No Specific Reason

* If I may sum up my 2013 in a word, I would just say with all simplicity it was dramatic.

* "Cuffs of a new pair of socks got loose after the second wash, should I return the socks back to the shop"? I volunteered to answer "definitely".

* Few days ago, I was riding a car with a friend and smelled something like pizza. I said nothing to her, but remembered years ago I had to pick up a colleague in the evening to go together to a meeting. The moment he got into the car he said "There is a strange smell, have been eating something"? I immediately said "No". I hoped he wouldn't notice the used tissues back on the floor, and thought it might not be classy to add "I was rather feeding". 

* Do those who are not careful enough with what they say in social media completely loose their mind? A post, I recently read, written by a colleague came as a total shock. Even in a closed FB group, we, well I mean I, expect the minimum self-censorship. The "slips" usually come from those who are the most addicted to social networking. Amid the 24 hours frenzy, no doubt that stupidest and most immature moments would lie somehow in plain sight. 

* These weeks I became the sole guardian of a couple. Mr. Newfoundland and Mrs. Golden Retriever. He is obedient and she is rebellious, and I am struggling to be up to the role of the good caretaker.

* Sometimes, very small and insignificant flashes make me touched. I was having lunch in a chain restaurant few weeks ago. I was sitting in the second floor looking at the families and couples dinning in the first floor.

I like to observe the behavior of the others whenever I have the opportunity. A table of ten people drew my attention. 8 of them were boys and girls of around 12 years old, and the two adults looked like teachers or coaches. The youngsters were wearing training suits and looked like coming from faraway countryside. I guessed they either belonged to an orphanage or a sports team. They behaved very well and were very shy and silent as if it was their first time in a restaurant in the big city. I looked at them and felt sort of happiness and compassion like I wanted to hug them for no specific reason. No drama here. I was just touched...for no reason.

* And now, what about 2014? Health and happiness for those whom I care about, and stability where instability reigns are all what I wish. They look simple wishes, but....

Doors

In 2011 and 2012 I lost two close friends. The loss was a decision taken, solely or partially, by me.

After a minor trigger in 2012, I decided I was not able to put up with an old friend's actions and attitudes. All his drama, moral pressure and negative energy took a toll on me. In return, I was not “allowed” to have my down moments. He has always been a heavy baggage, but at a certain moment, even after twenty years, we have the right to say enough is enough. I took the decision with no regret despite the long time we have known each other and the different situations we went through together. I do not hold a grudge against him and I wish him the best. Simply, I cannot bear the pressure of his friendship, as I see it, on my shoulders anymore.

It was different with the other friend. Has the friendship just faded? Maybe. What I know is that this friend, who was very close, became really aloof within a short period of time. When I inquired if I did anything wrong, he said he was just passing through a phase of his life where many matters became unclear and uncertain. I tried to give him the support I could give in a long distance friendship, but there was something basic missing in the person I thought I knew very well. I felt as if our friendship, among maybe other relationships and ideas of his, was under scrutiny and he was reassessing its value.

My country witnessed then an unstable political period where insecurity prevailed and hundreds of citizens fell dead, but my friend never called or sent a message to see even if I was still alive. Few months later, I found a one line e-mail asking if I was ok. I replied I was doing fine and added, in a friendly tone, that I had expected a much earlier message. He said he tried to call but there was no answer. I asked myself why I haven’t found any missed calls from him. Or any missed calls with the code of his country of residence? Why even an e-mail was not sent in the right time when the turmoil and danger were at their peak? These questions rolled around in my head, but were never addressed loudly to him. I did not reply his last message and he never contacted me again. For a reason or for no reason the friendship went to its death bed. As if there was an undeclared pact but signed by both of us to end it. Two years passed. I feel sorry. I feel really sorry because he meant a lot to me.

Were these two friendships real? Yes they were.

Do the reasons of the break-up seem valid? I do not know.

Did any of my friendships in the past take the same path? No.

Doors close, others open and life goes on.

Dinner With Non-Friends

It was the sort of dinner where one had to sit with strangers at the same table for two hours and show some respect. We were eight with nothing in common. Two options were available. Either to remain silent or to mobilize one's skills to conduct a decent conversation. 

A married couple. The gray-haired husband came across as a dignified person, and she looked like young Fanny Ardant. Natural fuzzy look, thin body and lovely spontaneous attitudes that would hide, as I imagine, a volcano of emotions. In an imaginary film, she would madly fall in love with a young  bohemian man and leave everything behind her.

A late fifties man from an evil country. Well, a country with an evil leader is more accurate though. An impossible and hypothetical question would have been "How do you feel about your leader?" or "Are children really die from hunger over there?". But who am I to ask.

A lady who kept adjusting her wig every now and then. She was not fixing messed up hair, no, she was adjusting the whole wig on her head... in case nobody noticed she was wearing a wig.

A man who extended bridges of communication every where. His tools? Several foreign languages he mastered and a fatherly look in his eyes.

Someone was far there at the end of the table. Our eyes never met. He engaged in a non-stop conversation with the dignified husband.

A red-haired smiled, and I smiled back. A possible interesting conversation floated in the air, but she was a bit far, and with the loud music it was not feasible to try.

A silent man who maybe was thinking of writing up his thoughts on the dinner in his blog.

Harvest of the Week

* I met someone who was detained in a famous hostage crisis that took place in the 90s of last century. He was lucky enough to be in the first wave of hostages who were freed after few days. Many others were released few months later. It was interesting to hear a firsthand testimony depicting how feelings of shock, rage, defiance and despair were experienced. According to him, what remained distinctively in his memory were the unexpected reactions of many hostages whom he has already known as friends or acquaintances. Those who thought to be big and strong collapsed. Others expected to be calm and confident became hysterical. And some frail-looking ones surprisingly composed themselves. The contrast between what was perceived and what was proved in his days of detention overshadowed the other feelings he harbored in that difficult experience.

* I was waiting for my companions to finish their grocery shopping in Mercado Municipal de Magdalena when a blind girl wearing the traditional dress and selling candies on the sidewalk caught my eyes. She looked quite poor. Every passerby tried to give her money without taking candies in return, as a gesture of help or compassion, was firmly turned down.  There are many very kind and dignified persons but they might not be visible in the fog that shrouds everything, and small beautiful acts like that touch me and restore the lost faith. I just wanted to tell her "Thank You".

Half Sorcerer

The art of imposing on mankind has at all times been an important part of the art of governing; and it was not that portion of the science of government which Bonaparte was the least acquainted with. He neglected no opportunity of showing off to the Egyptians the superiority of France in arts and sciences; but it happened, oftener than once, that the simple instinct of the Egyptians thwarted his endeavours in this way. Some days after the visit of the pretended fortune-teller he wished, if I may so express myself, to oppose conjurer to conjurer. For this purpose he invited the principal sheiks to be present at some chemical experiments performed by M. Berthollet. The General expected to be much amused at their astonishment; but the miracles of the transformation of liquids, electrical commotions and galvanism, did not elicit from them any symptom of surprise. They witnessed the operations of our able chemist with the most imperturbable indifference. When they were ended, the sheik El Bekri desired the interpreter to tell M. Berthollet that it was all very fine; "but," said he, "ask him whether he can make me be in Morocco and here at one and the same moment?" M. Berthollet replied in the negative, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Oh! then," said the sheik, "he is not half a sorcerer."

Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte

By Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne.

The Lost Cry

The two massive statues of Colossi of Memnon majestically stood firm for 3400 years.

They guarded a huge temple that doesn't exist any more.

They were severely hit by an earthquake, but survived.

Yellowish grass, green palms, warm winter sun, arid rocky hills, the lost legendary cry and the magnificent history of the "God-on-Earth" who was as well the father of a revolutionary monotheist, made that moment in January 2011 in Luxor, Egypt unforgettable.

If only I could hear them cry….. 

Dawn and Dusk

My usually silent father would enthusiastically speak up and name every village we would pass by on our way to his hometown. He would give us information like which village was the biggest, the most populated or whose grapes or apricots were the most delicious. My younger sister and I were not really interested in these sorts of information. We, like any children, would look out of the bus window at seemingly endless fields, herds of cows and buffaloes  and toiling farmers, and ask our parents impatiently when we would arrive.

My father's talkative moments were rare. Only in his last years, when he was approaching ninety years old and almost lost vision and hearing ability, he started to reveal faraway memories and stories from his childhood and teenager years. It was his last resort to feel communicative with the world around him.

In the last year of his life I was back home and living with him and mum. We developed an unprecedented bond of communication. I read the newspaper for him every morning, and in the evenings he would talk with solid memory about incidents and situations happened dozens of years ago. Given his very old age, some of these memories dated back to the early 30s of last century, and that was in itself quite impressive.

A whole new side of his life opened up. It was then I knew he once ran away from his family's house because he was so afraid of his father who found out he had written a love letter to the daughter of their neighbors. The parents of the girl complained. He ran away and stayed few days lost in the prairie. It was common in the countryside back then to hire someone to travel from one village to another and search for the lost/runaway kids. The person who was named The Caller would walk the streets, call up the lost names and mention their physical characteristics. My father was found and taken back home. No mention from his parents was ever made about the letter.

In high school he moved to live in the big city with his cousin. He once urged other students to riot against the administration of the school and consequently was suspended. He became very distressed and scared he might get permanently expelled. In a strange coincidence, while he was helplessly wandering the streets, he ran into a friend of his father sitting in a café, and upon hearing papa's story, the friend offered to pull some strings to settle the matter with the school. When I asked about the reason for the riot, he mentioned something concerning the favorable treatment given to the foreign students. He added he was young and fool.

Papa talked fondly about his favorite youngest brother who passed away prematurely after a battle with cancer. Papa devoted his time to accompany him in the hospital where he usually stayed overnight. It happened many times he arrived late at the school in which he worked as a teacher. The relation with the director became very tense. Papa later quit the job and changed his career. As ironic as life sometimes gets, the same angry director became, few years later, his father-in-law.

The well-built, strong and courageous man I, the introvert son, knew as my father in his prime time, and the frail skinny almost blind old man I, the grown up nomad son, knew as my father in his final year seemed as different as dawn and dusk, although at a certain moment in their rising and falling journeys, dawn and dusk look too similar to tell apart.

Emily's Space

A solemn thing within the Soul
To feel itself get ripe-
And golden hang - while farther up -
The Maker's Ladders stop
And in the Orchard far below -
You hear a Being - drop -

A Wonderful - to feel the Sun
Still toiling at the Cheek
You thought was finished -
Cool of eye, and critical of Work -
He shifts the stem - a little -
To give your Core - a look -

But solemnest - to know
Your chance in Harvest moves
A little nearer - Every sun
The single - to some lives.

Emily Dickinson

Dream (October 11, 2013)

It seemed like I was looking for an apartment to buy. I entered a big old and prestigious condominium, but the entrance and the lobby were not as I expected such a building would have. It was rather dim and seedy-looking with idle persons standing in the corners. I was told there was a vacant apartment in the eighth floor, and the moment I entered the elevator, someone warned me that the higher floors are not as well preserved as the lower ones. He added the walls up there were not made of marble.

As the old metal caged elevator was going up, I saw the gradual deterioration of the condition of each floor. When I got out in the eighth floor, it looked like a big dirty kitchen of a low-end restaurant. There were baked crusty pastes I could not recognize if they were for pizzas or bread. The kitchen staff was deep frying in a huge pan. I stopped and struck up a conversation with someone, when I saw a stray small cat jumping from the floor up into the frying pan. I was about to scream but the cat could get its head and body out of the oil and shook itself dry. It was not hurt and that left me very surprised. A young girl took it in her hands and kept patting on its back. I thought the girl's hands must have been all greasy and dirty.

Purple October

Even if I was not lost, I felt like one. The busy streets were roaring. Cars, lights, crowds and my foreign wandering self. Dozens of sweaty purple men raised their hands to carry God. Enthusiasm and devotion of believers, no matter what they believed in, never failed to amaze me. I saw it before in Jerusalem, Mecca Tokyo, Cairo and Rome, and I laughed at what I have always been told as a child, that signs of devotion of the believers were the best proof they were on the right path. And as usual there was only one right path.

The God's slow 19-hour-journey reached its final destination. The last few hundred meters consumed more than 3 hours. I placed myself in the middle of the yellow plaza, and did not forget to check if my wallet was still in the safer jeans front pocket after I removed it from the vulnerable back one. It was there.

I was not wearing my contact lenses, neither did I remember to bring the glasses. So, the image of the Lord was blurry, and the sword of sorrow that pierced in the soul was invisible. 

By then, the crowds were in their absolute zeal. Chants, ringing bells mingled with emotions on the sparkling path. Again as usual, the only sparkling path.

Sail

Amy Winehouse was on the radio complaining of the safe old bet when I started to unwrap the cartoon box. It was abandoned in the storeroom for almost one year, until I decided last week-end it was the time to open it and get out the pieces of the boat model.  Nails and screwdrivers were placed on the table calmly waiting to be used.

And as "the tiny penny rolling up the walls inside" was still struggling in its desperate endeavors, I sat down and found myself contemplating how a year has already flied by so fast in which the patient, who was repeatedly thought dead, would come out of coma, smile, and then sink deep and hit the borders between life and death.

A year passed fast, yet the few hours I spent trying to assemble the wooden boat model seemed endless. At the end, it was done and ready to sail. And it will sail.

15 Sunny Winter Minutes

“Shake it. You get what is written in Heaven for it"

It was sarcastic, and as it was pronounced in the native language, the two sentences rhymed. The two greasy laborers who said it loudly, laughed at the wiggling mannered young man who upon hearing it, turned his head back, looked at them, smiled and went on his way. I thought it was funny although it meant to be derogatory. So, it was sarcastic, rhymed, funny and derogatory.

I was waiting on the sidewalk in that sunny winter morning.

I went inside the auto accessories shop and asked the technician how long they needed more to finish the installation of the car seat cover. He said around 15 minutes.

The commercial street was crowded with cars and shoppers. The two laborers were still standing across the street and watching the passersby.

A car parked a few meters away and a thin bald man got out and entered a nearby store. I immediately recognized my old neighbor. Our families lived close to each other for ages, but we almost never spoke except when we were in the preparatory school and I wanted to join the scout team in which he was a member. It was weird that we knew each other that long without being even on speaking terms. I always found he had an unwelcoming attitude that discouraged me from striking up a conversation with him. He might have had the same view on me.

My sister used to find him so handsome that she named her first son after him. His look dramatically changed along the years though. She recently let me know, in her usual updating news of family, friends and acquaintances that she read his obituary in the newspaper.

Back to those sunny moments in the busy street, my neighbor, whom I did not know then would pass away prematurely, went out of the shop and got into his car. Our eyes met and we pretended as usual we did not know each other.

"Shake it. You get what is written in Heaven for it" echoed in my mind addressed by the two car grease smeared guys to their smiling seemingly unoffended target. It was then when someone came out of the shop and said "The car is ready".

Thousands of Afternoons Ago IV

The second day after I arrived in Vichy, I decided to change the hotel. It was far from the school and far from the other hotels or rooms in which the students, I have already met, were staying.  I walked the streets until I found a nearby hotel with reasonable rates. It was owned by an old provincial couple. The wife did not seem particularly friendly, and I thought maybe if it was not for the many empty rooms in the hotel, she would have gladly refused to accept me. I guessed she might have had a previous bad experience with foreign students who flooded the city every year. It might have been something else. I did not know.

The teacher of my morning classes was an attractive tall and slim lady in her early forties. Short black hair and black eyes. She would be nice and smiling, and in a second would swing mood and become tempered. In her good moments she would sing and ask us about the songs we loved. She would even flirt discreetly with one specific guy in the class. In her bad moments, we would become silent like hushed up kids in the kindergarten.

In general I won’t feel very comfortable if a moody person approached my close circle. I try to avoid unpredictable people. With Marie Francoise, we had the normal healthy distance between a teacher and a student, so I did not care much about her swinging moods. I even liked her, maybe because I found her character interesting, or because I liked (and still like) people who sing to themselves without caring much who might or might not listen (A dentist I visited recently kept singing while he was checking my teeth. I was amused and did not feel disturbed).

It was the peak of summer and heat was bearable though, compared to the sun in my hometown. And Joyce Sim's Coming Into My Life and Princess Erika's Trop de Bla Bla were constantly aired on the waves.

Pigeon Tower

The Pigeon Tower is fortified and high.

Pigeons flied far away, and I remained all alone.

I saw a Pigeon Tower first in my uncle's countryside home as I mentioned here when I was 7 or 8 years old. I liked how majestic it looked and the idea that pigeons also had a neighboring home to which they came back everyday before sunset. It was built of mud bricks and painted white.

We, as kids, were allowed every now and then to go inside and have a look.

Afterwards whenever we traveled in the countryside, I started to pay attention more and more to those towers, which were mostly built in the fields around the villages. My uncle's tower was one of the few, in our rural area at least, that was built inside the village.

Any countryside drawing of mine at that early age included a pigeon tower somewhere.

Then in a famous film produced in late sixties, that I watched on TV, there was a cruel rape scene that happened in a pigeon tower. Certain scenes in the movies we watched when we were young remain unforgettable, and that was one. It gave pigeon towers, in my mind, another dramatic, and maybe sexual, connotation.

Years later, a beautiful, jazzy and sad song of my very favorite singer, included the two above-mentioned verses while depicting her feelings of loneliness, despair and nostalgia. I love the song.

Joyful, sensual and then Nostalgic. Natural sequence.

Horses' Heads And Eternity

I met her many years ago when she was a university student in Paris. We were among a group of students of different nationalities. An energetic and full of life girl with wild beauty, blue eyes and smiling face. Academically she was brilliant, and socially she was wooed by many. We got together into few situations that left their repercussion unforgettable in my memory.

We drifted apart more than 20 years ago and never contacted each other. Accidentally every few years, I would hear something about her from persons who turned out to be common acquaintances.

Few days ago, I have been told she passed away after a strong battle with the monster disease, survived by a husband and a daughter. I was given a link to her FB and came to see her recent photos and read the condolence messages.

Twenty years are long enough to bury many feelings, but her loss saddens me. Besides, I am in a mood that makes me apt to feel saddened.

Our memories together kept her alive in my mind and kept me feeling as if I was still close to her as I once was. 

Try

Moments of silence are needed to try to understand.

Unanswered

* I found someday that my khaki pants were missing. Nothing could explain the disappearance. No strangers were in my house who could have stolen them. I have not left the gym wearing my work-out clothe and forgot them in the locker. I did not use a self-service laundry. Nothing.  I gave up trying to figure out where and why. Years later and in another country where I was living, the exact same scenario repeated. Khaki pants were missing from my house. And again no explanation. This might seem funny, but it is true.

* Family1, whom I completely trust, told me family2 stole his money and submitted the evidence. It seemed credible, but I could not believe f2 with his integrity could do it. I said to myself there must have been a margin of error somewhere. F1 never told anybody else in order to keep the family together, and years later he passed away. F2 went in life armed with his usual nice character, kind attitudes, level-headed views and supportive positions. Where does the truth lay? To be totally unaware of a possible hidden and evil aspect of character of someone so close and so kind is something scary.

* The nostalgia to the past kills me. I admit the past might not have been the best of times and I can not deny the beautiful aspects of the present, but why it seems so tender and so sweet? Memories feel like a wind coming from far off and the moment it touches my face with its waves of beauty and longing, I get so overwhelmed that I kneel down. My parents, the family house, the garden, the quiet neighborhood have all gone and will never come back, but here I am on my knees receiving the waves with my eyes closed and both arms extended.

Fatima and Her World

The other person who used to turn away her face whenever she saw photos of snakes, as I mentioned in “Semi-close encounters with snakes”, was the help who worked in my parents’ house. She would not give a clear answer why. Photos of snakes were just a big no.

She was originally from my mother’s hometown. A friend told Mama about a trustworthy widow who would like to move to the city and work as a help after the death of her husband. She was in her late forties and had a married son and a daughter who lived back in the village. Mama immediately accepted.

What drew my attention first was her thick accent. I had to pay good attention to understand her, although I was not completely stranger to that accent because Mama would sometimes switch to her hometown accent if she met one of her old relatives or in her rare visits to her hometown.

Fatima was fat with curved body. Living all her life in the countryside made her unaware of many aspects of life in the big city. She shocked us at the beginning with her frequently-used swear words that infiltrated her talk. She, innocently and naively, had no sense in choosing the appropriate words. It was not until Mama let her understand that such words could not be tolerated, that she stopped using them. She also used to tell stories about how her late husband loved her and how he, before their marriage, threatened to commit suicide if she did not accept his proposal. Sometimes she was real fun.

She was also a flirt. I remember once I saw her in the corner of the garden with the guard of the neighbors' house in what looked as an intimate moment. There was nothing physical, but they seemed quite cozy. I took few steps back and mentioned nothing because my parents, with their conservative attitudes, would not have tolerated it.

She worked for us many years, until suddenly one day she requested to leave because she found another job for an expatriate family with a much better salary. We were disappointed by her decision. For few months after her departure Mama was so upset that she did not return back her calls, but later our attitude became friendly, and she used to come visit us every now and then.

In the following years I left the house and the country, and I did not see much of her. Mama told me in her last years Fatima was almost unrecognizable because she lost a huge weight due to her diabetes. She passed away in her hometown, survived by her son and daughter.

Holiday

Few days in the Andes. The majestic Andes with their rugged and dramatic snow-capped peaks. A rich valley that goes through between picturesque two chains of white and black mountains was the place of my holiday jaunt.

Many first-times like being 5000 meter above sea level, trekking, eating grilled coy (guinea pig), being terribly altitude sick, touching a glacier, passing through small beautiful indigenous villages seemed forgotten by modern life, experiencing the four seasons within a matter of hours and finally feeling relaxed after real hard times on more than one level along the past months.

......

Our share of night to bear,

Our share of morning,

Our blank in bliss to fill,

Our blank in scorning.

Here a star, and there a star,

Some lose their way.

Here a mist, and there a mist,

Afterwards-day!

Emily Dickinson

What If....

It was a moment half of the truth seemed visible. The Fog moved slowly but then stopped and left the imagination picture what might be behind the white smoke. Helpless as I felt, I had no choice but to try to look self-assured. Did I? I cleared my throat and asked "And what if summer came…?" I realized when I uttered the last word how desperate I sounded. Silence prevailed and summer seemed like the hidden truth in a crystal ball that no one could see but in which everyone believed.

Semi-Close Encounters With Snakes

The simple known fact is that snakes are dangerous, but moreover I knew two persons, one of them was my aunt, who could not bring themselves to even look at snakes’ pictures. My mother told me when her sister was a teenager, she once fell asleep under a vine in the family’s house, and when she felt like someone tickling her she found out it was a snake. She screamed for help and from that day even looking at a photo of snake terrorized her.

In May 2008, I visited a beautiful city on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula called Salalah. The city is unique in many ways. It is the only spot in the region touched by the Indian monsoon every July and August of the year and that leads to continuous drizzle in that very arid area and makes the temperature dramatically drop to 27 C, where the mercury gets easily stretched beyond 45 C. in the rest of the peninsula. The city becomes lushly green, and the abundant coconut palms give it a Caribbean or Southeast Asian flavor. Besides, it is also one of the cities that claim to have the tomb of the Biblical and Qur'anic figure Job.

In one of the sightseeing tours we visited a natural site of heavy trees and bushes and a waterfall, although the latter was almost dry because the monsoon season hasn't had started yet. I moved away from the group to enjoy a moment of silence, and got closer to big rocks with many cracks that formed beautiful shapes. So close to the rocks that I found out one of the cracks was actually a light brown almost-one-meter long snake. I was startled and immediately stepped back as it moved smoothly back to enter into the crack.

The same day we had a free evening. I preferred to stay at the hotel, work out at the gym and order dinner from room service. The gym was a spacious room on the ground floor overlooking the garden. There were very few persons working out on the cycles. After I warmed up I went for chest workout on the flat bench in a corner of the hall. Weights were placed on the stand and some heavy weights were left on the floor next to jump ropes. When I picked up the dumbbells from the floor, I noticed one of the ropes moved and I thought it was tangled with the weights, but with a closer look I could not believe it was a snake that crawled quickly towards the weights stand.

When I told the trainer, he gave me a doubtful look. Actually I was not even 100% certain of what I saw. To prove I was mistaken he moved all the weights from the stand and there was nothing. He lifted up the stand, and right there we saw a snake in a spiral pose beneath the leg of the stand. It moved quickly to enter a tiny hole in the floor/wall junction.

The whole atmosphere changed and we were ordered immediately to evacuate the room. A snake in a five-star hotel was not an everyday challenge. The feeling that I could have touched it thinking it was a jump rope was repugnant.

The following day when I asked what happened, I felt the management did not want the news to spread in the hotel. They searched the gym and the garden and found nothing, so they just filled up and closed all the holes and cracks.

Two situations involved snakes in the same day for someone who had no close contact with snakes before, and in a city known as a tourist destination but unknown for its wondering snakes was something difficult to forget.

For few weeks later, I would wake up suddenly during the night at the slightest feeling that there was something unusual. It could only be a pillow falling down, a blanket pulled away or a sheet got messed up, but to me it only meant there might have been a snake in my bed.

From The Diary

We were four. Three guys: A, K and myself, and S. S was not really our friend or a pleasant person to be with, but we could not avoid her accompanying us as she and k were roommates and she requested to go with us. Upon an invitation extended by H in Brussels, we decided to spend the week-end with him.

K, who was always excellent at organizing a trip, was the one in charge. He rented the car and drove us the almost 300 kilometers, followed the guide map in the city and just parked the car in front of H's house in the neighborhood of Ixelles. It is wonderful to have someone in charge, in so perfect charge that all you need to do is just to relax and enjoy.

It was my second visit to Brussels and fortunately it did not rain or snow the whole weekend.

At H’s home, the four guys of us crammed in one bedroom and left the other one solely to S.

Everything went well until Saturday evening when we started to hear sounds of beats coming from upstairs. H told us that that was the neighbor signaling that we were making noise. We were surprised because we really did not make any unusual noise, but according to H, the problem was with the neighbor himself who was very old and a difficult person to deal with. He would also use racial slurs at the slightest provocation or sometimes with no provocation. H added that the old man's wife apologized few times for her husband's behavior and attributed it to his senility. I could not believe how my friend H, or anyone, could tolerate this attitude, but H said he had no other option but to leave the apartment which was not an easy decision. Besides, the police when contacted, did not take any serious action against the neighbor, so he had to live with it.

We were supposed to leave back to Paris on Sunday afternoon. S went in the morning to meet a friend of hers whom we knew too. That friend was a very decent young lady. We agreed with S to pick her up around 3 PM in front of her friend's house. 

Sunday morning I went with A to buy chocolate as presents to our friends back home and then we met with K and H  for lunch before we went back to the apartment to collect our stuff. We said goodbye to H and left.

We put our belongings in the trunk of the car that parked across the street and took our seats. K in the driver's seat, A in the passenger's and me in the backseat. K drove in reverse a bit to get the car out when he unintentionally hit another parked car. We went out to see if there was any damage but there was nothing. 

At this exact moment, and in the very calm empty street in that Sunday afternoon, a very old man appeared out of nowhere and started to shout hysterically at us. It turned out he was the old neighbor. Every attempt to let him understand that there was no damage done failed. He did not give us one second to explain or give himself one second to listen. So, we just left him barking alone on the sidewalk and drove away. We really pitied H for having such a neighbor and thought what a continous headache he must be having. 

A commented jokingly that as if the deep racist attitudes of this man were not enough for him, he now witnessed those foreigners committing a "crime" before they ran away.

We were already late for S when K realized that we had to fill up the tank, but since it was Sunday many stations were closed. Moreover, our meeting point was not easy to reach. Finally it was almost 4 o'clock when we arrived. S was just furious and I definitely understood. A quietly left the passenger's seat for her and moved to the backseat. 

In these situations I would apologize and explain what happened and give the angry person time to calm down, but that was in no way A's tactics. He apologized, and that was fine. He explained in details and exaggerated about the reasons behind the delay, and that in my book was not bad. But then he kept asking her every 3 minutes if she was still mad and saying that she should not get mad. And obviously that only resulted in doubling her fury.

The tense atmosphere lasted for two hours until we decided to stop at a gas station to buy something to drink and to make a visit to the toilet.  I got into the small toilet cabin first and a drawing on the wall of a huge organ drew my attention. For the last hour until we arrived Paris, S' attitude changed and she became almost normal. A whispered to me that undoubtedly what she saw on the wall of the toilet cabin has improved her mood.

Two days later I took the flight from Paris back to where I was living, A also left back for his home of residence, and K and S continued their student life and remained the foe roommates they have always been.

Paris - Brussels

December 1993

Dream (May 17, 2013)

I rode the car with my maternal uncle whom I haven't seen for ages. He looked as young as he did the last time I saw him. The street was empty although we were in the city center. I asked myself if it was appropriate to tell him I had intention to rent an apartment in the same neighborhood where he lived, but then I decided not to.

We arrived at his home and I did not see neither his wife nor his sons. There was only a nice-looking young woman whom he introduced as the maid. He talked in a serious way and asked her to bring the file.

I was a bit surprised that he lived with such a young woman alone in the house, and wondered if what they had went beyond what was supposed to be between a man and a maid. I guessed people and neighbors must be talking about them.

She brought the file and he showed me some papers and said he had plans to travel abroad either to France or Turkey, and he decided to choose the latter because it was cheaper. He wanted to know my opinion concerning the arrangements of the travel because as he said I had experience in traveling abroad. The paper had the number 2372. I did not know what this number stood for, but I guessed it might be the price he should pay.

I felt at a loss and did not know exactly what to say or how to help him.

Sunday Afternoon

The water touched my toes and I immediately felt a shiver down my spine. I stepped few meters back and looked at the cloudy scene where it was impossible to recognize the line between sky and water. Scattered surfers were floating like dead bodies waiting for a big wave. I shook the sand off my feet, put on the topsiders and rolled down my gray pants.

It was not very cold though, besides, the two hundred something stairs that I climbed up later to reach the top of the cliff made me feel somehow warm.

While the waterfront road was live with strollers, joggers and tourists, side streets were narrow, calm and almost empty. My exact favorite walking streets. Some of the few restaurants or cafés located here and there were open but with few clients. They must be the residents of the neighborhood, not the visitors who would prefer more vibrant spots. Houses with small green front yards and old rusty iron fences with anti-climb spikes were still able to survive amid the mushrooming and luxurious new high rises. It was quite, except for a passing car every now and then or residents occasionally getting in or out their houses.

Back home, afternoons were the meditative zone of the day especially in the long hot summer when windows' shutters got closed to keep the strong sun out, naps were taken for more than one hour and the house became dead silent. Lazy thick afternoons that introduced everyone in the house to the kingdom of sleep except me.

But this Sunday afternoon offered simple joyful moments. It looked me in the eyes, tapped on my shoulder and then disappeared in the crowd. And that was enough.

Sufism in the Time of Terrorism

The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of the strong support rose, and He said to me “Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?”

“No”, I replied.

He said, “With seventy veils. Even if you raise them you will not see me, and if you do not raise them you will not see me. If you raise them you will see me and if you do not raise them you will see me. Beware of burning yourself. You are My sight, so have faith. You are My face, so veil yourself”. 

Ibn Arabi

1165-1240

Countryside

During my childhood years my family used to spend two or three weeks in summer in the countryside.  By countryside I mean precisely the village where my father was born and raised until he entered the high school and where some of his family, namely his mother and brother, were still living.

A small village of ten thousand inhabitants on the east bank of the river where palm trees heavily grew. The main crops were wheat, maize and cotton. Fruit trees were also abundant. Mango, small green apples, guava, apricot and endless orange orchards.

Streets were narrow and dusty. Houses were large but adjacent to each other. Electricity grid was not fully connected and only few telephone lines were working.  I remember very well by sunset time, the maids were up to light the fueled wick lamps. The grown-ups would talk and children would play in the corner of the big dim living room lighted only by two lanterns. Stars looked so many and so bright in the black sky. This might sound as centuries ago, but it was only the middle of the 1970s.

Needless to say people were friendly and simple, as countryside people usually are.

My father's family house was huge and divided into different sections for family members, guests and social gatherings. A barn and a pigeons' tower were located on the left side of the house. I think the admiration I always feel for the romantic view of pigeons’ towers stem partially from my memory of that old tower.

My uncle had a big family. My grandmother and her sister lived in the house too.  His eldest two sons, who were few years older than me, and I were hanging out together all the time. The eldest was the closer. We had a strong bond.

Many vivid memories from these years, especially tastes and smells of food like the freshly baked flat bread in primitive ovens, the thick buffalo milk, heavy dishes rich with tomato sauce, the homemade Karish cheese, fried eggs soaked in home butter, brownish fried ducks, round pastries stuffed with date paste, sweet and very dark tea served in small cups and offered every two or three hours, the strong smell of lamb meat being cooked and the salty rice pudding in clay pots.

Although the village was not different from thousands of other villages, it was nationally known for those who were interested, as the site where an old mystic religious philosopher was buried after being injured with forty wounds in a battlefield in the year 657 A.C.

The authenticity of the tomb is doubtful though since there are three other countries that claimed having the same honor.  One of these countries had stronger historical evidence. Besides, the site of the battlefield itself was many hundreds kilometers far from our village. I remember the enthusiasm and heat that colored the arguments used by my uncle and other residents of the village to prove the authenticity of the tomb. As a child I did not care about these arguments as much as I did for the effort we had to do to climb the long stairs leading to the mausoleum. The number of the stairs had special significance related to the forty wounds. Myths and miracles were attributed by the devout, as usual, to this ascetic figure who once said to his creator:

If You forgive me, that will in no way diminish Your sovereignty;

And if You punish me, that will in no way augment Your authority.

You can find others to punish besides me,

But I can find no one to forgive me but You.

The river was not very close. A thirty minutes' walk, and from there we would take a ferry and cross the river to reach the small city on the other side which had nearby one of the oldest archaeological sites that dates back to 2625 B.C.

My uncle was decent and easy-going person. I think I took a little of his talent of painting. He had his unique style of naïve art and participated in local and national exhibitions. His studio was a secluded room in the house where we were not allowed to enter. His wife, on the other hand, had a strong character and was not very friendly with the youngsters.

I haven't visited the village in more than 25 years. My grandma, her sister and my uncle passed away years ago. His wife is too sick and I can't even imagine how she might look like now. According to those who visited the village and the house in the last few years, the charm has long gone and what remained there has nothing to do with what once had existed.

Dream (May, 7 2013)

I went with my deceased father to visit a colleague whom I have not seen before because our professional contact was only through paper work and the internet. He welcomed us in his rather dim apartment and I felt a bit embarrassed because my clothes looked too casual. We talked a lot and I exaggerated in praising the quality of his work.  His wife was somewhere at the house but I did not see her.

He accompanied me to the door and we waited for the lift to take me down. The lift was old and did not seem functioning well. When its door got open there was a young woman inside with her children (boy and girl). On the way down, the lift went bit by bit slower and then stopped between two floors. We were stuck. Finally we could jump out of a window. I carried up the children to reach the window. Their mother and I followed next. I went out of the dim building to the street which was not very bright either.

Sleep

My sleeping habits changed in the last few years. My formerly rigorous 8-hours-sleep is not valid anymore. It is 7 hours or less.

It is not very uncommon now that every now and then I wake up at a certain hour in the middle of my sleep, like 2 or 3 A.M.,  and stay awake for one or two hours before I can get back to sleep. These sudden awakenings last for few days or even a week. And it is not related to being worried, stressed or any other sort of anxiety.

Before, I used to sleep only on my right or left side and I rarely tossed or turned. Now I keep tossing and turning for no reason, and I wake up and find myself lying on my back, with my two hands' fingers interlocked, which is funny because I usually do not interlock my hands.

Dreams are not either as frequent as they used to be.

Some of these changes like sleeping fewer hours might be common as we get older. Others could be genetic. My mother always suffered from waking up in the middle of her sleep for no reason and staying awake for no short time.

No explanation for some of these changes  as there is no easy explanation for the meaning of this beautiful stanza of Emily Dickinson:

Sleep is the station grand

Down which on either hand

The hosts of witness stand.