Frustration

 

Frustration! This is all what I feel, profound frustration, I just wish we did not meet, life was much simpler, much straightforward and much familiar. Now, I hate you and hate myself million times more, and it is needless to say that I resent every moment of love, happiness and hope I had with you or dreamt to have with you. I hate Cairo, that grey dusty depressing city that we both call home, with other 22 million desperate souls. Our God Osiris was cut into 14 pieces, and each was wickedly thrown in one of Egypt’s regions, his beloved wife Isis, roamed our land and gathered the torn pieces, used her magic, I mean her love, recreated her beloved Osiris for one night, they made love and created Horus. You cut me into several shreds, threw mw all over Cairo, to make sure that Im in pain, severe pain wherever I walk, or drive. You did not need magic, and of course you did not need love, to turn my life into an eternal abyss of misery, anger and regret. Every street and every neighbourhood in our dilapidating city carry a memory or a memory to be. We said we will visit these places, when the weather gets better, we will go to these monuments, what else can be done in Cairo, right? We mentioned felucca rides, in Maadi and also near down town, Ah downtown walks at night, that Pizza place, that tiny famous one, may be visiting the Museum before it loses all its belle epoque charm. Every where in Cairo has a piece of me, my love, my hopes to visit together, and my anger that we are not together. I should leave Cairo and its people in their destined defeat, and live my own tragedy. I need Isis to gather my torn pieces, all the pieces except my heart, I don’t need any more pain. I need Isis to blow her sacred breath, recreate me, a stronger man, a man who does not believe in love. Isis, I need your magic, and let your love be my last encounter with love. I need your love to bring me back to my old life, my familiar life, where I did not lose myself into a one-sided love, where I did not love someone who enjoys her life while I am dying every single day. Isis, the goddess of mourning, I beg you mourn my life and mourn my love till you feel that all this pain, all this sadness and all this anger deserve a new life.

I am frustrated, I need the magic of all the gods and goddesses together, I need to return back a year ago, before meeting you, before surrendering to love, and before losing myself. If this is my test, quest, or challenge, I admit that I failed in a legendary way. Isis, my goddess of mourning, wisdom and magic, why don’t you help me? No mercy for this lame man fooled by love. Why don’t you send Set to burn this sad city with all its humiliated inhabitants, why doesn’t the God of war, chaos and storms revenge for me, for my naivety, my love and loss. Hate, has such a strange taste, strong, irritating and disgusting. Im whirling within a tornado of hate, anger and a sheer need of revenge. I need my life back; I need it badly. You gave me memories, invaluable feelings, overwhelming emotions and then what? Left me with all this agony, awakened me and threw me to a horde of zombies. Why am I blaming you? It is me to blame, it is me to hate. No my love, no, today allow me to hate you, to hate you as much as I love you, to hate you as much as my heart can bear.

 

Good Morning

 

I sent the daily “good morning” message, I hesitated a bit while picking an emoji, a smiley face, or that one with the hearts, the face with the red kiss, or just the childish sun with its silly rays. I waited for your reply, you wake up early, I checked my mobile, after brushing my teeth, I checked my mobile after praying, I checked my mobile after taking my shower, I checked my mobile after preparing my coffee, I checked my mobile before picking my bag and leaving and I kept checking my mobile along the way. You can’t be that stingy with eleven letters, you could have sent an emoji, anything, you were online 10 minutes ago, why didn’t you check my messages? A few hours ago, we were together, in one of my vivid dreams, talking and talking and now you don’t even care to send one word.

I remember one day, in our beautiful beginning, we came up with a crazy idea, cant remember if it was me or you who suggested it, I was usually the crazy one among the two of us, but on that day we decided to pick a random day, a very random day, and if we are still together on that specific date, both of us will make tattoos. “But I hate tattoos…I can’t stand them” I screamed in a funny theatrical way, “no tattoos for me” I repeated while looking at my skinny arms and waiting for your laughs. You said in a decisive tone, “If we are still together, we will have tiny tattoos, may be the first letters of our names…” She smiled and added, “maybe you write my name and I write yours”.  We kept laughing for hours, about the shapes, sizes and fonts of these future tattoos, and we discussed where to place them and who will see them, and then all the laughs stopped suddenly, disappeared, collected their echoes and left. Yes, at that specific moment we realized that there are others, others who will need justifications for these names attached to our bodies, these names which are not ours, but we insisted on taking them with us to the grave, these names became parts of us, of our beings.

Still waiting for that reply, while trying to respond to all the messages of the “others”, those who clung to my life at different stages, those who became part of my life, shaped it, and owned it. They have rights in my days, and in my future, in fact they perceive them as their days and their future, these “others” wake and sleep reassured that I am there for them, and that they know all my feelings, dreams and hopes. These “others” did not know that I was struck by love, unintentionally, struck by love and I could not resist. These “others” fill my days with their needs, problems and noise, I am sure your “others” do the same. I will check my mobile, may be you send a reply.  

Christmas in Europe

 “Christmas in Europe…. You said before adding, “a crazy idea”. I love crazy ideas, what’s life without some crazy ideas every now and then.  Let’s go to Europe, let’s enjoy Christmas there, the cheerful decorations, the cold fresh breezes, the happy smiles and the picturesque old towns. We will walk for hours along the narrow cobbled streets, may be it will rain a bit to complete the magical romantic scene. We will take photos infront of every ornate cathedral, stop by window shops, pick a small mirror or a ceramic statue of an angel, or a small antique colored glass vase. Even in our dream, we know that when we return to Cairo we won’t have a place to house our tiny souvenirs, but this did not stop us from picking one. This is the beauty of dreams, they are beautiful, spontaneous and fulfilling. We will kiss under every tree, we will be lost in these kisses just as they do in the romantic movies. Long lustful kisses that will redefine the boundaries of love and love making as they call it.  We stare at the view while spending most of the day lazy in bed. No rush in dreams, no running from one monument to the other as I usually do, no exchange rates, no limitations on credit cards, no boundaries, no restrictions, no taboos. Only love and it’s freedom, our cultural baggage won’t burden us in this trip, all the people who fill our lives while disappear for these few days, they won’t leave any trace or a memory. The whole world will be you and me, and the old towns of Europe will be celebrating our love, this Christmas will be an excuse to celebrate love, to celebrate freedom, to celebrate dreams. Cups and cups of hot chocolate, loads of croissants and gateaux of every flavor, we both have sweet tooth my love.  We will sing together walking along the river, there will be a river in our dream, there has always been a river, we will sing cheerfully, our voices will sound funny, lots of inaccurate melodies, but we will be happy. We will be in the ( here and now) as all my therapists used to advise me. We will forget Egypt, our people, our lives there, we will forget the past and the future, we will choose love and only love to be our guide, companion and path. Years and years after this “Christmas I’m Europe” trip, we will keep remembering it, when we followed our dreams and lived as we had to, when we realized that nothing in life, nothing at all is more important than love, and when we decided to give love a chance, even for a few days in a magical setting. 

I don’t like what I am becoming!

Ages ago I read a sentence in a novel, I never forgot it and now I am surprised how applicable it is, “I learned how to love you and hate myself”. I can feel the metamorphosis, I am turning into a wreck, a huge ugly wreck surrounded by a tsunami of profound and furious feelings. I am frustrated, all what I need is to forget the whole story, and be able to return back to my life. I have been bungeeing between these two worlds for so long, and its exhausting. I stare at people with half dead eyes, greet them with broken smiles and wait, wait for something that will never happen. Then I remember that I have wasted my best years waiting for something good to happen, inshala it will happen, just be patient, stop being hasty, patience…patience, and frankly nothing happened. Or to be honest, a lot of things happened, may be more than I expected, and all these things created a life that I am forced to live, a life that suffocate me, a life that I have to be grateful for, a life that lacks life.

Will you ever love me? Will you re-love me again? I stuttered but you heard me, your beautiful eyes, your beautiful dark eyes met my tired eyes, not for long, you swayed and I asked, “have you ever loved me?” with a shaky tone, I added, “not even for one day?”. You stood up, said in the coldest manner, “you sound nervous a bit today”. “A bit” I wished to scream as I have been screaming on daily basis, I wished to tell you that I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and that I am just legitimately curious to know what happened. How did I live before my downfall? What did I do…. Questions, questions, questions,… and now I feel that all the words have lost their meanings, they sound mediocre, fake and provocative. How can words describe my feelings or the feelings of any lover, how can an arrangement of letter, ink strokes on paper, shapes put next to each other, scribbles, how can they express the way your love kills me once or twice a day. But will silence describe my feelings?

Yesterday I told you that I love you so much, again, for the millionth time, again, I love you. But what do I really want? Love, what is love? This is my eternal question, my curse and my death. I love you, I told you, I wish you happiness, I told you, I think about you day and night, I told you, I am afraid that you will forget me, I told you. Words lost their meaning, their effect and their echo. How cruel love can be? how long this love should last? what will remain of me afterwards? 

 

Madness

 The whole problem was that you wanted to categorize us, lovers, what is our relation? It is not enough, there are constraints, this won’t work, this will never work, no need to continue, it’s better to rationalize things, no need to meet anymore. Your love disappeared suddenly as a shooting star while I was still enjoying the vagueness of the whole situation. Lingering in a beautiful dream, which you have already left. Now we meet, we sit and talk, we eat, we send messages, but are we really friends? I can’t ask, I don’t want to ask lest I lose what remained of us, these meetings. 

 “The more I meet you, the more I need to meet you more”I wanted to send you this message a few days ago, but I didn’t.  I was afraid that you will keep silent, and I started to hate your silence, it’s humiliating. Why do we meet ? I mean why do you offer me such bittersweet encounters? You are not sadistic, I presume, so why…. Do you still love me? Do you still, with all your rationality, have mixed feelings? Am I too frightened to ask, to confront, to claim my rights, my rights in love, in happiness and in belonging to you. I’m weaving a beautiful love story in my imagination, only in my imagination. After every meeting a chapter is added, again, only, in my imagination. I know to where this will lead me,   Madness, total madness, I’m ready, I accept the legitimate fate of real lovers. I love you. 

The lover and the …..

I want to tell you a lot of things, all my sentences will start and end by “I love you”. Cliche? I can hear you saying this, but believe me this is what and how i feel.

But what is love? I asked you once and you eloquently answered me, but apparently your love did not withstand your own stubbornness, your decisiveness or maybe your wisdom.

I wish you happiness, that is what I am sure of, even if I am faraway, even if I am just a friend, even if I am not allowed to ask a lot of questions because simply it became none of my business!

Again, what is love? I reached your shores exhausted and desperate, after long aimless journeys, where I denied love, denied its importance, I even denied its existence. Oh, my love, it didn’t take me long to surrender, I was afraid, worried and I didn’t understand anything, and I’m still afraid, I’m still worried and I still don’t understand anything.

Is it a curse? What shall I do? How can I continue living with such a gigantic void? How can anyone live after being split into three, the one who denied love, the one who loved you, and the current one who has to live. But don’t they all have to live? Does one of them have to be forgotten, so that life, that mundane life, can be proceeded. I wish I could keep the lover and kill the other two, anyway I don’t think that the old version, this silly denier, is still here. The challenge now is between the lover and the short- love story-survivor. Did he really survive? I have been haunted for several months by the same question from everyone that I know or even hardly knew, “ what’s wrong,ha?”. How I wish to be honest and tell them that everything is wrong, extremely wrong. I wish I was brave enough to tell them that I accidentally met love, and that this is the only thing I want in my life, and that nothing, nothing at all worth betraying this precious, pure and profound love.

No, my dear friends this is not my middle age crisis that you were expecting it to be scandalous, and this is not a mental disorder that seeped recently and I assure you this is not an illusion. This is something that I have never believed in its existence, something that I used to make fun of, something that is killing me everyday. It’s a miracle that I witnessed, and no body ever told us what happens after miracles.

The lover or the survivor, who should be in control? The survivor is fake, faking that he is ok, hiding behind the sudden migraine visits, and complaining from the war, the devaluation, the traffic and everything except the only thing he should complain about. However, the lover is crazy, the lover is a wreck, the lover is pathetic. Who could bear his never ending questions, sighs and cries about love. They are all disbelievers just like his old version, they can’t imagine or accept that there is still a place and a time for love now.

How I wish that you can help or advise? Although I would not bear your rationality. May be you were too scared to continue, what was it that scared you that much? Boredom? That moment when the morning texts, the phone calls and the dinners feel like unbearable burdens. Or were you scared of our mood swings? The pace of all what happened between us should have scared me too, but that what happened, neither of us understood it then. The survivor, although no one survives love stories, is incapable of being in charge, for most of the day the lover is present with all his melancholy , vigor and pain. Here he is, the lover, writing so that the story outlives you both.

Move on!

 Love can not be faked, I know. Love can not be donated, I understand. Love can not be begged, I have to remember this. I have to be grateful, you are still keeping a few threads between us, the threads of friendship, that’s how you define our relationship. I have to shut up, accept this situation, be grateful and keep going with out short polite diplomatic almost formal meetings. Ah, I have to ignore any hints, any puns and if I refer to anything romantic I have to accept your sudden and savage silence for a period that only you know how long it will last. My friends advise me to move on, seal this chapter, bury this premature love and move on. Their advices are getting louder turning into curses and accusations of weakness, mental disturbance and even of being a pure drama Queen. I’m not pathetic, I have a life just as yours, busy life, dull life, fake life just as yours. I push the days, waste them waiting for a vague moment that never arrives just like you. I deal with those around me with the least amount of emotions just like you. Everyday I engage less and less with my surroundings, just like you. I’m not pathetic my friends, may be the only difference is that I was touched by love, and since then, and unintentionally my life is disintegrating. I can’t continue faking happiness, faking care and faking concern. The long hours of driving and singing, driving and making phone calls and driving and crying, suddenly seemed not to be enough. I need sometime alone, alone with all our few memories, I need to relive them for a million time, I need to relive the same pure genuine striking feelings. I can’t keep going on, gliding along the days like I did for the past four decades, i simply can’t. Even if I can’t live our love, at least I have to relive it, before I forget any slight detail, how you smiled when we first met, how you refused any compliment and how you were stingy with your nice words. I have to remember everything even when you were shouting, and your time vibrates with anger, did you say that we should never meet again? I tend to ignore this hour, I tried to delete it, but no, I have to remember everything. All these memories are not enough, and I don’t have the luxury of picking which ones to keep.  

Move on! That is what my friends say in a logical tone, with this wicked patriarchal look, move on! Apparently, no one will ever understand what happened between us. I’m doubting if you even understood it, it was too pure, too profound and too beautiful to be true. It was illogical to you, but this was the only way I would call this feeling “love”. My dear friends, don’t worry, I’m moving on, but I’m not alone, I’m “ moving on” with all our memories.