Lord of the Flies

She felt like she was living in Lord of the Flies, that book she studied as a schoolgirl, the story seemed so improbable then, fantasy. But now she knew that man was right, leave them to their own devices and they become cannibals. Humans that is. Why is it supposed to be human, to be good and giving and caring, why is that described as human? Why “Oh the humanity of it all”? What is humanity, but a bunch of raving mad animals? A species. It’s not just a single race that is worse or better than another, it doesn’t come down to the citizens of a certain country, although these people she lived amongst were a ripe example of what humans are really like, deep down. No, it was human nature. That is what she found so utterly disturbing. Why? That’s the question that poses itself, why create us this way? And we all know, there are some whys that can never be answered.

Hitting the traffic again, for the 1000th time in this single year since she began working on the other side of the city, the sprawling metropolis, she saw a sight that at once soothed her eyes and troubled her mind. A tall building with so many windows was reflecting the orange of the sunset, more of them towards the bottom of the building, so that it looked like the building was on fire with flames leaping from its windows. It was pretty, it was also very apt. Yes this city is on fire; yes these people are all just waiting to die.

A man drives past on the other side of the road, he’s on a motorbike, and sticking up off the back of his bike is a handwritten sign, help us it says, and underneath that in smaller Arabic script, oh leader, help us. That’s all she could read as the man sped past. She wondered what kind of help this man needed.

A couple cross the road, she stops so they can pass, they are young, and pretty, she is happy and smiling, he is serious and protective. What do they have to look forward to except each other? And even that goes AWOL after a while. Everything is so fucking temporary.

The call to prayer, she hears it and turns off the music, she drives in a bubble of music and AC and tries to keep the rotten air out as much as possible. She turns the radio station from iTrip to the Quran station, so she can really hear it; she wants to dissect the words. She wants to hear what that call is saying to her and the other millions who can also hear it at this very same moment. It says God is greater, greater than any of your worldly worries you stupid little human being, with all your cares. Didn’t I tell you this a million times before, look to God for help, to Him for guidance, to Him for peace. He is the only constant. The why rears its ugly head, why make us with so many bad sides? Why make us at all?

Sexual Harassment Delivery

Of course I have my own sexual harassment story to tell, it happened in the pre-car period of my Cairo life. Which by the way has provided me with much needed protection, even though it only takes about 5 mins of driving for me to completely lose it, at least I don’t have to deal with about 90% of the harassment that I did pre-car.

One night as I was walking to the hairdressers a pubescent creature on a bike came up behind me very quietly, grabbed my boob quite casually and pedaled away as fast as his grimy little legs would go. I was so shell shocked I had no idea what the hell I should do, apart from scream profanities at him as loud as I could, in the hope that someone with an ounce of decency would intervene and maybe knock him off his bike (which looking back is what I should’ve done). Nobody even batted an eyelid.

To cut a long story short, I jumped in a taxi and attempted to find him before breaking down and wiping my tears away with tissues offered to me by the nice taxi driver man. A couple of hours later, after getting my hair done (what?), Hori and I went on a manhunt for a cretin wearing a red football t-shirt with the number 10 and some foreign players name on the back, the only description I had to go by. It must have been red t-shirt night.

As always, cont in next post...

Sexual Harassment Delivery 2

A couple of weeks later, this time in broad daylight I was walking home, and some lad again on a bike, started following me, I wasn’t about to let that boob incident happen to me a second time, so I waited till we were face to face, and I asked him “Fee 7aga?” (Is there something I can do for you?) and his reply was “Aiywa, ayez ado something I can’t really repeat on this blog.” (Yes, I would like to put something where the sun does not shine).

So I challenged him to do it, a sort of come on then if you think you’re man enough, he was taken aback by this but kept circling me with his bike anyway, not quite sure what to do next, and this didn’t make his small talk any more polite.. so I made like I was going to run after him, and I was wearing my trainers this time and had every intention of knocking him to the ground and kicking the kaka out of him. So he rode off.

Now there is a reason for this random rant, and seeing as blogger doesn’t usually let me write anything longer than a paragraph, I will continue in za nekxt wan.

Travelling Curse, No Longer a Joke

Yep, it happened again last weekend. This time i thought an attitude adjustment might be in order, you know the whole think positive and positive will happen type of thing. I thought it was me causing all the negativity that happens when we travel, because i was always expecting it to be a nightmare in some form. But, it didnt work. And, we came home the very next day, with a very sick Hori. Who is still sick to this day. He came down with a mysterious illness. Have to go, little one is calling.

World of Hate

Maybe I’ve been living in a bubble, but it took something really simple for me to understand what’s going on in the world today, no, not understand, just realise. I was visiting Amazon last night reading up on a book that I found through a series of random links, after I read the reviews, I went onto the discussion forum, and was shocked and sickened, saddened by what I saw. Hate. Pure unadulterated hate against Muslims.

I know, anyone reading this must think I’ve had my head buried in the sand. I guess I’ve been too wrapped up in life in Egypt, and all its goings on, and too wrapped up in loving and trying to raise my child, and watching too many kids programs where life is a garden of flowers, butterflies and fun.

Living here has changed me profoundly, I am not proud of it, but I have become much more inclined to ignore things that disturb me. Pretend they don’t matter. But tossing and turning last night, not being able to sleep from utter disgust, I know these things do matter, now that I have someone else’s life to consider other than my own, my son’s life, his future as an Arab, Muslim male.

The question that kept forcing its way into my head was, where can we go? Where can I take my baby so that he can have a good normal life, free of racism, corruption, hate, murder, rape, terrorism? Where? The answer was nowhere, because anywhere we go, there will always be other human beings involved... continued in next 3 posts (for the reason why, see here)

World of Hate 2

When I lived in London, I knew I didn’t want to bring up my future kids there. The education is good, but the life is hard. Racism in schools is rife; I suffered it myself, because I wasn’t white, or black, but somewhere in the middle. That was a long time ago, and now, post 9/11 and the London tube bombings, I can only imagine what a nightmare school life must be like for a Muslim kid in a British school. I was lucky, I got taken out of middle school and sent to Egypt for a couple of years, where I was allowed to have a real childhood, free of worries and cares, and then back to London to attend an Arab school. That saved me, I am totally and absolutely positive.

Growing up in London, all I knew was the UK media, UK TV, UK press. There was no Al-Jazeera in those days. I remember one day watching the news as a preteen, and discovering for the first time that Israel had existed for over 40 years. All I kept saying to myself, was, why hasn’t anyone done anything about this? It’s been 40 years! I wasn’t politically aware, I didn’t know anything except raw emotion, and all I had seen on the screen was Palestinians being killed daily, by the Israeli occupation. I had until that moment thought it had only been going on for a few years.

Next I remember crying as a teenager at the images of Kuwait burning. The gulf war affected me directly because many Kuwaiti’s ended up running away to London, and their kids were in my school, in my classes. We had a test the morning that Iraq invaded Kuwait, but we couldn’t concentrate, because so many of the girls in my class, Iraqi’s, Kuwaitis, Arabs were crying.

World of Hate 3

My school made me proud to be an Arab. We didn’t care that much for religion, we were Muslim and Christian, we just loved that we could all speak the same language, we were normal teenage girls, with usual teenage concerns, but we didn’t have to suffer racism or discrimination, except once we stepped outside the school grounds.

As an adult, I remember the images of 9/11. I was at work that day, working for an Arab publishing house, we all gathered around a big screen TV, and watched in horror as the second tower went down on CNN. But before it even hit the ground, I swear, the news scrolling across the bottom of the screen was stating as fact that Osama Bin Laden had done it.

The next couple of days are a haze of these horrific images, that I could not stop watching, flipping obsessively between channels each time the coverage ended to see some more. I had a really well educated British friend with me throughout that time, who never knew anything about Palestine until we had talked about it. He had spent his whole life thinking that Palestine had occupied Israel. The publishing house had opened my eyes to things I hadn’t known before, namely access to AP pictures of what was really going on in Palestine, at this point I had close Palestinian friends, I was pro-Palestine now more than ever before, I attended meetings, went on marches. Then something happened, that made me question my beliefs, my entire existence. Let’s just say, life threw something at me, God threw something at me, a test of my humanity.

World of Hate 4

The morning after 9/11, on the tube going to work, I saw for the first time people looking at me in fear. I thanked God that once again I was safe, because I worked in an Arab company I wouldn’t have to deal with this at work. In the days that followed people went crazy, attacking anyone who looked even remotely Arab or Muslim on the streets of London, even the Indians that wore turbans, it was sick.

A year later I moved to Egypt. By then I had stopped watching the news, because it just made me feel useless, and worthless.

Since then, I have lived in a bubble, broken only by last night’s escapade into the forum of hate.
When I think about taking my child back to London, all I see is a country where child abuse, kidnappings, rape and murder, even kids killing each other with guns and knives, is an everyday occurrence.

I lived in the US for a while, it was more of the same, except on a bigger scale. There is where for the first and only time I saw a real gun, where a drug fuelled acquaintance offered to take me on a drive-by shooting, like it was something to do for fun, where news of a dead body found in the alleyway behind my uncle’s business wasn’t so shocking, where swimming in my uncles pool with my young cousins I could hear guns shooting, and he lived in a nice area!

Now in Egypt, where most of the population is walking around with an amputated humanity, I face different problems, problems of ignorance, indifference and defeat. So where do we go from here? What will I tell my son when he starts to ask me questions about the world, about life, about religion?

Travellin Curse Strikes Again

List of "things" that happened on our first beach-camping trip over the easter weekend:

1. Five holes in one car tire
2. Arrived at camping site at 2am due to various "reasons"
3. Was too late & too dark to set up tent, so had to sleep under the stars, which wouldnt be that bad if it werent for the rain & lightening, & hungry mosquitoes that soon followed
4. Broken glasses, stepped on by horizontal husband, ensuring i couldnt see much for the rest of the trip
5. Full on and sudden sandstorm, ensuring tent collapses with me inside it
6. Broken tent poles poke hole through brand new tent (guaranteed for life against stormy weather)
7. Storm continues through the night as we sleep under freshly fixed tent threatening to dump us in the sea by morning
8. Loud neighbours who insist on shagging all night and providing us with drunken soundtrack ( we had set up tent far away from any other tents, but the next day these people with four tents decided they wanted to move in with us)
9. Injured toe for both of us, which wouldnt be so bad if we didnt have to trek through hot sand with open wounds
10. Flashlight mysteriously gives up on life
11. Lose sleeping bag holder to said neighbours in an act of utter stupidity on my part which was done with good intentions
12. Return home to freezer and fridge full of rotting food, BECAUSE i had mysteriously unplugged it before we left???? What?
13. The above are just the ones i can mention, and remember
14. Did I mention it was my birthday & that I lost my toothbrush...
15. Have i complained enough yet?

Shakira Fiasco

trekking in the desert, no way of contacting others because ur mobile network is too busy to care that ur lost, stuck in traffic for 4, i repeat, four hours, only to catch Shakira waving her tits at u from a giant screen and saying "goodbye egypt, mwa! i love you!"

did i mention finding ur car by coincidence in the middle of the desert where it was ditched in a last feeble attempt to catch the concert in time.

a guy in a car next to us " dee law shakira kanet betewled gowa, makansh dah koloh 7asal."

i wont translate, its not funny in english.

the pyramids were nice though.

The Travelling Curse

it's a long time joke in my marriage that we have had a travelling curse placed upon us as a couple. anytime, anywhere we go travelling the curse makes its presence known. last weekend we went to our seaside chalet, and lo and behold were (well i was, horizontal husband snored right throught it) woken up by the door rattling sounds of a full on sandstorm.

not like me to let this get to me, we hit the beach anyway, and the beach hit us back with flying sand and angry sea waves.

this picture was taken of the surf as it crept up the turf, i think its trying to tell me something.