Summertime

Last night while I was driving home you dedicated my favourite song to me on the radio saying you just got engaged to the most perfect person... and the presenter said, "Enjoy the rest of your lives."

I think we will :)

Death Becomes Her

She used to sit in the office next to mine. I heard her laugh and talk and breathe.

One day she passed away. Her office is now empty and there are only the soothing sounds of the Quran coming from there.

I want to talk about what I learned.
I learned to say thank you, every time.
I learned to ask about people, how they are, what they need, what they want and hope for.
I learned to always say hello to everyone and smile first.
I learned to say the good things immediately; there may never be a later.
God’s love, tolerance and endless mercy were confirmed to me.

She rests in peace.

The Kids

Finally I have something to write about.

After talking about doing it for so long, I finally did some volunteer work with street children yesterday. As I was driving home last night I asked myself why I hadn’t been doing this my whole life. I could’ve been volunteering for the last ten years if I had really wanted to. But it occurred to me that I am probably of more use to them now than I ever would’ve been before.

Because now I am more tolerant, more patient, I have my own child, so I know what it is they need instinctively.

I am less idealistic, more practical and more in touch with reality, so I know what can be achieved and what cannot.

I am more willing to give, and less expectant. I am more aware of how the world works, so I can be of more use to them maybe through my work, maybe through just being there, who knows what will come?

It is very early days. I don’t even know if I will see any of those same kids again, but I hope I will. I hope they will come to recognize me, and know me as a friend.

Where do I start?
I was nervous, anxious. I was worried on our way to them in the ambulance equipped with doctor and social worker, hearing horror stories, wondering how they would react to me - another complete stranger trying to interfere in their lives.

We parked the van and they came running, all smiles and handshakes and high fives, and questions and energy.

Bareeza, he’s about 15 but he looks smaller. He can recite his ABCs, constantly wanting to play games, and constantly needs attention and physical contact.

Ramadan, barefoot, hasn’t been in school since the 2nd grade, and cleans cars for a living as do many of the others.

Hend, girl of around 15, harder and stronger than any man I’ve seen, yet really self conscious about her missing front tooth; she has a lovely face.

Asma’a, tiny little girl, who says she’s 12 but somehow I don’t believe her – showed me the proper way to say goodbye with her own special handshake. Bundle of energy.

Mohamed is 17, carries a little pink comb and tells a story of how he ran away from his town amid extremely violent clashes. Painted a picture in my mind of a village on fire, and then began to sing in a melodic voice. He is barely literate. He dreams of spending Ramadan with his parents and tells me how his dad only beats him if he doesn’t stick up for himself.

These are just a few of the kids I met yesterday. I wonder now how I can be of help to them. What can I learn or do to make things easier? Because really and truly, that’s probably the only impact I can make, I can’t take anything they’ve experienced away, I can only make it easier to take.

I know as a child sometimes you just need guidance, you need hope, you need someone to tell you everything is possible, that you are worth something; that life is there for the taking.

These kids just need to feel like they are still human beings with a chance of a satisfactory life. Promising them a good life maybe overly optimistic.

Now on Twitter

http://twitter.com/dailyantics

Where are you from?

I have a question for you, you the person reading my blog.

I am really intrigued to see that people from really cool places like mauritius, peru and croatia are visiting this blog, but nobody ever leaves a comment.

So just this once, leave a comment answering the question: where are you from?

“Jazz is my Jihad”

I used to be a writer.

Back in London, as an aspiring journalist who basically had no idea what I was doing, I arranged my first interview for a website which no longer exists. I was their art & culture correspondent, and now that I look back, Gilad Atzmon (an Israeli jazz musician) was an interesting choice considering I was writing for Arabia Online.

I have no idea now how I found out about him, but his pro-Palestinian views and my love for jazz music may have had something to do with it. I went to meet him at one of his performances at a jazz club in central London and found a man of great talent, and great power. An Israeli, who was once in the army, who woke up one day, looked around him and decided that Israel was no longer a place he could call home. I went to see him perform several times after that, and each time I was struck by the energy that rushes off of this musician in tsunami waves whilst he performs.

What was said during the interview was controversial to say the least, and although I edited out as much as I could, it still never got published.

The reason Gilad comes to mind now is of course the atrocities that are currently happening in Gaza as I write this, and on which I have failed to find the energy to comment on in this blog -not because I don’t care about the people who are losing their lives needlessly, but because I am truly sick of politics, violence and bloodshed - particularly in the Middle East.

I am sick of both sides of this bullshit feud, and to say I wish they would just live in peace sounds childish and naive to say the least.

I stopped watching the news long ago, but there is no escaping what is happening in Gaza. The fact that I have a child of my own, who I would want to protect from a simple breeze (like they say in Egypt) doesn’t make it any easier. I can’t even begin to imagine what parents are going through at this very moment, wondering whether their children will make it through this horror, and whether they themselves will survive to take care of them, and I don’t want to.

I want to tell you a true story.

Once upon a time, there was a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, just like the millions who are marching through cities all over the world today. To say she hated Israelis is to put it lightly.
She was also a girl looking for her father, just like the thousands who are searching for a lost parent all over the world today, and she found him. With him she found two brothers she never knew she had - and they were raised as orthodox Jews. They had both volunteered in the Israeli army and navy, only a week each, but still. They had lived on kibbutzes and celebrated Hanukkah, and eaten kosher. They were supposed to be her idea of a sworn enemy, yet the first time she laid eyes on them she fell in love.

That’s what life does to you, when you think you are better, or have more rights, or are special in some way. It smashes your well formulated opinions, beliefs and judgments in to the nearest wall.

And you become more human for it; more worth the life you have been given.

Watch Gilad perform here.
Visit his website here.
Watch Jazz is my Jihad here.

Shoe, glorious shoe!

This is the best thing I've seen ALL YEAR!

Ecopolis

forget that villa by the sea, i wanna live on a lilypad!

On feeling thankful

I found this article on zenhabits about feeling thankful

I discovered a few things recently, one of the most important being that everything is a choice. I realised that i had spent most of my life thinking, about the past, the present, the future..analysing every little detail, until my mind became so cluttered that i could hardly see, appreciate or really feel anything around me. I thought this constant chatter in my head was me being intelligent :)

I want to focus on the good stuff, and i have a lot of things to be very grateful for.

I have a beautiful son
I have a home
I have friends and family
I have a job
I live in a country where i feel i belong
I am in good health
I have love
I have food, water and sleep
I have knowledge and peace

I am blessed :)

I tag anyone that reads this, especially Munqy, Fesh and Madwoman. List 10 things you are grateful for.

Well done Noha :)))

BBC coverage here


An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years with hard labour for sexual harassment of a woman in the street.

Digla Performs 7elwa Ya Baladi

Digla's site

a little peace of heaven

this is sunrise at Tooti Camp, between Taba and Nuweiba, where i spent most of my eid holiday in blessed peace and serenity and didn't have to brush my hair for at least five days. i showered under the stars, slept under the sky, ate freshly cooked meals by 3am Adam with the smiling face, and forgot and was forgotten for a while. 

House of Cards

In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", from the wicked album In Rainbows, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects.


Watch here

Perception Poll

Check out these images and then participate in my social experiment

Presence in Absence - Death of a Poet

I long for my mother's bread
My mother's coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother

And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
with a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a god
If I touch the depths of your heart

If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand

I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest


My Mother by the late Mahmoud Darwish

Rave Review

Go see it, go see it, go see it... I love WALL.E

and the answer is...

And we have not created the heavens and the earth and what is therein purposelessly —that is the view of those who reject [God] or who are ungrateful [37:27; 3:191]

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?

the bimbo post

Boredom sets in...

Bored of work, bored of facebook, bored of email, bored of news, bored of cairo, bored of people, bored of traffic, bored of sitting at a desk day in day out, bored of inactivity, bored of smoking all day at the office, bored of doing fuckall with my life, bored of not doing enough, bored of writing shitty corporate bollocks that means zilch, yes, the boredom which usually visits me at the one year mark has set in.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooored.

B
O R E D
R
E
D

Darkest Before Dawn

Christopher Nolan = Genius