Xeno-a-xeno
My “good” is very different from your “good”, but they both share one thing. Neither is good enough.
When voices come in colors
A cafe in open air, an exceptionally hot Cairo summer night, the rejuvenating feeling of being around friends, and -surprisingly- strangers.
I stared into the void while my friends indulged in a girly conversation, I drifted for a moment, not thinking of anything, not focusing on conversations that wind throw my way.
I think clarity has less to do with focus than what we usually think. When you’re focused on something you leave your mark on it, you perceive it in a mixture of what it is and what you want it to be. Only by being a perfect bystander could unbiased clarity come.
Voices mingled, and in that very moment that voices became unintelligible, they brought a new kind of perception. Voices cease to have linguistic significance, but they do carry the mood, the feeling, the aura. It’s almost as if the air around the speaker resonates with meaning that I cannot perceive by hearing.
Voices had colors, and in that moment everything felt so perfect. Everything, everyone, every shade of abstract had a meaning and a purpose. Voices had all kinds of colors, but they all belonged to the same rainbow, so did I.
Black is still my favorite color, but I can’t help wondering.. If I could ever distance myself from myself, and listen to the void, would my voice come in the color black?
Burning fuse
7/17/2006
When all what exists becomes a constant swing from one extreme to another, what remains real? Nothing that I know, nothing that I don’t know, nothing that exists except that void. Is it familiarity that I miss? Is it certainty? But when was I ever familiar with anything? I’ve always been the eternal lonewolf. Estranged by all, blending with masks one after another and never sharing a real face. What familiarity did I ever have to lose? What certainty? I could prove or disprove all what exists in my head, at will. Or could I? Maybe it’s all in my head. What scares me is how I tried before to make myself feel alive. I’m more alive if more things around me are dead. It’s like a slow-burning fuse, getting closer and closer to dynamite. I still know my cure. I still know my cure. I still know..
Free fall
7/4/2006
So often I know my reasons -true reasons- for doing or not doing something, and more often than not it weighs me down. True reasons aren’t always the most noble or dignified ones. You bear with yourself, you bear with others, and you go on. Gradually, that cement bucket lets go of your legs, or you succumb to water and consider the free fall into the deep just another current. But I’m cursed. I see the answers in hesitation of others, the real reasons pulling the strings, so rarely do we confess it to ourselves. I see mine, I see others’ ,and it still weighs me down. Free fall is becoming something that I’d soon fight against. At one point, it wouldn’t matter how many buckets drag me down. I’ll have to enforce my own current. Free fall’s delusional elevation is over.
لهذا أحب الدخان
سألتني: لماذا تدخن؟
نظرت لها لحظة و قلت: كل الناس تخاف السرطان, أحياناً أشفق عليه من الوحدة.
ضحكنا.. و أخذت تتحدث بينما شرد ذهني.. بعيداً..
أخذت أفكر في كل تفاصيل حياتي.. أحلامي الكبيرة.. إخفاقاتي الأكبر.. الأسئلة الحارقة التي لا أجد لها منفذا.. أو إجابةً.. الأشياء العديدة التي أعرفها, و الأشياء الأكثر التي لا أعرفها.. و اللغز الأكبر المستعصي على الفهم: من أنا وسط كل أقنعتي…
واصلت النظر إلى حلقات الدخان الرمادية المتصاعدة ,منتظراً أن تتشكل الإجابة في تماوجات الدخان في أي لحظة..
لعل هذه هي الإجابة؟.. ربما….
8 يونيو 2002
Blackland
The ancient name for Egypt is Kemet or black land, inspired by the fertile black soils deposited by the Nile floods, distinct from the”red land” (deshret) of the desert. Over the years etymology did its thing and made Kemet into Egypt.
This is probably how I perceive Egypt, a mixture of colors and scents and traits. It’s like a gigantic blender that’s been running for thousands of years, mixing pharaohs, romans, arabs, persians, turks, armenians, albanians, muslims, copts, jews, east, west, and all the shades in between.
The resulting “cocktail” is my Egypt. So colorful, so diversified, but still one.
It is strange how our ancestors divided Egypt into Kemet and Deshret.
Black and Red.
Just add a touch of white and you’ll get our flag as it is today, 5000 years later.
Maybe there’s something about black and red that resonates with”Egypt” after all.
Black is my favourite color, and in my world it doesn’t associate with evil. Black is more than a color to me, it’s a theme, a concept, an identity.
Black needs nothing to be what it is, unlike all other colors. It is by itself the absence of everything else.
It’s self-suffecient, evident, and complete. If perfection had a color, it would be black.
This is my shade of black. This is my Blackland.
Self-suffecient, complete, majestic, mystique, and like all what’s beautiful, it’s even more beautiful when wrapped in the black of the night.
For all what it is, for all what it could be, for all what it made me, I say it proudly..
I’m a Blacklander from the Blackland.
In love and gratitude for what she is, in hope of what she could be.
I give you Masr, Egypt, Kemet, The Blackland, from Cairo with love.
August 12th, 2006 1:00 AM.
Cairo
Notes from the blackland 