Few Days in Egypt
The view from Room 17 (my hotel room, Alexandria)
Does a place grow old ?! this is one of the questions that have kept me awake in the hot and humid nights during my last visit to Egypt. between Alexandria and Cairo I was trying to find my own Egypt and I have failed. to be out of your place is to be in exile but is there a word of being out of your tome.
William Saroyan an interesting Armenian writer once said “When two Armenians meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.”. If words ever had weight these would be as heavy as a mountain on me, what is home and how much of it is made up by us.
When I walked about in Talaat Harb in Cairo or Mahtet Elraml in Alexandria my feet knew exactly what they were doing but for my eyes there was something missing. It is like trying to read a book you know well in a language that you do not know well.
My grandmother used to tell us stories about her exile days in Egypt. During the Fascist occupation of Libya my family found refuge in Egypt, in the late 1940s my grandmother was 16 years old Married and responsible for a household, and like many Libyan refugees she believed in her identity as a “Westerner” (Back then, Libyans in Egypt were called “the people of the west”, the term Libya was coined later on).
She told me once ” in exile a soup is not a soup any more it is much more than that, it is a robe that holds us home”. when the Fascist occupation was finally over with the second world war, my grandfather waited for few years then decided that it was time to go home.
All my grandmother mentions regarding those early days back home is her frustration that Libyans started to cook and eat Pasta and Pizza. what confused her even more people have forgotten some of the old ways of cooking and now she (and other returned refugees) are the source of that knowledge. she once commented on that ” .. we did everything exactly how we used to do it before we left, we thought if we change our ways people back home might not recognize us. we never thought that it will be us who will not recognize them” .
Now my grandmother eats pizza with joy and she is a world class cook when it comes to pasta, on the other hand she forgot all about her robes that held her once home. My short stay in Egypt reminded me with the fact that I have no home but my suite case, reminded me of Saroyan and of my grandmother’s tales.
I might have had a home in Egypt once but now all I have is hotel room.
Alyosha
“It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”*
Is it really that bad to lie, Alyosha.
Alyosha, do not look away for the blood on my hand is mine
Is it really that bad to lie, Alyosha.
Alyosha, are not you my brother ?
“It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”*
*from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Her Akşam Vodka Rakı ve Şarap
The Lyrics in English :
please note the translation is not perfect as it the product of Google translate and my common sense (unfortunately I do not speak Turkish)
“Her Akşam Vodka Rakı ve Şarap” is an old Turkish song the singer of this version is Dario Moreno and I think he is the original singer, I have to admit that finding information about this song is not an easy task.
the video is from one of my favourite Turkish movies in the recent years The Market: A Tale of Trade directed by Ben Hopkins who also made a documentary called 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep which is awesome as well!!
Flaming Lips – “I Can Be A Frog”
just about right ..
the absent mind of mine
Walking to work I was smoking like every day, people measure the distance with meters, foot, miles etc. I measure the distance with smoked cigarettes, my average is 4 cigarettes to my office.
anyway today when i was done with my third, I put it in my pocket. It took me a while to realize what I have done, this “while” was enough to create a hole in my Monday pair of jeans and to burn me in a “strategic” place. I am sure people who were passing by were wondering about the smoke coming out of me but ,I guess, they were too polite to ask.
now, I am at work and I sit down and stand up as if I am hiding an erection. he absent mind of mine it will kill me one day, I know that much. but for now I need to look for a new Monday pair of Jeans.
أنا يوهن
من وحي سارتر
يَوَهَنْ
A clipped nail
Dear Ms A,
I write these lines with much hesitation, I can not deny the fear to lose my memories to a piece of paper. I think once you word your feelings, your thoughts and the way you experienced your days you some how lose them like you would lose your cut hair and your clipped nails, they are still yours but they are no longer you.
In Science, more precisely in quantum physics, you can not know both the position and the speed of a quantum particle at the same time, they call it the observer phenomena. Once you know the speed and the position of the particle it starts to behave very differently. Same thing with us people, once words come in and once these words are registered some how we lose more than we gain, we lose the truth about ourselves, we become the observed electron.
on the other hands visiting those early days of my life as time traveller, a tourist, who is not after the truth but after an adventure in an exotic place is something I must do.
I guess all I want to say in this very long introduction is this, do not take the following lines as documentation of my childhood but more like lies inspired by my childhood or what I remember from it. A clipped nail
.
.
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“I AM SANE !! ” .. so she says
Julia: you know I imagine myself doing things !!
Me: right..
Julia: in the morning, in front of the mirror,while i am putting my makeup , I imagine myself screaming at it that I am sane
“I AM SANE , I AM SANE, I AM SANE, I AM SANE , I AM SANE, I AM SANE ”
Me: Does the mirror say any thing back ?
Julia: I do not talk to mirrors, I just imagine.
Me: shame .. try to put the make on the mirror instead of your face, she might say something then.
.
.
.
Julia: you are an Idiot, you know !
Me: right ..
Silly Jack
Man, Jack does not smoke French cigarettes
poor guy, his dream is to die in a car accident
“what ever or where ever we come from, all that we do is to escape from it. In fact the whole planet , the whole galaxy can be described as an escaping ship .. to stick where you belong you must to be as stupid as a tree”
once upon a time, Jack hated music and loved numbers. Once upon a another time, Jack, somehow the same Jack, hated numbers and loved music. Back and forth till he could not give a shit anymore
“Look at the so called miracle of birth,the first escape if you ask me, we were in our mom’s belly, part of that body, then we grow a consciousness and had the urge to run away .. tell me something do you think if my arm grow a consciousness it will stay attached to my body, HA !, it will be like those arms in the horror movies of the 80s and I will be screaming my head off trying to stop the bleeding or may i will try to kill it, you know, kill my own arm … I do not know man, if you think about it I might even breast feed it. Do you think arms like milk?”
when Jack goes mad, Jack goes all the way. I questioned his state of mind when he told me about his fight with a tree. He told me that he lost that fight because the tree cheated, I said nothing.
” .. these Idiots, they call what we are experiencing “LIFE !!”. tell me ,if you may, what does this word mean.. ha ? .. I think it is one of those stupid labels, like Wednesday or like 12PM or £4.99.. Just another label. to explain what we are in by LIFE is like using the sign language to explain RED to a blind man .. ”
silly Jack, he would describe a remotely possible scenario for his death and then he would say “C’est Si Bon”.
” .. I prefer my broken English, this way it is easier to be misunderstood .. ”
silly Jack, Old tired Jack
Carved Smile
I sometimes imagine that I have no mouth
walking in very grey streets among other mouth-less shadows
Other times I imagine the mouth-less me is sitting by a white table
playing with a knife thinking “would not be a fine idea to stab my face
to carve myself a .. “Smile”, sounds as a good name for wound
