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.

من وحي سارتر

يَوَهَنْ

Dear Ms A,

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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

In this series , The Guilty Pleasures Series, I will try, merely try, to bring out to this so called blog a few of those who live inside my head. Now, when I started thinking who I shall let out I thought that I should let those who make the most “sense” but that reduced the number to a big fat Zero. even that this is a very good reason not to choose “sense” it is not the only one. the main reason would be the fact that I hate the word, from it’s spelling passing by it’s pronunciation to it is meaning, these letters when grouped together do not make sense to me .. ahem, well hating the word does not mean i would not use it, also it is worth mentioning that “hypocrisy” is one of my favourite words.

Now, the word “interesting” sounds like a more sensible word to use as a measuring criteria I would say.

so with no further due, allow me with a great pleasure to Introduce:
Sue The Talking Cat
The Zippos the Naughty Noisy Colours,
Mr. Grumpy the wall
Lighter the Suicidal Lamp Post

Coming soon … to a monitor in front of you …

: مقدمة نظرية

عندما نعطش …. ندرك وجود الماء

عندما نحوع …. ندرك وجود المأكل

عندما نبرد …. ندرك وجود الكساء

عندما نسأل لماذا …. ندرك حاجتنا للكذب

كم من المدهش كم الكذبات الصغيرة التي نحتاجها فقط للبقاء على قيد الحياة

: كمان مقدمة نظرية

أهلا عزيزي الغريب

أرجوك لا تعتذر و أصدر أحكامك علي كما تشاء

فأنا قبل حتي أن أراك أصدرت أحكامي عليك مرتين

!!  كمان مقدمة نظرية …. عيش عزيزي المستمع

في مدن الغثيان ، يمنع عنا كبريائنا تذكرة الخروج الوحيدة من هنا، يمنع عنا الرضا

في بلاد الجن و الأساطير حيث تطير السحالي و تزحف العصافير
في بلادٍ البيض فيها لا يباض بل يحصد كالقمح
و الإستمناء كالتعليم المجاني من حق الجميع و كالموت حق على الجميع
في تلك البلاد ،كل البلاد، هناك من يموتون لأنهم لم يجدوا شيئا أفضل ليمضوا به الظهيرة
و أخرون يحترفون الألم، فلا شئ أفضل من أن تطفئ سجارة في إحدى عينيك و أنت تنتظر ما يأتي و لا يأتي
و هناك من رفض اللاشئ ليأتي باللاشئ ثم تقافز و صرخ كقرد عجوز إكتشف عضوه لأول مرة فأمسكه و صار يزعق واااع وااع واااااع
في تلك البلاد ،كل البلاد، حتى النجوم بليدة
لا أدري من الأحمق الذي ظن تلك البقع في السماء فكرة جبدة تستحق الوجود
نحني جانبا فمصدقيتي مشكوك فيها
إستعمل بصرك و قل شيئا إن لم تكن النجوم بليدة
لا تقل لي بل قل للنجوم فيبدوا لي بأنها تمر بأزمة وجودية و تحتاج إلي بعض … النفاق أو الإطراء إن شئت
في تلك البلاد الموت ليس شريراً
بل هو كالخدمات الحكومية الأخري ؛ مهم مجاني بطيئ و غبي
فقط لو يعطوا القطاع الخاص مساحة أكبر
في تلك البلاد ,كل البلاد, هناك من ينتظرون الدهشة على الأرصفة
و غرف إنتظار عيادات الأسنان و دهاليز السوق السوداء
من المدهش كم هي نادرة تلك البضاعة.
نادرة لدرجة أن هناك من ذهب لمستشفيات الولادة ليخلق دهشته بنفسه
في تلك البلاد كم كان سيكون لطيفا لو كان هناك ألهة حمقاء أو متصابية
كم كان سيكون لطيفا لو وجد الرجل العنكبوت وإن كان منحرفا جنسيا
في تلك البلاد، كل البلاد ، قد يُظَنُ بأننا نعيش الحياة
إن هذه إلا جهنم، قد متنا جميعنا و ها نحن نعاقب بالسأم

I started reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels this morning and I was faced with these lines

In my own country

I am in a far off land

I am strong yet have

No force or power

I win yet remain a loser

At break of day I say goodnight

When I lie down I have a great fear of falling

— François Villion

I read them loud again and again, I read them till the words merged together into unmeaningful sounds,  only then I left my flat and went to work.

اليوم …  لوناً إنتحر

لا نعرفه أيهم

لأنه عندما رحل

لم يترك وراءه أثر

He knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with him when he realised that every thing is as good as lighting up a cigarette. and spoken words usually are nothing but noise.

that put him in the corner, you see the problem was he could not say what is the definition of “Fundamentally Wrong”, other than it is not the norm as it is not what other people feel like he can not tell what is “Fundamentally Wrong”. in other words it is a matter of statistics to him and that made him think that he has to do something about it ..

he always likes to say ” i am a blind man driving a car in the middle a desert of Asphalt, lost all hope in anything sensible (including understanding the meaning of sensible) and only wish to have an accident”

when she came into his life, I thought that she was the accident he waited for and teased him with my findings but he replied that I was foolish, he actually said that when she told him that she wanted him badly he was imagining Nina Simon having a shower and singing

So you just do what you gotta do
My wild sweet love
Though it may mean that I’ll never kiss
Those sweet lips again
Pay that no mind
Find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

but Nina Simon was wrong it was never sweet and it felt like lighting up a cigarette, i asked him if he ever went through something with considering its ending before starting it and when he replied asking if that was wrong i did not have much to say

many times I caught him talking to him self, after a while I asked him if he is aware of that and he said that he was aware of it and that I interrupted an interesting conversation with himself to say nothing of importance, I did what any decent person would do, I apologized to both of them and left.

once he said that he can see the hat of Tom Waits poping up of the bath tub every now and then and one day Tom will be brave enough to come out of the tub, tell him that Leonard Cohen is a wanker and they would do friends stuff together.

she finally left him, and I honestly do not blame her I actually think she stayed that long just to prove something to herself like when silly people build the highest tower just to prove that their penises is not that small. When she told him she was leaving all he did was looking to shower and laughed at it then he lighted up a cigarette, at least that what she told me later

although I did what was required from a decently social person to comfort another, I honestly could not care less about her at that moment, all what I wanted to know was what he was laughing in the shower, did Tom Waits come out of the tub and if so what did they do?