Carefully delivered affection…


A smell of sulfur and a terrible yellow hue shamelessly covers the city. depression. mental weariness. crippled emotions. all are looming over the road from the airport.
Another planted bombed ravaging the silence. and only apathy is what you hear through the night. they don’t want to know anymore. they don’t want… anymore.

The sun shone earlier this morning. hours before its expected time. casting an oblong shadow of my head on the wall. decades of memory has been similarly projected here. momentary shadows that have never left a mark.
The sound of machine guns in the background hasn’t subsided yet. I could still hear it like some eerie music from a distant day. but life is as lively as ever on this day. I hear spoons stirring thick black coffee in quiet kitchens. clattering of trays and of small cups on small dishes… women readying themselves for the morning. I hear happiness swelling up like a rose bud waiting to bloom after all those years of gray winters.

Like a precious perfume bottled in crystal, packaged with care. so much care. for if it broke nothing could contain the scent of a dissipated relationship that never took place.
Like a thin film of oil on the surface, it preserves. keeps a lid on so much. things that are never to be revealed again. matters of the heart that stay – as they should – stagnant at the bottom of the bottle. small precipitates of time. seconds, maybe years, carefully settled at the depths of aching hearts.
“do you allow yourself a little time to cry?” she asked, thoughtfully.
from the life that I never had. one that I never wanted. from there, I see them passing by indifferently… banding about happiness that I didn’t know. and then a slight tinge of regret clouds my day.
she hands me my coffee with a smile that conveys a feeling of compassion, with a little bit of pity perhaps.
It irritates me.

“Come in.”


I heard these words. but that was the end of what I heard. of what I remember I heard anyway. I remember a door opened and then closed. an empty house swallowing me in like a fish a pebble. memories brushing against my face, defiantly, screaming “we are still here”: childhood cinematography… brutal and gruesome. brutal for still being so vivid, so ‘there’… when do memories fade? oh, when they do fade… they are nothing but few bits in the patch work of all the neuroses that… are me.
I laugh, you know, because you’re never to see this… to see it from the inside, nothing gruesome should be tagged to my past…
I still smell the gunpowder. I know it’s just fire works, but all the same it’s nauseating. ugh… make it stop.
when I stepped out of that airplane. lots of memories came flooding back of course. but not until I reached their house that… oh make it stop. I don’t care what day it is. tell the children to stop. no wait. don’t. don’t tell them to stop.
but this music is too brutal. please, play it down a little.

“your music is so so pretty peter. so simple and so elegant. you stirred feelings I thought.. they’re long gone… long gone! how pleasant you are! I haven’t known you personally, but I think if I had I would’ve liked you. you lovely, lovely darling!
yours truly,”
yesterday, while playing her favorite concerto, she wrote this note to Tchaikovsky. folded it into a small paper plane, turned the music up and flew her little work of origami out the window… with a sweet smile. (how charming!)
Until he told her to turn it down. how disappointed she was! he doesn’t understand her ears anymore. or was it just the fire works that really accentuated every bang with a small explosion. but she thought it fascinating… especially the cadenza near the end taking over all the bangs of a war site…

I was utterly destroyed by the scenery of the room. faded furniture, polished for the day. grotesquely displayed like a cheaply made up corpse in an open casket. ludicrous.
this is where life stops. this is where life stopped 30 years ago. history stunted like in some fairy tale. but everyone goes into paralysis in this house. everyone, even the hopeful lad who comes back at the end to awaken the kingdom. I can’t say it’s the ruins of anything, because nothing was ever built here. nothing. this is where people gathered to create a vacuum. no no not even a vacuum, because even that takes in energy. it’s where people stepped aside from the course of life, maybe by decision, to pose like wax statues in an ever empty (empty empty empty) museum. with an ancient gramophone incessantly playing the same music… for eternity.

“how was your trip?”

come spring... and I will


remember...

Tistifil Fayrouz…


When she comes back home every night, she always rings the doorbell although she lives alone, always has, and there’s never anyone to answer.
She believes that perhaps one night someone would open the door… welcome her home after an awfully long day with open arms and a ready dinner… or maybe she just thinks that if burglars were inside she would give them enough time to evacuate and evade an unwanted and unnecessary confrontation.
One night, she came back late, rang the doorbell, and waited for a few seconds. Suddenly another door opened. her neighbor stepped out with a beaming smile and said “you’re late tonight.”
“yeah. I was held up at work.” she said with surprise.
“I have dinner prepared. would like to come in?” he offered.
She did.
(candle light dinner. Fayrouz singing in the background.)
“I wonder if Fayrouz wanted to be Fayrouz… maybe she just wanted to be a simple woman from the hills she… colors in her songs… I mean, she was under the influence of a husband she never… well, she always sounds awfully sad!” she said, probingly.
“would you like to have dinner with me?” he interrupted.
“but I am!” she replied with surprise…
“no… I mean to go out with me… like a date.” he explained.
“not until you tell what you think about Fayrouz. do you think she wanted to be the woman she is today?” she asked in a determined tone.
“well… she’s great. she’s a legend…” he answered hesitantly.
“yeah… yes she is. no. I will not go out with you. thanks for dinner though.” she replied with… tender humor perhaps.
She finished the rest of her drink. dabbed her lips with the paper napkin placed next to her plate. blew him a suggestive kiss a la Marilyn Monroe. laughed and… left.
he heard her ringing her door bell again. waiting for a few seconds, and then going into her apartment.

Delilah


“How… how far would you go?” he asked [fear – hesitation].
“for how long have you known me, darling?” she replied [assuredness – tenderness].
“23 years” he said [confusion].
“have I ever stopped? short of death. have you ever seen me stop? back off? I have never committed murder, it’s not my style, but murders did happen around me quite often. I always get what I want. I always dispose of nuisances… rather gracefully, I believe.” she answered [satisfaction – smugness].
Like swimming in a sea of laughter, he laughed.
He removed her sunglasses; she looked at the ocean and smiled. no, she even laughed too.
They were happy: He took her answer carelessly; she knew that he would not see the end of the month. She felt pleased. Actually, she felt a tinge of tenderness towards him now, knowing that he will soon fade away into her past. She cherished him now as a distant memory, which in her mind he already is.

He still remembers when he first saw her… singing the habanera in some party in New York. singing with perfect intonation, with a sway of the hip and a clap of the hand, and one glance… one all consuming killer glance and he was captivated; captured, actually. enslaved… to her beauty, to her presence… to her. he’d have never imagined that he’d stepped on the web of a black window…

Babbling on the phone…


I used to listen to music while I go to sleep. I don’t anymore. I need silence. it’s more tasteful, I believe, to fall asleep to nothing. not even to a nocturne. it’s more private. the older I get the more private I get… reclusive; I won’t even share my moments of sleep with a long gone composer. or maybe that’s because now I listen more, or better shall I say. I can’t just take in the sounds without registering any emotion. any reaction.
and the sound of your voice on the phone, actually the ring of the phone itself, brings in a lot. sometimes, you know, I am apprehensive to pick up. for I know that… that your conversations are… charged. yes charged. it’s not an empty chatter about politics.. or the weather anymore. it’s all about us now. right when there is no longer ‘us’.
and your words… are shattered. they are vague. they cling to me. but only one by one. not in sentences. only words. you are shattered. yes you are. I get you piece by piece. like a joke that lost its humor for it was not told the way it should be. no no, not a joke. a plea. like a plea, yes. coming across… through so many layers. word by word it goes through – penetrates – every layer like going through… thin air. but the words are not sentences anymore. just words. shattered. vague. word by word. they simply… don’t make sense anymore.
haven’t you taught me to be a poet. haven’t you told me that if I listen to nature I could hear the music of a brook. so now I listen. and now I am filled with silent resentment… all building up… and to what? nothing. I am just becoming emotionally charged. yes, charged. you are not charged – I take that back. I am. you project. I receive. and keep it inside.
again. as I said. I can’t sleep to music. maybe it’s not you. I am becoming more… perceptive. (receptive?)
(static)
hello?
(static)
can you hear me?
yes. so… how’ve you been? and how’s Boston treating you?

MOULID...



powered by ODEO
pic: Sayed El Badawi Mosque (Tanta)
Music: Mesr Yamma (sheikh Imam)

Forte-piano…


“Dearest. for all the notes that flow by… with every note, I still have more time to think about you than I would have ever imagined. the pianist at the ceremony plays incessantly, with mounting heat in every phrase. and I still think about you… with a precipitating rhythm… on changing keys. I try to match his piano to the life we had together. an accelerando for a soundtrack for a picture… about us. one that would make you cry. how charming we were. charming together. people would watch the picture and they would say that. how charming they are! we wish we were they… and then… and then, my dear, life would be utterly blissful. wouldn’t it? I wish you could see the smile in my heart when I think about you. when I write this to you. I love you, you know I do. I always loved you more than I loved us, for that my dear is what’s important… you loved me more than yourself, and that was not right. my wrong, not yours if I daresay, for I needed everything you gave me, and sometimes more. but that was then. now, I just celebrate you with mounting heat just like the music that surrounds me… but forgive me love for I will not be able to accept your invitation. I would have told you that I am too busy to be with you on your day, but you’d have known that it is not true; for nothing could stop me or you (I still believe) from being there for each other (and I still hope that this will always be true - and it will). having said that, I could only wish you all the happiness and love, from this distance I take. and I am sure you understand now how I don’t belong to their society, but never to yours, for you are mine…
yours as always.”
She looked into the mirror of this dingy restroom in this rather mediocre pub somewhere by the piers (she can’t remember where) in the very innards of this ugly city… She pulled a compact bag of cosmetics from her purse and started working on her face. ‘retouch’, she thought. She softened and darkened and reshaped and then dabbed any excess to look as if she was born with impeccable shadows and skin intonations. she took her drink from the edge of the sink, opened the door, gave the queuing crowd an icy look and walked by to her table. to him. to his table. to his conversation. to his gesticulating hands. to his agitated mood. to his domineering presence. to him. to where he has her grotesquely exposed to a crowd. to where he exhibits her to the room, a woman, his woman, someone to smile and nod, someone never to leave lipstick marks on his cheek or her champagne flute. someone who darkens and softens discreetly in a dingy restroom to always stay immaculately made up after he’s smeared and smudged with wet kisses and fervent hands… someone with grace and taste, a taste that’s tasteful to his taste… a trophy wife.
She sits and smiles and nods and plays her role. but under the table her hand wanders around in her purse, touching ‘his’ letter. her hands slowly, dreamily roles over the indentations of his words just like some faded Braille’s alphabet… for she is blind for not reading… not seeing what it is.
for a moment, she lost herself in the realms of this letter… of an award ceremony she never saw, of a piano recital she never heard, hoards of people she never knew, and someone constantly inhabiting her mind like the memory of a smell that stirs up so much in so little…
she felt the weight of a question lingering in the air, like she always does when conversation ceases and eyes expect. with an orchestrated smile she said “excuse me darling, I simply loose my focus in crowded places. what were you saying?”
“Did you finish the arrangements for the honeymoon? I faxed you my schedule for next week…” he said.
“yes.. yes.. would you excuse me.” she said, and then, bag in hand, she simply... walked out.

Since my first post…


It has been a year.
the canvas is still empty.
the door left ajar.
and I still have nothing to say.
my colors are still packed for better days.
my words are reserved and I haven’t shared with you the color of my insides…
the red well tucked in a tube. the blue waiting to sprinkle the white. and the white waiting to lose itself in someone else’s existence.
my brushes are dry. their hair virgin and smooth.
all I read is you.
I learned your expressions, your moods…
I did spill some of my red on this page.
but my canvas is still empty and I still have nothing to say.

Like magic...