Nightmarish remembrences

that's a picture of my school, or part of it at least.

I would lay on the lower bunk, my small feet high in the air barely touching the bars of the bed above. The amount of bars my feet would reach would be the amount of years i'de live in the US i told myself. I had just moved back from living in Virginia to living in Egypt and the culture shock, the school system, plus everything else was just too overwhelming for me. On my first day of school the teacher bust a ruler on my hand because my Arabic writing wasn't good enough, if that was just the first day how were the rest of my days going to be like. It would only be later that i would prefect being rebellious and refusing to open my hands to receive the stick but maintain an angelic face as well. It was a world of eat or be eaten. Elementary school drama that ruined your school career, and not to mention the connections you had to have in order to survive. Our neighbor, Mr. Ahmad worked in my school as a teacher and i can't say how much i took advantage of that. He became known as my uncle in the school and he never objected. whenever it was that any of my friends or I were going to get in trouble for being late to class, skipping class or any other thing involving getting into trouble, i would smile at them confidently and we would head to the teachers lounge for one of "3amo Ahmad's" notes.

An Illusion of sorts

I'm taking an Arabic course and the first thing we talk about in the class, why Arabs aren't united. we talk, debate, and examine. As if it is us that will solve the problem of Arab unity and organize the people into something more humane. Then it moves onto love, the taboo of all taboos. A point is made, one that i wholeheartedly believe in, but could never find the right words for. Some Arab men claim Modernity or Arab people in generel, we'll claim modernity but it's only a face. we'll have the new cars but no no traffic or sense of traffic organization whatsoever. we try immitating the west, it's now modernity to have the bars, and clubs but we lack the basic repsect for each other and our women. We refuse to give our women equel rights and look at them as second class citizens,despite Their God endowed rights. This is the facade of modernity, the illusion that many live in.

childhood memories

It is those days spent in summer as a kid selling lemonade on the sidewalk, splashing in the sprinklers and riding bikes with friends that make you miss those long gone summers. sometimes it's even the smaller things that you didn't pay any attention to that suddenly remind you of how much you miss being a kid.
The other day for example, i was laying in bed waiting for sleep to kick in when i heard my dads footsteps along the hall going into my younger siblings room and covering them up. when i was younger i would pretend to be asleep and wait for my dad to come make sure my blanket was covering me and then give me a kiss on the forehead. I thought that was the sweetest thing a father could do, it was the ultimate show of parental love. I'm not sure when my dad stopped tucking me in but i guess i grew too old for such a thing and its those little things that remind of my childhood sometimes and make me miss it.

Where are we? ohh and we're out of gas!!

Groggily i woke up and asked " Are we there yet?"
my mom had a worried look on her face and i could see her mouth moving with prayers.

"what? whats wrong?" i said fully awake now

"We ran out of gas, and all the gas stations we're passing are closed" she said
"AGAIN?" i exclaimed

If you remember, this happened to us before when my mom stopped in this small freaky town that reminded me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. It seemed like we were always running out of gas.

So there we were, in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere, with a flashing gas light,surrounded by trees, no other cars in sight and as it turns out, none of our phones had signal.

The GPS told us that the next gas station was 6 miles down. The car didn't seem like it was gonna go that far but we decided to take the risk anyway.

While my mom was freaking out and telling us "ed3o ed3o" I was thinking how really this is beautiful. think of it. the middle of nowhere and God wanted to hear our voices in prayer. ahh it really did put me in awe

well of course right when we got out of our little mishap, it was labeled an "adventure" instead :P

New year, new resolutions!!

Salams and peace ya'll.
can't believe it's been a year since i've started this blog. I can't remember the exact reason of why i started this blog but i think one was for it to serve as an outlet for myself. a place where i can post whatever and whenever. Although i haven't been keeping up with it as much as i should and i can't promise that i will either. it has helped me and i've met some amazing and talented bloggers through it. so can't say i'm not happy. speaking of which, does anyone do the new year resolutions thing? personally, new years is a time for me to be all depressed about the year that passed and me wasting it and not doing anything of much importance. I don't even remember any of my last year resolutions but i know somewhere i have a paper laying with 50 goals that i want to achieve before i turn 25. let's just say i only got one of them achieved, i started praying my sunnah prayers. so i guess that's not all that bad.

During this last year
i've launched my business
I finally got my long overdue car license
i've memorized 2 surahs, which isn't much considering i had a whole year!
i finished my first year of university...
yay for procrastination.

by this time next year

I hope to have written a book or the rough draft of it at least
preformed some spoken word poetry
memorized 5 surahs

...i can hope hey! don't judge
my new years started 15 days ago. Have a blessed year ya'll