Exit Door (Bab Al-Khorouj): A Novel by Ezzedine Choukri Fishere

Ali’s unexpected joyful letter; he kept silent for eternity and uttered blasphemy in the end!

“I don’t want you to measure your behavior on what you think is possible human perfection, i.e. your father, and feel inadequate for the rest of your life. I am not perfect or great any more than you can.”

How many times have you heard a father—whether yours or someone else’s—say this to his son? Reading Ali’s letter to his son might spare you needless moments of frustration and despair. 

Exit Door is a socio-political Arabic fiction by Ezzedine Choukri Fishere. Fishere created a cacotopia, an imagined nightmarish account of the nine years of Egypt’s post-revolution timeline where all the raised fears, demands, and scenarios took place. The novel is a 483-page letter from Ali to his son Yehia that was written on the 20th of Oct 2020, in 24 hours! Writing was a doddle for Ali; he was the presidential translator for decades. Ali wrote that letter from South China Sea heading for Egypt, on board a commercial cargo ship carrying small nuclear bombs amid thousands of containers, which was raided by the U.S. Navy 24 hours later.

Apparently, Ali was the traitor. His defence was to prevent a bigger crime against the populace and expose his father-in-law, President Al-Qattan’s treason. In case they tarnish his image, Ali wanted his son to hear the whole story firsthand and keep this letter as a proof or plan B if things went awry.  

Another implicit reason behind Ali’s letter was redeemed fatherhood—in the form of a letter! Ali spent his life in the hallways of palaces from which he derived a false sense of importance and an excuse for negligence. Moreover, Ali and Yehia were forcibly parted for 5 years when Nada, Ali’s orderly wife, fled with her son and overbearing father Al-Qattan to London. His letter is full of manly insights & confessions, warnings against emotional extortion that parents impose on their children & getting caught up in the current of desire, and paternal advice “Inevitably, you’ll have to push back injustice when it comes to you.”

Ali recounted the past 30 years of his life including lives and deaths, his glassy marriage, his cowardice and ambivalence, his drinking bout, and his awakening. He told Yehia about his first love Dao Ming, his childhood friend Ezzedine, his impulsive friend Mahmoud, his indispensable assistant Abdou, and his sweetheart Noor, “When she speaks, her voice comes out like a hand that rubs your soul.”

Ali’s story started where it ended, in China, and ironically with almost the same people, the military generals: Al-Qattan and Al-Menisy.

Fishere tells the story from the decision-makers’ viewpoint and offers the reader a perspective on consequences and public response. He puts the reader inside the political kitchen among futile activists, scheming politicians, procrastinating governments, and competing political parties. Occasionally, he mentions the youth and grassroots who had come to wield political and cultural power. Fishere vividly conveys the intentions, emotions, and suffering of all the characters through Ali, the political insider.

You can easily focus on the rich and flowing sequence of events after reading the plot in the first few pages. You will relive the old regime, the uprising, and the ruling military council. You will read about the banned ultras-hood, killings, shelling, riots, arson, chaos, popular committees, national salvation governments, negotiations, security reform, more blood, revolutionary court, execution, occupation, and treason.

Exit Door sets off alarm bells through its consequential adverse events. But Fishere does not leave his reader without a chink of hope; Fishere bets on the youth versus the misleading elderly, “Those youth, who did not find role models to emulate, grew up seeking truth, goodness, and beauty nonetheless!”

Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Egyptian novelist and Professor of political science at the AUC, had published five novels. His fifth novel Embrace by Brooklyn Bridge was long-listed for the prestigious Arabic Booker Prize 2012.

Diamond Dust (By Ahmed Mourad)

“When murder becomes a side effect of a drug that cures a dying city!” Diamond Dust

Lots of people practice the bedtime ritual of repeatedly replaying an argument they’ve had with someone in their heads. They fantasize about different scenarios—saying or doing something that’s so out of character, until they win and finally doze off. The novelist Ahmed Mourad in Diamond Dust novel brews up a diabolic concoction, a panacea for all our problems with mortals. A Good riddance!

Diamond Dust is an intriguing mixture of crime, thriller, social, and political all-in-one novel. It reveals the life behind-the-scenes and rampant corruption among social classes and the men of law. It tells the story of three generations of two families, El-Zahar (the punishers) and Bergass (the corruptors), and Walid Sultan, the debauched chief of detectives. 

Taha Hussein Hanafy El-Zahar is the main character, a young man who lived with his crippled father in a small apartment in Dokki. He held two jobs, a medical representative and a night shift pharmacist, and practiced one hobby, drumming. His life was like a motionless pond; everyday he puts on a suit, a necktie, a leather suitcase with all kinds of cajolery stuff for physicians, and the glibness of a high-pressure salesman. The first pebble tossed in his pond was a dire encounter with Dokki constituency bully—aptly dubbed Service—at the pharmacy. Twenty-four hours later, a boulder fell in his pond displacing all the water that was once there; Hussein El-Zahar was killed and Taha almost died! Hussein’s life also seemed pathetic, trapped in a wheelchair looking out his window with binoculars and scribbling all day long. But after his murder, Taha discovered his dad’s aged notebook and a remarkable tool. Hussein El-Zahar wasn’t pathetic after all!

And a chain reaction of killings ensued… 

The narrative mostly takes place in 2008. It starts with the grandfather Hanafy El-Zahar who owned an herbs shop in Haret El-Yahud in 1954, and hung out with his friends Yousef Bakhoum and Lieto who was Jewish, like a snapshot from the movie ‘Hassan, Morcos, and Cohen’. It briefly mentions the tripartite invasion and evacuation of Egyptian Jews. Hanafy had seven children; Hussein was his favorite—Hanafy’s mini-me. Hanafy’s character is close to the soft womanizing Si-Sayed, not the authoritarian. Lieto played an influential role in Hussein’s life; even his red-headed, flirtatious daughter ‘Tuna’ who was Hussein’s first heartbreak. Taha inherited his father’s genes and fell in love with a red-head too, ‘Sarah’ the neighborhood’s bombshell. Taha describes her as “intentionally seductive!” Despite the gloomy facts in the novel that depicts the perpetual moral decay in our society, Ahmed Mourad’s sarcastic voice represented in ‘Yasser’ will make you laugh. Yasser is the comical, panicky childhood friend and café buddy of Taha. He is gangly, outmoded with his plaid shirts and punk hairstyle, and a womanizer, ironically!

The novel flows smoothly and ends happily in Sharm Elsheikh. There is no guesswork as the plot is revealed in the middle, but the events never abate or cease to shock you. The photographer and novelist Ahmed Mourad knows how to tantalize and engage his readers by mixing facts with fiction and using everyday language in all his three novels, Vertigo, Diamond Dust, and The Blue Elephant. The last two novels will be made into movies and Vertigo was made into a TV series last Ramadan, starring Hend Sabry.

Watch the spooky Diamond Dust promo here: http://youtu.be/kiK1aXlt3GU

The Blue Elephant (By Ahmed Mourad)

 

The Blue Elephant

Did you know that your nose becomes engorged with blood when you lie and this causes a tingly or itchy sensation which requires a nose rub to soothe it? So the next time you talk to someone, watch out for that snout stroke cue, but don’t rule out the possibility that it may be an innocuous itch! You will learn more body language reading tips in Ahmed Mourad’s new thriller novel ‘The Blue Elephant’ through Dr. Yehia Rashed, the shrewd psychiatrist, narrator, and main character.

Yehia tells his story the day he received the dismissal warning letter from Abbasiya Mental Hospital that disrupted his 5 years of voluntary oblivion. He resumed his work as a Psychiatrist in section ‘East 8′, the section that decides the sanity and fate of crime perpetrators. One of the inmates was his old friend Sherif Elkordy, a psychiatrist too ironically, who had been accused of murdering his wife Basma–shoved naked off the 30th floor! The two friends’ encounter opened a Pandora’s box and rekindled an old romance with Lobna, Sherif’s helpless sister. Throughout the novel, Yehia tried to psychoanalyze and investigate Sherif’s case and peculiar tattoo; did he or did he not murder his beloved wife and if he did, was he aware, and why? Finding answers upturned Yehia’s once stable and apathetic life.

The first lines clearly revealed the sarcastic, self-loathing tone of the narrator, as well as his wayward lifestyle represented in beer bottles, weed, poker, and “The three most important inventions to mankind: electricity, alcohol and Maya!” Maya is the sizzling character that appeared in the first page as Yehia’s physical associate. Maya’s role was not merely sensual; it became life changing when she introduced Yehia to “The Blue Elephant for travel and tourism” that took him repeatedly to a mystifying unexplored world, where he came out as a different person! Those spooky journeys, coupled with Absinthe and Jack Daniel’s, unravelled dark secrets and implicated Yehia in Sherif’s case.

Ahmed Mourad, author of Vertigo and Diamond Dust, is a well-read Egyptian novelist and photographer. He engages his readers by mixing fact with fiction and colloquial with formal Arabic. He also adds a dollop of contextual English phrases to materialize his stories.

Mourad’s vivid imagination will make you petrified like Sherif, woozy like Yehia, chant Fayrouz with Lobna, smell violet like the odour of Indian incense, hear smashing beer bottles, watch National Geographic on Yehia’s TV, admire Maya’s blue nail polish, tap into psychology and taboos like alcohol, psychedelics, and unspoken desires. You will drop in at contemporary places like Abbasiya Hospital, Osman Towers in Maadi, Sequoia and Deals in Zamalek, and Drinkie’s in Heliopolis as well as historical places like Bab Zuwayla and Sabil Nafisah Al-Bayda!

The Blue Elephant is a gripping psychological thriller novel with a dash of romance, lust, blood, violence, voodoo, and a handful of quips. You’ll read this book in big chunks and the creepy end will disrupt your bedtime routine for a day or two!

The District – Co-working Space

Everything about this place invites you in. It’s spacious, bright, colorful, hip, artistic, comfortable, and lively. It’s within a walking distance of Maadi Metro Station, located on the top floor of a dwarfed brick building that managed to catch a splendid glimpse of the Nile Corniche and its refreshing breeze despite the tall buildings in the vicinity. The District presents a novel way of working, co-working space.

The door left ajar on the 4^th floor opens into a well-lit, roomy foyer with white walls, stylish pendant lightings, Greek key patterned frieze running along the ceiling, and ceramic tiles. Both Mazen Helmy, Founder of The District, and Ahmed Maher, Community Manager, greeted us warmly and showed us around. There’s a sizeable, well-equipped kitchen near the entrance. The reception/lounge across from the kitchen leads to a spacious loft through a flight of stairs with patterned wrought-iron railings. There are several rooms on both floors, all furnished with desks—some have a glass memo board built-in for instant scrawling, workstations, conference tables, and blue, black and red swivel chairs. There are also comfy red sofas with cushions, and brown, red, orange and blue bean bags strewn all over the place. There’s a bookshelf that serves as a mini-library on the second floor, packed with frequenters’ books contribution. The loft, partially converted into office space, has marble flooring and exposed wood beam ceiling. A multi-coloured kilim, a dart board, modish lightings, and several handmade paintings of famous Egyptian characters and Arabic calligraphy on wooden canvases embellish the white, orange and purple walls. The sunlight slanting in from the windows and the green reflected from the scattered plant pots add a dash of freshness to the place. The airy rooftop terrace with the Nile view, a swing, a pretty small fountain, and a pergola is inspirational. People with open laptops sprawled across desks were all over the place. Some were talking and working together, while others were working alone. The place in general is spacious, uncluttered, pristine, and welcoming.

Mazen says that the co-working space concept appeared in Europe several years ago, especially during recession—The Hub being the most popular. He believes that the co-working space concept has lots of potential in Egypt because of the innovative and collaborative spirits that sprouted up in the wake of the revolution. Co-working space offers low cost, no fuss, all set workspace for start-ups and entrepreneurs, and connects them with experts they would never meet otherwise. Mazen observed the daily routine of a typical working citizen—formal wear at a 9 to 5 job, then a pair of shorts or jeans, laptop bag slung over shoulders and head to the nearest café. Lots of people complain how nine-to-five working environments can sometimes be hostile or stifling to innovation, productivity, and learning. These observations plus years of travelling abroad inspired Mazen to create an unconventional, carefree, ready-to-use co-working space as an alternative to working in cafés or the distraction and isolation of working from home. The District presents a unique, versatile, and homey workspace, a hybrid between office and café, where human interaction is the cornerstone of the business. Mazen and Ahmed say it’s not only about providing a physical shared workplace but we want to create a growing value network of professionals and entrepreneurs, and instill a sense of community. “We bring like-minded business people together in an environment conducive to connecting, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.”  The resulted synergy will reshape the community into a more innovative, sustainable, and productive one.

Co-working space concept varies from one person to another and it is not exclusively to freelancers or entrepreneurs; salaried employees are starting to frequent such a place. Maher says that co-workers are currently in their late twenties to late thirties, and have diverse backgrounds. Therefore, they offer flexible hourly and monthly (3 days or 6 days/week) membership options, online booking system plus the possibility to freeze membership in case of travel. For a fair price, the members have access to the whole place, a kitchen supplied with hot and cold drinks, WiFi, scanner, printer, conference room, projector, HD webcam and video conference. The members are free to receive drop-ins and clients. They are allowed to use The District’s address, email, and telephone number on their business cards. And thus, The District provides its members with some secretarial services like dealing with phone and email enquiries, arranging meetings, and maintaining office supplies.

Aside from providing workspace and meeting space, The District organizes monthly entrepreneurial, educational, and networking events coined as ‘Open Stage’. As the term implies, it’s a gathering event for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas and share knowledge, maybe band together, and meet business icons as well. The District hosts a Community Market on the second Friday of every month for entrepreneurs and start-ups to display their products for sale and most importantly, get feedback from customers; it’s like testing waters. Moreover, The District team work as promoters and connectors through The District Lab. They provide invaluable support to start-ups by assembling a small group of enterprise and business experts—possibly investors—to help start-ups or new ventures get on their feet.

At the end of the day, co-workers uphold and pitch the social, collaborative, and informal aspects of the co-working space. Co-working space designed for and by the people, creates more flexible forms of work and brings new blood into the business community.

http://www.facebook.com/DistrictEgypt

Steel Lotus

Imagine a house enclosed by lush golden fields, made from mud-brick that has a garden and an inner courtyard. Now imagine the house from the inside having a vaulted ceiling, a colored stained-glass lantern dome, a still-water basin (salsabil), colorful kilim rugs on the floor, mud-brick benches (mastaba) and wooden lattice screens (mashrabiya) built into the walls. Can you feel the natural light, the serenity, the cool and clean air all over the house?

 Those imaginative excerpts were real images shown to me by Dr. Zeinab Eldeeb, photos of illustrative house models and wheat farms of an optimal village. “A typical Egyptian village, with Egyptian features, made by Egyptian hands and raw materials, lesser costs yet more humane,” says Dr. Zeinab Eldeeb.

Dr. Zeinab Eldeeb is considered a pioneer in the field of anthropology and human development by the SorbonneUniversity, the UNESCO, and the EgyptianCulturalCenter in Paris.

She said that the Nile River and the farmer were the keys to the great agricultural wealth of the Egyptian civilization. The Egyptian farmer was the first to domesticate the first wheat family. He stabilized its genetic structure that was adapted to the environment and started to grow wheat grains ever since. The farmer provided the people of Egypt with the ‘loaf of bread’, the sacred and living meaning of the word ‘life’. Egypt was rich and great before it started to crumble over the past 30 years when it was deviously robbed of its natural resources including its water resources, not to mention the identity effacement by deliberate negligence of the farmer and consequently the village, which is the unit of life in Egypt.

“We have to go back to basics,” says Dr. Zeinab in order to restore Egypt’s great status and self-sufficiency.

Being a passionate Egyptian and humanitarian, she was interested in the human experience in ancient Egypt which sees the human being in a framework of an integrated system—with land, plants, water, and living species—and examines the various ways in which learned techniques, values, and beliefs are transmitted from one generation to the next and acted upon in different situations.

In the 80s, and for 10 years of applied research, firsthand observation, and film documentation, Dr. Zeinab presented to the world an unprecedented visual anthropological description featuring the daily life in the rural community, along the Egyptian valley and desert. Her research confirmed that the Egyptian farmer still preserves many of the customs and tradition legacies that were verbally passed down from generation to generation. Her research was the precursor of a national project for human development in the Egyptian valley and desert.

She translated her knowledge into action when she collaborated with the Agricultural Research Center, and together they combined culture with modern science and presented to the world a multi-faceted, developmental, national project for re-building the Egyptian village.

(http://www.facebook.com/#!/Dr.ZeinabEldeeb)

In 1990, the Government approved and allocated the necessary land for her project. During the seven following years, the invincible and diverse team working with Dr. Zeinab (scientists, experts, farmers, and youth) established several model farms and houses in most of the targeted governorates to build agricultural, handicraft based, eco-friendly, and self-sufficient villages. The houses were built in Egyptian architectural style that uses locally available materials, solar energy, natural light and ventilation systems like domes, courtyards, and mashrabiyas, and salsabils to increase air humidity. Dr. Zeinab says “It’s not just building a house; it’s about reviving the Egyptian identity through reviving old handicrafts, folk arts and industries, and engaging and stimulating the village people and craftsmen to use and develop their knowledge and mastery.”

The invincible team also turned pure sand into wheat, with no manure, no chemicals, and no additives! I’m talking about the more productive and more stable variety of organic wheat that was cultivated in a virgin, high-salinity desert land. They dug wells in the desert. They provided farmers with derived wheat seeds for propagation that yielded more than 30 ardebs per feddan i.e. doubled their produce and thus their profits by lower costs! The farmers were taught how to grow their own seeds instead of using (GMOs) genetically modified seeds. They were advised to shun pesticides and rationalize water usage by modern irrigation methods.

The project’s over-whelming positive results during its first illustrative phases were globally recognized as the most significant developmental project in the world. And despite that, the project was unjustifiably terminated in 1997 when Dr. Zeinab, the project and patent owner, refused its privatization. Dr. Zeinab went back to Paris but not without putting up a fight in the futile courtrooms.

“If the 25th of Jan revolution succeeds, it will change the face of the world,” says Dr. Zeinab El-deeb. She came back to Egypt after the revolution, recharged with hope and knowledge, to carry through her national project by teaming up with the farmers, craftsmen, revolution youth and graduates, scientists, researchers, and intellectuals from all walks of life.

It’s worth mentioning that the project addresses the most serious problem facing the country which is construction encroachment on agricultural lands and river banks. The project provides solutions for clearing the courses of the Nile River and canals, and calls for obtaining African-Egyptian legislation under the UNESCO to turn the Nile Basin entirely into a natural reserve.

Dr. Zeinab wraps it up at the end of our meeting “We want to promote organic agriculture and safe food production. We want to support the visions and aspirations of the youth and encourage creativity. We want to revive the authentic Egyptian handicrafts and restore the Egyptian farmer’s capabilities and resilience, and hence revive the Egyptian culture and identity.”

Oodles of unforgettable moments…

My First Coronary 

The first time I took my niece Fatma for a ride in my car, I almost had a coronary. Fatma was 2 years old. I sat her in the passenger seat and I learned later that it was a HUGE mistake. I fastened her seat belt and told her “Fatooma, now I want you to sit very still and don’t fiddle with anything, ok sweetie,” “Ok,” she said softly, and was it my naivety or confidence that got me too complacent. We drove around the block at a very moderate speed and luckily the streets were almost traffic free. At a moment, when I turned my head to the right to check on her, she was happily sitting back in her seat looking out the window, rocking to the music, and waving her tiny hand at every living and non-living thing. And suddenly, oppressive silence prevailed. No music, no whirring engine sounds, no humming Fatma sounds! I turned my head towards Fatma. Like Tom & Jerry cartoon, my eyes popped out of their sockets when I spotted the car key in Fatma’s tiny hand and realized that the car had been coasting for a few seconds and the shifting gear was on neutral! I froze for a split second, recovered, hit the brakes and pulled over. I couldn’t forget the look on her innocent face. Her lips were curled across her cheeks and her eyes were widely open. I guess she realized, yet bemused, that something must have gone terribly wrong from the look on my face! In the end, we’re alive!!!   

Who Peed in my Pants?

We were on our way back from a day use in Sokhna. It’s a two-hour drive. My sister was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and 3-year old Fatma and her grandma were in the back seat. On the way, Fatma guzzled too much water and juice to kill time and keep cool after a long day in the sun. Fidgety Fatma couldn’t stay put in the back seat and insisted on sitting on my lap. She kept nagging and I said yes in the end. A few minutes of fiddling with the car radio and she fell asleep in my arms. My sister suggested pulling in to put Fatma in the back seat again. But we were halfway there so I told her I could bear my tingly legs and besides, I was keeping Fatma warm against the chilly car’s air-conditioning. Oh, how I wish I took my sister’s suggestion! I was looking out the window, staring at nothing, thoughts floating in my head, music drifting into my ears, and suddenly…heat in my crotch! For a second, I didn’t get what was happening and then the heat turned into wetness and started spreading to my thighs and my abdomen. “I peed my pants!” that was my first thought, “I was cold, my lower half was numb, and I drank a lot of water but… No Way! FATMA!” Before saying anything out loud, I groped for Fatma’s lap and it was soaked. Unfortunately, the warmth didn’t last long against the ice breathing gadget in the dashboard. I was cold, uncomfortable with a pair of wet knickers, and mortified at the thought of getting out of the car, eventually!

Relapsing Heartaches

The few times I heard Salma say something clearly audible, were when she got sick. She was about two years old and everyday her father would drop her off on his way to work at grandpa and grandma’s (where I still live!). At times, her immune system and oral antibiotics would bail on her so my dad would call the pharmacy to send someone to give her an antibiotic shot at home. Need I say more! A two-year old facing a GHOUL (Walt Disney effect on a child’s imagination; in fact he was a decent guy with a syringe!)… Lots of commotion, screaming, weeping, hopeless cajoling, and finally chasing! This syringe-chasing drama used to happen early in the morning. I would be fast asleep before I jumped out of my skin on the neurotic thumping against my bedroom door. She would push me aside and rush into my room, usually bare-legged, running around hysterically in circles, uttering a two-year old’s unfathomable jargon that was interrupted by sobbing and gasping, making it harder for me to understand what she was saying. But then I got it, “el-patanone… ati patanone…!” (English: My pants… Get me my pants…!) This two-year old freaking girl thought that as long as her pants were on, she would be safe! Not in my arms or anybody’s arms! Her pants were her refuge, her savior from the ghoul and his evil syringe!  My heart sunk every time I witnessed this little child’s living nightmare. If only I could spare her all forms of suffering! May there never be a sick child ever… Forgive me Salma.

Gags on Me

In a former post, I wrote about my nephew Yassin that he’s a natural born comedian. To give you an example, a few days ago I was baby-sitting Salma and Yassin. They were watching Dora the Explorer in the living room and then Yassin came to me and asked if I could walk him to the bathroom because it was dark in the hallway and he was scared. So I held his lil hand and we walked together. I lit the bathroom light for him and he immediately frowned and folded his arms. I asked what was wrong; he retorted that he could switch on the lights by himself! I apologized and switched them off, and his pouty lips curled into a biiig smile. He tiptoed on his lil feet and stretched his arm up to reach for the light switch and clack! He placed one foot on the doorstep which is somewhat high for him but familiar, and kept trying to lift the other foot up several times while his hands were resting on the door frame. Yassin is 3 years old; he can walk and run and jump and climb stairs. I was puzzled! I placed my hand on his back to give him a lil push but his disobedient foot kept falling down again and again and again… I told him “Come on Yassin. Lift it up. What’s wrong?!” I thought he hurt his leg. He was looking down at his feet, seriously, as if begging his foot to climb up and then turned his head up to me and cackled “Oh look! My foot is stuck!” I literally swept him off his feet, seized him in my arms and kissed every inch of his face, neck, and nape. Grrr… You lil prankster!

Always an Auntie, Never a Mom, and I’m Proud!

I was tagged with ‘Auntie’ since Fatma’s birth, my oldest niece. And that’s the current, most significant title I’ve acquired so far. The word ‘Auntie’ was super-glued to my being by Salma’s birth, 2^nd niece and Fatma’s cousin. Lastly, my nephew Yassin, Salma’s bro, carved A-U-N-T-I-E upon my mind, body, soul.

Being an Auntie…

Unlike motherhood and fatherhood, you do not get to decide to become an Auntie. Auntie-hood will find you; it will creep up on you just like old-age. No choice, yet no obligation and no responsibility. Mostly, my job as an Auntie is to spoil and indulge my nieces and nephew. I may step in and lend a hand (that doesn’t come near soiled diapers) whenever help is needed on rare occasions. Luckily, I have 2 strong independent sisters and even a stronger prototype, my Dear Mom. I know I’m taking them for granted, I know I should show more responsibility and gratitude and much less selfishness. I know that an immeasurable amount of joy has been dropped into my lap. I therefore take this opportunity to thank God and my sisters for bringing to life these magnificent little people. Particularly into my life!

Fatma, Salma, and Yassin are the 3 wonderful spirits of felicity in my life…

I’ve spotlighted Fatma in my post ‘The Bittersweet Nuisance’. This one spotlights the other two little people in my life, Salma and Yassin.

Salma and Yassin

Even though they share the same DNA and the same living environment, they are so different character-wise. Salma is very quiet yet daring—others would say impulsive—unlike Yassin who’s vocal, loud, and timid.

Salma is five now. She is petite. When she first started walking, she was a tailgater, following everyone around so quietly and closely. We wouldn’t realize her presence until occasionally and accidentally someone trod on her little feet. And yet, she would hardly squeal! She moves like a butterfly; no swooping, no buzzing… Just sheer silence and grace.

Here’s my suave little princess Salma. The other day when I flounced out of the living room after a bicker with my father, she ran after me and hugged me tightly. She looked me deep in the eyes, no words, just soul talking. I stared back at her concerned face until she broke into a chuckle and we both laughed. I kissed her cheek and I noticed her lovely dress. She loves dresses; she loves all the girly stuff. She loves it when someone tells her how beautiful she looks and she is! So I took a photo of her holding Ramadan’s lantern in her hand. Yassin’s too who emulates his sister; she moves, he moves.

Salma and Yassin are very humorous, especially Yassin. Yassin is a natural born comedian. I love it when he puts on his sulky face and sits quietly to grab everyone’s attention. And when he succeeds and everyone is mollycoddling him, he shrieks with laughter triumphantly for having tricked us all. I also love his gigantic sense of pride. Yassin has a precise offence-o-meter that goes off with the slightest cue of insult, may it be a glare, a tone, a gesture, or a word as simple as ‘NO’. And that’s when the Comedian steps aside as the Whiner steps in. The Whiner is a howling, kicking, and pinching version of a very snotty Yassin that nobody likes! Just kidding Yassin…

I love you little guys and I don’t care what you do, say, shout, spew, spill, kick, smash, drop, lose, drench, smudge, botch…etc.!