a tale of two goodbyes

date: 1 October 2006

city: Cairo

she carried her handbag, left her apartment which was right next to "Kobry El Kobba" metro station, took the Cairo underground metro to "Esaaf" station. she felt more comfortable riding one of the first two metro cars for women and children only. half an hour later she got off, walked upstairs to hail a taxi: "26 July St. please". At Shagaret El Dor St. corner the taxi stopped and she had no problem remembering the address because she came here a few days earlier for an interview, it was September 27th and when her husband came to pick her up in their FiFi (that was the nick name of their red Fiat 128 hatchback car) she found a wrapped gift on her seat. "happy 1st montharsary dear" her husband said. he bought her a wooden salad set of one large bowel and two small ones because he knew how much she loves colorful salads. 

the Cairo bureau of this newspaper was located in Zamalek, the balcony overlooked nice gardens and she could hear birds singing in harmony with the sound of the computer keyboard. her fingers played quickly on the computer, her head moved from the Arabic newspapers spread open next to her on the large table at the center of the rectangular office to the screen in front of her, her brain raced to translate news headlines from Arabic to English. she had a great first day on her part-time job. 

for a whole year, this was her daily routine with a one-hour commute to work, sometimes she preferred to walk the first half of the distance on her way back home even though the Boulak and Abou El Ela area can give you a "cultural shock" walking down that bridge connecting Zamalek with that poor market place, but an experience in Cairo's public transportation wasn't on her list because it was a whole package of filthy mini vans, over crowded buses, and a selection of harassment incidents she can't pick and choose from. 

at the end of that year she and her husband had to move from Cairo to Alexandria, this young couple decided to inform family, friends, and acquaintances in Cairo ahead of time, so she went to tell her boss that she's leaving. to her surprise, the assistant journalist came up with a brilliant idea and the boss approved of it: "How about you do the same translation but from home? You'll be online during the same working hours you spend here. Let's try it while you're still in Cairo then we'll surely know that it's going to work after you move to Alex." and this was the first e-mail she sent :

the years passed by and she spent a total 7 years and 3 months in this part-time job. so much happened during these 86 months, but she kept sending that e-mail every morning and waiting for more translation requests from the boss. the Cairo bureau of this newspaper changed 5 journalists during her stay, each one of them appreciated her work and she kept the job, even when she traveled she would e-mail the headlines and when she gave birth to her first son she took two weeks off then went back to work even if it meant typing the translation at 3 or 4 am with the newborn baby on her arm. when the Global Financial Crisis started she didn't ask for a raise but when her daughter arrived she did and the request was rejected. when the last boss informed her that the end of 2013 will witness the end of her work she had mixed feelings.

at first she felt sad and scared, she was sad to lose a job that was more like a miracle, it was very convenient for her to work form home while she was pregnant the first and second time and even more convenient when she had the kids with no help around she was able to both look after them and work from home, but she felt sad because whatever income her salary added was more needed now than ever, even though her salary witnessed no change what so ever during these 7 years and 3 months regardless of the climb that prices witnessed between 2006 and 2013 yet she did not wish for this income to stop.

a few weeks after she received the news the initial fear and sadness started to fade and were gradually replaced by excitement and hope, she felt that she's set free, this job was perfect but only for a while, it's no longer the best thing for her and she enjoyed this feeling of anticipation, waiting, searching, and guessing what could be her next perfect step... now she's free, the sky is the limit (with 2 kids in the picture! or the frame maybe), she can think outside the box and decide what she loves and can do for a living.

so the end of 2013 witnessed the first goodbye for her, the last time she types the word "Headlines" in the morning e-mail subject-line, the last time she opens these three newspapers first thing in the morning, the last time she clicks "send" so that the e-mail would arrive on time... there's nothing else in her life that she was committed to doing for so long, doing the very same thing every single day (except on weekends) for 87 months, not even her quite time... it was hard to send this last e-mail

and say goodbye to what has become part of who she is, but she wondered which one of these two goodbyes was more painful...

2013 wasn't as good as all Syrians expected, hoped, and prayed for... it wasn't as bad as our worst nightmare either... it was much worse... one might think that saying goodbye to a bad year is easy because one can't wait to put it behind them and open a new page, but the year 2013 is hard to say goodbye to, because it has to make up for the mess she's leaving behind, we can't just forgive her and let her pass (the word "year" in the Arabic language is feminine) shouldn't she pay for the damage she caused before bidding us farewell? but to be realistic, if 2013 is to be sent to prison until she pays her dept then she'll be in jail for a decade, a century, or maybe forever. so we have no choice but to let 2013 go and make some room for 2014 to deal with the old package and unfold what she has prepared for us.

date: 31 December 2013
city: Alexandria

she, the blog writer, at the end of this day, made peace with these two goodbyes looking forward to new beginnings, to finding a new job, to peace being restored in Syria, to a new year as sweet and flavored as our homemade ginger Christmas cookies...

HAPPY NEW YEAR DEAR BLOG READERS AROUND THE WORLD

all i w-a-n-t need for Christmas

the title should look like this: all i want  need for Christmas

i'm raising the white flag... giving up, on so many things, including getting this post title appear as i want!!!

yesterday i was watching the sunset, from our famous window, and i started panting all of a sudden, i wanted to scream at the sun "STOP... don't set... yet... i'm not ready" i didn't actually yell, i just kept taking photos of the clouds with shades of gray and salmon pink pretending that everything is under control and that all is "cool" while NOTHING was...

as i listened to the clicking sound of my camera to distract my attention i got even more nervous... it sounded like a clock... the more photos i took the more clicks i heard the more clock ticking there was...

Christmas Eve of the year 2013 arrived so suddenly for me i almost had a panic attack. being the control-freak-perfectionist-pintrest-addict-mama i am, i couldn't accept the fact that "it's here"... khalas... it's Christmas Eve already...

EVERYTHING is a mess... my brain is a mess and i can't trace my thoughts... my heart is a mess and i no longer recognize my feelings and i'm unable to give each one a proper universal name... my sorrow is a mess and my tears drop here and there while i want to have an "organized" grief and "well distributed" tears... even the space i live in is a mess (unclean apartment, untidy rooms, no food, no matching outfits for all 4 of us, no celebration plans.... so much is missing) i need the sun to give me just a little more time so i could "fill in the blanks" with proper and relevant ideas, emotions, reactions, tangible stuff and pinned down Christmas-related dates and places an activities...

but it was too late to do all of that in just a few minutes or even hours... i had no plan B, i usually do, even though i hate plan B's, i'm a perfectionist and i can only have a plan A and it HAS to go well, but yeah with two kids under the age of five i "learned" how to make plans other than A.... keep a plan B, C all the way to plan Z within reach... just in case... but this time i did not plan AT ALL, what a shame... this shame tastes different, it's Christmas Shame... Rihamic Christmas Shame... the new disease that i seem to have developed this year... RCS

similar to every other sudden incident, you need to know a few standard safety procedures to tell you what to do in case of a fire, an earthquake, an attack by aliens... or in case of an RCS

a peak through the window into our home could've given you a glimpse of what's it like inside my head&heart... i had the choice to either keep pretending and just say that it's not Christmas Eve, borrow the first stage of grief "denial", anyhow in Egypt we celebrate Christmas on January 7th so Christmas Eve is still two weeks away... OR... look my RCS in the face and start fighting back... i chose the latter

i'm new to my RCS so i didn't know whether just shaking it off would work or i need serious fighting, like armor and weapons and all of that so at first i tried to scare my RCS away gently but this didn't work... so it was time for some serious fighting and if it's "shame" then according to Daring Greatly book/manual the first anti-shame tool is LIGHT... i need more LIGHT to come into my head, heart, and home... 

Tip/Armor Number One: The first (and maybe only) anti-RCS weapon is Light, apply it to the 3 H's (head/heart/home)

once i was able to allow some light to come in through a few cracks i could see clearly that things are not THAT bad... it's enough that we're all healthy, we have an actual home with actual walls and a ceiling... how about starting there, anywhere, there's always a point i can start from and not just tell myself that everything will be ok... no... i should practice saying: "everything IS ok... already"... everything is ok, everything is acceptable, is good enough, is sufficient enough, is perfect enough... 

so the sunset was over and it was dark... there was no time to use the vacuum cleaner, no time to cook dinner or prepare any dessert, no time to sort out all the depressing thoughts about refugees and no time to categorize feelings about how bitter Christmas tastes with the war in Syria... i had to get started, i had to decide that i was ready for Christmas eve... decide to enjoy it... just the way things are... prepare Him room (maybe tidy the living room up a little, just this room)... when there's room my ears will be sensitive enough to hear the knock at the door... i'll be so imperfectly ready with whatever room is available in my 3 H's... so i opened the door wide enough (as wide as i could at that point) and THE light came in and took care of a few things inside... i didn't witness any miracle yesterday night, it was a Christmas Eve like never before (in a bad sense) i was missing my family's traditions in Damascus... the longing was too bad to bear this year... the cold, the smell in the air, the lights, the ordinary yearly Christmas stupid stuff we did... just counting a few things makes my heart ache... i never imagined that in addition to destroying the present and the future of a country and a people, war can also sneak into your past and rob parts of your warmest memories... 

regardless of this bad state of my 3 H's i was able to prepare Him room, a very small one but it was big enough... i was able to be still, for a very short while, but it was long enough... it was a very humble room but in His eyes it was perfect enough... because if somebody can know and understand what i'm going through then it's the very Child who was born last night for THIS VERY REASON... Hebrews 2 : 18 says: "Because he himself was born a refugee away from his home, he is able to help those who are refugees"... (you can look up the original verse if this new Syrian version looks unfamiliar to you)

on the less philosophical/depressing level ... i mean domestically speaking... this is how our feast, eventually, looked like (the menu mainly featured pop corn, french fries and nuts, a fruit salad and a bar of chocolate cut in pieces!!)

... and the tree (the lights on the floor will twinkle on the tree at some point, but for now enjoy the neck exercise and tilt your head to the left... see? the tree is strait)

...and the kids (the Bible doesn't say there were THREE wise men... there could've been only two... with their own kind and degree of wisdom)

all of these photos are so imperfectly perfect that i found them worthy of my signature.

so there's nothing that i really want for Christmas this year, not because i have it all, i don't, but i'm trying to apply the Arabic proverb: "If what you want is not, then want what is" (does it make any sense at all in English? i'm trying to play on the verb to "be" to make it sound like the Arabic version... i guess you got the point) maybe i don't want anything this Christmas but there's so much that i NEED this Christmas... it's not "i" as in "me, myself and Riham" but a different kind of "i"... i'm speaking on behalf of a multitude of people who stand on different points along the "suffering spectrum"... i need peace in my country (Syria needs peace), i need a shelter for the homeless (displaced Syrians need a shelter), i need a normal childhood (Syrian children need a normal childhood), i need a place to call home (Syrian refugees need a place to call home)...

some people think that this still counts as self-centerdness when i keep saying Syria and Syrians... but aren't we the number 1 topic in news headline this Christmas? haven't we won the 1st place for so many categories recently? (worst humanitarian crisis in decades, largest death toll of children in such a short time, biggest displacement of civilians in so and so, worst educational and health conditions of a nation in the area.... )

so if by raising awareness about the Syrian crisis this Christmas i'm being self-centered then why not look at it in a different way and say that i'm being "cool" and following the latest "fashion" and staying up to date by speaking about the most "hot issue" globally... THE SYRIAN CRISIS... the "i"... 

this Christmas... "i" need it ALL... that's ALL "i" need for Christmas... 

be still... take a break... get a tattoo !!!

these three sentences are lined up according to chronological order... so the story starts like this:

once upon a time, not too long ago, i was sinking under layers and layers of work, plans, and Rihamiat project material and i realized that it has been a while since i last visited Momastery and i decided to do some blog reading and there it was, G's POST, saying "see you next year" not using these exact words, but she's taking her advent break and will be back when December is over. "Be Still" was G's ADVent ADVice and i thought well, my December is not that busy, i don't get my kids too many gifts anyways and when i told my son you're having 3 gifts this year just as many as baby Jesus received, he was quit thrilled, so maybe i shouldn't grab my organizer and pencil and start crossing out plans and cancelling events blindly, honestly, there isn't much on this month's page.... so what's the problem then? why does this "Be Still" STILL sound relevant? i thought for a moment then a drawer opened in my head, it wasn't stuffed with useless things, everything there was useful, practical, and much needed, i could also close the drawer easily without the need of squishing things and squeezing them together, but the problem with this drawer was its lack of categorization and you know how much i love CATEGORIES and COMPARTMENTALIZING my life and my everything... THAT's it then, this is why Riham is unable to function well, even though compared to others i appear to be well organized and things are perfectly planned, TO ME they are NOT... and in order to do some winter clean up to my drawer i need to "Be Still" so that i can have a clear mind and sharp eyesight to decide what's important to me and my family and what's not, to separate jewelry from junk (figuratively and literally... again, because of the Rihamiat project material).

the next chapter of this story arrived with my decision to take a break, not in the sense of doing nothing, but actually doing more, and doing it differently. Where's the break then? the break is stepping outside my comfort zone of familiar people and familiar places, as much as i love the small circle of people i know in this city (which is 99% composed of church members) i still needed a break, i needed to walk away for a while until i can say "i miss you guys" far enough to feel like going back again. so i signed up for a Christmas bazaar, a gathering of 40 different groups or individuals who have their own projects and business from food to crafts  to clothes to leather bags to Christmas decoration ... you name it. the table rent was a bit expensive so i shared it with another lady who paints on cushions, so half the table had Rococo hand painted cushions and the other half had Rihamiat items.

i carefully selected which items to take with me on that day and accurately calculated the discount i want to add on some pieces. i didn't know what to expect during the 9 hours i'm spending on that chair but i was open and ready for anything and everything only to discover that one can't be fully prepared for "anything and everything" specially when the attack comes from your own memory with floods of images, feelings, smells, people's faces, songs and languages... it was overwhelming and at some point i felt that i can't take it so i remembered the "Be Still" technique and it seemed to work right then and there...

the general atmosphere was so familiar, when i was growing up, one year after another we used to organize and participate in Christmas bazaars just like this one, Christmas music, cold outside (it was the last day of the "Alexa" storm), warm and cozy inside with dim yellow lights in a beautiful huge room... there were pieces from my Damascus there... several times during the day i wondered just for a split second why people were speaking Egyptian Arabic and not Syrian!

then the language i heard brought back memories from my collage years in Beirut, i tried to remember words and sentences with some Christmas and New Year greetings too and shared it with a few people who spoke Armenian, they were total strangers and the Arabic they spoke was Egyptian (again not Syrian), but they made me miss my Armenian friends and a flow of memories rushed inside my head of how i first fell in love with the Armenian language and culture 13 years ago because i saw it through the eyes of my friends who were proud of their nationality and heritage just as proud as i am today of my Alma Mater, my Haigazian University...

little did i know that by logging out of my present i'll be automatically logging in-to my past and wearing the glasses that show me again who i am, where i come from, and how and where a major part of my character was shaped, these 9 hours spent on one chair at one table were a trip back in time visiting places so dear to me giving life to memories i stopped feeding for such a long time i thought were dead... in the middle of the trip i was still meeting new people, getting to know amazing potential friends, exchanging experiences and ideas with a fellow soldier on the battlefield of establishing her personal project... in every new encounter i had and during every hour of this bliss i felt grateful for my husband and mother who took turns looking after the kids until it was time for them to pick me up...

whenever i step into unfamiliar territory i take with me a weapon or a defense mechanism that i might need to use and on that specific day the first thing i could think of (other than three photos of my husband and two kids) was Brené Brown's book "Daring Greatly" and i was on the "Mind The Gap" chapter...

      

(by the way, the organizers of this huge event made sure all tables were covered with  a nice green plain table cloth, but they gave us the freedom to change or add to it, so this was my "sharshaf aghabani" a Syrian red Christmas table cloth i chose to come along with me on this journey for luck, good vibes, positive energy... all of the above and much more)

whenever i felt weak and hungry during that adventure i would read a few lines and re-energize: "Minding the gap is a daring strategy. We have to pay attention to the space between where we're actually standing and where we want to be. More importantly, we have to practice the values that we're holding out as important in our culture. Minding the gap requires both an embrace of our own vulnerability and cultivation of shame resilience - we're going to be called upon to show up as leaders and parents and educators in new and uncomfortable ways. We don't have to be perfect, just engaged and committed to aligning values with action." and i may add to Rene's paragraph Glennon's famous phrase: "We can do hard things".

towards the end of the day, Christine, the  mastermind behind this event and the most energetic authentic extrovert i've ever met, came to my table with her big smile: "Izzayek (how are you) Riham? Eh el akhbar? (how is everything going)". i asked her about this henna tatto lady downstairs, i noticed her table earlier when i went down to grab a super tasty lasagna piece with an extra yummy éclair mini cakes for lunch, "Go go now, she's leaving" Christine ordered in her usual over-excited mode. so i ran downstairs and the lady was just finishing when she looked up to me and smiled, the last customer left admiring her Christmas bells tattoo and another bell rang in my head "Be Still"... it's my very first henna tattoo ever and it's for free so shouldn't i feel guilty for choosing anything other than my kids' names or my husband's or a Christmas symbol? no, because "Be Still" encapsulates all of the above including myself... the lady looked puzzled so i wrote the two words down, she admitted her English handwriting is not as great as other tattoo shapes she masters, but i told her it was ok, yet she added a heart instead of the dot above the "i" and this looked beautiful  enough to me... and a couple of minutes later i walked back upstairs holding my left sleeve up with a "Mind The Tattoo" look on my face addressing the crowds till i reached my table safely and waited for an expected Rihamic regret to creep into my heart and wash away my internal big smile.... but it didn't...

"dare greatly" doesn't literally translate "go get a henna tattoo", and it's such an adolescence-ish behavior to say "i want a tattoo like Glennon's" but this was my visible proof to myself that i've sealed the deal (with black ink instead of red wax), i can do hard things, i can get a henna tattoo (was that story i heard about a henna tattoo that never came out as promised true?!!!!), i can participate at a huge Christmas bazaar and display my work for the public opinion to crucify me or carry me to the seventh heaven, i can leave my kids for 9 hours for the first time in my life (for as long i've had them, inside or outside of my womb, Sep.2008), i can be sociable and presentable with total strangers once again all on my own since the day i got married (Aug.2006), i can step into the arena and say this is who i am, i can show up and be there one hour at a time.... then i can go back home and justify to my kids why "mama wrote on her arm" while they are not allowed to draw on their faces and each other's skin !!! (but the actual message was that mama gets away with it without anyone yelling at her but poor them, they get yelled at and sent to the bathroom to step on their stool and keep washing the paint off their hands and faces, life is so unfair i know)...

the story doesn't have a happy ending though, to be honest there isn't an actual ending, yet.

the next morning i had to take a picture of my tattoo (of course) in daylight, and (of course) near my beloved window (the one you're sick of hearing about in almost every post)

but then the effect of yesterday's ecstasy faded away and i went back into my regular daily routines of unexpected routines, the kids were fighting and demanding breakfast, i couldn't get up early enough to have my coffee before i could recognize their voices, the house was more messy and unclean than ever because i was too busy in the past few days preparing for this stupid Christmas bazaar, i had no plan for lunch, and things got out of control inside that drawer once again...

i tried to silence all the voices in my head so i could "Be Still" for one minute... SHUT UP I WANT TO BE STILL... the magic left the tattoo and i had to handle things all by myself without the super powers of any wand...      

maybe there's no such thing as a quick fix, bazze2 lazze2 (spit and paste: a term my friend taught me about work done quickly to glue things up with your own spit, sorry if the image is too disgusting), a tattoo is only a tattoo, a book is only a book, a blog is only a blog, unless each one of us finds her own steps like in step 1 step 2... step infinity... to be still in her own noisy way, to prepare Him room in her own messy heart 'n house, to feel the true joy, gratitude, and magic of Christmas in her own wandless life... i can't say that i've figured it out yet, but i'm working on it, and right now all i need to do, the step i've planned is go take a shower with the hope that the tattoo will be one degree less dark on my pail skin !

11/12/13

yesterday marked the 1000th day of the war in Syria, with that number came a zillion other numbers expressing the magnitude of destruction and death in my country. i've never hated numbers like i do now, at school i used to like math because my mother was a math teacher and whatever i didn't understand in class she would explain to me and make me happy. but today, on 11/12/13 i need to reconcile with numbers, add joy and life to these figures, count my blessings (or at least the troubles i don't have) specially that we're in the middle of a storm in the MENA region that keeps me thinking about homeless Syrians all over the area, whether they live in tents made of fabric just like the photo i saw this morning of a refugee camp where the tents are "floating" in a sea of rain, or they live away from their home, or they do live at home but lack basic essentials for surviving such a viscous storm. 

usually i do my shopping for my kids' clothes ahead of time and i try to find places with good quality clothes and good discount at the same time, every winter both my son and daughter find enough to wear that will keep them warm... except this year, i can't even count the things that kept me from doing this preparation in advance and last night i discovered that my daughter has nothing warm to wear! her only pullover is in the laundry and she hated the idea of putting on something from her brother's shelve so this lead for an easier decision this morning: i won't take them to the nursery and school today... i know i'll regret that decision a few hours into the day, specially that it will be their second day in a row, yesterday they stayed at home too (sick), i also had planned tons of things to do today which are over due too.... BUT it's too cold outside for my little munchkins... how many Syrian mothers have the luxury of saying this sentence?... for hundreds of children and mothers it's "too cold INSIDE" for their families to survive... wasn't war cruel enough on them? haven't they had their share of suffering already? why is the winter of 2013 the hardest one in i don't know how many decades? 11/12/13 can never look even close to "cute" to me today...

i can clearly remember that one specific day last year when i found the perfect blanket for my son, we had moved into a new apartment where the kids have their own room and we bought our son a new bed which needed a blanket as winter approached. THIS IS IT, a red one (his favorite color) with Mickey on it (a descent cartoon character that both he and his mom like!), i could also fold it in half for a thicker cover that would still be big enough for a 3 and a half year-old boy. i proudly carried it home just on time to check out the news quickly and head to the nursery to pick the kids up... and there it was, the main headline: "Three Syrian infants died in Al Zaatari camp in Jordan because of the cold"!!!!!!!!! i couldn't stop crying, there i was "the prefect mother with the perfect expensive blanket" and i may add expensive because this year we paid 20% more for our daughter's, there i was, so helpless so depressed i almost took a scissors and cut my son's blanket into what? 6? 8? how many small blankets can we have? i wanted to send them to these tiny babies and their perfect mothers too who couldn't keep their infants warm enough so these angels went to heaven where it's perfectly warm for their fragile bodies, just as warm as should be....

so i'm running out of ideas to get myself out of this gloomy mood, i don't want my mood to match the weather or the harsh reality of the Syrian war on one hand, but i don't want to go through the day indifferent to the suffering of others, i wish i had more power and influence to sit like my munchkins do and discuss WORLD POLITICS to talk about an action plan for HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION... why should these words be too BIG to apply in our insignificant yet effective lives...

i try to take "baby steps" along the endless path of helping others and making a difference in their lives and the best place to practice is right here and right now, at home, with these two future world leaders i'm entrusted to look after and ensure that their characters are well shaped and rounded and their bodies are well nurtured and cared for. a few days ago something happened, it usually happens once in a blue moon, i prepared a well balanced healthy and truly HAPPY meal for my kids. even though the house was messy and unclean, there were piles of laundry, toys and material from my Rihamiat project in every corner, but i felt true satisfaction and content just because of this image:

... and just when i think that my mood-changing attempts were successful, my son walks into the room (just now) and says:" ماما ممكن تدفيني أنا بردان mama could you keep me warm, I'm cold"...