Yesterday I received the rejection mail from the chevening scholarship. I thought I submitted a good application with well-written essays, but apparently, they were not good enough to stand out among thousands of applicants. Surprisingly, I did not feel sad or disappointed, but rather determined to work on my skills, study more for CFA, and maybe retake IELTS with goal 8! I am grateful for being different from the mass of people in my periphery, but I realized this was not enough to study at one of the top 20 universities in the globe. Again there is more time into the cocoon dwelling there active not lying dormant. I feel I have not much time to waste on unnecessary things. I should work hard on what I already have and make some progress here before reaching milestones. The journey to success would never be easy or smooth. There should be obstacles, times of failures, and people who insist on my high expectations Vs my humble capabilities and education according to their standpoint. We will see what kind of surprises the cosmos might bring about to help me achieve my goals and dreams. I believe they are not wishful thinking and they will come true someday.
Tag: Arabs
The Current Plight
Another currency floating happened this morning moving the EGP from 24.7 to 26.7. I feel paraplegic unable to project the future or how starving most of us will be. Everyone in a position is held accountable for this plight and the humanitarian crisis we all face now. It was indeed our slogan “Bread, Freedom, and Social justice” in January 2011 not to get to the verge of destruction, not to transgress asking for food or out of fear of death. Despotism begets nothing but anger and justice from the mobs.
The situation is unbearable in Egypt now. I am not selfish but deep down I don’t care much about saving money or making calculations for tomorrow as I feel I will not stay much here. I feel grateful for the last decade for being a firm guru allowing me to gain more knowledge and master another language. For their veneer as an insurmountable hindrance to a blessing to another gate. My people are reliant on the relics of our ancestors bragging all the time of lineage, but life does not tarry with yesterday and today what matters only. Education illuminates us and helps us make a living not the opposite. Glad for snatching myself away from ignorance, parochialism, and laziness.
Hopes, Hopes
He will give you something better than what was taken from you.
Yesterday I submitted my application to study Finance MSc at the university of Edinburgh. Well, I wouldn’t deny my effort or exertion to learn, take exams, and pass them. However, getting to this point was impossible then. I am in the mode of let’s see how much my efforts will pay off. It’s the first time in my life I feel relieved before knowing the results and it is not easy to get there at all. Once I have decided to make the change, endure people’s dirt in front of my face, eschew ignorance, accept being an outcast in my close circle of friends and acquaintances, and persist. Making choices is by far easy, but executing them is an epoch full of lessons.
My Labyrinthine Job
It is disastrous to keep working in such a monolithic and hostile environment. Who can be productive among coworkers engrossed with making up stories about others?!. Instead of going to work in order to work and act as a linchpin in your community, you drag yourself to get there and exert your utmost effort not to mingle with them. Bullying, rumors, gloating, backbiting, and criticism are qualities and actions of those who can not move any step forward because they are imbecile, parochial, and toxic. I feel it is inherited, radicalised, and by far difficult to get rid of.
We work to make money and make our lives better off not the reverse!
We work in order to gain experience then we can climb up the career ladder rung by rung, not to face obstacles, dupes, or hatred.
Work comes second after our mental health and well-being, so please unleash yourself and leave.
Your mental health matters
Your happiness matters
Do not justify, mingle, or even respond to such superficiality.
You are a vicegerent created by Allah to instil something beneficial and to coexist. Those who choose to run amok, you cause trouble to yourselves only because of your insolence, ignorance, and animosity.
I feel it will take tens of years to be real humans in the Middle East and even in the west, we can not be treated equally because of stereotypes, hijab, and religious beliefs!
Miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep!
The Seven Selves, Khalil Gibran
In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper:
First Self: Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night. I can bear my fate no longer, and now I rebel.
Second Self: Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given to me to be this madman’s joyous self. I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts. It is I that would rebel against my weary existence.
Third Self: And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires? It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman.
Fourth Self: I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman.
Fifth Self: Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel.
Sixth Self: And I, the working self, the pitiful labourer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms-it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman.
Seventh Self: How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfil. Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot! But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, while you are busy re-creating life.
Is it you or I, neighbours, who should rebel?
When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission.
But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things.
Another Crime!
Gaza is the most segregated place in the world. Ordinary things like parsley, canned food and drinks, musical instruments, etc may not be allowed there according to the authority of the transgressor! They are under attack now. One million civilians are under threat and they are not less humans than Ukrainian and other vulnerable people in the globe!
Our solidarity and supplications with you!
Insecure Women And Their Hostility Towards Us!
Often people that say they “don’t care” actually do. The moment they discuss you with their friends and family, compete with you, bad mouth you to others or react to anything you do or say is when they give themselves away. You can either be saddened or flattered that you effected someone so much. The perspective is yours to determine.
― Shannon L. Alder
It has been a week since I got involved in an abhorrent situation with my female colleague. Insecure women can not stand mingling with outstanding people, especially women because they realize how miniature they are! She is the sister of my manager’s wife (YES. YOU READ IT CORRECTLY!!!). She was working in another department totally different from our work, but due to the restructure; a lot of departments have been centralized and many employee had to leave their jobs moving to branches and another departments.
She is truly an Arab inclining to nepotism and mobs’ acts. She always comes to work late and no one would blurt out a word. She usually says good morning then screams at my colleagues’ faces because of nonsense, for example, one of them touched her office or did anything relating our job without taking her permission. She has no experience in our field, but her ties allowed her to have the upper hand on important business. Sometimes, I feel she still lives in the era of servitude! Imagine that she kept screaming at my face before others only because I was talking with my new colleague helping her with some papers!!!! She offended me saying nonsense and I have not complaint, then she officially complained me to the manager (HER RELATIVE) purporting that I lack respect and decorum when I talk to her!! Mohamed FIRE HER!!! I hate those people who ride waves. She knows well how conspicuous I am. I have the potentiality to get promoted within a couple of months. I cried like a homeless child. I felt crippled and pathetic and why??? from whom?? someone with no value!!!
Five years ago, I would involuntarily accept such a situation suspecting my demeanor. Now, I am a different person, secure, successful being chosen amongst hundreds and it is only because of my diligence as I have no relatives there to support me. I am a humanitarian believing in everyone’s right to live, work, opine, etc without transgressing others’ rights or trampling on their feelings! Would the Middle East change? Would our ambience get ameliorated? Recently, videos of violence and domestic abuse have become quotidian.
A syrian girl got lynched because she tainted her family’s reputation in the name of love. When retardation would stop speaking loud? When nepotism would fade away paving the road to qualified youths only? When will I be able to serve freely? When will I get the opportunity to flee getting a prestigious degree then come back to get rid of such nonsense! Deep down I know that I will win. That hopeless girl was able to learn English on her own. That pathetic girl was capable of bearing a lot of afflictions peacefully. That girl has been selected amongst hundreds to attend an interview deciding whether to be the decision maker where I work or not. I am still waiting for the result but still unable to fathom their hatred. Do you know that I have been working on my skills for a decade? A girl from the countryside belonging to illiterate family thinking of education as a luxurious thing, so what about planning to traveling overseas to pursue my education singlehandedly! Does success coincide only with sadness and obstacles? Now I know the behind celebrating them after having many gashes but they are still alive and survive. Life goes by but Allah would never forget your cruelty! To Allah we belong and to him we shall return.
The Meaning Of Motherhood In The Arab World And How It Has Changed Recently!
“Allah does not charge a soul except with that within its capacity. It will have [the consequence of] what [good] it has gained, and it will bear [the consequence of] what [evil] it has earned. “Our Lord, do not impose blame upon us if we have forgotten or erred.”
An Egyptian woman who is single has decided to adopt a child and bring him up singlehandedly! She is an author, a well-known figure in Egypt. Ironically, her fame is based on a blog called “I want to be a bride”. She created this blog 15 years ago introducing herself as a single woman belonging to a group of other women aged from 25 to 35 years old whom are their society’s scrutiny and pressure to get married. I think I am one of them now as a thirty-year old! This coincides with an unbelievable video of a husband who stabbed his wife because she wanted to get divorce. News of a wife killed her husband unintentionally because he bought her one air conditioner not two as she desired! An accident of a doctor who was suffocated by her husband before her children as he usually abused her, but this time the result was lethal!
Women do not need wombs nor sperms to be real mothers within the lukewarm wedlock! It is an instinct we do have from the Almighty Allah, so children don’t ask for titles, lineages, nor names. They only need a shoulder to lean on, a cuddle away from judgemental people, a guru to teach him/her how to dust off themselves when life thrusts them. They will be also their mothers’ crutches in the future. Marriage is a blessing but it is not a hindrance to experience life as long as we don’t perform something prohibited or offensive! Alha for being a monotheist belonging to our forefather Abraham, Adam, and Eve. Alhamdulillah for knowing that we are mortals and everything is transient!
They are dead, we are dead! Therefore, we are woven into the same tapestry of life voluntarily and peacefully! Do whatever you want to do. Be whoever you want to be! Life is beautiful.
Congratulations Ghada and Adam! I wish you all the best here and in the hereafter together, ameen!
A Quiz!
Today is the second anniversary of my blog! Time flies! There is a huge difference between today and how I was in 2018, but I am sure that I will go up many rungs maybe until I reach the peak. I have some questions as an Arab woman from the upper of Egypt, with illiterate milieu, tribal roots, a thirty-year-old woman “SPINSTER”, self-made, simple, strong-headed, studious, ambitious, willing to knock down all the obstacles, still down to earth, still ethereal, and spiritual too as a monotheist first and a muslim who is enjoined to befriend all and respect everyone’s choice, the question is why are you following this blog? Do you enjoy what you read here? Will this blog blossom? Have your standpoints changed about Arabs even the bare minimum? Do you think I am equal to any educated woman on earth? Will objectification be stopped? Will I get where I want to be? Will I get a scholarship to pursue my study abroad? May I be a CEO someday?! Will I get married to someone who is willing voluntarily to serve love, support, equality, and respect at the table of that sacred tie? Will you accept me? Will I coexist peacefully with my flaws and afflictions? A lot of questions and they always lead to the same labyrinth!
Hola friends and I am waiting for your answers!
Simply Live Your Life!
At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.
That woman exists everywhere in my life. You have noticed her picture on my notebook, on my laptop, she exists also on my cellphone background,etc! She inspires me to move forwards and never look behind my back.
Life transfixed her and thrusted me too. She was the odd one out as I am now! Her legs were crooked and I have my defects too.
She could paint and survive, while I am still struggling to get rid of those superficial veneers.
She let her story take wings, I solicit succour as my stamina can’t take it anymore!
Frida turned her misery into unbelievable paintings, I may build up my walled garden too but I have to pay upfront.
Ironically, I did and I will keep doing so as long as I feel my humanity without any objectification.
How rootless I feel, the more I read and learn from life and books.
I am still a toddler, but the difference between now and before is choosing being thrusted voluntarily not forcibly.
We are portable memories accumulated over the years and some unforgettable experiences.
Thanks coronavirus as it proves how inert we are. It has become a homewrecker suspending and cancelling everything around, but its implications would never be expunged as we better value disguised blessings now. Do not take anything for granted!
Thanks 2020 as it showered my life with bounty and prosperity alhamdulillah. Life is too short!
Viva Frida🌻
Arabism Is A Hindrance And A Pretext For Stagnation!
Allah does not change a people’s condition unless they change what is in their hearts
Quran~
And this is what I was doing through the last two years. In retrospect, I think I was the most melancholic person on earth, but then I realized how oblivious I was! Through that process of evolution and getting out of my cocoon, I have learnt a lot about myself and my milieu. I had to sift my beliefs out from what they call “traditions”. Staying low-key for some time is a must especially if you are surrounded with showy, bigoted, and ultra people. I did my best to ameliorate many things around and there was no panacea for my life. Thanks for having a place to vent on as a nonentity’s story may inspire. At the end, an empty vessel clangs the loudest, so please move forwards with enthusiasm and determination and rewards will definitely come in your path!
Restoration Of Saudi Women’s Entitlement
Saudi women are finally allowed to travel on their own. In a place where relics and traditions overshadow religions and its essence. Before Islam, women were goods and chattels inherited after their master’s death. They were concubines, dispossessed, dependants,etc, until Islam came down. However, it sounds nomadic lifestyle outstrips even holy scriptures.
Can I travel alone with no mahram?
It is permissible for a woman to travel without a mahram “guardian” provided the way, destination, and return journey are safe and provided she does not meet with any harassments jeopardizing both her safety and religion. It has been narrated through Aidy Ibn Hatem that the prophet told him, “And if you live a long life, you will surely see women traveling from Hira till they circumambulate the Ka’ba, fearing no one except Allah“.
Imam Ahmed’s report of the hadith includes: ” By He in whose hands is my soul, verily Allah will bring this mattar (Islam) into completion till women travel from Hira and circumambulate the Ka’ba without being accompanied by anyone”. From this hadith with its different chains of narration, some scholars have derived the permissibility of a woman traveling alone if her safety is guaranteed. Moreover, they have used this hadith to restrict other prohibiting hadiths which, according to them, referred to the lack of security associated with travel in the distant past.
The majority of scholars have permitted a woman to travel for obligatory hajj without a mahram if accompanied by trustworthy females or company. They based their opinion on the precedence of the Mothers of Believers (may Allah be pleased with them) who went on hajj after the prophet’s death and the caliphate of Umar was accompanied by Uthman Bin Affan.
Allah create us different to know each other and witness his phenomenal creation on earth. I am so glad and looking forward to hearing more pleasant news about Saudis and others!
Happy Women’s Day
Thanks for every figure who taught us the importance of self-aggrandizing. The importance of dwelling in our cocoons until we get acquainted our real selves. Thanks for not clipping wings, letting us wander, and thrust between your relic “yesterday” and our future. Thanks for the slaps, ridiculing our entitlement, and your timing to get things done. Without savouring these, I would never have such familiarity with my new self. Obstacles are made for those who are incapable of keeping pace with the present. I am still fetching, wandering, but deep down satisfied with what I have done and still. Allah honoured me to instill, and give a hand to those who are less privileged than me. Therefore, do not ever question my entitlement as a woman. I can be your unwavering comrade and your warmest figure according to the situation. You choose which one to be by your side. Do not believe in the surface as it is a protection against beasts.
Happy Women’s Day.
It Is Not Pleasant Being Arab
I have not been blogging for a couple of weeks. However, I was thinking of what should be the next topic throughout that time. I was watching some documentary movies about sex trafficking because of wars, poverty, or maybe illiteracy. In Yemen, a kid got married before puberty, which was according to her father “we wanted to get rid of a burden because of poverty, so we were compelled”. In Pakistan, there is a village where girls get slaughtered in the name of bringing dishonour. Dishonour, according to their loathsome viewpoints, is going out, talking with strangers innocently, or even disobeying their parents’ will. In Lebanon, men take advantage of Syrian women due to their disastrous circumstances as refugees.
Ironically, the society always suspects our entitlement as women as we are delicate and rely on our emotions. Nonetheless, women are their target to satisfy their needs in the most abhorrent way. I myself have been through a lot to correctly evaluate myself as a human being. I have known bullying from a man. I have got ridiculed from a man. Recently, I had a fallout with my mother. It was one of the fiercest and I opened up the most. She conveyed her desires, and I spoke frankly about my own desires which are totally different from hers. I love my mother, but I would never emulate her. Is it wrong to speak my mind? Is it vulgar to go after my dreams? Should our wings get clipped off to represent obedience and honour? For how long are we going to witness this farce?
This relic should no longer exist. Life is much simpler than this maze. The area is a stagnant pond of retardation. If you approached it. It would swallow you up without any changes apart from another corpse.
Hola amigos from the other side!
BRAINCHILD 