Why do you wake up in the morning?!

During a much casual conversation which started out as a meaningless talk to keep us alert after an intense night of serious clubbing, my husband simply asked, why do you wake up for in the morning?

Trying to hide the fact that this simple question struck a deep wound in my heart, I instantly, yet carefully replied; to work... I lied, because lately I've been turned between two lives, two worlds where I'm the only common factor, the life of a housewife who still didn't reach the point of desperation and that of a career woman who has a lot on her plate. I pretend to work, ye, that is my ugly truth so I don't feel useless and worth of a nothing. I pretend to write while all I do I just stare at a blank page with no words and no intention to be filled with words.

The question, why do you wake up in the morning, has no answer in my book. I don't know why I wake up in the morning. I want to work, in fact I have tons of dream and goals I wish I can fulfill, yet I allow the days to slip away and burn my dreams...

I have the same goals since 2009 and yet I always startle when I come across a note with an old date showing my achievement skills are up to nothing. It's as if all that I'm good for is watching other people live the life that I want and do nothing about it as if I have no will power... If I continue like this I will definitely end up a nothing and i'm not used to being a nothing.

In another life, I should be waking up for what should be worthy to and of me , the multiple fires that would drive me right out of that bed but I'm putting them all down as a result of my slackness...

My baby boy, my husband, my work, my home, my family, friends and life...

I need to start living my life instead of dreaming and fantasizing about it... I need to get it together and suck it up for once till I make it through... I need that feeling of a proud worthy woman back... I desperately need it...

Everyday I realize that what I'm doing right now is not enough to get me where I want to be yet I do nothing about it... 

Why do you wake up in the morning? 

Answer: blank

Ever thine... ever mine... ever Ours

All my life I swore never to depend on a man for happiness,

Yet, here I am… writing with your pen… on a paper you bought me… in your home… waiting for you…

You have made my life magical in ways that I never thought is real.

You have made every Valentine’s more special…

You have made every impossible… Possible

For forever my name will be connected to yours…

My entire life… Presence and future relies on you…

It is hard for me to admit that

But without you I do not exist…

I grew up in your arms

I became a woman and a mother because of you…

I love you with everything than I am

I am yours and you, my love, shall forever be mine…

Ever thine… Ever mine… Ever ours…

To all the morons out there...

In my head I won a nobel prize

In my head I’m friends with Oprah

In my head I’m a renowned writer,

         One who matters

In my head I’m the world’s focus

   My every word is important

   My every move is worth covering

In my head I’m a bestselling author

In my head I’m better than Paulo Coelho

In my head everyone is interested to

               Know me

In my head I’m the reason why the world

             Is a better place

In my head my existence matter

In my head I’m named by people’s magazine

      The no.1 most influential person

In my head I build an effective education system

In my head I’m the reason behind every

             Great change

In my head I’m a supermom

            One whose kids look up to her

In my head I’m flawless

In my head I’m the perfection of

           Mankind

In my head I’m fabulous

In my head I’m the one who

        Sets the standards

In my head I’m always smiling

In my head I reach satisfaction

In my head I’m a mogul

In my head I’m the source of

          Power

In my head I die a noble death

In my head I leave while

          Praying

In my head I live the full life

In my head the whole world

         Mourns my death

In my head I die young

        Never to be forgotten

In my head I’m larger than life

So please,

the next time you see me don’t just tell me I’m beautiful

Top 8 sources of POWER!

What a world we live in! One day you’re ready to take over the planet and on the next you feel like everything is worthless and every attempt is useless. It’s very easy to give up and torturous to keep going. We try to find that power we need to continue, to persevere and in rare cases to excel yet it becomes almost impossible to find optimistic people when you’re down. It becomes too dark when you need light to guide you through your already bumpy road.

To find reasons to quit, that’s easy; but where can you find that power to go the extra mile? Where can you get that fire to thrive and achieve uniqueness?

 Books? Too Cliché… Internet? May be, but you have to go through a hell of personal experiences that might or might not work for you. People? Well, I don’t want to seem mean but not all people mean well, in fact sometimes they’d rather see you dead than succeed. So, it’s better, always better, to depend on oneself and exert that extra effort on soul searching to get to where you want to be. Think a little bit more, open up your eyes because not everyone is that lucky to catch their chance train, and you’ll find your torch. As for a start, I have got eight sources for you, may be one will work!

  

1.   Faith

You won’t believe what faith can do to your life! If you have faith in your dream; if you have faith in the realization of it; if you can see yourself perfectly and comfortably fitting there, then it will happen! Have faith in your abilities; in the possibility of tomorrow; in the ever changing fate and you shall succeed.

Trust Allah and in the power of prayer; trust that He can hear you and He shall grant you nothing but the best and you’ll be blessed with the inner-peace you need to focus on nothing but your dream. Faith is a must if you ever want to become, period.

2.   Love

In utopia, love should be a sufficient source of power. It should lift you up and push you to be a better person. In the real world, sometimes love kills ambition when all you care for is to be with that person you love all the while knowing that he/she will love you no matter what you become or don’t become, WRONG!

That hopeless romantic concept, I believe to be, too naive and shallow, because I’m a firm believer in constructive love, where two people hold hands to move forward; to motivate and support each other to become the best they can be.

Love is actually the most effective weapon of all, whether you choose to love yourself deeply as to see yourself worthy of nothing but the best or you choose to love and be loved by others, in the normal sense, love was never made to be destructive.

3.   Loss

Yes! As much as any form of loss hurts and jabs, but it’s a real life-changer, I should know! Ever since my father’s death, I hated failures and weaknesses. I chased success in every corner as if my life depended on it. I refused people who called my vulnerable; I was trying really hard to prove them wrong. I didn’t want anyone to think that my dad left a fragile girl behind, easy to break and too heavy to move. I wanted to be his best work, I still am trying. And I pray for him every day because it’s because of him that now I know my passions, dreams and aspirations. And he’s the reason why I want to carry on my plan, to make him proud of who I shall become.

4.   Acquaintances

My mom always told me that good friends bring good and bad ones bring nothing but bad. And you know what, I believe her; although if you asked me 7 years ago I would have firmly disagreed! Yet, she always pushed me to befriend the top 5 students in my class and I always wondered, why would I care what their grades are? I just want to have fun, popular friends! But she had a point, when you surround yourself with losers, in time you’ll become a loser too with a dumb attitude to prove it. But if you surround yourself with successful people, their aura will haunt you and in no time you’ll be thinking success and you’ll be acting success.

5.   Experience

Your CV is your best representative! Where you’ve been and what you’ve learned can easily add up to where you are going to be. Internships, travels, readings, mixed cultures and courses will definitely boost your drive to your destination. And human relations will add years to your age. The more you meet people, the faster you’ll learn that not all people are good, not everyone is necessarily honest, but above all you’ll know that everything happens for a reason and you’re just too rushed to realize the benefits of everything you go through.

6.   Time

At that point you must have at least heard of time- management, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to tell you that it’s never too late. No matter how old you are, you can still live your dream rather than just live in it. Today, the world has changed so much and I’m not trying to sound like a redundant anchor, but it’s true. Today, you can rejoin school and continue with your education. Today, you can resume where you left off and move on to a better you. It can seem ridiculous at first, but if you can open up a catering company only through facebook, I know anything is now possible. Just consider time as a variable factor, not a constant routine. It’s your right to refuse to be called a retired old man, just as much as you can reject the idea of being another tedious housewife. It’s your time and only you can decide how to spend it.

7.   Jealousy

The green monster isn’t always evil; actually he can help you go somewhere. Pick someone, feel really jealous* of them, don’t envy* because that’s immoral, but just feel that burn of the I want to be like him/her and watch your life change. If they can succeed, so can you. If they can achieve, then for God’s sake, so can you. They are humans just like you, yet the only difference is that they used their full potentials and that rusty thing we usually overlook called the brain. If you can avoid crossing that fine line between jealousy and envy, everything should go in the right direction.

*jealousy: I want to be like someone

*envy: I want to be this someone and I hope he/she dies!

8.   Human Nature

You want to be the better man; that is human nature. Everybody wants to be the best, and do much better than others. Everybody wants to be the center of attention. Everybody wants to be that someone who everyone points at and wish to be him/her someday. Everybody wants everything others don’t have. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, we were born to compete. We were born to try to be distinguished. Use that! Embrace your human side, we’re not angels, if God wanted us to be angels He would have created us that way. But we are not and thank God for that, because that what makes us work even harder, even if just to prove that we are better than others. Any reason, as long as it is legal, is a justifiable one. 

Once Upon a Voting Day!

At exactly 10:30am on a sunny Monday morning, I was standing in line next to my mother ready to give my voice to someone I was in no way terrorized to vote for. This time I was going to take part in making history and witness Egypt as it blossoms into the beautiful democratic country it ought to be. Well, I was a part of making history alright, but the democracy part now seems like a blurry image of something I can’t really tell if it’s real or just mere hallucination!

Since great minds think alike, all women showed up early and I mean all women! The line was endless; it was two streets away from the Mohamed Taymour’s school door where I’m supposed to vote. It was hopeless, part of me actually considered leaving and coming back in the afternoon or may be tomorrow but the look my mum shot me when I started complaining pinned me right where I was, sinking in the muddy streets of Nasr City.

You would think the fact that it was all women would make the four hour long waiting interesting and fun, but as it appeared women didn’t talk about politics, in fact we were ordered by one bossy woman not to talk about the candidates because she considered that to be a form of advertising and influencing. So, what else women talked about? Food, yes it came down to the point that women were exchanging recipes, actually two got into an argument of whether it was better to use garlic chopped or minced when preparing molokheya! And knowing that my knowledge about cooking ends at microwaves you can guess how happy I was.

As the street got busier with cars dropping off women and the sun was growing merciless, a young woman appeared with a megaphone screaming that any woman above 60, pregnant or with children should proceed to vote directly. That’s when my mum chose to sarcastically mock me for not bringing my 20 months old baby along.

By 1:30pm my back was killing me and my feet were slowly outgrowing my boots but on the bright side the school’s door was at least visible to me. Right in front of the school, there was a Muslim brotherhood booth with lots of men wearing hats with “El horeya wal Adala” logo, they weren’t actually promoting for their candidates, not in an obvious way at least, but they were lecturing people on how to vote. Other parties sent in their youths wearing t-shirts with printed logos distributing informational flayers about their candidates. Some women refused to take those flyers because that was unethical while others took them then threw the flayers away.

Approaching the gate, we were walking a lot faster now; I had to part ways with my mother because we were in different voting committees. My battery was dead by then so we agreed on a meeting point. I headed to committee number 75 and I was devastated to find a line again. But with the scary bossy lady off the radar we were free to talk about politics, candidates, and the SCAF whichever way we liked. One woman innocently joked about the Mubarak era saying that he saved us from the elections hastiness, when another woman starting yelling “who’s saying Mubarak? Do you have any idea what he did to us? He robed us blind?!” After we soothed things out between the two and prevented what could easily turn into a catfight considering the heat and the long hours came my favorite part, the talk about the candidates and the parties. I was voting for “El Kotla Al Masreya” and “Mostafa el Naggar” out many reasons but the most important, I think, is to bring diversity to the parliament. Almost everyone I know, including my grandparents, are voting for Muslim Brotherhood and I just don’t want to repeat the farce of the NDP all over again.

Just as I wrapping up my wise political theory, three army soldiers barged into our diminishing line yelling, “Lobna Khairy! Where’s Lobna Khairy?!” I swear it was my first time to be aware of my knees’ existence, my heart just pounded as the thought of being arrested, tortured and rapped like the horror stories I hear about women’s interrogations in the Egyptian police station brought vomit to my mouth. I replied hesitantly, that my unfortunately I was she, one of the soldiers answered “your mum is waiting for you outside” Could I be any more embarrassed? My mum actually sent the “army” to look for me when I was just lecturing the women, who by the way were much older than I am, about the importance of diversity in the political scene!

It was almost 2:00pm when I was up next to vote. I was doubtful and scared; what if I marked the wrong person? What if I took too long and people started complaining like it happened before with other candidates? But the truth was the people in that small filthy, if I may add, classroom was more helpful than I could have ever imagined. They guided me through every step and successfully managed my stupidity. And I voted without messing it up. For the very first time, I wasn’t hesitant about my candidates of choice or the vision of the political party I am for. For the very first time, I actually knew what I want for my country’s future to look like and I did my part. I voted!

So as I walked outside the room my head was filled with two thoughts, first, how sorry I felt for those students who have to go to that school because it was unbearably hideous, old and smelly and second, the fact that I, ironically, waited for 4 and a half hours to vote in just 2 minutes! 

Polygamy in Egypt

According to a recent statistics conducted by National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR) after only three short years of marriage, nearly 25 percent of Egyptian husbands take on a second wife when almost 70 percent of those second marriages end in divorce!

The alarming rapidity with which men remarry raised the imperative question of why Egyptian men are yet again embracing polygamy in the midst of the deteriorating economic status of the country, the obligatory military service and the exacerbated unemployment crisis. Nevertheless, the validity of polygamy in Islam was almost never really questioned here in Egypt, it was never legally banned before like in many Islamic countries including Tunisia, Turkey, Tajikistan and Indonesia, yet it was always frowned upon by women!

“Polygamy is God’s right granted for men limited to four wives with a number of conditions underlying fairness to the first wife. The problem is that women overlook the sanctity of protecting fellow Muslin sisters from the various harms in society because of selfishness and the idea that their husbands are insulting them by taking a second wife,” said, Sheikh Mohamed Gad, Head of Panorama el Shrouk Mosque, Shrouk City, Egypt.

In Egyptian society, the reasons why husbands take second wives can vary randomly. Some men remarry out of nothing but love, yet the idea of informing the first wife is too scary for many reasons, to mention a few, to avoid marital problems, to maintain a healthy peaceful environment for the children and escape the divorce demands the first wife insists on when informed about the second marriage. “There’s nothing wrong with my first wife, I love her and I still do, but I did not want to sin or do anything that will jeopardize my faith so when I met my second wife ,  I decided to get married. It was not an easy decision, and it requires a lot of sacrifice from my second wife to keep our marriage as discreet as possible, but in the end I am doing nothing wrong or illegal,” said, Moustafa Hussein, 36, businessman.

Others seek fatherhood, which is one of the most common reasons why Egyptian men remarry when the first wife is reproductively challenged. However, in most rural cities in Egypt, many men blessed with daughters remarry for the second and even third time until they have the heir they hope for. Despite the hail of equality messages Egyptian media adopted throughout the past seven years, well educated men still pursue the outdated desire for a son. “I have four daughters and I love my family, but I wanted a son of my own and thankfully now I have one as a result of a second marriage; I informed my first wife after having my boy because I didn’t want to create problems out of nothing if God didn’t grant me Hamza,” said, Ayman Galal, 48, anesthesiologist.

When torn between misery and family, some men try polygamy to have the billboard-like marriage they dream of instead of breaking the first one. “It was the endless fights and demands; I didn’t want to divorce my first wife and I still don’t to keep my family together, so I married another to give me the peace and patience I need to continue my life,” said, Amr Faramawy, 42, businessman

Yet, not all Egyptian women refuse the idea of polygamy; in fact some wives don’t want a full-time husband and would not mind being a part-time wife either which means sharing him with another wife. “I married my second wife 6 years ago, my first wife knew all about it from the moment I decided to get married, she was jealous and hurt at first of course but now she has the time she needs to look after the kids as she likes without having to worry about me and what I think of her,” said, Emad Antar, 42, field engineer. 

Polygamy is most certainly the most controversial family system in Islam; however there are many conditions that allow the man to have more than one wife yet keep the responsibility and presence of marriage alive. “Polygamy was mainly intended for protecting widowed women with children, to give her the security and marital life she accustomed and guard her from sin,” said, Sheikh Mohamed Gad. For a husband to remarry he should be able to afford the expenses of multiple households, he should be able to give fairness in terms time and treatment to both wives, and a justifiable reason to get married like if the wife is sick or barren.

Polygamy like any system has its advantages and disadvantages. “Look at the number of Muslim women who are not married, divorced or widowed; if a man can be fair and pay for more than one home, then why shouldn’t he marry another,” said, Sheikh Mohamed. Polygamy will definitely help abolish the phenomena referred to as “spinsters”, curb men’s excessive sexual needs where one woman may not be enough, and increase population. But the problems resulting from the misuse and the misinterpretation of polygamy is the reason why most men are cautious about second marriages.

Egyptian women are fighting polygamy hard; in 2000 a new marriage contract was issued legalizing for Egyptian wives to put the conditions they want which if violated by the husband, a divorce can be easily granted by the court. Among those conditions are allowing the wife to work, number of kids or in some cases none, marrying another and travelling to work abroad.    

 

 

Lost in unedited thoughts

It happened before, this feeling, this fear, this fogginess and endless darkness.

The weather was exactly like today, indecisive.

Ten months ago I was at the same place I am today

Worried and confused.

I thought I will take a stance but I got scared away.

The effect was undeniable

A far fetched victory

That was all

I got to a point that shook my belief system to the core

I was active in a good way

I got a cause to live for

I adored my son even more

I had a mission now to raise him like a true Egyptian

A justice fanatic!

Here we are again,

At the same place

Today, I love my country…

Egypt; a country so vague that makes you wonder whether you love it or hate it! 

Today I feel for my people

All the screams and blood.

All the lives that were shed.

They’re trying to say something but it’s too loud I can’t seem to hear them.

I got lost in the midst of all the voices trying to block out each other.

The once hated are now hailed.

The once loved are now hated.

Political parties are clashing.

Rumors of conspiracies are flying.

My country is turning into a victim.

I fear for Egypt…

Where are we going?

What are we doing?

The revolution is now cursed?

When will the dust settle?

It can take years…

I fear for my son

I fear for the future

It's all blurry again

It's all grey again

I hope Egyptians can no longer be manipulated

I wish for roads to be simpler and cleared

I wish for everyone to be honest

We are still virgins when it comes to politics

The grounds are all already shaking

I thought I understood

I thought I have changed

I thought we have gotten more aware

I thought all Egyptians are now patriots

I was wrong

There are Agenda's

There are conspiracies

There are manipulations

And the people are yet again paying the price...

Is this our country or will forever be theirs?

Egypt is cut open

And we are exposed

It's time to render

It's time to decide

Can we be a better country?

I am lost…