hisethereal-blog

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Interiors shots in Call Me By Your Name (2017, dir. Luca Guadagnino ) by photographer Giulio Ghirard

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After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used— She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag— And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers— Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands— Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped —has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

When I lose hope in the world, I remember this poem.

(via bookoisseur)

I’m really glad I read that.

(via selfesteampunk)

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one morning in jogja

languid breeze and bullets of dew hanging at the tips of freshly mown grass. grey, bleak skies and chirping birds; a metaphorical contrast too striking to ignore. two slumbering figures on a bamboo-made bed: one with a bulky security-type belt tied around his waist (there is something pitous about this sight) and the other snoring boisterously like a very tired baby. a malaysian middle aged man sat ruminating on some Japanese newspaper. he's got this rehearsed acridity in him that's meant to steer people off his orbit. a painting of a dancer in kebaya luscious to the eye, one hand framing her slim jaw and the other gesturing an invitation. a morning, reticent bird hungry for some Nabokov, resorting to rereading Lolita for the nth time. a boy with a tiny mole on his nose, slender legs, and drowsiness too engrossing to escape. a phone buzzing: a text from a girl announcing her soon arrival at the hotel, a silent demand to nudge her friends to get ready. the sound of a plucked guitar: another human claiming his space. a half-wet helmet wedged in the corner. stacks of books in foreign languages too sacred to touch. a yearning to see old friends. a city ready to rise.

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stop.

It wasn’t lust, but fucking carelessness that tricked you into giving away your dignity for that absolute act of filth. Wasn’t it enough already that you ripped Him apart by publicly confessing how liberal you are, how your life isn’t necessarily governed and structured by some divine power? Don’t you feel like a walking manifestation of human ignorance for completely humiliating the force that has guided you to your place today? Think about it. You’re literally just bones and nerves wrapped up in flesh and skin. What great accomplishments have you achieved to make you feel entitled to disregard the proof of His existence? To defy His rules? Sure you’ve got a case to make, questions to put forth. But staging a total denial to at least, at least listen to what He’s got to say, to His words, is the most disrespectful thing your limited mind can ever imagine. Stop it. Restrain yourself. This is not worth it. This really is not the path you’re supposed to be taking.

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on a night like this.

On a night like this, I remember slouching on a couch on Maggy’s floor with Iju, Mishal, and Cheme and just rambling about how pathetic we were for always clumping together and not actually socializing with others.

On a night like this, I remember crying over the heavy workload IB threw at me and at the same time having Taha calm me down and Chris stuff my mouth with food.

On a night like this, I remember ditching TEDx and laying on one of those big red cushions with Sara and calculating the possibility of us being asexual despite both us being virgin and not knowing what sex actually feels like.

On a night like this, I remember seeing Egidio tearing for his freshly shaven head, a product of Mateo’s failed attempt at joking. He hit the window, too, and I was feeling helpless.

On a night like this, I remember coming to Maggy’s room for the first time to ask her watch a movie with me. We watched Devil Wears Prada and I fell asleep halfway through. She hated it, both the movie and me sleeping.

On a night like this, I remember standing next to Jesed and capturing a beautiful picture of her. It was Maria’s birthday, and I was shitless scared because Catherine the house parent could storm in any time.

On a night like this, I remember sleeping next to Abi on her bed. My heart was racing because it was the closest I had ever been to a girl. But we cuddled through the night, and talked about our lives. She showed me pictures of her sisters and I told her how genuine she was to me.

On a night like this, I remember being mad about Johan’s little alcoholic party with Svetlana and Marie, and just dragging myself to sleep on the sofa in the living room. Silently, as always, Chris came to slip a pillow under my head and cover me with a duvet. He told Erik to go talk somewhere else and turned off the light.

On a night like this, I miss my friends. 

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how?

He was an oddity to his mundane, meticulously structured life. He was the soothing tone to every break and crack of his voice. He was the glasses, the neat teeth, the surprising squeak in the bathroom when he was trying to belt out a song, the dinner table, the reason he was frantically rushing out from class. He was a disruption, a bump at the doorstep, a walk along the lonely street. He was love, but as he always knew, he was a heartbreak too. Now tell him, how do you forget a person like this?

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voice.

He's slowly and irrevocably addicted to the voice he would not mind to hear all day.

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the sweetest thing a best friend can ever say to you

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pain.

Seeing Egidio was like revisiting the last day on campus. The pain was not any less unbearable, and the ensuing void is still haunting me. The next time I see him or my other friends, we won’t be the same people. Just like what happened with me and my friends from high school or middle school. Every time we try to reconnect with the memories of our old school life, we often just laugh everything off and pull away from the topic. Once, I tried to meet the bright-eyed kid that used to sit next to me playing with his pencils in middle school in the body of a university student that now has long hair and a moustache. But he was just not there anymore. There’s nothing left to excavate. And what am I going to do now with my UWC friends? Am I just going to watch the cycle roll in front of my eyes? But there’s nothing I can do. We’ve hopped on different boats heading to different directions. We’re already underway. And the only thing visible from the distance we’re apart now is just their wave of goodbye.

And a hope; a hope to ever see them again.

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broken.

Tonight, I let her go. And what's left is us. Both broken.

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us.

We thrive in wars and advance due to our competitive nature. Emotions are seemingly debilitating and greed is the foundation of our economy and politics. So why are we questioning the inhumanity we see around? It’s us. It’s you. It's me. It’s humans, always, that make this mess.

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loneliness.

Can we converse? About anything, really. About me inflicting on you a never ending fear, an already built-up curiosity about my mysteriousness, my being in general. Can I please blabber? Over matters that keep me up at nights these days: the incessant, annoyingly stupid thoughts of you being inhumanly, almost unforgivably kind to me, of you not matching the borderline disloyal, fickle mind that I am, of you just standing there, waiting for my replies. Am I your other half? When you called me so, I honestly shrank in discomfort. There was that uneasiness that crept up on me when I heard the word love voiced from your deep within. 

‘Can you believe this girl? She’s in love with me?’

You must have a reason, even when words fail to describe it. I do, too, have a reason for, well, my inarticulateness, perhaps my ignorance. To reveal the truth, I think I have never fallen romantically in love with someone, nor have I ever been heartbroken or overwhelmed by a surge of pain due to a smashed relationship.

Frankly, I cannot fathom what love entails: does it involve being sexually excited? The urge of wanting to physically stay by their side? The idea of always giving without desiring any return? Enlighten me, please. Although I would not play pretend, I have been in relationships before. But I was always the idle one, my heart was always numb to feelings. I hardly recognized mutual sense of affection.

Do I love you? My tongue would easily roll to utter yes. But that funny taste would still be in my mouth. The same uneasiness when you kissed my cheek that night, when you held my hand, when you hugged me tight, when you cried over my departure. Should I feel differently? Is it weird? Is it love?