Chapter One

 

Amsheer. He was born in the desert, on the first day of that stormy month known as Amsheer.

He was born in that moment when time is still. When the air has been yellow and unbreathable, and then the manic rains fall, cleansing the earth and all that dwell upon it. That silent moment in between when the sun hangs as a sullen disc of rock, and when its life is returned to it - burning dust and breaking hearts; the giver of life and its foretold reaper.

How exquisite he was, unlike any other. He bore no resemblance to any of his kin; it was as if he had been born to the desert herself, that she and her unceasing bedfellow, the night, were the sole providers of his genes. 

His father winced as Amsheer was bundled into his arms. He had caught a glimpse of golden hair stained with blood in the eruption of activity that had surrounded his wife’s limp and lonely body. Now, on closer inspection, he found himself peering into a pair of raven eyes. 

He lamented. He looked from this unfamiliar child, this strange fruit, to the naked body of his lost wife, and he lamented. The price paid for life to find this child was too heavy.

In the place of congratulations, the abrasive palm of condolence was now grasping his hand. In the place of the long anticipated celebrations, there would be an immediate funeral. 

In the place of love, a bearable numbness grew within his chest. 

As the wails of affliction rose to meet with a greeting of thunder from the sky, he placed the newborn on the sand beneath his feet and looked away. He resolved never to look into those eyes again. 

Thus the child was named Amsheer, in his father’s mind the harbinger of storms and sorrow.

WTF?

x - are you seeing someone?

- (hysteria) if i wanted to fucking cheat on you, i wouldve done it years ago

x - lets not part with hate

- i dont hold any hard feelings towards you

x - good, thats all i want. but wear this like an earring, like a necklace around your neck; even after we part, you still have a partner - for life. even though i wont talk to you. you'll feel i dont
care, but i will. i wont call, i'll wait for you to call. we're two good people, the two of us, and we shouldnt lose each other.

- erm..we have a son..

x - apart from that, we should stick together, cause we're both good people.

- you never said that about me before

x - yes i did, you just never heard me

- no, you never said that to me before

x - well you are a good person, you love better, you treat people better, than i do. just so that this is clear, we're divorcing? just so i am not assuming anything, we're divorcing, not seperating?

- yes

x - consider yourself divorced, as of now.

Dull

They start as dull niggling flashes at the back of the head, voices of different tones and pitches, rising, reaching a peak. That’s when you realise they’re behind the bedroom door, and that they’re real and that they are fighting voices.It’s five am and I lock the bedroom door from the inside, just in case. My new stinking home. It’s not just the dog’s piss. It’s the stench of failure. Of hopelessness. Of waiting for God. Of unconditional love that’s conditional. Of money that’s hard to earn and easy to spend. Of defeat. Of complacency. Most of all it’s the stench of mediocrity.

That was last night. This morning he said I was like a dead person. It’s not that I am incapable of love as I once thought, it is just that I find it, the reality of it, so utterly disappointing. It is always so much more attractive to live in the mind than have to deal with what is real and possible, and within reach. Therefore I choose dreams over reality. I always was quite good at amusing myself.

You are God's gift and I pray that you don't have to pay for my stupid mistakes.

Last Paragraph

“It’s the human condition,” she said, “to be afraid of change, to be afraid of the unknown.” But that was not her fear.

Her fear was the human condition.

Dead Man...Part 2

At the time, my reactions were raw. They ripped right through me. Last night, at the sight of the dead man, all I felt was indifference. We were driving past on our way to a late dinner; there was an unusual amount of traffic on this particular road. At first sight of the police I thought it was one of those lagna’s. I gave the driver my cigarette, sat up properly in my seat and proceeded to look all sweet and innocent. As we edged closer I realised that there was a crowd in the middle of the road, and that cars on either side were being waved on, they were slowing down to look at something hidden from my view. I knew it was an accident. In between the tight spaces in the crowd, which for a dead person was surprisingly small, I saw an object. Egyptians like to gather at the tiniest sign of trouble; I guess a person once dead is no longer seen as trouble. The object was his body.

I told the person driving not to look, to just keep moving, whilst I stared and took in every detail. Instinctively I wanted to protect his eyes from seeing such a scene. Once we had got past and the road was freed up once again, we moved quickly as if running from something. “I’ve lost my appetite,” he said. “It was his time,” I responded. And we ate the meat.

Dead Man

After living in Cairo for a year I saw a dead man on the road. He’d been killed in some sort of car accident. At first sight I thought he’d been beheaded, then I realised that someone from the crowd had covered his head and neck with a piece of cloth the same colour of the shirt he was wearing, making it seem like he was just a torso. He was barefoot, but his soles were clean.

It was no longer a surprise to witness the death of a stranger, nor a shock to witness death. A year ago, it seems so much longer; I met death for the first time. I was twenty seven. I saw it in the form of my dead grandmother. I saw it in the form of road kill, specifically a cat with its guts brightly splattered across the tarmac. I heard it in the form of a frightened dog, also hit by a vehicle, a helpless screaming being which I could not help. I saw it in the form of a woman lying in the middle of the road. Back then I was frightened most by everyone’s indifference.

Dead Cat and Screaming Dog

Scream. Piercing. Tore me. Then silence. Guts on the motorway. Red. So red. Soft. Sight. Moved me. Swallowed. But how much can you swallow? Breathe. Without choking. Breathe. Really breathe. Disturbed. Forget grammar. Listen. The scream. Was piercing. It tore me. Nobody moved. Nobody listened. And what of my grandmothers face? And what of her frozen eyes and gaping mouth? And what of her soul and where it is now? And what of all those walking souls? And me. A walking soul? I smell him. I smell him now. I caught his scent on the breeze last night. He speaks of death. He hasn’t seen it. He hasn’t smelt it. It possesses him. Sometimes? All the time? He fears that he is next. He visits me in all my dreams. Do our souls meet when we are asleep?

Visions of Wings and Feathers

And what of love? It’s smeared all over your walkways. Your streets. Your polluted air is thick with its heavy weight, with the scent of millions, with the sweat of lover’s palms as each searches ravenously for the other. Away from your prying eyes. Lost inside. Missing part. Never find. I have been humiliated by you. By what I feel for the fruit of your loins. With his old eyes. I have borne the words with dignity and pride. But I know now that they are eating away inside. It’s slow. Delayed reaction? They get heavier. Their meaning reaches further. The implications. They get deeper. I am not healing. I am not dealing. I am denying on the outside. Too afraid to look in. To discover the damage. The wreckage. That you so simply caused. So easily. So casually. Destruction. I looked numb. I felt numb. I feel him. I see him. He is fragile. Like an angel. I see through his layers. His colours. I can almost touch them, that’s how real they are to me. You have poisoned our auras. As they merged now shall they sever. Because I do not heal. Because I do not deal. Because I KNOW we are helpless in the face of such power. Possession. Nine tenths. Where is your tenth claw resting? In my back? Pray, let me turn around. Who is he? To me? Heaven knows. He is my missing rib. Not I his. Baby you’re so fragile. You’re so fucking fragile. It’s a great show. A great show you put on. But I can see through you, I never had so much vision.

Warning...Part 2

Rancid taste. Questions, questions..never any answers. Never any replies. Only judgements passed and accepted. Never defended, only defeated. I feel hunted. I feel like a black man on Ku Klux Klan territory. On the run, but never escaping, always dreading the final moment of capture, in a nervous state of bare survival. And what is my crime? And who are you to judge and accuse? And what will become of me? What will become of my warm and sunlit dream? Will I have to succumb to your poisonous ways; will I have to sacrifice it on your blood-drenched altar just to be accepted by you? Does acceptance lie in the amalgamation of my existence into your filthy society and in the adoption of attitudes, rules and ideas that I despise as my own? Will I become ostracised? Will I have to leave? Will I be able to fight? Will I be able to maintain the noble and moral conduct (as I see fit) until the end? When is the end? Where is the end? Why is there always an end?

Warning, Blood and Guts in the Morning

I was warned, time and again, in a zillion different ways, and I heeded in my own shade, but did I really understand what it was they were warning me about? A million different ways, a million different opinions and a million different faces, all saying, all telling me the same thing. Be careful. Of what? It never really registered until now. Be careful of people. Be careful of their eyes, and their judgements, however uninformed they are, their opinions are what count. If you want to survive that is. If you want to be able to live as any other normal human being does without harm, not physical harm, just harm, harm, harm, then you must follow the rules. They are not written. You cannot go and buy a manual. You cannot go and study them in the library. They are passed down from one generation to the next. To the chosen few. They are like a sacred text that is only ever discussed in cavernous intimacy while the world sleeps. I digress, surely I am making excuses, surely I was warned enough times, surely I had enough lessons. Did I just choose to ignore what I had been given of advice? Was my optimistic nature just too downright ignorant to understand? To realise, to register, do I always have to take the hard way and learn the bitter lesson for myself?

Transitional Nature

The transition from one culture to another is fraut with difficulties. Although one may know the rules of the game, practicing those rules is another issue entirely. For instance, remember when you were in science class? The physics teacher verbally explained the correct steps that needed to be taken in order to conduct the experiment successfully without causing any personal harm. She painstakingly drew a diagram on the whiteboard for you, just to make sure that everything was clear. But what usually happened when you actually came to follow the instructions? Didn’t you always manage to burn your fingers on the Bunsen Burner or spill some deadly concoction on your best friend’s lab coat? Living here has proven to be a repeat of that careless scenario. On a larger scale. With more personal harm inflicted on an individual than could ever be expected, especially by a naive person of western origins like yours truly.

1

What is originality? Why are they always screaming of originality on the one hand, and restricting every word that comes out from underneath your fingertips on the other? Does originality have to follow formulae? does it mean writing something original as in: exactly as it came out of your head? or does the shit that comes out of my head have to be shaped and presented in a way that pleases you, or them? What about the fuzzy shit that I cant put into a pleasing format, but can only see and hear within the confines of my own cotton wool landscaped mind. Can I put it down as is? Or do I have to pretty it up for you, them? I want to write. I want to write what I want, not what I think you want, or what you think you want, or what is accepted as the norm. I don’t want to follow rules. Fuck grammar. Style. Categories. Genres. I just want to write. Maybe tell you a story. Maybe not.

And what of love? Its smeared all over your polluted walkways.


He is my missing rib, not I his.