Always with You...

This is an Urdu or Hindi version of the Arabic/Egyptian Amr Diab "tamalee maak" ( = always with you) song.

Since I can't understand neither Urdu nor Hindi, I am assuming it is Urdu because I can recognize a few Arabic words.

In any case, Urdu or Hindi, I like this version.

A Flight into Fiction...

As of late, I have been feeling compelled to move into writing more fiction and less "reality"...which I will do - but not on this blog.
It is funny how I have compartmentalized blogs in my head - as if each blogs reflects different aspects of the self...

My fiction blog about to be born soon, with not too severe birth pangs I hope, will take on a different name. This is what one does to newborns. You give them new names...

Why fiction ? Because I realized that fiction gives the necessary space and freedom to delve deeper into Reality. Fiction is capable of capturing the essence of things in a much better way, than simply writing one's thoughts...Each thought becomes a personage, each experience a character, each feeling a being...

More freedom and more space -- inner and outer freedom and space to convey the intimate details of the characters, their hidden thoughts, their secrets, their longings, their pain, their dark sides, their desires and hopes...

I am excited and thrilled at the idea...I feel like some wave of fresh air engulfing me, and am looking forward to this new voyage...to this new adventure into a vaster universe, not confined to established rules -- rules of conduct, thoughts and beliefs...

Fiction may prove to be the real Freedom, the only Freedom available...the only Freedom left.

A new language is about to be born...

Painting: Iraqi female artist, Salma Al-Alaak.

Not Authorized !

If there is one thing that makes me really sick, disgusted, about to vomit is this bullshit thing called "politically correct" - and when pushed to the extreme, it becomes so fucking irrational, unreal, deeply hypocritical and borders on tyranny, nay -- becomes tyranny itself...

I must admit, the "left" whatever this word means is more guilty of it than the "right", that is why I find leftists and liberals in general too be way more hypocritical and fake to the bone, than their "rightist" counterparts...

There is also the gender politically correct and the racial politically correct and the religiously politically correct and next you will be asked to fart in a politically correct way too -- fucking unreal !

Let me give you a few examples...

Take for instance the Jewish state of Israel...God forbid that you criticize the Jews for anything, they are the chosen people of God. God forbid that you say the Jewish State of Israel which is comprised of Jews -- has behaved as the most murderous, racist, brutal, psychopath in modern history...No you have to be really careful and say it is not the Jews of the Jewish State of Israel, it is the Zionists of the Jewish State of Israel -- otherwise they will point the finger at you and call you "revisionist", "anti-Semite" and all the rest of the bullshit we have heard for decades....A Jew can only be a victim never a perpetrator.

The thousands of Palestinians slaughtered in Gaza in the space of 20 days is a myth, an optical illusion, it never happened. Their children were not murdered in cold blood. There was no white phosphorus used and homes and buildings were not bombed...the only bad guy is the Arab and preferably a Muslim Arab.

Mind you the Christian Arabs are not faring all that well in Israel either. They keep getting spat on, and the Prophet Jesus and the blessed Mary are ridiculed, slandered and insulted...but that is okay really...as long as a Jew does it.

But the other way is anti-Semitic... and delegations will be sent to the Vatican...and demonstrations will take place in every single capital in the West, and the media will cover it 24/7 ...

But notice if Muslims walk in a demonstration against the Danish cartoons which slandered the prophet Mohamed, that is considered very "backward"....Arab and Muslims should be above such "petty issues", so do the Christians really. Why should they get offended at having their faiths slandered and their prophets insulted.

Take another example -- America. If anyone criticizes America and the Americans, they are hate-filled terrorists. But America's track record in contemporary history is one of the worst known to mankind...but that is okay, because America like Israel is above the law.

Never mind that America has obliterated a whole nation -Iraq and killed one million of its people in 5 years. Never mind that it stole, plundered, pillaged its resources. Never mind that it erased its history. Never mind that it raped and tortured its men and women. Never mind that it imposed sanctions that starved its population to death. Never mind that it generously used DU, Napalm and God knows what other lethal toxic shit. Never mind that it destroyed its infrastructure. Never mind that it installed a sectarian theocracy, never mind that it exiled 5 million outside their country...never mind any of that, but one should not criticize neither America nor the American people. That would be hate-filled....But all the murder, mayhem, destruction and shit that America has done is not hate-filled and not terrorist...

Now let's get to race. One should never talk about Black Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos and Asians...Never mind that they were part of the American army and did the killing but because they are colored, any criticisms of them is considered racist. Their killing is not racist but your daring speaking out against them is racist...their insults and slurs against the local population is not racist but your mentioning it and hitting back is racist...


Now lets look at gender...Criticizing American women or Western women is sexist, but Western women who don't give a fuck about what their governments do to women from other parts of the "lesser" globe and who vote for them is not sexist at all....Western women who land in the Arab world with their patronizing, paternalistic, racist, stereotypical images ingrained in their genes, is not sexist, but you are if you speak out against it...

And of course if you dare say anything about the West in general, then you are definitely a terrorist...because you envy and hate their freedoms deep down. You may end up in some obscure shadow prison because you looked and spoke suspiciously of Western values...

But it does not stop there...

Talking about Arab governments and leaders is also not authorized, that would be politically incorrect too. How dare you criticize this or that leader, ruler or regime. They too are above the law. Their rule is for ever and ever, like in some bad, never ending horror tale and anyone who even speaks or thinks along the lines that maybe after all there is something quite wrong there, that one is suffocating, that this political paranoia of the Arab ruler can no longer be tolerated, you are immediately branded as a "threat to national security"....

Same goes for sects. Take for example Shiite political ideology and how it has been put into practice in Iraq, if you speak out against it and call a spade a spade, and say that Iran has been funding the most murderous barbaric militias in Iraq, you are nothing but a sectarian, Arab chauvinist...same goes for the Kurds. How dare you criticize the Kurds, they are the new Jews of Iraq. They have been so "badly treated, so oppressed"... and if you say -- hey this is a lie and they are the ones detaining, torturing and oppressing people...you are called another revisionist of the Kurdish holocaust...

The same political correctness applies to Arab men. If you say Arab men suffer from chronic double standards, a deep backwardness when it comes to women, a fake shallow ego and are really oppressive towards women, then you are called all kinds of names. How can you speak out against your own country men when there are more "important" issues taking place. Where is your solidarity, your understanding, it is never the right time...you must be either a Zionist, or some Orientalist or a deep self- hating racist or some envious lesbian bitch, or some penis envy driven woman and the rest...


And if you dare mention Muslims and how the Muslim discourse is used to justify and rationalize away the blatant repression and oppression of women, and the most ludicrous, ridiculous, laughable fatwas then you are called an Islamophobe, because the Muslim discourse cannot be criticized at all. The Muslim theologians and mullahs are direct representatives of God on earth, they too are above reproach.

By the same token if you dare criticize the Christians in the Arab world, then you are said to be a persecutor of minorities...and definitely a Muslim fundamentalist.

But it does not stop there...

If you say that the domestic help you have, who happens to be Sri Lankan or Filipino or God knows what, is a liar, a thief and has abused you time and time again, then you are not only racist, but also an oppressor of the proletariat, and a violator of human rights in general....You definitely need to be incarcerated then.

And where does it stop -- this politically correct bullshit ?

It does not stop....So you pick your words ever so carefully, you twist and turn them around, you hint, allude, insinuate and the rest...Otherwise you may always end up with some asshole who takes offense at your potential political incorrectness and you may end up in big trouble from all sides....

You will have either the Mossad, the CIA, some Western Feminist group, some Anti-Racist league, some governmental Arab Security Police, some, deranged macho Arab men, some Muslim fundamentalists, some fanatical Christians or some NGO defending domestic workers -- on your back...

End result -- You stop speaking/writing and you become another politically correct tyrannical hypocrite. As simple as that.

Alternatively, you start writing boring blogs about how much you need to lose weight, but mind you that may also be taken as offensive to "weight challenged persons", or why your boyfriend /girlfriend did not call you but then you may come across as desperate and not very cool. Or you can always write about what to get your grandmother on her birthday -- I suppose that is safe enough. Or you can also write about knitting and gardening...but then no one would read you.

Oh well, I suppose the pen is mightier than the sword, and mightier than the B.52's and the DU bombs and the white phosphorus and the torture of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and the slaughter of Gaza...and, and, and...

But hey, you do not need to mention any of that. And if you do, you are not really authorized, except in the given framework in which you can express yourself...their politically correct way.

A word can be sooooo offensive but lost, broken, destroyed lives are not !!!

Yes indeed, the Tyranny of the politically correct is the worst form of Dictatorship.

Painting : Iraqi female artist Diaa Abood.

Dame La Libertad

A wonderful but incomplete fusion of Flamenco and traditional Andalusian music from Morocco. Could not find a full version, unfortunately.

This is one was produced in 1985 by the Orquesta Andalusi de Tanger (Andalusian orchestra of Tangiers) with Juan Pena Lebrijano, a Spanish flamenco singer.

Just beautiful !

A Homage to Che Guevara -- "Oriental Version"

Post-Valentine Blues...

Received a surprise call from A.

For those of you who do not know my blog, A. is the guy who laid the golden insight about men in love when he said : Men fall as easily in love as women but hate to admit it, and when they do, it is almost always too late.

Well, A. called out of the blue. He said he was in town and would love to meet up for a drink and he added "a post-Valentine commemoration."

I like A. He is charming and a great story teller.

One thing, that really, really, really, irritates me about him, is his pseudo-cryptic fashion when he speaks. I will tell you why later, I qualify it as pseudo.

His cryptic fashion requires an expert decoder...like some top notch specialist who can decipher his coded language.

Take for instance that opening line -- "a post-Valentine commemoration."

Post-Valentine commemoration presumes that we: 1) celebrated Valentine together to start with. 2) that we are in the reminiscing stage of some Valentine get together.

None of the above holds true. I have never celebrated Valentine with A. So how can I post-commemorate ?

Unless of course, A. uses the word Valentine to mean "Love", and hence, wants to commemorate some love we had together.

But then again that does not hold. A. and I never had a love affair. So what is there to post-commemorate ?

You see, this is what really, really, really bugs me about men in general and Arab men in particular. They cannot talk straight. Which reminds me of a saying my best female friend makes ample use of -- poop or get off the potty.
A. neither poops, nor gets off the potty.

But as I said, I like A -- despite, in spite of his cryptic language. And he really has a wry sense of humor, which suits me fine...Besides which, I was in the mood for some coded language deciphering, a question of sharpening up my skills in the art of decoding. So I agreed to see him for some "post-commemoration" of God knows what...

We met in some newly opened café and thank God, A. is quite generous, so I did not have to languorously linger on tiny sips from one single cup of espresso, like in the past...

I was a woman with a mission - mission impossible (used to watch that series when I was a kid) - that of decoding A.'s language. I was going to render the impossible, possible...a bit like Batman or Superman.

Come to think of it, have not met a super man yet...except one. But that shall be kept a secret -- besides it's none of your business.

I was going to use this meeting time, to understand, unveil, reveal, pierce through, dig into -- why did A. say "post-Valentine commemoration."?

And yes, I can be very obsessive at times when I am eager to understand...I can switch in no time and tap into my mental reservoir of "private detective". Something that gives most pleasure, once I have "solved" the case.

So I listened to A. for over 60 mn. Yes, I was timing it. Detectives always keep track of time...

In the space of 60 mn, A. mentioned his ex-wife about 7.5 times. I say 7.5 because I interrupted him at the 7.5th time -- at "ex" -- so he could not finish his sentence, his 7.05...and he was left hanging with an 0.5 of some ex-wife.

He also spoke of his 3.5 kids about 7.5 times. And as if that was not enough, he also talked of his mum and dad, his siblings, his in laws, the extended family...and had I let him continue, I might have had some more insights into his tribal/clan origins, as well...

Fuck, I was getting bored to tears.

But I had to keep an "open mind" and crack his code...

Then it hit me -- the guy had a bad case of cold feet. Cold feet as in being "not available." Emotionally unavailable. Anyone who mentions his ex-wife and kids over 7.5 times in the course of 60 mn is unavailable in my dictionary.

But at that point I still did not manage to crack the "post-Valentine commemoration" introduction line -- the one I received earlier on...

Then it hit me again...

The guy had built in his own head a fully directed romantic film, in which he was a Cupid with a whole sack of love arrows. Not only that, he was also at a stage where he had run out of arrows and wanted to post-commemorate the film that unreeled in his own mind...Talk about a flight into fantasy !

And they say only women are capable of that, ha!

Yet still, I found the whole episode to be most entertaining. He was no difficult nut to crack...But I must admit, the thrill was gone...

Another thing worth mentioning, that kind of did me in...did me in like some captive, held in a metal cage...it was the fucking music.

I don't know who, but some motherfucker working in this café changed the music to some techno/house/punk, I don't know what you call it exactly....and it started hammering in on my head, like some Guantanamo torture.

You know what I mean ? The kind of music they play in American humvees that circulate in Baghdad and run people over. The kind of music they played in Abu Ghraib. The kind of music they play in Guantanamo and drive you fucking insane...

Someone played a similar kind of music that night, and it hammered away at my head...

A's face suddenly became distorted, and his words drowned away, sinking away and getting lost into a medley of demoniacal tunes that were assailing my ears....

I decoded the post Valentine fantasy lover, in his fantastical mind love quest, there was only one thing left to do - Go home.

So I said to him -- this music is driving me insane...

I felt the onset of a migraine setting its foot right behind my eye, settling in its orbit and aiming its arrows at my right temple...

Pictures of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib also raced through my mind...I must be suffering from some chronic PTSD translating itself through migraine onsets. It is called -- a co-morbidity factor.

I said to him -- We have commemorated Post-Valentine, I need to go home now...

He smiled in his wry manner, the manner that first attracted me to him and replied

Home ? Which Home ?

And I, blinded by the light, harassed by the noise surrounding me, managed to conjure up a reply, some reply -- Wherever I can lay my head -- away...

Painting : Iraqi artist, Ali Al-Tajer.

Mullah Valentine.

My horoscope for this week, strongly advised that I should love myself on St.Valentino. It suggested that I pamper myself, dance naked in front of a mirror and add some talisman on my Love altar. And if I did not already have a Love altar, I should definitely create one, said my star sign.

Pamper myself, this I already do. But maybe am not doing enough of it. So I thought to myself, I should follow a results guaranteed piece of advice that my female friends keep repeating – “Trust me, the best way to pamper yourself, is to have a relaxing scented bubble bath, light a candle and listen to your favorite music...”

This piece of advice has become so utterly cliché amongst women. Every single, self help book mentions it. Still, I thought to myself -- okay girl, soak yourself in a sensuous bubble bath, light a candle and play your kind of music...

Mind you, I use to do that before, soaking in bathtubs, but not anymore.
Last time I did, I was in for a surprise. Just as I was pleasantly relaxing in the water and letting myself get carried away by the music, indulging in reveries, I felt little things drop on my face...in my half awake state,I smiled, thinking to myself how romantic, I am in a hot bathtub and it is snowing outside...it was no snow for sure. The wall was actually flaking off, from the humidity and tiny particles of painted cement were landing on my face. So much for a bit of sensual indulgence...

Anyway, cement flakes or no cement flakes, the water here is way too polluted to soak in.

Thirty minutes are sufficient to cause shock from generalized septicemia. You can be damn sure you will have E.coli crawling out of your nose.

Which reminds me, a couple of years ago, a dozen or so people died from drinking this water. It was heavily polluted by shit (human excrement-just in case you forgot what shit means) dumped by the Israelis into lake Tabaria. People swore they could smell shit coming out from their taps. Surely am not going to take that risk, having shit water penetrating my pores. So bubble baths are out.

Dancing naked in front of a mirror is the other option urged by Ze stars. Now why the fuck would I do that for? I can dance but why naked? Like strip in front a mirror and admire myself or what exactly? And why would I dance naked alone? It makes no sense. I mean, if I really have to be naked, let me at least be naked with someone...

Besides I am no exhibitionist. How can anyone be an exhibitionist here anyways ?
If you want to wear your socks, you must pull your window shutters-- down. Why so ? Because your boring, empty, gossipy neighbors only activity is to snoop at each other and at you.
God forbid should they catch a glimpse of your ankle while you’re pulling your socks up, you will become their topic du jour.

Moreover, the only full size mirror I have is glued to my wardrobe's sliding door which is jammed. Last time I tried pulling it, the damn thing fell on me. So I guess dancing naked is out too.

What was the third thing ? Ah yes, the Love altar. Now this one, I can really dig my teeth into. Literally...

I did construct/create my Love altar. Could not think of any talisman, except one against the evil eye, a red rose, a red colored scented candle, an incense holder and a love poetry book. All carefully placed on a cardboard box which I covered with an old red damascene cloth.

And this is my temporary Love altar to celebrate Mullah Valentine as per the Zodiac’s omen.

Oh and I did paint my toe nails red. I know it's only a detail but an important one, nonetheless.


Some of you are already wondering, why has St.Valentino been re-baptized as Mullah Valentine ?!

Don’t dig too deep, it’s only for culturally sensitive reasons...Trying to turn Love,“halal”, I suppose.

You see, our Mullah Valentine, is a terribly jealous, frustrated, envious, capricious, sexually obsessed, fearful, hater of women, issuer of Fatwas.

You never know when he will come up with a new decree banning this or the other. And, being an Arab woman, I have to walk on egg shells around Mullah Valentine.

As we say in Iraqi “gesher bossal”. A sentence used when someone’s ego is too fragile and you need to tread carefully...we say “kho moo gesher bossal !?”.Gesher bossal means the skin of an onion.

In other words, the Mullah’s ego is too sensitive to things pertaining to romance, love and the rest...So on Valentine’s day, you really need to tone it down, in particular the sensual parts...before he strikes you with a fatwa that may cost you your life.

His arsenals of weapons are the following: Censorship, coercion, forced domestication, silencing, control, torture, mutilation, rape, and killing.

You must have guessed it by now, Mullah Valentine does not love women too much.
Or maybe he does and this drives him insane...

So for him to contain this arch-enemy, the one that stirs so much passion in him, he has to turn them women into disposable material.

But before disposing of you, he will try to keep the respectable façade of the “mighty judge”. He will admonish you, with laws and a diarrhea of verbal injunctions like : Ayb – shameful, shame, shaming you...
If that does not produce the desired results, he will introduce the haram stuff - forbidden or verboten in German – I like verboten better, more totalitarian sounding. He will go into lengthy details and show you how - anything you say, think or do -- that displeases him is haram. He will frequently point his finger at you and say "achtung". He will also frequently push it to the extreme; he is an expert of the extremes. Sometimes he will go as far as telling you that even your voice is haram – awra.

Of course, he will not say “I or me “ – he will refer to “God” instead. Since he secretly believes he is God -- your God, he has no qualms about associating himself with Him.

Your looks are definitely haram, so you better cover up. The thicker, the better. Never mind if you trip and fall and suffocate in your thick loose garments that look like friggin black potato bags, you must hide your body from him, from his gaze...You see, deep down Mullah Valentine can’t control his lust. He is too weak and too easy of a prey to his own telluric libidinal charges...

He sees in you the trigger of what he cannot control -- himself. So he controls you instead.

You become the devil incarnate, the source of all fisq and fassad. Two other favorite words of his. Fisq (not to be confused with R.Fisk) means deviation. And since you are essentially devious, you will deviate. And who deviates the “faithful” but the devil? And who gets to be stoned (both literally and symbolically )but the devil? The she-devil of his mind...

Fassad, on the other hand means corruption, mischief and something fassid, means something rotten.

He will also use the word fitnah often. Your not covering up the way he wants you to cover up, your not behaving the way he wants you to behave, your not acting the way he wants you to act...makes you a source of fitnah--tumult or chaos. In Arabic it can also mean persecution and oppression, depending on the contextual use of the noun.

All of that is logically coherent in his mind. You are the source of evil hence you have the power to deviate and make men rot in your corruption and you thus create tumult and chaos...push it a little further and you will be responsible for all the oppression and persecution that takes place in the world.

So you understand now, why it is so important for you to follow and obey his rules ?

Damn it you have so much power and you know it not. If you are capable of all the above, you are one hell of a powerful woman, don’t you think ?

If his verbal and written injunctions and admonishments are resisted, then am afraid I got bad news for you, he will pass onto action. His favorite word will sound like "eeqab shadeed" - hard punishment.

Mullah Valentine does not operate individually, he is a team player. He leads groups of men, sometimes arming them to their teeth and their mission is to purify this earth from the fassad, the fisq and the fitnah. So he will go for your jugular - naturally, and especially if you are an Iraqi woman that does not fit his ideological ”romantic” concepts.

He will go after you with zeal. He will harass you, insult you, slander you, beat you, kidnap you, arrest you, detain you, imprison you, rape you, torture you, mutilate you, dump you in piles of garbage and in rivers and you can kiss your Valentine’s Day preparation, celebration and Love altar goodbye, forever goodbye.

You have transgressed his laws, your very existence becomes Haram. You will be erased from this Haram existence.

He feels neither remorse nor guilt, because he “purified” the earth from your sort. He has finally subjugated your powers of “evil”; he is now free to feel and exercise his own unlimited power and might. He is finally a man who is obeyed. He is finally king in his ideological fortress. Obedience is terribly important for Mullah Valentine. He worships being obeyed. Otherwise how can he prove any manhood? How can he prove any virility? How can he prove any status? You are his property; you are the property of the male collectivity. Properties do not budge, do not talk, do not laugh, do not sing, do not dance...properties are there for usage only. Properties obey...

Fuck them, impregnate them, feed them, domesticate them, clad them and that is more than generous for the Mullahs Valentines of this world.

But the problem is that you breathe, and with your breath you keep reminding him that you are not an inert object, so try not to breathe too loud, will you please ?

Because if you breathe too loud, you will be rocking his ideological boat, his manhood and virility boat, giving him more reason to justify why he needs to have you coerced and controlled right down to the minutest details of your life. Giving him reason to justify why he needs to erase you...

You need to remember always that private property objects do not breathe. So tone down your breath, make it inaudible...and obey, always obey...

"Al-Ta'aa" is the secret word that will open all the sesame doors. Al-Ta'aa is the golden key...Al-Ta'aa means unquestioning, unconditional obedience. "Al-Ta'aa" means you will be granted some form of life...

Only then will Mullah Valentine grace you with approval and blessings. He might even whisper in your ears and request you to paint your toe nails red for him, and for him alone, even though colors and make up are so haram...but for him alone in secrecy, without anyone knowing or watching...behind thick veils and locked doors, at his temporary, "love" altar.


Happy Valentine’s Day to democratically occupied Iraqi women !


Picture : Courtesy of Fars news agency.

On Immobility

Was watching a program the other day, more of a discussion as to whether Saudi Women should be allowed to drive cars or not.

Some idiot, representing Saudi Human rights was arguing that this "move" should be done gradually. When asked why - he responded that some national census showed that over 70% of Saudi society were against females driving and that one should go with the flow and take baby steps in change, a little at a time like maybe a 100 years down the line...

Mind you in democratically occupied Iraq, women at some point, stopped driving too. It is only a few months ago that they dared venture in their cars again, but even then, they feel safer being accompanied by a male. Iraq has turned into a Shiite Saudi state !

Of course the sectarian Shias with their turbans who RULE Iraq, the "habarbashieh" as we call them and the "shroogs", as well as the "religious" ones, share a common trait - a deep misogyny of women. The more they clad them, segregate them, immobilize them, the better.

So has Iraq turned into a Shiite Iranian state with a Saudi flavor? I suppose so.

I have a solution for all the women in both Saudi Arabia and Iraq who dare not drive.

A radical solution that will solve it once and for all.

Ride MALE donkeys. And you don't need a Fatwa - religious decree, for it either.

I am absolutely sure there is no shortage of them at all - male donkeys, that is.

But a short Nota Bene to the Iraqi sisters, make sure you get your clearance from the Shiite Hawza first, unless you want to end up floating - dead in some river, like some of your female predecessors. Now, that would be real, total Immobility -- exactly where they want you.



Painting : Iraqi female artist, Sawsan El-Sheikhly

On the Fires of Creativity...

I frankly have no more inclination to write about politics, occupation, wars, death tolls, and the rest...I am saturated with it, overdosed on it and most of it feels like a rehash of things said before...and repeated ad infinitum.
Yet I cannot settle for the status quo nor for faits accomplis...

This state of limbo can be paralyzing and stifle all energy that can be channelled for other purposes, in other directions...I am aware of this trap and stalemates are not necessarily a good thing precisely because they are STALE. Stale as in stagnation.

Hence redirecting my energies to reading all the books I have been wanting to read has been a most welcomed breakthrough, some fresh air infused into that staleness.

Not just reading but also re-connecting with people, only people that I know will bring an extra something to my life.

Such a person is M. M.is an amazing artist, very talented yet like most highly creative people always unsure of his work. Which is not a bad thing really, because this insecurity drives him to excell even more and his works shine even brighter...yet he does not see it that way.

Got to spend the afternoon with him today and I believe what makes M. so unique is not just his genius in artistic expression or the techniques he uses, but what shines through most in his work is his personality, or should I say his being.

M. is a pleasure to be with. He is not overbearing nor narcissistic as are most artists (unfortunately), but he not subdued either. He is somewhere in the middle, a middle tinged with a natural shyness that comes across as an endearing quality. Yet he is very open. It is this mixture of reserve and openness that is reflected in his works.

We talked for many hours about creativity. I don't have his talent for sure but I understood the blocks, the inner reticence that can hold back any artist.

The first and foremost is the inner censor. The inner censor manifests itself under different forms, even taking on different voices - it may be a cultural tone, a societal rule, a parental injunction and even a personal belief...or a bit of each and sometimes much of each. I suppose it feels like someone (oneself to be more precise) putting a lid on something, like turning a tap of water off, at other times it feels like trying to stop a river from flowing or a fountain from gushing...

I shall give you an example that M. shared with me.

M. when not painting, teaches. He told me of one of his students, who was not really a student since she was an artist herself who had a few exhibitions in her name, in other words she was no beginner. This female "student" was painting horses for over 3years. She said she loved horses and horses inspired her. The problem with her is that she could not paint anything else. She was stuck with horses.

After several private tutorials, she realized thanks to M. that the reason behind her being stuck with horses was because that was the only thing permissible for her to draw or the only thing she allowed herself to draw. She told M. that, that was the closest she could get to drawing nude men. And her being stuck with horses was her way of making it culturally or socially acceptable to draw nude men in her head.

This is one instance of how the inner censor works. I guess it is the same with writing. That is why in my opinion, works of fiction can be more potent than other forms of writing because they allow through character constructs to give voice to what the inner censor wants you to silence.

And that is why works of fiction, if well written, have this amazing ability to transport the reader into a reality which is close to his/hers through an identification process. It is the reader that renders the characters alive by infusing them with his/her own personal experience and by identifying with them. And it is the art of the writer to provide these characters to the reader, by deriving, extracting them from his/her observations of real life personas, in other words from reality.

But at the end of the day it remains fiction, just like the virtual remains virtual and not real, while it confers a sentiment of realness. And it is precisely because a writer in the fictional world creates characters that may be total opposites of what the writer believes in - this in itself is the highest form of art and creativity at its best.

In a way it is a trapping lure for the reader, because even the most intelligent of readers will confuse the fiction with the real. But fiction remains fiction however real it may come across. And blaming the writer for his characters is really another way of censoring him.

One such brilliant writer, a contemporary one, is Ala'a Al-Aswany. This man is in my opinion one of the best contemporary writers in Egypt. He wrote the Yacoubian Building, Chicago and I have been reading his "Niran Sadiqa" - Truthful fires. A book that was banned in Egypt because of its heavy criticisms of Egyptian society.

People turned against him because they made that mistake of taking the fictional characters for the writer. Ala'a Al-Aswany stressed that he loved Egypt but some of his fictional characters did not.

I think the brilliance of Ala'a Al-Aswany comes from the fact that he was able to circumvent his inner censor in the most elegant and compassionate of ways. Reading the Yacoubian Building or Chicago for instance is a real life experience. The characters are so well studied, so well observed and so well lived that they are real or become real. The genius of Ala'a Al-Aswany is his ability to form intimate bonds with his characters, as if they have always existed and were just waiting to be put on paper. His uncanny perception of the psychology of his characters, their hidden desires, their unspoken truths, their inner cultural, religious, political tensions and contradictions, their very survival...are all carefully crafted, not so much in boring details of narration, but in their essence, in their very being.

Why am I writing all of this ? I am not sure myself...

Maybe because allowing the fires of creativity is the best antidote to wars, occupation and death...or maybe because of some other hidden reason that I have not yet uncovered...or maybe because my own fictional characters are dying to get out once and for all, instead of this hide and seek that I play with them and take on a reality of their own however short lived this one may be.

Take Refuge...

Never again...never again an Arab man. Never again an Arab...Semite -- Muslim, Christian, Jew, never again...

Never again anything to do with this part of the world. Nothing. If anyone tells me there is one Semitic wire in his fucking brains, I shall run away...

Women of the world, leave this lot away and run for your lives...

A deep misogyny awaits you. Yeah I know, all of you ex barmaids turned respectable, dying for a Semitic lay. Be my guests. As for me, never again.

I, an Arab woman, proclaim out loud and publicly, that the man from this region, is the most backward, vile, antiquated, cave like, being ...did I say being ? How wrong I am. Animal ? More like it.

This thing from this part of the world -- keep away if you want your sanity to stay intact. They are a fucking disaster, a public health hazard, an affront to your humanity...a perversion, a deformity, an abject thing.

Take my advice -- Keep away from this lot. Left wing or right wing, middle or center, it don't matter...they are all a fucking disaster.