The Racing Chocolate Thief

I have this recurring dream where I'm in a big race, but the race starts off with a free all-you-can-eat chocolate chip waffle breakfast. Needless to say, I stay at the starting line for a while, even after the race starts. In fact, I stay there until I've finished every last waffle. Then, once I start the race, I keep stumbling upon these massive chocolate stashes located under people's mattresses (not sure why I had access to their mattresses). I suddenly notice that I'm carrying a very big sack, so I begin to fill it up with all the various chocolate bars I'm finding until it's completely full. I should mention that there were other sweets including soft cookies, gum, toffee, mints - I remember I didn't take the mints because I calculated that they were a waste of sack space.

And then, after all that, I still manage win the race. Chocolate dreams are the best. Especially when they are recurring.

But then I wake up and I'm seriously hungry.

avoiding living so as not to make a Life

I've been avoiding living. And by living I mean, actually digging my heels into anything real in Egypt. I haven't enrolled in any classes, haven't made any friends, haven't said or done anything to make me accountable to anyone (besides my husband).

I didn't really do it on purpose. I just avoided doing real stuff and my conscious mind told me that it was because I was newly married - getting a hang of things like cooking, pleasing in-laws, etc. (yeah...right.) I kept using excuses until I finally stopped suppressing the real reason of avoidance. Well, I didn't want to stop - it all kind of just forcefully broke out of my subconscious mind.

I don't want to make a life here. I don't want any of this to be real. The more anchored I become here, the more it feels like the anchor will be too heavy to lift when I need to go home. For example, when I think about the slight possibility of making friends, my guard automatically goes up - because I already have friends at home.

And my guard is always up because people in Egypt are nosey in a major way. And everyone has an opinion. I understand that people who are close to you want to advise you, but it's often done in a way that's extremely pushy, and might I add, not only people who are close to you. Someone you just met might just tell you that you're living your life wrong. So yes, my guard is up in an exhausting way. Sometimes I just collapse under its weight and take a day or two to just be moody and not let anyone in.

And when I remember my parents and siblings, and all the babies that are related to me that I haven't seen in so long, my heart aches. And although my logical mind tells me that I should be where I am, how can it ever win an argument with my heart?

I did the thing I promised myself I would never do.

I did the thing I promised myself I would never do. I promised myself that someday when I got married, I wouldn't neglect my old life - I would keep blogging, I would stay in touch with friends and family. I would work. Basically, I would just be myself, except with another person.

When my friends were getting married and falling off the face of the planet, I didn't understand. I thought it was about them being so in love that they just didn't think anything else was as important. At the time, I turned my nose up at them. To be honest, I thought they were overly-emotional ninnies.

But I think I now understand their predicaments. After you get married, things change - there's so much more complex emotional states that need to be analyzed and sorted through. There is a lot of personal adjustment and reflection that happens. And well, there are in-laws.

The person you're with will make you re-examine your own life and habits - compare and contrast them to your own, worry about new things you had never thought of before. And it's a lot to handle on a psychological level. So I get it now - I get why people struggle to maintain their old lives when they get married. It's emotionally taxing.

Granted, the fact that I'm in Egypt makes it significantly harder to maintain my old life (well, actually it makes it impossible). But I'm still a little bit sad. And that's not because some of the things I was and some of the values that I held are falling to the wayside. No, it's because it's happening without me noticing. But I should notice, and I should care. The last thing that I want to be is a woman who loses herself in marriage simply because she didn't take the time or effort to carve her own niche in the world.

I know it's not easy, but I'm trying.

While I was lying in bed I came up with a really great blog post topic. I thought I should write it down or else I might forget, but I was too lazy to get out of bed. And then, I forgot. So this is what you get to read:

booga booga booga.

October

I miss Autumn in Canada. October is the month all the trees used to really start looking like they were set ablaze with colour. I remember being so distracted by the trees that I would often almost bump into passers-by. To me, autumn is associated with putting a jacket on in the morning and holding a travel mug filled with hot tea while running towards the bus in half drizzly weather. I never understood why people called this kind of weather "miserable."

Autumn is what life is about - seeing that stage of immense beauty disintegrate into a cold kind of darkness. I always found those quiet moments of reflection surprising and sweet, like a chocolate bar you forgot you had in your bag. I suppose I'll have to find things that inspire me in Egypt now - although autumn here is just the same as summer, but slightly less hot. No changing colours, no putting on jackets, and no having coffee with friends on their lunch breaks.

I used to craved the culture of Egypt - knowing that it was rich and filled with family and unique flavours of life. And not that it isn't, but every day I realize more and more how much I miss my home, the familiar associations I have with Canadian nature and atmosphere. I didn't realize how connected I was to home until I left it. It isn't just people anymore, it's smells and tastes and sensory things that I just can't explain with words.

I miss bumping into friends on the street. I miss muffins - I guess Egyptians haven't come around to the idea of muffins just yet. I miss calling my sister whenever I want to complain about something (which was daily). I miss my mom.

I miss the place my heart grew up.

Chosen Family

What she said. Exactly.

I miss being able to escape to a private place when life became too overwhelming. Whether that meant going for an undisturbed walk, or holing myself up in my room and vegetating. I miss downtime. Downtime in Egypt exists, but it's collective, which means that you're in someone else's face while having your downtime. Apartments are generally too small, sidewalks to full, mouths too busy yapping to find a quiet moment of rest and contemplation, separate from all else.

I miss being alone.

I'm still alive

These are the days leading up to my walima, and boy oh boy did I underestimate the amount of things that need to be done.

The problem is, life in Egypt is hard. Yup, that's the crux of the matter. Getting stuff done here is so much more difficult than in Canada. It requires knowing people as opposed to just showing up and buying something at a store. You have to know someone so that you don't get ripped off or get stuck with a defective product.

Also, when moving into an apartment, you literally need to buy everything except the walls and the floors of the place. Nothing comes included, even doorknobs. So, as you can imagine, there was shopping to be done every single day for the past month.

Also it's really hot. And Egyptian culture is confusing, and I'm trying hard to navigate it without offending people in a major way. Pretty sure I've done that several times thus far. Oh well.

Also, my English is suffering in major way. Writing used to come easily to me, but now I'm searching for words that are commonplace. For example, I was about to type "searching" like this: "surching." And that's not an exaggeration (which I just spelled with 2 Xs instead of 2 Gs).

Life in Egypt is hard.

But Alhamdulillah, this is what was meant for me - so what state is appropriate except that of thankfulness, right?

(but it's hot)

Til we Meet Again

I'm in Egypt right now...Ramadan in Egypt is different. When it first started, I longed to be back in Canada with familiar faces, getting Ramadan Mubarak emails and calls. It didn’t feel the same to be in a different country – the emotions that I had always associated with the beginning of Ramadan weren’t there.

It has gotten better in the past few days – I’m noticing interesting things about Egyptian culture and how it melts into the Islamic tradition. On the second day of Ramadan we went out slightly before maghrib to go to an iftar at my in-laws’ place, and the streets were like that of a ghost town. The shops were closed, there were barely any people walking about – the only people on the streets were young men wielding bags of pre-packaged dates to give to drivers of passing cars to break their fasts with. It was quite the sight to see men throwing little bags of dates into the open windows of cars.

Egyptians only bake certain kinds of bread in Ramadan. And only eat certain kinds of foods – the week before Ramadan, grocery stores sell massive amounts of oil (go figure) and Ramadan-specific foods including dates, Amar Al-Deen (dried apricot sheets, sort of like fruit roll-ups).

Praying taraweeh here is different, too. I prayed in the largest congregation I’ve ever prayed in at a famous mosque in Alexandria. The streets all around the mosque were blocked off and we prayed on the asphalt in rows upon rows of worshippers. And the imams…I can’t quite describe how it feels to be praying behind imams who sound like some of my favourite reciters. Imagine praying behind Abu Bakr Al-Shatri, or Muhammad Jibreel or AbdelBaset Abdel Samad.

To be honest I felt lonely when Ramadan first started. I missed my community, I missed the quirks of the multicultural mishmash that is Ramadan in Toronto. And I still miss it, but the thing that always brings me back is listening to the same Qur’an, the same du’aa, the same sweet words of celebration that surround this month. It reminds me that there is one thing in my life that is consistent no matter where I am. It makes me feel like maybe I’m not too far from home.

pack it up

I'm currently in the process of packing up most of my belongings to move to another country for a while. I leave in just under 3 days inshaAllah.

Packing for a long trip with no definite return date means that I have to go through nearly everything I own, and makes me re-examine the purpose of a lot of things that I'm leaving behind. Limited suitcase space gives rise to a lot of personal judgement/decisions about what true needs are vs. the frills. We go through our lives accumulating items that have either intrinsic or sentimental value - but at the end most of it means nothing.

Packing up my life is hard. I have a lot of stuff to go through, but that's not why it's hard. Rather, I now really have to deal with the fact that I'm leaving the home tree that has always had stable roots, for a life of a seed trying to burrow itself into the ground to grow and make its own roots. What if I get tired and a slight wind blows me away?