Only If I could...

An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...
This is personal. A medley of wishful thoughts, desires...and a stark reality from which there is no real escape.
I would much rather be writing about Love than Death...
About dreams coming true, as opposed to nightmares realizing themselves, rolling in front of my very eyes...like some welcoming carpet.
I would much rather invite friends over for a candlelight dinner instead of sitting in funeral gatherings giving my condolences...
And another one has gone, and I repeat the same words, they have become meaningless.
At times, when I am told of the news of yet another passing away, I just raise an eyebrow...That is all I can manage, sometimes. Then, I continue doing what am doing.
I hate it when am in that kind of state. Absolutely hate it.
I hear on a daily basis, so many stories of Death...The saturation has dehumanized me... And I don't like what I see.
I look into the mirror, and say to myself, this is not who you really are...
Maybe this is my pathetic attempt to shield myself from too much pain.
Because, at other times, I feel the grief so overwhelming, a tsunami of grief...
So I build dams and barriers, hoping to contain the gigantic waves, before they engulf me and everything else around me...trying hard to keep my little patch as "dry" as possible.
I guess one could call it survival.
The greatest challenge is to keep sane, avoiding at all costs, slipping into insanity. There is something about violence that can make one insane. I know so and have seen it around me...
The violence of a reality you can hardly do anything about, the violence of emotions, that accompany what you see, hear, and feel, the violence of witnessing those around either withering away, in resignation or cornered into neat little square boxes of indifference...
Violence violates...They belong to the same root.
So everything is constructed on a daily basis, as to how avoid being violated even further...Violation is really all about rape. Again language is a powerful tool.
The French call rape "viol"...
The rape of daily living. Mental rape, moral rape, spiritual rape, physical rape, social rape, economic rape, political rape...so many levels of rape, of violations.
It is so hard to explain to an outsider...especially someone who does not feel any of the emotional "stuff", any of the affinities...especially to someone who shields himself, herself, behind theories, analysis and ready made slots, boxes, pigeon holes of handy concepts.
Futile attempts to rationalize away or explain a real devastation of personal and collectives lives. Not numbers, not nameless faces, but real lives...breathing, kicking, moving lives ...or what was once a life.
At times, I try to gather, collect, amass all of that, that bundle of sensations, feelings, thoughts, longings, yearnings...and deposit it on paper, for the record, for history, for them, for you, for me...
At other times, I wish for a magical invisible hand to reach inside, across my chest, into my heart, and grab that bundle and find the words, the best fitting words, and present them as an offering, a gift, for the record, for history, for them, for you and maybe for me too.
I think women will understand what am saying, with more ease, than men.
Most " men " still need to learn about the unsaid language...get familiar with it, master it, and possibly replace "facts", "figures", "theories", "concepts", "analysis" ...with the half spoken word...with utterings, mutterings, murmurs, those "senseless" tears, and other "emotional hysterical outbursts"...
Maybe then, we will find a common language, a "primitive" language that unites, beyond words...
And maybe then, I won't need to go and look for them...
And maybe by then, the language of arms will be replaced with the unspoken word, and silence will fall, like white cotton fluff, like a peaceful cloak, like a gentle dove, covering them, you and me...
And maybe by then, I can start writing about Love instead of Death...
Painting : Iraqi artist, AbdelAmeer, Alwan.
LinkHere