Conversations with Myself.

25th September 2012

It’s 10 :10pm. I just got back home. I come in, greet and enter my room. I change my clothes, make ablution and pray. I tightly close my eyes, focus on one special prayer and fold my prayer mat. I go out of my room, I prepare the table and eat. I re-enter my room. I grab my external hard drive. I put on some Eddie Vedder, lie down and start thinking! 

Hind this is how you spend your days. This is the answer your friends around the world have been asking you for all this time. 

They would greet in an impatient tone and say “So … How are your days ?”. They look for excitement in your answer, they look for a surprise, a detail to congratulate you for. But soon … “Good” ends it all. It comes to crumble their hopes. You say it but never really stop to think about it, Hind. You never think about it. Are they really “Good”… your days? Cause you know … you just spent five hours at work preparing a proposal; One hour eating lunch alone and revising for your evening German Class; four hours in transportation between taxis and trains, two of which you used as your only SAT prep time; then finally three more hours in an intensive German class where you struggle to pronounce your age in Deutsch.

Hind… Those five hours you spent at work, you were serving the brilliant but most needy high schoolers of your country. They are orphans and you were trying to make their lives easier. With each letter typed on that word document you hoped your plans succeed in honoring the hard working and deserving young people they are. And with each zero added to that budget you compiled, you feared to scare away potential sponsors and add another failure to your life story. Those five hours, you used as best as you can to serve. Your job is making you thankful for all the opportunities you’ve had in life, but is also making you humbled by these orphans’ tremendous belief and optimistic approach to the future. 

Your job inspires you Hind.

Hind… That hour you ate alone made you reconsider the times you took company for granted. The times you wished to flee society and live in the wild. While multitasking between dipping the fry in the Ketchup sauce, learning “to be” in German and checking if you still had enough money for tomorrow, you missed Alexis, Jason, Dhvani, Dimeji, Kenza, Roseline, Rima, Reda and Zack, Bethlehem, Linda … You thought of the few advisory lunches and the countless house competitions you missed and wished you had the chance to be in your second house, with your second family one more time.

For a second, Hind, you cherished the people in your life, played with your memories then tingled all over.

Hind… Those four hours you spend between trains and taxis, entrench you in your society. You wait forever for that taxi to come. When it comes, you beg it to stop and take you to the defunct King’s Boulevard. As soon as it hears about your final destination, it speeds and leaves its smoke for you to inhale. No taxi wants to die in the traffic of that boulevard. So no matter how early you are, you and a dozen other smoke inhalers will always be ashamed, blamed and left behind for the more merciful to empathize. Right there, between two rejections, you’ll always take time to look at these passengers who are now too angry at even their speeding watches, but who minutes ago, in the train, had let their heads loose and surrendered to the morning sleep. You look at them and finally understand your people. You get it now.

You suffer, Hind, together. You feel that togetherness... You forget the suffering! 

Hind … Those three last hours of your day that you spent learning another language are the sweet cherry on the three floored cake. It’s true you are out since 8am. It’s true you had to take the last tramway home. But it’s also true you always wanted to hear more than the “schlakhen schlakhen” in your cousins’ conversations, see more in the Arte TV documentaries and twist your tongue in more than three vernaculars. Those three hours were the last and hardest. But, heartily, unearthing again the leftovers of your motivation, you forced your hand to raise itself. You forced your mouth to ask your teacher and let your ears enjoy every sound in the “Dir vereinigten Staaten von Amerika”. The United States of America! The tiredness disappeared; the world stopped noising but not the sound of your dream destination to further your studies. That one kept noising and it all made sense then Hind. 

Oh how happy you were to put your dream on a different vibe: The German one!

You’re lying down, “Hard Sun” on speakers and that impatient question in your mind. You think but I speak for you. And I say, yes! Your days are “Good”. Real Good. You don’t need more. You ask and get enough. You live. You laugh. You lead and follow. You live Hind. You learn. You learn some more. Your body gets tired. You exercise your mind. Your mind gets tired. You go to sleep … a better person than ever before. And before I sleep, I smile. 

For a while, that silent but giggling inner happiness is what I am feeling. And it’s all well deserved.