Some More Little Things

Dad's cure to my loopy biological clock; an organic alarm, ready and set from the night before.

The Little Things

 

Oh nothing, just my father spontaneously getting up in the middle of the night to brush my disheveled teddy bear. And people wonder why I love my dad.

Religious Harassment.

This happened today at uni and it thoroughly pissed me off.

 

I was sitting alone next to the side entrance of the free clinic where the interns come to practice. It overlooks a construction site on campus so it’s hardly populated, and doctors occasionally come out for a smoke.

 

There I was, enjoying Ayn Rand’s We The Living and a smoke, when I was startled by the company of a patient. She was an elderly woman wearing a black abaya. Without any greetings or pleasantries that would warn me to her existence, she was leaning onto me, inches away from my face, and the following unedited dialogue took place.

 

هي: إنتي إزاي بتشربي سجاير وإنتي بتقري المصحف؟

أنا: حضرتك مالكيش الحق تقوليلي أعمل إيه

هي: يعني إيه؟

أنا: ده مش مصحف حضرتك، لو سمحتي إتفضلي

هي: ماهو لو كان أهلك حاجبوكي مكنتيش مشيتي في الحرام

أنا: حضرتك إزاي تدي لنفسك الحق تكلميني كدة؟ لو سمحتي إتفضلي

هي: تلاقيكي قبطية ماهو أصل كلكوا كدة

أنا: *عليت صوتي* لو سمحتي إتفضلي

 

Now let me tell you what’s wrong with this scenario:

I honestly don’t know where to start, perhaps that she gave herself the right to go up to a stranger and tell them how to live their life, or maybe it’s the sight of a woman smoking that Middle-Easterns just can’t get used to and almost always relate to promiscuity, or maybe it was the violent religious discrimination, or the fact that she thought all Christian women are whores, or that she thought that all women who smoke are whores, or that she thought all women are whores that need to mend themselves and become human beings, or the fact that she thought all Christians are depraved and immoral by default, or the fact that she thought there’s nothing wrong with parents forcefully veiling their children, or the fact that she thought forcefully veiling another person is the solution to depravity, or viable in the first place, or the fact that she thought depravity is synonymous to smoking, or the fact that she thought depravity is a given for all Christian women, or the fact that she thought the bullshit she was spewing was virtuous, or had anything to do with values, or is remotely related to any religion or moral code. Maybe it’s the fact that she couldn’t imagine a woman reading a book that wasn’t the holy Quoran that had her assume the English book with a colored cover was in fact Quoran, or maybe it was the fact that she invaded a complete stranger’s personal space and filed accusations based on their assumed religion, or the fact that she thinks anyone who is not veiled is a whore, or the fact that she perceives my very existence as a mistake that she is bound by religion and society to set right out of her own precious time, or how the way her society taught her how to understand Islam allows her to behave this way to another human being, or how she thinks that’s what Islam tells people how to behave, or how she insulted me on every fucking level possible for a person to be insulted and verbally violated, and last but not least, how she genuinely believed she did absolutely nothing wrong.

 

I don’t know what to say, I was bound by the difference in our ages to respect the elderly, but I have never been thus insulted in my entire life. I am no stranger to the societal difficulties and the unwanted tags that come with being a smoker, I am aware of how this fucked up society perceives the sight of a woman smoking and I have been harassed over it before, but maybe the combination of discrimination against women, Christians and smokers in the span of less than 2 minutes was too much to bear.

 

I am a free woman, and there is nothing that anyone can say or do that can change that. I am not a walking vagina, I’m no less of a human being for being a Christian woman who smokes, none of these three give anyone the right to think of me that way. I am not a whore for having a vagina, I am not a whore for smoking openly and for fuck’s sake I am not a whore for being Christian.

Mark it.

Quand je vous aimerai?
Ma foi, je ne sais pas,
Peut-être jamais,
peut-être demain.
Mais pas aujourd'hui, c'est certain.

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
Et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle,
S'il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière,
L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait;
Et c'est l'autre que je préfère
Il n'a rien dit; mais il me plaît.
L'amour! L'amour! L'amour! L'amour!

- Extrait de Carmen, L’amour est un oiseau rebelle par Georges Bizet.

"But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny their souls really won’t be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that worries them to no end."

– Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Happy Easter!