Until it happens ...

So it’s been a while since I last updated my blog. I even wonder if anybody checks this blog anymore. But today I felt like coming back to say something about…. Life.

Hold on, hold on… in case you're not a fan of those pretentious texts that claim the ability of explaining the meaning of life, let me tell you that I’m not either. Neither am I claiming that I’m bringing up something new here. I’m just writing today to share one amazing almost startling (in a positive way) thing I realized today. This thing made me believe, more than ever before ,that there’s a word that just perfectly describes “life”.

Before we get to the word, let me tell you what happened a little over a year ago. On August 8, 2008 (08/08/08) and - believe it or not - at 8pm, I finally arrived for the first time to my dorm at MSU. All I had in mind were questions, worries, ambitions and hopes. I had thoughts about the people I parted with, and questions about where I would be in a year, in 2 years... But in such moments, you never know for certain, and you never imagine what would happen exactly (and I mean exactly) one year from then.

Well what happened one year from then was this.: OnAugust 8, 2009 (08/08/09) I simply was in Morocco attending the wedding of an extremely special person to me: my friend-sister S. Needless to say, when I parted with her in 2008, the marriage had not been planned. And even a few weeks before the actual wedding, the date was going to be different. But it ended up falling on August 8. Do you wonder where the 8 pm went? Well it was written on the wedding invitation cards! How exact is that?

Now maybe you’re thinking “so what? This is just a coincidence”. Well, maybe. But this just makes me believe that life is nothing but a series of…

Countdowns.

For those of us who are waiting for something to happen… let’s just go on with our lives and let the countdown work its way… the "Zero" moment will arrive. We just never know in how much time from now.

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S and MR ... may your years together bring along
countless moments of happiness.
Allah y7fedkom :)

Flash back

A plane. My second for that day had just set off. From my window seat, I saw beautiful Amsterdam. A river, lakes, green areas and well structured building blocks… then the huge open ocean. The water was seemingly calm, but intimidating. A whole world of mysteries and endless untold stories lying beneath that glittering blue surface, whose uniformity was disturbed by a few dark dots scattered here and there.

That day, I experienced the longest sunset of my life. It literally lasted for hours. My flight which set off at sunset was traveling west, and so was the end of the day. As the arrival of nighttime slowly worked its way westward above the Atlantic, so did our flight. As if we were earning bonus hours on that day. As if the deepest wish of permanently busy people had just materialized. The day lingered beyond the twenty-four hours.

Layers and layers of comfy-looking clouds appeared outside my window. Amazing nuances of pink and purple marked the horizon, an imaginary yet universally referential line somewhere in the air.

From my thousands-of-meters altitude, I thought of how drastically perspective differences can change the way we see things. Just as the usually remote clouds looked fluffy and almost inviting when seen from above. Just like heavy, colossal, roaring ships can turn into mere dark dots scattered here and there on the surface of a blue ocean.

One of those days...

All I remember from that August day are those green stress balls all students had received with many other give aways during a student orientation. I remember myself sitting with a group of new acquaintances , and the hands of someone tearing off that stress ball into small pieces. We joked together that day about how already stressed out that person was…

Then August went by, then the whole semester, then the first half of the second semester, and my stress ball was still there, with its green color and its dollar shape as intact as they were the first day. Not that I never stressed out since I came here (how could I not!), but because out of all the possible usages it could have, I was keeping it (with many other items like pens, pen holders etc) as a sample promotional item used for communication campaigns. Yeah, just what a studious Advertising student would do, you would think.

But today was the turn of my dollar-shaped stress ball to do the job it was made for. - or a little bit more. The reason is that today was the last day of a week during which I had one presentation, one mid-term exam (plus one last week), and a quiz (and endless readings, in-class discussions, group meetings, friendship disappointments, AND a dozen summer internship applications with no response). My green stress ball was also called for duty because today I got the scores of one of those mid-terms, and they had nothing to do with what I was aspiring for. Too much for the calm, serene Kaoutar people are used to see.

So being alone at home (fortunately) I just decided to admit that I need an insanity phase, and let myself go… Banging the table, letting out angry shouts, trying to calm myself down, failing, trying to get some relief by crying, but to no avail. All I could get out as usual were 2 drops of tears, and that was it.

Then came the turn of the stress ball. Because squeezing it gave no effect except intensifying the pain I already had in my wrist, I found myself doing exactly what that student was doing back in August. Tearing it up into small green spongy pieces.

Do I feel better? I think I do!

Aren't we one after all?

Differences, faces, colors, names, sounds, questions and answers, smiles, meaningful sometimes, meaningless most for the time. Intrusions, apologies, misunderstandings, understanding, fake at times, real at others.

Respect, gazes, stereotypes, silenced or masked. Languages, reflections, tastes, traditions, religions, habits, so different sometimes, so alike some others.

But aren’t we one after all??

Could Cupid explain that??

Scene 1:

She: Why do you complain about such occasions? We are the ones who have trouble finding good presents for you. It’s never been an easy task for me to find a present even to my father.

He: On the contrary, it’s men who find it difficult to think about suitable presents for women.

She: Come on, there's plenty of things you could buy to a woman and make her happy.

He: Like what?

She: Well anything! A jewel, a cosmetics product, flowers, or something practical she needs… You could also invite her for dinner in a nice place, make a good surprise... But what about men?!

He: You could buy something traditional, a belgha (Turkish slippers), material for djellaba, this is the kind of things your father would like to receive.

She: (Stops short of asking what a man –other than a father- would like to receive for a present).

Question 1: Will that mystery about “what women want” and “what men want” ever be solved?

Scene 2:

He: Has the woman on the radio said that they’ve been talking about love for an entire week? Weird choice! What’s going on?

She: Yes! Well it’s Velentine’s day!

She2: Don’t you know about it?!

He: (A bit surprised, laughs) Lucky you!

She: What do you mean "lucky you"? Valentine’s day is everybody's business!

He: No... We celebrated our Valentine's Day a long time ago. Now it’s your turn.

She: Love has no age! (Playfully) Come on! Why do you men keep coming up with pretexts to ignore this kind of occasions? Just to avoid buying presents? :p Why don’t buy a present to your wife after work. She’d be happy about it.

He: (Laughs, addressing He 2): We have women’s movements here.

Question 2: Why are men too proud to admit that they do care about such things as love!?

Thinking of you

How helpless you feel when the fact is there; unchangeable, irreversible.

How pretending science looks, when it gives itself the right to confiscate your hopes;

How absurd your priorities seem, when you wish, and it’s too late, you could start it all over again, and put your loved one at the top of your list;

How foolish those doctors seem, when they think that their decade-long studies give them the right to pronounce death sentence against your dear one;

How numb your mind feels when it has, and no choice is there, to acknowledge that there’s such a thing called The End, and that it is approaching;

How wrong your calculations seem, when you suddenly realize that what you’ve been building away from your loved one simply has no foundations;

How worthless that passion you followed seems, when you discover that you have deprived yourself of true passion.

My full support and compassion to all those who have known, by bitter, ruthless scientific evidence, that a dear one is leaving soon.

Time again

“Time flies!”

“Hours are too slow!”

“I wish I could go back to those days again”

“May those days never come back again”

“24 hours a day are not enough! I wish our days were longer”

“One day seems like years for me”


I wonder what our problem with time is!

Imagine the chaos we would face if, for only one day, time obeyed the desires of people. The world would go mad!!! Days would want to go faster to make someone finally have that long-awaited reunion. But they would want to go slower to prevent an impending event from coming.

Time would want to stop to satisfy those who want things to last forever as they are now. It would want to go backwards to give a second chance to those who made mistakes.

To satisfy us, time would want to cut itself into pieces, rearrange the chronology of events and maybe delete some parts.

But as crazy as this seems, would it really satisfy people if ever this happened?? There are big chances that calculations would turn wrong again. Rearranging the chronology of events might get us into a bigger mess, and we would wish again that time was arranged differently.

We’re trying to play an unbalanced game against time. Every time I think about this, I get the image of dwarves trying to block a giant and change his road, while the giant just walks and walks without paying attention to them.

That ship is going with or without us.

A beautiful voice fades away

The beautiful Rajae Benlemlih will no longer shine on our radios and screens. I was startled at the news yesterday evening.

Death always strikes suddenly and the news is always hard to believe no matter what the reasons are.

Allah yerhamha w Inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raji3oun

The eternal twins

Two twin streams they were
So small but so abundant
Slowly tracing their way
So weak, light and silent

A bit salty they tasted
So clear and also warm
Who do you think they wanted
With their beauty to charm?

A source of charm they could be
With their star-like glow
A sign of harm they could be
With their sea-like flow

Two twin streams they are,
And here will always stay
With each eternal scar
With every happy day

In all places they can be
They’re not that scarce or rare
Even in Mars they would be
If any life is there

No use trying to find them
In all your maps or books
Geography doesn’t know them
No matter how rich it looks

But like all streams they do
Have courses and have names
So hard each cinema crew
Tries to master their games

Whatever might be their causes
Happiness, sadness or fears
Wherever might be their sources
And after all days and years

Their name will still be tears.

Awkward consoler

“Maybe it’s time I changed my perfume.” The sound of M. seemed so deep on the phone yesterday. She was just stepping out of a break-up meeting and that’s what justified our almost one hour conversation on the phone. “It’s time to move on”.

Yeah, it’s time for you to change, M… but it isn’t the end of the world after all. You’re not going to die. You just have to face one of those days on which we wake up with those silly yet decisive resolutions… changing the ring tone of our mobile phone, the colours of its display screen, our look …. and … [yes I will admit] it’s one of those days on which, if it were possible, we would change our name, our job, our house, our neighbours, the road we take home, the sidewalks, the shopkeepers, the buildings that remind us of someone or sometime we no longer want to remember…

Stupidity exists in life M, and we can’t help it. Things don’t necessarily go the way we want and people don’t necessarily see things as valuable – or as possible – as they might seem to us. Sadness also exists. And seems like a river of which we all have to drink.

But M, listen to me. You need to be strong. You’re not dying. It’s just that life can be cruel sometimes. And that this time… [yes, I will admit again] life has betrayed you again, and you suddenly woke up from your beautiful dream to find yourself face to face with that harsh reality; you found yourself forced to read the last page of a book which you thought was much longer!

Well, I have to admit it now: As simple as it may seem, all my heart is with you M, because today time has simply come for you to change... your perfume.

I wish you good luck… and loads of courage.

Ownership game

This weekend I had a strange reflection about our tendency to use possessive pronouns with many things which we don’t really possess or control. It seems just obvious to say “my” or “our”, while we’re never sure about who in fact controls the other!!

My mind: Can you really control the way your mind works? Can you stop forgetting what you want to remember, stop remembering what you want to forget? Can you vanquish your fears, program your reactions, or stop analysing/overanalysing things when it’s not for your good to do so? Can you make your mind work the right way at the right moment?

My dreams: By dreams I mean both what we see when we're asleep and the goals we might have in life. The dreams we see during sleep are probably the least thing we could control. Who among us ever wishes to see a nightmare? And who can control what one sees in one’s dreams??

The goals we sometimes call dreams are similarly never ours in the sense that we can never guarantee they will come true. We can work hard for them, plan the way to get them, but there’s always something called faith, qadar, or mektoob having the upper hand on what happens.

My job: I and my job: which of the two controls the other? Who makes the other wake up early in the morning everyday, endure the troubles of transportation, work hard the whole day, work at night sometimes, lose temper and feel depressed and overwhelmed…?

My life: How long we will live, where, and how. The unknown future. It’s also when we talk about life that we talk about the undefeatable giant: time. (And no need to talk about the illusion that I own MY age which never takes my opinion before it decides to increase its figure to a higher one!)

My body: Is “your body” really yours?? Your body never forgets to grow fat if you don’t pay attention to what you eat or don’t practice sports. It is absolutely not you who orders or even reminds your skin to show wrinkles nor your hair to turn white as the years go by. “Your” body can give you pain. It can let you down or prevent you from moving if it decides to do so.

Just a few silly thoughts that crossed “my mind” by a Sunday afternoon…

V-day symptoms

Suddenly everybody became aware of all details around them. The mood people had that day, the way they replied on Valentine's Day wishes, the way they were dressed, phone rings, the tone of people's voice when they answer the phone, whether they talked about anything that would seem like an appointment… It can be funny (and sometimes annoying) how such occasions as V-day make people, whether they mean it or not, alert to any kind of signs and almost spying on each other!

V-day has come and reactions to it were different. Ranging from that of my newly married colleague who, until yesterday, was happily wondering what he was going to buy as a present for his wife, to that of the shopkeeper near my workplace who, being completely unaware of that “special” day, just replied “God forbid!!” on a client’s “Allah yzoujek” prayer:)

V-day has come while some people were impatiently waiting for it to give or receive presents, to express their love for an nth time or probably for the first time. Others had to put up with that imposed feast of love, although they made all possible efforts to forget about it; others just didn’t care about it. And others decided to replace the absence of one special person by sending wishes and presents to friends or relatives.


V-day has come; V-day has left. And the world is still the same!

Faking happiness??

"Smile when you answer the phone; this will give the caller a good impression."

"When you put your blush wear a smile to define your cheekbones."

"Every morning in the corridor of your workplace greet people with a broad smile. This will help you start a beautiful day."

"If people try to annoy you, just smile at their face; they will understand that their efforts to spoil your day are useless."

"If you want to contradict someone, no matter how upsetting what they said is, express your opposing opinion with a smile. This will make them more receptive to your arguments."

"Smile when you take a picture. This will help you look beautiful and lively." .....

It Seems that we have turned smiles into a mere accessory we can put at strategically calculated moments.

Do we give real smiles any value at all???

Allô, les pompiers!!!

... quand des choses sérieuses se discutent dans la pièce à côté... :) :)

Another phobia

I hinted many times on this blog that I have troubles crying. But today, I received an email which made me cry (not for so long though :p). The email was a goodbye one from a “virtual” friend and colleague with whom I’ve been working for over 2 years in a benevolent organisation. Reading the email just brought to the surface my phobia of goodbyes; the word I hate the most.

“We mustn't be sad,” he said. It’s always the same in similar situations. Like the day I had to part with my sister-friend Farah, and then with my sister when she left the country for studies… Always the same scenario: we try to fake smiles, hide our tears and bring up courage from every corner of our hearts to make it easier. We fight that killing pain in our throats; we make promises that we will keep in touch; we bravely shake our heads approving the idea that time flies and that we will meet again soon, although we don't believe a letter in what we're saying ...

I HATE GOODBYES!!!

Back to Track

It’s like she’s back to life. When the incorrect is corrected and everything is back to its right place, life seems better. She has been obliged for quite long to follow the rhythm and meet high expectations despite her handicap. A train obliged to go on with the trip and reach its destination on time although it was out of its rails. And no room for mistakes. It was a silly situation but the effect was there. Now the train is put on track. There are certainly stones and unexpected bends on the way. And there will be worries. But at least there’s a change.

It feels correctness, order and relief.

All she could say was Alhamdulillah.

To mamma

December 12, 10 am. Exactly one year ago, I received that shaking news that you were gone. "Lbaraka frasna mamma a khti," Abdessamad managed to tell me on the phone.

I had just arrived to office in Casablanca, and I don’t know how I made that trip back to Rabat. Everyone was already there. Relatives from all cities were arriving.

That day was cold and foggy… and it’s still cold and foggy down here. This world is harsh mamma, and peaceful people like you are really becoming rare.

One year has passed but we didn’t forget you, and will never do.

I kiss your hands.

From 5 to 25

I was small and carefree. I waited for that beginning with both fear and enthusiasm. That new year at school was so special for me because it meant new clothes and lovely colourful school supplies.

I am grown-up and responsible. I waited for that beginning with both fear and enthusiasm. I got new clothes, and was given new colourful desk supplies

And I have to work to earn a living…