April 1st, 2023

“time, wonderous time, gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies…” – taylor swift, invisible string

hopeless is an adjective i often use to describe myself: a hopeless romantic, a hopeless hyper-fixator, a hopeless case of anxiety. hopelessness is the blues. hopeful is an adjective i feel all the time: a hopeful daughter, a hopeful student of both God and the world, a hopeful mess of dreams. hope is my purple-pink sky.

the two conflict all the time, but they’re almost the same thing to me. to be drained of hope is dangerous, but so is a Salma full to the brim with hope. She’s a force to be reckoned with, a fire too bright to ever be dimmed, and the possibilities for her are endless, unimaginable. This is my Salma right now. I sit with the future ahead of me, scared as I always am but braver than I ever was before.

If you know me, you’ll know that I am big on Star Trek metaphors. Here’s one for you, for the record, for history: Salma stands at the frontier, leaping forward, exploring new worlds, new emotions, and even new lives.

This hope might be shattered soon, who knows? It just doesn’t matter for now. For now, I think maybe I can transform my world and maybe my mom’s one day. And my Egypt, with my beautiful, wonderful, stronghold of Cairo. I love you with all my heart, despite all the hurt and the heartache and miseries you have caused me in the short span of 22 years. I forgive you, because it was never your fault. You might have been named the conquering city, but you’re the one conquered and held captive. One day, I will be free of their shackles and I will free you too.

For Cairo, from Chicago with love.

thoughts at the reg while fasting

I am so overwhelmed with how grateful I am. I can’t find words to describe it. Even if it all goes to hell after this month, I think it was all worth it. From now on, wherever I go, this country, this city, this neighborhood, and this campus have imprinted such beautiful and wonderful hopes and ambitions in my heart. Before, I thought they were all lost. They were not. They are not. Freedom, education, solidarity, and community are not lost. They’re here, overflowing. Maybe the amount I carry back home with me will not be enough to save the entire country, not even enough to save my mom and the life I wish I could have given her, but it might just be enough to save me. Or, at least keep me afloat long enough to figure it all out.

Coptic Christmas and Remembrance

I couldn’t watch a film about the revolution today, barely made it halfway through and needed to take a break. It was the M*sp**ro killings that got me. Maybe I am getting too soft, or maybe I am less desensitized to violence than I thought I had become. I do not know, but seeing beautiful young men and women trampled, stomped over by tanks was not how I imagined my evening going. It was not how they imagined their life ending. Ruthless. Heartless. Brutal. And all for nothing it would seem. On this Coptic Christmas, I remember Mina Daniel. I remember his mother, to whom I apologize for having her go through the agony of not only losing a child, but also losing the cause for which he gave up everything. Remember Mina Daniel and all those who lost their lives for a dream no one got to materialize. I hope the heavens still celebrate you as the martyrs that you are.

Trying to write. think of imaginary non-fiction, so not real but not entirely fake either.

I tend to overexaggerate without actually meaning to do so. It’s second nature by now. No matter what, I am a person who typically makes certain things appear to be bigger than they ever need to be. Yet, I also developed over time a nasty habit of minimizing the significance of things that should mean everything to me, or at least the effects of which are truly detrimental. It’s something you learn to do growing up where and how I did.

I suppose you can see where the dilemma lies. Or did once lie. This was a while back.

Eventually, no dilemma remained. All that mattered lost meaning in my eyes, and my heart hardened like asphalt after all the stomping feet made their marks. I became stone cold, yet I longed for something or someone to fill the boot-shaped gaps left within me by those who paved me and then deserted me to the elements of harsh weather and cruel strangers.

It makes no sense, I know. It doesn’t really to me either.

Update:

Hi folks! Insane that I haven’t posted here for a whole year. Well, it has been quite the year but I do hope you’ll forgive me if you were one of those actively reading my little not-so-sweet nothings over the past six years or so. I miss writing and I’ll try to get back to it. I can’t make any promises because for once in my life I truly feel alive even if a tad lonely. I never thought I would feel so… free? free is the word. the Americans were right about one thing: liberty is goddamn beautiful. I already dread the day I will have to let it all go. How does one forgo a life without worry, a walk without fear?

28.12.2022

thoughts I might not mean tomorrow

I feel different, like I’m maybe finally changing with the world after letting the world change without me for so long. That doesn’t really make sense, perhaps. It’s just an odd feeling, realising that you’re finally doing too much but for the right reasons… or maybe not the right reasons, just better ones. I’m still as lost as anytime before, heck, I’d say more lost than ever and in so many new ways I’d never thought possible, Yet, here I am, not dying from the pain, somehow surviving the stress and wishing it would end. I don’t want to quit anymore, although quitting would make everything so much easier. I think this is just surviving with a twist; surviving with a little more room to breathe and less people to drain my oxygen away.

20.12.2021

2.10.2021

Dearest,
your life could never go to waste when it has more meaning than one could ever hope for. your words are as lovely as you are, but I do hope you know that your friends are ever-present with you.
As does the sun when it disappears at dusk and returns for the start of a new day, your friends and their love will shine upon you once again, brighter than ever with the break of dawn.
And their light, which yearns for reunion, will merge with yours until no darkness could ever touch you.
may your nights always be lighter with love.
here’s all of mine,
tangerine 🍊

calling on a god who’s busy elsewhere

i swore i wouldn’t give up so easily, but it’s been so long since i wasn’t struggling to feel worthy of living.

i sought out everything, small and big, whether i actually wanted it or not.

and yet, here i am, in the same spot, with nothing to my name and nothing to show for all the pain of waiting and waiting and waiting for it.

i am tired of suffering the grief of waiting and never getting. i am tired of carrying all my grief only to carry so much more with each passing day.

what should one do, oh merciful god, to finally get your approval? to go back to feeling like they might be tolerated by you, let alone loved, touched, blinded by your grace?

what is it that i am doing wrong? is all of it, all of me, wrong?

tell me, if there’s no point to this, tell me.

if there’s no point in my living but this feeling of unworthiness, then this unsalvageable soul begs for its end.

grant me my own buoyant vest, or show me if there’s a white light,

but stop leaving me in reckless abandon.

stop giving me your number, only to hang up the phone when i call.

stop telling me to catch you at home instead, only for you to sever your landline and cut off all the train tracks leading to rome.

i suppose this is my last attempt in reaching out, calling on a god who’s busy elsewhere to care.

sending a letter must be easier, but maybe that’s just the sound of desperate despair.

all i know is that i just can’t take another stay at a heartbreak hotel or stand another day of faking that i’m even remotely fine..

i just can’t.

23.08.2021

14.7.2021

the world is your oyster. the world is my oyster.

the world is yours for the taking. the world is mine for the taking.

no more dependency. no more letting havoc reign free.

no more useless excuses. no more waiting for the enabling users.

if you’ve got something to say, why won’t you say it?

if i’ve got something to say, why don’t i say it?

if there’s something to save, why won’t you save it?

if there’s something to save, why don’t i save it?

you’re free… maybe for now. you’re free. run.

i’m free…maybe just for now. i’m free. i’m running.

dearest, here’s a confession

unedited – 4/6/2021

dearest,

here’s a confession:

i don’t call upon the gods anymore;

why ask, why beg when it’s been a little more

than half a decade since they’ve heard you last?

i’ve lied before, all those time I had written you

in the past;

i haven’t seen the light for so long

let alone lingered in its grace like I had once longed.

and yes,

hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have

— but no,

i don’t have it anymore.

it’s been lost in the currents of flightless whines,

unmurmured, unuttered

from these cracked, pale lips.

i realise now that

it doesn’t take an alchemist to see

that all i am is the real me,

the whole me is the current me.

stuck, still, lying in wait

even though i don’t want to be.

why is it that i stumble, crumble

in the wake of loss when all the skyscrapers lay mocking me?

soaring, ivory towers could be pretty somewhere in new york,

but have you seen the way they look down upon you

with daunting eyes and cruel smiles

even when you put in the work?

i admit i tend to lie most times, my friend

it’s something to which i’d grown accustomed

to spell, to send,

to fend off the fiends.

though now i’m telling you, sincerely

with any dignity i might have held,

that hope has forever been bottom-shelved

and disappointment appears to be something

that can’t be helped

you know,

my george told me once

that there’s no use of waiting;

it’s no good staring out a window,

watching the people, the cars, the whole of life

pass you by as you do.

he was right, as always, his words were true

i can’t keep on sitting, waiting for the sun

while everyone else found a way and grew

i’m wasting in this house of hand-me-downs

and all i’ve done to try and run

only left a bitter taste on my tongue

and another slashed scar on my lungs

even my mama knows i can barely breathe

i cough more in a day than a kid with hay fever

in spring could manage to sneeze

my chest aches as much as my mind

when i remember how easy it used

to be, being kind.

the only bad that doesn’t hurt

are my lies,

and though i tried my best to be curt,

to be graceful, to be honest,

i do admit i lie when i am loneliest.

by intent or by omission,

i lied to you again at the start, my dearest.

i may call upon the gods no more.

but the

heavens know, the earth knows

that sending them forget-me-nots is just as desperate

just as close

to begging as the wind in the winter comes to blows.

i guess all of this comes down to the fact that

i’m not sure

if i’m just trying to say that i tried

with the comfort of a pagan’s disguise,

or if i’m spinning this wheel to feel better as i cried

about my own feelings of self-despise,

or maybe all these reasons are the same,

quite the vigilant danger,

or the coalited tamer:

my waiting reprise.