"Your days are happy"

Only twice a year did I feel incapable of sleeping. No matter how hard I shut my eye-lids, my mental machinery kept working away and conjuring up all sorts of scenarios and preparing suitable verbal and physical responses. The night before the first day of the new school year was a night of planning, unprecedented ambitions and promises of academic improvement. The night before Eid Al Fitr, however, was all about money. 'How much am I going to make tomorrow?' I constantly asked myself. Hours later, I would shut my eyes and force myself to stop thinking.

Eid was arguably the highlight of the year's religious and social calendar. A day when everyone came together, putting personal piffs aside and reaffirming our human unity - as if! For kids, however, Eid was like the financial district's bonus season (in the long gone times when such rewards existed!) The more relatives -investors- you had, the higher your dividends. After showering and putting on my new or new-looking clothes, I had celebratory breakfast with my family for the first time after a month of fasting - Geimar (thick cream), strawberry jam and tea made for a delicious meal. A few of us would be miming names of particular firework types and one of my brothers who was responsible for supplying them would either mime back or make gestures with his hand to inform us of his final reduction in price.

Having visited our relatives and collected our semiannual pay-out, we rushed to what is known only for the day as 'Eid Square.' Scores of children shouted and sprinted from one ride to another, like a flock of seagulls pouncing on a fisherman's boat. A small ferris wheel was the centre point of a number of lame attractions that included a raffle stall; a fireworks stall; a shoot 'em up table and a candyfloss corner. The main attraction was a couple of group swings with two smoking men with thick moustaches at the helm doing all the pushing and shouting so as to excite the lunatic crowd. Only I seemed to notice that one of the swings was right next to an electric post with dangerous-looking cables dangling from it. Unfortunately for me, it was the swing that I was sitting in. As the kids bellowed out a traditional Eid chant: "Push harder! We won't come down unless we're beaten up!", I screamed my heart out. "STOOPPP!! LET ME DOWN!" I never liked being pushed hard on swings but this was swings liked I'd never seen before: with a group of crazed children and an ominous man pushing so hard that my seat would occasionally hit the cable from the nearby post. I got off that ride with my hands on my face and my brothers' mocking laughs ringing in my ears.

Eid also meant new clothes, for young and old. Children wore different kinds of outfits to mark the occasion. Some wore checkered suits with elastic ties that made them look old and stupid; others wore jeans, shirts and sunglasses eventhough it was during a relatively cold time of year. As I look back now, I'm grateful to have been the odd-looking kid who dressed casually and sometimes didn't even manage to buy new clothes for one reason or other. I was content with what I had and didn't pay much attention to sartorial details - oh how I'd love to be of such aesthetic modesty today!

After spending hours on minute-long rides that seemed to our naive and mathematically-inept brains like an eternity, we would call it a day and go home with bucketloads of joy, excitement and inevitable regret at wasting all our money. If we were lucky, we'd be treated to a film or other such luxury. Our minds would then go back into school mode and we would start methodically panicking over our unfinished, or unstarted, homework.

This was how I celebrated Eid more than a decade ago. Today, as hard as I try and as desperately as I search, I cannot find much happiness in such communal festivities. People always asked me why I never look happy whenever there's something to celebrate; my robotic response is something along the lines of "Who said I'm not happy? I am, but I'm not going to dance about it, am I?"

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I'm not exactly a party animal. To me, most festivities are off-puttingly exaggerated and I find myself raring to slap anyone who smiles too much. Particularly difficult to stomach are the three big festive occasions; the two Eids and Christmas - the latter I have never enjoyed and this year seems to be no exception. Karaokeing to The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl may have offered a glimpse of Christmas's reputed sense of community and togetherness, but I remain unconvinced.

Eid is embarrassing; Christmas is cold and birthdays are, well, check the archive. True happiness needs no occasion and we should be forever grateful to be alive and to have one another.

By the crack of dawn, my eyes sumbit to physical exhaustion and.. slowly.. I fall asleep.

School Daze - Part 2

Year 2 was much better as I was as academically capable as most students in the class. I wasn't yet one of the select few who the teacher regarded as the cream of crop, but I was gradually getting there. During that year, I managed to strike up good relations with a few people whom later became my best friends. I found one of them on Facebook a few months ago and I cannot wait to meet him again after all those years.

We moved houses the following year and it took some time for me to settle and feel comfortable with the latest change of scenery. Once I did feel at home, though, I slowly climbed up the ranks in my class till I was finally dubbed the 'naughty genius' by teachers. Despite that, I was beaten up with that sordid stick on an almost daily basis. I, along with the vast majority of students in the country, were beaten up for the smallest of errors and the most undeserving of reasons.

The summer following the end of that academic year saw the passing away of my mother and my adopting an attitude that was a little more observant, as opposed to the care-free, inquisitive character I had upheld previously.

I had a good relationship with all my teachers, especially those whose lessons I found particularly engaging, and whom I strove to impress throughout my schooling years. Looking at it now, it seems a pitiful effort to achieve something I cannot quite figure out. Maybe all I really wanted was to fit in and be like the others. I was a passportless Iraqi whose sole 'connection' was a family friend who was well-connected with high-ranking Syrian officials. I did, however, manage to stand out in certain aspects; English lessons were Mehdi-time as far as some of my friends were concerned. Due to my having a relatively better knowledge of English, I was the teacher's favourite. On many occasions I would refrain from putting my hand up as I saw eyes rolling and tongues tutting as if to say “Here comes Mr Shakespeare!”

Year 4 was perhaps my best year in Syria. I was academically outstanding and I had a wonderful set of friends, all of whom helped me feel truly happy at heart. My teacher, Mr Bashar, gave me an invaluable amount of encouragement and planted in me a sense of confidence that no other teacher came close to equalling. Still, I didn’t escape his Asaya, but my beatings came no where near the beating a friend of mine once received for scoring low grades in his monthly examinations. Usually, you would open your hand and stand on the tips of your toes in anticipation of the teacher’s cursed Strike. This time, Mr Bashar had intended to hit Hussein so hard that he missed the target and ended up hitting the underside of his wrist. The whole class gasped in shock but Hussein simply fell to the floor in agony. The janitor, Abol Foz, was called to deal with the situation whilst we froze in utter terror. Having missed the rest of the week, he came back with a cast covering his arm.

Year 5 was more or less the same as Year 4, except for the teacher of course. Mr Zuhair was a refined, leather-jacketed disciplinarian. He was a hardcore, sixties sort of teacher who talked about student activism and old-fashioned trends that we lacked. His apparent gentility was never in doubt, but he occasionally switched tabs and became much like any other teacher. The class consisted of nearly 60 students, three on each desk. When angered, he managed to throw a piece of chalk at the student he wanted to call, as if it to sound the drums of war. One of the corners of the class, where the rubbish bin handily sat, he called ‘The Boxing Ring.’ As prefect, it was impossibly difficult for me to write names on the blackboard. Sometimes I did, and I can’t forgive myself for doing so. The scenes of carnage that ensued are stuff of Dickensian fiction, but it was happening before our eyes.

Year 5 also saw my getting the highest grades in the whole class for the first (and only) time. I was usually amongst the top three but had never been the highest scorer. When I did, I was overjoyed and my friends flocked to congratulate me. It’s funny and rather annoying when I think of how good I was back then, and how far-fetched such achievements seem today.

It was only in Year 6 that we had a different teacher for each subject. The Arabic teacher stood out as the students’ favourite due to his involvement in an after-school program which many Shia students took part in. I only joined because they went on trips and offered participants the chance to play on computers - an absolute privilege in 1999. He liked me and I was rather apprehensive towards him because he was one of those aggressively-playful characters whom you are bound to meet in your lifetime. I was introduced to him during our first lesson with him; I was called out and told to answer a grammatical question which another student had answered incorrectly. It was an extremely basic question of tenses but my standing in front of Mr Abdel Rahman scared me to the core.

“It’s a past tense, Sir.” I murmured, shaking.

“Past tense? Brilliant! Are you sure?” He asked mockingly.

I quietly shed a few tears of embarrassment, fear and utter hatred of life!

“Yes, Sir. It’s a past tense.”

I could hear a few students gasp and say “Mehdi! What’s wrong?”

I looked at them and cried some more but I couldn’t see what other bloody tense it could have been!

After the lesson, he called me out of the classroom and spoke to me. Upon finding out that I was Iraqi, he asked why I had answered incorrectly and why I was crying. I told him I was very scared so he hugged me so as to comfort me and re-assure me that he is but a friendly beast.

It went downhill in Year 7. The onset of adolescence, coupled with my choosing to waste my time and money on collecting Pokemon stickers resulted in my academic levels taking a significant slump. I struggled to maintain average grades and many gave up on my passing that year. This wasn’t made any better by my new-found interest in a number of public figures. Of course, I don’t mean Javier Solana or Kofi Anan; rather, my friends and I were infatuated with a Syrian actress called Nourman As’ad and would not stop debating which angle best accentuated her utter beauty! Only Elissa proved to be the catalyst that diverted our attention. She soon become the talk on every tongue. Any teenager that year must have had at least one Elissa moment which he would be able to recall as if it had happened only last night.

One of the most hilarious incidents of that year was during an Arabic lesson when the teacher asked about the different conditions of the hemza (a written linguistic link placed either by itself, above a vowel or underneath it.)

“I wonder where the hemza in 'Elissa' goes..“ Joked Homedan.

We giggled but were cautious so as not to draw Mr Bahjat’s attention, only for Foad to open his gob.

“Depends on whether she’s under the duvet, under water or alone and bare."

As we laughed hysterically, a few were rounded up and sent to the head of year’s office. Mr Ridha, who was in charge of the boarding facilities during my brief yet scarring stint - was the Head of Year. His name was enough to make students shudder with fear. Inevitably, they came back cooling down their palms.

There was a mirage-like notion of our moving to England, but it was hardly something that I thought much of. Somehow, I passed Year 7 and, ironically, straigh after collecting my certificates from a smirking Mr Ridha, I had to dash to the British embassy to finalise my paperwork. I was a little upset that I’d have to leave behind the faces and places that I’d grown up with. My final year was particularly exciting for me as I was able to explore the city and form a relatively personal relationship with it.

To be continued.

School Daze - Part 1

I was recently flattered by the knowledge that one of the kids I knew from school is an avid reader of my blog. When he started attending the school, he was subject to intense scrutiny by everyone who saw him as he had a distinctly posh manner of speech. The fact that he wasn't yet ten years old made it more comical given that the vast majority of students nationwide struggled to construct a single grammatically-sound sentence. His stardom gradually waned and I suppose kids have now become used to their rather refined colleague.

Merely remembering him, though, tempted me to go through my mental-archives and see whether my schooling experience was a memorable dozen years that moulded who I am today, or a forgettable set of incidents, people and papers which are best kept at bay lest I'm sucked into the cyclone of pubescent melancholy, where I regularly took refuge during those days. More importantly, how much has changed, if at all, since I last walked past the school gates as a student?

My first two years of school, Reception and Year 1, were spent at an Islamic school in London which had been set up by the instructions of Sayyed Abol-Qasim Al Khoei, so as to provide a suitable learning environment for the Shia community's children. Although it was a private school, it chargeed very little. However, it now charges significant fees and many families who felt that they can no longer pay four-figure cheques for their children's education have opted to send their children to state schools, irrespective of the cultural ghosts that loom large - or so it is claimed. Luckily for me, I suppose, the fees only rocketed after I left.

In any case, my introductory couple of years at school were pure, unadulterated fun. I vividly remember Miss Lynn whose office had, amongst other wonderful things, toy monsters. My favourite was a brown dinosaur for whom I would deliberately get in trouble in order to be sent to Miss Lynn's office. I also remember when I told my teacher that I needed to use the bathroom, only for me to sneak out and go to the newly-built children's play area. There were a few tricycles which I just wouldn't stop dreaming of playing with. The picture was taken a couple of years ago when I went to visit.

The best thing about those two years, however, was the fact that, despite seven years in quasi-exile, some of the children I played with in 1993-4 are now my closest friends.

"Where are you going during the summer holidays?" I remember being asked in front of the whole class, sometime towards the end of of Year 1.

"We're going to Mecca for two weeks." I replied, much to the envy of some of my friends whose summer was to be spent in less awe-inspiring places. Little did I know that I were to re-enroll at the school nearly a decade later.

We did go to Saudi Arabia that summer. Dubiously, our two weeks of pilgrimage were followed by a 'visit' to Syria. To cut a long story short, there was a dramatic change of plan and we ended up staying in Syria for over seven years. There, I came to a vague understanding of the world and where I, in all my 165cm of might, stood in it. It wasn't exactly a sheltered childhood, but upon my return to London in late 2001, I clearly saw that life in places like Syria limits not only people's opportunities but their view of the world at large.

We stayed in a town on the outskirts of Damascus called Sayyeda Zaineb, in reference to the Prophet's grand-daughter whose golden-domed shrine is the centre-point of the town. A local relative was entrusted to find a school to take me in. Seeing that I was still six years of age, and that I couldn't even spell my name in Arabic, I had to start from scratch. It took three attempts to find a good school for myself and my brothers, for whom it must've been doubly difficult to adapt to this sudden change of plan.

The first school we went to was a state school near our house (which we changed several times over the years). Most children there were of economically-disadvantaged backgrounds. They were generally nice to us, despite the occasional oh-look-at-the-British-kid remark which we had to put up with. The real jaw-dropper, however, came in the shape of a large, sellotaped wooden stick. Anyone caught talking during the lesson, anyone whose homework wasn't immaculately presented, anyone who gave the teacher, well, the wrong end of the stick - was punished by the Asaya. Our pleas to parents and relatives were forever unheard, and the beating continued throughout our time in Syria.

After the state school, we were transferred to a private school. A mini-bus with a colourful sticker on the driver's door picked us up from our area and dropped us back. There, I became good friends with an Iraqi boy called Mehdi who, like me, had a bag with a big, smiling bear sketched on it. The only difference was that my bag was black and yellow whilst his was pink and red. I was delighted that I was one of two bear-bag wearers whose names and nationalities were identical. Sadly, this coincidence was the single interesting thing that I told people when they asked me about school.

A few days later, we were transferred to another private school. It was said to be one of the best schools in the country, admitting only the smartest (most well-connected, really) students. However, this time there was a rather important clause; we were to become resident students at the school's boarding facilities. We attended the school as boarders for the remainder of the year and moved back home afterwards. I will spare the readers any details of my experience there as it was rather forgettable.

Fortunately, my Year 1 teacher, Mr Saleem, was kind enough to let me pass eventhough I had yet not learned to write one word in Arabic. I was so hopeless that, on one occasion, I memorised how to write one of the ten words which were written on the blackboard in preparation for a spelling test afterwards. Having learned that single word, I pretended to scribble whilst the teacher read the words out. When he finally uttered the golden three-syllabled word (يجمعون if my memory doesn't fail me) I jotted it down with boundless joy. Unsurprisingly, I scored 1/10. Nonetheless, he kindly allowed me to pass to Year 2 and gave me, as encouragement, a pair of plastic badminton rackets. Funnily, the same day that we started our summer holidays that year, I somehow became near-perfect in my spelling and use of grammar.

To be continued.

Spare change?

If George Bush knew anything about Iraqi cultural festivities, he'd be utterly miserable right now - not that he isn't. On the night when Iraqi kids go around houses -in a trick-or-treat sort of way- singing "majeena ya majeena, shugee il chees winteena (majeena o' majeena, rip the bag and give us) he admirably plucks up the courage to ask for a hefty $700bn to save an economy that seems to be having a paralysing stroke. Having waited for a couple of weeks for an answer, he gets an ego-crashing rejection the same day that Iraqi children collect their "eediya", a small sum of money given to children in celebration of Eid.

I couldn't help but make an association and laugh when I saw a sign in a cafe near college. It read: "Please do not ask for credit. A slap on the mouth often offends."

Poor George.

20 Candles, One Wish

Yesterday I listened to a radio program discussing age, getting older and one's impending demise. Without sounding like a hindsight hero, the points raised further proved to me theories I had previously speculated.

To most of us, getting older is something we'd rather not talk about since it reminds us that we're slowly but steadily treading towards life's chequered flag.

It was said that, on the one hand, men are more prone to bouts of depression as they get older which, to me, is perfectly understandable as a fellow member of the gender. Spirits tend to be at their absolute lowest when we step into the mental landmine that is the mid-life crisis. Pitifully, we attempt to re-fuel our self-esteem by behaving in ways that would make any young man cringe. If you ask me, I'd say it's a fault in modern perceptions of what makes a 'man' rather than a testosterone-induced sense of inferiority. That's the deal with men. Women, on the other hand, ever the stoic ones, take pride in growing older. Despite the gradual loss of youthful exuberance and possible gaining of other, less glamourous bits, women are heartened at seeing their offspring blossom. This is almost unanimously considered to be the greatest achievement of all. In short, women are generally adept at marching along the sandy shores of time with the sort of majestic grace that us men can only look down on with great envy and pity.

I couldn't listen to the entire program but the question of age, coupled with my birthday, triggered in me a rant-like mental monologue..

What's the big deal with birthdays?

You wake up with a certain sense of importance. "Today's the day" you think, and then you prepare to face the world with an air of confidence. You get to be the centre of everybody's attention -and affection, I would assume- and you get a few presents and words of congratulation from those who cared enough to remember the date. So far, it's all perfectly fine and I have no objection. What I find utterly unfathomable is why you're supposed to be showered with praise and made to feel like you've achieved, over the past twelve months, a distinctively praise-worthy goal(s), when in most cases you actually haven't.

I'm not a cynic or a party-pooper. I love nothing more than having a genuinely good time with the people I love; but to actually 'celebrate'? Give me a break! What's there to celebrate? There are far too many things to resolve that are just a little more urgent than deluding yourself with a false sense of achievement and self-worth. It's just too vain for my liking. Of course, my rant strictly applies to people who blow more than, let's say, 18 candles. Anyone who is yet to reach that milestone has a claim to being boundlessly pampered for the sake of living in today's child-centred and ever so caring society. A friend of mine always seems to win whatever argument by declaring with clear frustration "Fucking hell! we live in the 21st century!"

I guess so.

Personally, I have tended to feel disappointed with what little I have managed to do over an entire year. Few are the birthdays when I have genuinely felt happy when revisiting the highlights of the bygone months. Last night, however, as the clock struck midnight, officiating my becoming a twenty-something (nothing really, just twenty), I felt compelled to re-evaluate my opinion on birthdays and what they're supposed to mean..

Life is way too short and every passing minute should be cherished. Special moments, people, places and words are to be preserved in an imaginary perfume bottle for us to open and re-live whenever we wish.

The past year has taught me to be more tolerant of difference, to seek solace in my family, to keep climbing despite the numerous hurdles which, with sufficient determination, become anecdotal. Not only am I on the verge of completing a third of my university degree, I have also been extremely lucky in getting a foot on the ladder of my dream career by working during the entire summer for a respectable broadcasting corporation.

My hopes have been put into perspective and my ammunition polished.. all I have to do now in order to make today a success (in the eyes of my foul-mouthed friend, at least) is be a little merry and blow the candles.. but what would I wish for?

Seriously, I wish I didn't care so much!

I can clearly hear my inner-emo protesting "such a lousily corny finale!"

An audience with..

Whilst they lay bare and wait to be seen to,
I look at their shrines and ask..

"Did I like them?" I certainly feel sorry for them now.
"Did they like me?"

Dunno

As I try to leave their morbid congregation,
A distant memory of a smile that only I noticed
brings me to a complete halt.

They really aren't here.
They are but not like how I am.
Perhaps they're more here than I will ever know..
Until I join their glum dinner party, of course.

For now, I better get going or I'll somehow forget
The way back to life.

When..

When you lay down to rest and tightly lock your eye-lids in hope of falling asleep.. but fail..

When your train of thought is constantly derailed by unfinished work, unrequited love..

When you feel stuck in between numbers and names and lifeless faces..

When you lose the ability to transcend time.. past, present and future..

When you fail to see beyond colour, shape and size..

When you have something to say but no-one to say it to..

You seek warmth in the hidden treasure inside you.. the flame of life and seed of love that makes you who you are..

You seek solace in the sea of beauty that is your God-given soul..

When you realise that less needs to be decided and more needs to be done..

When you feel empowered by a stranger's smile..

When you feel that Heaven's might lies between your hands..

When you reach your summit of selflessness..

You have been happy, though you may not know it.