Home

I unlock the door. It creaks the sound of wood that hasn't been touched for years. Everything is bathed in black. 

I step into our house and smell the air. A distant smell of enclosure and abandonment linger lightly in the air. 

And it's so hard to believe. 

I look around, scan the rooms, take in the sight of all the furniture and the space we left behind long ago. And they look back with all their stillness. But their gaze holds memories that my mind decodes and starts replaying. 

I've always hated my home town. It's a little town where people gossip for entertainment and reject the slightest thing that did not conform to their habits. It's rowdy and I never reached a point where I sympathized with its rowdiness the way I did with Beirut's. Except for the few surviving patches of green in it, I never found beauty in it. 

I hated the town but I loved our house. It's a spacious house, with two floors of space, unlike our sardine-like house in the city. But what I loved most about it was the way I had it memorized. The way I knew how the sunlight filters through every room, and when. The way I found my spots around the clock, following the path of the sun across the walls and windows. But the nights were much more quiet. Our house is by the main road of the town, so it was attacked by car pollution around the clock. 

At night the traffic lessens and the sounds of the surrounding trees make their way in, the crickets and the frogs, the leaves on windy evenings and the creatures of the night. I used to keep track of the way the moon moved across the sky at night, because every night it would rise a bit later than the previous night. The full moon was the best; from my room's balcony you could see the town and the sea and the hills between. When the electricity was out, the scene was ethereal, like everything was submerged in a pale blue light. And on the days when there was power, you see a thousand little twinkling lights and it all makes you feel like, my God things could possibly be okay. And then there was the brilliant moment when the moon reaches the horizon above the sea and it's too late at night for anyone else but you to notice.

I used to hate the town. I still do. But I liked our house. I was sitting in the tiny room where dad preferred to move to. He built it years ago so he wouldn't have to take all the stairs up to our house. I needed to get something from our house so I came up and that smell hit me. The utterly loaded silence. The silence of the one who waited for years to no avail. I opened my drawers. I found everything in place, I even found clothes I thought I lost a long time ago. Everything was there, the way we left it, just waiting to be used, to come to life again. 

It was like it stood there in solemn quietness for years, patiently waiting for us to come back. 

silence vow - day 16

"in the silence between your heartbeat bides a summon.

do you hear it?

name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless,

but why pretend it is not there?

leave that which is not, but appears to be.

seek that which is, but is not apparent."

-rumi

today, on my sixteenth day, i started to understand the purpose behind my vow. and still…

there is an unparalleled sacredness in stillness. the will to become silent eats at your ego, the part of your selfhood that you communicate to the outside tangible world, your shell. but like all matter, it recreates it in a different form: a presence within. by willing your erasure, you accept to embrace the world. 

have you ever thought about the posture of open arms? the exposed torso, lifted hands, no limb is protected by another. a state of simultaneous vulnerability and embrace.

the past days have been brutally painful. the harsher the pain, the deeper the cut. and the deeper the cut, the louder the wail. the more desperately i beg for deliverance. 

hafiz says:

"don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. let it cut more deeply. let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can. something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of the Divine absolutely clear."

absolutely clear. 

silence vow - day 13

they are born in a flash, a bulb of energy, right before they fade out and die. 

ideas, thoughts, inspirations. nothing seems to be able to last. all those pretty words of the mind, they fall as soon as they rise. 

like how it amazes me how rarely people are really looking for an answer when they ask you a question. most times, they're only looking for a confirmation of what they have already preconceived. mute or not, it doesn't matter who you are to answer them. try it for yourself. wait a few heartbeats before answering, put a limit on the number of your words when you reply. 

some people don't even notice i'm silent. i can't imagine how loud their mind must be, cause i've heard how loud their tongues are. 

so you assume, silent tongue, silent mind. or the opposite, since she's repressing so much to say, her mind must be drowning in words. 

it's both. when the question is real, when a real answer is looked for, it's waves of words that surge and have to be repressed. when the question is unreal, i don't even bother thinking of an answer. 

like how i am perceived as harmless because i don't speak. harming is not always a matter of intentions. if anything it's mostly unintended. don't they say it's the closest ones to you that harm you most? i can't harm verbally, nor can i lie. 

"shall I not tell you how to achieve all of this?" the prophet (pbuh)  took a hold of his tongue and said, "restrain this."

like how, in the lack of uttered words, words that are uttered to me reverberate. they echo in my mind. imagine everyone felt the same. imagine how much we would weigh what we say. if our world is good, less harm would be done. if our world is not good, more harm would be done. 

like how your own words have a loud resonance in your head. so when you mute them, you mute the noise they make. 

and somehow, you realize, that there are voices within. noises within.

some are memories that would be replaying, instigated by something your senses picked up. some are premonitions, instigated by something your thoughts stretched to. and there are some that are neither. timeless inner noises. clear as crystal, that make utter nonsense, yet that sound utterly right. 

silence vow - day 9

run on a high, 

crawl on a low. 

i only noticed how annoyingly chirpy i am today when i had to write a work email and couldn't keep my tone remotely serious. 

there's a joy you can float within. it's a very silent space. and sometimes you need words to come aware that you've been floating in that space. as much as silence is an experience necessary to touch intangible dimensions within, so are words. 

otherwise, why would they exist?

i wish i could share my joy. i wish i could extend it to those who live in its lack. i wish silence or words were enough. 

silence vow - day 8

i just spent the past hour and a half of my life staring into the eyes of a man on a screen. 

i went with my class to watch a documentary about palestinian refugees in lebanon. i could barely focus on the content of the movie as one loud urge resonated in me; the urge to protect, to heal, to take care of that man. he showed no sign of weakness or need in any way; on the contrary, he kept displaying that smile of bravery that i know all too well. 

a smile that wants to show self-contentment; a paralyzer smile, an anesthetic, clearly here to numb a horribly gaping pain. he's a grown man, but he kept his childhood eyes. there still remains the fear and terror of what they have seen and the strongest sense of dismemberment i've ever seen. he's no orphan, but he has the panicked look of a child looking for his lost parents, knowing he will never find them. 

that man is real. he's probably smoking another cigarette right now in the confinement of the camp. camp. a bunch of concrete, dirty money and ill security entrapping thousands of suffering souls. 

i've been complaining about my lassitude, about the entrapment of my breath; a figurative one. they can't earn an decent livelihood, can't move up the economic ladder, if they were to make a family, it would be one that suffers under the weight of the chokehold, barely any education, barely any infrastructure to provide them with clean water or electricity. 

that's how you form them, those terrorists. those men all-too-willing to blast themselves for some random cause. trap them, suffocate them and make them hate their lives, despise their existence and so, that of everyone else. boom! 

no, i wish it was one of those ideal moments of, oh i've seen a condition worse than mine, suddenly i feel better. because i raise my praise and thanks to the Giver; i am already aware of being blessed. that was never my problem. 

his problem was that he had nowhere to belong to. he craves at least an illusion of stability, of constancy because in it he thinks peace will be. of course he would, he's been brought up to think he is a refugee, that he belongs elsewhere, and that until he goes back to elsewhere, until he settles down in a dreamland, he'll never be home, he'll never have peace. he'll be within war. 

men around him hold guns and point them at him (jokingly). he doesn't flinch. it feels like he wished they blew his brains. it feels like he's been run over in this life, and can't wait to leave it. he's restless, he's uneasy.

i'm looking for my home too. but it's no land, like palestine. it's no perfect  picture either, like luxury money can buy. i've been home before. i'm looking to find it again.

another point to connect to; i'm looking for the phase in which i disappear into a line.  

silence vow - day 7

there have been bombardments in my mind

and i have been drowning them out.

i have been able to do so because i live in this time,

this time of fast consumption and mass distraction.

i live in a time when i can run away from the unpleasant and the ugly within.

plug music into my ears and mute it,

yet the music i choose somehow preserves echoes, 

echoes of what will not be silenced forever.

and so i forbid myself from music,

i ban myself from distraction,

and bit by bit, i heard them again, i saw her;

a snake inside, that feeds on one piece of my heart

only one piece.

she lurks under the surface and waits,

waits for the piece to grow back,

before she strikes again.

and i, the one who claims to embrace good and evil,

am ashamed of this snake;

i can't call her by its name.

i'm ashamed of labeling her:

loneliness

"don't turn your head,

keep looking at the bandaged wound.

that's where the light enters you.

and don't believe for a moment

that you are healing yourself."*

because it's hard to admit that we are not as self-sufficient as we claim to be

as we make ourselves believe to be, as we are told we are supposed to be.

it's ugly to never be enough.

it's  a sign of weakness because it's not a sign of strength.

right?

wrong.

Healer of all, heal my bitten heart.

* Rumi

silence vow - day 6

there's a long stretch to make between the intoxicatingly sweet void of that elsewhere we reach inside of us, and the loud vibrance of the now our bodies reside in. 

i mean, i'm mutedly walking on that puff of pure joy in the morning, in the afternoon i'm laughing boisterously with my friends, so much i'm enjoying their company, and by nightfall i'm yelling my lungs out while dancing like the stupidest person on earth. and i love it all. 

yes taking a vow of silence for forty days might sound extreme; but i'm against the view that divorces spirituality from everyday life. the view that only associates society's standards of "purity" with the divine and spiritual, and everything else kind of becomes commoners' matters. so it would completely defeat the purpose according to my beliefs to do my fast on a weekend, or in a state of retreat. no. my religion is about incorporating the esoteric within the mundane; actually, it's finding the esoteric in the mundane. God isn't elsewhere. God is everywhere.

"when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy," rumi says. you laugh with all your soul, you cry with all your soul and you pour your soul into dancing like a monkey on coke to britney spears' songs. you're alive with all your fibers. you're so present that past and future can simply never exist.  

today my brains stopped talking. my answers no longer came to my mind in words or letters, they came as pure unarticulated ideas. somehow, it make things better. 

"azza, i'm disappointed in you." my friend was shocked to see me behave like an idiot, shouting and dancing, when i was supposed to be on a spiritual journey. it's frustrating how society gives a pre-painted image to each label. a veiled girl cannot kiss a man who is not her husband; suddenly we attack her values and how she's degrading the veil. we're shocked when a man with bad reputation is seen helping someone get up; yeah he probably pushed her in the first place, or maybe he's just trying to get into her pants. how boring would life be, if categories were so set, and people were subject to labeling? 

it's why i hate labels. heck it might be why i gave up speech. come put a label on that!