Of Turning Thirty/Meto at Twenty!

In the year 1999 I turned twenty. If you had the chance to see me in this year you would have seen a totally different person. Young was the word to describe my age and my face but not my looks, with my extremely old fashioned clothes and glasses that I insisted to wear only to look older and with the sad deep look that I always carried, with the kind of books I used to read and whenever I opened my mouth to say anything -something that rarely happened- you would say "What's wrong with this boy?! he looks 16 and he sounds 50!!" I was silent most of the time, engulfed in my own world, talking to myself either silently or loudly most of the time and trying to keep away from people as much as I could. I never had friends at school, my attachment to studying and to be always the first kept me closer to my teachers and books but very far from my colleagues, and actually I didn't mind that, on the contrary, I used to see my colleagues as ridiculous and silly creatures who are shallow and dumb and who spend their valuable time doing useless things. I felt superior and far batter than them so they did not deserve even to say good morning to them or replying to anything they said. My world had no people except my family, mainly my mother and 4 sisters, and of all the members of my family, my little sister Salma was my pet. I took full charge of her when she was 2 and I was 14, I became responsible for anything related to her life, school, going out, reading, everything! At that age she was the only human being I got closer to, with her cheerful and life loving self she filled my days with happiness, I saw many things through her little innocent eyes and I spent my best times with her. Till this day I never feel she is my sister, she is my daughter, a piece of me and the dearest person to my heart. This weird character went with me to university and the fact that I was studying Pharmacy with all the abuse we had to go through from long tiring sessions to being victims to all kinds of psychological complexes that the professors suffered from and got on us, this added to my silent and inward solitude and resulted in this absurd character that I had. I recall that the worst time ever was the one when I had to work in a group to perform some lab work or to do an expriment where each student is supposed to coordinate with a team to get something done. Thank God my reputation as a very clever guy helped me to gain the trust of my colleagues that I will handle everything and they will just get the results, I gained their trust and respect but not their love, but did I care? My free time which was only in the summer holidays was spent in training; I worked in pharmacies, companies, medical labs, I just wanted to make use of every minute I have to get career-related knowledge. And going out meant going out alone or with my family, rarley with school colleagues who for sure found me very boring with my silence, my deep interest in books and my hate to football and sports, my inability to share their talks about cars and such things that teenagers find engaging. At that age I was extremely religious, I used to pray in the mosque as much as possible, walking always with the holly Koran and reading it in transportation and whenever I had any free time. My biggest dream was to bomb myself in palistine to gain a lifetime residence in paradise and do something useful with my anyway ending life, and if I couldn't do this, my more earthy dream was to graduate and have a career in research, finding a magical drug that cures one of the world's most deadly diseases, getting a Noble prize in medicine, getting married as soon as I graduate and have a big family with lots of daughters (probably that was the influence of Salma) So in short, at 20 I was this weird silent guy, wearing funny clothes, attaching passionately to religion, judging people by the way they dress and their grades at school, reading difficult books mostly classical novels of Arabic, English, French and German writers and living in my own world that no one had any access to, carrying a bad experience of one sided attraction to a beautiful girl at school who I never ever had the courage to go and talk to although her sister was my sister's best friend, loving her silently and writing her tears-drawing painful love letters that never reached her and suffering but enjoying in silence and solitude. I also had some attempts in writing, with several short stories and a long story with all the sadness and misfortunes that could happen to a hundred people all happening to one poor woman that I created as a character! In 1999 I turned twenty and in that year, a new me was being created! Keep following!