Monday, December 28, 2009
Absurd!
He said "So it is really Egypt! They are building the Goddamn wall!". She said "I can't believe she's finally getting a new home". It was their 37th anniversary.
Postponed!
They have been sitting silently for an hour, starring at their empty cups. Suddenly he said "I don't think I can live without yo..". She didn't wait for him to finish the word, she said "Neither can I!".
I do!
He looked at her with his deep green eyes. Rays of piercing light radiated from his eyes into her. She looked down feeling the hot flush of blood on her face. He didn't say a word and he didn't ask her any question. Without saying a word she stole a quick look at him that said "I do".
Unforgiven!
She could have forgiven him for the slap, only if he ran to her and took her in his arms when she fell on the floor.
A Hug!
He was lying beside her in their bed, asleep, deeply asleep. She moved closer to him and placed his silent arm around her body. She only enjoys his hug when he is asleep.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
A Story Without A Start!
She saw his number on her mobile screen in the middle of a hectic work day; it has been almost two months since they have last met. Close friends they keep calling themselves in their personal conversations, online chats and in front of common friends and everyone. The major differences in their characters and in the way they view things can make them nothing but rivals, but his fiery nature that only her smooth understanding and high tolerance for the other could sooth made them close in a way, nothing more than friends, or so she thought until she got his call.
- Him: No never, you know me better than anyone, put me in one place more than two weeks and you will lose me forever.
- Her: My God, it’s not even getting better by age, is it?
- Him: Nope, never. So tell me, what have you been up to?
- Her: Nothing much, work, work and work, it has been stressful lately
- Him: Yeah, as if it has been better before, have you ever been free since you started this business?
- Her: Actually no, you are right, but at least I’m around, a phone call away, unlike those who spend most of their time in airports.
- Him: Ok someone is talking about me, well, I’m in Cairo this week and probably the week after, what are you doing on Tuesday after work of course?
- Her: Nothing, I don’t think I’ve got anything after work .
- Him: What about dinner?
- Her: Sounds great.
- Him: Ok, so we talk again on Tuesday to confirm time and place.
- Her: Perfcet! At last we’ll get a chance to talk, it has been so long I miss talking to you, I need the energy you induce in me with your flamboyant stories.
- Him: Yes, and I need to tell you some news.
- Her: Tell me, another promotion?
- Him: No, actually I’m dating.
- Her: Really!
- Him: Yes, I think it’s serious, anyway I have to go, will tell you all about it when we meet. Take care
- Her: Bye
***
- Her: Finally you are in Cairo, man I pity your family, are you ever gonna settle down a bit?
- Him: No never, you know me better than anyone, put me in one place more than two weeks and you will lose me forever.
- Her: My God, it’s not even getting better by age, is it?
- Him: Nope, never. So tell me, what have you been up to?
- Her: Nothing much, work, work and work, it has been stressful lately
- Him: Yeah, as if it has been better before, have you ever been free since you started this business?
- Her: Actually no, you are right, but at least I’m around, a phone call away, unlike those who spend most of their time in airports.
- Him: Ok someone is talking about me, well, I’m in Cairo this week and probably the week after, what are you doing on Tuesday after work of course?
- Her: Nothing, I don’t think I’ve got anything after work .
- Him: What about dinner?
- Her: Sounds great.
- Him: Ok, so we talk again on Tuesday to confirm time and place.
- Her: Perfcet! At last we’ll get a chance to talk, it has been so long I miss talking to you, I need the energy you induce in me with your flamboyant stories.
- Him: Yes, and I need to tell you some news.
- Her: Tell me, another promotion?
- Him: No, actually I’m dating.
- Her: Really!
- Him: Yes, I think it’s serious, anyway I have to go, will tell you all about it when we meet. Take care
- Her: Bye
***
“A lump in your throat
A cold hand squeezing your heart
Something you’ve never thought
Why are you torn apart?
Yes, you care about him the most
But you will never go for the dart
The happiness he has always brought
Can make your life a work of art
But in his life you cannot get caught
You know you’ll never be his part
Wasn’t this what you’ve been taught?
If you can’t end it then don’t start ”
***
Monday evening. An unsent message saved in the drafts folder of her mobile phone:
““I know it sounds crazy but...I think I feel jealous! I don’t have any reason or explanation for this, I know you see me as boring, naïve and depressing, and I know we didn’t promise each other anything but I can’t help it, I just can’t” ”
***
Tuesday morning. A message from her:
““I’m sorry I won’t be able to make it today, A friend of mine is getting married in 10 days and needs me for some errands, I’ll be busy till the wedding, sorry dear. Take care and good luck with your date” ”
Monday, November 09, 2009
El Masriyeen.... Rag3een!
Do you remember songs like "Mashya El Sanyoora", "Ya Mama Setto", "Mate7seboosh ya Banat" and "3'anno Lel7ayah" that we used to listen to when we were children, with their funny lyrics, cheerful music and the amount of energy and life they used to inject in us whenever we listened to them?
They all belong to El Masriyeen band that was filling the radio and TV with their music and lovely songs in the Eighties, lead by the composer Hany Shenouda and many members as musicians and singers with lovely voice.
Yesterday I had the chance to attend their first come back concert in Cairo that was held in Wekalet El Ghoury in old Cairo. Listening to their songs I suddenly went back to when I was 5 or 6, and recalled how I loved their songs and used to knew them by heart and laugh my heart out with their funny clips. Now, 25 years later I was surprised to see myself still remembering the lyrics by heart, singing with the music without missing a word and getting back that same old feeling of pure, absolute, unconditional and untouched happiness that only children could feel.
The performance was great, the whole band members are so down to earth and I felt as if I knew them already for so long, they were not just singers and musicians doing their job, they were friends, family, relatives. It was obvious that they all have a magical harmony with each other, and whenever Hany Shenouda speaks it is of the simplest, sincere and sweet words, I simply loved the man and his work. He was still on his very same old place on the keyboard, sending passionate looks of love and support to every single member on the band, giving full credit to all of them that I felt he is more of a loving father than a band leader. I couldn't help but going to him after the concert, and over a sincere hug and pair of kisses I thanked him for bringing me back those wonderful feelings that I thought were gone for good and for showing me that happiness can still come in something as simple as a song that is carfeuly written, composed and performed with lots of passion and talent.
The band now has three very talented young singers, Fady, Afaf and Ayman who are just sweet and lovely, I couldn't take my eyes off their lovely faces that were hosting unremovable sweet smiles even after the concert ended.
After a very long clapping session and a friendly chat with Hany and some of his lovely team, I went back home driving my car in the streets of Cairo and suddenly things seemed better, I didn't mind the dirty buildings, the ugly streets, the chaotic traffic or the people's attitude, for my heart was elsewhere and my ear could hear nothing but the happy music and lovely voices. That was exactly how I felt when I watched "Mamma mia" the musical that kept me happy for days and that I kept it in my list of antidepressants and happiness-enducing things :)
Now El Masriyeen band will give their next concert in El Sakia on Wednesday Nov 18th, so I strongly rcommend that you go and get back some of that wonderful time that we all lost for growing up and living in this crazy life.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Our Great History!
Do you agree with me that a great history of thousands of years that is not preserved, not supported by a matching present and signs for a bright future is simply useless and talking about it is pathetic? To me, it is like a very old ugly dirty woman who is bragging about how she was Miss Universe years and years ago.
Egyptians were the most intelligent people, they marvelled the world with their achievements and they taught humanity almost everything from buidling to agriculture to ethics and religions ... Yes, twe were great.
Did you notice the past tense in the above phrase? Sad isn't it? And depressing, at least to me!
I am personally against building the ".....est" things to claim your position in civilization, Dubai for example is always building the tallest, the biggest...etc and although I don't like Dubai and with all the horrors of Cairo and the hate and grudge I carry for it, I would still live there than spend a week in dubai, but you know what, every time I go there I get more and more impressed. yes they do not have history or past, they did not build pyramids or kept the bodies of their deads till now, but they are booming, the city is very clean and organised, life there is very easy, Dubai airpport is the best I have ever seen, even airports in Europe do not match it, it takes you literally 3 minutes to finish all the procedures, everywhere you are greeted, helped, welcomed and you feel you are like a very welcome and loved guest....well, I am proud of them.
And let our 7000 years of civilization bring us clean air, drinkable water and sewage free fruits and vegetables, let it bring us safety while walking in the street and let us bring it the feeling of belonging that was lost long ago, let it bring us the basics of life that we cannot find in our own country although we find them given to everyone wherever we go.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Nostalgia Europea!
Dear Europe,
I've been with you for two weeks, two full weeks, walking in your streets, breathing your air, drinking your water, filling my eyes with all your beauty that never ceases to amaze me and filling my soul with the life I have there that never ceases to make me feel alive. Yes, my dear Europe, I only feel alive with you, alone, without a familiar face, speaking your languages and living in places far away from home and from my beloved family and friends, but still the love that you give me makes me feel fulfilled and happy, a kind of happiness that no one else could give me.
When I first saw you, it was Paris, and it was the time I realized that I belong to you, the week I spent there showed me what happiness really is, what basics of life I miss and I didn't know that I missed unless I had them with you. I could breath a clean fresh air that I never have where I come from, I drank clean water from the tap, something I stopped doing since I was a young boy because the water coming from the taps where I live is not clean and cannot be drunk by humans, I found there a beautiful river, very clean that I could see under the water, accessible that I can walk by it and bend to get some of its water. I found old buildings that carry history of centuries and still look elegant, clean and extremely beautiful. I found greenery wherever I went as if it is a part of the daily life, while I rarely see a tree where I come from. I saw people who have beauty as part of their life, they care for it and would do anything to keep it, people who respect each other and do not care what the others look like, wear or say, I found peace and calmness, I found all what I never thought I needed until I went there. On my way back, in the airport I was crying, I felt as if I was parting from the only happiness I ever had, and I promised you to come back.
Then I lived in Germany for three months, which I see now as the best days of my life. Living there I became sure that my love to you is strong, deeply rooted in me and will stay as long as I live. I came to you with a sore heart and you treated me, and what else can be the best treatment for a wounded heart than being with you. There, I worked, lived, went to places, met people, made friends and with every day there, your love was growing inside me, like a tree that will not be uprooted unless my life ends. And when I went back to where I came from, I had this severe depression, this longing to you and to the days I lived with you, for the first time I was nostalgic to a place that I do not belong to. But don't I belong to you? Is home where you live, where you carry a document stating your nationality that you never relate to, just a dumb word that does not induce any feeling in your heart? Isn't home supposed to be where you feel home, where you feel happy and where you feel that you want to spend the rest of your life there?
Only then I decided that any vacation will be with you, only you, and since then I have been saving all the money that I can to spend it with you, for only with you I feel that money is made to be spent. Who said that money does not buy happiness, the money that I spend to pay for my trips to you give me happiness that is incomparable to anything I have ever felt.
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over
You were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
A song by Noel Harrison from the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" 1968, that won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in the same year
"To look life in the face... always... to look life in the face... and to know it for what it is... at last... to know it...to love it for what it is... and then... to put it away..."
Virginia Woolf
For the first time he woke up without feeling that thrilling happiness that he has been feeling for the last week. Seven days… seven mornings… he used to wake up very early every day, greeted by the cold air that caresses his face as soon as it gets from under the pillow. Whenever he spends a winter night in Europe, he switches off the heating system and he leaves the windows open, he wants to have "cold" as the first thing to feel and the clean smell of fresh air as the first thing to breath as soon as he wakes up.
He ran to the window, the city was still asleep and covered in fog, like a beautiful woman in a French painting from the Nineteenth century, lying elegantly on a love seat, dressed in a transparent veil of white silk that shows its beauty rather than hides it. He breathed the fresh air, carrying the cold of five degrees and the characteristic smell of freshness and cleanliness that he has been absorbing the last week, something he never finds where he comes from. He kept filling his lungs with the air, he wished he can keep the breath inside, he wished he had bigger lungs or his whole body becomes a lung to keep this fresh air inside. What a cruel life, he thought to himself, that makes you see clean air as a dream, even the act of breathing, the most natural and spontaneous right of all living things, is something he cannot enjoy where he lives.
A long shower did not help to wash away the layers of sadness that were covering him the more the time flew. His lips that were smiling inevitably for a whole week could not smile now. He had no appetite for breakfast, although during the last seven days he used to eat with an enormous appetite that he gained 3 kilos in only one week.
He had packed the night before; he did not want to lose any minute of his last hours in that lovely place. He did the bed and left the room as clean and organized as he once stepped in it a week ago, he knew it's a big hotel where they have a staff whose only job is to do rooms, but he just could not leave anything behind him that does not match with beauty. This room has seen him in happiness for whole week, it deserves to be left as beautiful as it should be, and everything in this city has to carry the word beautiful, strongly and proudly.
He dragged his suitcase to leave it in the reception, he was greeted by the beautiful lovely lady that he befriended from the moment he entered for check in. His sadness was obvious and when she told him that she hoped he enjoyed his stay in their hotel, he had a problem speaking, with a gulp in his throat, he said that he enjoyed every minute…that he regretted sleeping for this was a waste of time. And when she apologized because the weather was not good, he interrupted her telling her that it could have never been better, what could be better than a cold cloudy week with showers of rains and blasts of cold air, and all of this contained in a city where the past comes back to life, beautiful and charming, genuine and absorbing. He told her it was his favorite weather, for he comes from a desert, where rain is a rare visitor that visits him few minutes every year, where summer is the most triumphant of the four seasons and where an annoying egotist sun is powerful enough not to allow a single morning to be there without its own presence.
He had two hours to spend in the city before his departure, only two hours…how little is that when we are happy. What can be better than walking in a city where walking, the normal and trivial of all acts, can be an enjoyment, where all the streets are cobbled and very clean, the way he likes streets, where all the buildings he comes across are old and clean, the way he likes buildings, where he is surrounded by clean and fresh air that smells of nothing and when it dares carry a smell it is either the smell of the sea, coffee, freshly bakery, frankincense or plants.
He kept walking, without his camera, his only companion that did not leave his hand the last week, his final walk was dedicated to his eyes only. He did not take his i-pod as well, who needs music in such walk? He wanted all his senses to absorb as much as possible of this city, even its silence, for he treasures silence as much as he treasures beauty and cleanliness. He wanted to kiss the buildings, to hug them; he wished he could be transformed instantly into a giant, big enough to embrace the whole city with its buildings, canals, islands, bridges. Yes he loves dead things as his closest friend once said, but she did not know that he never saw them as dead, for every building was alive telling him a story, its own story where happiness mingles with grief, creating life the way the wind shapes the sand dunes of the desert where he comes from…
Why does everything has to end, why are we lacking the ability to freeze time, to stop life when it should be stopped and where can his life be stopped except in that place? His boat was there, taking him back to the city with its real life, soon he will see cars again, hear their noises and smell the air polluted by their exhaust, soon he will be in an airport, one of the places he hates the most, and soon he will be back to where he came from…
The boat was there, he looked back wishing to run away and hide in the city forever, but he did not, he boarded the boat and it started moving triumphantly. The beautiful coast of "Fondamenta Nuova" was getting gradually invisible to his eyes. His vision was blurred, not from the fog that was still covering the city, not from the rain drops that fell on his eye lashes, but from the tears coming from the heart of a man destined to see beauty only where he does not live and feels nostalgic to where he does not belong…
Murano is not just a type of glass, it is considered the most expensive and authentic glass, named after the island where glassmakers reside, adopting ancient methods of blowing and colouring that is living from the thirteenth century till this moment, inherited across families and turning this small island into one of the most frequently visited places in Europe.
Not very far from the Venetian coast lies this small island like a beautifully drawn painting, and what is a painting without colors?
Venice has always been famous for colored glass that was once called Venetian glass, then in the thirteenth century and due to the fact that most of the houses were made of wood, having those furnaces used for manufacturing the glass made the island at a risk of fire, so the government issued an order that all the glass manufacturers should move to the small island of Murano. Now Murano is a brand, world famous, expensive, luxurious that offers you a wide variety of beautiful products ranging from necklaces, vases, glasses, antiques, chandeliers and all kinds of shapes that can or cannot be made from glass.
The island is really small, peaceful, clean, beautiful and elegant, a chip of the old block as they say, for Venice and beauty seem to be eternal companions. As soon as I stepped from the boat, a magnificent composition of blue glass placed in the main street greeted me with a warm welcome in spite of the cold weather. It took me some time to be able to identify exactly what that object was, a collection of narrow hollow tubes of different shades of blue, arranged around several axes and ending up in this conglomerate of gracefully bent tubes, a work of brilliant art, beautiful beyond explanation.
I wandered in the empty streets, stopping at each shop, wondering how a human hand can be able of working with such care and producing such beauty from something as fragile and brittle as glass. I decided to enter one of the furnaces and see the process live. Most of the shops refused that, and even refused to allow me to take some photos of their products. Only a young beautiful lady invited me in and took me to the furnace where her father was working. He asked me what do I want, I asked him for a vase, a blue vase. And in front of my eyes, a miracle was happening…
I watched the old man working with a speed that my eyes could not follow, I was told that he has to finish in 5 minutes other wise the glass will cool and solidify and cannot be shaped. In less than three minutes, the vase was there, not a plain one, but full of shapes, curves, very unsymmetrical and amazingly beautiful. I was speechless… Was I impressed by the whole atmosphere and how an ugly hot gloomy place like a furnace can be a home for such beauty? Was I impressed by the old man and his super natural speed? Was I impressed by the vase he made in no time, without a previous design, all spontaneous!!!
I wanted to stay more and absorb the beauty of the shapes and colors. The lady was nice enough to allow me to take some photos. How did people live without cameras?
I toured the island several times, stopping at other shapes placed casually in the streets. A combination of long thin segmented glass shapes that reminded me of sugar cane plantations, but they were colored in red, a graceful shape of curved pieces colored in bright red, orange and yellow, a similar figure with shades of blue and many other breath taking shapes scattered here and there that words cannot explain, I will let the photos show you everything, for some places no words can be able to explain their beauty…
I went back to my hotel, with a beautiful vase for my mother, a load of photos in my camera and a lifetime experience that will keep me alive for some time.
To be continued…
Walking into the narrow streets of Venice and getting close to its marvelous old building is a totally different experience than seeing it from the water, sailing on the famous gondola and watching as the scene changes slowly like a film, like a tray of pictures from a fairy tale book.
It was slightly before sunset, the cloudy sky was having that faint orange tint that indicates the approach of sunset in the clear skies of Europe, and of all the European cities that I have visited, clean, organized, civilized as beautiful as they all were, Venice stands alone as a unique individual, around which time had stopped.
Even the gondola, that small boat, the only means of transportation in Venice and a very romantic symbol is unique in many ways. The old Gondolier who invited me aboard his gondola or "Deborah" as he calls her, told me many interesting facts about this magical boat.First of all, it is handmade by the assembly of 280 different pieces that come from 8 types of wood. It operates by a single rowing movement and it has an elongated shape that is approximately 10 meters long, the final edges are turned gracefully upwards emphasizing the ancient fairy tale shape. Some years ago the government in Venice issued an order that all gondolas have to be in a specific shape and all coloured in black with beautiful delicate golden decoration. The government also has ordered that all gondoliers should wear a uniform, black trousers and black-stripped white T-shirt. Yes, some governments care about the beauty of their cities and I am certain that a government for a city like Venice should have beauty on top of its Agenda…
Let me tell you this, watching a gondola standing in the still water of the canal, swinging gracefully and slowly on the water surface can be nothing but beautiful, I saw it as a princess in an elegant black dress and gold ornaments, waving to her people, inviting in the same time.
I boarded the gondola with old "Massimo" the sweet gondolier, listening to his sad and touching story about his gondola and why he calls her "Debora" after his wife who passed away 10 years ago, and after whom he never thought of marrying or even touching another woman, he dedicated his life to take lovers and tour Venice with them, taking them across all the beauties and ending the romantic tour under the bridge of sighs where they kiss and turn their love eternal. When he knew I'm single he was surprised and he asked me I should not waste a single moment in my life without being in love because it is the best thing you can ever do… to be in love.
When he asked me where I am from and I told him Egypt, he surprised me with many things he knows about Egypt, he even called me "habibi"! and when the trip ended he refused to take the agreed price and made me a huge discount just for the fact that I am an Egyptian single man who is brave enough to visit Venice alone and loving it non the less.
Sometimes being Egyptian ends up in something good…Sometimes…
To be continued…
The Accademia as it is commonly called or L'Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia as it is properly called in Italian is one of the world's most renowned art galleries that hosts one of the finest collections of Italian paintings dated to the pre-1800s. It was founded originally as a school for fine arts; painting, sculpture and architecture. It is a huge building located on the Grand Canal, the main canal crossing Venice and it was originally three separate buildings that were combined and turned into this magnificently huge art gallery in the eighteenth century.
Among the great work of arts that the Accademia hosts, the most famous of all is Da Vinci's "Vetruvian Man" (attached) which is a masterpiece of art and science and contains many secrets of geometry.
Entering the huge gate after a warm welcome by a typical Roman façade, I kept moving smoothly from one room to another, trying to absorb the immense paintings with all their details, starting with very early Christian art and ending with beautiful sceneries.
After some time, I just had some difficulty trying to lift my lower jaw placing it back in its proper place. It was inevitable…I was wondering how can a single artist, a man, just another human being, how can he be able to work on such huge paintings and I mean huge, with all the details, the facial expressions, the background and its full assembly of things… It was just unbelievable…I am talking about Bellini, one of the great Italian painters, a Venetian who needs a post of his own (which will come later on among other Venetians, promise), a painter who was fascinated by the Virgin and Jesus, capturing the most emotionally intense moments in their lives with beauty that words cannot describe…
Many questions were left unanswered in my poor mind that has been subjected to a brutal culture shock as soon as I landed in this magnificent city which is a work of art itself. I tried to pick one of the huge paintings randomly and I tried to imagine the painter standing in front of a plain wall. Did he have the whole scene in mind before starting or he just made it up as soon as he hit the wall with his brush? Where did he start with his brush? Which color did he use? How did he manage to complete such a huge work? How did he manage to take breaks and come back to work on the very same part?
After some time, I was exhausted… drained, I just couldn't stay more in that place, I was really saturated from the huge works and this beauty that my eyes could not capture more and my heart had no place for more awe…
I went out, breathing the cold air with its characteristic freshness… Just across the channel I was invited to a Gondola by a very cheerful old man who insisted that he will take me to a tour in Venice as seeing it from the water is different than seeing it from the land, I couldn't agree more…
To be continued…
If you are in love and you want to make this love last forever, take your beloved and fly immediately to Venice. As soon as you land there, wait for sunset and go take a gondola with your beloved and ask the Gondolier to take you to the Ponte dei Sospiri, or The Bridge of Sighs, make sure you kiss right under the bridge before the sun sinks into the horizon… Now you can feel safe, for your love will last forever…
Venice is a city for lovers, no wonder that it is in Venice and under one of its most famous bridges where you can make your love eternal, or so says the legend. This magical Bridge was built in the year 1600 to connect the local prison to the interrogating rooms in the Doge's palace. It is from this bridge that the convicts sentenced to imprisonment will see the last view of the beautiful city from a narrow stone window.
When Lord Byron, the great English poet visited Venice in the 19th century, he watched the bridge and he imagined that the convicts would see Venice for the last time and sigh mourning their lost freedom, and since then it has been called the bridge of sighs or Ponte dei Sospiri in Italian.
Walking around the magnificent Doge's palace, a real example of Baroque architecture with all its grotesque and exaggerated decorations, adorned with famous colossal Roman statues and roaming across its huge rooms, with their walls and ceilings crowded with Baroque paintings you suddenly enter a plain hall which is devoid of any decorations, and who would decorate the room where convicts are interrogated, judged and sentenced. Then you enter the stone bridge, you will see it is totally closed, more like a tunnel and you can only see the outer world from very narrow small window and then it leads you into the prison and its cold scary cells.
The contrast between the exaggerated decorations that characterizes the Baroque palace and the plain ugly emptiness of the stone walled prison attracts all kinds of feelings, and being claustrophobic by nature, I was literally running to get out of this horrible place, to breathe some fresh air and see the sky again.
It is true that we do not know the value of things until they are gone, just being able to walk in the streets, inhaling the air and seeing the sky is a blessing…
To be continued...
Walking across the narrow streets of Venice, you will know that you are approaching San Marco square, the biggest and most important in Venice, when you find yourself overwhelmed by the smell of Frankincense*, a typical smell of catholic churches. Then the Basilica of san Marco greets you with its huge domes, grotesque architecture that characterizes Byzantine churches. But the Basilica of San Marco is not like any other Byzantine Church and its magic does not only lie in its architecture…
Before you enter the church and across the flocks of pigeons that fill the square, you will find in front of the main gates of the church three thin and very tall pillars each one ending with a golden lion, and where do these pillars come from? Alexandria, our own Alexandria!
Ok for those who do not know San Marco or Saint Mark the Evangelist as we know him, here is s little bit of info that I believe every single Egyptian should know, for Christianity, I believe, is not just another religion whose believers are fellow Egyptians, Christianity is an integral part of our history that we hardly know anything about, although our Egypt has played a major role in Christianity that cannot be ignored. And although I'm not the best one to talk about that, I will try to give you some basic info about Saint Marc and his relationship with Alexandria and Venice…
Saint Mark is one of the four Evangelists (the four writers of the Gospels, the other three are Mathew, Luke and John), and although he was not one of the twelve Apostles (the followers and companions of Jesus) he was called apostolic because he was a follower of Saint Peter, one of the Apostles and the pillar of the Roman Catholic Christianity. Saint Mark was born to a devoted Christian mother who was a member of the earliest believers of Jesus. He is believed to be one of the men who poured water during the marriage at Cana, when Jesus turned this water to wine. It is also believed that he hosted the apostles in his house after Jesus' death and into this very house Jesus visited his companions after his resurrection.
Later on, Saint Mark left Jerusalem and went to Egypt, specifically Alexandria, to carry on his holly task and spread the word of Jesus into its lands. A job that would cost him his life, as he was resented by the Egyptians who have been worshipping their traditional Gods for thousands of years and would not give them away that easily. In the year 68 AD Saint Mark faced his martyrdom bravely when he was tied to several horses and dragged through the streets of Alexandria, a common and very famous killing method for heretics at that time. His remains were buried there for almost 8 centuries. During that time, Alexandria being the harbor of Saint Marc, became a centre of Christianity and it was there that Christianity spread to the whole of Egypt which was under the Roman reign that is famous for its fierce torture of the Christians, and it was also in Egypt that monasteries originated as a means of escape and keeping one's religion from the fierce and un-human attacks of the Romans who saw Christians as traitors, having their absolute faith in an unseen God rather than the Emperor and the Roman estate.
In the year 828, two devoted Christian merchants from Venice, seeing how Egypt was being transformed into a Muslim country after the Arabic conquest, they stole the remains of Saint Mark and hid them under layers of pork, knowing that Muslims do not touch it, and that was the best way of smuggling the relics of Saint Mark safely to Italy. When they reached Venice, they were met with a ceremony and the Doge (Italian word for Duke) of Venice ordered that a huge cathedral would be built for the honor of San Marco as he came to be called in Italian.
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Venice is not like any other city in the world, and since everything it hosts is different, its main cathedral is also different from any other church you can visit. Before entering the cathedral, you can easily tell that it was built across an extremely prolonged periods of time, it is very obvious from the building style and the decorating fashions that work has been on and off in the cathedral through ages. Each of the three gates has a style of its own, and while going in, each single corner can be taken off its settings and serve as a work of art that does not match the rest of the church. And unlike any other church I have visited in Europe, where your neck aches after some time from carrying your inevitably up-lifted head, amazed by the fine details, the integration of colours, the huge walls carrying the domes and their decorations, the coloured glass allowing the shimmering day light to enter gracefully adding a delicate spiritual atmosphere, combined with the characteristic smell of Frankincense, the serene calmness that characterizes Catholic cathedrals and the sad faces of the virgin carrying her only son, sometimes as a beautiful baby and sometimes as a dead body of a crucified man, his hands and feet still bleeding from the huge nails that fixed him on his cross. In the basilica of San Marco (Basilica is an ancient Greek word for royal, now given to Big churches where religious ceremonies take place) you have to look down, because unlike other cathedrals where the floor is a layer of plain marble, this Cathedral has a full exhibition of mosaic and intricate colored pieces in its floor that every inch is a masterpiece of its own. But again, you can easily tell that it has been built across ages, for every square carries a different style, and in spite of the amazing details and the magical combination of colors, the whole scene can sometimes be annoying.
I attended the Sunday mass which was of course in Italian so I didn't get a single word, but I wasn't there to understand the preaching priest, nor was I there to ask questions, I was there because there is something magical about churches and specifically Catholic churches and their masses that enchants me and attracts me like a spell, that I cannot visit any city in Europe without visiting its cathedral and attending the mass. I spent another hour in the cathedral absorbing the beauty of its art, the huge marble figures, the beautiful paintings, the breath taking tiny pieces of mosaic combining together in an unearthly harmonious way that tells you how a human hand can work wonders, how a human heart can create beauty from dead things, how human eyes can absorb what they see and how a human mind can capture all this and wonder about his very own nature and how he can be capable of miracles. I left the church overwhelmed by its art, and in my mind I was hearing one word that makes sense behind all what I saw inside, inspiration…
To be continued
* Frankincense is the resin taken from the trees of Boswellia serrata, also known as Olibanum or locally known as Liban Dakar, a historic incense with deep roots in Christianity as it was one of the gifts given to baby Jesus by the three wise men.
The only thing that annoys me in Venice is the people. Being sociophobic by nature and a loner who worships solitude this should be very much expected. But I have to admit that things get somehow different in Europe , either the people there are too civilized to annoy anyone, or I am more consumed with the beauty that I don't even see the people or feel annoyed by their presence. But people in Venice make you feel as if you opened an old fairy tale book, and across the breathtaking pictures of the city you find that some child has drawn those matchstick human figures with colored pencils… How annoying!
In an attempt to see the city without people and based on a good friend's advice that the dawn over the Grand Canal is a scene not to be missed, I followed the advice and woke up very early to see what Venice is having for me. I left the hotel around 4 am. Getting out of the warm hotel, I was struck by two things; the terribly cold weather and the fog…
It was cold, really cold, and although I was well equipped –or so I thought- with my thick coat, ice cap and gloves, the cold air was powerful enough to penetrate right to the bones… But who cares, I love winter, I miss it in Cairo which offers me all what I dislike, so some cold winter would be a treat in itself, so off I went.
Being totally immersed in the sea, fog was literally covering the whole city, I couldn't see a meter away, and again that was a treat, how many times does it get foggy in Cairo's winter? Walking in the fog and having the objects appearing very slowly under the dark sky and the dim light of the street lanterns, combined by the cold air, the empty streets and the complete silence, I thought I must be feeling scared or at least afraid. But no, nothing related to fear was there, I was happy, smiling, inhaling the cold wet air and wishing my lungs could expand 10 times to absorb as much of the clean air as possible. Air that smells of nothing, like we used to study at school in science lessons that air and water are colorless and odorless. It was air as air should be, clean, cold, wet and fresh...
I kept walking randomly across the empty streets, my breath sending this warm white vapours into the air, childish as it sounds but again this is something I really love and miss. The streets were empty, now I can see city as it should be seen. Not a single person out there, the beautiful ancient buildings standing mightily in a foggy scene barely illuminated by the street lamps and sinking in the bluish light of dawn… Why are words so insufficient when I need them to tell you what I saw, how it looked like and how it made me feel?
As if I suddenly became a part of one of Monet's paintings, where everything is portrayed behind the veil of fog and the buildings silhouette all around you. The sky was dark and with the very slow fading of the fog, it started to acquire a deep dark translucent blue color that lightened very slowly. I sat on one of the docks watching the beautiful surroundings and wishing that time would stop. I would keep on walking every now and then, staying as close as possible to the water and going over every single bridge to have a high view of the sleeping city. It was Sunday, no people were expected to be seen at this time of the day and for the next couple of hours as well, and that in itself was more tempting to absorb as much as possible of the authentic fairy tale look of this legendary place. A very shy sun was trying to prove its presence from behind the cloudy sky and the foggy air, its helpless trials only ended in a very faint yellowish circle that kept showing weakly but persistently, it was a typical winter morning.
Why does time fly when we want it to stop? The enchanting church bells rang filling the air with their deep harmonious echoing sounds, waking me up from this dreamlike walk and bringing me back to earth, but gently... very gently. It was 8 am, time for the Sunday mass in the Basilica of San Marco. I walked towards the cathedral that I have seen the day before and decided that my week in Venice would never have a better start.
To be continued...
Why would anyone write a full post about Landing in a city?
But Venice is not like any other city and landing in Venice is not like any landing!
In my trips I always leave the airport and either take a taxi or the underground to my destination, but leaving an aeroplane and jumping on a boat was something I have never experienced before. The airport Marco Polo is 40 minutes away from the city and the only way to get there is by boat…
I have always associated Europe with old beautiful buildings, huge cathedrals, clean streets, greenery and clean air but never with the sea…. Even when I went to Barcelona that is a Mediterranean port, I did not feel that what I saw there was a sea, it was rather some watery space that has no waves nor does it give the characteristic smell of the sea that we I am used to. But Venice is something else, for all those things that I associate with Europe were combined with the sea, deep, blue, vast and with this characteristic smell that I love.
Venice is built totally inside the sea, the city itself is an archipelago (a group of small islands connected together) of 118 islands, connected by about 150 narrow canals and about 400 bridges that serve as roads. The buildings are literally immersed in the water and many of them have their staircases going down into the canals, so that you can only reach them by boats. The only means of transportation is boats (this will be in a separate post)and walking… can you imagine how clean, clear and calm the atmosphere could be?
The buildings are very short, not a single building is higher than three stories including a ground floor, a middle one and a roof. The only high buildings that you can see are the church towers. But venetian Churches will need a post of their own.
The streets are extremely narrow and the buildings –accordingly- are very close to each other. All through the city you will never see a "modern" building, actually the word modern does not exist apart from the way people are dressed. So with no cars nor any traces of them, narrow cobbled streets, historical buildings and ancient architecture, classical music playing everywhere, even in the boat stations…what else do you need to feel as if you had a magical journey into the past? As if suddenly you jumped into a fairy tale and all you can do is look around in amazement wondering how the word beautiful would really underestimate what you see?
Walking in Venice is an experience that I cannot describe. But what amazed me and kept me thinking till now is something that I cannot really find a logical explanation for… those who know me well know how I have bad memory with streets, I really need to visit a place at least ten times (and here I literally mean ten times, not just metaphorically) to be able to visit it again without a map. Now as soon as the boat dropped me in the small port "Fondamenta Nove" and I was told that my hotel is 10 minutes away, I sank into that feeling of "Ok… this is trouble". The narrow streets and the similarity of the buildings should –logically- conspire to make things worse!
But…and to my extreme amazement, I didn't have to look at my map even once, and before your mind jumps into conclusions, there were no signs leading to my hotel, I just walked and walked and with a strange sense of direction I found myself at the hotel door. And for the next days I have been roaming the city, visiting all kinds of places and going back to my hotel several times a day without needing a single look at my map…Now I really cannot find an explanation of this, nor do I care to find one, who can speak about logic in a city as enchanting and legendary as Venice ?
So that was just about landing in Venice , what about being there? This will come slowly, as a nice walk by the canals and into the friendly streets of legendary Venice , so follow me
Have you ever been to a place and felt as if the REW button of your life has been pressed for hours, for everything around you suddenly turned old, ancient, full of all the magic of the past....
This is exactly how I felt when I landed in Venice, and landing in venice is different from any landing anywhere on earth (check my next post)
I am writing to you now from a city where the word "beautiful" underestimates what you see, a city where the sea embraces you wherever you go, where you hear classical music around every corner, where food is nothing but an enjoyment, and walking is an endless pleasure, where every single building is a work of genius art, a city where there are nomeans of transportations except boats...
Venice... La Belissima, that legendary place where Shylok the jew chased the good Antonio to cut a pound of flesh out of his body in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, where the unhappy wife Anna stole some weeks of life and spent some happy days with her lover Vronsky in Tolstoy's Anna Carenina, where professor Aschenbach came for a summer holiday and ended up with a disastrous experience in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
Venice, a legendary icon with 34 museums, the home city of Vivaldi, Marco Polo, Bellini,Albinoni and many great artists of all time...
Follow me in this legendary journey in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my whole life
To be continued...
Well I mean my book "Al Rehla" is, I just discovered that my book is available for purchase online in a very interesting website that we can call the Amazon of the Middle East!!
Check it out
http://www.neelwafurat.com/itempage.aspx?id=egb122652-5123630&search=books
Paris, Chartres, London, Berlin, Cologne, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Zurich, Zermatt, Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Cordoba, Seville, Salzburg, Vienna, Venice, Verona, Prague, Karlovy Vary... Every one of your beautiful cities has given me its best and greeted me with its beautiful greenery. Each city soothed my heart with its beauty, fed my soul with its well-kept history and art and showed me its best, its very best. Like a mother proud of your children, wanting them to always be perfect and present them to the whole world in pride and glory, you presented your cities to me and I loved them all, every one of them has engraved its place in my heart and left a mark in my soul. And now, my dear Europe, I wouldn't be exaggerating when I say that you are my mother, the mother of my soul. You love me and care for me like a mother, whenever I come to you you give me the happiness that I never found anywhere else, you sooth my pains and comfort me. The smile you put on my face vanishes as soon as I leave you. The feeling of relief and belonging only comes to me when I am with you. Your rain cleanses my soul, your rivers tell me what beauty is, your green mountains showed me my home and the snow that covers you in winter made my eyes see a clearer picture of who I am. Yes, for my soul you are the only mother.
I am a product of you, my dear Europe, your painters, authors, poets, philosophers, composers and historical figures all enlightened me and made me what I am, every one of them, every single work that one of your children has made was a lesson to me, a journey of knowledge, I grew up with them, I walked their footsteps and I learned from them all, Your history was my best teacher and your literature was where I learned to feel and write, your paintings have taught me to appreciate art and beauty and your music is one of the things that keep me alive where I live away from you. I wouldn't have been the man I am now without you, without your children. Without your love.
I have parted from you my dear mother, but I will come again, with a smiling cheerful face that is rarely seen where I live, with a loving heart open to you and to your gifts that you generously offer me, with eyes that will never get enough of your beauty because they only see beauty in you. I will come to you and hug your trees, kiss your buildings, pray in your cathedrals, and dream of the day I get united with you for the end of my life...
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Of failure in getting out of my shell/ A horrible experience with Omar & Salma
Ok, this might be offending to some people, especially those who like "comedy" and Negm el geel "Tamer Hosny" so if you're one of those, please stop reading now and delete this mail from your list, I am not intending to take back anything mentioned here.
Based on a very stressful mood I am in due to work load, work problems, Exams, summer and others, and based on a strong recommendation from my boss -who is one of my very close friends- to "get out of my shell, my comfort zone, have more acceptance for others, develop some tolerance, get close to our consumers and what they watch and read, get down from my ivory tower and live on earth even if I don't like many things surrounding me" bla bla bla... and based on a request from two dear colleagues to go out with them and "totally plan the outing, we trust it will be good" I decided to go for a movie "Omar and Salma" after a nice dinner. While shocked from my choice, my colleagues agreed happily that finally Meto will fight his deppression and go do something cheerful. So we went....
What a horrible movie, what a waste of time and money, not mention, my nerves.... my poor nerves that are already eroded on daily bases from many things. I went home after the movie cursing everything and everyone related to it even the usher who took us to our seats! Yes when I'm angry I go extreme.
Now why do I call the movie horrible, here are some of the things that annoyed me more than you can ever imagine:
- The whole movie is lacking quality in every single aspect, the script appears like a group of friends were having a cool "2a3da" and they decided "matyalla ne3mel film tahyees keda" and they really did it. No story, no script, no built dialogues, no anything!!!
- The movie is full of useless sexual connotations with almost every single character that appeared, a son and his father, a 4 years old girl and her parents. It is very obvious that they have nothing to do with the script (assuming there is one asslan) but they are just there to make people "laugh".
- The film tackles the issue of the transformation that the after-marriage life of a young couple is subjected to. Don't expect to see anything as serious as the previous sentence, even betrayal, divorce, bringing up kids and child abuse are tackled in a very superficial and childish way!
- If I start to mention the number of ethics and values that have been deformed in the movie I need a book, but here are example, the way the married couple deal with each other (two gangsters), the way the children talk to their parents, the way the son talks to his father, the teacher and the way he is portrayed, the neighbors, the caretaker of the building, every single character that appeared in the movie is literally deformed!
Finally, I went home, running as much as possible from the cinema and the audience who were laughing their hearts out, cursing every single person i ran into till I went home, wondering what will be the effect of such film on the extremely young children who were in the cinema, I wanted to ask one of the mothers or the fathers "What do you think this film will do to your son or daughter?" but for sure I excluded the idea, if a parent is careless enough to take their child to such movie, for sure any "reasonable" conversation is useless.
I cannot blame the filmmakers, they have the "noble" cause of making people "laugh", aren't we experts of making fun of our problems and laughing at ourselves, "ommal nemawet nafsena ya3ny?"
I blame the audience- including myself- for going to such movies, wasting time, money and a whole generation of kids. After all, "He who has no audience will never sing again"
Finally, I reached the conclusion that this will be the last time in trying to get out of my shell and giving things that I do not like a second chance. I'd rather stay as I am, liking what I like and hating what I hate.
And I have to run now to have a big fight with my boss where I will make him regret advising me of "challenging my own staus quo", I love, I adore, I worship my status quo!!!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Of being "Open Minded"!
A very good friend of mine -actually one of the very few people in my whole life that I can talk freely to knowing that I will never get judged or misunderstood- mentioned that "open minded" has become abused lately and turned to be very vague as it is "sticked" to all kinds of people and actions without really having a solid base upon which it is applied. She also questioned:
"What is open-mindedness? Which adjectives fall under its definition? and then... how are they implemented. ..? Or is it just one of those linguistic fashions?"
This made me think for a while and then I reached the conclusion that, like any adjective, "open minded" differs according to who says it and who she/he gives it to. So for example such an adjective can be given to a man who does not mind sharing the house work with his wife, a mother who accepts that her daughter goes out with group of friends from both sexes and stays out late, to a man who does not mind that his wife or girlfriend dresses in an exotic way, and it can reach the extreme of giving it to people who do not believe in God or any religion.
And of course we have to put in mind the three things that govern our society and become the base of judgement which are religion, traditions and social pressure. Accordingly, a person who breaks some of these rules can be easily called open minded by another person. And again it all depends on who gives the title and to whom.
So I think it is like any other adjective, very subjective, you cannot find a single definition or even a group of things that if present in a certain person this person deserves the title, it's like most of the adjectives we use. What is beautiful? What is good life? Who is a happy person? And the list can go for as long as we want.
And although some adjectives can be measured like intelligence for example, still the means of measurement differ according to who measures and why is he measuring?
I think if you want to minimize your annoyment, whenever you hear this adjective (or any other) being given to someone, just ask the giver of the adjective two questions:
1- What do you mean by open minded?
2- Why do you think X is open minded?
It will help you understand the one who gave the adjective, which is really more important than understanding the one who was given it. And believe me you will be shocked how people use words to describe things.
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Windmills of Your Mind
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over
You were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
A song by Noel Harrison from the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" 1968, that won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in the same year
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
To Look Life in the Face
"To look life in the face... always... to look life in the face... and to know it for what it is... at last... to know it...to love it for what it is... and then... to put it away..."
Virginia Woolf
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Life in Venice/The Departure
For the first time he woke up without feeling that thrilling happiness that he has been feeling for the last week. Seven days… seven mornings… he used to wake up very early every day, greeted by the cold air that caresses his face as soon as it gets from under the pillow. Whenever he spends a winter night in Europe, he switches off the heating system and he leaves the windows open, he wants to have "cold" as the first thing to feel and the clean smell of fresh air as the first thing to breath as soon as he wakes up.
He ran to the window, the city was still asleep and covered in fog, like a beautiful woman in a French painting from the Nineteenth century, lying elegantly on a love seat, dressed in a transparent veil of white silk that shows its beauty rather than hides it. He breathed the fresh air, carrying the cold of five degrees and the characteristic smell of freshness and cleanliness that he has been absorbing the last week, something he never finds where he comes from. He kept filling his lungs with the air, he wished he can keep the breath inside, he wished he had bigger lungs or his whole body becomes a lung to keep this fresh air inside. What a cruel life, he thought to himself, that makes you see clean air as a dream, even the act of breathing, the most natural and spontaneous right of all living things, is something he cannot enjoy where he lives.
A long shower did not help to wash away the layers of sadness that were covering him the more the time flew. His lips that were smiling inevitably for a whole week could not smile now. He had no appetite for breakfast, although during the last seven days he used to eat with an enormous appetite that he gained 3 kilos in only one week.
He had packed the night before; he did not want to lose any minute of his last hours in that lovely place. He did the bed and left the room as clean and organized as he once stepped in it a week ago, he knew it's a big hotel where they have a staff whose only job is to do rooms, but he just could not leave anything behind him that does not match with beauty. This room has seen him in happiness for whole week, it deserves to be left as beautiful as it should be, and everything in this city has to carry the word beautiful, strongly and proudly.
He dragged his suitcase to leave it in the reception, he was greeted by the beautiful lovely lady that he befriended from the moment he entered for check in. His sadness was obvious and when she told him that she hoped he enjoyed his stay in their hotel, he had a problem speaking, with a gulp in his throat, he said that he enjoyed every minute…that he regretted sleeping for this was a waste of time. And when she apologized because the weather was not good, he interrupted her telling her that it could have never been better, what could be better than a cold cloudy week with showers of rains and blasts of cold air, and all of this contained in a city where the past comes back to life, beautiful and charming, genuine and absorbing. He told her it was his favorite weather, for he comes from a desert, where rain is a rare visitor that visits him few minutes every year, where summer is the most triumphant of the four seasons and where an annoying egotist sun is powerful enough not to allow a single morning to be there without its own presence.
He had two hours to spend in the city before his departure, only two hours…how little is that when we are happy. What can be better than walking in a city where walking, the normal and trivial of all acts, can be an enjoyment, where all the streets are cobbled and very clean, the way he likes streets, where all the buildings he comes across are old and clean, the way he likes buildings, where he is surrounded by clean and fresh air that smells of nothing and when it dares carry a smell it is either the smell of the sea, coffee, freshly bakery, frankincense or plants.
He kept walking, without his camera, his only companion that did not leave his hand the last week, his final walk was dedicated to his eyes only. He did not take his i-pod as well, who needs music in such walk? He wanted all his senses to absorb as much as possible of this city, even its silence, for he treasures silence as much as he treasures beauty and cleanliness. He wanted to kiss the buildings, to hug them; he wished he could be transformed instantly into a giant, big enough to embrace the whole city with its buildings, canals, islands, bridges. Yes he loves dead things as his closest friend once said, but she did not know that he never saw them as dead, for every building was alive telling him a story, its own story where happiness mingles with grief, creating life the way the wind shapes the sand dunes of the desert where he comes from…
Why does everything has to end, why are we lacking the ability to freeze time, to stop life when it should be stopped and where can his life be stopped except in that place? His boat was there, taking him back to the city with its real life, soon he will see cars again, hear their noises and smell the air polluted by their exhaust, soon he will be in an airport, one of the places he hates the most, and soon he will be back to where he came from…
The boat was there, he looked back wishing to run away and hide in the city forever, but he did not, he boarded the boat and it started moving triumphantly. The beautiful coast of "Fondamenta Nuova" was getting gradually invisible to his eyes. His vision was blurred, not from the fog that was still covering the city, not from the rain drops that fell on his eye lashes, but from the tears coming from the heart of a man destined to see beauty only where he does not live and feels nostalgic to where he does not belong…
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Life in Venice/ La Traviata
The nineteenth century witnessed a great upheaval of all kinds of art and literature in Europe. It was a century of creativity and thinking, producing works that marked a milestone in the history of humanity. In this time and specifically in France, there lived a famous writer whose father was another famous writer, both father and son gave the French literature masterpieces that cannot be forgotten, both had flamboyant lives that were considered scandalous at that age and both had exactly the same name "Alexander Dumas"
The father (1802-1870) wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo and was involved with Hashish and other drugs as he was a prominent founder of the "Hashashins club" with other famous writers like the great poet Baudelaire. The son on the other hand was famous for his scandalous affair with Marie Duplessis, a famous courtesan (high class prostitute). This life long relationship inspired Dumas to write his masterpiece La Dame aux camélias, or The Lady of the Camellias, that was first published as a novel in 1848 and then he adapted it for the stage in 1852.
The great Italian composer attended the play and got immediately inspired by the story that he made it into the famous opera La Traviata or The Fallen One which premiered in Venice in 1853.
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It was my last day in Venice, I dedicated the last evening to this multi level masterpiece, For La Traviata is a masterpiece of music and plot. The show was given in the Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista, one of the many old schools in Venice. Like all the buildings in this enchanted city, the Scuola kept its original architecture, with the magnificently huge Roman facade, the show room that is literally covered by huge paintings all over the walls and the ceilings, and the carved statues in the walls and the ones scattered in every corner. It was a perfect place to see a world famous classical opera as great as La Traviata.
Although the original story takes place in nineteenth century France, the opera was adapted to be set in Eighteenth century Italy. We see Violetta, the beautiful courtesan, throwing a party in her home, we get to know the noble Alfredo, a shy gentleman who has been madly but silently in love with Violetta, but he cannot hide his feelings any longer, he confesses his love for her but she rejects him telling him that she was not made to love or be loved by any man, she asks him to forget her and find another woman. But something about Alfredo and his feelings touched her and in a very romantic scene she gives him a red rose and asks him to return it when it has wilted, a symbol of not only the short life of his love for her but of her own life as well.
Alone, Violetta cannot remove Alfredo and his voice from her mind, she keeps talking to herself and wondering if he is the man she has always been waiting for. Torn between her attraction to him and the impossibility of being with him, for she is a courtesan and he is a descendant of a noble family.
But love wins; Violetta and Alfredo eventually escape and live together in Violetta's country house, enjoying the stolen happiness that they cannot have lawfully. After sometime Alfredo accidentally discovers that Violetta is selling her properties to finance the luxurious life they are both living and he goes back to Paris to claim some money. Waiting desperately for his return, Violetta is visited by the Baron, Alfredo's father who commands her to break her scandalous relationship with his son. Violetta refuses, the Baron offers her money and social protection but Violetta is deeply hurt, she cries while trying to make the father understand that she is not after his money and that she has already been selling her possessing to finance their love, she begs him to allow her some days of happiness in her short life that will end soon. The Baron is deeply touched by the true feelings of Violetta, he begs her to leave his son because their relationship is destroying the family and already preventing his daughter from getting married. Violetta agrees to sacrifice her love for the good of Alfredo and his family. The Baron gives her a fatherly kiss and calls her the noblest of all women.
Violetta with unbearable remorse writes a farewell letter to Alfredo while singing of her eternal and unconditional love to him. She gives the letter to her maid to send it to Alfredo who gets devastated when he reads it.
Then Violetta is seen in a party, for apparently she has gone back to her life, Alfredo is also there winning a huge sum of money from gambling, he makes a scene and throws the money at Violetta as a payment for her "services", Violetta is deeply humiliated and she faints. In the final scene we see Violtta in her death bed reading a letter from Alfredo's father who heard of her illness and felt so guilty from what he lead her too, he has already confessed to Alfredo the whole story, Alfredo enters and the two lovers sing together their final love song just before Violetta dies in his arms.
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Was it the beautiful music of Verdi playing live? Was it the amazing performance and singing of the actors? Was it the breathtaking setting of the ancient place? Was it the extremely beautiful and sad plot with all the emotions it triggered and all the values it resuscitated in my heart and mind? Was it the extremely attractive Soprano who was playing Violetta and exchanging eye contact with me (or so I imagined… hoped actually)? Was it the whole week of being immersed in pure beauty as if the world has forgotten me for whole week in a paradise like place?
I wasn't able to identify the real reason for feeling as if I were flying, as if I suddenly left this world and went into a magical journey where everything around you is beautiful in an unearthly way… A dream, a dream that you can touch and live when you are fully wake!
How can I explain this? How can a withering plant almost dying in a cracking dry soil explain its feelings when it gets some water carrying the secret of life? How can a weary bird explains how it feels when it finally lands on a solid ground after days and days of flying over the sea? If what I just mentioned got you closer to how it all felt then I have succeeded.
I was the last one to leave the place, I didn't want to and it was one of those moments when I wished I could freeze time, I just needed nothing else. It was my last night in Venice, the place that has been treating me well for a whole week, and ended up with this gift.
I had my last walk in the empty city, bathing in a sea of serenity, surrounded by the dim light of the street lanterns and a cold breeze of fresh and clean air carrying the smell of the sea and the freshness of winter rain, feeling a strange familiarity with every corner, with every building.
Venice loves me, I could feel it, strange and crazy as it might sound but I felt it loved me. With every step I was taking I didn't feel like a foreigner, a tourist who is spending some days of vacation and leaving the next day back to his home, or the place that is supposed to be home…
To be continued…
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Life in Venice/ The Colours of Murano
Murano is not just a type of glass, it is considered the most expensive and authentic glass, named after the island where glassmakers reside, adopting ancient methods of blowing and colouring that is living from the thirteenth century till this moment, inherited across families and turning this small island into one of the most frequently visited places in Europe.
Not very far from the Venetian coast lies this small island like a beautifully drawn painting, and what is a painting without colors?
Venice has always been famous for colored glass that was once called Venetian glass, then in the thirteenth century and due to the fact that most of the houses were made of wood, having those furnaces used for manufacturing the glass made the island at a risk of fire, so the government issued an order that all the glass manufacturers should move to the small island of Murano. Now Murano is a brand, world famous, expensive, luxurious that offers you a wide variety of beautiful products ranging from necklaces, vases, glasses, antiques, chandeliers and all kinds of shapes that can or cannot be made from glass.
The island is really small, peaceful, clean, beautiful and elegant, a chip of the old block as they say, for Venice and beauty seem to be eternal companions. As soon as I stepped from the boat, a magnificent composition of blue glass placed in the main street greeted me with a warm welcome in spite of the cold weather. It took me some time to be able to identify exactly what that object was, a collection of narrow hollow tubes of different shades of blue, arranged around several axes and ending up in this conglomerate of gracefully bent tubes, a work of brilliant art, beautiful beyond explanation.
I wandered in the empty streets, stopping at each shop, wondering how a human hand can be able of working with such care and producing such beauty from something as fragile and brittle as glass. I decided to enter one of the furnaces and see the process live. Most of the shops refused that, and even refused to allow me to take some photos of their products. Only a young beautiful lady invited me in and took me to the furnace where her father was working. He asked me what do I want, I asked him for a vase, a blue vase. And in front of my eyes, a miracle was happening…
I watched the old man working with a speed that my eyes could not follow, I was told that he has to finish in 5 minutes other wise the glass will cool and solidify and cannot be shaped. In less than three minutes, the vase was there, not a plain one, but full of shapes, curves, very unsymmetrical and amazingly beautiful. I was speechless… Was I impressed by the whole atmosphere and how an ugly hot gloomy place like a furnace can be a home for such beauty? Was I impressed by the old man and his super natural speed? Was I impressed by the vase he made in no time, without a previous design, all spontaneous!!!
I wanted to stay more and absorb the beauty of the shapes and colors. The lady was nice enough to allow me to take some photos. How did people live without cameras?
I toured the island several times, stopping at other shapes placed casually in the streets. A combination of long thin segmented glass shapes that reminded me of sugar cane plantations, but they were colored in red, a graceful shape of curved pieces colored in bright red, orange and yellow, a similar figure with shades of blue and many other breath taking shapes scattered here and there that words cannot explain, I will let the photos show you everything, for some places no words can be able to explain their beauty…
I went back to my hotel, with a beautiful vase for my mother, a load of photos in my camera and a lifetime experience that will keep me alive for some time.
To be continued…
Monday, March 09, 2009
Life in Venice/ La Gondola
Walking into the narrow streets of Venice and getting close to its marvelous old building is a totally different experience than seeing it from the water, sailing on the famous gondola and watching as the scene changes slowly like a film, like a tray of pictures from a fairy tale book.
It was slightly before sunset, the cloudy sky was having that faint orange tint that indicates the approach of sunset in the clear skies of Europe, and of all the European cities that I have visited, clean, organized, civilized as beautiful as they all were, Venice stands alone as a unique individual, around which time had stopped.
Even the gondola, that small boat, the only means of transportation in Venice and a very romantic symbol is unique in many ways. The old Gondolier who invited me aboard his gondola or "Deborah" as he calls her, told me many interesting facts about this magical boat.First of all, it is handmade by the assembly of 280 different pieces that come from 8 types of wood. It operates by a single rowing movement and it has an elongated shape that is approximately 10 meters long, the final edges are turned gracefully upwards emphasizing the ancient fairy tale shape. Some years ago the government in Venice issued an order that all gondolas have to be in a specific shape and all coloured in black with beautiful delicate golden decoration. The government also has ordered that all gondoliers should wear a uniform, black trousers and black-stripped white T-shirt. Yes, some governments care about the beauty of their cities and I am certain that a government for a city like Venice should have beauty on top of its Agenda…
Let me tell you this, watching a gondola standing in the still water of the canal, swinging gracefully and slowly on the water surface can be nothing but beautiful, I saw it as a princess in an elegant black dress and gold ornaments, waving to her people, inviting in the same time.
I boarded the gondola with old "Massimo" the sweet gondolier, listening to his sad and touching story about his gondola and why he calls her "Debora" after his wife who passed away 10 years ago, and after whom he never thought of marrying or even touching another woman, he dedicated his life to take lovers and tour Venice with them, taking them across all the beauties and ending the romantic tour under the bridge of sighs where they kiss and turn their love eternal. When he knew I'm single he was surprised and he asked me I should not waste a single moment in my life without being in love because it is the best thing you can ever do… to be in love.
When he asked me where I am from and I told him Egypt, he surprised me with many things he knows about Egypt, he even called me "habibi"! and when the trip ended he refused to take the agreed price and made me a huge discount just for the fact that I am an Egyptian single man who is brave enough to visit Venice alone and loving it non the less.
Sometimes being Egyptian ends up in something good…Sometimes…
To be continued…
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Life in Venice/ The Accademia
The Accademia as it is commonly called or L'Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia as it is properly called in Italian is one of the world's most renowned art galleries that hosts one of the finest collections of Italian paintings dated to the pre-1800s. It was founded originally as a school for fine arts; painting, sculpture and architecture. It is a huge building located on the Grand Canal, the main canal crossing Venice and it was originally three separate buildings that were combined and turned into this magnificently huge art gallery in the eighteenth century.
Among the great work of arts that the Accademia hosts, the most famous of all is Da Vinci's "Vetruvian Man" (attached) which is a masterpiece of art and science and contains many secrets of geometry.
Entering the huge gate after a warm welcome by a typical Roman façade, I kept moving smoothly from one room to another, trying to absorb the immense paintings with all their details, starting with very early Christian art and ending with beautiful sceneries.
After some time, I just had some difficulty trying to lift my lower jaw placing it back in its proper place. It was inevitable…I was wondering how can a single artist, a man, just another human being, how can he be able to work on such huge paintings and I mean huge, with all the details, the facial expressions, the background and its full assembly of things… It was just unbelievable…I am talking about Bellini, one of the great Italian painters, a Venetian who needs a post of his own (which will come later on among other Venetians, promise), a painter who was fascinated by the Virgin and Jesus, capturing the most emotionally intense moments in their lives with beauty that words cannot describe…
Many questions were left unanswered in my poor mind that has been subjected to a brutal culture shock as soon as I landed in this magnificent city which is a work of art itself. I tried to pick one of the huge paintings randomly and I tried to imagine the painter standing in front of a plain wall. Did he have the whole scene in mind before starting or he just made it up as soon as he hit the wall with his brush? Where did he start with his brush? Which color did he use? How did he manage to complete such a huge work? How did he manage to take breaks and come back to work on the very same part?
After some time, I was exhausted… drained, I just couldn't stay more in that place, I was really saturated from the huge works and this beauty that my eyes could not capture more and my heart had no place for more awe…
I went out, breathing the cold air with its characteristic freshness… Just across the channel I was invited to a Gondola by a very cheerful old man who insisted that he will take me to a tour in Venice as seeing it from the water is different than seeing it from the land, I couldn't agree more…
To be continued…
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Life in Venice/The Bridge of Sighs
If you are in love and you want to make this love last forever, take your beloved and fly immediately to Venice. As soon as you land there, wait for sunset and go take a gondola with your beloved and ask the Gondolier to take you to the Ponte dei Sospiri, or The Bridge of Sighs, make sure you kiss right under the bridge before the sun sinks into the horizon… Now you can feel safe, for your love will last forever…
Venice is a city for lovers, no wonder that it is in Venice and under one of its most famous bridges where you can make your love eternal, or so says the legend. This magical Bridge was built in the year 1600 to connect the local prison to the interrogating rooms in the Doge's palace. It is from this bridge that the convicts sentenced to imprisonment will see the last view of the beautiful city from a narrow stone window.
When Lord Byron, the great English poet visited Venice in the 19th century, he watched the bridge and he imagined that the convicts would see Venice for the last time and sigh mourning their lost freedom, and since then it has been called the bridge of sighs or Ponte dei Sospiri in Italian.
Walking around the magnificent Doge's palace, a real example of Baroque architecture with all its grotesque and exaggerated decorations, adorned with famous colossal Roman statues and roaming across its huge rooms, with their walls and ceilings crowded with Baroque paintings you suddenly enter a plain hall which is devoid of any decorations, and who would decorate the room where convicts are interrogated, judged and sentenced. Then you enter the stone bridge, you will see it is totally closed, more like a tunnel and you can only see the outer world from very narrow small window and then it leads you into the prison and its cold scary cells.
The contrast between the exaggerated decorations that characterizes the Baroque palace and the plain ugly emptiness of the stone walled prison attracts all kinds of feelings, and being claustrophobic by nature, I was literally running to get out of this horrible place, to breathe some fresh air and see the sky again.
It is true that we do not know the value of things until they are gone, just being able to walk in the streets, inhaling the air and seeing the sky is a blessing…
To be continued...
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Life in Venice/Basilica di San Marco
Walking across the narrow streets of Venice, you will know that you are approaching San Marco square, the biggest and most important in Venice, when you find yourself overwhelmed by the smell of Frankincense*, a typical smell of catholic churches. Then the Basilica of san Marco greets you with its huge domes, grotesque architecture that characterizes Byzantine churches. But the Basilica of San Marco is not like any other Byzantine Church and its magic does not only lie in its architecture…
Before you enter the church and across the flocks of pigeons that fill the square, you will find in front of the main gates of the church three thin and very tall pillars each one ending with a golden lion, and where do these pillars come from? Alexandria, our own Alexandria!
Ok for those who do not know San Marco or Saint Mark the Evangelist as we know him, here is s little bit of info that I believe every single Egyptian should know, for Christianity, I believe, is not just another religion whose believers are fellow Egyptians, Christianity is an integral part of our history that we hardly know anything about, although our Egypt has played a major role in Christianity that cannot be ignored. And although I'm not the best one to talk about that, I will try to give you some basic info about Saint Marc and his relationship with Alexandria and Venice…
Saint Mark is one of the four Evangelists (the four writers of the Gospels, the other three are Mathew, Luke and John), and although he was not one of the twelve Apostles (the followers and companions of Jesus) he was called apostolic because he was a follower of Saint Peter, one of the Apostles and the pillar of the Roman Catholic Christianity. Saint Mark was born to a devoted Christian mother who was a member of the earliest believers of Jesus. He is believed to be one of the men who poured water during the marriage at Cana, when Jesus turned this water to wine. It is also believed that he hosted the apostles in his house after Jesus' death and into this very house Jesus visited his companions after his resurrection.
Later on, Saint Mark left Jerusalem and went to Egypt, specifically Alexandria, to carry on his holly task and spread the word of Jesus into its lands. A job that would cost him his life, as he was resented by the Egyptians who have been worshipping their traditional Gods for thousands of years and would not give them away that easily. In the year 68 AD Saint Mark faced his martyrdom bravely when he was tied to several horses and dragged through the streets of Alexandria, a common and very famous killing method for heretics at that time. His remains were buried there for almost 8 centuries. During that time, Alexandria being the harbor of Saint Marc, became a centre of Christianity and it was there that Christianity spread to the whole of Egypt which was under the Roman reign that is famous for its fierce torture of the Christians, and it was also in Egypt that monasteries originated as a means of escape and keeping one's religion from the fierce and un-human attacks of the Romans who saw Christians as traitors, having their absolute faith in an unseen God rather than the Emperor and the Roman estate.
In the year 828, two devoted Christian merchants from Venice, seeing how Egypt was being transformed into a Muslim country after the Arabic conquest, they stole the remains of Saint Mark and hid them under layers of pork, knowing that Muslims do not touch it, and that was the best way of smuggling the relics of Saint Mark safely to Italy. When they reached Venice, they were met with a ceremony and the Doge (Italian word for Duke) of Venice ordered that a huge cathedral would be built for the honor of San Marco as he came to be called in Italian.
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Venice is not like any other city in the world, and since everything it hosts is different, its main cathedral is also different from any other church you can visit. Before entering the cathedral, you can easily tell that it was built across an extremely prolonged periods of time, it is very obvious from the building style and the decorating fashions that work has been on and off in the cathedral through ages. Each of the three gates has a style of its own, and while going in, each single corner can be taken off its settings and serve as a work of art that does not match the rest of the church. And unlike any other church I have visited in Europe, where your neck aches after some time from carrying your inevitably up-lifted head, amazed by the fine details, the integration of colours, the huge walls carrying the domes and their decorations, the coloured glass allowing the shimmering day light to enter gracefully adding a delicate spiritual atmosphere, combined with the characteristic smell of Frankincense, the serene calmness that characterizes Catholic cathedrals and the sad faces of the virgin carrying her only son, sometimes as a beautiful baby and sometimes as a dead body of a crucified man, his hands and feet still bleeding from the huge nails that fixed him on his cross. In the basilica of San Marco (Basilica is an ancient Greek word for royal, now given to Big churches where religious ceremonies take place) you have to look down, because unlike other cathedrals where the floor is a layer of plain marble, this Cathedral has a full exhibition of mosaic and intricate colored pieces in its floor that every inch is a masterpiece of its own. But again, you can easily tell that it has been built across ages, for every square carries a different style, and in spite of the amazing details and the magical combination of colors, the whole scene can sometimes be annoying.
I attended the Sunday mass which was of course in Italian so I didn't get a single word, but I wasn't there to understand the preaching priest, nor was I there to ask questions, I was there because there is something magical about churches and specifically Catholic churches and their masses that enchants me and attracts me like a spell, that I cannot visit any city in Europe without visiting its cathedral and attending the mass. I spent another hour in the cathedral absorbing the beauty of its art, the huge marble figures, the beautiful paintings, the breath taking tiny pieces of mosaic combining together in an unearthly harmonious way that tells you how a human hand can work wonders, how a human heart can create beauty from dead things, how human eyes can absorb what they see and how a human mind can capture all this and wonder about his very own nature and how he can be capable of miracles. I left the church overwhelmed by its art, and in my mind I was hearing one word that makes sense behind all what I saw inside, inspiration…
To be continued
* Frankincense is the resin taken from the trees of Boswellia serrata, also known as Olibanum or locally known as Liban Dakar, a historic incense with deep roots in Christianity as it was one of the gifts given to baby Jesus by the three wise men.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Life in Venice/Dawn
The only thing that annoys me in Venice is the people. Being sociophobic by nature and a loner who worships solitude this should be very much expected. But I have to admit that things get somehow different in Europe , either the people there are too civilized to annoy anyone, or I am more consumed with the beauty that I don't even see the people or feel annoyed by their presence. But people in Venice make you feel as if you opened an old fairy tale book, and across the breathtaking pictures of the city you find that some child has drawn those matchstick human figures with colored pencils… How annoying!
In an attempt to see the city without people and based on a good friend's advice that the dawn over the Grand Canal is a scene not to be missed, I followed the advice and woke up very early to see what Venice is having for me. I left the hotel around 4 am. Getting out of the warm hotel, I was struck by two things; the terribly cold weather and the fog…
It was cold, really cold, and although I was well equipped –or so I thought- with my thick coat, ice cap and gloves, the cold air was powerful enough to penetrate right to the bones… But who cares, I love winter, I miss it in Cairo which offers me all what I dislike, so some cold winter would be a treat in itself, so off I went.
Being totally immersed in the sea, fog was literally covering the whole city, I couldn't see a meter away, and again that was a treat, how many times does it get foggy in Cairo's winter? Walking in the fog and having the objects appearing very slowly under the dark sky and the dim light of the street lanterns, combined by the cold air, the empty streets and the complete silence, I thought I must be feeling scared or at least afraid. But no, nothing related to fear was there, I was happy, smiling, inhaling the cold wet air and wishing my lungs could expand 10 times to absorb as much of the clean air as possible. Air that smells of nothing, like we used to study at school in science lessons that air and water are colorless and odorless. It was air as air should be, clean, cold, wet and fresh...
I kept walking randomly across the empty streets, my breath sending this warm white vapours into the air, childish as it sounds but again this is something I really love and miss. The streets were empty, now I can see city as it should be seen. Not a single person out there, the beautiful ancient buildings standing mightily in a foggy scene barely illuminated by the street lamps and sinking in the bluish light of dawn… Why are words so insufficient when I need them to tell you what I saw, how it looked like and how it made me feel?
As if I suddenly became a part of one of Monet's paintings, where everything is portrayed behind the veil of fog and the buildings silhouette all around you. The sky was dark and with the very slow fading of the fog, it started to acquire a deep dark translucent blue color that lightened very slowly. I sat on one of the docks watching the beautiful surroundings and wishing that time would stop. I would keep on walking every now and then, staying as close as possible to the water and going over every single bridge to have a high view of the sleeping city. It was Sunday, no people were expected to be seen at this time of the day and for the next couple of hours as well, and that in itself was more tempting to absorb as much as possible of the authentic fairy tale look of this legendary place. A very shy sun was trying to prove its presence from behind the cloudy sky and the foggy air, its helpless trials only ended in a very faint yellowish circle that kept showing weakly but persistently, it was a typical winter morning.
Why does time fly when we want it to stop? The enchanting church bells rang filling the air with their deep harmonious echoing sounds, waking me up from this dreamlike walk and bringing me back to earth, but gently... very gently. It was 8 am, time for the Sunday mass in the Basilica of San Marco. I walked towards the cathedral that I have seen the day before and decided that my week in Venice would never have a better start.
To be continued...
Monday, March 02, 2009
Life in Venice/The Landing
Why would anyone write a full post about Landing in a city?
But Venice is not like any other city and landing in Venice is not like any landing!
In my trips I always leave the airport and either take a taxi or the underground to my destination, but leaving an aeroplane and jumping on a boat was something I have never experienced before. The airport Marco Polo is 40 minutes away from the city and the only way to get there is by boat…
I have always associated Europe with old beautiful buildings, huge cathedrals, clean streets, greenery and clean air but never with the sea…. Even when I went to Barcelona that is a Mediterranean port, I did not feel that what I saw there was a sea, it was rather some watery space that has no waves nor does it give the characteristic smell of the sea that we I am used to. But Venice is something else, for all those things that I associate with Europe were combined with the sea, deep, blue, vast and with this characteristic smell that I love.
Venice is built totally inside the sea, the city itself is an archipelago (a group of small islands connected together) of 118 islands, connected by about 150 narrow canals and about 400 bridges that serve as roads. The buildings are literally immersed in the water and many of them have their staircases going down into the canals, so that you can only reach them by boats. The only means of transportation is boats (this will be in a separate post)and walking… can you imagine how clean, clear and calm the atmosphere could be?
The buildings are very short, not a single building is higher than three stories including a ground floor, a middle one and a roof. The only high buildings that you can see are the church towers. But venetian Churches will need a post of their own.
The streets are extremely narrow and the buildings –accordingly- are very close to each other. All through the city you will never see a "modern" building, actually the word modern does not exist apart from the way people are dressed. So with no cars nor any traces of them, narrow cobbled streets, historical buildings and ancient architecture, classical music playing everywhere, even in the boat stations…what else do you need to feel as if you had a magical journey into the past? As if suddenly you jumped into a fairy tale and all you can do is look around in amazement wondering how the word beautiful would really underestimate what you see?
Walking in Venice is an experience that I cannot describe. But what amazed me and kept me thinking till now is something that I cannot really find a logical explanation for… those who know me well know how I have bad memory with streets, I really need to visit a place at least ten times (and here I literally mean ten times, not just metaphorically) to be able to visit it again without a map. Now as soon as the boat dropped me in the small port "Fondamenta Nove" and I was told that my hotel is 10 minutes away, I sank into that feeling of "Ok… this is trouble". The narrow streets and the similarity of the buildings should –logically- conspire to make things worse!
But…and to my extreme amazement, I didn't have to look at my map even once, and before your mind jumps into conclusions, there were no signs leading to my hotel, I just walked and walked and with a strange sense of direction I found myself at the hotel door. And for the next days I have been roaming the city, visiting all kinds of places and going back to my hotel several times a day without needing a single look at my map…Now I really cannot find an explanation of this, nor do I care to find one, who can speak about logic in a city as enchanting and legendary as Venice ?
So that was just about landing in Venice , what about being there? This will come slowly, as a nice walk by the canals and into the friendly streets of legendary Venice , so follow me
Of Life in Venice
Have you ever been to a place and felt as if the REW button of your life has been pressed for hours, for everything around you suddenly turned old, ancient, full of all the magic of the past....
This is exactly how I felt when I landed in Venice, and landing in venice is different from any landing anywhere on earth (check my next post)
I am writing to you now from a city where the word "beautiful" underestimates what you see, a city where the sea embraces you wherever you go, where you hear classical music around every corner, where food is nothing but an enjoyment, and walking is an endless pleasure, where every single building is a work of genius art, a city where there are nomeans of transportations except boats...
Venice... La Belissima, that legendary place where Shylok the jew chased the good Antonio to cut a pound of flesh out of his body in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, where the unhappy wife Anna stole some weeks of life and spent some happy days with her lover Vronsky in Tolstoy's Anna Carenina, where professor Aschenbach came for a summer holiday and ended up with a disastrous experience in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
Venice, a legendary icon with 34 museums, the home city of Vivaldi, Marco Polo, Bellini,Albinoni and many great artists of all time...
Follow me in this legendary journey in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my whole life
To be continued...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
One Hundred things that make me Happy!
I knew that I like counting things, uselessly most of the time... After counting one hundred things about me, here are another hundred, this time they are things that make me happy...
1- A hug from my Mother
2- A journey by train in Europe
3- Adding to someone's knowledge
4- An outing with my work colleagues
5- An outing with school colleagues
6- Being in Germany
7- Being in Paris
8- Being in the vicinity of Al kaaba
9- Blueberry jam
10- Buying a gift for someone I love
11- Buying books
12- Candles
13- Chocolate
14- Classical Ballet
15- Climbing green or snow covered mountains
16- Cooking
17- Cutting birthday cakes
18- Deep uninterrupted sleep
19- Driving my car very late at night
20- Earl Grey tea
21- Finding something I thought it was lost
22- Flowers
23- Fountains
24- Freshly squeezed sour Orange juice
25- Gardens
26- Getting feedback on anything I wrote
27- Getting over a loss
28- Getting presents
29- Giving medical advice
30- Giving Salma a hug
31- Giving things to needy people
32- Going out with Salma
33- Going to Switzerland
34- Going to the opera
35- Greenery
36- Hearing the birds singing
37- Hearing the wind blowing
38- Ice cream
39- Listening to a piece of music I like
40- Listening to Catholic prayers
41- Listening to Dalida, whatever she says
42- Listening to Samira Said, whatever she says
43- Lying in my bed listening to music
44- Making someone happy
45- Making someone laugh
46- Museums
47- Organizing my room
48- Pain Perdue from Casper and Gambini's
49- Painting
50- Passing an exam with high grade
51- Pasta from Macaroni Grill
52- Pizza Alfredo with Anchovies from Maison Thomas
53- Plants
54- Playing with my nephews Aly and Hussein
55- Praying alone in my room
56- Rain
57- Reading a book I like
58- Reading certain parts from the holly Koran
59- Receiving a call from a friend asking about me when it's obvious that I'm not ok
60- Riding bicycle
61- Sailing in the Nile at sunset
62- Seeing a baby sleeping peacefully
63- Seeing a loving couple, humans or animals
64- Seeing a mother playing with her baby
65- Seeing a place I like in a movie
66- Seeing Samira Said on TV
67- Shisha Peach in Grand Café Maadi
68- Shopping for clothes
69- Snow
70- Solving a riddle
71- Startling someone concentrating
72- Staying in bed in weekends
73- Sweet corn
74- Taking a cold shower after a hot day
75- Taking a long warm scented bath
76- Taking photos
77- Talking to a close friend
78- Talking to Salma and listening to her talking about her little world
79- Thunder and lightning
80- Travelling to any place except the gulf
81- Tulips, anywhere, anytime, any format
82- Twilight
83- Visiting a friend and find something I brought him/her in his/her place
84- Visiting a gothic Cathedral
85- Waking up in the morning to find the weather is cloudy and there will be no sun
86- Walking by the sea
87- Walking in the streets of Europe
88- Watching a movie I like
89- Watching sunset
90- Watching the full moon
91- Wearing a coat on a cold winter day
92- Wearing a scarf in a windy day and having it swinging with the air
93- When a song or piece of music I like comes unexpectedly on the Radio
94- When a wish I had comes true
95- When someone asks me about the direction, and I know the right answer
96- When someone trusts me with his/her secrets
97- When something I expected happens
98- When the one I love sleeps in my arms and I'm fully alert watching
99- Winter
100- Writing a story
Did I miss something???
Monday, February 16, 2009
Post Number 100/ One Hundred Things about Me!
So the posts are becoming one hundred!
Being fond of counting things (have you seen the movie "stranger than fiction"? something very similar)and taking such round figures as stages, I thought of this...
Here are 100 things about me, you might already know most of them
1- I'm an Egyptian man
2- My real name is Mohamed
3- I have few nicknames, mainly: "Meto, Hamada, Moody"
4- I'm 30
5- My Birth date is January 7th 1979
6- I'm a Capricorn of Leo ascendant
7- I hate football
8- I love reading
9- I have 500+ books at home
10- I love classical music
11- I hate power
12- I hate politics
13- I'm not happy living in Egypt
14- I wish I can live in Europe (Paris, Munich, Brussels or Seville)
15- I love travelling
16- I have visited UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Algeria, Malaysia, KSA, Bahrain, Emirates.
17- I have 4 sisters
18- I have 2 nieces and 4 nephews
19- I have 3 brothers in law
20- I love blue and purple
21- I don't like red
22- I love green mountains
23- The Alps are my favorite
24- I love snow
25- I love winter
26- I hate summer
27- I don't like desert
28- I am allergic to sun
29- I have migraine
30- I studied Pharmacy
31- I speak Arabic, English, French and German
32- French is my favorite
33- I love i-pod
34- I'm anti American
35- I hate business
36- I love painting
37- I love candles
38- I love chocolate
39- Lindt is my favorite
40- I love flowers
41- Tulips are my favorite
42- I write stories in Arabic and English
43- I blush, very easily
44- I don't feel comfortable talking about sex
45- I believe in God, and I love him
46- I love Jesus
47- I celebrate Christmas
48- I love herbs
49- I'm superstitious
50- I believe in signs
51- I love children, girls specifically
52- I'm pessimistic
53- I'm bipolar
54- I take vitamin B tablets regularly
55- I drive
56- I hate driving
57- I have Hyundai Matrix, bleu-ciel
58- I care about my books than my car
59- My dream car is BMW- X3
60- I'm extremely organized
61- I never forget a face I saw
62- I love Virginia Woolf
63- I don't like to be the centre of attention
64- I hate talking in public
65- I love writing reports
66- My biggest dream is a small wooden hut over the Alps in Switzerland
67- My sister Salma is the most precious things in my life
68- I have a Nokia N-95
69- I have a Spanish guitar, a real one
70- I love blueberries
71- I have a lot of female friends
72- I love myself
73- I'm sociophobic
74- I don't make friends easily
75- I hate jokes, and those who say them
76- I hate compliments
77- I hate the underground, especially in Cairo
78- I'm claustrophobic
79- I keep grudges
80- I always carry my keys, mobile and wallet in my hands
81- I'm single
82- I was in love before
83- I love Samira Said and Dalida
84- I love Maison Thomas, the Pizzeria
85- I don't like crepe
86- I like sea food
87- I cook, whatever you think of
88- I love cleaning
89- I used to play with dolls when I was a kid
90- I love to be alone most of the time
91- I overreact, most of the time
92- I don't care what people I don't know think of me
93- I don't mind being rude when rudeness is required, even when it is not
94- I do not leave a good first impression
95- I hate when people I don't know or don't like kiss me
96- I hope I will die as soon as possible
97- I love following rules, and setting them
98- I love anything that is "ancient" and I don't like most of the things that are 'modern"
99- I hate Starbucks
100- I don't regret anything, the things I did before and proved to be wrong, were done because they seemed right when they were done.
So how many of these you didn't know before?
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
C'est fini...C'est fini la comedie!
It's over…The comedy is over!
It all started as a very successful play
In a theatre in the suburbs with blue décor
There was no one but the two of us!
We have loved each other for so long
To the point of forgetting time
The time that has always changed happiness into pain
And it has won now, it is happy when it sees us,
Each one in his own way, like strangers
Having nothing in common except the daily words
The décor did not change but the actors have no roles to play
It is better to draw the curtains
It's over… The comedy is over
We never thought we will part
Eternity was guaranteed
We were alone in the world
We had a long way to go
Where nothing was forbidden…
It's over...The comedy is over
It has won now, it is happy when it sees us,
Each one in his own way, like strangers
Having nothing in common except the daily words
The décor did not change but the actors have no roles to play
It is better to draw the curtains
It's over… The comedy is over
It all started as a very successful play
In a theatre in the suburbs with blue décor
There was no one but the two of us!
It's over…The comedy is over!
- A song by Dalida-
Sunday, February 08, 2009
نزيف الحجر
هل من الممكن أن يقرا الإنسان كتابا واحدا يجعله يعيد النظر في شيء كان متأكدا غاية التأكد من كرهه الشديد له؟
كنت من أشد أعداء الصحراء، فحين أنطق بكلمة "صحراء" لا أجد في ذهني إلا خيالات عن الموت.. الفناء.. التيه.. العطش.. الشمس الحارقة والرمال الخانقة.
وحتى حين ذهبت إلى سيوه منذ عامين جذبني جمال الواحة الكامنة كسر الحياة الأبدي في قلب الصحراء الميتة. جذبتني أشجار النخيل و تمايلها الرشيق على أنغام الرياح الصامتة، و أخذتني تلك البحيرات العذبة الصافية تتحدى قسوة الطبيعة و تنشر الحياة حولها. أما الصحراء بذاتها فلم تنل مني أي حظ من الإعجاب ولا شيء من الانبهار، حتى وقعت تحت يدي رواية "نزيف الحجر" للكاتب الليبي "إبراهيم الكوني"، والتي تدور أحداثها بالكامل في الصحراء وبالتحديد في منطقة "تسيلي" الواقعة على الحدود بين ليبيا والجزائر في أقصى الجنوب، والشهيرة بكهوفها المهولة والتي تحوي رسوما ونقوشا ترجع لما قبل التاريخ.
في أسلوب أشبه بحكايات الأساطير يأخذنا" إبراهيم الكوني" في رحلة شديدة الخصوصية إلي عالم "أسوف" ذلك الشيخ المتوحد النائي بنفسه عن عالم البشر، فهو يحيى وحيدا في الصحراء، لا يأكل اللحم ولا يعاشر النساء عملا بنصيحة والده حين قال:
إذا جاورت الأشرار لحقك الشر، الإنسان الذي يفضل الخير لا بد أن يهرب من الناس حتى لا يلحقه الأذى
وتتسع دائرة شخوص الرواية لتشمل الحيوانات، فنعرف أن "الودَان" ليس كسائر الحيوانات
يقول أبوه وكذلك أمه أن روح الودَان تجذب، تضلل،تسلب العقل،وتجرد من الإرادة،فيجد الصياد نفسه مسلوبا،منساقا،مسكونا،يتقافز على أربع ويطارده على الصخور الصماء الملساء القاسية
وحين يصر أسوف أن يعرف لماذا يرفض أبوه صيد الودَان نعرف أن هناك سر أسطوري يكمن بداخل هذا الكائن المسحور:
انتظر حتى هل القمر وحكى له كيف أن الودَان هو روح الجبال. كانت الصحراء الجبلية في قديم الزمان في حرب أبدية مع الصحراء الرملية. وكانت آلهة السماء تنزل إلى الأرض مع الأمطار فتفصل بين الرفيقين وتهدئ من جذوة العداوة بينهما. وما أن تغادر الآلهة ساحة المعركة و تتوقف الأمطار عن الهطول حتى تشتعل الحرب بين العدوين الخالدين. وفي يوم غضبت الآلهة في سماواتها العليا وأنزلت العقاب على المتحاربين. جمدت الجبال في "مساك صطفت" وأوقفت تقدم الرمل العنيد في "مساك ملَت". فتحايل الرمال ودخل في روح الغزلان و تحايلت الجبال من جهتها ودخلت في الودَان. ومنذ ذلك اليوم أصبح الودَان مسكونا بروح الجبال.
ولكن كف الودَان والغزال عن القتال حين أرسل الله لهما عدوا آخر وهو الإنسان. والودَان لا يهرب حين يقابل صائدا من بني البشر، بل يقاوم بقوة خارقة تماثل روح الجبال الساكنة فيه، فيجتذب الصائد المحموم الى الهاوية. وحين يشارف الصياد على الموت لن ينقذه الا الودَان.. ذات الودَان الذي حاول أن يصيده. فيكون ذلك بمثابة عهد بين الودَان والإنسان.. نذر من يخونه ستعاقبه روح الجبال.
أما الغزال فله قصة ترويها غزالة عجوز شهدت موت أمها لإنقاذ طفل من بني البشر ولكني أتركها لكم لتقرءوها في سطور الرواية ولتعرفوا قصة "قابيل ادم" ذلك الذي لا يشبع من اللحم ففي فمه دودة تجعله يأكل نفسه إذا لم يجد لحما يأكله.
عليَ الآن أن اعترف أن هذا العمل الذي تمتزج فيه الأسطورة بالواقع ويغلف الخيال وجو الصحراء المهيب كلماته بغلالة ساحرة، جعلني أعيد النظر في الصحراء أملا في أن أرى فيها ما رآه" إبراهيم الكوني" و سطره في هذه الرواية المبدعة.
Palm Trees
Like palm trees
Bending gracefully in the evening breeze
Your fingers…
I hold them…I suddenly feel at ease
With a gentle touch I see the wonders of a thousand seas
My heart…they open it…they have all the keys
I feel them, I see what no human sees
Magical they are…they can make the fire freeze
Wasn't it with his fingers that Jesus cured disease?
Monday, February 02, 2009
I'm available online!
Well I mean my book "Al Rehla" is, I just discovered that my book is available for purchase online in a very interesting website that we can call the Amazon of the Middle East!!
Check it out
http://www.neelwafurat.com/itempage.aspx?id=egb122652-5123630&search=books
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A Moment!
He did not say a word… without any introductions he took her in his arms… he hugged her, with his strong arms wrapped around her tiny body. He was big, strong, warm… her head rested on his chest and she inhaled his manly smell. She could hardly grasp her breath, she could not believe that she was that close to him, snuggled in his arms like a baby who has exhausted itself all day and all it needed was a deep sleep in its mother's loving arms. She closed her eyes and wanted time to stop. She was suddenly secluded from the whole world, she felt nothing from what was happening around her, the bright lights and the loud noises disappeared. That was exactly what she wanted, no it was more, more than she had ever thought she could get, a moment in his arms.
From A Moment, my new story.... Contact me for details
Monday, January 26, 2009
Attack! (3)
My mind has been defeated in all its helpless attempts to prevent your presence from occupying my daily life. Now you can declare your victory…
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Attack! (2)
My day is continuously bombarded by memories of you when my defence systems are in a constant state of dormancy...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Attack! (1)
A mighty force armed by longing for you has succeeded in entering my day and caused a lot of casualties in my proper self, in spite of the continuous resistance from my helpless mind...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Requiem....A New Story
Nothing is stranger than human nature, we can be capable of loving and hurting the same person, and will do our best to try to show how we are victims, how we did what we did because it was out of our hands, because of human weakness, because we were wrong, blind and immature. And always God is mentioned as our creator who made us as we are, although God gave us a clear guide of what to do or not to do, but again, it's human nature, we take full credit of our achievements but someone else, something else has to get the blame of our failures and sins.
From my new story "Requiem"
Contact me for details
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Here Ends 2008
The year has ended, the last year in my twenties and the entrance to my thirties.
Now looking back on 2008 I see great things that took place. Let me start with 2 lifetime experiences that left a mark in my life and I presume will be kept in my account of achievements. The first being the Omra, with the intense emotional experience that is not comparable to any other thing I went through and having my book published; something I'm still trying to believe and cope with.
Scanning the year, January, my favorite month greeted me with a trip to Turkey, I enjoyed every minute, the company of my lovely colleagues, the snow droplets falling on my face in the freezing mornings, walking in the narrow streets of Istanbul, absorbing history from every corner, indulging in the greenery of the parks and the splendors of the ancient palaces and gathering parts of me in Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque listening to the most beautiful prayer call I have ever heard.
March found me in a situation where I was "forced" to socialize at work, and surprised me with my ability to build very strong relations with people I never expected to get closer to.
April saw me in Sharm El Sheikh, enjoying the idle feeling and reading a lot of books on the beaches of the red sea, then it hit me with a terrible car accident that made my car look something like a deformed coke can.
May rewarded me with a nice trip to Iran, the fascinating country that I love, with its lovely beautiful people, impressing development and breath taking history that drowns me wherever I go.
Then June witnessed me in the biggest bookshop in Cairo, facing a crowd of dear familiar faces, feeling embarrassed like I've never felt in my life, wishing I were somewhere else and yet expected to speak about my book and my experience as a writer who is celebrating the launch of his first book. The week after, I was in Switzerland, wandering in Zermatt and absorbing as much as I can of its snow covered mountains and green covered hills, climbing up to 4.5 Km, breathing clean air, surrounded by beauty that words cannot describe, wishing if time could stop and dreaming of a small wooden hut on the mountains.
August found me in the suffocating city of Jeddah, hating it, hating my job and feeling extremely nostalgic to Cairo that I hate the most! Only seeing the Kaaba and cuddling this new-born connection to its vicinity that made up for the horrible Saudi experience. August also hit me with a personal loss, a friend that I thought close, a shocking painful loss that I managed to overcome, a proof that I am performing better in managing losses.
October, oh that lovely autumn month, it saw me walking in Europe, my beloved Europe, bowing in respect to the streets of Berlin, standing in awe in front of the masterpieces of El Prado in Madrid, starring in a state of disbelief at the marvellous treasures of Alhambra in Granada and enjoying the company of my dear friends Camel and Ines, feeling overwhelmed in the great cathedral of Cordoba, finding myself in La Giralda and the beautiful streets of Sevilla and feeling dislocated in Barcelona. But this lovely tour ended with a visit in my beloved Paris, kissing its streets with my eyes, crying on my departure day and asking God to bring me back, to keep me there forever.
November sent me to London, walking in its childhood-related streets and absorbing the fine art in the National Gallery. December saw me in Algeria, breathing the clean air and absorbing the green mountains overlooking the sea in Oran, one of the best business trips I ever had.
And ends 2008, sending me into another stage of my life, with hopes and dreams, difficulties and challenges, pains and sorrows, gains and losses, happiness and pleasures, with huge plans to achieve and happiness to spread on people I love.
Of all the wishes I have in this new year, I hope I will never be a source of pain or disappointed to anyone who loves and believes in me.
Monday, January 05, 2009
The Years
He didn't die, he didn't kill himself for he is writing these lines now, but the last ten years made something else out of him, the 20 years old boy turned into a 30 years old man. And the last ten years have seen a lot of things happening in his life…
He finished his studies, continued studying in another field, for he is addicted to knowledge. He read an enormous number of books and learned something from each one of them, he changed job several times till he found the most suitable one, he knew a lot of people, good and bad, he hurt people and got hurt, he got attracted to people and people got attracted to him, he fell in love again and tasted another kind of happiness mixed with pain, he knew the bitter emetic taste of betrayal, he lost his faith in love and learned from his mistakes, he knew what he wants out of his life and decided that the journey should leave an effect, he believed in himself and in others, he traveled a lot and saw the beauties of the world, he found the place where he dreams to live, he learned languages and developed new passions for things he didn't imagine would like, he made a lot of decisions and he never regretted any of them
Ten years have shown him a lot, in himself, in people and in life. Ten years have taught him that he is capable of doing great achievements on many fronts, that God as much as he gives does not give everything to his people, something has to be missing, for him he knew what was missing and he learned to live with it.
He grew up, he changed a lot, but whenever he looks at himself he sees the small old shy him who enjoys his own company rather than the company of others, who prefers to write than to speak, who would rather be alone than being with someone who does not like and who cannot live without art and beauty. The same him that loves flowers, winter, fine paintings, classical music and sad movies.
The self discovery trip that he started ten years ago is still going on, for he decided that it will end only with his death…
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