sunbeams in the morning

roses are not red but deep purple, soft velvet black and midnight blue. in my garden. butterflies with white headscarves flutter about not ready to reveal their true colours. yet.

I saw you in a dream my little big cat. why did your paws drop off until you were left standing with one hind leg only, staring silently at me with sad ginger eyes?

once. it was not a dream. we walked along the shore on a dark night. I said: listen to the  melodies in the waves breaking  along the shore. water bubbling up between uncalloused toes. but you heard nothing. at least not before. but now I hear your daughter is an artist. so you were not made of ice after all. or perhaps you married a poet.

I slip constantly. you break into my thoughts. pick me up. set me on a wooden chair. settle me into a plush lounger. and sometimes you smile and ask me to dance. Jewaira. dance.

dipping into honey glazed nights and spreading three fingers into the air. regressing into portraits of us together framed in intricate blocks of time. suspended in something that resembles eternity but as ethereal when sought.

wrinkles in time wedge me into moments when only your values exist. when the moment reigns supreme. reactions are  one hundred percent proof. the hangover is lethargy. your logic too lethal to sustain me. and I slip back.

sunbeams in the morning. pave a glittery path  into the sky. there I will roll, roll, roll away.

 

blink me in

will close my eyes

and you tell me a story

throw me a line

and pull me through

bait me

rate me

I consent

to all

====

will blink

and see you

a field of pink

an electric horizon

of translucent flamingoes

dive into your

madness

and retrieve

my heart

quivering

shivering

yet

full of joy

====

Time Traveler

Watch the clip and decide for yourself if this is a time traveler using a mobile phone in Charlie Chaplin’s film from 1928 “The Circus”.

How cool is that?

Raising Readers

 

Have you been to the Book Fair?

No. But I want to go.

Yes, you should. Take the kids too. It’s great for them to select their own books.

Oh I encourage them to read. I buy them story books and have the nanny read to them when they come from school.

But why don’t you read to them? It’s a wonderful bonding tool. Right before bed time. They will always remember those special moments.

Oh hahaha I do tell them stories in Arabic. I make things up mostly as I go along. But it’s mostly out of my head.

=======

She realizes that reading is good for them. But she delegates the task to someone else. In the end, does it matter who reads to your young child?

 

Lorna

I’ve been in Kuwait now for five years. I used to work in a salon under the sponsorship of a divorced Kuwaiti woman. Her husband divorced her because she couldn’t have children. Anyway, she wasn’t a good sponsor. She made us pay for our health insurance and our other expenses. She only paid our salary and I had to be at her salon all day, sometimes working up to 12 hours, depending on the whims of the clients. So when I left her, I told her why are you so “Bakheel?” So stingy? What are you going to do with all that money from the salon? You have no children. No one you need to look after. Why don’t you pay us more?”

It’s better now at this salon. I work 8 hours a day only and then I am free to do anything else. That is if I want to do free-lance work I can to get extra money in.

I left my previous sponsor and now I am direct local-hire. I can ask for a higher salary and I can manage where I work.  Yes, I like living here. I have family also working here direct-hire. I helped get them jobs.

One of my aunties I got to work here as a domestic helper in a Kuwaiti home. Haha, but now she is married to an Egyptian so she left her employer. He was the English language tutor to her employer’s children. He is a 23-year-old Egyptian and she is 40. But they fell in love and now they are married. She has a very beautiful one year old daughter now. I told Alma, that’s my auntie’s name, that she has to take care of her beauty because her husband is very young. She must take care.

Hahaha, why do Filipinas like Egyptians? Maybe because Egyptian men have beautiful big straight noses! Our noses are very small. Egyptian men like Filipinas because they are caring and gentle and they don’t make too much fuss. But sometimes there are problems. Some men are jealous and too controlling.

I know one Filipina who hasn’t been back to our country in years. She married her Egyptian husband and took Egyptian nationality and forgot her whole family back in the Philippines.

Some women forget their lives back home, even if they have family. But mostly we support our family back home. Like me, I support my parents, my son, and my divorced sister whose good for nothing husband left her one day after the birth of her second baby. He just couldn’t afford a family anymore and left. My sister was heartbroken but we support her financially till she is able to get a job. I’m hoping to find her a job here in Kuwait. She’s a college graduate.

The best husband material is if a Filipina finds an American. This is their best chance to get to the USA and to start a new life. But I don’t want to go to the USA. Why? My family is in the Philippines. My boyfriend is Filipino too. It’s the best to have someone from my background. I had some proposals before from some Egyptians. One man asked me to marry him on the first date. The other, he proposed through my friend after one meeting. But I don’t want to get married that way. I have to really know the man and want to get married. Not just temporary. It is my decision in the end and my life.

Shahla

Shahla sat on a low stool and whipped out her white spool of thread. She proceeded to do the bird dip with her head as she threaded the little hairs on my toes. Now I see the gasps of incredulity: “Waih! Hairs on her toes! Disgusting! Laser, laser!”

Well, it happens that Middle Easterners are downright hairy. I’m lucky that the hairs on my toes are the worst of the unlikely hair growth and to Shahla, it was just another job.

She bobbed her head, up, down, and with every yank, there was that sense of relief and cleanliness. Innumerable sessions of laser had not managed to tame the mane on my Arabian toes. But still, I had never had anyone do threading on my feet before. I felt mortified that her lips and face were so close to my feet and feared offending her.

Shahla, or Sheila, as the English called her, didn’t seem to care. So I continued to babble on some sensational bits – like the infestation of bed bugs in American hotels – posh or not. And the Eastern European lady on my right shuddered visibly as she imagined the horrible things.

“But they cause no harm,” I reassured. “Only mental trauma and distress!”

Shahla had raised her sons in the U.K. but she cannot forget Iran, the country she immigrated from  in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. There were reasons she had to leave but her soul is still there in her city, with her parents, and the rest of her aunts and uncles and cousins. She goes back to visit family any time she can but after etching a life for herself in the U.K. for close to 30 years, she feels she cannot go back permanently. She seems lost in that fragment of time, where parts of her are particles in the afternoon sun.

After she finishes the last toe, she sits upright and I comment about her feeling tired. It’s only then that she tells me she’s fasting for Ramadan.

Safer Sex for Athletes

Knowing the high testosterone levels of top athletes during sports meets, I wonder if organizers in Kuwait and other Gulf countries distribute or make available condoms to sports participants? In recent years, free condom distribution has been encouraged at sporting events to encourage safe sex.

During the Delhi Commonwealth Games recently, so many condoms were used and flushed down the toilets that the drains were clogged.

“Used Condoms Clog Village Toilets”

In a move to promote safer sex and HIV awareness, condom vending machines were packed with at least 4,000 condom packs.

One disgusted commentators referred to the athletes having sex as an act of animalization (“After animalization, drop the rubber in a bin” in one comment) and another complained: “Is this the culture of sports persons all over the world? For what purpose are they here? Are we human beings are [sic] animals? Even animals have some norms, rules and regulations which they naturally follow”

 

 

 

Exception

What justifies making exceptions to the rules?

Lets assume this video is not a fake but genuine CCTV footage.

The Russian cop stops the driver of a car driving along the Russian M23 with only one  headlight. Moments later, he glimpses a pack of wolves running down the highway and he makes a scramble and jumps into the car’s back seat until they pass.

Now lets each of us put our selves into this situation.

 

 

Knave of Hearts

 

“THE Queen of Hearts,

She made some tarts,

All on a summer’s day;

The Knave of Hearts,

He stole those tarts,

And took them clean away.”

 

The Knave of Hearts has made off

with her  poetry and her stories.

He’s tied her to a chair, and he plays with her hair,

watching her squirm and wriggle

Oh my Queen, why do you writhe and giggle?

I’m enjoying eating,

and may endure a beating

as soon as my meal is done;

when his majesty the King will

beckon to me: Come, here Jack!

Let’s look at your back..

I beg you to please

forgive this travesty

For the Knave that parts

Has stolen her heart

and shattered the vessel

into a million smithereens.

 

 

 

Bin It

The weather is still hot.

I was driving down the wide street and came to a halt at the stoplight.  The man  in the white car in front of me opened his window, and then threw out two empty Rawdtain mineral water bottles.

Just like that.

It never ceases to amaze me how anyone can throw any litter out the car window, and into the street.

If I were living in the future, I would have zapped him with my zap-shooter, and branded him as “Mr. Litterbug”

But I had to settle with waving my fist and mouthing G-rated obscenities.

Bin your rubbish for goodness’ sake!

Et Voilà

His fingers flick lightly through my hair and he smiles in admiration. Aloud he tells me how beautiful it looks and I twist my head around and say coquettishly, yes, it’s the handiwork of that French hairstylist.

I forgot her name. Coquette? She had talked endlessly. I often wonder if I have that effect on salon workers for instead of me, the client, pouring out my heart, often it is the employee with very little prodding on my behalf who tells all.

My French hairstylist spoke English with French flair,  flinging her dyed ash blonde bob sideways whilst looking into the mirror and tending to my slowly diminishing mane. She was not young but that was part of her charm. She had the sensual confidence of a woman who was comfortable with her beauty and her age.

“Ah” Kuuwait!” She exclaimed. “Yeeess we get a lot of customers from Kuuwait!”

It was of course my first time with her and we were getting to know one another.

One of her Kuwaiti customers, a very beautiful and elegant lady as she described her, one day came into the salon for her regular treatments.

Upon asking about her “ça va” affairs, the female client proceeded to tell all. With her lips in a pout (my addition), she said that she had left her husband.

“Just like that!?” the French hairstylist had exclaimed. “But why? What happened?”

One morning the husband had appeared all dapper, and dressed up to the nines, with shiny shoes, crisp dishdasha, and a certain aura about him – perhaps one of anticipation and stallion studdedness.

The wife stated: “Oooh, you look good. You look like you’re a groom, on your way to your marriage.”

And the husband turned around and said: “I am getting married,” he said bluntly.

At that the French hairstylist stopped her scissors in mid-air and I feared that in her excitement she would cut off more than she had intended. But she continued: “And like that, she left. She said if you are getting married, then get out of my life. And so she is divorced and free now! And oh, what a wonderfuul sense of humour she has. We always laugh about the day her husband walked in like that.”

Now whether I was scandalised or otherwise, I tut-tutted and murmured my outrage but also soothed her misconceptions.  Polygamy was quite ordinary but to be so blasé about it was not so acceptable. Ever the one who attempts to be the devil’s advocate, I suggested that there must have been signs.  A relationship does not deteriorate overnight does it?

In the end, after we had exhausted all subjects, the French hairstylist with the ash blonde bob fluffed my hair and announced: ” Voilà! It was a pleasure and hope to see you again next year.”

Put Yourself in Her Shoes Campaign

Campaign for domestic workers’ rights in Kuwait on Facebook:  Will this campaign make people who abuse their domestic workers think about their actions?

TRANSLATION: Have you ever been called a ‘donkey’ at work? Employers in Kuwait yell at domestic workers and call them names. Some consider this an acceptable form of discipline. Put yourself in her shoes

TRANSLATION: Do you consider a Friday spent with your boss a day off? Most domestic workers do not have a regular day off during their time in Kuwait. Some employers count family outings as a “holiday” for domestic workers, though they must still watch the children and perform other services. Put yourself in her shoes.

TRANSLATION: Have you ever been denied food when you are hungry? Some domestic workers in Kuwait say that their employers only give them a few pieces of bread to eat each day. Others go for days without any food at all. Put yourself in her shoes.

TRANSLATION: Have you ever worked for months without pay? The most common grievance of domestic workers working in Kuwait is that their salaries are not paid in full, or on time. Some domestic workers labor for months—even years—without pay. Put yourself in her shoes.

Nose Breakers

The excerpts below are from the Arab Times. I’m sure there is more that goes unreported.
I wonder do women break noses too or is just a male thing?

Driver’s nose broken: Police are looking for an unidentified person who allegedly broke the nose of a Bangladeshi driver, reports Al-Anba daily. The Bangladeshi, who drives a roaming taxi, filed a complaint at Kaifan Police Station, saying the suspect chased him, forced him to stop on the First Ring Road and started punching him on the face. He submitted a medical report to support his claim and even provided the plate number of the suspect’s vehicle to police.

In a similar but separate incident, an Indian employee working in a glasses shop lodged a complaint at Kaifan Police Station accusing a Kuwaiti police officer of breaking his nose, the daily added. The complainant said the officer, a ‘captain’, entered his shop and started punching him. When the ‘captain’ was summoned, he said the Indian had behaved indecently with his female relative who visited the shop earlier and that he was planning to file a complaint. The problem was solved amicably.

Asian’s nose, jaw broken: Kuwaiti man is said to have broken the nose and lower jaw of an Asian man when he caught the man red-handed while vandalizing his car, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.
The daily gave no further details.

Egyptian punched in nose: An Egyptian man has filed a complaint with the Nugra Police Station accusing a compatriot of punching him in the nose and causing him serious injuries, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.
The complainant said this happened because he had borrowed KD 16 from the man and could not repay in time.
The complainant has submitted a medical report to substantiate his claim. A case has been registered at the police station.
The suspect has been summoned for interrogation.