My first ever art show...

I finally took photographs of some of my art. I haven't had a show yet, but people who come into my home always encourage me to do more. I don't think I'm ready, but I'd love to hear your feedback. What's your favorite?

Invasion after midnight

When you march off to bed, so tired, flipping off light switches and locking doors, the last thing you want to see, when you walk into your room, is a cockroach doing a runway walk on your blanket.

“Naaaaaaaaaaaaayeeeeeeeeeffffffffff!!!!” I screamed, tonsils ringing like alarm bells. “Z’haaaaaaaaayweeeeeeeeeeeee !!! ” (cockroach in arabic)

I could hear him cursing from the hallway as he walked towards our bedroom, not enthusiastic about my find, nor my manner in expressing my horror.

“Okay. Okay, calm down.” He muttered as he walked to the kitchen to get paper towels. I remained plastered to the wall, like a petrified shadow, staring hatefully at the intruder. The bastard cockroach had frozen on the edge of the bed, pretending not to be there.

“Where did he come from, Nayef? Where? We are not cockroach people!” I was hysterical, walking backwards as Nayef captured the evil creature.

I mean, we clean our house, we’ve had pest control, and we’re basically good people. Why is it on my bed??? Why? I suddenly feel dirty and ashamed…and a little bit homeless.

I looked accusingly at the open bathroom door, and shut it firmly, after checking under the sink for a cockroach party. No relatives in sight.

Whisker rudely awakened from my screaming, and Nayef storming out of the house with a big crumpled ball of newspaper, looked at me for an explanation. I tried to enlighten her, but she wasn’t so interested. As long as the screaming wasn’t about her, she didn’t care and comfortably nestled her head into her butt, making like a doughnut in her insect-free bed.

“Where did you put it?” I greeted Nayef at the door.
“In the garbage.”
“With its friends?? To make more babies???” I shrieked.
“No, no, no. I crushed it. It’s dead. No babies.” He patted my head.
“Goood!”

Following the killing festival, our sleepiness evaporated, and we resentfully walked back to the TV room to watch more 24.

Of course, as one does in times of horror, I Googled my latest nightmare. I had to know more about this invasive species, and below is my disturbing find:

“Cockroaches live up to a year. The female may produce up to eight egg cases in a lifetime; in favorable conditions, it can produce 300-400 offspring. Other species of cockroach, however, can produce an extremely high number of eggs in a lifetime. Laying up to 100 eggs in each egg sac, it only needs to be impregnated once to be able to lay eggs for the rest of its life, allowing one single cockroach to lay over a million eggs during its lifespan.”—Source: Wikipedia.

No wonder, the fu*&ers are always wondering around alone. They’re already pregnant! No biological clock ticking, no need to date and no worries about missing out on motherhood. Just a one-night stand on a crazy lonely night of passion, and the bitch is set up for life. Children here, children there, spreading disgusting nuclear war-proof eggs everywhere.

It was 1:30am when we stumbled upon ‘sleeping beauty’ on our bed. I couldn’t help but think that if it wasn’t a holiday, at that time, it would be dark in our room, and we’d be sleeping, stupidly unaware of the monster invasion.

So what do we do now? We are both exhausted, refugeed on the sofa, watching hour 4am on 24, bed-less and pyjama-less.

Oooh…I can’t go back to bed consciously. Damn it, I need a tranquilizer.

"It's Bahrain's finest...It's Bahrain's fair..."

The Autumn fair, is neither held in Autumn nor can it in any way be described as fair, in terms of beauty.

Nonetheless, my best friend and I go every time it is in town. In the fear that we might miss something, we subject ourselves to cruel and unusual traffic, mentally challenged drivers and the worst parking scenarios you can ever imagine. Off we went last Saturday morning, on the very last day of this large gathering of sellers from all over the world and shoppers from all over Bahrain.

After getting stuck for 45 long minutes behind a large 16 wheeler that had stupidly lost its way into the swarming area, we gave the police men some tips and pointers on traffic control, parked the car in a dangerously questionable spot, and walked in.

It was so crowded and very pushy and shovey. I was tempted to poke the cattle of people in front of me with a knitting needle, to hurry them the hell up. Kids running around with sticky lollipops where bumping into peoples posteriors and then politely pulling the clammy candy of the offended butts. Old ladies inspected every single thing they passed frequently stopping without warning, in danger of being crushed by those behind them. What fun!

“I guess this is what Hajj must be like” I say to my friend, as we clung to each other.
“Yeah, but without the credit…” She whispers back.
“Ok now where the hell is the Egyptian Cotton?” I wonder looking around, “They say its amazing and gets softer and softer with every wash.”

We set off on an expedition within the huge exhibition center to find the legendary bed sheets. It is so surprising how most booths, will not help you find another seller, even when their products have nothing to do with what you’re looking for. They’re not even bloody competition.

I asked the shoe guy, the man who sold miracle honey, and a bored woman who sat at an empty stall, trying to sell funny looking underwear with bad spelling. None of them would 'fess up.

“No, don’t know! Don’t know!” The spice seller shook his head so profusely, I suspected he was lying.

“He knows and he’s not telling.” I say annoyed.

“Let’s buy some cinnamon and see if he confesses.” She suggests.

At this point, we have a bag of spices we will never need, especially since I am no culinary artist, and no information to get us closer to the bed sheets than when we walked in.

We set off to the opposite side of the bustling indoor marketplace and since I’m “the older one”, I continued to look for Egyptian looking people to ask. I figured that perhaps countrymen would help one another.

About two minutes before we were ready to give up, we both found the answer simultaneously as we each asked our last suspect.

“I found it.” I happily announced.
“Me too.” She said excited.

We were satisfied with getting the left over sheets after everyone in Bahrain got what they wanted, and moved back to shop for fun things.

At the counter of Arabic perfumes, Oud and other concoctions of Jasmine and bukhour, we were attended to by a man who knew little about “nice flowery smells”. As we struggled to explain to him that we didn’t want to smell like an ‘old aunty’, I was attacked by a manic salesman who sprayed my arm with ‘Eau de Grandma’, informing me it was his fast-selling special blend, and that was the last bottle.

“Hey!” I yelled, in my head, keeping my aggressive side hidden.

I can’t believe he sprayed me. I hate when people do that. I am so picky with smells, it can ruin my day if I’m wearing the wrong perfume. Once in high school, some guy thought it would be funny to spray me with Minotaur (a stinky men’s perfume), and to this day if I smell it, I feel nauseous.

I quickly paid for the bottled scented water for linens which I settled for, and backed away from the counter, to avoid further attacks.

As we walked out of the Autumn fair, carrying bags of spices, bed sheets and perfumed water, I felt that perhaps ‘Eau de Grandma’ wasn’t that far off from my new found persona. I can picture our retirement years…

Oh and by the way, the bed sheets are to die for. Doing it again next year...

Decorating houses with spouses

The title sounds all nice and rhymey, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a potential battle field. When you embark on playing house with your significant other, you have to be extremely careful not to scream out phrases similar to those listed below:

“Are you f*&%ing kidding me??? That ugly-ass couch??? Over my dead body!”

or…

“What do you mean you think peach and blue look lovely together????!!! OhmyGod.. ohmyGod, I think I’m going to die”

Especially heed my warning, when you are in a public place and you two were holding hands a mere few seconds ago. Your hysterical yelling and the shocked look on his face may draw unwanted attention from innocent shoppers.

In the beginning, there was IKEA. (Chorus of angels singing) That was our first shopping trip together. We had gone on a fun road trip to Kuwait, driving a huge Ford pick up truck, ready to be filled with goodies. Our real conflicts didn’t surface because almost everything Ikea makes is so bloody amazing, so we were under the false impression that we both loved the same things. In the midst of Swedish genius, we were such a compromising, loving couple with wonderful taste, who chose everything together.

A few hours later, we had bought about a million things, including a mini rocking chair that sat next to me the whole 5 hour ride back. To leave Kuwait on time, before sundown, I had to be dragged out of the store pulled by my long beaded necklace like a runaway goat, as I pleaded and begged that I just needed 5 more minutes. We all knew I was lying.

I out-shopped everyone, and by the time I was securely fastened into my seat, everyone was cranky and tired, except me. I was high on Ikea. My sister and I were in the back seat of the car with the last minute item wedged between us, and the closer we got to Bahrain, the closer the rocking chair got to my kidney. “You bought it! Now live with it.” I was told.

After that pleasant shopping trip, we’ve since experienced some awkward moments in furniture stores, usually, in the presence of a salesman, who wanted the earth to swallow him.

“That is disgusting. It is offensive and it looks like Louis the XVI threw up on it!”

“Why are you so angry with it?”

“Why are you offended, you didn’t design it, did you?”

“It’s not that ugly…”

(Gasp. Hand on heart in feigned shock.)

“Fine Farah, it’s repulsive, let’s move on.”

Several mini tantrums later, through divine intervention, we are unified again upon discovering a low Japanese bed that we both absolutely cannot live without. In order to keep the peace, we buy it immediately. Love conquers all once again, and we frolic back home in merriment, with our new find.

Several months later…

About two hours and several minutes before the New Year, I found my husband in a room turned upside down with furniture moved around and papers, books and all kinds of things in piles and heaps. At first I thought, he was recreating the Tsunami aftermath. Heaving and panting, lifting a huge TV set and then pushing a big sofa, he explained that he just wanted to check something. As a lazy (or as I like to say energy-efficient) person, I don’t understand moving heavy furniture around, just to explore other possibilities. Imagination is effortless and nothing breaks.

“Umm..honey? Before you go all insane, and start moving things around contrary to logic, why don’t you ask my opinion?” I plead, already feeling helpless.

“Why? Why do I have to check with you? This is my room!” He barked.

Here we go again with the “my room” madness. When I hastily agreed to this ridiculous assignment of rooms, I thought he meant “his” as in space to exist in, not to DECORATE! I can’t have an ugly room in a pretty house. My Virgo-ness won’t allow it. Everything has to be perfect or I will die. (I’m very theatrical in my head) On the outside, I smiled and nodded and urged him to get dressed, because we were invited to more than one party and were intending to do the New Year party hopping thing. We ended up leaving the house at 11pm and barely making it to Manama before 2007.

Another wonderful experience you will encounter when you get married or co-decorate is the thrill of explaining to your loved one that closet space is not a measurement of his masculine power in the house. While we enjoyed ruler-measured equality in our bedroom closet, I only survived a few weeks on that meager space and finally gave in and bought my self my own spacious closet to put the rest of my stuff in.

He never lets me forget, that I overcrowded his clothes by hanging my allegedly “huge” wedding dress in his half of the closet, although it was only for 3 weeks and we were on our honeymoon at the time. Since then it has been evicted to my parent’s house, but that’s because I don’t wear it everyday. I’ve refused to let the others go.

“I can’t throw them away…I’ve known them since 1997.” I say hugging my shoes.

“But you have thirty two and this ones ugly.” He says poking my treasured mustard boots.

“What? I love him.” I say cradling the lone boot. “I carried these with me all the way from London.”

Don’t worry; some events have been slightly dramatized for the enjoyment of the audience. What really happens is you eventually get over all those little hiccups of sharing space and compromising your domestic fantasies, and you finally find a happy place.

The happy place involves the man busy drilling holes and hammering nails, with a collection of tools sufficient to build a boat, while the woman chooses which paintings to hang up and organizes his artillery of tools, neatly labeling each box. This is where we both found ourselves in our element, happy as clams.

And after all the matrimonial DIYing, the shelves were put up, books beautifully stacked, candles were lit, and calmness and peace prevailed.

When Nayef invited me onto the sofa to watch our latest addiction 24, my mind went back to the day we bought it. After months of searching, it was love at first sight. It was during a big sale, and somehow no one had seen it yet. Seized with excitement, Nayef sat me down on the sofa, ordered me to shoo people away and not move until he came back with someone from the store. Today, as I settled down beside him amongst the pillows and fluffy blanket I am immersed in the feeling that we are truly home. Our home.

Digital Art

After going all the way to Saudi Arabia, to buy a year's supply of canvases for my painting sessions, I discovered that I could do things much faster on my computer, and it looked prettier. If it didn't, I would simply click close and then not save. No brushes to clean and no palette to scrape. The following are my creations of the past week. Addictive.

Playing Monopoly with Boys

The first time I played Monopoly with my husband, we had been engaged a few months and were still getting to know each other. We were three players, me, my sister, and the new fiancé.

By the end of the game, my sister had declared bankruptcy and thrown her money at him, and I had a nasty scowl on my face and was rethinking my decision to marry this mean man. A side of him, I had never seen before had emerged and robbed us of all our money, while building massive hotels before we had even passed Go, he charged us hundreds of dollars every time the miserable fate of the dice led us to his properties.

And as we begrudgingly handed over our hard earned cash, he did an obnoxious dance of glee accompanied by an annoyingly non-rhyming song of utter arrogance.

Already, we felt like crap for being broke and mortgaging our pathetically scattered properties, eyeing the collection of one missing land in his possession that could allow us to build houses and hotels.

“You’re on my land. Pay up!” I snapped.
“How much?” He grinned, flipping through his offensively thick wad of notes.
“Six dollars…” I mutter between clenched teeth.
“What? How much?”
“Six. Dollars.” I enunciate irritated at the mockery I was being made into.
“Keep the change…” He throws me a ten before rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

Four minutes later, I’m borrowing money from Basma to pay him 2000 dollars, because I landed on the damn Board Walk and he has a big fat red hotel on it.

“Damn you and your developments. A little humility wouldn’t kill you!”
“Oh come on. It’s just a game.” He says teasingly as he does a little victory wiggle.
“Like hell it is. This is war.”

This humiliation and indignity continued until 3am. When I finally handed over all my valuables to him and sat penniless by the purple squares, which got me the grand earnings of 18 dollars, he declared himself the “winner” and called it a night.

The next morning at breakfast, my sister came to the table looking all ruffled and hung-over from the game.

“You know, I don’t really like him that much anymore. He used to be really nice until yesterday.”
“I know! Nothing ever pissed me off so much as losing to a big tap-dancing man.”

Three Years Later…

A few days ago, during the long holidays, a friendly game of Monopoly was played, to pass the time. As the three unsuspecting girls sat to play with four suspicious looking boys, they didn’t imagine that the game was going to end 6 hours from now and that at the 4^th hour, war would temporarily break out, hostages would be taken and all the girls would withdraw.

Apparently when boys “play” games, they really live in the game, even if it’s a stupid board game with tiny boots and hats representing their manly selves. The passionate way money was counted and the alliances, signed contracts and under the table trickery was all foreign to us girls. We like to simply roll the dice, say please and thank you and are constantly apologizing, when someone pays us lots of money for landing on our plots. While the mafia of men are seizing property and pushing others to mortgage, we’re coming up with frilly financing plans to allow the poor victim of fate, some pocket money to buy shoes and still rent the room at New York Avenue.

Testosterone on the other hand, works quite differently. Every man carries the mandate, I win, therefore I am. And so they played, ruthlessly and without mercy. My own husband, only wanted me to “join” his team when my alliance to another became a threat. I didn’t buy it and refused to succumb to their manipulation. (He wanted my train stations, my main source of income) I said no and retreated to my sofa, penniless. Again.

At 5:45 am, as the little houses and hotels, cards and dice were put away safely into the box, I silently swore that I will never play anymore co-ed games.

The funny thing was that while the boys yelled and argued about made up rules and unfair alliances, we cowered in the background hoping that a fight wouldn’t break out and make everything all awkward. But when all was done and the winner emerged, the boys slapped each other on the backs laughing and joking and later described the evening (early dawn) as having been such fun and would love to do it again soon. What? Really? What about all the hostile yelling and screaming? We thought heads were about to get ripped off. Apparently not. What we witnessed was boys being boys. Scary.

Needless to say the girls were traumatized and decided that next time, we would play Trivial Pursuit, which was more difficult for the boys, because they didn’t know half the answers. Playing Monopoly with girls is probably not as exciting but it will be a while before I forget the irritation of male competition and play with boys. I wonder when my next memory lapse will be.

Nesting Alert!

It all started with the innocent task of cleaning my wallet. This two-minute activity which involved tossing old receipts and reorganizing cash in order of denominations had led me to the kitchen where we keep a growing pile of change, because neither of us have a pocket for coins in our wallets.

The next thing I knew I was categorizing medication alphabetically and checking expiry dates on random food in the closets. When my husband walked in, he found me sitting on the kitchen counter intensely focused on cleaning the screw cap part of the ketchup bottles and arranging the bottles by height, like a school line up. He sort of always “finds” me in these weird moods. Staring at the stacks of coins, categorized by country, he thought to himself: “What happened to her?”

Domestic demands happened! That’s what. You have to clean after yourself and then after the man. The Man, (a very strange species) does not appreciate the alarm and hysterics caused by finding articles of clothing vertically dropped in the middle of the room, accordion-style. Like a lone roundabout, waiting for a network of roads to happen, perhaps some jeans to lead you to the T-shirt and then a scarf highway to the bed. Now that’s fine if we’re monkeys. But we just bought a beige canvas hamper yesterday! Together! And we both admired its ingenious talent at concealing piles of laundry. What has changed? Are you not speaking to the hamper today? Did you have a falling out?

According to Dr. Laura, I should just tell him kindly that I need his help keeping the house clean and that I’d appreciate he puts things in the right place and then give him a kiss and a hug, bake him brownies and make him some hot chocolate.

That’s just ridiculous. Dr. Farah says to pick up the fiendish item and yell as loud as possible. “I’m throwing it in the garbage!” and then burn it in the garden for all the neighbors to see. That should drive the point home after 65 pleasant requests accompanied with smiles and pats on the back.

(I think he knows I’m writing about him, because he just told me he was going to organize the nightmare table that I’ve been begging him to clean! And then he's going to fix that shelf for me that I wanted up for the past month. Praise the lord, it’s a miracle!)

And so after weighing the pros and cons, I decide not to shame him publicly in the compound, but to try and lovingly understand the shortcomings of men in the household and not hold this against him. So I drop it in the hamper myself and leave a yellow post-it note in its place on the floor.

It reads:

Dear tenant,

It has been noted lately that many things are being dropped here, that do not belong. Please be advised that this is NOT the hamper. To reach the hamper, kindly proceed straight and take the first left turn. Opening hours: All bloody day long.

Further articles of clothing dropped here, will be mercilessly burned at the stake as the witches were in Salem.

Yours truly,

The Carpet.

He never acknowledged the note. But I did notice that things were not thrown willy nilly around the room anymore like a bar fight had broken out. I also noticed that since we hired Emily, our domestic chief of operations, I'm not as evil, as when I was doing everything myself.

And so the moral of the story is: Get a third party to clean your house, they won’t take it personally, because they’re getting paid for it, and it’ll keep your marriage pleasant.

Everyone’s happy.

I slept...

Silence. Silence and lots and lots of beautiful quiet
need to sleep; overwhelming
Bed envelops me and holds me in it's womb
Just the invisible hum of the heat-breathing radiator
Warmth inside, Cold everywhere else

Soft darkness with a yellow glow around the garden
Peace, safety and the loving smell of freshly laundered linens
Falling in backwards, melting into feathers of softness
In a small house, surrounded by strong trees
As the moon was welcomed into a big blue sky of stars, I slept.

I'm only happy when it rains

My husband just found me on the porch in a frantic race against the rain, swishing water out into the garden with the most useless of tools. It's not raining cats and dogs. It's raining cattle, and there are cows of rain on my porch; my safe spot. This is where I’m planning to sit on my wicker furniture, curled up drinking tea and reading a good book during the rainy holiday. This is not supposed to be the set for Water world. I was battling the puddles threatening my doorstep with such enthusiasm I raised my heart rate to cardio-training levels. Wearing cropped pants and beach slippers in the cold, I think I scared him when I turned around to explain what I was doing.

I stood there breathless with electrified frizzy hair, face pink with determination and soaking wet, holding my weapons of choice. The name eludes me now, but in one hand, I was holding that thing you use to swipe water of your shower glass door. To a passer-by I must've looked like a mad hockey player seized with dementia.

"What are you doing?" he asked.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" I answer waving my other tool, the spade-ish thingy that comes with a matching brush.
"Farah, you're going to get sick! What you're doing is pointless."
"Well, somebody has to save the house from "The Flood". Hand me that bucket will you?" I answer hysterically.
He walked back into the house shaking his head, wondering if when he wasn't looking someone switched me with a look-a-like maniac.

Three Hours Earlier

"I love it when it rains...Isn’t it amazing?" I sigh staring out the window of the car.
It felt so safe driving around, dry inside and wet and splashy outside. It's especially wonderful if you're the front-seat passenger and the executive DJ.

I had bullied my husband into plugging in my iPod, because my music was cooler. He listens to old Arabic songs that go on forever and sound to me like someone is wailing from a prison cell. I can't take it more than 3 seconds. When we were engaged I used to drown out the sound by humming in my head, trying not to be one of those people who have to have things their way. Now that he’s legally bound to me, I decided to tell him the truth.

"Nayef, I can't. It's killing me!" I mutter through clenched teeth.
"What's wrong with your face? Why is it scrunched up like that?"
"It's the music. It hurts my ears. I will die if you don't change it.” I begged, looking like a constipated Pug.

So with good music as our soundtrack, we marveled at the rain’s strength and felt the thrill of driving through big puddles spraying the sides of the streets. However, the peace I found in the rain earlier today was immediately erased when I saw my own porch flooding with pools of water gathering at the threshold, soaking up the make-shift Welcome mat. My domestic safety was vulnerable and I immediately started drawing up architectural solutions to this leakage into my covered porch, while rushing to grab for the nearest squeegee. (I just remembered the name)

Looking out of my window now, I see that the puddle has been revitalized and is collecting smugly in the corner of the porch. I realized that my insane thrashing at it earlier was futile, but either way it was satisfying.

Enjoy the long rainy weekend and “Be one with the puddles…”

GDN Letters that annoy me...

In reference to the letter linked below:

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/story.asp?Article=163674&Sn=LETT&IssueID=29261

Dear Dark Magician, (whatever the hell that means)

First of all, I got a headache from reading your jumbled letter. Nothing flows smoothly and you don’t have a single healthy sentence in the entire text. You seem to be a bit confused, trying to back your unquestioned beliefs with facts and logic that just don’t mesh with each other. In some instances, I wasn’t sure whether you were for or against something, but I figured out a little bit of your mishmash to understand that you have taken the liberty to “correct” someone by dictating that the hijab is compulsory and in fact not a personal choice.

In all logic and reason, the only people who should have the right to discuss hijab, and its wonderful protective benefits, are women. They are the ones who wear them, and they should be the ones to evaluate their effectiveness against temptation, evil and nuclear war.

I don’t see any passionate campaigns by men, telling women about the wonderful benefits of wearing bras. “Bras…because you don’t want to look like a cow” or “women and bras, unite against gravity!”

So why is it every man’s business to tell us their opinion on how liberating wearing a hijab is. I personally don’t find it liberating nor useful and never will. Others find comfort in it, the same way I am comfortable wearing jeans as opposed to hotpants. It’s my personal choice and right not to reveal my body to whomever I don’t want to reveal it to and I can say the same for every other woman. If you are not comfortable with your hair showing, cover it, and get on with your life.

But to accept that men are telling us, in the name of religion, that it is compulsory to cover your hair, THAT I don’t accept. And just to prove that it isn’t something specifically called for in the Quran, you now see this hijab propaganda gradually evolving and being redefined to include covering the face. I can only anticipate that the next step to “protecting” women will be to ban them from speaking, because their voices will be the only feminine element left to delete. The popular “Islamic” compromise which is unfortunately starting to exist in Bahrain now, is that a woman exists and has alleged “equality”, on the condition that she be covered from head to toe, with no face. This only serves one dangerous and highly poisonous purpose, which is to erase her from existence. She can offer no human feature to appeal to others and essentially becomes a faceless nameless object, easy to ignore or abuse, because she’s not familiar anymore.

You can no longer view her as a mother, a sister or a friend. She becomes your temptation that must be covered, synonymous with sin. She is now that, which will get you into hell if you touch her, think of her or look at her. Something to quickly avert your eyes from and not acknowledge, lest you have sinful thoughts and become tempted to rape, pillage and commit adultery.

I fear that we have gotten to the point where we have to modify God’s creation in order to avoid committing crimes. We no longer take responsibility for our civility, mutual respect, or self-control. If you are on a diet, every baker must close his windows and curb the smell of freshly baked bread, so that YOU don’t feel tempted to grab and devour a loaf of olive bread and get fat. We don’t care! Get fat, or don’t get fat, but pay for the damn bread or go sit in your room under your blanket.

Hair is hair. It is not inherently sexy. How attractive is it lying on the bathroom floor? Does it make you go wild, when you see hair on your carpet? What is beautiful, is the woman, who the hair belongs to. Whether she covers it or not, you cannot reduce her femininity without erasing her presence. Her features will be in your daughter’s faces, her tenderness will shine through in the way she holds your children when they cry and she will always be attractive, no matter what you cover.

Du-bai or not Dubai

First of all, I would like to apologize to my loyal readers..(hahahahah, sounds so pompous) for this literary lag I have been suffering. Life has kept me occupied with its hectic schedule and before I knew it 10 days had passed, and I've written nothing.

I'm now in Dubai attending a course. The course is great, lots of new information and no mentally-challenged mandatory exercises like my previous experiences, but the minute you have to leave the hotel, you regret not having bought your own helicopter when you had the chance...

All the taxi drivers in Dubai are drama queens. You ask them to take you somewhere two blocks away, and as you're casually sitting in the back seat, you decide to make friendly chit chat..."How long will it take to get to Sh. Zayed Road?" Rather than the usual.."Oh just a few minutes more"...You get this response.."Oooooh...Too Much Trrraffffic! Very Bad! Very Bad! Maybe ONE HOUR!"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah let me out! I can't sit in a car for one hour, and not cross a stateline, country border or a time zone. You have to realize, he's talking about a destination which I can see from the window. I sat the remainder of the trip in distress, feeling very very claustrophobic.

I learned after a while, that they exaggerate, because we arrived in 15 minutes. But that was after he stressed me out, appointments were postponed and half my hair fell out, . They make it such a big deal, I'm almost wondering if this isn't propaganda to keep people indoors.

With so much more to share, I have to leave it for another time. I fear that if I don't go to bed right now, I will be getting an involuntary banana and oats facial in my mueseli tomorrow morning...

Bon Nuit (Wish I was in Paris)

Pet tragedies in the Mattar Household

After the fifth time our pet bunny Fluffy (how creative) had violently smothered her babies to death, I was holding my dad’s hand asking him to accompany me to the mental hospital to admit Fluffy for psychotic tendencies. “She’s MAD, Baba! It’s out of control. She squashed them!”

“Oooooooh look how cuuute!” we had cooed and aaaaaaaahed over the hairless blind creatures petting them repeatedly with our fingers through the mesh wire.

“We’re going to have so many raaaaabits!” Not so much.

Next day: 8 baby bunnies found suffocated to death by big mothers fluffy butt.
Oh, the tragedy! We dragged friends and family one by one to point at the murderer in shock and horror telling them how horrible she was, secretly breathing sighs of relief that our own mother was sane and never sat on us.

Years later, I found out that we had imprinted our human smell all over the offspring and the mother wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

All the while, we had judged her for being un-maternal, and not knowing what a wonderful gift children were, it turned out that we were the real culprits.

I feel really bad now. Ignorant monkeys that we were, we killed 5 generations of rabbits.

Several years later, I got really passionately into horses. I went horse-riding every week and had posters, t-shirts, books and horsey stuff coming out of my ears. And so the next logical step was to begin a heavy whining-and-begging campaign on my father, to get my own horse.

“Its only 500 dinaaaaaaaaaars….” I wailed, lying on the floor next to his bed, as he read the newspaper after lunch.

“PLEEAAAASE.” I delivered my ‘please’ composed in several different harmonious notes, and punctuated every once in a while with a desperately groaned “BAAAAAAABA”

He was good. He ignored me so well; I started to think I wasn’t there.

“MAAAAMA?”

“What, Farah?” (Oh good, I exist.)

My mother who tried to speak to me with logic, about how we don’t have a stable, or enough space, and the high costs and demands of maintaining a horse, gave up as soon as I told her, it was going to live in my room, at which point I was swiftly but lovingly kicked out of their bedroom.

My father after feeling bad, that he couldn’t get me my own pet horse, wanted to compensate me with something else.

A few days later, he called me into the garden telling me that he had a big surprise outside. I got so excited I started running around like a headless chicken, putting on my riding pants and boots so quickly, before he could even say anything. Rushing out the back door, I almost stumbled onto my face heading to the corner of the back yard that I had envisaged as a stable. I stopped dead in my tracks, shocked as my eyes rested on my “surprise”. I was speechless and disappointed beyond belief.

Staring stupidly back at me from my “stable”, chewing some innocent nearby plant, was a scruffy, stinky brown goat. “WHAT??? THIS IS NOT WHAT I ASKED FOR, DAMNIT!”

How the hell am I supposed to ride a goat? It’s going to split in half, and besides my feet are going to be dragging on the floor and the saddle will fall off!

The sad thing is that I actually had this mental conversation after considering for a split second to make do with my consolation prize. I think the sensitive goat felt my dismay, because three weeks later, I was sat down by my mother who told me that Deodorant the goat (I was into sarcasm at an early age) unfortunately was no longer with us. Deodorant had committed suicide by banging her intelligent head into the wall. I felt partially responsible for damaging her self-esteem and blaming her that she wasn’t a horse. But it’s probably for the best that she’s now with God and nobody made her a Ghoozi.

These tragedies resulted in us not having any more pets for years, with the exception of one noisy, insomniac and hyperactive canary, which was later freed by me into the afternoon sky after my sense of righteousness, was aroused by a history lesson on slavery and the writings of John Locke.

The incidental peace and quiet was priceless.

Chorus part II

I have to just elaborate on one thing regarding Chorus and why I hated it so much.
Mr. "Wigward" as he was unaffectionately named by students, made us sing a horrible Christmas song entitled "Grandma got runover by a reindeer".

What kind of sick song is that? I loved my Grandmother and I was infuriated at the
callousness with which these people sang about their flattened Grandma...
and so I was extremely offended by the following lyrics:

Grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve

you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

she'd been drinking too much egg nog
and we begged her not to go
but she forgot her medication
and she staggered out the door into the snow

when we found her Christmas morning
at the scene of the attack
she had hoofprints on her fore head
and incriminating claus marks on her back

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

now we're all so proud of grandpa
he's been taking this so well
see him in there watching football
drinking beer and playing cards
with cousin Nel

its not christmas without grandma
all the family's dressed in black
and we just cant help but wonder
should we open up her gifts or send them back?
(send them back!)

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

now the goose is on the table
and the pudding made of fig (ah!)
and the blue and silver candles
that would just have matched the hair in grandmas wig

i've warned all our friends and neighbours
better watch out for yourselves
they should never give a license
to a man who drives a sleigh and plays
with elves

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

(sing it grandpa!)

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

(Merry Christmas!)

Chorus; the song of life

Have you ever attended a course and wondered what the hell you were doing there? Whether it’s a seminar, a training session, or some random healing group, which claims to solve all your life problems by teaching you how to breathe, I’m sure everyone has found themselves in an unplanned environment, during which they frequently wished they could die.

I remember when I was in Eighth Grade we had a required Chorus class, yes it’s as retarded as it sounds. While all the boys were doing fun things in Tech Ed. building shelves and hot air balloons, we were stuck in a class room a kilometer away singing “Mee May Maah Moe Moo”. Yes. Moo. Can you imagine the indignity???! This exercise was supposed to make your vocal chords flexible. Well someone should tell them that…I DON’T PLAN ON ENTERING THROAT GYMNASTICS AT THE OLYMPICS!!! But there we were, with our wig-clad teacher who was sickly excited about the prospect of singing the above mooing in every bloody note on the piano.

AAAAAH!

It was only about 55 minutes of suffering but it would almost drive me to tears, every single time. When Mr. Winward fell unexpectedly off his piano bench knocking his toupee out of place, I felt guiltily responsible, although everyone could see, I was a clear 5 meters away from him, and hadn’t tampered with the screws.

Since then, I’ve been surprised, that life often throws you into Mee-May-Maah-Moe Moo-moments. One minute you’re happy and free, the next you’re stuck somewhere, and although not physically restrained from leaving, you stay the entire torturous time, silently suffering and resenting the fact that you were taught not to scream in public.

A while back I was signed up for a day long seminar about trade or export or something equally exciting like that. It was in the middle of a week, where I was close to ripping my hair out from all the impossible tasks on my plate, and yet I went anyway to broaden my horizons. On the way there, the insane traffic helped broaden my creativity in skills such as swearing and wishing evil thoughts towards my fellow commuters.

I thought that overcoming this obstacle was a big achievement, but after I arrived at the venue, and was handed a folder and the agenda for the day, I found that there was an even bigger achievement ahead of me; to make it through the day without crying.

It turned out that the seminar was suddenly something completely different. And the inept organizer had switched it to technology, and how it could make my life smoother and easier, if I was an entrepreneur. Okaaaay. But I’m not. I wish I was, because then I wouldn’t have sent myself here. I’d be in my delightful Ikea-furnished home office drinking coffee and listening to blaring music while I worked happily on my laptop, making millions. Fantasies are great, they defy logic.

Anyway, in eight grueling hours of mundane discourse, we praised the wonders of Excel, MS Project, and learned that putting together a database of contacts in your own handwriting on random pieces of paper is not an efficient business practice..HELLOOO! No Shit! Is it still 1989?

And to add insult to injury, we had to do really annoying exercises where you pretend to introduce yourself to an “American”, by keeping it “short and sweet”. They made it sound like we were acquainting ourselves with outer space beings with ADHD. I was less than enthusiastic. In fact, I used a very clever tactic to avoid being passed the microphone. I stared at my paper with such intense concentration, I almost went cross-eyed. Experience has taught me that if you avoid eye-contact, people tend to skip over you. It almost worked until my neighbor, whose method didn’t work, passed it over to me out of spite, while I was still staring profusely at my desk. My less than subtle hand signals and silent mouthing of “Get that thing away from me!” were unfortunately noticed by the instructor up front. “What’s going on back there?”

I suddenly looked up at her and gave her that sick sweet smile, you use when you’ve been caught being yourself in a public place. I wanted to disappear, but instead I just mumbled, “I’d rather not.” Grin…

My thankfully sharp partner and I finished the last exercise of the day on the computer, in 10 minutes, while others were still typing with one finger and looking for the Enter button on their keyboards. At some point we were asked to mix with others who had difficulty with technology, but we politely declined with a smile.

That might’ve been considered rude and uncooperative, but the mood I was in by then, I couldn’t have managed to kindly guide anyone through the basics of keyboarding, or teach them how to enter data into a table. I would’ve simply smacked them with the mouse and walked out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is…I’m not sure there is one. I think the next time you find yourself in a useless predicament, leave. Go back to doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because life is short and one shouldn’t spend it visualizing themselves knocking their head senseless into their desk, like I did. I leave you with my final words of wisdom: Never Mee May Maah Moe Moo, for anyone, it’s just not worth it.

Five Reasons to stay at home on the Weekends

1. If you want to watch a movie, get it on DVD. First of all, the music doesn’t go all funny on you and awkwardly skip “romantic” scenes that we already got over, when we were 11. Also, you can pause to go to the bathroom or make your own popcorn/nachos/hotdogs, whatever thrills you. And if you get an important phone call, you can discuss in painful detail what you’re going to wear to the wedding tomorrow, without shamefully being escorted out by the usher in the middle of your conversation.

2. There. Is. No. Traffic. None. If perchance you are in a hurry walking to the kitchen, and you find that the person in front of you is walking on the wrong lane at the snailish speed of 20 footsteps per hour, you can just kick them. After all, it’s your house. Also, you won’t get arrested for pelting “visitors” with rotten tomatoes for bad Road-iquette. It’s very tempting, when some moron in a big dusty car is pushing their way into the 2 centimeters in front of your car, to get out and bang their head into their steering wheel until they black out. This will usually lead to someone’s arrest.

3. You can have whatever you want for dinner and will not be restricted to a menu of limited items. Also rather than sit at a crowded table, for hours, waiting for decent service, you can eat on the comfort of your own sofa. If you want to have ketchup with your fillet mignon, no patronizing waiter is going to look at you and say, “we don’t serve ze ketsup ‘ere”. Pour it on.

4. You will not be stared at if your t-shirt is green and your shorts are pink with purple polka dots. In your house you are Anna Wintour, and you are in vogue. You don’t need to wear heels, big bunny slippers are a must.

5. And finally, nothing beats the feeling of freshly laundered pyjamas, dim lights and a fluffy blanket, curled up on the sofa watching something addictive like Prison Break with the one you love. Make sure you have it on DVD, because the fun is in watching four in a row, till sunrise and reducing the painful suspense between episodes to 30 seconds rather than seven whole days.

Note: If you are single, all of the above will seem ridiculously boring and staying at home would mean hanging out with your parents, which is socially pitiful when it’s not by choice. For this portion of my audience I will be writing you a post soon… 5 Reasons to Get Married. So now go out into the big mess of a world outdoors and meet someone nice. Good Luck.

The Whisker

My dog just came galloping down the hallway into the TV room at a frenzied pace. This can only mean one thing. She has been up to no good. In the past, this devil -is-after-me sprint into the room to look at us with an "I'm innocent" look, means that someone has been very, very naughty and has just emerged from the forbidden rooms.

The forbidden rooms are our bedroom, the dressing room, and the I-need-my-private-space room which my husband uses to smoke cigars. Usually she has snuck into the first two, which are mostly my domain. She likes my shoes. I have found her on more than one occasion making out with an innocent slipper caught in a loving embrace, saliva everywhere.

"What are you doing???" I would yell.
And then I would melt almost instantly because of the "what do you mean?" look on her face, like I just accused her of something ridiculous.

I'm telling you before I had Whisker, I would've laughed at people who describe their pet's facial expressions. But damn it, I tell you, this dog has an expressive face. Her speciality faces are the "forgive me" face and the "I'm sad you were away all day" face. I love her to bits. She's testing all my preconceived notions of how I was going to raise kids.

My husband and I are worried that we will not love our children like we love this dog. I'm so worried about this, that I want to get pregnant, just to prove us wrong.

Contrary to all my proclamations of what I would and wouldn't do if that were my child, while witnessing mothers trying to control children in supermarket aisles, I've become the soft mother.

I would bribe her with dorito crumbs so she will love me more than my husband. I would break the forbidden room rule, if she sits at the door when we go to bed, with her toy bone in her mouth wanting to play fetch. I would even wait outside the kitchen after I finally get her to go to bed, listening for her footsteps incase she was going to follow me back for the 5th time. And when she doesn't, I'm almost heartbroken, even though I've ordered her firmly to go to sleep.

Wa3alaaaaaya...7abeeeeebty. My mother, who doesn't like dogs, is constantly asking about her and dropping by to visit her. "How is Skewer??" she asked the other day.

"Mama, her name is Whisker.." It's okay, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, back to the present moment. After she came running into the room breathless, like she was being chased by a banshee, I asked my hubby if he left the bedroom door open.

Blink blink, "forgive me" face.

He has learned that look from Skewer...I mean Whisker. I walk to the bedroom and find the door ajar, like a few inches ajar. Like a hamster couldn't make it through, ajar. But somehow the pekingese houdini slipped through. Inside the room, everything looks in place...except...

There is a slight ruffling of the shoe army I have told you about before, and lo and behold on the bed is a lone pair of my black gem-studded slippers. It has been chewed upon profusely. A confused series of miniature footprints surround Exhibit A and a tuft of hair from the only redhead in the house. "WHISKER!!!!!!"

I walk slowly back into the living room, expecting to find her in the usual spot, after her crime has been discovered. She's on the sofa, peering at me behind Nayef's leg, like he's her Embassy, and I can't go there to arrest her. She is looking at me, as I walk in and as I go to sit on the sofa. She is waiting for her 'telling-off'. But I use the guilt technique that parents use sometimes to confuse their kids. I say nothing.

I swear to you, she sat there staring at me for about five minutes, until I walked over to her held her face and told her that she was a little devil.

"Naughty Girl!"
(But I'm cute) said her face.

Oh God, I know she's adorable. Earlier today I had bought her a fuchsia and grey stripey sweater which she wore with such pride. She looked like Cindy Lauper in one of those baggy t-shirts from the 80's.

After that, she felt better, smiled at me (Yes, she smiles) and trotted off happily to her small cushion bed and fell asleep, exhausted from all the fetching, food begging, sweater-wearing and shoe-licking.

After all...Girls just wanna have fun...