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There was a loud shout from above, her heart shot to her throat as she ran blindly toward the nearest exit. How could they have known? Had someone ratted her out? She was so quiet, she had even taken extra care not to wake her room-sister. They couldn’t catch her, she wouldn’t allow them. Last time they caught her trying to escape, she wasn’t allowed to leave the house for months except for the Friday afternoon walks with Nurse. She threw herself on a heavy door and fell into a blinding glare. The Outside, she was close, the gates were not too far away. She ran like a wild animal pursued by dogs, she felt very much like a wild animal. Her bare feet were numb to the sharp rocks that nipped at their supple underside, her mess of hair trailed behind her and her arms flailed wildly in her large, sheer nightgown as she ran, and ran, and ran…
She woke up the next day in a locked room. They had caught her again, thrust her back into the stark, sterile prison of her room. She rubbed her head and sat up on a bed that wasn’t hers. She tried to remember what had happened and where she was, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t remember anything. She couldn’t feel anything. She picked at her fingers and stared at the wall.
Three hours later Mother came in. “Dear, you gave us quite a fright last night. You shouldn’t go running off like that!” She embraced her and kissed her on the forehead tenderly.
“Yes, Mother.”
“You are a very sick girl and I am taking care of you,” she stroked the girl’s hair.
“Yes, Mother.”
“This is for the best, you know that.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“If you run away one more time,” Mother leaned and whispered in her ear, “I’ll have to take away your legs.” She smiled, her smile made her eyes twinkle and dance ferociously. They were blue and cold, they sucked you in and tormented you, but you were caught up in them all the same, enjoying the pain they caused you.
“Yes, Mother.”
“You are a good girl darling, but I must punish you, you understand dear. You went too far. You will not be eating this week.” Mother left and shortly after, or perhaps a long time after, for she had lost all sense of time, Nurse came in and fitted her with a tube. “That ought to teach you not to run again you little cunt,” she sneered, pushed away the cuffs that chained the girl to the bed, and forced a needle into her vein. She just stared blankly at the wall with hollow eyes, submitting to Nurse’s will.
That was how it was for a long time, she lived a life carefully controlled by her caretakers. They determined when she would wake up, what she should eat and even how she should feel. There were others too, they were blurs flitting in and out of a reality concocted and dominated by Mother and Nurse. As the moon turned and the seasons changed, Mother became more lenient. She began shoving less and less pills down the girl’s dry throat. Some days she would be allowed to walk outside her room alone, and some days Mother would sit next to her and talk about things she didn’t comprehend, but it was nice to have the company. And after quite some time, her run for freedom was forgotten.
But not by her.
Those gates still existed, and inside her was a clawing, a ghastly gnawing, an itch, a tug, some mysterious sensation that willed her to be free. It was as if some glowing thing had hatched and perched inside the chasm within her chest. Hope? Was there such a thing for a girl that knew little more than a blank wall and a heavy chain? And yet, every day as she sat on her bed and stared at the wall, biting her bloody lip, she thought of those gates and what must be behind them. What if there wasn’t anything there? What if she stepped out and fell off the edge of the world? She shuddered. She hadn’t shuddered for a very long time, and the sensation stirred that instinct within her.
The moon was full when she decided to do it. Instead of running out the gates she would climb over the fence in the back. It was very high and hard sharp points, but she did not think of that. After two attempts she managed to get into her coat and quietly slip out of her room. Her feet were sweaty and made a wet schlip sound as she walked, so she had to stop to wipe them on her gown a few times. The back door was in the kitchen and the key was in the sixth pot on the first shelf. There were nine keys, but she found the right one immediately. The door creaked as she slipped out and skipped to the fence. Skipped! She didn’t know she could skip! There were no guards here, no lights, only the heavy moon gazing down at her her languidly, as if amused. She grasped the iron bars with her hand and kissed them. They tasted like her blood. Was that what freedom tasted like? Casting away her doubts she pulled herself up and climbed. The air was electric, it filled her lungs with ecstasy, her heart beat like it hadn’t before, and although her body was straining under the physical exertion, she had never felt happier, or more alive.
It was then when it almost came crashing down again.
“YOU NASTY PIECE OF SHIT!” screeched a shrill voice that cut into the silent night like a blade. The girl saw the gleam of red eyes coming closer to her. “GET BACK HERE SO I CAN SAW YOUR LEGS OFF!” She felt the blood leave her body, as if frightened away by the threats. She blindly threw herself over the other side of the fence and fell. She thought the voice had caught her when she felt a piercing pain in her arm, but when her face hit the grass she realized that she had only cut her arm on the fence. Without sparing herself a second to catch her breath she ran, thinking only of putting as much distance behind her and the fence. She could hear the wails of Mother and rage of Nurse following her, but those were only voices. And the voices would fade away into the air soon enough.
She wouldn’t stop running until she reached the city, and even then she couldn’t stop until her legs gave out beneath her. The city smelled strange and unpleasant, of human waste and sulfur. A cloud of damp smog hung over her head, so that it felt as if the world was darker there. And even the full moon, which seemed to take up so much of the sky before, was a only speck of light in the distance. She shivered, her coat was thick but the cold stabbed at her from every angle. She needed to eat. She pushed herself to look for food, though every part of her body protested. She stumbled across a garbage can that was lying on its side and bent over to look for food. All she could find was a small broken bone with a bit of marrow inside. As she was getting up, proud of her prize, she heard a growling from behind her. She spun around to find two emaciated wild dogs with the look of death upon their haggard faces. With matted fur and teeth as long as knives, their eyes were locked firmly on the bone she had just found. Filled with fear she ran, despite her legs’ pleas to stop. She ran delirious for a full two seconds before the dogs descended upon her. They sank their fangs into her bony arms and clawed at her eyes with foaming mouths. She screamed and kicked but they wouldn’t stop tearing at her thin frame, having decided that she would make a better meal than a broken bone. Just as she was about to submit to her fate of being eaten alive by feral dogs, they stopped tearing at her to rip each other apart. By some unknown grace, she managed to crawl away behind a small bush, lie on her back and slip away.
She opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t. She wished she had died in her sleep and her soul had floated away to the stars. With great difficulty she rolled over and pushed herself up. She spotted a man selling food out of a cart and her mouth watered. She staggered over to him and opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t. He hadn’t seen her so she reached a pale arm out to him and touched his shoulder. He turned around, smiling but as soon as he saw her his smile dropped and his face fell into a hideous expression. Horror was etched into his features and his skin turned green. He turned to his left and spat, then pushed his cart hurriedly away.
Broken, she collapsed on the sidewalk. Passing people didn’t notice her lying there, a mess of bones and blood, and those who did merely turned up their noses in disgust and walked away. They were too used to the pathetic huddled masses of city urchins and had long lost what little empathy they had. As she lay there, festering, and feeling that bird within her shed its feathers and burn, she thought of Mother and Nurse. She thought of the wall in her room and the embrace of the cold chains around her wrists. She looked down at her bare hands, they were cold and ghostlike. She looked down at herself and sobbed for the first time in years, and with the thought of her caretakers in her mind she set her head down on the hard stone and died.

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Somehow one of my drawings has ended up in a relationship with a t-shirt. You are cordially invited to their wedding here.

الرجاء عدم اصطحاب الخادمات و الأطفال.

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Fear is what fills our veins with urgency, pushes the sweat from our pores and infuses our insides with purpose. We fear isolation, isolation which has become the building block of our society. We build palaces and cram them with people. We give these people labels; family, friends, lovers, acquaintances… We devise fanciful relationships and pour imaginary meaning into them. We throw ink on a slab of wood and call it art. We give awards to those who make the most money, celebrating them as successful, calling them artists for being able to swindle the largest amount of people simultaneously. We create this facade to convince ourselves that we are functioning normally, that we are expressive, that we are behaving in a way that humans ought to behave. But behind this silver curtain of seemingly endless hopes and dreams we are individuals, and we are huddled in dark corners gnawing at the bones of what remains of our humanness, like feral dogs in a concrete and glass jungle. When we attempt to reach out and connect to humanity we are spurned and shocked, and we recede further and further into our harrowing hollows, and we grow gaunt, and vicious and isolated, and afraid.

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I stared, entranced, at a roll of tissue paper. The last person to use it hadn’t torn their piece across the perforated edges properly, and a bit of forlorn paper billowed in the breeze of the air conditioning. It danced to the tune of brushes scratching at rough paper, and the dull whirring of a dozen minds desperately trying to bring a canvas to life with the sort of sorcery that decency denies me to discuss.

There was a silent agreement that no one was to speak louder than a murmur. I looked down at my own empty bunker and urged my insides to squeeze out something worth putting brush to water for. I rotated it clockwise bit my lip and rotated it once more. I peered through the dim light and allowed my mind to absorb the tics and nudges, the squints and flutters, the colors cavorting on top of one another, seeding into each other, crying, weeping, changing. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw boxes and lines. Stark lines segregating the wetness of the paint and the dryness of the air, the smell of perspiration and the bleeding of cadmium. Isolated sensations, boxed feelings, quarantined consciousness. I sighed and allowed a drop of water to fall from my paintbrush, realizing that a torn bit of paper dangling at the periphery of our perception was the only thing that had meaning.

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I can truthfully say that I am a woman who has known death and felt the cold touch of Izrael. It all started when I was watching TV and remembered I had a bottle of Fanta in the fridge, and my heartbeat quickened in earnest. Upon finding the bottle I realized that opening it with my bare hands is impossible without getting my palms torn to shreds, so I looked through the cupboards for a bottle opener. Now, the problem is that I don’t know what a bottle opener looks like. I know there’s a pointy end and maybe a hole somewhere in the contraption, maybe a spinning wheel – I don’t know the last time I can recall seeing one was in my great-grandmother’s house back in 1999. I found what I thought was a rusty bottle opener (but later turned out to be a rusty can opener) behind a set of dishes and went to work at that tantalizing bottle of Fanta. I spent upwards of fifteen minutes hacking at that bottle while the orange nectar inside winked and danced seductively, arousing my parched taste buds. I sustained two injuries, a minor cut on my palm and the cut on my finger which is currently causing my slow, painful death. It’s a small cut, only a drop of blood oozed out of the damaged skin on my right forefinger, such an innocent thing. But it only takes one small cut for the C. tetani (tetanus) bacteria to crawl into my unsullied body and begin defiling it with its wicked spores. I can feel the bacteria as I type this, hanging on to the torn edges of my skin for dear life, ejaculating their bacteria babies into my open wound and laughing maniacally as my white blood cells bravely fight a losing battle. They’re tearing up my body right now, they are raping my nervous system and verbally abusing my kidneys. I can feel my body weakening, every breath is becoming harder, memories of a dark park in Alexandria are swimming across my eyes, my fingers are twitching, my toes are cold. The end is nigh.

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The most exciting thing that happened to me this week is that I bought a new toothbrush. The bristles are neon yellow, which makes it cool like my teeth are at a rave.

I’ve been daydreaming more than usual, mostly about unnatural creatures. This entire week I’ve been thinking about man-dogs, translucent sea beings, two-legged spiders, and things with faces on their feet. I really want to see one of those creatures in real life, call me a nutter but I do think they exist. I refuse to believe that the world is limited to zebroids and ligers. Why is it irrational for there to be extraterrestrial creatures that look like cysts and have the intelligence of a Disney park employee? Why can’t there be a population of yetis living in the Himalayas and facing increasing unemployment as a result of overpopulation caused by decades of favorable soil conditions as well as advancements in irrigation and the abolishment of capital punishment? It makes sense to me. I think all these creatures are just biding their time until someone nukes someone and humans become extinct. Then they shall rise up, absorb the nuclear waste through their butt gills and rebuild the earth as a monument to Satan. Or something.

Yeah, so about the toothbrush. It’s really cool and it vibrates and all. Hehe.

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I’m sitting on a ledge trying to write a paper. I figure if I can’t work this shit out by the end of the day I might as well jump off and hug the rocks with my brain. There are dead leaves at my feet, and a large crack right next to me. There are ants in that crack. Ants have a way of making the best of what they get in life. I can also see little pieces of colored paper, remnants of better days gone. There’s a nature preserve down this cliff thing, it has frogs and foxes and rabbits. I wish there were lions or bears down there. Or a yeti. I’d investigate but I’m worried someone will steal my laptop, see my old writings and mock me on reddit.

It’s nice here, even though I’m sure someone is staring at me from the window on my left. Glaring at me with big eyes and an open mouth. Wondering who I am and why I’m hunching over worse than Quasimodo. Chewing a cheese and cucumber sandwich and thinking, half ashamed, I wish this girl would fall.

I wish I had a moose.

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This is big.

I’ve been keeping this enormous secret for so long, but I think the world has reached such a terribly low point that I must interfere and attempt to rescue the human race from their misery.

I have found the cure.

The cure for our isolation, the cure for our desolation, the cure for the plague that has been riding our back from the day we were cast from our mothers’ breast!

I discovered it three years ago, when I was clawing my way out of a bottomless chasm of misery, and I haven’t looked back since. Its powers are beyond that of any other force in the universe. Imagine something faster than a neutrino, more powerful than the splitting of an atom, tackier than Jersey Shore and you will be picturing it, the force of enduring happiness I call Haya’s smile.

Before you scoff, call me absurd and go back to that incognito tab you were browsing, hear me out.

If there pictures of my mental state before and after I met this girl, they’d look like this:

Before

After

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I once bet her that the next person she smiles at would smile right back. She smiled at one of the cleaning ladies who was sporting the glummest look you could imagine, and the lady smiled back like she was seeing her baby for the first time in 15 months.

My theory is, we take Haya’s smile, magnify it with lasers and shit and broadcast it over the world.

Cancer? gone.

World hunger? No more.

Nickleback? Dead.

Satire aside, I really want to declare my adoration for the smile that changed my life, and its owner who is the most loving, kind-hearted, selfless person I have ever met. Someone who will sacrifice everything for the people they care about, a self-flagellating masochist who would rather bleed than accuse. She has so much forgiveness in her heart, it astounds me. I am an admirer, a worshipper of her character. I am proud of her and I love her, and I am so grateful she is my friend. I could never ask for a better half.

One day I will write a book about her, and it will be five volumes and cheesier than a pizza.

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Political Geography is in sepia tone. I don’t know why, but every time I step into this class I feel like I’m in the 1940′s, sitting on Marx’s lap.
The discussions are so shallow. Sometimes I wish the bus I take on the way here would flip over so I wouldn’t have to attend and have my intellect raped.
Maybe I’m overreacting. The mayonnaise sandwich I just had is making me queasy.
I have to pretend to pay attention and act as though this debate isn’t the lamest thing since The Little Mermaid 2.

Update: I think the professor is a right wing American republican. This is disconcerting. A Qatari Tea Partier.

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The Abbasids used Khorasan as HQ
You’re probably wondering why so let me tell you
It has vast human resources
Strong knights and fighting forces
Revenues from commerce and cultivation
It was the best geographic location
Khorasan is in the east and very remote
That’s how Abu-Muslim gathered support
The Umayyads expanded without administration
And the Berbers resisted Arabization
Father killed son and mother killed daughter
Until the dynasty ended in slaughter
The Umayyads tempted karma and that’s what they get
And so started the Abbasid caliphate

Word to your mother.