#mojadidi

It was just another day. Just another day that would change his life in one of those irrevocable ways he had read about in all those books. That was everybody's problem, he thought to himself silently, trying to process the epiphany he experienced; they only seek out the wondrous and the glorious, never taking comfort or even seeing the inherent beauty of the smaller things, the everyday things. It started simple enough, like most contemporary stories did, with a phone call. "Good morning, we know it's your day off but for reasons necessary to make your life not uninteresting as dictated by the weaver of stories, we're going to need you to come in today." So he went to work, not caring for the phone caller's poor diction nor his cryptic breakage of the fourth wall. How could he? He was only a fictional being made into existence by a bored deity. "Sorry we had to call you in on such short notice. The doctor coming today couldn't make it, said something about how today wasn't meant for him. You know how it is." He nodded with a quizzical look that gave his face the proper distortion to confirm his role as a protagonist in the story. "What have we got?", he muttered with a perfect eloquence. "Well, it's not going to be easy. Bed 6... He's... Uhh.. Well.... Looks like he's going to expire today." He thought of expiry dates and how simpler his fictional life would've been if every person just came with an expiry date. "And his parents? Are they aware of his imminent detachment from our embryonic microverse?" "I'm afraid so." So he went over to the newly christened Bed 6, his real name lost in a vaporous ether a good while ago, like all the other good little boys. And there were his parents, a picturesque portrayal of life at it's bleakest. They were a kind of beautiful in that way only truly  sad people can be. He paused and took a deep breath, he could sense the deity's mischief afoot. Bed 6 would die any minute now and he had to prepare for the Danse Macabre of resuscitation. 20 minutes later, it was announced and made real in his fictional world. Bed 6 was no longer a breathing life, but merely a sorrowful footnote. He soothed the parents much as he could with his generic religious  speech full of contradictory mysticisms. They left him with a dead Bed 6 in an attempt to go process the immense amount of bureacratic paperwork that must be filled in order for the world to acknowledge a death fully and officially. He stared at its lifeless body, and held it's cold hand. He wrapped the baby's hand around his little finger, channeling in the baby's parents' empathy. He said a prayer in a tongue he wasn't sure he spoke. And just like that the story hit its stride as the deity decided that it was time for him to  understand it all. "He got what everyone gets." A lifetime. --

As Sasha sat comfortably on the beach (the maximum extent of comfort already limited by the presence of sand in just about every fold of skin she could imagine), her gaze brought her eyes to the sea of stars above her. The moon was particularly swollen today, and she could see every star dancing, pulsatile in rhythm and vibrancy.  Her mind took her back to her childhood, back to when she didn't need to imagine herself flying amongst the stars. She didn't need to, you see, because she had the ability to travel across the infinite macrocosm of the universe. At least she had thought so back then. Gullible as her mind was back then, she yearned for the days of her youth.

She remembered the first time it happened to her. It was a rainy day at school and boring Mr. Grunkel was droning on and on about how plants produced oxygen through a process called photosynthesis. She was staring at the rain drops as they landed on the plants. And then it happened. Her mind whooshed as she found herself flying through the window and to the sky, eventually reaching space. There, she bore witness to the magnificence of her solar system. She surfed Saturn's rings, said hello to a lonely Pluto (that coincidentally had the face of Pluto from the Disney cartoons), and tried to look for Jovians on Jupiter.

"Sasha? Sasha!"

She found herself in the classroom again. "When did it stop raining?" she muttered as the entire classroom gawked at her, fear evident in their eyes.

"Are you okay? You spaced out there for a second. Why don't you go to the nurse's office?"

Spaced out was as apt a phrase as any.

"Yeah, I'm okay. I really am."

She hadn't even assumed there was anything wrong with her. Why would she? She felt great; energized by space radiation, ready to take her own world by storm. She decided to ride her bike to school the next day. Something told her that the gusts of wind on her cheeks would feel fantastic.  So that's exactly what she had done. She took her bike out from the garage, put on her helmet and started riding. She didn't expect to find herself in the middle of Alpha Centauri on a cloudy November 4th but she didn't complain. Her mind flew again until she found herself staring at the two stars burning in a blaze that somehow didn't even singe her. She was mesmerized. "Two stars!" she had exclaimed to herself silently. They seemed like two awkward children at a prom, too scared to ask the other to dance. She floated between them, and bathed in as much starlight as she could.

"Sasha! Oh my God, please be alright."

When she came to, she found herself in the hospital. Wires connected to her. Beeps invading her privacy. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck.

"Thank God!"

Her mother, tears running down her eyes let out a smile that Sasha would never forget in her entire life.

"What happened?" she felt ever syllable that came out of her was elicited by pain.

"You veered onto the highway and got hit by a car. How could you so be careless Sasha?"

"I guess I just spaced out."

And that's when the tests began. After what seemed like forever, her doctor told her that she was suffering from absence seizures.

"Quite common," he said in that typical assertive yet monotonous voice doctors usually spoke in, "an absence seizure is typical of petit mal epilepsy."

"Petit mal?" she quizzically asked wondering how strange those two words sounded together.

"Yes, you'll be fine. You're just going to need to go on this medication."

"And it'll stop?"

"Well, yes," he scoffed at her.

"But what if I don't want it to stop?"

She started to cry. She tried explaining what happened to her when she had these 'seizures'.

More tests ensued, this time a psychotherapist came in and talked to her.

"Sasha, you need to understand that these were hallucinations. None of it was real. If you don't go on the medication, what stops you from having another seizure, another accident. Another accident, where you might not be so lucky this time."

She could hear her mother crying outside the door.

So she took her medication, and lived on with her mundane and bland life. She remembered reading about Icarus once in class and consequently, broke down into tears.

Her mind always wandered when she stared at the stars.

"Sasha, what are you doing? Stop ogling the sky and come sit with us!"

"Right, just give me a second. I'll be right there."

"Oh have you heard?" Her friend pulled out her phone and showed her a picture of a planet. "Check it out. Apparently a space probe, finally took a picture of"

"Pluto!" her smile widened. "And look, there's Pluto's face!"

Her friend looked at her quizzically, and said,

"God, Sasha, you can be so strange sometimes."

Strange, she thought to herself, but not crazy. 

--

I'm not a creative person.

God, saying that out loud on its own is enough to make me cringe for a lifetime. It's the truth though. I've tried fooling myself over the years, trying to convince myself I have unbridled and unchanneled talent searing through my veins, but the truth of the matter is just that,

I'm not a creative person.

I'm not a writer. I cannot, for the life of me, spin a story into a woven tapestry of emotions and sentimentalities. You might be wondering why I'm here then, writing for the Collective. After all, it's supposed to be a place where the creative come in to write articles, blogs, thoughts or even lists of things they want to share with the world.

I don't know the answer to that.

I do know that, though I may not be a creative person, I am a good storyteller. I add the right amount of embellishment and intonation to my words when I narrate and people have found them relatively entertaining. I thank God that I work at a hospital that is relentless in the story telling department.

But sometimes, I worry.

The problem with the 20 somethings of our generation is that we often feel lost, lonely or worse, useless. We feel that if we're not defined into a niche, we're forever lost in the ethereal sea of average people.  We're constantly trying to occupy ourselves to keep busy from dissecting our average mentalities. We are obsessed with leaving a mark on the world. It's a problem of our generation and not our parents' because of the Internet. Look at YouTube and Twitter for example. Previously average people, suddenly being loved by hundreds, sometimes thousands, sometimes millions of people. 

And then you start thinking, why can't I be like that?

Why can't I be an athletic person who does Parkour? Why is it that no matter how much I try, my followers on Twitter are stagnant? Why is his blog being subscribed to by thousands of people whilst mine rots away in the dark corners of the Internet?

It's enough to dismay and sully anyone's soul.

Which brings me back to why I worry.

I worry that my career and my story telling has defined me. Before working at the hospital, my name was Ahmed Al Mojadidi, nice guy with assholish tendencies. Sometimes I could tell a joke or a story and people would laugh. Sometimes they wouldn't.

Now, my name is Ahmed Al Mojadidi, doctor working in a government hospital.

"Hey Ahmed, tell us a story."

I worry that I have lost my essence to something I used to enjoy doing. I worry that maybe, just maybe, I am no longer myself. I worry that once I stop working at the hospital, I'll no longer have stories to tell and fall back into that sea.

I worry that, that none of it matters anymore, because even though I may have lost who I was, I've at least filled that void with misconceptions of who I am. And that terrifies me.

I miss when stardom was so difficult to reach.

I miss being average.

____

After almost 1 year of being a resident, this is the one thing that's still pretty difficult to deal with: Telling the father or mother of a child that their kid is either terminal, hopeless, or just not going to be their same old son or daughter anymore.

  It's an emotional rollercoaster that's always different with each family. There's no routine to how it works or what you're supposed to do. I'm sure abroad there's a whole system or class teaching you how to deal this particular piece of information out but here, it's just an afterthought.

  Which sort of sucks.

  It's gotten to a point where I jump at the possibility of delivering bad news to families because I feel I'm the only one equipped with the ability to emotionally convey bad news and at the same time, share the emotional fuckage the family experiences. I don't think I'm better than my colleagues at it. I just think that they've been at this longer than I have, and that they've reached a certain jaded level of consciousness I'm not sure I'm ever going to get to... or want to at least.

  It's also a whole lot harder to do than say, telling the family their kid died. There's a finality to death. But with terminal illness or affection, I always feel like I'm damning them to both feel the loss of their child profoundly but also hope that maybe, through some sort of God given miracle, their kid will be the 0.0005 percent that miraculously becomes okay.

  And man, do they stick to that hope. Because after all, "God is almighty and works in mysterious ways."

I sometimes thank God that I don't have to deal with atheists and agnostics. It becomes a whole lot easier to accept when the doctor says something like "Well, God is here and this is what He wanted to happen so who are we to judge."

  And I feel like a prick every single time I say that because it works EVERY.SINGLE.FUCKING.TIME

  So yay for Egypt not having atheists.

  Another one that's always harsh is "Was there anything that could have been done to prevent this? Was it my fault doctor? Was I too late? Did I do something wrong?"

  I pride myself in honesty, but goddamnit does that become a whole lot harder when I say, a single shot of Vitamin K could have saved their newborn from having intracranial hemorrhage and subsequent brain atrophy for the rest of their life.

  And I tell them that. But I also tell them it's never their fault (unless it's aspiration pneumonia, ESPECIALLY after I've told them not to fucking breastfeed their kid but that's a whole other story entirely).

  After all, ignorance is rather rampant here.

  I have a few stories about a few of these moments and I might or might not share all of them here but here's one that really did a number on me.

  We had a 10 year old girl who got admitted into the hospital for having pancytopenia (all blood cells, including Red , white and platelets are decreased) Now, there are alot of causes for pancytopenia but we usually screen out leukemia first by doing a bone marrow aspirate and sometimes biopsy. So we managed to book her aspirate a few days later and I remember going upstairs to the labs to pick up her report.

  She had leukemia.

  I'm not going to lie. I felt nothing reading the paper at first. To me, this was just another girl who had cancer and we were going to tell her parents that and then she was going to go on to the Cancer Hospital and get her treatment and then maybe get better, or maybe not.

  Pretty standard stuff.

  But then I bumped into her father, who had been waiting for hours outside the lab for the test results.

  "Did the results come out Doc?"

  His eyes were wide open, full of worry and anxiety.

  "Yes, let's sit down first."

  So we sat on the bench in the hallway.

  "Well, your daughter, she has leukemia."

  "You mean cancer?"

  "Yes."

  Then and there he just broke down in tears, as if crushed by this immense weight. Not as if. He was, and there I was, sitting next to a crying middle aged man who just found out his 10 year old girl had cancer.

  I felt like shit.

  I felt like shit because I felt nothing a few seconds prior to seeing him, and now here I was, just emotionally syncing with him and feeling every ounce of sadness seep out of him.

  That's a lie, because obviously I couldn't even experience a fraction of what he was feeling, and even that small fraction was already too much for me.

  "It's not the end of the world. It's tough. It's going to be very tough, but I've seen kids with leukemia go into remission and get better and move on with their lives and become healthy individuals."

  "So you're saying she's going to be alright?"

  I fucking hate that question.

  ".......... Listen. We're all going to do our best here. You're going to do what you can and the doctors are going to do what they can, and well, the rest we can leave to God. Okay?"

  He was still crying.

  So I hugged him.

  Might have not been the by the book thing to do. Might have not even been the right thing to do.

  But there we were; two sad men sitting on a bench trying to get through life's hurdles.

  And boy, are those hurdles high for some people.

____

Unlike most people who were spending the 21st of December tweeting and making fun of the Mayan apocalypse, I was on call in the hospital  in charge of the Newborn unit. It was my first shift in the ICU and I was in charge of 24 very sick babies, each the size of my palms. I had called my friend who was going to be in the hospital the day before and we were joking around and we agreed that if an apocalypse of any sort were to go down, we'd meet each other and take it on headfirst.

Here's what happened:-

I woke up at 9 a.m. and took a cab to the hospital. It was windy and cold. I arrived at the big steel gates of the hospital, smoked a cigarette and went inside. I met the resident who was on call yesterday and we went over each of the 24 patients. As soon as she left, I sat staring at all 24 incubators and dreaded the next 30 hours. Was I up for the task of managing all these patients? Or was I going to cave in and do a horrible job and live with the guilt for the rest of my life? As I was daydreaming, one of the nurses shouted and told me a patient was arresting. I ran to the incubator and saw the baby, devoid of any life. We initiated CPR and I intubated the patient (put a tube in its airway). As I was doing the chest compressions and the nurse was fixating the tube, I could swear I saw the baby's cold dead eyes stare right into my soul. It was clear the baby wasn't coming back.

"OW!" shouted the nurse who was fixating the tube.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. My hand must have grazed the metal lead doctor."

We called it. Time of death was 11:40 a.m. I decided I'd call the parents after Friday prayers.  I was writing up the paperwork and then I noticed the nurse was feeling tired and looked, well, like shit.

I asked her if she was okay and she said that her hand was throbbing. I looked at her hand and it looked really infected. I told her to put some antiseptic on it and I went to the bathroom. That's when it started. That's when I heard the screaming.

I ran back to the ICU and that's when I saw it. There was blood everywhere. The nurses were all on the floor bleeding to death. They looked like they were...eaten.

I didn't know what to do. I freaked the fuck out. That's when the phone started ringing. It was my friend.

"DUDE! SOME SERIOUSLY CRAZY SHIT IS HAPPENING! THE DEAD ARE WALKING! THE DEAD ARE WALKING! COME DOWNSTAIRS NOW!"

That's when I saw it.

The baby.

The dead baby was crawling.

This is happening. The zombie fucking apocalypse was happening.

I ran to the supply department and grabbed all the scalpels. I got out of the ICU and that's when I realized that almost everyone had already gotten infected. I zoomed past the walking corpses and managed to meet my friend outside the steel gates.

"It's happening."

"Yeah. But are we ready for this?

"Even if we aren't. It's one hell of a start to the end of the world."

Adrenaline rushing, we decided to look for survivors and live out the end of the world as much as we could.

It was…….

Exciting.

    Here's what really happened:-

I woke up at 9 a.m. and took a cab to the hospital. It was windy and cold. I arrived at the big steel gates of the hospital, smoked a cigarette and went inside. I met the resident who was on call yesterday and we went over each of the 24 patients. As soon as she left, I sat staring at all 24 incubators and dreaded the next 30 hours. Was I up for the task of managing all these patients? Or was I going to cave in and do a horrible job and live with the guilt for the rest of my life. As I was daydreaming, one of the nurses shouted and told me a patient was arresting. I ran to the incubator and saw the baby, devoid of any life. We initiated CPR and I intubated the patient (put a tube in its airway). As I was doing the chest compressions and the nurse was fixating the tube, I could swear I saw the baby's cold dead eyes stare right into my soul. It was clear the baby wasn't coming back.

We called it. Time of death was 11:40 a.m. I decided I'd call the parents after Friday prayers. I wrote up the paperwork. The workers from the morgue came and wrapped up the baby and took him downstairs. His name was Mohammed. He was only 26 days old.

I called the parents.

"Hello, is this Mohammed's father?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"This is Dr. Ahmed from the ICU. I don't know how to say this but well, my condolences, sir. Mohammed passed away right before the start of Friday Prayers."

Silence.

"Sir, are you there?"

"...Yes, doctor. We're on our way."

And then the family came. The mother cried. The father held her holding his own tears at bay.

It was the end of their world as they knew it.

  And right then and there, another part of my soul eroded, wishing maybe this day could have gone differently.

  ____

Every night it ends the same. I have a discussion with my conscience, and by discussion, I mean no-holds-barred showdown with my inner psyche.

  For the sake of simplicity, let's refer to my conscience as Bob (he loved What About Bob)

  Me: Today was a good day. Not very eventful, but I got some work done and I was able to keep my chin up.

  Bob: Despite?

  Me: Despite what?

  Bob: Finish your thought. Did you think I wouldn't notice?

  Me: I'd hoped you didn't. Then again, I probably hoped you'd bring it up.

  Bob: Go on then.

  Me: Well, I keep getting this feeling that I could be accomplishing more in my life, you know?

  Bob: Accomplish? Shit, here I was thinking you were just some normal average guy, and now you're going on about wanting to accomplish things in your life. Enlighten me. What do you want to accomplish?

  Me: I don't know. I was thinking about maybe writing something, committing to an idea and running with it.

  Bob: Ah, you honestly think you can commit to writing? Let alone flesh out a whole story?

  Me: Sure, I mean I do exude some creativity.

  Bob: I say this because I don't want to be embarrassed by you. Stop. Don't think you're above average. You're not. Don't think you have some sort of innate gift within you. You don't. You are just like everyone else. 

  Me: What the fuck are you talking about? Everyone tells me I'd make a great writer.

  Bob: Forget everyone for a second. Forget this persona you've worked so hard to maintain. Do YOU think you can make a good writer? Actually, do you think you can make a good anything?

  Me: Why are you being so harsh? Yes, I do believe I can accomplish anything so long as I put my mind to it.

  Bob: Okay big shot. Then answer this for me. When's the last time you ever felt passionate about something?.

  Me: Easy. When I read that book a few weeks back. I loved it. 

  Bob: Alright, fair enough. Obviously, I didn't phrase my question well enough. Let me reiterate. When's the last time you felt passionate about something YOU did?

  Me: Oh.. Well, there was that article I wrote. A lot of people liked it. They said it spoke to them.

  Bob: See, there you go again. Why do you care what people thought of it. Did YOU like it?

  Me: I guess. It was okay. I felt I could've done better.

  Bob: Have you ever been perfectly satisfied with anything you've ever done? Just a sense of complete contentment?

  Me: Not really. I always think I can do better. But wait, that's a good thing isn't it? I mean it just means I try harder every time.

  Bob: But do you? You settle for mediocre. It's easier to. There's no risk of putting yourself out there. No risk of shattering the façade you worked so hard to maintain.

  Me: I don't fucking settle for mediocre. I try my best and do what I can.

  Bob: Why are you lying to me? Wait a minute. Wait, wait. I think I finally get it.

  Me: Get what?

  Bob: You actually believe the shit you're saying?

  Me: It's not fucking shit, alright? It's how I feel.

  Bob: Well, I'll be damned. You lied to yourself so much that you've finally embraced that lie and it's somehow transformed into an ugly truth.

  Me: Say I did do that, what of it? I'm a better person now because of it.

  Bob: You're not. You're a husk. You don't even remember who you used to be anymore.

  Me: You know what Bob, fuck you. I don't need to listen to this shit right before I sleep. I've got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

  Bob: Oh I'm …. .

  Me (cutting him off) : Just shut the fuck up, okay? 

    And I slept. And I carried on with the next day as usual, only to have the same exact dialog again that night. What's the moral of this story you may wonder?

    Bob is an asshole and consciences are for losers.

____

"Hey, sorry I'm late. The traffic was just ridiculous today. Did you see the car accident on the bridge?" 

"Hey, no, no I didn't. Listen, we need to talk."

"I know, you scared me on the phone. Is everything alright?"

"Before we talk, promise me you won't get angry. Promise you'll keep your composure."

"I don't understand. What's the problem?"

"Just promise."

"No, you're obviously going to say something that's going to aggravate me. I'm not going to promise you anything. Now spill it. What's wrong?"

"I don't know how to say this… You've obviously noticed there's been distance between us lately."

"I have, I remember clearly you excusing yourself on account of stress at work. I obviously knew you were lying and would tell me eventually what's wrong when you were ready. Guess that time is now then."

"Why do you always have to assume I was lying?"

"Well, clearly, it wasn't an assumption. You're just about to prove my point right now aren't you?"

"I hate when you do that. I hate your "holier than thou" attitude and your assumptions. Work has been really stressful. It's the end of the fiscal year and we've got so much paperwork. Obviously, you wouldn't understand seeing as how you're always on top of everything."

"You're diverging again. Just tell me what's wrong already."

"This is exactly what I want to talk about."

"What are you talking about?"

"This, this little argument right now. I love you. You know I love you, but I can't just keep taking this abuse from you."

"Abuse?"

"Mental abuse, yes. You're always thinking you're one step ahead of the rest of us. Always trying to prove your point and win your little debates just to satisfy that ego of yours."

"So you're saying it's my fault that everyone we meet is an idiot and I shouldn't even bother to speak my mind just so the idiots can feel at ease? What the hell is this really about?"

"See, there you go again. I'm presenting you with a fact. But, you're not even willing to listen to me, because in your mind you've already made the decision that I'm trying to hide the real problem from you. You think everyone has a personal vendetta and everyone thinks in layers. Sometimes what you see is what you get."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm dead serious. This isn't a joke. Please wipe that smirk off your face."

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me just get this straight. You're breaking up with me because I think for myself and speak my mind? You're breaking up with me because I don’t go with the flow?"

"I never said I was breaking up with you. Why are you even suggesting that?"

"Obviously, you're hinting at it."

"Stop claiming you know me inside out! No. There's no hidden implication here. I'm telling you how I feel. I'm being honest here."

"No you're not. You're trying to break up with me, but you don't want to say it. You want to piss me off and get me riled up and angry at you. You want me to see that there's no other solution. Clearly, you knew how I'd react to this and clearly you realized that I'd see no other solution. I mean after all, I do think 5 steps ahead, don't I?”

"No, that's not it all. Why is it always extremes with you? I'm telling you because I'm hoping you might find a solution to this mess."

"You're lying. And, I can't tolerate this any longer. Here's the money for the coffee. Goodbye and have a nice life."

"So that's it. It's as simple as that? You're breaking up with me?."

"Spare me your drama. It's what you wanted. Just once, just once, be honest about yourself. Take care of yourself and know that I still loved you even with all your flaws. Never once did I want to change you."

  And he left.

And she cried and talked to her friends about it. They called him an asshole.

And he was angry and talked to his friends about it. They called her a slut.

And that was the end of that. 

It's all a matter of perspective in the end. Was she the paragon of virtue and him the renegade? 

Or was it the other way around?

____

Now, we all have friends of different kinds and varieties, but ever since the revolution happened, the categorization has changed somehow. Here's a list of the friends you currently have in a Revolutionary  Egypt:

  1-    The HARDCORE revolutionary: This is the guy who was already political before the revolution happened. He's the one who dragged your ass down to Tahrir on January 25th, and he just 'knew' that it was all going down. He hasn't missed a single day at Tahrir, and has been in every protest since the beginning of the revolution. He's the one you'd call when you're trying to get somewhere (like Tamarai)  and you're not sure whether or not it's a good idea. He's somehow become one of the 'people' and whenever you go with him to Tahrir, everyone there refers to him by name. He has no faith in any governmental structure (and for good reason) and will continue to protest fervently.

  2-    The Twitterutionary: This is the guy who jumped on the Twitter bandwagon moments before the revolution started. Once he started noticing how giving a political opinion (in 140 characters) earns him dozens of followers, he's become the equivalent of a Twitter whore. All his tweets are full of rants and madman conspiracy theories. He's always retweeting fellow twitterutionaries and now he actually believes his follower count of 10,000 people means his opinion actually matters (despite the 5,000 Twitter eggs that are currently following him)

  3-    The Feloolutionary: This is the guy who thrived on the corruption of yesteryear. He was the guy you called when your license was confiscated, or you needed to go do something in the mogamma3. He was fully connected before and now, all he wants is 'stability'. "Yeah sure Mubarak was an asshole, but look at the country now man! It's in shambles. No one's working. The people need a dictator." This was the guy who fought hard for Omar Suleiman and Ahmed Shafik.  He even knew the guy behind Omar Suleiman personally. He hates ONTV and Al Jazeera and thinks CBC isn't so bad.  "After all, how are we going to go to Cairo Jazz Club and Tamarai once the Ikhwan decide alcohol is illegal?" He will fight tooth and nail for his God given right to live in a corrupted society of thieves and looters.

  4-    The Stonerutionary: This is the guy you go to when you want to disconnect from turbulent events.  Having a stockpile of drugs, he never seems to run out of hash. He's always stoned and his opinions on the revolution can be summed up as, "Dude! Whoa! Not cool man."

  5-    The Islamutionary: This used to be the guy you didn't know so well beforehand, because he was always a tiny bit more conservative than you always were. Once he heard his savior Abu Ismail was out of the race, he went Ikhwan all the way. After all, how can we be a thriving nation if we're not governed by Sharia law? You argue with him all the time, because of his fervent defense of Morsi and the Ikhwan. "No man, they're trying to fix the country. They're not looking for a power play. They can't be corrupt. After all, look at their beards!"  He blames EVERYTHING on the old regime and thinks that in doing so, people might start listening to him.

6-    The Kanabutionary:This is the guy who watches the news and is completely up to date on whatever biased bullshit the news media seems to deliver. His information is based whole-handedly on the likes of Khairy Ramadan, Yousri Fouda, Bassem Youssef and Twitter. He always tries to talk big, but when asked why he's never been to Tahrir he'll always shy away saying something like "It wasn't my fight" or "I couldn't say no to my parents."

  7-    The Baltagy: Let's face it. We live in dangerous times and sometimes we need to look out for ourselves. This is the guy you call when shit goes down. He's fully equipped with tasers, knives and guns, and he's not afraid to use them. He'll never refer to himself as a Baltagy but deep down, you're sort of glad he's on your side because you know he's got your back.

  8-    You: You don't feel like you belong into any of these categories. You've been to Tahrir a couple of times, and sure you care about the country (but not enough for you to actually physically die for). You want stability and freedom, but not at the price of a dictatorship. You go to sleep every night hoping and dreaming of a better Egypt. You admire all the above people because unlike you, they're actually out and about doing something they think is good for the country, and sometimes that's all you need:

  Hope and Conviction; Something I am severely lacking in.

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