who am i?

The glide of red lipstick has always been special to me. Fully concentrated on the lines drawn, face so close to the mirror condensation starts to collect, art in the making. 

It makes me feel connected to a life lived before. One where I could have been in a castle with stained windows mirroring the shade of my lips. One where I could have spilled blood just as dark and shared kisses just as hot. 

he asked her favorite color. come on, she said, you can do better. 

so he took it to heart and better he did. he learned about what she was like as a kid. he listened to her friends, the stories they'd tell. he talked to her demons and learned them as well. 

he became her diary, the way he would hold, ever so dearly, the secrets she told. he knew all the anguish she buried inside. he'd seen all her scars and the thoughts they implied... 

but after a while, he stopped asking questions, and forgot the details she'd previously mentioned. 

as time went on, the distance grew  and she found a stranger in the person she knew. 

so the day came, as it so often does, that their love was laid to rest in a coffin. As they choked on goodbye, though the bond had been broken, he wanted to leave her with one parting token. 

Sometimes, everything just feels too fast. The pounding of my heartbeat. Too fast. The sound of the cars outside my window. Too fast. The bouncing of my leg under the table. Too fast.

Too fast. Too fast. Too fast.

I fell for you too fast. You got bored of me too fast.

We were swept away by the idea of being wanted that we forgot to notice each other’s presence. We only cared about the too fast caresses, the too fast pecks, the too fast typing and replies. We should have slowed down.

But that’s in the past. There never was an us so why mourn it, right? There is nothing to yearn over, nothing to sigh over, nothing to feel a painful pang of remembrance over. Or was there?

Why is it, that after it’s all ended, after we said goodbye, I still miss you sometimes? Maybe it all went by too fast and I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t live in the moment.

You never wanted a later, you wanted a now. You didn’t know slow you only knew urgency, too fast. You wanted us to move too fast. When you found out I was falling behind, you moved on. You moved on, too fast. Makes me wonder if you cared at all.

Now, I sit with my pen and paper, sometimes forgetting the pain. But occasionally, my heartbeat reminds me of the pace you lived at. I read a verse I wrote for you and my heart pounds. Too fast. I see a photo you sent me and my hands shake. Too fast. I listen to a recording of your voice and my breath quivers. Too fast.

It never rains. The sun scorches our skin with malice, punishing us for sins we committed in another life. It lays out its revenge on our skin, leaving us red and raw all year round, never allowing us the pleasure of feeling the cool droplets of rain land on our arms and sooth our souls.

It never rains, but it rained today. I awoke to the drip drip drip of rain drops on my window. Too early for anyone to make a sound, we all looked out our own windows, knowing everyone else who’s been a slave of the sun is doing the same.

It never rains, but it rained today. The thunder, too, oddly relaxed me. The frightening clamor bringing with it calm instead of chaos, serenity instead of fear. The thunder was my music as I laid there admiring the drip drip drip.

It never rains, but it rained today. I laid there amongst my blankets, not worrying about the never-ending tasks awaiting me, but calmly thanking the sky for the brief pleasure it brought down today.

While it may not have been my plan from the start, I don’t mind it as much now. I had my first three papers this Thursday and, as a classic IB student, I pulled an all nighter. Since classes stopped until the end of our exam period, I woke up early and got ready to study. My favorite cardigan warming my shoulders, I lit a candle, put on one of my classical playlists and got to work.

I’m not a lover of STEM subjects, of that I’m sure everyone knows by now, but over the years I’ve come to realize that the only way I can study for them is if I romanticize the process, make it an event. Now, I look forward to the page full of calculations I’ll have at the end, the stack of flashcards strewn about, the indents my notes leave on the page prior. Chemistry seems a lot less dreadful with that in mind.

With that being said, the morning comes to an end and my study session extends into the late afternoon. I attended a zoom class at six with my teacher solving some past papers as some last minute revision. At that moment, I knew I had to pull an all nighter. Armed with numerous cups of coffee, I set out feverishly working out equations and problems. While, yes, I may have been panicking, the process was oddly soothing.

My friend and I were on a FaceTime call and kept each other company throughout the night as we worked and laughed, solved and panicked, chugged down caffeine and napped. It’s nights like this that I’ll remember for life. Company in the midst of a pandemic, the world crumbling around us, but a mere exam our main focus.

The last hours before our exam were nearing and we hurriedly tried cramming in the last bits of our syllabus that we could. The laser focus of 6AM never fails to surprise me. My friend and I part at 7AM, after ten hours and sit our first paper. Our second paper. Our third paper. Just like that, the day passes and our exams are done with.

Maybe the lesson should be, study in advance. Maybe I should be preaching about going through your material slowly and diligently, but honestly, the rush of cramming, the strew papers, the gulping down of coffee… That’s what I live for. The chaos exams brings is soul crushing, but I find it so beautiful. A love hate relationship, it and I.

Her hand lovingly brushed through my hair as she read me to sleep. “Tout enfant, tu dormais près de moi, rose et fraîche,*“ she recited reminiscing. A flip of a page, a dramatic cliffhanger, a line of poetry. My mother’s gifts to me as a child. I vividly remember dark rooms and her by my side, some nights filling the darkness with hushed syllables of French, some with the punctuated sounds of Arabic, some with the unsure pronunciations of  English, but all with her adoration for the craft of writing. Though I didn’t know it at the time, she introduced me to the friends I would cherish for the rest of my life— the likes of Victor Hugo, Ahmad Shawqi and Charles Dickens.

An introverted child, I quickly found companionship in not only literature, but writing. I found comfort in the texture of paper and a friend in the gliding of ink. Third grade was full of me scribbling a story I thought of in a notebook instead of playing tag. Eight grade was me on a bench meticulously picking out words for a line of poetry instead of gossiping about boys. Senior year is me writing a piece of flash fiction for a magazine instead of studying for a psychology test…

My life revolves around writing. My being is encapsulated in the words I set on paper. My thoughts arranged in lines of verse, in passages of prose, in a stream of letters and syllables that make the world make sense.

Now, over a decade later, I understand the depth of my mother’s favorite line of Ahmad Shawqi’s, for I am the words that my pen bleeds.

أنا من بدّل بالكتب الصحابا لم أجد لي وفيًّا إلا الكتابا**

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*”My baby, sleeping close to me, all pink and fresh,” ~ A ma fille Adèle, Victor Hugo

You are my pride and joy. My only love and closest friend. You are the reason I’m still here.

I met you at Yale, at the bookstore around the corner. It was so picturesque. A beautiful setting for the beginning of a beautiful relationship. You were on the shelf, surrounded by many like you. But you were special. Your binding, your paper, your cover. You were calling to me. I took you off the shelf lovingly, knowing you were worth more than your price tag, and carried you away. Now, years later, we’re still together.

You, my love, are my pride and joy, my lover and friend. The way my thoughts are strewn all over your pages, disobeying sequential norms. The way you’re filled with different inks, colors and dates. Different coffee stains, tea splotches and tear drops. You hold my journals and reflections, my notes and equations, my ponderings and plans.

Your pages have crumpled, my love. Your binding is coming loose. Your cover is stained and wearing at the edges. But you are you. You hold my very being in your ivory leaves. The older you grow, the more you grow dear. But one thing fills me with dread. The finality of the last few pages you hold.

As we grow closer to our end, my love, I want to thank you. Thank you for holding me those nights I needed it. Thank you for keeping me together with your binding. Thank you for not complaining about the scratch of my pen on your paper. Thank you letting me bleed my thoughts into you.

The only company I have is the barely audible scratch of the fountain pen in my hand against the page. A yawn escapes me as I look up past the abandoned cups of coffee and at the clock that reads 1AM, but I still scrawl three words into the margin of my battered paperback: Inequality. Injustice. Discrimination. 

Ensnared between the lines of ink on smooth paper, I drift into a space where time slows down, where I no longer need to hide. 

Growing up bouncing between the conservative communities of Morocco and Saudi Arabia, I came to know one thing alone: silence. Stay quiet about your beliefs and you’ll be safe. Don’t disagree with the men in your life and you’ll be safe. Don’t fight back and you’ll be safe. Your silence is the only way to guarantee safety.

With a societal muzzle forced upon me, it was no surprise that I grew up to be an avid reader and feverish writer. The story of having a book as one’s only companion is one many people share, but while the majority relay reading’s role in their lives as a minute part of an introverted, reserved phase they had, I credit the hundreds of books I’ve read over the years and the countless hours bent over notebooks of smudged ink for my ability to unlearn the bigoted propaganda that was fed to me over the course of my life. 

I started off defensive as I discovered articles that opposed my views—the views my community led me to believe were mine—but soon opened up to the idea that maybe the other side had a point. I tentatively drifted away from my usual fiction to flick through a Middle Eastern history book, which led to another about the politics of the Arab countries I grew up defending and another and another. A domino effect ensued, guiding me to discovering the passion that has become such a large part of my daily life—my passion for liberty, freedom of expression, and justice.

While I may not have had access to in-depth world history classes, government courses, or internships at legal firms, authors allowed me to bridge the knowledge gap forced upon me at birth and a pen let me bleed out my thoughts and share them without the threat of being targeted. 

My keyboard and ink were the only way I could break the silence and yell, exploring the vast new worlds of ideas through my journey of self-teaching and writing. 

My newly-piqued curiosity led me to find those who could enrich me, teachers from lands I could only dream of visiting. As I learned about international law with Noura Erkat, feminism with Roxane Gay, immigration with Ilhan Omar, and a plethora of other creatives, I found myself and my views—as I defined them.

After battling through that grueling self-discovery and the intense backlash to the liberal opinions I held, I made it my mission to be a resource to young women in the same position I was in—the resource I so badly wished for only a few years ago. 

Ever since then, I’ve found a confidant in my keyboard. Its clatter quickly became my voice, much louder than I could ever be. Its clatter is an indicator of a discussion, a piece of prose, a poem, a part of me soon to be published and sent out to impressionable girls with that same glimmer in their eyes. Its clatter is an indicator of my hope of change and progression.

For as long as I can remember, my mother has spun tales of a different life, one in which we did not have to stay quiet, did not have to question ourselves or our decisions, and did not have to rely on anyone else — a life in which we were free to truly live. What younger me thought was strange, however, was the fact that these fantastical tales of faraway lands and realities were always punctuated with a book being placed into my hands. “Your education is the only way out,” she’d say with a look that spoke of the horrors I’d face if I stayed.

While I was privileged enough to have access to formal education, that was not the case for the rest of my family. Like most Arab societies, Morocco has not valued the education of women until recently but chose instead to deprive endless generations of any sort of formal schooling. 

Due to this injustice and blatant misogyny, my very own grandmother would grow up to be an illiterate mother of five, barely knowing how to distinguish Arabic numbers and scrawl out her first name with a shaky hand. She was not, however, unaware of what the men in power were attempting to do. She knew they were forcing ignorance upon her to keep her complacent, to make her their slave. She, too, would whisper the same command I’d hear decades later in my mother’s ear as she slept. “Your education is the only way out.” 

She refused to subject her daughter to what they had done to her, working on learning how to sew and cook in order to put my mother through school. The years passed and she finally watched my mom learn to read and write, to add and multiply, and to break free of the cell of ignorance that shackled the long line of women before her.

And now, many decades later, my mother is doing the same, pushing me to surpass her own achievements. Murmured encouragements and proud smiles as I come home from school, as I write and publish, as I work towards getting the college education that she was not able to access. 

Her quiet support means more than words could have ever communicated. Now that I am older and have seen a tiny sliver of the real world, I have come to understand the significance of the books she had placed in my hands but a few years ago.