One morning I was at the supermarket buying a few random things. Among them were some grapes and a box of raisins.
After I finished paying, I was helping the cashier lady place the items into bags. All the fruits went into one bag, with the grapes going in last (and so were on the top of the bag). The rest of the items went into another bag.
She was left holding the box of raisins and was about to get a new bag for it.
It was a waste of a bag, so I wanted to tell her, “Why don’t you just put them on top of the grapes?”
But instead, and without missing a beat, I said, “Why don’t you just put them with their younger cousins?”
I smiled big because wow, look mom, I made a funny! But the cashier didn’t even as much as smirk.
In 2019 I learned to choose my audience carefully and to never waste a great pun on a mediocre crowd.
There’s me, and there’s me behind the wheel. These two have nothing in common. When I’m driving, I’m the angriest most foul-mouthed version of myself.
Here’s a short story. Rewind to 2010. October. Jeddah.
My flight to London is tomorrow. My passport was still in the UK consulate, no news about my visa. An entire 20-week vacation hinged on my being granted this visa. And if that failed, I don’t even have my passport to make any changes and go somewhere else.
My nerves were worn down thin by the time the call came, that afternoon, that my passport was ready. But I had only one hour to pick it up.
The UK consulate is on the other side of town. I leave my office and drive rather erratically to pick it up. All goes well, my passport is with me, I phone my then-wife and tell her we’re going to London.
And then I head back to the office, in terrible traffic.
Someone cuts me off, and when I honk at him, gives me the middle finger, triggering maybe the worst meltdown I’ve ever had in my driving life.
Just how bad was it?
When I reached my office, my colleague asked me why my eyes were bloodshot. I got so angry that some of the tiny capillaries inside my eyes had flared up so badly my eyes looked as if I had an allergy.
A few minutes later, I noticed some blisters had appeared along my waist and wondered what insect had caused them. But those were actually shingles.
I had gotten so angry I lowered my immune system enough that it was no longer able to fight off the shingles virus, and it erupted on my waist. Immediately.
But by far the worst thing that happened that day has actually lasted with me to this day.
My stomach would never be the same. That night I had my first acid reflux incident and have been living with GERD ever since.
I’ve never been as angry as that day and hope to never be again. But I learned a lot about anger and stress, the hard way.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: I aspire to reach a place in life where I can have a chauffeur. That’s my goal. To never drive again.
One time in 1998 I was invited by my girlfriend’s parents to have lunch in a fancy Italian restaurant. They ordered fish and were going at it with forks and knives like professional surgeons, which they weren’t.
You see, I’m not good with a fork and knife. I’m what the colonizers would have called “a savage”. So, I looked for something to order that I could eat with a spoon.
I ordered a risotto thinking I had outsmarted the menu. But the risotto arrived with a. fork. I barely touched it (the risotto). Told them I was suddenly feeling nauseous and maybe I was pregnant. Tough crowd.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: I now carry a spoon with me wherever I go. You can’t trust restaurants.
When I was eight years old, I watched an episode of “الأميرة ياقوت” in which Yaqout is on a boat in the middle of the ocean. We see this from a bird’s eye view, and below the boat is a shadow of a giant stingray.
That scene haunts me to this day. I don’t like the sea because of the shadows. I prefer swimming pools, except, of course, at night.
You see, in the same year, I was watching a movie with my parents. I don’t know why they let me watch it. I don’t remember the name of it or anything, but there’s a scene in which someone slips a crocodile into the swimming pool to murder a girl swimming at night. She escaped at the last moment, as they always do.
I realize that I’m quite impressionable, and my childhood has provided my imagination with enough ammunition to intimidate me for the rest of my life.
Anyway, sea or pool? Pool. In the daytime strictly.
On the morning of the last day, he woke up and saw death blocking the doorway. They wrestled each other to the bedroom floor, where my frail, fearless grandfather was eventually defeated, in patch of sunlight on the marble.
He left in a hurry, my grandpa, taking nothing with him and leaving behind no last words. He had just enough breath left to say goodbye but no one was there. We thought that death would come in the night, like all the thieves do, but death crawled in in the morning and we weren’t there.
It was an ordinary winter weekend in 2006. I was lying on my bed reading a novel when my mother screamed out to me. She was on the balcony, confronting a flying cockroach the size of a date.
She screamed to me to go help her kill or catch or whatever it is you do with a cockroach. But this was a flying cockroach.
While my mother distracted the cockroach for me to arrive, I updated my CV, applied for 12 jobs in Saudi Arabia, received an offer, packed a small bag, and was heading to the airport.
I bid her farewell at the door and never looked back.
You think I’m joking, but I started my career in the GCC to escape a flying cockroach.
Also, the only thing that could be worse than a flying cockroach is a flying cockroach that can talk. If it could also talk, that’s it. I’d kill myself.
In my grandmother’s house, old and dark and dusty, I would walk the long corridor with my eyes closed, running my fingers softly along the rough wallpaper, like a needle on a vinyl record, and i swear to you I could hear the sound of my mother, my aunts and uncles, laughing as they played, each in their own childhood, before the dust came in and the darkness settled on the furniture.
