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Pool boy

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels

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.

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Grandpa’s death — a meditation

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.

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Why I left home

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.

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Wallpaper — a meditation

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.

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Evil Eye

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

In 2001 my parents visited Turkey and came back with an “Evil Eye” pendant in the shape of a giant blue eyeball. My father hung it from the rearview mirror of the family car, where it was so huge it blocked half the view and slowed down the car by at least 15 km/h.

One winter night I borrowed the car to run an errand. On the way there, a vehicle in front of me braked suddenly; I managed to do the same but ended up gently bumping into its read fender.

No damage happened to the car in front of me, and none should’ve happened to mine either.

Except for the giant Evil Eye which, upon the braking, was flung forward by the force of inertia and smashed into the windshield, cracking it all the way down the middle.

“If it weren’t for the Evil Eye,” I told my father that night, “nothing would’ve happened to the windshield.”

If it weren’t for the Evil Eye,” my father replied, “God knows how much worse the accident could’ve been.”

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Hilltop — a meditation

It’s the first day
of my autumn.
I find myself on a hilltop
alone like I’ve always stood.
The breeze whispers
in my ear
words I don’t want to hear.
The sun’s rays,
warm on my skin,
warm like my mothers’s
love should’ve been.
The sun’s rays fall
on the solitary trees.
The breeze
shakes their branches,
shedding their past leafs
as they stand waiting for
the promised rebirth.