We and the Sheikh … written by: Shaza Ferzli
Never liked that Sheikh ….
You may feel sorry to hear that …
You may even ask for God's Forgiveness…
But, yes … that's how I feel …
You told me he was your Sheikh … and later would be ours
You looked at me with usual love
And I looked at him … His eyes lacked …
God-fearing and devotion that you find in Sheikhs
Only jealousy, piercing looks and codes were there
When you promised me love
I promised you passion … until death
I trusted your honesty, sincerity … shyness and God-fearing
Yes … I enjoyed looking at you
Praying, bowing down to God and reciting the Holy Verses
Supplicating with your hands, heart and feelings of purity and virtue
I don’t know how that Sheikh stole from me,
The pleasure of steeling looks at you while praying
I don't know what he stole from your heart and hands
Here you are continually praying more and more…
Like an adult who lost the purity of childhood in his prayers
When we first met, according to our traditions and customs,
You exceeded all expectations …
Surprising family and friends with red roses
Yet, now,
We are alone, no family or friends
Now … the Sheikh forbids roses
Now … he even counts our kisses
Now … he limits our steps
Now … he sleeps with us
Directing our joy and cry
Now, you stand at the door,
Hesitating to hug or even kiss me on the forehead
By God! Let your Sheikh take my life
And give me back … the minutes of our spontaneous dancing around in our house
Give me back … the minutes of our teenage happiness
While discovering the world around us,
Succeeding together, failing together and praying for forgiveness together
Yes, that Sheikh took everything
You were sad and full of pain; you left me a month and yet more
You said I was wrong
Maybe I was, God knows best ..
But I am now ready to repent, fast and ask God's forgiveness
For the sake of a Sheikh
You memorized thousands of things
In his presence, you lost …
The truthfulness of your prayers, purity of yourself …
And children's spontaneity that I loved about you
Aren't you the one who said that children are closest to Allah…
What an irony of fate!
When friends and family introduced me to you
You said I was observant … Pardon! Extremely observant!
You said I was a child … a child wearing a coat and scarf for adults
Since then, we started reading and explaining
Tens of verses and Hadith…
Since then, we started memorizing and thinking
Of tens of Fatwa and sayings
But today, and forgive me for this, you are not thinking
Yes! I don't know how you became just a big parrot
You no longer like my scarf
You are no longer satisfied with my commitment
Has it become traditional? Or you are looking for another?
Another woman who dresses, wears Hijab, and prays …
Exactly according to your new Sheikh's fashion
And not according to the orders of Allah and the religion
Whether easy, hard or obligatory
Yes, you want another woman in the costume of a Sheikh
A Sheikh … who washed you and reshaped the love inside you
What a coincidence! The love of your heart is bigger now
But, it became enough for two … or even three!
Don’t lie to yourself…
What you took from him …
Were only beliefs which shatter love and never appreciate it …
No! I am not and will never be …
Against the orders of Allah … but have you returned to yourself before
Then, both your heart and mind have the full right to accuse
Do you remember … years ago
Do you remember that morning …
When we walked around the mosque,
Praying, crying,
Asking God for relief…
That morning, we asked Allah to give us a child …
We believed Allah wouldn't disappoint a patient worshiper
Then, we laughed and chased the flying doves
Happy and satisfied
Those were the orders of Allah … those were His blessings
However, today … me and your beautiful child
Are begging,
To visit the mosque and count doves
But, the orders of your Sheikh say; No
She should wait
He says wait for an appropriate time, an opportunity and fatwa
He says waiting gives us a status of deferred joy
Please … Tell him
That his deferred joy
Is never and will never be equal
To that divine joy from Allah the Almighty
Gifted to us because we were praying then
Like pious adults … like pure children
Please … come back as you are … as you were
Come back alone; come back with other women, if you want
And Allah will be for and with us
With other Sheikhs maybe
Together, with their words, crossing the obstacles of sins and slips
Back together, two or more, if you like
Closer and closer to Allah
Psycho
Fairy talefull of real fictions !
Written by; Shaza Ferzli
Published in Baladna Newspaper -English Edition of 13\April\2011
He hasn’t eaten since the day before yesterday, he hasn’t slept since yesterday, and he
hasn’t been able to wake up since forever. The key to the refrigerator, which he uses to
lock it every day, is forgotten in the office, and he pretends that someone else has
forgotten it. He locks the refrigerator because someone eats his food while he is away. In
his house there is a luxurious bedroom, big enough for one man and a female guest who
never comes, and will never come.
He voluntarily deserted sleeping, because sleeping stops him from thinking, from
painting, and from living. He never lets anyone think on his behalf, write instead of him or
even send short messages without his knowledge. As for time, he doesn’t know how
much will pass, but he’s convinced himself that it is still early and that there is still plenty
of time to make many statues of paper, to build psychological windmills and to join the
circles of life of others. They know just too little about him while he knows them very well,
more than they expect him to know.
He figures out the sort of food they like, the color of their underwear, their psychological
nature and their habits. He knows the day on which they will give birth to their children.
He knows too much, yet no one told him any of what he knows. He asks himself
questions, and then answers his own question. He has a billion ways to decode and
analyze. At the same time, he enjoys the sweetness of victory, the victory of the
discoveries he makes by himself. He tries to deprive others of the thrill of being able to
discover facts the way he does, a discovery which he calls square, cubic or cylindrical,
and it doesn’t matter how others think of his discoveries.
Others? Who are these others? This is the question that Psycho didn’t even try to find an
answer to. He says: “The question doesn’t deserve finding an answer to.” Because he
already knows that the distance between him and others is changeable. He has divided
others into two teams; the allies’ team, and the enemies’ team. It doesn’t matter where
others sleep or what they eat. They are all equal to him. They all stand in one long line. He
might call one of them to have dinner with him in his room, where there is only one chair,
but it doesn’t matter anyways because no one will come. This ‘other’ is the paper dart, or
a rocket launched by forces.
Whenever he feels like having a romantic dinner, he thinks about a girlfriend he had ten
or twenty years ago, whom he knows nothing about except the information on her ID.
And although he knows that she wears colored contact lenses, he insists to call her
‘aqua eyes’. It doesn’t matter; for him, her vague eyes are enough. He also remembers
the voice of another girlfriend he was once flirting with in bed, and imagines that another
man was trying to prevent him from this; he wanted to hit him with a velvet pillow,
although everyone who knows him and knows about his past would describe him as
moving like a lion and in his best conditions as a golden lioness.
In the past, he used to work without stopping, but now, work means nothing to him
because he discovered that he was created to discover. He believes that work is for poor
people but he has never been poor, and he doesn’t deserve to be tied behind a desk.
His desk is still there in his purple office. This office didn’t earn him money, but his
money never runs out. He can feed dozens of his imaginary friends in his apartment. He
has enough money to buy the company of his imaginary wasteful girlfriend. Although
there are other girls racing to satisfy him, he prefers this particular one. So what is the
office good for? The office was found to fabricate roles of characters to help him in
completing the drama and set characters into action.
The desk was found to carry the computer screen which Psycho hasn’t turned off in a
long time. He hates it when the light fades away, and it kills him to live without internet
because by means of this technology, these virtual characters live. Under rare names
that describe how sick the character is, every character lives in its own world, a world
that was created by Psycho. He controls the virtual characters and allows them to make
electronic bets, while he sometimes creates new characters and soldiers and sends
them to the war, which he himself controls and which he’s never lost and will never lose.
Years have passed, and he still fights the sun and the moon with weapons which he will
never agree to call virtual. He became king, slave, man, woman and hermaphrodite often
looking for identity.
Years have passed, and he still sails in a world where he can kill the shark with a paper
propeller. What happened the day before yesterday? Why isn’t his princess helping
him? Why aren’t his guards getting out of the screen?
What really happened is that a woman entered his world, to love him madly. Her heart
lightened his world by its pulse. She didn’t find a place because her Psycho couldn’t find
the right mask for her, or maybe he found it but she refused to put it on her pink-white
skin. The oxygen can…he decided to kill her. She refused to die from the first and
second attempt, but the third one was a knockdown. Her soul was departing as he lied
back in his bed. All of his virtual characters vanished and left him alone, awake. In his
heart maybe…he shot her in his heart. One bullet left him hungry and lonely in a dark
purple room.