I have this four-hour long final tomorrow.
For Arabic class. I’m fucking shitting my thermals.
HOW AM I FAILING AT MY FIRST LANGUAGE?
Search:
August.
14.
2011.
11:37 pm
Be careful when fighting monsters, so you don’t become one of them.
Words to live by.
Identity Card - Mahmoud Darwish
Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks…
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself
at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew.
My father…
descends from the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather…was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house
is like a watchman’s hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title!
Record!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards
of my ancestors
And the land
which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks…
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!
Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware…
Beware…
Of my hunger
And my anger!
Bidi nammmmmm.
Why is my lazy ass taking 20 units?
All sunshine makes the desert.
Arabic Proverb
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
The Madman - Khalil Gibran
Artist: Shadia Mansour
Title: "El Kofeyye Arabeyye" (feat. M-1 of Dead Prez)
Album: El Kofeyye Arabeyye
El Kofeyye Arabeyye - Shadia Mansour
I love my dad.
Sometimes he texts me things that make me light up. Like today, when I asked him to mail my rent check:
علي عيني وراسي يا حلوه
