Sincerity

Sincerity is a drop of water;
Silent in its falling,
Pleasant when occurring,
Lost within the others.

Image credits: Phaitoon / freedigitalphotos.net

Airport

A small light situated on the runway flickers on every two seconds or so somewhere in the corner, officiating an atmosphere populated densely with the still, early-morning quietness that can only be encapsulated in places where the intensity accompanying a lack of sound signifies its seriousness. Sometimes the light forgets to count and misses a second. Most who are lucky to witness this usually criticize silently, forgetting that it is, after all, only a light.

And almost as if a fog of drowse seeps through narrow corridors and wide spread lobbies, chairs line up from side to side with all types of people united in the deepest realms of sleep. It’s as though if all those people weren’t there, the chairs wouldn’t be, either.

Only the odd bored introvert refuses to part with his thoughts, remaining awake to draw imaginary thought bubbles over the faces of unsuspecting sleepers, hoping to make his day by finding just one person with which he could have an intelligent discussion. A free meal and chocolate discounts will work for the rest.

A beep every once in a while from a scanner of some sort tries to set a standard of efficiency but is easily humiliated by a dedicated band of midnight man-nannies calling themselves police who patrol the high corridors in a childish golf cart. In a mysterious way their laughter echoes soundlessly in the halls they tour but reverberate strangely in the fantasies of a dreaming traveler who has his earplugs on.

In a way, everything talks at night. Pages of books flicked all too many times in a bookstore by bejeweled fingers always tell you they should be bought on discount. Empty tissue boxes always play a trick on you. Even above the ceiling, hiding in the ventilation shafts are not ninja assassins but loyally humming air conditioning units that rumble in their own language. They express in iciclessss.

The sound of a coin refused and landing in the return vault of a vending machine that has run out of chocolate milk and change puzzles the small, cute five year old Japanese girl standing in front of it. But she knows what she wants, points at it and commands the machine to obey - pink hoodie and everything. Challenged, the machine gives in and the cardboard pack comes tumbling down.

There is no truth to the Max Payne-esque notion that if time slows down, so does space and material. There is no truth to the opposite too though. One learns to appreciate this on break when food that was meant to be enjoyed over an hour has to be gorged down in a second and what was supposed to be digested in a second has extended beyond an hour, three lavatory breaks and even defeats the 5 am toilet rush.

As the sun rises, rays chase you until the feeling of lightness overtakes, bringing into balance the function of night and day. The world begins to spin again and suddenly you see Chinese going to Iran, Iranians eating Mexican, Mexicans going to Russia, Russians boarding onto India, Indians going to Germany, Germans flying to Germany, Brazilians going to Germany, Americans not going to Germany and so on. In fifteen minutes the true meaning of the term 'melting pot' is seen congruent with its physical namesake as one indulges in a feast of cultures, histories and traditions.

And as another midnight shift in an airport comes to an end, you realise that that's okay, because every day the sun shines... is a good night.

hsn

photo: Baggage trollies at Dubai International Airport Terminal 3, Departures Level. Credit: Unknown

Closing Shift

As the early morning swish-swooshes into a blurry encore of the diminishing night's song, the night holds a protesting vigil that is exemplified through every passage of the common city. The street lights line up as legionnaires, tall giants spaced apart, silently and majestically showering the world with a caramel glow that illuminates safety through the haze of the dark night sky.

Traffic lights mount the pavements as sentinels, rhythmically emitting white light diffracted into iridescent splashes of ruby, topaz, and emerald. The colours prevail into the distance, cautioning awareness and granting passage to the superior four-wheeled race who hold up high their noses (radiator grills) and patronise the mortal bicycle men lurking in the shadows on either side. This squad of news distribution delegates emerge occasionally to gawk at the cascades of brushed aluminum, spherical opaque bodies and poised slivers of metallic gleam all while minding their own business.

As I grasp all of this in a second, my dalliance with visual modality attracts the attention of my seat-mate and the bluetooth-type kinetic transfer of epiphany that I attempt fails spectacularly.

Maybe we still need cables?

Still, as our faces hide in the absence of light we seem to share in common the sense of purpose that places us together there right then. The road extends onward like curvy waves in a sea of waypoints leading back - not exactly in terms of latitude and longitude but something that works well enough - to an individual’s heart or convenience. It leads to shelter. If you don't miss your stop.

Nevertheless as reflection overcomes perception, those behind the tinted windows of a transport van realize that to a lot of fortunate people the same window pane beholds outward a dizzle-dazzle world of satisfying nationwide nocturnalism that they help make real. They realize that after everything has been said, seen, done and happened it brings with it – like all type of occupational schedules – peace of mind maintained by a strand of reality as thin as a fragile gossamer that can be shattered when grasping the fact it doesn’t remit enough monetarily, it isn’t really worth doing or, unique to this scenario, you’ll be up again doing the exact same thing in very few hours.

In spite of all this as we travel through the passages of the common city, the golden sparkle of overhead orbs play a melody, sprinkling themselves everywhere like hundreds and thousands, transforming everything and revealing in a moment of clarity the sight before us, reaching far into our conscience the felicity of creation as they stun us and bring all around them to a halt. It effectuates the inversion of a robust township that can only be discovered when silence sails over and consequently only few witness.

Making it worth it, almost.

Anyway, in its undulating loyalty to the task, the tell-tale shine of two-minute shoe polish fails to mirror my look of dismay on black leather as I realize there’s nothing captivating about missing your drop-off point.

Happily, I’m already on the long walk home – and it’s just been night on the closing shift.

hsn

Sciences of Soap

As pandemonium impulses electrically though the nerves located in the heels of my feet that, once un-socked could be mistaken for potato mush, I know in my heart that neuroscience will always stop short of explaining the flipside to every step taken; the fulfilling of a long-term mental to-do list that frequently looms in the unreachable recesses of the mind, where the pervading pain biting my shoulders can act as a prelude to the tenable support I might have to provide to myself during more challenging seasons of fate.

Can I please, sit down for a minute?

Looking for support on my as yet unfounded, faith-headed principle, I see physics revolving around my existence as I dangle onto the edge of tolerance, offering countless rationalities to accompany every motion I chance at. But mon ami, these are just ‘hows’, not ‘whys’ or ‘for whats’ or ‘for whens’: these are merely fanciful engagements for the falsely inquisitive mind that nonetheless knows no tomorrow, feels nought but the jouissance of the present moment and consequently will fare poorly when I’ve crossed out an objective on that long-term mental to-do list, and am about to start another for which I should have already been prepared – hopefully also with extra insoles for another long walk.

You tend to underestimate the fear that arrives with a pang when your reasoning has been compromised, when you’re not even sure if you should be patient, when you’ve finally learnt how to properly slice that life-provided lemon only to grasp the fact its’ a coconut and you’ve opened a lemonade stall complete with banners describing it as lemonade so decadent the only other thing that comes close to it is lemon-scented dish-washing soap. At this point fear grapples you and underestimating your fear is the only step you can take to protect yourself, so you can forget it and somehow, get through the day, knowing its’ just that – just a day –, not telling yourself you don’t know how to cut coconut tomorrow, either.

But it’ll just get through.

Or will it?

Yes, it will. I know it will.

At this point although the knowledge that I won’t be betrayed or left behind can only export so much fear away from me, because I think, I share – maybe along with the rest of the human race - the collective tendency to blame what I cannot fault, fault what I cannot perfect, deem perfect what I am too finite to criticize, criticize what I cannot accept, accept what I am too inexperienced to denounce, denounce what I cannot foretell, foretell hastily in a bid to censure, censure what I cannot tolerate, tolerate what I have no reason to reproach and reproach whatever wasn’t done by me, I’m willing to stack it in the back-shelf in an attempt to redeem that sense of security that only stamps itself on the faithful.

If I haven't been forgotten till now, why would I be forgotten after now?

So it willl get through then. I guess I’ll just have to wait, distracting myself with the sciences that be, knowing how but not why or when or why. Until I do.

And then it snaps (electrically), and I realize, ‘thank God, this is just coconut.
Those guys actually got the lemon-scented dish-washing soap.’

hsn

For what?

As Egyptian media accounts that the Raf’ah border is to open later this year to give way to religious Palestinians making for their annual Holy Pilgrimage toward Makkah in the final month of the Islamic Calendar, I begin to wonder what Husni Mubarak’s real intent is. After all, there is no doubt that those who are allowed to pass through Egypt’s Gates of Mercy will have to have been on a very narrow and short check list, and will have to adhere to certain principles, on a very long and wide check list.

Should we - as the Arab governments have - dote Mubarak with the most sincere of thank yous? This would mean complacency in his act of kindness, because after all, he was considerate enough to examine the fact that not all of us chant, ‘In the name of Israel, the most beneficent, the most merciful.’ Perhaps it is for this that in the recent war in Gaza left 92 mosques shredded to ballistic rubble in the recent 22-day war, and the shelling of not one was criticized by him.

I guess it can be safely assumed that Husni Mubarak considered it not within the rights of the Palestinian human beings to flee Gaza in the wake of the Israeli invasion in January 2009, yet somehow the relatives of the 2000-odd dead men, women and children (of just that war) have been cleared of terrorist status by Egypt’s secret-police scanner. Nice. Now 2k grieving relatives can have an extra weekly loaf of bread.

It is anyone’s wonder how much food the Egyptian border guards – forget the high government – consume on a daily basis themselves, as they regulate the passage of Palestinians toward Saudi Arabia, many of them who will be too weak from a lack of food, water, sanitary services and medical care to withstand the journey, elongated by border checks. It is anyone’s wonder how many band-aids the border guards have in their first-aid kits to apply in case one of them concedes a fatal one-inch scratch.

But what overwhelms my comprehension is the disparity in behavior that the government of Egypt has accepted in their own authority over the border crossing. Why allow the Palestinians to go for Hajj? What is so special to Mubarak, who strings the country’s decision-makers to his fiddle, that he would permit the mass-exodus, albeit temporary, toward Saudi Arabia and possibly financial and military aid, amongst others? If the aim of closing Raf’ah was to, as was said, stymie the influx of weapons into Gaza and the West Bank, what makes him so sure that this can be avoided during the two-day grace period?

Clearly it is not in fear of the Arab alliance, a multitude of horse-totting PROs who are really just two sides of the same glitter-ordained pillow upon which he tucks under him every night. I don’t regard his compassion worth mulling over, and if anyone states otherwise I suggest they grab hold of a Palestinian passport. But that isn't needed; the silence tuned by him and the overshadowing coverage of his grandson's death in contrast to the media attention of a blatant racial, nationalistic and facist crime committed on an Egyptian national in Germany narrates itself. If he won't speak up for Marwa al Sharbini, why for the pawns on his chessboard of power?

I do have one theory though: Maybe it is to give false hope to the people, and halt 14-year-old Sa’id and his 13-year old friend Hamdan, who are breadwinners of their families, digging one of the many 700m-1km long underground tunnels that have spurned out of necessity since every single border post across the region has been suffocated slowly since Hamas won the elections democratically in 2005. Even though they have to skip school like all the other boys their age who partake in the same, Sa’id explains it is a lucrative business, and elaborates a pack of cigarettes bought in Egypt for 10 cents can be sold for a dollar – 10x the profit. He says if he has to, he’ll do it to the day he dies. When they stop digging, the tunnel will be bombed, and they’ll have to start from scratch again. By then, it’ll probably be Eid, so the border will be reopened.

This, however, is just speculation, and I have not got the answer I want. So as I stand on the curb, I still wonder, what is his intent?

hsn