The Empire Of Loneliness

  Twenty years passed since he finished college, and now, he's stepping into his forties. He lives in the house, where he was brought up. He is described as the prince of youth who evolved to the king of silence. The flashbacks he has from his youthful years make him shut his eyes hard till they exude proud tears. He sighs secretly which follows a smile of carelessness.  His days seem to be built of routines.  Routines you wish to win a portion of for a day even.

  The neighbors know nothing about him since his parents died. They just know that if you asked him for a favor, he would nod accepting your request and accomplish the mission with a kind smile. They know too that he's a hard working man, as his sister got married and she never quits visiting him. They wonder why he doesn't give her the visit instead.

  His friends claim when he turned thirty, they didn't know him anymore. It was before his tragic loss to his dear parents. He was the most loved. He was always around chanting, laughing and talking. He was their example for the word "alive," till all of a sudden, after graduation and the multiple parties they had celebrated together, he disappeared. He just did. He worked in several places, though he wasn't an industrial student. He worked for what he likes, hates, related to his college, not related to his previous studies, luxurious jobs and poor ones. He didn't have a break. It was that time, he didn't want to enter his house. Awkwardly, he made no company in all these places he worked at. His language was nods and smiles. People loved him for that, it took a good deal of time till they realized that his nature to be that quiet and he has nothing personal against any of his colleagues. None of the places he worked at gave him the chance to meet his friends. He wasn't delighted by that coincidence, he didn't care to think about it.

  Hugging his forties with a new home, yet it was the same flat he grew up in, was neutral. It was weird that he quit all these jobs he took up. He depended on the money he saved. He managed his needs. He learnt to sew, he bought the fabrics he liked and turned them to fashion items for himself. He used to wear each self-handmade for only one day, for that you would never see them afterwards, as he used to give his used-for-one-day clothes to orphan houses, as despite his old age, he was fit as a healthy teenager. He had all the healthy recipes via internet which made him spend each week 20 pounds maximum. He downloaded PDF versions of books, printed them and got his artistic side on, to color and design hard covers for them. His movements were sways. His progress was calm and genius. He was forty, but acted like a sixty-year-old scientist who is fed up with his brain which knows about everything and time lays besides him rolling its eyes as the old man doesn't join its empty races anymore.

  His days, his thoughts, are they similar to what you see? To what who knew him sees? This is how his daily life goes: He lays in his bed, sleepless for hours. The bed still had the warmth of his parents. He keeps touching the pillow, dips his nose into it, breathes in the smell and breathes out a crying scream. His thoughts are stabbing his skull. He wishes he can cut his skin and let them out, but they just keep pushing till his veins protrude and he fingers their patterns slowly till he reaches his eyelids , rubs them hard and gets off the bed. He walks to the bathroom, has a warm shower. He cries there even harder, but he thinks the falling water takes the tears along which makes the process unnoticeable. He steps out of the tub, clears the mirror from its accumulating vapor, sees his own features and spits on it. He puts his clothes on and heads to the kitchen, turns the radio loud which plays his mother's favorite tunes. He makes himself a cup of hot milk, his back tends to the wall and he keeps chatting. He keeps chatting with his absent mother. He narrates the memories accompany each song. These memories his mother used to narrate to him, but he ignored and roared in the back of his throat each time she started talking; now, he's like fixing this mistake. And yes, he knows it's pretty late. He smiles, walks out of the kitchen, goes to bed and sleeps. He wakes up on time. He had no wardrobes. It was just a statue dressed up in the outfit he made the day before and shelves of shoes. That is the room, is like after his renewal. He gave up the wardrobe and the mirror to his sister. Nothing stayed the same, but where the bed and TV are, is the only exception. The formed space are studded by these shelves, which were painted in bright colors by his young nephews where shoes and books sleep. He opens his eyes, imagines his love next to him, waking him up with the sweetest words and the most affectionate pets. Then he shuts his eyes hard and imagine another girl he liked and wished to be in love with him by the door of the room asking him to smile and get off that bed of laziness. After his brain cries out for mercy to stop torturing it with daydreams, he looks up to the ceiling and jumps off the bed. 

  His room, meaning the room which was totally his when his parents were alive, is clear of any furniture. It was the room of mirrors as his nephews call it. They don't know that it is his gym. He plays the music loud and starts dancing, laughing, jumping, talking, saluting, doing everything. He talks to people he never met. He dances and laughs with pals he never knew they existed. Afterwards, he has his serious mood on and starts training like a sports coach.

  But before that active jam, he stays long in his mini-mosque. The dining room was cleared, it turned a place of shelves filled up with Qur'an and religious books. He stays there for hours. He prays for his parents then his sister, then his nephews. He doesn't ask for forgiveness to his own mistakes, cause he believes that he deserves each time his skin would burn in hell. He reads Qur'an and revise that part he worked hard to memorize the past night. In the end, he drops himself loose on the floor, sweeps his hands through the smooth threads of the carpet. He always asks his sister to visit him, but he never does it as he knows the exaggerated hospitality of his sister and how she would work hard to cook several meals and how this puts pressure on her financial life which doesn't improve because of his useless, still absolutely loved, husband. Of course, if his life was summed up to be boxed by these walls, we would have been narrating the life of a dead man. He randomizes the chances to go out, but it's always by the sunset. He breathes in pure air, let his brain chat with the natural scenes and heart chant the background music.

  In his diary, he was the loser who survived, the guy who was the reason of his parents disappointed crying nights and didn't have the chance to show his regret and announce his sorry on time; though he insufficiently fixed it after their death with a heavy depressed heart. In his sister's, he was the secret hero, who sacrificed with his happiness, his plans to make his own family, just to see his sister happy. In his nephew's, he was the outstanding role model. In the diaries owned by the strangers he met, he was the mysterious generous man, the human who poured out unlimited, infinite giving. In his friends', he was the man who took the pain in, the friend who bled with loud laughter, the pal who helped you to run to success despite his paralyzed state, the colleague who gave love without receiving. In his parents', he was the son who took all the blame in secretly and silently, he was the little boy who gives honor to you by whatever he says. He's the man who stood still when life collapsed.

My Kid's Letter

Dear mum,

   I know in this era there's no such letters, but one of the reasons I love you is, you're one of whom witnessed the arise of technology, though you're not using a bit of it, so I've to get my Romeo on & write you a letter while I AM YOUR KID. But you know, writing isn't a big deal as long as you read much. You raised me up to read books and even read the plot before watching the movie, as if nothing in this life would work without reading! This is not about revising with you how nerdy you brought me up (no blames, by the way).

   This letter isn't personally informative. I've just found myself sick of work and I even ran out of creativity to make up anything new on the internet for fun (like you say "surf to find yourself, create to let others surf searching for you." Yeah. I listen.) So, my time was filled with heavy thinking about.... well... I- I... found your FB & Twitter history; you can say, I hacked your past. I went through each post and friend. It's funny that I know minor of those friends, I can recognize barely-known three out of your "700"!

   Before you get mad, mum, I swear I didn't mean any scratching to your privacy, I was innocently curious to know why you're the only mother who says our age is better than yours. I was starving for  knowing. Without being offensive, mum, but seriously, were you just "share-ers/ retweet-ers"? I may use the word "parrot" as a substitute. You were concentrating so much and put all of your brains into a movie/series to get out of it, a quote & with Instagram's vintage effects to the screenshot; voila, that's what you created.  I have seen each post and watched the movie related to it and gasp! The quote is.. somehow good and true, but the movie is stupid and made for retards! I have read your compliments to each other for noticing such wise saying and I am like "someone, please, slap me! If this isn't over, kill me!" As these wise sayings are actually daily words from an angry mother to her kid, from a caring father to his boy, from a loving friend to her best mate. It was literally like you, people, didn't noticed each other's talks, you're believers to whatever said in this screen. I noticed too hundred thousand posts a year! I can't judge this, you were discussing about things, so it's not a total major waste of time, but it was fooling your generation. It was harming it, cause you surrendered to its hollowness. You believed that the click on "share" makes you intellectual being while you might not have read it.

   It was a funny frustrating experience, still I've learnt much. I learnt that you're the only one who's true to judge our generation that way. I've seen the rusty cuffs which used to tie your imagination to flee back then. I've witnessed how the society in the past was holding back the exploration that you could do. You were forced to be attached to certain things, in the way it's posted. Minor times, I've seen a constructive argument. By time, you lost that sense of argument, it seems you were tired to do it anymore, to correct some thoughts or to exude information from someone else. The rudeness was the style to oblige you to accept whatever they say. Who sounds wise is a snob, who sounds silly is the coolest. Who talk about how old is gold they mention miniskirts in the 70s, and my heart ached! You were also shedding off Arab culture. I remembered that day when you chose several comedy Arab movies. You told me they were very old that even the actors and actresses in it, were older than your own grandparents. You told me that when you were my age, you used to laugh, later on -after being awoke by reality- you watched and you sighed. You told me "watch and write down which phrase made you laugh and which made you sigh." I remember how generous you were that day when I wrote all of what got my attention, followed by "sadly laughing." Then you followed these movies with comedy foreign movies, and that's when I wrote nothing and my reward was a vacation for a week by the sea. I have never got it, till I went through your past's timeline. I get that we don't know the value of our own culture. We just keep blaming it, insulting it, underestimating it out of ignorance without experiencing, without fair comparison.

  What was really funny, that my grandma's generation is the wisest creators, yours is the foolish mindless followers and mine is the filtering researchers. I wonder if you, all of your class, got back in time, would you let your mind still busy with the same stuff? With fashion, movies and lyrics? With pretentious unreal intellectualism? Or you would start stepping up and expressing yourselves through actions which we -your kids- would be going through them now proudly?

   Mum, this was a talky talk with you, I wish it was tete-a-tete conversation. Anyhow, before I go, I have to tell you that I studied your last post on FB, which was a.... sequel? Wasn't it? Sorry, just joking, but you can't ignore the fact that it was ridiculously long! I promise that I haven't read this last post at first. I took your timeline with sequence of events from the oldest to the latest. So, I guess now you figured out that my letter is a brief version of that last post which you titled "we were such fool adults." That wasn't intentional, but I've just noticed it now! What they say "Like mother, like daughter."

   We will blab it all out next meeting insha'Allah.

                                                                                                                     With love and respect,

                                                                                                                                 your daughter, 2071.