Saturday, January 11, 2014

Reflections on a recent trip to Beirut

In an attempt to keep my promise of writing for half an hour every week, this blog entry for the week. I guess one of the things that has kept me from writing regularly lately is the feeling that nothing particularly special has been happening in my life. However, as my brother would tell me: everything depends on your perspective, i.e. how you look at it. As I recall the events of the past couple of days, I actually realize that my “ordinary” working week is actually quite extraordinary for any normal person. Yesterday I was in Beirut, today I am in Cairo, and tomorrow I am off to Jeddah. Now while this may seem ordinary for a consultant like myself who is always on the move, I have met some people who have never left their country, let alone their city.

I believe this extensive travel is become to seem more and more ordinary simply because the world we live in is becoming more and more interconnected and globalized. While it may seem hectic traveling all over the place in such a short period of time, I must admit that I find it absolutely thrilling. I love change and exposure to new things, and traveling definitely satiates this passion of mine. I remember when I was in college, I would enjoy going to Washington D.C. from Charlottesville. The bus ride would take four or so hours. While most people considered the length of time the bus would take to be the biggest drawback of the trip (the car takes ~2 hours), I found it to be the most enjoyable. I loved looking out the bus’s window and watching the scenery of the gorgeous Virginia countryside that we would drive by.

Back in college, taking a road trip to another city was a big deal for me. It was like the ultimate getaway. I never imagined that I would be traveling between countries in a single week. I must admit that the reason I love traveling so much is because one learns so much just by observing different things. When one is taken out of their comfort zone, he or she is impelled to dwell on his new surroundings and compare them to his or her natural habitat.

My stay in Beirut for the past two days allowed me to reflect on Egypt. I have a tenacious love for my country. It saddens me to see what it is going through these days, but what I have seen in Beirut gave me hope. Despite all the political turmoil it has gone through, Lebanon seems to always pull itself together and thrive. The Lebanese are highly intelligent and extremely hardworking. Despite the sectarian divisions between them, they have somehow managed to work together to make a modern Westernized city in the heart of the Middle East. Working from my company’s office in Solidare (a high-end business, commercial, and residential district), I was impressed by how such a small nation could attract so much investment and develop a fully-fledged service sector.

I understood how they were able to pull off such a miracle when I visited the American University in Beirut’s campus. It dawned upon me that what makes Lebanon what it is education. Lebanon’s education system has produced the highest caliber work force in Arab World. I work with some of the most intelligent people I have ever come across at my company, and most of them are Lebanese. I pray that we Egyptians come someday understand the value of investing in education and the unlimited returns on investment it could offer us. Personally, I try to learn new things everyday so that I could become a better employee, citizen, and person.


That’s concludes my half hour of writing for the week. I hope with that I’ll be able to maintain my weekly writing schedule during my upcoming busy travel schedule.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

The Lost Notebook

It had been almost a year since I had seen Alla. Last time I saw him was in Casablanca as he bid me farewell at the Diab metro station as we ended our week-long tour of Morocco. As we got into my car yesterday in Zamalek, I mentioned to him how life works in mysterious ways. I met Alla, who is originally from Aswan, at the University of Virginia. There, we took an Arabic class on the topic of “Al Nahda” (the Arab Renaissance). After our graduation, our careers took us our separate ways. I ended up in the Arab World serving as a consultant bringing the Western knowledge to the East, and he ended up teaching Arabic in different universities in the United States (in essence bringing Eastern knowledge to the West).

The first thing I did when we got in the car was pull out a copy of “Daydreaming in Cairo,” the novel I had written over two years ago and which was recently published, and give it to Alla. My motive of giving it to Alla was twofold. First, I consider him to be one of my closest friends so I wanted to share it with him. Second, I wanted him to circulate it amongst our acquaintances in the U.S. after reading it. He was surprised to see that I had authored the book that I had just given him. However, what was more surprising was what he later told me as we drove through the streets of Cairo.

Although I thought that I had known Alla quite well, I was apparently mistaken. After briefly telling him the story of my novel’s publication, he disclosed to me that he was also a writer. I immediate thought how uncanny it must be that two really good friends were writers but had not known so about each other. He confided that, although he loved to write because it would allow him to enter an imaginary world of his own, he never shared his writing with anyone…not even his closest friends. I had always felt the same way about writing; it is indeed a very personal experience. But ever since the publication of “Daydreaming in Cairo,” I feel impelled to share my writing to the world. It is a gift that God has bestowed upon me, so why not use it to fulfill my purpose in this life?

However, unlike my writing which is generally narrative and experiential, Alla writes poetry and writes stories in lyrical language that is pleasing to the ear. I must admit that my writing is very basic in the sense that I do not make use of many, if any, literary techniques. However, Alla informed me that he is able to write in different styles. Alla then went on to tell me a sad story related to his writing career. Immediately after he had bid me farewell in Morocco, he had boarded his flight to Kuwait. On the flight, he had a sudden streak of inspiration and wrote extensively on the plane. Almost all his best writings were all documented and compiled in that notebook on which he wrote in on the flight from Morocco to Kuwait.

 What happened next would be considered a tragedy by any writer. All off-boarded the plane and left his notebook behind, never to be seen again. He tried frantically to retrieve it from the airliner but to no avail. He tried everything humanly possible to get a hold of his notebook but without success. As a writer, I know how valuable one’s collections of notebook writings could be. They are one’s only documentation of his flashes of inspiration. Alla then went on to tell me how he tried to recollect his stories in his mind and rewrite them, but they just weren’t the same as when he had first penned them in his notebook. I wanted to console him by telling him that many are the travelers that have lost their writings on journeys and that this notebook was just practice for the greater writings he is to write in the future.

 I wondered what must have been the impressions of the airline passenger who must have laid his hands on Alla’s notebook. As Alla mentioned to him, since he had never shared his writings with anyone, he wasn’t sure if his writings were “treasure or trash.” Which of the two must the passenger thought of Alla’s writings? This got me thinking, which of the two do readers think of my very own writing? Although I used to be very sensitive what others thought of my writings, I have decided to make it a point to share it with others. Life is too short to keep waiting until one produces a masterpiece. My advice to amateur writers like myself is to keep writing and to keep trying to get published. It is only through persistence that one masters the craft of writing.