You don't know what it's like to be me looking at us.

I see us.

From the backs of the rounds that control my vision, an image reflects off the optical mirrors that Allah placed inside my sockets: It's you and me; it's an illusion of an allusion.

We're in a fantastic place. We're alone--save a boulder that supports my back and the hawa that holds you up with the palm of her hand.

This is our place--this is the only place where our lost love is able to be found. No demons or thieves can steal it from here. You are mine again, and mine alone. I am yours here, but I've always been everywhere else too.

It's you and me and the boulder and hawa. And it's hawa--amorous and organic and musical.

I feel every note of it in the pads of each of your fingertips as they caress my cheek--it soothes and burns all at once. You radiate your freedom to me here, a freedom that you have denied and kept from me for these past years. My face flushes and new freckles form from your glow.

You smile. My soul gasps for breath, grabbing that life.

I knew it! I've known it! I've always felt that it was still there, in the depths of your soul; scorched into the crevices of this boulder. This faith-rock holds me up to face you, and does not allow me to forget and let go.

My heart has seen your face like this every third minute of every day that I have lived in a state of awareness and wariness of love.

And it is wretched how much I love. It's a pain that I wish I didn't earn from you.

But in this illusion of an allusion--I see that you've earned it from me too.

I don't want us to leave this fantastic place. So I tear, and, thus, tear the illusion of you and me and the boulder and the hawa into my pupils. And I relinquish the rest of me to a life with closed lids so this can never be interrupted by another sight.

I see us--and I will never see anything else again.

A muse maktoob

I believe that everything has its place and its time and its significance.

An hour ago, that belief was exemplified.

I had, for several days, let the MP3 icon for Muse simmer on my desktop--untouched for no particular reason except maybe a lack of desire to listen.

An hour ago, I stared at that icon and had a completely unrelated thought: I thought about how I hadn't written anything in more than 30 days--and I thought about how I had changed during that time--I was not the same woman who had written that last post in early November.

...During those 30 days, I had pulled the knife out of my side--the one that, by my own hand, had been piercing and twisting and tearing me for several years now--wiped off the blood, spit-shined it clean, took a look at my reflection in its blade, winked, and tossed it to the curb...

But it seemed my new-found [dare I say it?!] happiness had also ripped out my inspiration.

That realization behind me, I finally double-clicked the Muse icon hoping for a new kind of inspiration. My subsequent realization: the name of Muse's song is "Feeling Good."

Muse to Reem: "Freedom is mine...it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life...for me."

"Of course," I snickered, looking down at my freshly-polished shimmering blood-red nail, "there was no other day for this ear penetration to take place. Today was when it was supposed to happen all along."

Kol shee ilo waqto; kol shee maktoob.

:)feeling.good

Ramblings void of sleep

Sleep is impossible right now; it has been so for the past several hours actually.

And just before I decided to start writing this, my internal voices had been debating about whether I had the energy to get up, wrap my mind around some thoughts, and jot them down on this virtual notepad.

As I type, I wonder if the "do" argument really won, or if I'm going to conk and zonk out soon, perhaps mid-sentence...

...but I continue for now.

While my mind's minds were having a back-and-forth about the future, the tips of the fingernails on my left hand were gently skimming my shin, attempting to soothe me to sleep. But, my eyes were wandering around the room--dark, except for a whitish-blue glow emanating from the virtual notepad vessel, my computer--and refusing to allow the rest of me to be lulled into the fourth and R.E.M phases.

And I saw and heard my thoughts bouncing in front of me, like the ball that guides a karaoke singer through her song. And they were set against a chorus of "let it be, let it be, let it be...forget about him...don't you shed a tear...memories will fade away," sung by Shooma and written by Ihsen Da Sole. It was inevitable that the song would become etched in my head, listening to it as many times as I have since receiving it.

As it repeated in my background, my brain churned away in the foreground. I stared at the hangings on my wall: the runner that Ropina had given me during my 2007 trip to Palestine, the bullet-ridden targets signed by my shooting-range crew, the prayers rugs that intersect and complement each other--I paused here, and thought about how I hadn't prayed maghrib or 3isha, and debated whether I should use my awake-ness to do so now, realizing all along that I wasn't going to: my love and appreciation for Allah has never wavered but my focus during the movements of salah sometimes does, and I knew I would not be able to focus now. But I continued to think about it, because of guilt.

I looked at the clock--only six minutes had passed since the last check, and I thought, "Akkh, ya Allah, four more hours to go."

Now, I was hearing the "thought I lost you, in the darkness, of a lonely night...never let you go" of Interstate's "I found you," and I thought, "I wish he could act like a Libra sometimes," and I debated whether I should use my awake-ness to log onto Facebook to see who else was not sleeping and whether they had notified me of something during the hours that I had been logged off.

"No, I don't want to be found right now."

With the base of my skull cushioned by my pillow, I tilted my head toward the back--my eyes reaching for the whitish-blue radiation of my computer screen, "That is why I had also not been logged into my instant messaging programs--I want to be lost and inaccessible."

I thought about how I was as dazed and confused as the players in that movie, which I had seen before the stroke of 12 and before the TV turned off...Matthew McConaughey's character "loved red heads." But that was no comfort: he was a loser in that film. I was still bored and tired and annoyed--only four more minutes had passed.

"Uff..."

I stretched both of my legs out, locked them together, and lifted them to a pike, attempting to straighten them as much as possible; I felt the resistance of my hamstrings: "how unsymmetrical?!" So, I pinned back certain parts, trying to refashion them into something more "normal." I decided to just be thankful that they function. They did get me through the kickboxing class, where he called me "beautiful," and flirted that I would be able to do some damage in the ring. I saw the gym: rows of heavy bags, waiting for punches of stress and kicks of frustration to pound them into senselessness. The bags were symmetrical as were their rows, except when interrupted by a weighted swing.

I found my eyes had shut, but my brain was still working, and I still was not sleeping--"why am I lying to myself?" I opened them.

And, I stood up and stared at my bed, then the clock, then the computer (had a camera been watching me, I may have resembled the chick in "Paranormal Activity"). With pangs of hunger in my stomach and a swelling of thoughts in my head, I walked toward the whitish-blue light.

I sat on my stability ball, squeezing it with my bent legs to force stability and levity, and started to type the thoughts that had been streaming inside during the past several hours of unstable sleep.

And here I've been: "Ya Allah, two more hours to go."

I'm going to sleep.

My favorite kind of fenan

"What is wrong with this watch? It goes slack when I watch. It goes fast when I don't care-less..."

He wrote, "It goes slack when I watch," and, as I read that line, I got that tingle in the small of my back--the one that I get when something grabs my bones and shakes them until the vibrations hit my soul. It's a rare feeling but one that is often triggered by song.

In that instant during our instant messenger conversation, Ihsen Da Sole went from talented musician and singer, and all-around cool guy, to intelligent lyricist--my favorite kind of fenan.

I had heard his track, "Beef," before, and it sounded good. Its melodies flowed and fit well into the scheme of my music collection. I liked it, and then I left it alone.

Today, "Beef" took on a new life. Ihsen pulled out the words for me, separating them from the beat and the background and even from the title. And standing alone, fending for themselves against a blank canvas in an instant messenger window, they were simultaneously stark and soulfull.

I don't think Ihsen realized what reading those words, that line--"it goes slack when I watch"--was doing to me...at least not until I told him, "That's it! I have to write about you tonight."

In "Beef," Ihsen tells you about his struggle with time, a war that is so ordinary that an unattentive audience may just nod and sing along robotically. I urge you to pay attention; to stand on the battle field in the aftermath, when it is silent and still. There, you will find the most basic, commonsense, beautiful, complex description of a mundane moment that everyone experiences but forcibly ignores. And the words smack you in the face and you will be forced to face them. Then, you will hear that Ihsen is singing for you too.

These are the gems of music--the hidden trinkets that are discovered with each pump up of the volume, allowing for deeper excavation. These make music exciting to me. To me, an intelligent lyricist is someone who rhymes an experience that you know but have never before put into organized words. And that sensation transforms a song into a life soundtrack. I know now that I will think of "it goes slack when I watch" while I'm watching life tic-tock away on the clock on my work computer.

Ihsen's music is full of other such diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and black onyxes that surely emerge from his daily life: but nevermind that he produces Hip Hop shows from beginning to end to showcase the talents of Afrock; nevermind that he brings sophistication and maturity to the game with a classy style and a smooth sound that can still be tough when it needs to be; nevermind that he represents the soul of Tunisia with every spit and verse that he delivers in English; nevermind that he favors soul music in this phase of his life; nevermind that he is one of the hardest-working men in his hood and he's only 25; nevermind that he eats salty fish with his fellow countrymen on il 3eed; nevermind all of those details that have brought this lyricist to the place he exists in today--to the talent that he has evolved into in this era of his life; nevermind that he is looking at a future that will certainly be bright but that is a mystery right now.

Nevermind all of those things--because you will realize you know it all when you hear him sing it to you in that one gem verse.

***You may still be fighting your war with time, ya Ihsen, but those battles are creating your creativity, and

you are making some timeless music, my friend. Masha'Allah.***

Pine Wood

I walk toward the gates...

...I halt, look around--wait.

"Why have I not been stopped...

...by a 7aris or Palestinian cop?"

Shrugging my shoulders, I proceed without a care...

...ready to find out if he really has a pair.

I sprint stealthily down the lamp-lit path directly to the beige doors...

...I pause, just a centi before.

But it is not for fear or thought or second-guess...

...I am ready to put him to the test.

And with the spirits of Palestinian shuhada' at my back...

...I fling the gates open with strength that makes them crack.

But it doesn't startle Abu Mazen who is sitting on a money sack.

"You," I whisper. "YOU!" I shout...

...And I grab my 7andala necklace to clear my mind, which has begun to cloud.

I walk with a forward lean and fury...

...knowing that the shuhada' are on my side; my jury.

"You have sold your people for that wretched green..."

...I simultaneously wonder why I haven't yet been arrested for starting this scene (??).

I point my middle finger at him as I approach...

...because he doesn't deserve the dignity of a tashahud index finger reproach.

"You dress your son--not Mazen, the other one--in the latest American fashion...

...I've seen him at ZAN, peering at the girls with his Nike cap on."

"And in your other pocket are the shekels and pennies from your Israeli and American masters...

...In that pocket is your reservation to dine with those bastards..."

"...on the flesh and the bones and the blood of Palestinians..."

"....to gorge your fat bellies fatter on the marrow of dead millions."

A centi now separates me from Abu M...

...but not a flinch; nor a breath; nor a warmth surrounds him.

"You..." I grit my teeth and snarl...

...but perplexed, see his face is gnarled.

"YOU!!!" I shout again, and spit in his eye...

...Nothing. No reaction. I say to myself, "Is that dye?"

I wipe the darkened saliva from his vapid face...

...and upon touch realize why 3abbas has no grace.

He is soulless and made of wood...

...not from Palestinian olive tree branches but from pines grown in an American hood.

I am overcome but not completely surprised...

"We have always known, haven't we? Geppetto has been puppeteering our plight. To this, Palestinians were wise."

I pull on my 7andala chain, and swing it left and right...

....pendulate once more and follow with a punch to the puppet's cheek; full of my might.

An alarm goes off: "Finally..sheeesh!" I sigh...

..."No security before because a puppet can't die."

I step backwards twice, then turn to see the Ramallah moon...

..."To think, your milky glow has even touched this fake bafoon."

I march quickly toward the exit and the Palestinian night air...

...Gliding on the breeze of the shuhada' still there.

I step out of that marrionette theater with my right foot first...

...grip the remnants of the entrance...

...and look back at the punctured pine-wood nothing, still propped up on its purse.

And knowing that, once Abu M is confirmed as khashab publicly...

...and the disgrace of Israel and America will be made for all to see...

...the Palestinians will rise and will finally be free.

I smile my first real smile, and shout with glee...

"La teez teezee! Inta mish ra'eesee!"

For the last time, I turn my back to the puppet, and, with 7andala, moon the oppressive and fucked-by-money regime...

To Palestine, I face forward and open my arms, and say, "I can stay here now..."

"...You are home for good now, Reem."

The prayer offering

"As-salama 3alaykum wa ra7mat Allah. As-salama 3alaykum wa ra7mat Allah."

She sits, cloked in prayer garb and serenity...

...but with a heavy heart.

She cups her hands to mimic angel wings...

....but draws them in to capture her psalm.

She says:

"Sub7an il Malik il Qodoos, Rubb il mala'ika wal ro7...

...ya Allah, ya 7abibi...

Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to pray."

She looks up at the ceiling, searching for the Spirit, and envisioning God's expanse looking down at her...

...but through teary eyes, all she sees is the film of fluid and everything remains unclear.

She continues:

"Bshkorak ya Allah lal shahr il mubarak, Ramadan...

...but I'm scared now that it's over.

Evil has been re-released into the world...

...but we are celebrating 3eed?"

She looks down at her hands and feels a lump in her throat and a salty bead on her lip.

She offers this prayer:

"Ya Allah, please help us carry the spirit of Ramadan forward..

...to harvest it in our hearts and heads, and to grow it with love and purity every day.

Ya Allah, let us be kind to one another and seek out the good...

...rather that smirk and summon the evil.

Ya Allah, build our strength so that we may resist temptation...

...and turn ourselves into soldiers of spirituality."

She sits taller, and feels the tears drying on her cheek, and speaks with more confidence:

"Ya Allah, remind us that none of us can judge any other. You alone are The Judge.

Ya Allah, help us to prefer forgiveness...

...help us to prefer pulling each other up rather than pushing each other down.

Ya Allah, remind us to appreciate and say, "Al 7amdulilah..."

...and remind us to be charitable."

She closes her eyes, cups her hands closer to her face, and whispers:

"Ya Allah, please keep my parents in the warmth of your love...

...and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and my cousins and all of their families and friends and all of my friends and their families and friends...(Allah y7fazkom jamee3kom)...

...and forgive us all.

Ya Allah, help me to be a better daughter, grandaughter, niece, cousin, family member, friend, and acquaintance to them all...

...and a better Muslim and insha'Allah a mu'mina.

Ya Allah, strengthen the spirits and iman of those who have less than us and more than us and the same as us...

...and remind us that we are all humans, not one better than the other...

...and remind us that we will leave the material world with nothing but our souls and our deeds.

Ya Allah, remind us to hoard good deeds rather than meaningless materials...

...but bless the hard-working, whose intentions are pure and sincere...(Allah ya3teekom il 3afeeya)...

...and bless us with the intelligence to follow in the example of the Prophets, may peace be upon them, to make this temporary world a better place.

Ya Allah, make this world a better place."

And just before she cradles her face with her hands, her soul speaks:

"Ya Allah, bless me with the opportunity to be a mother, to be like my mother--the love of my life--and to harvest that love in my heart and self, and to grow it with more love and purity, and release it into the world."

She continues, speaking aloud:

"...but You are Most-Wise and know better than I whether I will be fit and have been formed to take that role..."

And whispering through fresh tears, she adds:

"...and I will accept the fate that You have prescribed for me...

...and I am patient and submit to Your Will..."

And she hopes:

"Ya Allah, bless me with the opportunity to be a mother."

She wipes her face with her palms and her psalm, and she sits silently.

She knows and feels the love she has for everyone she named in her prayer (she loves them and sacrifices every ounce of herself for them. Her love for them is absolutely genuine)...

...and she tears for them and herself...

...feeling that evil will now be lurking and tugging and that it will likely be interrupting her prayers to come.

She sits taller, and responds to her fear with confidence:

"La, insha'Allah la!"

And with that, she grabs her prayer beads and recites "Allahu akbar" and "Sub7an Allah" and "Al 7amdulilah" 33 times each...

...and she feels secure and OK; she knows Allah will make everything right.

She returns the masba7a to its holding place, presses her right palm against her bed and her left palm against her leg to stand, and says:

"Ya Allah."

She smiles.

Naseem il ney

There is a breeze that passes over and through me but leaves all too quickly. I look back, searching for the soul that ran away. I look forward..."Where did the zephyr go, and when will she return?"

I continue to walk under the sun, eyes closed and arms open...waiting for her to embrace me again; to re-place me into her trance.

But she does not come.

The ney whispers in my ear his summons to the dear naseem to visit me. He pipes and pulls and prays for the wind's safe return: "Oh that you are Allah's warm, sweet breath...Come and wash over this fasting walker, dehydrated and longing for you to protect and propel her."

"ON YOUR LEFT!": I hear the cyclist's jarring warning interrupt my song. I keep to my side and stare beyond him and his hoard. "It is not you I am concerned with," I think. "Leave me and go. I only long for il hawa. She is the one I will respond to. As for you, cyclist, stay left, pass, and vanish."

I let the negative energy evaporate from me into the still air, and il ney blows his highest pitch at it, launching it to chase the cyclists and push them farther away. This release creates a holey place for my beloved breeze to travel in and out and through freely.

"Ya Allah....ya Allah," my heart beats. It too awaits its refreshment.

I continue to walk forward.

Suddenly, a tress is lifted by an invisible force, and a spirit wafts into my nostrils-larnyx-pharnyx-trachea-lungs. Il hawa granted il ney his wish, and I am the beneficiary.

The wind has fully embraced me now. She swivels with the sounds of her companion ney in a beautiful infant tornado that only I can feel and that is not mature enough to carry me away.

And then, sprinting through adulthood and racing for death, il hawa settles down and dies. Il ney and I are left to mourn--we pray for il naseem's rest and rebirth.

I open my eyes to the sights of the trail and the cyclists that pedal passed. I do not see the zephyr but I know that she is gathering herself so that she may greet me again.

"Allah ykhaleek ya ashlab Shalabi u ya3teek il 3afeeya...inta wil ney." A tress lifts up and caresses my brow. The breeze is reborn.