This Eid

 

With the exception of first day, getting up early and getting ready is bitterly consequential unless you have any preplanned engagements. You just sit there, waiting for any notification or call, while being reluctant to approach anyone either – since the previous two calls went unanswered. You find yourself unwilling to do anything proper either, like doing some assignments, or reading a book for an hour, or the present example, writing something. Because it is Eid, you most likely would like to avoid such everyday activities. Scrolling on the phone, liking others’ freshly dressed photos, or mostly memes, isn’t forbearing either; actually for us, it is up to 5 minutes max. YouTube or starting a movie is a good option, but since these two also require intention and will, therefore they are often avoided. What remains and what eventually descends is the heaviness of eyes, the sleep coming back to complete its quota, or get some more hours. Both you wanting to fall asleep and then the aftermath of sleeping is totally vibe killing. The fact that you are falling asleep out of boredom means that you had no one to go out with on Eid; waking up, you are most certainly under the grip ‘triangle of sadness’, the trauma of weird and vivid dreams of daylight naps.

But like a good essayist, I will provide you with a solving conclusion: don’t wake up early if you can; if you can’t, then do not get ready. Remaining in one’s nightly clothes and lazying around house eating this and that, talking to kids, roaming the street, going for a smoke, watching TV, scrolling on the phone, and so on – postpones the disappointment or kills it all together. Better still, it might turn into a pleasant surprise should someone call you instead and so the day shall begin. For now, we are writing – undressed of course.

As the couple I am supposed to be, which I am not, therefore ‘am lonely’. Friends, family, they tire each other out. A girl, I suppose or claim from my experiences of relationship, glues them both together, or fills the gap between these two. Or she is something altogether separate; herself her world, herself fulfilling, herself consoling, herself complete. My desperateness or romantic temperament might be exactly because there isn’t someone where there someone should be.

Besides, why are there so many couple walking and biking around? Their presence immediately makes us conscious of our own loneliness. I believe in a world where people would choose their own segment, from a whole of range of different segments of like personalities and lifestyles: the all-male friends; segment, the introverts’ group with dim lights and absolute quietness, the couples’ group where no one is shy of no one else, the group of the idiots or insanes (what a fun group) – the point is that these group should not converge. They shall remain within their secure boundaries so that their own lifestyles, hopes, delusions, realities should not be spoiled by the presence of another group. A society of all, and at all times converging, can become cumbersome at times – and it is a great feat of a common man to be able to live within his singular reality alongside such differently possible realities.

Anyways, I am lonely. And my loneliness spurs some reasoned therefore mild rage in me as well: because apparently there are plenty other single people walking around, and because apparently we all are supposed to coupled, then why the fuck are we not? Why are we walking around with single, miserable asses, at best gazing at one and another, hoping to invite someone into our loneliness and put an end to it. But a gaze only reenforces our loneliness, our consciousness at once aware of the hopes that we sum up when we lock eyes with someone out of loneliness, then also aware of the fact that nothing came out of it but bitter killings of our newly born hopes. Walking on the road with expectant eyes, meeting the expectant eyes of the opposite sex, is a constant civil war of internal hopes and internal loneliness – blood must be shed, disappointments should be suffered, sadness shall ensue.

Freshta and the earnestness of nikah has begun to fade away as well. Both of them are too foreign to who I am, who I have been, and to what I can avail. She is of another world and I cannot, out of love and kindness, crusade into her world and wreak havoc there, or bring her into mine and offer her nothing but disappointments and adaptation tasks. I really do like her though. God bless her. Nikah is a thing of a distant future, so let’s put that possibility out of the question for now. I am not ready to put up a fight anyways. What remains is the need and search of a chatter, a meeter, a friend with mutual benefits, a bold person, or poetic, or caring, or elderly, or nice, or kind - yes kind.

Am I sad right now? Me asking this question indicates a few points: first, that I am not readily acceptant of my sadness like I was in the past, even when it wasn’t there; second, I don’t expect to feel sad for I have now become aware of my moods and mechanisms and based on this knowledge I shouldn’t feel sad; third, my awareness of my moods also gives me the power to control them or manipulate them, however way you see it. I guess I am sad, or lonely and therefore sad; lonely because of a girl that is, lonely in a ‘coupled’ sense as I said earlier. Yet I not entirely desperate either. I see girls, I teach girls, talk to them, share staff with them, blah blah blah. My consistent and I guess annoying (should I remove the humor) small talks about girls and nikah might subconsciously point toward this very loneliness I am trying to explain, yet I assuredly remain in control and acceptant of my condition as is – with expectant eyes of course.

My new found relief also relies on the nature of my expectant eyes, pointing ahead. Just a year ago, or half that, my eyes were turned backwards, calling, scolding, crying, for one specific person that was no longer there, or whose image only appeared now and then. When they say ‘aashiqui zor mekhaya’, this is I guess what they mean: to force your moist eyes shut down, to blind and then shut, to return to darkness, to process and accept that one specific person is no more; then to turn your head around, slowly, and to open your eyes again meanwhile, and once facing the horizon – to open them again and hope, to expect, to seek, to desire. My expectant eyes prove to me two things: that she (or the evil working in her or through her on me) could not destroy me, and that I am still alive, still hoping, still ready, or readier, for love.

 

As for what else is happening these days, we’ll try to write them down next time. Take care.

April 24, 2023.