I wake up. It’s 3:45 AM. I’m hungry, but I’d rather go back to sleep. I check my cell, there’s one text message. I reply, and the room disappears.

I’m outside a summer house, looking in through a window, witnessing some Buddhist ritual. He shows up out of nowhere and stands next to me – looking in. He tells me “they come here to practice Sufism, they got things mixed up!” I look at the sky and the distribution of the clouds, and I tell him we’re in ‘El King’ – as in Alexandria’s King Marriott. He smiles, nods, and asks “so how did you know?” I tell him it’s the sky. The air; it smells different here. He says it’s true, and starts explaining the scientific aspect of it. I listen, and inside my head I whisper “I love you!” He seems to hear it, he pauses and grins.

The door to the summer house opens and slams shut with a loud thud. There’s nobody in. I look at him and he’s a different person; a friend, and it feels like I just went back in time. We talk, but in singing, like in musicals. We’re at the same place, same scene, but it’s definitely not King Marriott anymore. We talk/sing and we run freely in an abandoned city by the sea. We sing and run for what seems like an eternity in a dream. Scene changes, we’re in downtown. Just us two. High buildings and empty streets, overlooking the sea. Talk of the city going under. We run… more like slide. And we sing louder. And the louder we sing, the higher the sea level rises. We stop to watch as we sing louder and louder still. It’s beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful. We take one last look of each other’s faces, then we run. We’re not singing anymore, we’re not scared either, but we’re running anyway. We run in the same direction, looking ahead and around, but not at each other. Buildings start tumbling down, water filling up the streets. “It has to happen” I scream. “It’ll be back” I shout out.
I laugh.

I’m in bed. She calls me on the phone and tells me of a bad turn of events. A misunderstanding. She repeats the meanest things she ever had to hear from a best friend. She’s in shock, so she’s not crying. I tell her it’s a mistake; that it was never meant that way. I’m in disbelief and I’m about to cry. I open my eyes.
I check my cell, I didn’t get any calls. It didn’t happen.
I check the time, I figure I can sleep some more.

I keep checking the time. I have an appointment at six. I keep checking the time. I don’t want the day wasted. I check the time. It’s 1:30 pm. It’s 2. It’s 3:30. I open my eyes. It’s only 11. I close my eyes again. Phone rings, I jump out of bed startled, it’s only 11:03.

I’m up.

I raise the volume to 30 when Nina starts her piano solo. While my left hand naturally hangs on the steering wheel, my right hand moves across imaginary piano keys as if I actually know how to play. I get so carried away, my eyes only half-open as the music runs through my body reaching my finger tips. That’s when a heap of thoughts lose gravity inside my head and start floating. I try to focus on one thought, one image, but it gets tricky. They float in a full circle without stopping, and I start thinking that this is my head’s way of teasing me, that it’s all intentional. I thought my head and I are on the same team!

Right blinker on, I smoothly go for my exit. I see a girl – looking about my age – crossing the road in the dark. For a second there I think that maybe I can stop the car. That maybe I can give her a lift if she’s heading to Maadi or at least drop her off somewhere safer. I dwell in my thoughts but I don’t slow down. I see her in my rear view mirror standing on the side of the road. I think maybe I should hit the breaks, gear on reverse, and drive back. But I just keep on driving as her reflection shrinks and finally disappears.

**

I get off the bus on Da’ery just before the Maadi/Nasr-City Exit, hoping to find a taxi to take me home. Some car starts pulling back to where I’m standing. Ah great, just what I need to wrap up my evening, some jerk thinking he can pick me up off the road. What was I thinking getting off the bus HERE in this hour? Oh wait, it’s a girl!

“Hey, do you need a ride? Where’re you headed?”
“Umm… actually.. I’m going to Maadi?”
“So am I, I can drop you off wherever when we get there. Yulla?”
“Ummm… thanks..”

She unlocks and I timidly open the door. I’m grateful and relieved but I don’t know if this is a smart thing to do at all. Yes she looks harmless, but I still don’t know. It won’t be worse than standing here anyway.

She asks where I live and I tell her she can drop me off anywhere in Maadi and I’ll take it from there. She insists to drive me to exactly where I want to go, and so I tell her. It’s not much trouble anyway; I’m on the main street, practically on any Maadi resident’s way back home. She seems friendly enough, but she doesn’t ask for my name. She doesn’t talk. She raises the volume slightly to the music playing and hums along. I feel a little awkward so I start making conversation. I ask her where she lives, she says a street number, she smiles, and she looks back ahead. Silence. Not much of a talker. She raises the volume again. Is she trying to shut me up? It’s as if I’m interrupting something. Why the hell did she stop to pick me up if she can’t stand talking to anybody? Oh alright, it’ll only be 5 minutes.

“So.. Where exactly?”
“Yes right here, to your right..”
“Oookay..” she stops the car
“Thank you very much. Seriously.”
“You’re welcome. Take care.” She smiles.

**

I would watch her step out of the car and walk toward the building where I decide she lives. I’d drive off and head home. It would’ve been that simple. But like most things I do, I do it all in my head.

The sight of the girl on the road has put the floating thoughts to rest, to give way to one tiny possibility of what I could have done, or have in fact done albeit inside my head. But with the girl leaving the car, thoughts of a similar nature start stirring up. One single act of goodwill, which I hesitantly withheld in reality despite going through with it imaginatively, created a downpour of memory flashes resembling this seemingly insignificant incident. Another low-gravity point. Another floating stream forming a loop. I stand before it, but I also stand in the center. I stand containing it, yet wrapped by it. But I’m not really there, am I?

After well intending “to be independently blue”, Nina starts singing to her Sinnerman. I shake my head once, twice, then regularly to the rhythm, and the chaos hiding in my skull quiets down. It vanishes. Just like that.
Hail to the rhythm.

Such a sneaky and capable nemesis! I ought to give it to you; you are – so far – undefeatable. Despite all the efforts to take you down and bury you forever, you always find a way to rebuild and resurface.

I thought about it and I have an offer for you: I will quit. I will no longer try to outsmart you; I acknowledge your power and I hereby bow in respect. All I ask of you is to temporarily hold. You will get your day of freedom, and you will embody destruction as you have always wished, just not today and not any time soon. You’ll have to wait till when the time is right, and this will be my decision.

If you’ve waited this long, I’m sure you can wait longer.

Agreed?

Now get off my back and go bother someone else.

I am unconsciously aware – paradox? – of every little thing we do. I pay attention, and I mentally record things. I try to save everything. Every detail, anything the least bit interesting, everything.

Later when I have the time, I write things down. Things that nobody else but me would find exciting or funny or moving or the least bit remarkable. I record all I can remember. I re-read what I write. I let my head re-live the recent moments. I savor the good ones over and over again. I walk into a new addiction, a new different fierce type of addiction, with determination.

I intently run the process, and I call it – the bland obvious – “Making Memories”.

Why would someone whose brain-cells have been burning with nostalgia, over other memories, work so diligently in making sure that new ones arrive safely to nest? What if it backfires? What if one day I lose what I have now? Won’t spiteful innocent-looking Nostalgia haunt my ass the same way it does now with other good memories? Why would I do it so consciously? And why am I unconsciously so keen on it?

Did I do this before? This process?
I probably did, but never with this intensity. Never with such great intent and caution and obsession.

Am I defying the fear of losing or am I scared of it more than ever before?

It won’t stop.

I grow slimmer, slighter, and lighter as I rise, however the essence of who I am remains – for most part – untouched. And the lighter I become, the faster I travel upward toward eternal light.

In time, I will not be but a spirit floating in ever fluorescent streams flowing amongst millions of little suns.

One day I woke up, I sat up in bed and listened to the wind, and I knew she was gone. I hugged the wind and felt it as it slithered through my arms and flew up and away. It gently brushed my cheeks and I felt my lips quiver in half a smile, half something-else.

Every once in a while I would hear a voice in my head. And Every once in a while I would smile in the air and whisper one thing or another with a grin, knowing that my smile would float up to her wherever she is and my murmurs would echo lightly in her ears.

The End