A Story of Two Sunrises

A Boxing tournament Episode #6

There are two times of the day, which cannot be explained no matter how hard we look up words, metaphors or phrases. It does not matter how much combined physics and philosophy one can put into those times, for the bulk of events that occur within them are just beyond comprehension. Sun rise and sun set are basically the essence of any day and the essence of every beginning and end. One of my most extra ordinary mornings ever came after a very long night. Now I don’t really measure length here by how long I stayed up as I slept 9 hours that night! Yet,  it was very long with all the bitter tears I shared with myself as the closest person to me back then decided to leave me over an online chat as I was miles away by myself in a sad corner in Cairo International Airport waiting for my flight to Paris.

On the plane, I cried my eyes until I slept, and even during my sleep questions were haunting me.. Why did I have to be so different from everyone else in my society? Am I going to die alone? And all the whys kept chasing me while I was awake on my next plane from Charles De Gaulle Airport to Strasbourg where I was supposed to give a testimony to the equality committee in the Council of Europe then attend their briefing on my testimony as well as the other Libyan, Syrian and Egyptian ladies in the European Parliament session.

I arrived in Strasbourg around 7 p.m and couldn’t help the tears again. I quietly wiped the tears during dinner then slept. Next morning, I woke up to Strasbourg’s sunrise, and opened my window to this huge billboard across the street saying: “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”  –Simone de Beauvoir-

There are very few moments in life when hearts break in a way that makes us hear the sound of the shattered pieces falling to a very solid floor only to shatter more. But then there are women like me who simply know that their message in life makes it so difficult for them to be unconditionally loved since those rules that bend and break women to deprive them from being human beings instead of the human attachments those rules justify injustice to turn women into are simply inapplicable to me. And the package the comes with my struggle as a feminist makes my company unbearable to everyone around me who made a choice not to question the rules that we were taught to take for granted; therefore, people tend to say goodbye to me more often than they stay.

That sun rise in Strasbourg simply gave me one hell of a morning to remember, the strength I needed to cherish the good memories I had and the sensibility not to hate those who left me as not everyone is up to the struggle I made a choice to carry on. After all, life is all about choices.

I remembered all of this today, as Sanaa’s sunrise was not a very promising one when I couldn’t decide how I really feel about a photograph of dead bodies moved by a garbage truck. My reputable intelligence could not help me answer the too many questions my senses were posing all at once. Why did we get caught in the middle of an elite armed conflict last year in Al-Hasaba? Why did Saleh and Al Ahmars enjoy their mansions as they let those simple men fight their ugly war? Why are those men wrapped in blood stained sheets without any name tags? How did their bodies lay in the morgue for over a year without anyone identifying them? Do they have mothers who want to smell them when they hug the way mothers do to us as if we are still newborns? Do they have lovers who hid their new dresses to wear for them when they come back? Do they have daughters who wanted to know more about life than their mothers’ tears and poverty? Who are those men and why in the world are they on the back of a garbage truck? And why is there a child staring at them as if he were in a toy store?
All those questions attacked my heart the way cancer attacks organs.. So brutally and merciless.. All those questions hit me today even though I saw the picture a week ago. Why today? Because activists called for a protest in front of President Hadi’s house this morning demanding an explanation for what happened in that picture.. And I simply started getting too overwhelmed as I knew that President Hadi’s house fences are too high for him to see what time of the day it was! Let alone hear a bunch of people wondering about the bodies on the back of a garbage truck…
As I expected, the protest was small but that is not worth deep thinking as much as people who drove and walked around the protest. Only then, I remembered a very important part of that picture! The qat dealers who sat to sell all kinds of qat when the truck passed..If people can sit to buy and sell when a garbage truck full of dead bodies passes by, how is it possible for people on a main road to notice protestors asking about a truck they never saw?!!! If the ones who saw were not moved, how are we asking the ones who didn’t for solidarity?!!!

Around noon, I stopped a taxi and kept thinking all the way home of this: If a regime attacks protests, it is creating heroes out of the protestors and this is what happened last year on March 18^th. 2011 Friday of Dignity/Karama. But, if a regime wants to make protests invisible, all it has to do is make people get used to them; more importantly, make people get used to the idea of dead bodies so that when masses of them die, they would still hit the market to sell and buy.

Some mornings are extra ordinary because they remind us how valuable we are, just like that morning of mine in Strasbourg when I improvised while giving my testimony and taught EU MPs how a 24 year old Yemeni woman cannot be bent or broken. And some mornings come as a reminder of how worthless one’s life can be in the country she/he was taught to call home but all it has offered so far is a garbage truck that, who knows, might be where my dead body rests when my day comes.

Good Night Everyone : )