My mother says I am a piggy bank, “7assala”. She doesn’t mean that I am cheap but that I am an information piggy bank. The accusations comes from the fact that I will read all of these very useful educational books and not use most of the information in them.
I digress, I usually use the information to help others and use the tips that are directly useful for me. I do enjoy reading most books for the fun of it. I read self-help books as if they were newspapers or magazines and read encyclopedias and dictionaries just fo the joy of learning new things or words regardless of its practicality. Is that weird? I personally don’t think so. Taking into consideration that I am not a TV person so I used to have so much more time on my hands. My mother shouldn’t complain she is the one who instilled the love of reading in us, my sister is an avid reader too, she just enjoys different genres than I do. I am curious so it goes without saying that I end up looking for all kinds of weird information.
I am the kind of person who can quote caloric content of most food because I usually read the nutrition labels, I know how to work the DVD player because I read the manual and I fact check every email I get or send because I am boring like that.
“Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.” Ralph Waldo EmersonWithout going into alot of background information, my mom commented on my last post that she thinks I have finally broken the piggy bank. Maybe she’s right and maybe not. I like to think that every piece of new information you come across will come handy in the future. Yes even though that with the internet today, you can search for anything, anywhere, anytime from wherever you are, it is always usually much easier if you actually know what you are looking for.
Another example is cooking shows, I have a mini addiction to watching cooking shows. I find them fascinating yet I hardly ever feel inspired enough to make whatever they are making on the spot. But I learn so much, I learn what tastes nice with what, how to make your presentation of the food awesome and what different ideas. It comes in handy when I am cooking, I hardly make a recipe exactly as I should, with the exception of baking because I’ve learned the hard way that the exact measurements usually have better results, but I do use what I learn.
My parenting style too has benifitted from all the information. I listened to every mom that “gave me advice” wether I asked for it or not, read every article I could and joined the interesting parenting communities and forums. I learned that I can disagree with some, agree with some and come up with my own mish mash of a style. It is not the perfect style, but it fits me because it is evolving and it is what I can do. I tried the “cry it out method” for sleep training but failed miserably then after some reading and searching decided that I was more of “sleep association trainer”.
Even my marriage benefits from all of the information, not just the relationship between my husband, but what I can offer as a wife. I understand what he does for a living and find it interesting. I try to read up on what he does. I can help look for information for him and be useful in different ways.
The more you learn, the less naive you become and the less vulnerable you are to life’s tricks. You don’t believe rumors so easily and you look for the truth in every thing that comes along. You learn to analyze and weight things until you can feel comfortable with what you have learned. Overall, I believe that formal education is very important, yet very lacking in our country because instead of teaching children and young people how to learn they want them to memorize information. Each one of us will walk a very different path in life, the enlightened will know how to use the tools they have acquired through their education to make that path easier, to make a u-turn when they need to and to generally be happier, more accomplished and satisfied in their lives.
My belief is that the more you know, the more ammunition you have for life and it all depends on how you use it. Maybe my mother is right and that I have broken my knowledge piggy bank and am applying more of it in life these days, but I think I have always been using the stuff, it’s just really starting to pay off now.
I asked my sister to get me this book from Egypt when she was coming because I had read a couple of reviews and was interested in what she had to say. I am always interested when young Egyptian female writers get published. I’ve always thought that the younger generations have lots of things to say especially the women. Amy, a senior editor at Enigma wrote a column that became a book.
I was sort of surprised that the book was only 94 pages, to me that’s more of a booklet, it is shorter than our washing machine manual. Nevertheless I read it all in a couple of hourse. It has been called Cairo’s “Sex and the City”, but I have to disagree. The book is about Amy’s trials at dating, Amy having to deal with what she calls Cairo’s elite society and Amy’s writer’s block. To be fair, the book was funny, light and entertaining but has no depth whatsoever. I always hope that once I put a book down it leaves a lingering aftertaste in my brain that I can think about. Once you put it down it is over. Again, to be fair her writing style is funny and very personal and you can clearly see her character and soul in it and you sort of feel that she must be a fun bubbly character you would enjoy having coffee with. It is more like a diary than a book.
So if you are looking for something to read at the beach or perhaps on a train ride then this might interest you. If on the other hand you were expecting deeper insights into Egypt’s society than go look someplace else.
I started reading this book a couple of months ago and for the first time in my life it took me more than a couple of weeks to finish a book. It was not the book’s fault it was mine, I was busy and then Ramadan came along so I had to put it aside for some time.
I finished reading it yesterday and felt satisfied. It is a story of love that spans slightly over half a century. Set in latin America in the end of the 18th century till the 1920s. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel laureate, spins a gripping, exciting and romantic tale of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Not exactly star crossed lovers but nonetheless separated by Fermina’s choice and then brought back together by Florentino’s perseverence and undying love 50 years later.
I will not spoil it for you but the book is worth the reading time. You will be transported to a different time and a different world where everything is slow moving like the Magdalena river and time is of no importance only love. From the book my favorite passage has to be:
Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.
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Imagine a book that tells the tale of four girls’ lives, loves and losses. The setting is in the city Riyadh of Saudi Arabia. Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, is like Sex and the City without the sex and in Riyadh instead of New York. Gamrah, Sadeem, Lamees and Michelle are the girls who we follow through a series of emails that were written by one of them which tells their stories.
At the beginning of the book you start reading the emails of one of the girls, you don’t know which one who has decided that she will tell their story, using a Yahoo group called “Seereh Wenfada7et”. Immediately you are drawn into their lives. Perhaps it is general curiosity of how other people live their lives especially young women. Maybe it is the setting, Saudi Arabia, which is very different than any other country.
Coming from a different world where freedom is a taken for granted, it was strange to think about how different my life would have been like if that freedom was taken away. What kind of person would I have been if I did not have the chance to experience all of the things that I have? Then again I was very lucky, my parents, even though they are religious people and that is where they have always drawn the line (Halal and Haram) where probably the most open minded parents around. They encouraged education, intellect and culture. They wanted us to learn, to read and to explore. Before them, my grandparents did the same for their children. So perhaps it is a mindset more than anything else.
The book is rich with culture and tradition. The author is very descriptive and makes you feel that you are a welcome yet slightly perverse voyeur into their lives.
I liked the story and would recommend it as light reading. Maybe because the author is still young I felt that it lacked a certain depth to it but I can’t exactly put my finger on it, or maybe it is just the fact that the book was originally written in Arabic and something is always lost in translation. What I didn’t like was the naivety of the girls, but that is not the author’s fault that is how growing up like how they did would do to them. They did sort of grow up on the pages and some of them matures.
Last week I went to Cairo for a short weekend trip and stopped at On the Run, a little green book with a white bride caught my eye and I bought it. Titled “Ana 3ayza atgawez” meaning I want to get married, the book is the funny stories that Ghada has been through meeting different potential grooms. I had no idea that the book was originally a blog, my husband pointed that fact to me and then my mother. Obviously the book was all over the news and I was just the last to know. I went out and got the other two books in the series by Shourouk publishing “Orz Belanaban lesha5sein” and “Ama hazihi faraksati ana” and was definitely impressed.
I’ve always thought that the blogging medium is a superb outlet for young Egyptians especially girls because it was a place where they could write, be creative and let it all out.
I instantly fell in love with (3ayza atgawez). Ghada’s style is hilarious, the stories are just so Egyptian and everything about the book is fresh and refreshing.
Orz Bellaban, is more about little stories that Rehab writes. Some are sad, some are funny and some are on the verge of crazy, but all of them grouped together point out very clearly that Rehab is talented and definitely on her way to a literary future.
The shortest book and in my view the simplest is Ama Hazihi faraksati Ana. Simple it might be but, shallow it is not, the book has lots of depth and is very easy to relate to, or maybe I related to it on a very strong level. Ghada (a different one) is obviously a very down to earth girl who’s head lives in the real world but has a very romantic heart.
Apparently the blogging trend is here to stay so definitely kudos girls!
I just read Persepolis: The story of a child and The story of a return, by Marjane Satrapi the Iranian Author/Artist. I am not sure if author is the right words here because the books are more of a graphic novel than a book. In just black and white graphics Satrapi tells her story of childhood through the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and going to school in Austria and the coming back to Iran and doing the rest of her growing up.
It was enjoyable to read and it was a different perspective on Iran, women there, the Iran-Iraq war and the Iranian revolution. Probably becuse in the first book you feel like you are experiencing it through the eyes of a child and then a turmoiled troubled teenager in a strange land all by her self. In the sequel, you can sort of sense the growing up that has happened and is happening to the author along the pages.
The story was adapted into a movie last year using Satrapi’s signature graphic style. I haven’t seen it but I am hoping to see it soon. The Iranian government aren’t very happy with it and complained to the French Embassy.
Here is a clip from the movie.
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I just finished reading In Search of Islamic Feminism by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. The author visits Muslim countries in search of what she is calling Islamic Feminism, interestingly she encounters a very vocal and active group of women working real hard to improve women’s lives yet do not want to be called feminists. Partly because “feminists” as seen by these women is associated with the Western type of feminism which is quite different than what is happening in these countries. Perhaps in Muslim countries, women already know what their rights are, the Quran is very clear on it. Islam has very clear laws and rules and they are all in favor of protecting and respecting women. The problem is that they are either misinterpreted or not followed, and this is what womens movements are mainly trying to accomplish, to bring these laws into the light and make sure they are followed correctly.
The book is fun to read, because it is more like a story of B.J.’s (as her friends call her in the book) journey to these countries. She has been to most of them before and is revisiting and also tells of how things have changed. She is neither judgmental of the culture nor completely unbiased which makes the reading even more fun and relaxed.
“‘Hub’ is love, ‘ishq’ is love that entwines two people together, ‘shaghaf’ is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, ‘hayam’ is love that wanders the earth, ‘teeh’ is love in which you loose yourself, ‘walah’ is love that carries sorrow with it, ‘sababah’ is love that exudes from your pores, ‘hawa’ is love that shares its name with ‘air’ and ‘falling’, ‘gharam’ is love that is willing to pay the price.”
I just finished reading the book and was sad to see it come to an end. Although from the excerpt it might seem that it was a soppy love story but this is so far from the truth. It is an amazing saga of several generations with a historical backdrop of Egypt at the beginning and end of the century. The characters were so entertaining and their lives were like windows into that era. I had previously read “In the Eye of The Sun” by the same author which I also loved but did not grab me like this one. Perhaps the reason why I enjoyed the book so much was because it transported me to a time in Egypt when things were so much better yet so much worse, a time when people had political aspirations and the will and drive to fight for their rights, like universities, women’s education and independence. It might seem weird that I mention independence last but I truly believe that when a nation is educated its independence becomes and inevitability.
As for the above excerpt, it truly is amazing to look at Arabic from the point of view of a non-Arabic speaker. I had always wondered why we only have one word in Arabic which we use interchangeably for love and like but I realized now that we have so many more versions of “love” than I had previously though. Arabic is truly poetic and romantic yet at the same time it is timeless and strong.
For some strange reason I remembered this book called “The Cay” by Theodore Taylor. It is a sad story and inspiring one at the same time. The Cay is the story of Phillip, a boy living on the island of Curacao off the island of Venezuela during World War II. As he and his mother are trying to escape the war and head back to their home in Virginia, their ship sinks. Phillip survives the boat accident only to be trapped on an island with a black man and a cat. The accident leaves Phillip blind. Not only does he have to learn adjust to his blindness, but he must learn to survive on the barren island in the Caribbean Sea. Phillip is also faced with other challenges including a hurricane. I read it as part of a school project when I was in primary school in the UK. It is a story about survival and resilience in the face of adversity. I have always wondered why we never read anything that was inspirational or even thought provoking during my years in the Egyptian Educational system. I even think that “The Little Prince” by the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry should be read by everyone. It is imaginary, creative and might even cause you to do a little bit of soul searching. The Prince is an alien which looks very human like and goes around traveling around the planets, discovering things, meeting people and creatures and learning so many things. If you would like to read it, here is a link to an online version. The illustrations are by the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry himself and I really recommend taking the time to read the book, then thinking for a few moments about how growing up or older has affected you.
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The question is did Humpty really fall or was he pushed? Is his name Humpty or Humpty Dumpty and he has a secret family name. Maybe the Dumpty’s thought Humpty sat on the wall too much and should get off it and get some exercise, or maybe the king’s horses and men were bored and wanted their go at trying to fix Humpty. Maybe Humpty was showing off and fell and got broken. The sad thing is at the end Humpty can not be fixed, unlike life it can mostly be fixed and even when it can not be, it can be dealt with.
To enjoy the Real Mother Goose you can find it at the project Gutenberg
by Rajaa Alsanea, is like Sex and the City without the sex and in Riyadh instead of New York. Gamrah, Sadeem, Lamees and Michelle are the girls who we follow through a series of emails that were written by one of them which tells their stories.
The Prince is an alien which looks very human like and goes around traveling around the planets, discovering things, meeting people and creatures and learning so many things. If you would like to read it, here is a 
