Eukaryotic Cells

It always rains in the afternoon, I don’t understand why. It rains and I get stuck at the same place, La Tabkha, this cozy bistro in Gemmayzeh that’s almost becoming synonymous with my life. A gigantic proportion of cells in my body must be made out of metabolized nutrients ingested there. A gigantic amount of my indirect relationships with strangers, my mental images of Beirutis also form there.

And when it rains, I stay there, blessed with the kindness of Zouzou, Gaby and Micho entertaining me with free desserts and semi-conversations. It can be kindness, familiarity, reciprocation of my daily investments there, or simply CRM. It definitely is good CRM for they know my name, my food preferences, how slowly I eat, and other little quirks of mine. Like any good enterprise with good CRM, they know much more about their customers than their customers know about them.

I know much more about their other customers, the semi-strangers I bump into with different frequencies. Part of what I know comes from a fluid combination of observation and imagination. How ‘Mrs. Slutty Bimbo With No Taste’ is effectively exploiting ‘Mr. Old Age With Bank Account and a Mercedes’. How ‘Mr. Short And Not So Creative’ is striking poses with his Marlboro Red to compensate for his height and lack of charisma compared to his two colleagues ‘Mr. and Mr. Creative With Stoned Look and Renegade Hair’, who look almost identical and do not seem to be struggling with the same Marlboro Red as they’ve already got attitude. How Mr. Gemmayel Jr. (I don’t know his name), and judging from his care and kindness in greeting people, will definitely have a future in politics. How ‘Ms. Believer in Swiss German Aura Readers’ must be a bitch in bed, and How ‘Ms. Veiled Sunni With 20 Something Daughter’ is plotting to marry her offspring with anyone applicable. In short, I know quite a bit about semi-stranger’s private lives, psychological neuroses, and professional future, and this puts me in direct comparison with them. Empathic or satirical comparison? I don’t really know. But they, the semi-strangers, help me locate myself on the existential map: a comparative, relativist, stratified one.

I know that their mental images get processed with real food, real nutrients. So Ms. Veiled gets processed with Mloukhiyeh, Mr. Short with Curry Chicken, and Ms. Slut with Lazy Cake. I’d like to know if one day in the future, my brain will have concluded neuronal associations between both elements on the accompaniment list. You know, a ‘One Trait One Taste’ kind of slogan.

And finally, metabolites of food, thought and existential compass make up my body cells. So my cell fluids are made of punishment (that’s how much I dislike food), my membranes of curiosity (for its own sake), my mitochondria of guilt, my Golgi apparatus of paranoia, my endoplasmic reticulum of disdain, my RNA of idealism, and my DNA of almost-pure, undiluted optimism.

Mobile Credit Scores and Essential Facts

During my short stay in Riyadh, I consumed a minimum of 2340 Saudi Riyals of ‘Mobily’ credit. I have no way of quantifying the exact amount, for the deck of cards I have (3 of SAR90 denomination, 27 of SAR60 denomination, and 15 of SAR30 denomination), this deck only includes cards I bought at the grocer by our office. It excludes machine recharges at the airport, the all-in-one supermarket cum laundry cum I don’t know what in my compound, and the miscellaneous cards I bought from miscellaneous grocers and non-grocers here and there. Several essential facts can be drawn out of this simple maths.

Essential fact #1: I spent too much time at grocers in this city. For someone who doesn’t have a grocery store fetish, that’s a lot of emotional connection with stacks of everyday consumables. Usually I swing for other consumables: some concrete like music and movies, others intangible like memory for example. I also spend enough time exploring other people’s fetishes on Web2.0 to be certain, so damn certain, that ‘grocery store fetishism’ is not a observable global phenomenon (unlike teen underwear, warm piss, latex, chicks with dicks, gore or gun fetishes). I can thus assume, with a reasonable margin of confidence, that I spent so much time at grocery stores because I have nowhere else to go, to take my legs to, to mobilize my blood circulation, or my need for changing scenes, in its direction.

Essential fact #2: I did not spend that much on ‘communication costs’. Not as much as I’d presumed at least, given the fact that ‘calling’ was one of my most tried-and-tested forms of escapism. So I’d call my mom, or I’d call Moody or Raed, or a combination of the three, to complain and whine. I should be grateful to the universe (by default of gratefulness to God), that my mom and my two best friends exist in my life. I’d also call Boudi, my flatmate, to talk ‘everyday business'. And hey, everyday business like ‘what Labneh brand to get’, or ‘whether the occasional maid dusted the place properly’, is the most universally practiced, yet the most often overlooked form of escapism. I would also call my boss and co-workers to apologize for running late, or to thank them for a meeting where a lot was discussed and nothing was resolved, of course. I would finally call other Riyadh sufferers to organize exciting events like the ‘Great Friday Sunbathing Bash’. And Oh My, Arabian Homes (my compound) has 16 outdoor swimming pools, perfectly clean, with controlled temperature. In other words, we have access to 16 venues for Bashes like these.

Essential fact #3: not sure whether this is a fact or a conclusion really, but I will not increase my Mobily credit score and right for rewards much further. Same applies to Aljawal or even Zain (MTC’s new brand name in response to increased competition in the Telecom market). In short, I will not return to Saudi Arabia as a resident. Assalamu Alaykom.

Fringe 4: Absence and Impossibility

Will these slender monsters bend to meet me?
and these never endings stretches, will they contract to greet me?
and the birds, almost non-existing because of too many cranes competing for space, they will not be here to sing the last song for me..

There were birds at the window of the house that didn't turn out to be home
and birds have made home in the ducts of the 'window AC' that didn't turn out to be mine..
even though I had bought it myself at a place that smelled the grocery stores I'm familiar with
and the Ramadan ceremonies that mean folklore to me
and these couple of friends that, well, just like the misleading home and window AC, didn't turn out to be friends..

They left, and left Vodka and Cognac at my door
One of them transubstantiated into a bottle of 'Absolute Vodka' and the other into 'Courvoisier Cognac'. Both bottles are still intact because I do not drink alone, and because I do not want the two girls to evaporate like the 50% and 40% Vol. alcohol(respectively). It's too disturbing for my sanity to accept the fact they have evaporated, like everything that comes and goes, gracefully tiptoeing at these marble and asphalt floors, ignoring the noises..

and what will I leave at whose door?
and will the footage I will take with my (not yet mine) Handycam serve any purpose?
will it be more than a futile exercise in zooming in an out,
when the textures and details, and for the first time, do not really matter?

This time it's trickier to bid farewell to things I love
to winds I barely felt, a sun that tired more than inspired
or to creatures, or places I have appropriated
I can only say 'assalamou alaykom' to supernatural phenomena, to abstract things like hopes and dreams
and yes indeed, all these towers and cranes do inspire hope
for things that compete with Godot in absence and impossibility..

Fringe 1: Consumable Memory

Accumulation of memory saves the day when things become a bit too bland. Luckily the past exists, and so does the capacity to daydream, and to be able to freely transform memories into a more consumable present moment.One serious blow to the value of memory is that it can be replaced with Polo mints, a walk down a corridor with rain pouring (not necessarily, a walk would suffice), or futile searches in insignificant magazines stacked on a desk begging for sympathy and thus advertising space. I sometimes do justice to the value of memory by replacing it with significant magazines: Forbes Arabia, Arabian Business, any combination of money and Arabia will do. In reality, Mondanite or black coffee are as entertaining, and as effective as their more 'mission vision' distraction tool counterparts in replacing the memory regurgitation game.