Nocturne

(excerpt from the Buzz issue 38/12.10.2004)

The days go by, I await impatiently as any lover does, to the sleepless nights and drowsy days of Ramadan. Anticipation makes my heart throb from the tips of my fingers to the ends of my curls, round and round till it vibrates energy, carrying me higher to unknown levels mystique.

... I close my eyes and smile, I am back to that life that I’ve only read about in long told tales, of nights and days, perhaps a thousand, maybe more by one, the spirit of humanity lives on in that little street down the old souk of Casablanca...

... It is not a mere cleansing process, rather, a purification of the psyche, the id, the spirit, the essence, call it what you may, the nether part of ones being that wakes us up of our somnambulist reverie when we forget for a moment who we are.

I dream of Palm trees and their beckoning fronds swaying to the mystical words whispered by dwellers of the night, of the crescent moon bowing its head in reverence of the day ahead, of the waters edge curling its grasp on the banks that it embraces. I dream of Iraq.

Body and mind abstain.

... January 1998, Ramadan in Dubai, My father hurries me and I stall… I am mesmerized b the echoing of prayer calls, and a spell is cast, I fall and tumble hopelessly in love with the melodious resonance across the twilight air, a rosy glow covers the shadows and for once it has a myriad of colours unlike any other.

As we prepare to set the table for Iftar, it should have been only natural to hear a soft knock on the front door; I peek through the curtains and see a little boy carrying two plates. As I open the door and greet him, he bows his head with a shy smile, passes me the plate and rushes away before I have a chance to thank him and his mom for their kindness, asking God to bless him & his family.

I turn back inside and look at my parents with dewy eyes and awe transcribed poetically on my face. I had just been hit by the sweetest and oldest of customs; share your blessings and delights with your neighbours. I felt lucky to have experienced this tradition, that may only have existed in the countryside of anywhere in the world. It reached out its hand and held me in Dubai, it may have been sixteen years since Casablanca, but humanity still thrives over here.

With age comes maturity, and a forlorn longing to the simpler past that we hurried at so we may grow up faster. Ramadan seems to bring back many of those times. It is not only a time for fasting and feasting, but a time for some spring cleaning of the soul. After satiating our earthly appetites, a need comes calling deep into the last third of the night to satisfy a never ending hunger for blessings & forgiveness. The spirit convenes in a multitude of ways with its creator and in those deepest and darkest of hours one finds solace from the scorching noonday heat of thought; revelation. A shroud of patience descends to envelope us, help us understand our fellow man, ourselves, our misgivings, our short-sightedness at a life we think of as eternal, and one lets go of worldly delights, of all that binds us from absolution. We thank the Almighty for being able to observe this holy month, for being capable of doing the good deeds to fellow humans as we must, for blessing us with life to see it for another year, It is then that we wish that all our days were Ramadan…

Go, Go, Go Shorty... itshya birthday, we gonna party, like itshya birthday

hApPy bIrThDaY tOoOoO mEeEe

HaPpY BiRtHdAy ToOoOo MeEeE

hApPy bIrThDaY HaPpY BiRtHdAy

HaPpY BiRtHdAy ToOoOo MeEeE

'Epiphanie du Silence'

To: Cadavre Exquis

Your style is exquisite, though I may have understood just a bit of it, but exqisite it is...

Continue your beautiful words that form such ugly visions at times, continue shocking; yet delicately, continue pleasing, yet intensely, continue your letters of suicide; yet passionately, continue your dark thoughts with blinding light.

Continue dying by being vibrantly alive.

A dire need . . .

I’ve always felt the dire need

To be a body of water,

And beside it to lay & rest

My gravely heavy shoulders

 

I’ve always felt the dire need

To live beside the sea,

And of the sea a mist I breathe

Of all my dreams to be

 

I’ve always felt the dire need

To weep far into the ocean

To wash away my souls scars deep

Of betrayal from loves devotion

 

I’ve always felt the dire need

To whisper in your ears

Lay me at the waters edge

And wipe away my tears

 

Darkest nights create the dire needs

To rest a weary mind

To invite a lover into arms

Along a path entwined

 

And at these nights thresholds lie

Labyrinths of desires

Of love and hate and hunger pangs

And imaginations taking me higher

 

I’ve always felt the dire need

To live besides of thee

And of thine mist a breath I feel

That brings me to my knees

 

I’ve always felt the dire need

To live beside the sea,

And of the sea a mist I breathe

Of all my dreams to be

A delicious verbal meal

He spoke to me of memories gone, of a beauty he had seen, that I reminded him of...

He spoke of the Iraq that had been, of burying a sweet girl in a dress so green, what he's dreaming of...

He spoke and I sat there listening to the song that he composed, he stroked my feathers, my plumage of violet , red, blue and green.

And again, I envied the pain of my fellow compatriots, their agony, their day to day turmoils that had passed through them, and is now like a foggy window, being wiped with the back of a western hand.

In his mind, he wished and wished and wished. But you see, he can't wish backwards!

"You must have been born an artist", "You must paint and draw and have a show" and I said that I do, I paint the most glorious pictures of magnificent color with my fingers as plumes and my words as paint. Yes, I draw beautiful pictures with my words.

He felt, he thought, but he said differently...
I enjoyed all three.
The pleasure of the forbidden, beckons me!

And I enjoy. I will enjoy. Words are pleasure for my tongue to curl around and taste, for my eyes to rove and devour, for my ears to hear and recover and for my hands to twist around in knots the sentiments that we control to feel.

Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.

Why are people dying and being hurt for my country?

 

Why can't I go there, do something and die for it too?

 

Today two Italian & Iraqi Aid workers were abducted. Why? what vile minds want to destroy Iraq when all Iraq wants is to live, prosper and be left in peace. Ah yes that makes sense, so whoever is doing this doesn't want that.

 

Thank you then for this humungous compliment. Yes Iraq is magnificent and will forever pose as a threat to any weakling state. Yes Iraq is magnificent and will always make the insignificant insecure. Yes Iraq is Glorious, but all this only through the blessings of The Almighty.

 

I had a poem that I wrote in January '91 in Montreal Canada, I recall little to none of it. In arabic it says:

 

    "I will write the greatest poem written for Iraq, I will with my soul and blood the pain of it's distance and I'll scream with my pen and cry with my ink Iraq, Iraq."

The Move Forward

Dated 04-09-04

In view of the current trend towards liberalizing businesses in the UAE, there is a dire need to create the right environment for profitable business methodology in addition to the prosperous business opportunities that will present themselves at Dubai’s doorstep in the near future.

The Dubai Technology & Media Freezone’s role in this process is integral as well as imperative as there will be a vortex in its current operations should the move to open the market for foreign investment be sooner rather than later.

Therefore, the focus would be to look further a field at what other prospective opportunities and investments have as yet not been tapped into.

TECOM as such may act as a mechanism and tool for a move towards intensive implementation of Intellectual property Laws and all related dynamics. With the vast resources available and its huge capability of reaching nearly more than 4000 Knowledge workers, TECOM may facilitate the move towards Dubai’s 2010 vision of a knowledge economy.

As the UAE is moving at a fast pace towards expanding its international portfolio so the need to encourage foreign direct investment does arise. The issue of TIFA (Although TIFAs are non-binding, they can yield direct benefits by addressing specific trade problems and by helping trading partners develop the experience, institutions and rules that advance integration into the global economy, creating momentum for liberalization that in some cases can lead to a Free Trade Agreement (FTA))1 is at the forefront of the country’s path towards expanding its strength and increasing its trading power.

As the challenges increase in such a prospective environment, so will the need to have regulatory bodies and authorities. As such they do exist but will need the strong arm of other entities to streamline this huge wave of diversity that will engulf the nation. Of the entities that will need to be in place, the Intellectual Property Office is one of such.

The IP Office will be the bridge towards safeguarding all innovative and creative endeavors that will eventually flow into the UAE. Why? As the UAE is young and at its business prime, we may not have the R&D muscle that leading nations already do though we do have the capability of attracting many inventions and industrial processes to life.

Through its financial strength the UAE will be a great opportunity for any young creative mind to bring over their brainchild to see its birth.

By encouraging this creativity, we will eventually need a higher regulatory power that will oversee these creative brainchildren and ensure their credibility through a National Authority of Science & Technology.

1. WIPO