Sakineh's Dictionary of the Modern Odalisque

Don't call me “sweetheart”! I'm not your sweetheart! Because a sweetheart we don't snub, we don't throw through the window, we don't despise. I'm your bad, your poison.

Wise words, Anita. Hello, I am the philosopher that died in the last episode. You may be thinking: but how is it possible for a philosopher that died to be writing something if he's dead and the dead people can't write? Was his death a lie? Is this letter being psychographed by Chico Xavier but, how is it possible if he's dead too? Then I ask you: what's the death? Have you ever died to know how it is? Why don't you die then? So later you can tell us how it is!

Anyway, I'll be here to comment Sakineh's history, just an ordinary odalisque of an ordinary harem of an ordinary country. Pay close attention to her history, her wishes, her needs, her daydreams and try to understand this disturbed soul that disturbed the most undisturbed of the men, the most comprehensive and spiritually closed of the psychologists. Here it starts her letter...

Morocco, January 2012

I would put here the full date but I'm so crazy in Allah that I don't know anymore which day is today, where I am and who I am. Why do the days have to change each morning when midnight starts? Why can't it be always May 31, February 7 or July 14? Why? Why so many whys? Why wasn't I born stupid, insensitive, blind, deaf and mute? Why can't I be just a bitch like the other women in here? Because if this way I was born, perhaps it wouldn't ache so much as it does.

When in Lebanon I still lived, with my Barbies wearing black burqas, I played. And dreamed. Years passed and reality stepped on my dreams and on my happiness conception. Getting married, having children, taking care of the home, teaching my daughter how to dance to hypnotize the men and having a camel on the garage. However, it wasn't just a dream of mine, but of many odalisques.

I don't know what capitalism means. Yes, I'm stupid, hate me for that. Once I've heard of “supply and demand law” and I discovered that, in love, it's similar. In my mother's time, when a man said he would call, he really would call. According to Sakineh's Dictionary of the Modern Odalisque, it means that he won't call, but as you are stupid, you'll wait the life to pass and the telephone to ring. He doesn't call you and you cry.

Today the odalisques themselves are hunting for the men that can have until four women if very rich he is. And we have to humiliate ourselves learning sensual dances, cooking, washing, taking care of the kids, dying our hairs and they don't even notice anything! Odalisques cheat one another, they hate themselves.

Men: I hate them. They should born with a plate on their forehead saying what they want. They lie to gain you and lie one more time do discard you. They are loving and romantic to gain you, and cold and heartless to discard you. I hate when they vanish. I hate when they don't call me back. I hate when they don't answer the phone. I hate when they compare me to other women saying they were better than me. I hate the speech “let's be only friends”. I hate when they look to the odalisques with visible eyes in the public market. I hate when they discover my dreams and vulnerabilities, when they make me happy and special, and later they leave me and I have to rebuild myself all alone once more.

No lies: say what you want! Don't apologize, I won't, I don't want forgive you! Yes, I'm crazy! Yes, I'm not a civilized woman. Because the pain you caused me hurts only on me, not on you. You don't know how it feels, you have no feelings to understand.

The odalisque had fallen in love with the king, with the desire. Not with herself. She consumed cocaine from Bolivia to stop the pain and danced while listening to Coldplay. Dancing was her shelter.

[This post was written with the partnership of Juliamaris de Oliveira].

COLPLAY - Princess Of China (feat. Rihanna) by DJ Erm