Sakineh's opened wounds

Nutty after snorting cocaine from Bolivia, Sakineh went out to the Marrakesh streets. Due to the drugs effects, she always went out of her mind, she ran away to another reality, she got rid of her problems every time she danced. And she kept dancing in the middle of the street totally unaware of what was happening around. She was then, ran over by a camel...

So it started. It was a sensation of turning and turning and turning without knowing exactly where she was going to, as if she was already in Heaven. She didn't know what was happening because she didn't know how it started. A beautiful, marvelous Sunday afternoon. A pretty, blue Sun, 5 o'clock. She had heard someone to say “Hold on, Berenice! We are about to crash”. Nothing more she could remember.

Sakineh's subconscious didn't bring back past memories all in a flashback. Her memories lied on the man that made her decay so much in her life and see a shelter on drugs. She relived this painful history together with the physic pain of being blooding after the crash while Berenice and the other person were leaving without helping. People around her listened, all curious, her groans. Nobody tried to help her. They were too busy recording her with their cell phones in order to post the videos later on YouTube.

He was a young and handsome man. Sakineh always had a low self-esteem because she had been poor and because she was a teenager out of the beauty standards. A handsome man like that interested in her was like she had won on the lottery. Even so, he had a dubious behavior.

There were times he was gentle with Sakineh. He used to give her gifts like gold jewels, he used to pay attention to her hijab, used to listen to her, used to give her advices. He was the kind of perfect man she always dreamed of when she used to play with her Babies dressed, from the head to the feet, with a long niqab. On the other hand, there were times he was far, it seemed as if he was trying to avoid her as if she could discover something dangerous about him. He was mysterious and full of secrets. This duality used to make her often distressed because sometimes she felt that it was a half-romance and she wondered what was the matter. Due to her lack of self-confidence, Sakineh used to believe that she was the one who was doing something wrong and she used to hate herself for not knowing exactly why.

Sakineh used to be very intuitive. One day, in a hurry, he told her they needed to talk and, when they met in an abandoned ruin, he was dry and straight to the point.

“I'm tired of you. I have found another woman. Don't look for me anymore. Goodbye”.

And he left, this way, without any longer explanation. Sakineh got devastated inside even though her intuition already alerted her that the end of their secret relationship was imminent. Neither the fireworks that were exploding in the skies to celebrate the coup d'état that deposed the royal family were able to uplift that destroyed soul that would seek comfort in the drugs and in the dance...

After remaining several minutes agonizing in the middle of the street, she was rescued by a Turkish doctor that had seen her dancing. He took her to the closest hospital and, after Sakineh was finally recovered, he told her his sister had a dance school in Istanbul where Sakineh could dance and teach dancing classes.

Sakineh quit the drugs and started being known and renowned as a great dancer. She got married with this doctor with Iraqi family background. She was back to life. Living without drugs, earning a living with the dance, living a true love with lies or omissions. After a whole life of supressions and suffering, she had finally found happiness.

Happiness that was shook during a diplomatic event at Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Ankara. She had met again that man that abandoned her and made her suffer. The Arab world was too small for them two...

Inferiority complex

Do you know that phrase that says “take care of your life and I will take of mine”, right? Then perhaps you think you don't meddle on others' life because you don't like others to do the same to you, isn't it? Wrong! We don't want people to judge us because we are who we are or we aren't who we were supposed to be, but the truth is that we are always judging the others and, if we do it, it's because something displeases us (because we wanted to do what this person does but, for some reason, we are obligated or we obligate ourselves not to do some things).

A very annoying kind of behaving of Brazilians, - in the past discouraged by the fact of having to face the conflict in person -, and that have gained power on the internet recently is the "complaining in mass". Is the kind of people that, on the internet, gather people with all the same boring ideologies and cliche arguments, and feel protected to troll all and each one who has a different opinion of them.

In Brazil, in each beginning of the year we have the same people with the same arguments hoping Big Brother to pass good, beautiful, educative, erudite messages because it only has ripped and frivolous people. This year, besides the BB (whose audience doesn't stop falling and the show is getting more and more monotonous), we have a group that gets shocked with the TV show “Rich Women”. The haters' arguments aren't completely null because BB, Rich Women or any other reality-show of major or minor success always have “vileness, shamelessness, and it is not a good example to our 1920's puritan society”.

So, why do these people fell so offended by ripped people (previously labeled as “ignorants”), pretty women (previously labeled as “bitches”), pretty men (previously labeled as "faggots") or rich people (previously labeled as “frivolous”)? What do these people have of so bad that really offends their victims as they show on social networks with their aggressive and preschooler arguments full of irony and bad words?

The answer to this question tends to be detracted and not straightly answered. “Television has to pass good, worthy things, educational matters. Brazil is full of problems such as the politicians corruption and the Brazilian people are only concerned about Big Brother. That's why this country of shit don't go ahead”. The argument of a virtual revolutionary hardly ever is different from this. We are supposed to mobilize the whole country to their cause, on the contrary, we will suffer with their virtual cholera.

All this indignation may (potentially) have a psychological background. So much hate to that group may reveal their frustration with their own lives, possibly because they don't feel pretty, desired, interesting, satisfied with the lives they have, etc. Hating the participants of reality-shows may be, no less, than envy. They may have been people that, in some moment of their lives, suffered some kind of prejudice or discrimination because they were not pretty, ripped, frivolous, rich, etc and this aggressive behavior may be a kind of paying back, of putting out everything they couldn't being or having, a revenge. Seeing that people not-pretty, not-ripped, not-frivolous, not-rich watch these programs fill them of fury.

Deeply in our hearts, we wish we could be pretty, ripped, rich people. We all wish we could work less and have more fun. So why do they criticize so much a thing they would like to be or to be? Things they say to unimportant? Wouldn't it be envy or complex of inferiority?

Home

The road cuts the valleys, mountains, forests. It brings closer, it takes away, it feeds, contributes to the progress, it's the place of fatal accidents. Roads. It tears the green and taints it of gray. It makes possible crossing rivers, frontiers, physical and psychological limits. Anyway, it's possible to write lines and lines of descriptions about it.

A big fish for a small aquarium. It tired, it resigned, it changed. It got, it moved. A fish from Aquarius in January in Rio de Janeiro. New fishes, new sharks, new crustaceans. The water had a different temperature. Getting food was different. The new aquarium, even pretty, was intangible.

Sardine with caviar price. An aquarium full of leaks and out of order things. Little domestic aquariums and of the little of these, many with Oceanarium prices. The warm water didn't please the cold water fish. The fish was no longer with its beloved fishes.

Pursuing a goal is overcoming an almost mental barrier. Opportunities don't fall from the sky, but they are more likely to appear when you work for it. Things aren't as simple as it seems, but they aren't that complicated as well. If winning is a reason to be proud, why quitting is a reason to be ashamed?

Every thing have their time to happen. Difficulties are a necessary bad thing for us to learn to give value to our accomplishments. If you're not prepared for something, dare to face it. If you fall, raise and try again. If a bone is broken, plaster it; it will get better sooner or later.

Disconnected? Apparently, but roads, fishes and difficulties are just metaphors to speak of our search for a goal that sometimes aren't ready for us, sometimes we aren't prepared for them. Some birds born with wings but don't fly. Some have wings, but too short to fly. And others don't have wings, but they create, develop and fly anyway.

The road brings back home, friends, family, life. The wide green that has no end is an invitation to jump off the window and live in that isolated and beautiful world. A river, a train line, the Sun setting and filling the horizon of red and orange. The night comes and in total darkness, stars shine and even the smaller ones can be seen. The Moon illuminates the forest around the road suspended meters of height, it is as if as we fly down over the trees.

Sleeping is not possible. An annoying sound inside the ears, the sensation of swinging is constant, just like a whole afternoon spent in the waters of a shaking sea. Atlantic in the right of yours. Black mountains start appearing. Just like the houses, buildings, the people, the accent. Arriving home. The cloud that engulfs you cozily.

[Rio de Janeiro means “river of January” in free translation]