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

Antiophidic serum

Making unusable the wisdom of a setback in your life is ignorance, is learning nothing and is to be susceptible to relive it sooner or later.

Some diseases are acquired once in a lifetime and, after healed, the person becomes immune to them. The venom of snakes, spiders and other venomous animals can be used as a counter-poison to the treatment of those who got their bit. It is not so different compared to human beings relationships.

There is always a positive side even in the worst situations. It is not very intelligent refuse yourself to see it through Pollyana's eyes. And it is not cliché to see opportunity in the difficulty. Making unusable the wisdom of a setback in your life is ignorance, is learning nothing and is to be susceptible to relive it sooner or later. And unless you are masochist, nobody wants to feel back the same pain, the same suffering.

People who bothers us will appear along our lifetime even if we try to avoid them and be at their environments. People like these are in every family, every company, every social class... The reasons may be diverse.

Then someone offends you, humiliates you, destroys you... You may forget the words, but you will never forget how you felt. There will always be a first time to live these bitter sensations – and situations like these are not few and there will always be a new one. The more you listen to your family and friends advices, read books, you will only really learn not to lower yourself after having seen the good side that the suffering implied to you after had felt it on your soul. This is when you develop the so-called immunity to it and that is why that is important to make use of the opportunity the difficulty is giving to you, otherwise, it is probable that you will end up making the same mistakes in the future.

When you are annoyed, you may end up learning more about yourself regarded to your vulnerabilities. You discover what hurts you and you can work on it and try to find a solution if it has a psychological background.

After some time, you find yourself in a conflict situation with a new person who is trying to let you down. Armed with the weapons you got from those difficult situations, you learn how to defend yourself and fight back. And one of the most curious weapons you have is one you inherited from an enemy. You may use the same words or even have the same attitudes of someone who hurt you because you know how much it hurts, the how much you bled. Perhaps Freud has already written something about the transposition of the pain...

With the sorrow, we develop our antiophidic serum, out immunity. With the sorrow, we discover our weaknesses to work on our spiritual strengthening or hiding them, or project them on the others. And remembering the sorrow, we may attempt to hurt someone in the same way someone had hurt us...

Learning how to die

You will learn how to die in order to learn how to resuscitate.

So this is the death. The coffee and the bread do not swallow down due to the lump in the throat. The hot shower could last forever. So did the rest if it were not for the flashback moments that never happened, but it was a dream in black and white, with no Sun, no heat, no touch, no caress. Sleeping in the middle of the night and relieving the last hope minutes. But here I am, alive. Dead but alive. Maybe I am at the Limbo.

We are dying every moment. It sounds tragic, do not you think? But we die because we are changing, the world is changing, the people and with them, our dreams and feelings. It is not the same thing as it was once ago. Sometimes it can the good, a blessing in disguise. And sometimes, the death is slow and painful. You implore to the Death to take you away, but she watches everything, indifferent, polishing her fingernails with her legs crosses, sat in a bench.

That is why we should be prepared to die. Every one will have to find their point of balance sooner or later, like it or not. I am trying to avoid creating expectations in order to not get hurt while I pursue my dreams. Or desires, needs, whatever, only in the end I will know what was it and at the Limbo, I will figure it out. If you do not prepared yourself, it is going to ache unbearably. You will fall and the world will not stop to wait you stand up. If you are prepared, yes, it is going to hurt, but soon you will recover and reborn from the ashes.

Phoenix. It dies and reborn from its ashes, always beautiful with its red fire color. Always.

Dying is not easy, it is not nice, none of us wants to die. But the death is a lesson, a learning. Yes, my friend, life is sadist and expose us to the pain for us to learn how to die. You will learn how to die to learn how to resuscitate. Its medicine has a bitter taste, the time. Dying is not the end, but a new begin, learn with your mistakes but never, ever corrupt your soul, your essence, yourself, to people who does not have patience, tolerance and that refuses to love and respect you the way you are. Dying is not the opportunity to revenge, but the opportunity to be humble and recognize mistakes and forgive the others and ourselves. We are human beings, we make mistakes and we kill sometimes people we love, with or without intention, for them to have the opportunity to reborn.