Scarcity

A sickly, solitary seventy-years old grandmother in the rural areas spent her entire savings on a gallon-or-something of kerosene, took leisure in scooping it cup-by-cup into her bed and set it on fire, with her in it.

The old woman's story never got to Twitter's TrendingTopics. It never turned into an uproar, or a revolution or ululation. It was mentioned in passing, on the radio, a five-second fame, at best; the length of an announcer's spoken breath.

Suicide is an option for the hungry. (Yes, there are different kinds of hungry, but nobody argues with the basics, where fame and fatwas and fairies are byproducts of energetic kinds of boredom.) Where hungry is common, we only shrug and sigh in response. Where hungry is common, comedy and tragedy lose strength and meaning.

Say your life is ordinary, underrated and uninspiring. And you know it's okay, and you're deeply glad about it. Because you might have access to love, and you might have all your meals (as well as your loved-ones') secured for the week, and you might only need to time to forget. Or remember differently.

Perhaps, you're the only one with the power to give your life's meaning, whether awesome or bitter or forgettable. Make good of that, you goddam ingrate.

Most Time

Remember your biggest success? Remember how people acknowledged and admired and your heart burst with immortal energy?

Remember your biggest failure? Your worst disappointment, foulest shame and when you wished the earth would just swallow you whole and forget that you ever existed?

Between those moments of extremes are the mundane. The long laps of unacknowledged & lonesome work that nobody talks about because they're so ordinary. So uninspiring.

If you look at anybody's success or failure, remember that they too have gone through those moments of crushing doubt; when nobody appreciated them waking up in the morning (every freezing and foulmouthed day), when nobody sent credit for not quitting for another day even in the absence of clear purpose, when the world forgot and existence became a mere, troublesome angst.

Have courage. Most of the time, most of us are there too.

That Law

The new Saudi internet law has been in the backs of our heads for ages. Nothing really new about it for people who are used to risk the dangers between honest anonymity or timid exposure. The only difference is that, now that it's governed by law, we are more aware of the risks we take in our choice to (ab)use our freedom of speech.

First Choice

We can always revert to the byproduct of that freedom, the freedom to state the fifth: silence. Looking at the immense amount of monolog diarrhea that Saudi bloggers have abused in their blogs, it's actually a good thing that blogging is part of that new law. The world needs not another verbal vomitter, or another "how I spend my afternoon with my cats" post.

Then again, the law is mostly for those who want to be heard. Who need to be heard. Who choose to risk their personal safety and comfort to say the things they feel need to be said.

Freedom

Freedom, any kind of freedom, is a responsibility. Having laws to govern freedom may be a hassle, but it also reminds us just how big a responsibility this freedom carries. If all of us, bloggers-tweeps-writers are aware of that importance, we might treat that privilege with more reverence.

Responsibility

Public exposure results in public concern, and as far as governments are concerned, either delivered with appeasing promises or tyrannical threats, controlling the public behavior is any government's first job description.

The responsibility in speaking your mind (whether in public or with intimate friends) means that you are aware of the possible results that your words might take. That you bear the risks of getting responses from your audience. (Unless you're severely autistic, but I haven't seen many autistic bloggers of late. Have you?)

Now, people who do speak their minds, whatever responses they risks in saying them, are folks who are

• a) too pessimistic of immediate society's response to their words, (e.g. I don't want to marry my cousins, yumma.)
• b) desperate to have their words out there, (Don't marry your cousins, kids)
• c) aware of the importance of their arguments (Marrying close relatives might increase risks of genetic disorders)

Response

If people write in public, and I did say write, not just blurt vomits of unreasonable hate, then the weight of their words is multiplied by every reader. Think about it this way: a postcard from a beloved can uplift you or ruin your day. A tweet can save a life or destroy it. This blog has saved and ruined my reputation more times than I would like to admit.

Imagine if you're as hot and intelligently sexy as @Diana, @Soumz & @LamaSabri, or as provocative as the Big Daddy of Saudi Blogging. Oh the swooning hearts, oh the fallen temptations.

If you're a blogger

Be upset about the laws regulating the Saudi internet, that's fine. Just remember, if your thoughts are so important that you would risk your personal safety for it, then by all possible means have them said. (Pass them on to me, and I'll post them anonymously from my blog. Anything to rock your boat.)

But consider the risks you're taking to have these thoughts out there. Consider the people you are saving (yes, saving) or hurting by saying them. Consider your intent in spreading your ideas. Are you doing this for good cause or just anarchy? How much comfort can you afford risking by having your thoughts spoken publicly? Does your significant others support your ideas?

If you're a reader

Understand that no blogger sticks to their craft for the heck of it. Blogging starts from the heart, and goes back there. Consider that serious bloggers (folks who are risking their personal comforts to write publicly) are people fighting to be heard, hence worth listening to. They are striving for betterment, for change. They're writing for bigger sentimental gains: That this is what they think is right and honest and just.

And if they are swimming against the mainstream media, then there must be some sense in their work, for only few people are able to think out of the box, and even less dare to speak/write them out loud.

Writing from my tower of ivory freedom,
Hning a.k.a. Alia M. Makki

PS. Can't believe I'm breaking my blogging fast with a post on Speech! Civil rights, ya naas?! Get me something katkoot to chew on! #gnarfls

Talk

We talk to restore balance.

We talk because something tipped our inner peace. We talk because we want something from the environment: understanding, sympathy, love, the salt across the table.

Now what if we wanted less from the environment? What if we expected and reacted less? What if we knew that things only change when its time is up, not when we want it to?

Wouldn't it be easier to swing back in the groove?

The Mannequin

 Photo by @Soumz

For a long time, it struck me as inane that a woman should bother so much that her appearances. Is there so little that a woman could think about than what she's wearing? How could the Saudi woman splurge her entire tens of thousands of riyal dowry on clothes instead of education? Or travel? Or a car and a rice cooker?

The Function

When you think about it, it's just how urban societies work that made appearances so important. Urban Social positions rely (if not entirely, then heavily) on appearances. 

In a woman's case, her main source of income is her looks. If she looks good as a girl, she get's the better husband. If she looks good as a married woman, her husband will keep her. And if she still looks good after three kids, she can still have other options if things turn boring sour.

Looks can be deceiving and it goes as far as brains. But who needs brains when we can have everything with a gorgeous face?

The Italians

Let's stereotype a bit more, just for examples' and sensibility's sake.

Italians are usually depicted loud and rowdy. When they talk, they TALK, with their italic Italianness and animate gestures. Yet in all that noise, there is expressive and desperate appreciation for beauty and life. There is the subtle knowledge that under all the noise, there will be a pause of satisfaction. That all have been said. All have been tried. And life, as sour as it gets, can't conquer the human spirit.

I see that gregariousness to take life by its details and make it beautiful in the Saudi and urban woman's attention to herself. To her appearances. And fashionably overfilled closet and mind.

That as confined and restrained and sour as life gets; the mere appreciation of beauty can set forth one's freedom and humanity.

And that's okay too, you know?

Domestic Martyrdom

A Hadith once said that a Muslim dude needs to learn to fight, grow courage, pick a cause to believe in and die for, then hope that he didn’t offend too many people in achieving martyrdom.

A Muslim girl only needs to please a husband to be nominated for the glories of martyrdom.

Feminists, please restrain from hating. This ruling actually honors a woman’s efforts in keeping a single man happy, whether she does it alone or with sister-wives and/or secret mistresses .

It also says something about how hard it is to stay married to a man and pleasing him on a day-to-day basis. That marriage can be as hard as protecting a whole country from invasion.

That, even if we love the men we’re married to, it’s still a risk on our mental and physical stability. And if a sister can still love her man after years of marriage, in poverty and sickness or football nights, I’d like some of that drug she's using.

For who doesn't want a little bit of heaven on earth while being married?

Positive Thinking Doesn't Work Alone

Fact

Depressed people swear by this: That as many positive thinking as they conjure in their heads, it doesn't lift the gloom. As many happy thoughts, achievements and positive self-images they reflect, nothing in the imaginary world has the power to pick up the awful drops of mood.

Cause

Positive thinking doesn't work because it's only smoke and empty calories. Just thinking it doesn't bring results or create change. Yes, it may help a little with beginnings and endings, but it doesn't feed the hungry, or fix a car or make the sun raise a little sooner.

Intervention

If a positive idea makes you more depressed, then it's no longer a positive thing, is it?

The big positive ideas may shy to admit their dirty little secret: That positive thinking only works if it's followed with continuous, tedious, positive sweating. Whether in series of steps or trials and errors, positive thinking need to be worked out, to be tested and proven to remain positive.

In short? Positive thinking is worthless without positive action.

Positive Minds

Since we can't change the world in bulk, doesn't it mean that positivity is limited to the work that we can manage? And the changes that we can handle? And the results that we can create? What, a made up room? A decent lunch? A scrubbed toilet? Hell, yeah.

Is that why the most positive people are the ones with lesser ideas in their heads, and more sweat on their brows?