مش باقى منى

شعر / جمال بخيت

مش باقي مني غير شوية ضي ف عينيا
أنا هاديهوملك
وامشي بصبري ف الملكوت
يمكن ف نورهم تلمحي خطوة
تفرق معاكي
بين الحياة والموت
مش باقي مني غير شوية نبض ف عروقي
خُدي.. وعيشي..
وافتحي لي تابوت
أفرح بريحة ورد فرعوني
وربنا ف عوني
إذا دخلت الجنة ولاّ النار
هاشتاق إلي ضحكتك
وقعدتي ف الدار
والقهوة متحوجة
من طيبة العطار..
ف كل يوم الصبح
باشرب حليب قبطي
وف النهار والمسا
بامسك ستار الكعبة لو سبتي
واثبت إذا هربتي
أهديكي عمري وحسي وجوارحي
أهديكي جرحي
هو اللي باقي ف دنيتي لما خلص فرحي
مش باقي مني
غير شوية لحم ف كتافي
بلاش يتبعتروا ف البحر
بلاش يتحرقوا ف قطر الصعيد
ف العيد
بلاش لكلب الصيد.. تناوليهم
خدي اللي باقي من الأمل فيهم
وابني لي من عضمهم
في كل حارة مقام
وزوريني مرة وحيدة
لو كل ألفين عام
ألم الجراح يتلم
مش باقي مني غير شوية دم
متلوثين بالهم
مُرين وفيهم سم
كانوا زمان شربات
والنكتة سكرهم

شربتهم الخفافيش
في قلب أوكارهم
مش باقي مني غير شوية دم.. ماأقدرشي
أسقيكي.. مواجعهم
وبرضه ما أقدرشي
أرميكي..
وأبيعهم
يمكن ف مرة تعوزي تطلبيني شهيد
هاحتاج يوميها الدم
يمضي علي شهادتي
مش باقي مني
غير شوية قوة ف إرادتي
علي شوية شِعر من خطي
حاسبي عليهم وانتي بتخطي
وانتي ف صبح الدلال
بتعطري شطي..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية ضي ف عينيا
أنا مش عايزهم
لو كنت يوم هالمحك
وانتي بتوطي
في معركة مافيهاش
ولاطيارات ولاجيش
وانتي ف طابور العيش
بتبوسي إيد الزمن
ينولك لقمة
من حقك المشروع
مش باقي مني.. غير
شهقة ف نفس مقطوع..
بافتح لها سكة
ما بين رئة.. وضلوع..
ما بين غبار.. ودموع..
وأنا تحت حجر «المقطم»
ف الدويقة باموت
أنا.. والعطش.. والجوع..
يئن تحتي التراب
وانا صوتي مش مسموع..
ياحلمنا الموجوع..
من المرور ممنوع..
مستني لما يمر
موكب سلاطينك..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية رحمة من طينك..
علي شوية صبر من دينك..
مش باقي مني غير حبة غُنا تايهين
ف الضلمة مش لاقيين
حس الفواعلية..
ولا صوت مراكبي عَفي
فوق المعدية..

ولا صوت بناتي العذاري
في كل صبحية..
والغنوة.. أمنية
«ياما نفسي أقابل حبيبي..
وانا ع الزراعية»..
صوتك وصوتهم غاب..
وانا تحت حجر المقطم.. باموت لوحديّا..
الليلة راحت عيوني
تطل ع البستان..
وجناين الرمان..
رجعت لي توصف عناد الغل والدخان
وسحابة سودا تضلل
علي الغُنا الغلبان..
رجعت لي توصف هبوب الموت
علي الألوان..
رجعت لي توصف….
خيال الذل..
ف موائد الرحمن..
مش باقي مني غير شوية كُفر بشروقك
وأنا..
منبع الايمان..
مش باقي مني..
غير شوية ضي..
وعينيا
مش قادرة تلمحني..
في وحدتي محني..
خايف أموت م الخوف
والضعف يفضحني..
السجن عشش ف قلبي
وماشي ف شوارعك..
نفس اللي باعني وخدعني
بالرخيص بايعك..
هاشيل حمولي انا
ولا هاشيل حملك ؟!
ماعدت أملك شيء..
فيكي.. ولا فيّا
ولا قيراط ولا بيت..
ولا نسمة صافية تلاغي النيل بحرية..
مش باقي مني
غير شوية حب جارحّني
ولا باقي مني
غير شوية ضي ف عينيا

The Blade Itself

A flashy name for a novel I read a few months ago for Joe Abercrombie.

I am not a critic (and god send that I never become one), and I hate being harsh on writers, but the novel is mediocre at best. Weak plot, flat characters that are anything BUT original, no premise I could detect, and peculiarly, I couldn't (by reading the book) discover what blade the title was referring to. The book has all the typical elements and characters of the fantasy genre without any effort to dress them up or customize them.

But for some reason I went for the second part of the book!!!! ... And then the third!! No not some mysterious indiscernible reason, I know what it was. One character "Inquisitor Glokta" was so original, so brilliantly depicted, his dialogues and thoughts so intense and intriguing that all the flaws of the book can be set aside (if not forgiven). Whenever this character appears, the writing gets brilliant, and the scenes, the dialogue, and even the secondary characters get rich and enjoyable.

Inquisitor Glokta - a broken and deformed torturer - works under a loathsome head of the inquisition, drags confessions and information from prisoners. You have every cause to detest him, but you don't. Maybe because he is truthful, maybe because he has depth and he made the book worth reading, I don't know but for some reason Glokta gets your sympathy and intrigues you to follow him though his own quest. Up until the end of the third book of the trilogy. Indeed, even following him getting up a flight of stairs with his deformed and broken legs and listening to his internal ramblings is rewarding on its own.

Inquisitor Glokta alone and his thread in the plot are not enough to make the book a good book, but is enough to make it worth reading and to make you forgive the author and suspect some latent potential to write brilliant books in the future.

Dangerous Beans

“I thought, … there would be an island”, said Dangerous Beans (a rat) in a crestfallen and resigned tone, and I started to cry, weep and howl openly. I was driving to the CMIC Maadi office. Listening to an audio-book, written by Terry Pratchett. In less than ten minutes the book (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents) made me laugh again, an effect only Sir. Charles Spencer Chaplin achieved before. And in my opinion, one of the marks of true craft and art.

“I thought there would be an island” reverberated in my heart as the stood for e very forlorn dream, every dying hope, and every fallen idealist. I wept, not only for Dangerous Beans, I wept for the whole world (and obviously myself before all).

Steven Spielberg usually gets such an effect with his climax scenes at or near the end of the movie, (e.g. Schindler’s List, E.T., and Empire of the Sun) but there is as well another way to touch the audience, another form of high art, the kind that makes you on the brink of tears from the beginning to the end of the work, without actually having to have a climax, or needing to make you cry. Examples of this latter are “The Way we Were”, “Slumdog Millionair” and the book “Doublestar” for Robert. A. Heinlein. In “Slumdog Millionair” I literally had tears in my eyes for the whole movie. And in “The Way we Were” I felt a state of elation/heartache the whole length of the 2 hours+ movie. The state was not bound to a certain scene, but to the theme of the movie. Robert Heinlein is a totally different story, .. better saved for later.

Project Halawes II: dreamers

Read part one first: Project Halawes

...

It was an instant success, the effect in workers' health and moral was beyond expectations, it was as if the spark of life was rekindled in the hearts of these men, for some of them lived every night in the middle-earth playing with hobbits and seeking for Gandalf, some lived each of the Arabian nights many times, enjoying the harem and the extravagance, some dreamed at being Jedi knights, samurai warlords, doctors, lawyers, politicians, people of conviction and significance.

After the initial success, a new rule was forged: "The length of the dream was to be determined by how hard and efficient one worked." The effect was dramatic and pretty much instant, the quality of labor quadrupled overnight. Workers worked with vengeance! Who would not work his heart out for an extra hour in heaven? Or even an extra hour between the arms of Calypso?

The dramatic success drew the advent attention of the Union, which decided to put more funds into the running research, as the whole case presented the potential to be successfully replicated on many other industrial facilities. The research resulted into many discoveries about human dreams and the different ways to control and supervise them. Among the great discoveries of that research, were the very impressive experiments about joint-dreaming, in which they were able to let two people -and later even more- share the same dream, not as in watching a movie together, but as in acting in a play together, so they co-dreamed, not just had the same dream. In which case one of the dreamers acted as the host, and was responsible for initiating the dream and setting up the scene, and the other dreamer(s) could then attend to his dream world and interact. This discovery was greatly hyped as one possible form for high efficiency communication, that can be utilized in the near future. This form of joint dreams was not however used with the red factory workers, for fear of strikes or organized rebellions. For as long as each of the workers dreamed separately in his own dreamworld, there was no foreseen danger to come of those dreams and therefore needn't be controlled or supervised (which was of course not without expense). The joint-dreaming was used instead to entertain the richest industrialists and guild-masters of the three colonies, and it met great commercial success.

But then, in a few years, the red factory met a problem that dangered the whole experiment. The workers simply couldn't dream anymore. In fact they dreamed, but their dreams became more and more convoluted and disturbed, and hence were less and less effective. The research team frantically investigated the almost epidemic problem, only to discover that it was almost unavoidable. Workers that spent years on the red planet naturally found it increasingly hard to dream of rivers or forests, they gradually forgot how such things looked like, felt like, smelled like. Photographs, video scenes and multimedia sessions didn't help much, and the option of giving them periodical vacations was simply too expensive (remember how dangerously new space-travel was at those days and how relatively precious energy was).

Now Frank -the youngest member of the research team- proposed a very daring remedy to the catastrophic situation (and it was very catastrophic indeed to the research team that was about to lose its funding and shut down). Frank thought that using the joint-dreaming (later called group-dreaming or co-dreaming) the problem can be solved, basing his theory on the fact that joint-dreaming was telepathic in nature, and therefore was not limited by conventional time-space rules and was out of the shackles of energy-matter physics. The idea was to have the host (the one who constructs the dreamworld) on a very different planet, and let the workers join his world experience the stimuli and effects that he can so fully and vividly reconstruct, after having personally and actually experienced just few hours ago. Taking the Idea further, there can of course be several hosts on several planets enjoying the marvelous nature of magnificent worlds, and not having anything to do but sleep and dream for 8 hours a day, that would be their work, besides maybe reading a fantastic novel or watching a nice movie now and then.

Now as strange and ridiculous as his solution might sound (and it was indeed met with skepticism and ridicule from his fellow researchers), it was quite inexpensive, and avoided space-travel as much as possible. The Union loved it! And as they saw it as the last hope for rescuing a huge venture, they pushed more money into the required research, and put Frank on the head of it all, neglecting the the envy of his seniors, and the heated scientific debate about the possibility of the experiment at all.

Frank's thesis stated that telepathy (and hence joint-dreaming) was unlimited by space as it was unlimited by time, that it was instantaneous! And thus the dreaming co-dreaming group can be thousands of light years away, without it affecting their capacity to co-dream or communicate, if proven right, Frank would have made a great leap, not only in the field on group-dreaming, but also in the field of cross-galactic-communications.


To be maybe continued ...

Project Halawes

Once upon a time, a time that is yet to come, at the second era of space-traveling for the human race, called by some The Colonial Age, a planet was found that was so rich with metals, energy sources and rare elements, that it was at once acquired by the Union of Enterprises to be turned into a gigantic factory, it was moreover in a strategically position that was almost equally distanced from the three human colonies like the center point of a triangle (at that time there were only three of course, the other unofficial settlements weren't approved yet by the colonial panel and did not pay any taxes to the universal government).

Unfortunately this planet wasn't that great for human life, or any life for that matter, true it did have a reasonable gravity (0.82 G) and true it had some oxygen in it's atmosphere, but the water was dire, and almost always frozen, the temperature was cold even on the equator, the landscape was mainly desert of rocks and mountains, and the color of the atmosphere by day was a deep shade of red. True there was some native life, but due to these reasons and many other subtle ecological reasons life forms were very rare and quite peculiar. Imagine a planet where the rivers are almost always frozen, so there was a fish-like creature that lived frozen and suspended for 3/4th of the solar year and then when the rivers melt it lived and "thrived".


So it was expectedly hard to find workers to man the factory (yes, human workers were still in use in some positions because they were simply cheaper than the robot alternatives), for even workers that were in the direst need refrained from working on the "red planet" (as the workers called it) for more than a year. Now don't you dare judge them, those were tough workers, used to the toughest conditions across the universe and to the then extremely exhausting space traveling buses (which transported workers at 7G to save time). But the red planet was really creepy, and it's nature was totally alien to any human wherever in the galaxy he was raised, the work was tough and all day long (to achieve the maximum productivity), and even the toughest of the workers went sick after no more than 20 months, the sickness was alienation, it had many different symptoms, and if not dealt with, was quite terminal.

So understandably the Union needed to solve this problem, because changing the staff periodically did cost them some money after all. And year after year, the plan to totally automatize the factory was proposed and rejected for its high cost. But then at the tenth year of the factory's operations one brilliant manager in the department of human resources did devise a radical solution. And truly, he was a nice guy and his solution seemed quite humane. He thought: "so they get sick? So what? Let's treat them, surely if there is a cure, it can be cheaply acquired in quantities, and why even wait for them to get sick, let's prevent their sickness, let's condition them psychologically to endure and even relish their daily work."

And thus the requirements were presented to the Union's chief psychiatrist, and thus the "Project Halawes" began. for the first two years conventional brain-washing techniques were used, with the effect of considerably increasing (almost doubling) the average worker-life-time, in addition to increasing the workers' enthusiasm and spirit. But this wasn't even close to the desired results, so in the following few years, different techniques were used singly and in combinations. Hypnosis, religion, and prostitution were some of the many things they tried with various degrees of success, until in the 21st year of the factory's operation, they started to use dreams. Yes dreams, artificially induced dreams of nice places and warm worlds, of rivers and rainbows, sirens and elfs, forests full of life, golden beaches, azure skies, and of course, beautiful women.

It was an instant success, the effect on workers' health and moral was beyond expectations, it was as if the spark of life was rekindled in the hearts of these men, for some of them lived every night in middle-earth playing with hobbits and seeking for Gandalf, some lived each of the Arabian nights many times, enjoying the harem and the extravagance, some dreamed at being Jedi knights, samurai warlords, doctors, lawyers, politicians or even prophets, people of conviction and significance.

To be revised and continued ... (probably not)

Malazan book of the Fallen

I write this, not as a review of the novels, many of those can be found on amazon.com, I write instead my feelings about the characters, yes ... the writer was so successful that I have strong feelings for most of his characters.

Anomander Rake, … who cannot feel awe when Rake is involved? The dark, tall, silver haired, almost immortal lord of the Tiste Andii, with a formidable black sword that is more than just a sword, a sword that exudes power, power that Rake totally controls, and uses to extract justice, cold justice, … who can not feel awe? And yet after a while, after you get to know what his motivations, after you see that how he values honor, friendship, and the lives of mortals, you feelings of awe must change, evolve into a more subtle much stronger thing.

Captain Wiskeyjack, the beloved commander, the man with unshakable integrity, who cares for his soldiers, and everybody, even those who are suspected to be evil or criminal, and whose soldiers will follow through just about anything. And yet, ... after getting old, after seeing so much wars and deaths, after being betrayed, he can see and assume the good in people, can love and be loved, stands fast to defend the life of someone because he simply believes she doesn't deserve to die. It broke my heart when he died. Really, I guess that if not for Rake, I would have stopped right there.

Quick Ben, the mysterious witty wizard, with only hinted at powers, knowledge and vision, who more than once challenged gods (ascendants) with his wits and not his powers.

Korlat, ... the female Tiste Andii leader, second only to Rake, from the first moment you can feel compassion coming out from her, and after a while you feel love, love that binds between her and the old all mortal Wiskeyjack, who values her greatly and loves her back. The sheer ammount of silent romance in this relationship almost crushed my soul, made me feel insignificant.

Caladan Brood, the giant warlord with a giant hammer that can shatter the earth and end life as we know it. Despite is still wise and restrained and goes through all those wars for the liberation of mere mortals.

Toc the Younger, ... .

Tattersail, ... .

Captain Paran, ... .

Picker, ... .

....

I'm just tired of writing, .. may continue later!

More on those novels

Well, ... ok if someone's interested, ... I'll give brief comments then full reviews if still interested, ...

The wheel of time is very special to me, the whole fantasy thing started with it (excepting LOTR)... it's huge, ... really epic in scale, ... and I have skipped some parts of it, bt hell, ... I have read some other parts more than once, sometimes three or four times, ... ten times in the case of the prologue to the first book.

I got tears more than once while reading it, and got really excited for a long long time, ... .

The sword of truth followed, and while there are similarities, it is really very different than WoT, ... I wrote a simple comparison once HERE.

SoT is philosophical, ... complicated, and very heroic, ... with two too perfect protagonists, and a very lovable grandfather, Zed.

Reimond E. Feist is very entertaining, ... Pug, Arutha and especially James (Jimmy the Hand), are very interesting indeed! with a very sophisticated philosophical view on magic and gods, that I don't think I completely understood!

Emperor is a very worthy read, ... if not for the novel, then for the astonishing life of Julius Caesar, ... simply inspiring.

Dan Brown, ... well, ... most of you know him, Angels and Demons, The Davinci Code, Deception Point, ... etc, ... he is very crafty at cteating suspense, and surely does a hell of research before writng, but hell, ... the characters are the same, even if their names changed, ... the general theme is the same, .. the plot is very similar every time (or rather the premise, as some would say) I like his work, ... but do not consider it literature of high value.

Now the Malazan book of the fallen is a real piece of great work, ... I'm sure to write more about it soon, ... the sheer amount of different characters that you are inclined to love, like or at least have interest in, is wonderous, ... simply fascinating.


Now for some reason, ... I seem unable to finish any book for Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, or Paulo Coelho ... , sure they are great, seems I have some problem, can anyone help??

Novels I've read through the last 3 years:

• The Wheel of Time (11 books till now) Robert Gordan
• The Sword of Truth (11 books till now) Terry Goodkind
• Most of Raimond E. Feist's
• First one of George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire
• 3 of Conn Iggulden's quatro Emperor (waiting the fourth)
• 4 of R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf stuff
• Most of Dan Brown's (couldn't complete Digital Fortress)
• The Rule of Four

Currently reading: Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen (which is very very promising and satisfying till now)

ANNABEL LEE

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1849)

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Edgar A. Poe and Gobran?

ALONE

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1830)

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

------------------

Does anyone feel the link between Poe and Gobran? Or is it just me?

Al Dustoor (Dastoor ya syad)

Al Dustoor is an independent newspaper published in Egypt (independent on the government I mean). Over the few past months it has gained a lot of inertia and public acceptance in the educated community in Egypt, especially after most of the government dependent journals have lost credibility (long ago actually). Not only has the so called "official" journals lost credibility, it has (IMHO) dulled the public conscious, stripped it of its freedom.

Al Dustoor is very bold in criticizing the government and Mubarak himself! (esp. the articles of its chief editor, Ibrahim Esa) It is really full of contents, not just ink, full of nice sarcastic caricatural drawings and a hell lot of bold diverse opinions about everything currently concerning the people in Egypt, not to forget its radical yet neat formatting and editing.

I never really liked any of Egypt's "official" journals, nor did any of the indie ones get my respect.

On the other hand, not only do I regularly buy "Al Dustoor", but I also keep the old prints, if not for its value, then for the beautiful poems written on the header of each page (each week by a certain poet, or in a certain theme).

Thanks "Al Dustoor", thanks Mr. Ibrahim Esa, we rabena yostorha ma3aky ya masr.

The Wheel of Time and The Sword of Truth

A little more than two years ago, at my final year at college, I started to read Robert Jordan's epic "The Wheel of Time". I was so fascinated by it that I almost finished the first nine books in a few months, and started to read Terry Goodking's "The sword of Truth". Again I was so fascinated that by the end of that college year, I had finished finished the first eight books of SoT.

It's been common to compare both series and debate which is better, maybe cause of the numerous similarities between them. In both series, the hero commands powers more than anyone since thousands of years, he has to fight the dark side of the universe itself, females with supernatural powers try to control him and blend him into their schemes, although they cannot actually teach him how to use his powers, almost no one can in fact. However, after
a while a group of those females come to serve under his command. Both heroes were fathered by another one than that who they thought was there father (yuch, bas sentence). both have a lot of people fanatically following them, by magic or for the sake of prophecy, and both heroes where centric to the prophecies of their world and try to understand them, both prepare for a war far beyond reason.

I might of course have yet overlooked some similarities :) ahh, .. both heroes are of course extremely good swordsmen.

Both series are quite different in my opinion. Not because of the the small details that differentiate both worlds, like that in one there is magic while in the other it's about controlling the different powers roaming in the world (that's almost the same I guess), but because both series were written with a different aim and philosophy.

Sot is really about philosophy and ideologies, the hero is as perfect as can be, in a never ending quest for doing what is right and good, ... defeating evil is his first mission, but what really motivates him is doing what he things right, for the people, those whom he loves, and himself

The enemy is not really evil, but rather adopting different ideologies than the hero, the battle is really about beliefs, ideologies, and philosophy. And surprisingly, ... it's still very interesting!! I read the nine books almost word for word.

The only thing I don't love about SoT is that the author practically re-tales the story of the previous books each time.

WoT is completely another thing, ... WoT is a real epic, with many heroes actually, a long fight, with many inter-wined threads, some of them I don't really read and I think each one can pick his favorite threads and read them.

None of the heroes is that perfect, each has his merits and his drawbacks (my favorites are Perrin and Rand). Victory or failure is not absolute each hero battles and negotiates, and sometimes compromises.

As a novel, ... WoT is more interesting epic, but on the other hand, SoT is has more value for the mind and soul.

Angels and Demons

I feel especially lazy. Having just returned from a thrilling journey across Rome in the company of Robert Langdon. In other words, I have just finished Dan Brown's beautiful novel "Angels and Demons". It's simply beautiful, full of mysteries and theological debates. Compared to its more dominant successor "The Davinci Code" I think "Angels and Demons" is emotionally richer, although surely less controversial.

The novel contains a very intelligent dialogue between religious faith and scientific faith.

You can find a nice comparison between both kinds of faith in this article:

Two Different Kinds of Faith: A Rant.

But I would like to point out that religious faith must not be blind. There can be reasoned, enlightened, regularly questionable and renewable religious faith IMHO.