Category Archives: Reflections

The systems failed us!

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

Although i never considered myself a revolutionist nor activist per se, I think that i was deeply affected by the revolution or the uprising of 2011, or whatever we can call it now.

Back in the time, I never felt belonging to any activist, civilian nor political groups, so I was somehow participating adhocly neither in an organized nor even a planned way. I simply participated following my inner voice, marching and chanting alone, or with my sister and close friends, haphazardly.

I witnessed all the events as silent participant and sometimes as an observer. I witnessed the crash of the system on the 28th of Jan, the vacuum of power, the resistance, the counter-revolution, the referendum election, the first real election, the daily clashes with an old rotten system, the Muslim Brotherhood rising in the power, then crashing, and the return of the most mediocre, violent and corrupted military rule ever over the country. Continue reading →

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The different Narrative of the Self [2]

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

On the wild beach of Abou Galoum, staring at the sea and the mountain shadows of the other shore of Saudi Arabia, only one month after I took off the veil that I wear for thirteen years. I sit alone and lonely reading.

There, I came across this quote from the book of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known “[…] We are always comparing what we are with what we should be. The should be is a projection of what we think we ought to be, Contradiction exists when there is comparison not only with something or someone, but with what you were yesterday, and hence there is a conflict about what has been and what is. There is what is only when there is no comparison at all, and you live with what is, is to be peaceful.”

At that moment, these words illuminated something deep in me, almost liberated me, not only from the external world judgment, that I subconsciously feared or challenged, but also and mostly from my own perspective of myself. Continue reading →

Histoire

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

Voilà un texte que j’ai écrit en Juin 2009, que je publie ici tel qu’il était écrit. Si je réécris ce texte aujourd’hui, le vocabulaire fervent et naïve changera, mais surement pas l’esprit!

Avec les premières notes de musique, commence l’histoire que je rêvais tant d’écrire, c’est avec la voix effrénée sans frontière qui s’élève, que mon histoire se déchaîne

« كل واحد منا فقلبه حكايات  répète la chanson ; et c’est là que  mon cœur débordé d’histoires  commence à raconter, à se révéler. L’histoire est simple, de la même simplicité de la vie de la mort. La même simplicité du début et de la fin. Soudaine et douce. Continue reading →

A long post of a clueless woman about love …

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

Like a gentle automn breeze, a fresh orange juice in a summer day, a view of a green forest with warm reflections of sunlight and shadows.  This is how I felt in his presence.

Long walks to nowhere, long talks with calm voice with a broken English and exotic accents. Despite of the two different worlds we come from, we managed to meet somewhere in the middle, where the time freeze.

He was, I believe, one of my rare acquaintance from the opposite sex that I met without any particular reason: not for study, nor for work, nor for any networking purpose.  Two persons met for no particular reason but to talk and to get to know each other. Continue reading →

Breathe In, Breathe Out, Breathe In And Breathe Oouutt..

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

I don’t remember when I had my first session of yoga, most probably from five years ago, but what I can remember is the awkwardness and the self-consciousness feelings that I had every time I moved my body. Every time I went to exercise or attended any kind of a session to exercise in order to lose weight, I had this overwhelming experience.

I have been always intimidated by my weight. It is the result of a long history of being bullied by the elders and the strangers. Throughout the years of my younger age and till the current moment, I lived many embarrassing moments and shame. For long time I avoided anything that can reflect the image of my body. Later on I started as an action of self-acceptance, to walk naked and to stare at myself in the mirrors of my room. Continue reading →

The Anarchist Believer and / or/ the Illusion of the “State”

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

This blog post below is neither based on literature nor any socio-political theories that I have read, it is the pure invention and the result of the sane/insane reflection that my poor limited mind has been developing lately. This blog is not neither a call for actions nor reactions, nor an attempt to offer alternatives. For some, these thoughts might have no clear linkage nor even a logic behind. It is ok; I don’t ask anyone to support me or to agree. This blog is simply a ventilation of an alienated free woman.

When and how it started

I am not a politics-driven person, I never understood it nor even tried to before, and I can say frankly that I am completely ignorant and illiterate when it comes to politics. However, lately it occurred to me that we as “humans” live in a big illusion called the “state” and its systems. I started to believe so once I was back from the Netherlands or even while I was living there for one year to get my Masters degree in Arts Management. Coming from the “country-of-no-system”, the chaotic Egypt, I faced daily the rigorous crushing Dutch system of functioning and living. Everything (banks’ systems, public transportation, and public life) were too organized, predicted, dictated and lived by the rules. I cannot deny that living in a system can be relieving from the daily struggle of surviving in Egypt. But with a little distance and reflection, you can easily realize that these social/public/political systems eliminate any “outsider”, “stranger” and any “non-follower” of the system. I lived there the glorious and dominating system of one of the most powerful “democratic” state of the “woohoo” very first class country of the world! Continue reading →

The different narratives of the self – OR – the selves

Posted on by Heba elCheikh

It was back to the summer of 2009, that I recognized this reality about myself!

Back to this time I was in this famous crossroads dilemma of switching careers. By then, I gave up journalism (or to be honest the attempts to become one, once I realized that I hate this profession and I would rather develop my travel writing) and tried to gain experience in the field of Art management.

By then also I had just quit my temporary job at Al Mawred Al Thaqafy, and I couldn’t yet take the decision of going back to Alexandria or staying in Cairo and try to find another job in this challenging very underpaid field. Jobless, penniless, I got this unexpected chance to travel to the United States to attend an institute of art journalism in Washington DC. I used to apply here and there to any chance in writing or art management. This opportunity was completely and positively out of my expectation. Continue reading →