Back from Stockholm (2)

When I know that my mother get cancer, I remembered my youngest brother who died with brain cancer from 12 years ago. I found every thing is repeating in the same consequence, with the same details. The same road which full of pain and led to death. And I could not think about any thing else, I could not see any thing except that. And I could not know how long this road will take, when the end will be, no one can know. I broke down for tow days with very bad imagination of the future. But I found it is too much from me to cause more pressure up on my family members. They know the hard truth and they live with it and challenge it by standing beside my sick mother and taking care of her, while I were abroad. No one of them need to have over load which I could be if I still broking down, but it is really hard what is the life do to us and how it take people we love away without apologizing or asking. At the first I decided not to think about the future and what will happen after one hour. But it does not work all the time, because I still thinking that every word from my mother will be the last one. I felt that the death is flying around us in every where and at every time. I saw it in every black cat I saw. I found it in every conversation with any one around me.

But I remembered a conversation between me and Javeria Kabani, the project manager of YLVP, when I asked about here impetration of my interview before I became a participant of YLVP. She said that I was "very strong". which reminded me with Roger`s strange question to me at the same interview: when do you think that someone is strong? I answered: when this one achieve his-her goals. And when he asked me when I feel strong, I told him it is when I feel that I succeed in teaching my students. at that time I was going to this interview just to test myself, my abilities. I did not have any expectations about what will happen after this interview.

When I remembered all of these things about being strong, I start asking myself if I choose to be strong or I forced to be strong. I found it as something difficult, hard and sometimes harmful. I said to myself that neither chosen or being forced to, it is the same result which I need now. Yes I need to be stronger, to challenge my weakness and to get over this situation and start learning how to live with my mother's disease. I found Javeria`s talking so supportive to me at this moment which I think it is the hardest time of my life till now.

I found myself and my family as a group of people walking on a road without knowing the directions or the place or to where the road will lead, just trying to keep ourselves standing up hand in hand, sharing pain together without showing tears or causing sound.

Back from Stockholm

Since I came back from Stockholm at 15th November 2008, I could not go back to my life. It is not because of my 3 weeks in Sweden with YLVP. It was because of my life in Egypt, when I left it I forgot that the life in Egypt is changing every mint. So if you left Egypt , do not think that you will return back and found it as it were before. It makes me remember why I hate travelling out side since I was young. Because I hate this quickly changes which you find yourself forced to live with, and it will not give you any chance to enjoy your life again. Some people think it is the "taxes" of travelling abroad. But I think it is more than that. It is the life itself which you waist outside dreaming of something you will make when you go back to home, but when you go home you could not have enough time for your dreams, so you start challenging the time or, in other words, you challenge your life before you travelled abroad which does not exist any more, because every thing in Egypt has been changed a lot and a lot while you were a broad. And all of your planning will not work any more.

Since I was young I have a strong passion to know the future. I hope if the idea of "Time Machine" is something real, so I can see myself after 10 years: how I will look like? And how will every one I know look like? Who will still alive and who will be dead? Where I will be and with who? But I did not ever put full scenarios for it or expectations. And when I studied "Future Studies" and the professor asked us to put the nearest, the near and the fare scenarios of our lives I put one but I did not feel it or believe in. I did it as a homework which I have to do. While I put the beast scenarios of the future of Egyptian political parties press in my year. And I thought at that time: it is a silly thing to tell all of these people your personal scenarios. But it was not the problem. The problem is that I am always afraid of the worst scenario of my life. And the worst for me contains the death of someone has a special place in my life. And, unfortunately, this is what I live in now.

Before I go to Stockholm, my mother made surgery and she starts recovering her health. And one day, while I were in Stockholm, I had a bad dream about my mother seeing her has problems in breathing. And she was really sick. But with cancer casing pressure on her backbone and she needed urgent surgery. And the problem was not in making tow surgery in less than one month with high level of Anemya which threatened her life. The problem was in having cancer with very bad previous experience for my family.