61 pangs for my panga palanga Mama called me panga palanga I don't usually know the difference between bisayan and tagalog Panga is bisayan...visayan I always thought it was funny that the country is called the Philippines and they don't have an F sound F turns into P and V turns into B I'm a coward too I called Ozzy a coward But I have fears too I'm afraid of getting better because getting better means feeling And it hurts when I think of mama It feels like I'm dying I did somatic therapy and EMDR therapy so I understand that this is progress I laughed afterwards, when my brain shut it down (my brain is protective but I guess these days, it thinks I can handle more-- I suppose I should be grateful for its trust) I laughed because crying outside of therapy feels like savings My mama was more physically abusive than my father But she was also more affectionate She taught us how to play guitar and sing I have this memory of making these abstract wax paintings with her She was crying, she ignored me when I asked her what was wrong and she told us all to sit on the floor around the coffee table She had some paper and old crayons and a candle She started melting the old crayons onto the paper and we OOOOOed and she laughed Baba was supposed to die first He kept threatening us with it, he threatened mama too He's probably going to live forever He's probably going to outlive all of us I think he lives on our guilt Tante Z said on the beach that uncle Saeed took my cousins' confidence She says for a while he took hers too My baba was afraid of him as well I adored uncle Saeed, I thought he was hilarious and he thought I was a princess So I didn't notice he was a brute until I was much older I heard that when he was younger he ran away to Germany He worked on the docks They had to trick him to come back They sent a telegram saying my grandmother was sick My grandmother was not sick She was a paranoid schizophrenic but they pretended not to see that She was the daughter of a village mayor They married her off to my accountant/tax person Cairene grandfather and I don't think she was very happy about it He died when my father was 18 years old He seems like a sweet man from the stories. He told baba to stop being a nerd and would pull him away from his homework to watch I love Lucy. He loved television, he was one of the first people to get one in Egypt He was highly educated and trilingual My grandmother didn't finish higher education but she was taught French She was intimidated by our English. I had three older American cousins-- two now. Maybe I'll write about Deena one day. Whenever there was too much English my grandmother would yell "PARLEZ ARABE" -- it became a family joke I didn't understand why it was funny She was taught to sew and paint She painted beautifully (I really hated that because I wanted to hate her) We still have a wooden dressing screen she painted with traditional Chinese scenes It always confused me She made so many racist Asian comments and jokes about my mother She shouldn't be allowed to paint beautiful Chinese women When I was little, after my private religion classes I decided to reason with satan. Because I didn't believe anyone could be more evil or unreasonable than my grandmother. So, I spoke to satan before I spoke to God I found his story sympathetic I wouldn't want to bow to some mud creature either The snake thing was very camp and fab And Adam and Eve sounded pretty stupid and ungrateful In Islam, satan isn't an angel or fallen angel, he's a djinn There are angels made of light, humans made of mud (ew) and djinn made of fire Djinn are not necessarily evil though They have freedom of choice like humans Angels are just slaves, they have to be good, they don't know anything else Just obedient robots Djinn can't directly interfere with our world, they can only whisper and tempt our hearts So evil is man made, it can be djinn inspired but it's all on us In the Muslim story, Iblees (that's his other name) has an ongoing bet with god about how stupid we are And looking around, I feel like he might be winning I didn't think that as a kid So I tried to tell him he was being very unreasonable and he was outmatched in terms of power I thought this whole experiment was a tremendous waste of time and not really in his best interests either Sometimes I wonder what he thought of that Is he all seeing too? Unclear I like Good Omens because of all of the above I was listening to an Amanda Palmer (married to Gaiman) song many many many years ago And the rapey missionary Harvard theatre guy I was seeing reacted with visceral disgust (apparently he knew her socially and was not a fan) So I liked her more But over time I felt she was a little bit obnoxious and affected But then Gen Z and tiktok eviscerated her and I felt sorry for her Isn't there a book called six degrees of Kevin Bacon? The most intense emotional pain I've ever felt and then endless wandering around in my head That was my day Yesterday tante Z was saying she likes me this year, that I seem more alive She went to an event at the library of Alexandria and then had lunch at the club, I've never been to the Alexandrian club Maybe I'll convince baba to go I got to be alone and really relax Relax enough to cry Tarek, the guy who sees me as a walking visa application Who's good with the tiny braids He'd let me really violently cry and hold me I threw up once and kept crying It made him hard? There was another one like that Ramadan! He'd get hard when I cried too I wonder what that's about |