I Return for #Jan25

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“I’m the luckiest. Look at what other people have gotten out of the Arab Spring? Some are jailed, others have their publisher booths raided and their books taken away. But, lucky me – I got you”. He said..

“And I got you, too”, She thought, with a content smile..

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It’s been almost a year since I’ve written here. There were so many times I had something to say, but since starting Graduate School, one deadline or another always seemed to get in the way. Time has only now made itself available, over Winter Break, and since 2014 has come to an end anyway, I felt I owed this blog an update, a “Year In Review” kind of post. Or, more of a diary entry, really. What better day to do so, than on the 4th anniversary of Egypt’s revolution?

• January-March

I already wrote in January, so I won’t re-hash that. Family health is in a much better state since then. There was a moment where I sat up in bed, listening to news I couldn’t understand. I’ll never forget my first thought, and my second. I looked at the shelves of my degrees. What did they mean? And I grew angry at them. Eventually, I tried to just take something hopeful from it: that every moment is precious, and one must make an effort to create them, and contemplate them. Then one must collect them, lest they find it’s too late one day and are left empty-handed, memory-less. Create, contemplate, collect.

It was just a time that was the best of times in some things, and the worst of times in other things. You feel a certain level of guilt at happiness amidst sorrow. But, that’s life: a mess of events that we’re just expected to figure out how to deal with, all at once – I guess.

In any case, months of passion and academia followed… it felt as though time just flew. It was pure fireworks, a confused euphoria. March brought its share of moments: I became a published author! A group of Saudi authors and I participated in a book that was released in the Riyadh Book Fair 2014, titled “On the Meaning of Arab Nationalism: Concepts and Challenges”. Each author contributed a chapter, mine was called “Nationalism and Feminism”. It took me around three months to write. The ideas that came to me while working through it will probably fuel my to-be Masters project/thesis.. We’ll see.