Mazloum

Vignettes is a current writing project of mine, mainly a few short stories - some of them fictional, some of them real, and some just random musings about the state of the world we live in.  It’s one of those things you find hard to forget. Even if it does evade you for a little while, it still finds its way back to the forefront of your memory, sooner or later, and you decide to document it, if only to acknowledge that you do recall everything, down to the very details. The thoughts, the feelings; they all come alive in your head once more, and there’s nothing quite like it. This happened to me a few years ago, though the exact date eludes me. It was Friday, I believe, and I was just about done with Friday prayers. I was on my way out of the mosque, tying my shoelaces, when an old man walks over to me and starts putting on his shoes as well. Being the introverted recluse that I am, I really do not pay attention to the man, keeping to myself instead until I’m done and read...

I write to feel right. This is - quite basically - the reason I write at all. My brain is often a cauldron, within which thoughts are constantly frothing and bubbling, threatening to spill over the edges, but the cauldron is tightly sealed, and so the thoughts keep percolating endlessly, never surrendering, only giving rise to more thoughts and ideas until you feel like your head is about to burst. And so, I grab a pen, and with it I carve holes into my skull, allowing all the thoughts to filter through in an orderly (or not so orderly) manner, so that I can simply stop feeling like my head is three times its size, so I can stop grinding my teeth so hard that I feel my jaw giving way. I write to stop feeling angry, or sad, or tired, or even to celebrate my happiness or random bouts of content. I write, because I like words. It's ironic how I've managed to fail to find a word that expresses how I feel about words. There is no word, sadly, to describe that feeling you ...