I have always enjoyed reading novels in my own language because I could relate more to it, I would read books in English but I was never able to enjoy them as much as I enjoy reading books in my mother tongue. But reading “To Kill The Other” was like reading a book in Arabic, I was surprisingly relating to every word written in it. I would remember situations that happened to me personally or heard it happening to people I know in this book which makes me think that the writer of the book, coming from a western background, did an excellent research when it came to writing this book. I find it really hard to write a book set in a different culture, because to understand the inner dialogues that occur within one’s self in a completely different culture needs tremendous studying.

 So to Danuta Hinc,  your book is breathtaking literally. Your book reaffirmed my belief that we are all really the same thing, we share the same human experience, different characters set in the book  from Poland,  Ukraine,  Egypt,  Afghanistan and others sharing their thoughts on life and what the other represent to them reaffirmed my belief, once again, that all we need is some empathy and openness to the other.

 One more thing that I really liked about “To Kill The Other”  is that no matter what’s your ethnicity, where you come from, your religion, you will be touched by this .  It awakens the human being in you and makes you feel connected to all human beings everywhere. You will find yourself sympathizing with Egyptian prisoners tortured in the 1980′s following Sadat’s assassination, Jews, Poles, Pakistanis, Afghans, Russians, Palestinians, Israelis and those victims of 9/11 themselves. It doesn’t matter where you come from, you will end up realizing that we are really the same thing.

 Finally It’s really great to see Western writers writing about 9/11 from a prospective that’s not biased, to dive deep into the lives of the hijackers and to know that there’s always more than one side to each story is not an easy job for a writer from the West but Danuta Hinc, once again, managed to do it.

The fact that typing these words now is going to be a past in few hours is annoying, I have no control over time and likewise I have no control over my life. Things keep on happening and I have no choice but to accept what’s happening. I have no intention to whine but I am bitter. I think being bitter is what follows the complaining phase, you realize that complaining gets you no where so you embrace this fact and stop complaining, in other words you grow up, yet feeling bitter becomes inevitable.

 I know it’s not healthy to feel this way especially that I am in my early twenties, I haven’t seen much and yet I feel too old. I used to read a lot when I was young and I regret doing so, books contributed to my pessimism, all the elder people I have talked to in my life contributed to my pessimism, they all gave me the same message, life is not easy.

 I KNOW life is not easy, I just don’t like this fact, I know we are all in pain, I know we are all suffering from this or that thing, but guess what?  I don’t like it and I am bitter. I really am trapped in life and if given the choice I wouldn’t have trapped myself in this shit.  When the good times come I am aware that they are temporary, when the bad times come I am still aware of the fact that they are temporary. I know this fact but I don’t like it. I admit that I  have this child in me who wants to be happy forever,  I know this will not happen, I accept it but I can’t help but feel bitter.

 I know I don’t know much in  life, and I know the way I see things now will change, I  know I will never understand life or  find out why I am here, why I am friends with these people and not those people, why I was born in this place and not that place, why do I look this way and not that way, why do I have these parents and not those parents. I know my questions will never get answers. I know this but, once again, I don’t like it.

 I know my parents tell me the good is yet to come but I know they are saying this because this is what they have to say to be good parents, I know the good is not necessarily yet to come, yes good times will come  but shitty times will always be there as well.

 Lately I have been finding comfort in religion, but I don’t know if I am doing this out of belief and faith or that I am finding this comfort in religion because it’s my last resort, I mean, I don’t know if I am approaching God because God is worth approaching or that that my motive is personal and I want to approach God because I just feel safer when I approach God.

 And now the final word is to God, Dear God, I believe my relationship with you is too personal, you know that deep inside I want to be a good human being, I don’t do all the things that they tell me will please you, but I know your eye is different from theirs, and I know you know that I am trying to be someone good so please help me become a better person, keep my sanity and protect me from those inner irritating voices.

For those of you who regret things, and we all regret things every now and then, things don’t work out the way we want, and we are disappointed, it happened before, it happens now and it will happen till the end of time. it’s about time we change our prespectives about regret. For me,  I have been really trying to find a proper way of dealing with regret, but it’s all in vain. I grow up and I am always disappointed with things. nothing worked for me, so I realized that there’s no permenant solution for regret, you just have to accept it as a part of the nature you have been enslaved to, yet, it’s good to remind your self with a few things about regret..

Sometimes I start thinking that the whole regretting-things thing is really meaningless, if things worked out the way I wanted, I wouldn’t have become the same person I am now, in other words, there are so many life-scenarios that I could have lived  if things worked out the way I wanted them to, but I don’t know these scenarios, so it’s like I want to go back in time and live another life “one event changes, your whole life changes, butterfly effect” but the thing is all these lives could have been worse than the current one, meaning, I am not missing much, since I don’t know if things worked out my way where I would have been right now and I am thinking may be I would have been regretting that things worked out my way, in other words, I would have regretted regretting in the very first place and thought that I am stuck in this life, the life I thought I wanted.

The point is, no ones knows which life-scenario is the best for him/her yet deep inside we all want to live different lives, yes, by regretting things, by wanting things to work out your way, you want to live a different life. We always regret, we always want things to work out our way, when, if things worked out our way,  we might have regretted regretting in the first place because may be, the crappy shitty life you have now is the bestest of the so many horrible scenarios out there, It’s not pessimism, it’s just that I am realizing that regret is really pointless, you don’t know the lives you missed, so why do we long for a life that we know nothing about? why do we assume that bad things happen to us? when these bad things are, may be,  not so bad compared to the worse things that could have happened if things worked out our way.

Why do we even think that if things worked out our way we would have become happier? we don’t know what makes us happy, you think you would be happy when you do this, and you do it but, oops, you are not happy. Marriage is the best example, all those fighting couples out there didn’t see this coming when they decided to get married in the very first place, but things do look good, sometimes really good from the outside. My point is, we don’t really know what’s good for us so we shouldn’t be too control freaks especially when it comes to life, thus, flexibility and learning to accept that things do happen for a reason is really a healthy thing, even if I don’t believe that things do happen for a reason, I would like to believe that things happen for a reason so I don’t freak out when things don’t work out my way.

There’s this quote that I really like to remind myself with every now and then, it goes like this  “regret not what you have done, regret what you haven’t” and I am really trying to live by that. I know every now and then I will feel frustrated about things not working out my way but victimizing one’s self and regretting is a waste, yes, a waste of everything, your time, your energy, your self esteem and basically everything. we have all tried regreting and victimizing at one point or another in our lives, and it did prove to be a waste. so I am trying to think that may be I am not meant for the life that I think would have made me happier. Things look good from outside but again, nothing is ever as it seems. I don’t have to let TV, society or whatever influence it is to decide, for me, the things that would make, me, happy. I don’t have to be the richest, I don’t have to get all the hot girls, I don’t have to be the best at anything, I don’t have to meet their expectations of conforming and feeling bad about myself. TV made so many people disappointed, either directly or indirectly, with their lives but this is another issue..

No matter how shitty your life is, things could have been much worse, so be glad for what you have now, or  at least try..and I am trying to appreciate the crappy life that I am stuck in, cause probably this is the bestest life for me, and probably it’s not as crappy as I am seeing it right now, it’s like hating your high schools times but once you are done with high school you wish you could  just re-live a day of high school. So may be when we are done with our lives and wherever we are going to be in the after-life we would have thought that our lives were really great and we would have even wished  that we could just relive one of it’s always-referred-to-as crappy days..

We have been depersonalized for so long that we are no longer who we really are, and no, it’s not schizophrenia or some sort of mental disease, it’s simply because we have been pressured to fit, to conform, to do what’s supposed to be done, to speak this way, to dress this way, to eat this way and to basically live the life they want you to live.

I am a combination of all the influences that I have been exposed to in my life, if I was born somewhere else, and was accordingly influenced by a different set of influences, I would have been a totally different person. Now I have a question, where is my own genuine identity between all that crap? what I believe doesn’t necessarily reflect what I really believe bearing in mind that  my subconscious is too fucked up to differentiate between what I really like and what I have been pretending to like that I ended up believing that I like, when the truth is, I don’t like what I think I like..

Now, in appreciation of my stolen life I dig hard to find who I really am, I question things and try to open up my mind to all things in life but it’s really hard to uninstall what has been installed in your mind for years. I also realized that one of  the things that depress me in life is the feeling that I am a repeat, and conforming makes me feel this way. I don’t want to oppose for the sake of opposing, but I want to give a meaning to my life so I refuse to let all those influences make me someone I am not.

I have become this insecure, cynical and conspiracist who thinks that the whole world is a lie, and no I am not becoming mentally ill, it’s just  a reaction to all the brainwashing and lies that I have been fed ever since I was born. I felt betrayed and manipulated by the society, I didn’t understand little things like how the government can use TV to contribute to my brainwashing, I didn’t know that everyone in life is offering you their understanding of life and that this understanding isn’t necessarily an absolute truth. I didn’t know that I am being directed by all these influences…

That’s why I think your truest self reveals when you are all alone by the end of the day, when all these influences are removed and you start questioning who you really are. We compromise who we are when we are in the presence of other people, we smile when we don’t feel like smiling, we act up, we do things to ensure that they perceive us in a manner convenient to our egoes, but when we are all alone by  the end of the day, we don’t have to compromise as much and we are closest to who we really are..

The word liberal simply means to me that you are given more than one choice. you are not given the How life should be lived book and you don’t even have to read it.  Instead you are given plenty of choices and you actually choose.

You have your own script and you want to live according to the script that you yourself  have written, not according to a script written by another person, and that’s why I relate being a liberal person to appreciation of individuality and the belief that  people should  live their lives the way they want to, as long as they are not harming others,  instead of living it according to how other people/society think it should be lived. It simply means liberating yourself from the life you are given and replacing it with your true life that has been stolen. it means cherishing your individuality and not allowing anyone to steal it from you.

The less you give people choices the more you enslave them, and let’s face it, we act like we choose to go to school, make it to college, work, get married  and all that stuff, but the truth is, we are doing what we think is supposed to be done, and what we think is supposed to be done is always affected by what  people think is supposed to be done, so people affect us. people around us affect our choices and thus the choices we are making, in a way,  aren’t really our choices.

So I should choose to get educated or not, I really shouldn’t get educated because getting educated is included in the  society’s list of the “the right things to do in life”, I should choose to get married or not, not because marriage is a normal thing and everyone gets married. we allow society to define life for us, when we should be the ones defining our lives and what it means. that even makes me think that human nature is also very sick, we impose our lives on people without even knowing it, we want them to do what we want them to be doing, and in the process, we are actually enslaving them and disrespecting their rights to choose for themselves.

Since I really don’t know how life should be lived I look around and see how people live life, so even without me knowing, I find myself doing the things everyone else is doing, while doing so, I get the feeling that I am useless, so I find myself wanting to be different, not because I want attention, but because being different and making my own choices is what makes me an individual, I don’t have to think that life is an obligation so I choose to live life according to my own ignorant understanding on how life should be lived..

I had one of those repeated conversations with my friends, too repeated that almost every one in Egypt has been talking about it for years, yes you guessed it, a conversation about the extremely boring Arab-Israeli conflict.

I asked this question “why don’t we just give them Sinai and let the Palestinians live there?”  but then my friends told me this means that Israel fucked us up the ass, got the land, kicked the  palestinians out and had everything their way.

I know the idea of giving Sinai to Palestinians is too naive, but if someone walks into your house and want to take it, you have two options, you either fight to get your house back, or you go live in another place assuming you do have another place to accomodate you and let him just “win”

Now giving in is a bad thing, to have someone take your shit is a bad thing, but what’s more valuable, your ego or your life? I would choose to give in and go live somewhere else if it means protecting my children, I would choose to be considered a loser if it means saving something else, similarily, It’s not that bad to let Israel “win” if it means saving more lives..

Now I am not supporting this ignorant naiive idea of giving Sinai to Palestinians, I am just thinking that the Earth is too vast and is able to accomodate two people fighting for a piece of land, yes, I understand how sacred the land is to both sides but I think human lives are more sacred than any land..

I also don’t like the Idea of a small number of people ruling a  large number of people aka governments, Israel telling it’s people that it’s their land and they should defend it, Palestine telling Palestinians that it’s their duty to have their land back,and the result is poor normal common people who want to just live and co-exist fighting because they have both been instructed by their govenments to fight.

Then they say it’s a religious war, Islam teaches Muslims that this land is theirs, Judaism teaches Jews  that the land is theirs, and followers of both faiths are trying to do their religious duty towards the land, Muslims have the right to defend their land, I always had this thought that  if I was born a jew, I would have been raised to believe that the land is mine, and that we have been fucked up for so long by so many people and that we deserve this land. A Muslim has the right to follow his faith and a Jew has the right to follow his faith and accordingly, the conflict is never going to be resolved.

How many people throughout history died in the name of religion? I hate when religion is used to justify killing, I hate when religion is manipulated by some people to get things done. I don’t know whether it’s a religious war or not, but I know so many people are dying and no religion would like to have it’s followers die like this. I personally tend to not believe it’s a religious war, because of the fact that Muslims and Jews had  lived  together peacefully in so many places around the world  including Iran, Morocco and Egypt before 1952.

I really think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is disgusting, I have been hearing about it ever since I was born and will continue to hear about it till I die, History is full of conflicts and wars and so it’s a normal thing to hear that people fight, it affirms my belief that we don’t lie on the top of the evolutionary ladder as we human beings always claim, we aren’t really as civilized as we pretend, we are really  animals and the world is one big jungle.

I hate the way we are constantly pressured to fit, we have to do this and that because this is what’s supposed to be done. we tend to do things based on a what’s supposed-to-be-done mentality rather than a what-do-I-want-to-do mentality.

You have to study hard in school, you have to get good grades, you have to be religious, you have to be just, perfect. You have to dress this way, you have to talk this way, you have to think this way, you have to see things this way, you simply have to conform.

Now if you don’t believe in Education, why do you have to get educated? not that I am against Education, I am just against forcing people to do things because they are supposed to be done, why don’t we let them interpret life their way, why don’t we let them define their lives as opposed to giving them our definitions of what’s life and how it’s supposed to be lived.

Why do we let them decide things for us? why don’t we make our decisions? and why do we always feel bad when we fail to conform? why is conforming the “right” thing?. we are constantly pressured to do things we don’t feel like doing because we have been raised to accept a non negotiable truth that this is what’s supposed to be done.

I really think this bullshit has to stop, what’s supposed to be done might not be what’s supposed to be done, I know we tend to pass our experiences to  people by telling them this is what’s supposed to be done but at the same time we forget that by doing this we are being selfish, we want to extend our lives by forcing others to live life as we want them to live it. So we end up making copies and copies of repeated human beings who have been told to do what’s supposed to be done..

We are responsible though, we choose to follow what’s supposed to be done because we are fearful, we like to walk in crowds, we feel safe when we are doing what everyone else is doing, when we are actually allowing them to steal our lives.

Living with a group is a hard thing to do, especially when each and everyone of us speaks a different language, his very own language, also trying to get to know who you are by comparing what you want to do and what’s supposed to be done is a very hard thing to do.

Each one has his very own definition of what’s life and how it’s supposed to be lived, and surprisingly, everyone is so sure that their way is the right way. I think imposing your beliefs of what’s life and how it’s supposed to be lived on someone who has the right to make his/her decisions is a complete disrespect to people’s freedom of living life according to how they want to live it not according to how we want them to live it.

So the story goes like this, at first you think you know who you are, then you start mingling with people, you realize that people are different, everyone see things differently and everyone tries to impose his/her beliefs on you, telling you that his/her way is the right way, you start thinking that may be they are right, may be their way is the right way, yet you meet another person who convinces you that his way is the right way so you listen and listen and finally realize that there’s no such thing as the right way or the wrong way, people are different and their definitions of what’s right and what’s wrong differ,  you end up hesitated, not knowing who to believe, then you start questioning who you are, realize that you don’t know yourself as much as you thought. Finally you are, sort of, disappointed.

Yet you try to fit, but so many things are to be questioned, like When you realize that you are not good at something, what’s the right thing to do? should you convince yourself that yes, you can do it? or should you face your imperfections and deal with them? Now some people would say that the “fake it till you make it thing” actually works, and that you should never disappoint your ego by accepting the fact that you can’t just do it. They even go furthur and teach us that you can trick your brain, when you say you can do it you will actually do it, self fulfilling prophecy that is.

But then some other people say that you should accept your imperfections, learn about them and realize that they are a part of who you are.Those people don’t believe in sugar coating things, they refuse to be dominated by a perfectionist mentality, they choose to be imperfect and are perfectly fine with being imperfect.they realized  that we define our imperfections based on what other people consider “imperfect” and by disapproving of our imperfections we are actually approving of living our lives according to other people’s rules.

This was an example when different approaches are pretty much convincing, and this is the problem, when so many opposing ways are equally convincing?  should you follow your heart? should you follow This people? or should you follow THAT people? and who should you ask for help? people, but people are different, yourself, but you don’t know yourself, may be you should just shut up and not think about it.

I know some questions  have no answers, but my mind refuses to accept this fact