I have decided to boycott all Egyptian newspapers because I couldn’t take how they keep cheering for the current government. I can’t take how those who oppose the government oppose it so I am not into opposition papers too. So that limit my knowledge of the current issues to the few hours I forcefully spend watching the news as my father happily hold the remote.
I do my best to keep myself busy during these couple of hours as I believe that the world news is the shortest way to depression. Natural disasters are everywhere, more innocents are being killed in cold blood all over the world and prices are going sky high with expectations of a world wide starvation. But though I try keeping my safe distance some news makes its way to me. In the last couple of weeks three headlines really made me wonder.
The first one was about a Cambodian man who married two women at the same day. Apparently, he was confused between marrying his current girl friend and his ex girl friend. He loved them both so he married them both. The only thing he worried about was working extra hours to support his two women.
The first thing that came to my mind was “God, I like the guts this man got”. He was stupid enough or may be brave enough to admit that he loved both women equally. He spared himself the hesitation of choice and spared his women the pain of indifference. He married them both because he loved them both. The second thing that came to my mind was “God, that guy proved all my men are lying he married two women in a country that bans polygamy in the time they gave lame excuses in a country where men are saying that God created them to polygamy!! Which led me to wonder what was on these women’s minds when they decided to share a man. I don’t know why I remembered the story of the child and the two mothers. Each of the two women claimed that the child is hers and when the judge ordered to cut the child into half one of them agreed and the other willingly admitted that the child isn’t hers. The judge seeing what the woman who was crying a moment ago claiming that the boy is her son sentenced the boy is hers because only a real mother will never accept to see her kid being cut into half. I bet that both women love the man the same way the other woman did. If any of them really loved him she would have let him go. His happiness would have been her priority but because we are not in a perfect world these women agreed to cut their man into half. I bet he has more things to worry about other than how to support them.
The second thing was the pregnant man. I am a believer that God created us equal but with different jobs. And a woman’s job is to carry babies so knowing about a man who voluntarily gone through the dreadful process of pregnancy was a bit shocking for me. not only because it has messed with all the biology classes that I have had in my life but also because I could never understand how can a man ask to do something that most if not all women hope they will never do. I was enlightened by the fact that he isn’t a real man; he is a transgender who kept his female organs and that’s how he managed to carry and deliver a baby. And that fact explains why he was the ova donor and he had to get sperm from a bank. I am not the type of person who judge people for their sexual orientation but I can’t deny that I can never understand the motives of someone who turned to be a man to do a woman’s job. Only a woman could long to carry a baby in her womb but a man?! Even if he has a womb, God where did all the testosterone go?
Last but not least was the news about the death of the famous Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. Personally, I didn’t understand or like many of his work. But yet I can’t deny that he had a view and that most of the Egyptian Cinematic Masterpieces has his signature. Egypt has lost another man with a view, and people with a view are rare to find these days in Egypt. Whether I agreed with his views or not, the man was a man of opinion. He stood for those opinions regardless how fierce the opposition was. I respect the man though I might not be a dedicated fan. He taught me one thing. When he died my brother said that he can’t understand the reason for all those people mourning a man who made a legend of himself. He, my brother, said that most of Chahine’s work was about himself or how he thinks of life, Egypt and the world. That comment about Chahine reminded me that what really matters was never the world because the world starts from within. May he rest in peace.
