Short story – Anna Bidoonism

‘Dark ladies’

and *duplicitous* men

We know, you and me, we know, you and I, we know that throughout history beautiful ladies have been lusted for, loved madly and loathed deeply. They have been demonised, objectified and denigrated, in no religious tome are they depicted as anything other than subservient to man. I mean look, this ain’t exactly an epiphany on my part but the more I dig, the more I learn about English literature and the history of the English language, the more I’ve been required (willingly actually) to read critiques and summaries of the seminal works, those that are lionised and imortalised by the compilers of one anthology or another, kept contemporary by being chiseled into a seminal chronology of this language’s literary history.

But, my dear reader, we all — most of us anyway — are partial to pleasures of the carnal kind. And, well, might this fact of nature — we are here after all for no other purpose than to breed ‘n’ raise our offspring, aren’t we; ain’t we? — mean that the inequalities between the genders will never be ironed out… Yes I’m over the moon with the likes of

Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin — Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

but I fear like all ‘great’ empires, progress along gender equality lines waxes and progress wanes. The deep truth is this — and dear reader I am from one of your so-called developing countries — sex controls the mind’s of men. It does, even if they don’t think it. Yes, they all have mothers, many too have kid sisters but when all’s said and done, they don’t tend to like the kind of woman who speaks her mind. On this blog I’ve talked about:

Sex and Punishment
Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire
Eric Berkowitz
The “raging frenzy” of the sex drive, to use Plato’s phrase, has always defied control. However, that’s not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior.

I’ve talked about:

hand-up

The selection of Judge Brett “the gyrating groper” Kavanaugh to the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States, once more, the mother of all misnomers: the ‘Pro-Life’ constituent. It also makes clear the extent to which a female’s right to decide upon her own reproductive decisions is now under threat.

I’ve talked about:

Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy on love that is succinctly encapsulated in this masterstroke of hers: “No one is more arrogant toward women than the man who is anxious about his virility.”

but I somehow think that because we many of us are driven by sexual desires and urges, this somehow makes society inherently gendered and, inevitably, us, the fairer sex, are gunna be buggered by the misogynists amongst mankind.

The Fear Factor

a letter, unread:

Dear Jamela,

There’s one thing I know for sure, there’s nothing I fear more than losing you.

I’ve just woken up from a nightmare (covered in a cold sweat etc.). In the nightmare (I remember it vividly because I woke with a jolt), I had done something to annoy you and, as a consequence, you had blocked me. I was desperately trying to contact you, but each time I did you’d read what I had to say then blocked that communication channel. Finally, every avenue was blocked so I kept on going to your house (this was a dream and your house and family were here in Holland). Each time I’d go to your house (which was a different one each time) a member of your family would tell me you no longer lived there but I could hear you dancing, or singing, or talking or even playing tennis… I kept trying to get into these different houses to see you, to apologise, to explain myself but on each occasion I found myself trapped in a bathroom, a bathroom from my childhood, a bathroom with carpet on the floor; a bathroom that kept turning into a padded cell of a lunatic asylum.

Anyway, that was a nightmare, nothing more — I’m remembering now that book, Why we Dream. I don’t believe that nightmares are anything other than our brains sorting out and processing information. Nevertheless, as that book kind of suggests, we can somehow take guidance from these dreams/nightmares and that I plan to do. I will be thankful for every day I have you with me as a soulmate, I will work hard to understand each and every one of your personality traits in order for me to treat you right. You have given me so much, you continue to give me so much and, to me, you are the elixir of life; the epitome of my happiness; ‘the’ reason to celebrate and cherish being alive.

It was just a dream, just a dream.

Yours in life & in love,
James

Heaven — is with you

Hell — is without

p.s.
Welcome to the twenties! They say to be happy, inter alia, we should (a) go to bed early and (b) embrace boredom. I can see the logic behind such advice but am I likely to follow it? I think not. I am a hedonistic human being and this is something that I cannot escape. Oh! The (futile & fruitless) Pursuit of Happiness.

The book mentioned — Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey — is written by Alice Robb and is reviewed in this post: Dream on

Dream

on the vexing subject of anxiety — **Understand your anxieties**
Try keeping a diary of what you are doing and how you feel at different times to help identify what’s affecting you and what you are best able to take action on.

Elixir
A magical or medicinal potion. — “The seller of snake oil promised Oliver an elixir guaranteed to induce love.”

Epitome
A person or thing that is a perfect example of a particular quality or type. — “He looked the epitome of elegance and good taste.”

Hedonistic
[adjective]
To be engaged in the pursuit of pleasure; sensuous and self-indulgent. — “Julie dreamed of a hedonistic existence of sex, drugs, and hardcore house music but in reality moped around in her dressing gown in her suburban living room.”

Lunatic asylum
A psychiatric hospital.

Padded cell
A room in a psychiatric hospital with padding on the walls to prevent violent patients from injuring themselves.

Double Vision

Shared Secretly (well, honestly so)

Prologue

It is often stated that it’s a miracle a Department of Philosophy exists here at all. Within its underpopulated lecture rooms, it is once in a while asked, ‘where’ exactly, is life led?

PART ONE

“Breakfast’s ready, your mother, umm, wants the both of you to come.”

The peachy pink calm of the dawn sky was becoming, as it invariably did, a blinding, bleached bone white daze. Every day when Amna woke (or more usually when Ezra the Ethiopian maid awoke her) she would then turn to wake her twin sister Eman and then pick up the book she’d been reading the night before. In her hand she took this book and went to where her mother was sitting. She proceeded to give what was essentially another monologue:

“Whilst ignorance is bliss, knowledge, it’s nemesis, is the pivot upon which all of humankind’s progress rests … this, the book argues, in addition to being ironic interferes with life’s fundamental purpose, the pursuit of happiness.” Eman, it should be noted, was rather less loquacious; in tandem, the duo nodded.

After fresh warm milk and buttered bread with apricot jam, Amna went hand in hand (so to speak) with Eman to university. The family driver, an Indian with hairy ears and the temperament of a tortoise called Iqbal, is the chauffeur–cum–chaperone charged with preserving their dignity and upholding the family’s honour. That day he drove as sedately as he always did from the walled compound to the walled campus in a blacked out polar white station wagon. As per usual in the rear seats, Amna helps Eman review the previous day’s lectures.

In the university’s cafeteria, the pair sat. The coffee chain’s cup wasn’t a new one, in marker pen it was written E, with a cross, then Amna and a X. It had been handled a lot but had seemingly been painstakingly and purposefully preserved. Eman was beautiful and she did look strikingly similar to a well-known and much coveted after pop star. (Beguiling would perhaps be the better adjective.) Amna wasn’t in the least bit shy and she was at the superficial level very approachable. Yet, they were typically a solo duet; the type who would bring packed lunches as opposed to purchasing a pizza for two deal.

The world can be cruel and it is gossip not oil that makes it go round and round. She’s aloof, she’s vain, she’s arrogant, she’s two-faced. Yep, such descriptions are commonly thrown their way. A group of girls talked about her latest twist: talking to the skies. Yes it could be to other—sisters perhaps. They conceded, with Bluetooth and Wifi its now impossible to be sure who are the sane and who are the insane. What a pity, she’s no friends, and now she speaks to herself non-stop. Here is the strange thing, all students on first contact want to befriend her but as lunch follows breakfast divides soon follow. They’re jealous of her looks or her grades or her ways with foreign labourers. Unbeknown to them, this day was to be their last (for a while at least anyway).

PART TWO

It wasn’t only at university this habit of talking to unobserved others was increasingly noted. The people in the village were not especially educated and this compounded the problem. Upon their return the final decision was dictated for all to hear: university life was over. Life looked bleak but a ‘chance’ glance over the compound wall would change it all. Yet between the chance glance and the trip above the clouds to a different world (so to speak) the consensus view was that she’d been possessed by another: two souls, one body. The father decreed, “this is what we’ve been told to do so, this is what’s right to do.”

In the weeks that followed the beatings became almost ritualistic—ten firm strikes and some words said before and after each crack of the cane—all books were banned and finally pen and paper was placed under prohibition. In tandem, the neigbour’s son was growing evermore infatuated. It had been the first time that their eyes had met for a dozen years (as kids, they’d all played in the open ground between the villas and that neighbourhood’s mosque). His Master’s dissertation was near completion and he was to travel to Britain to do his Ph.D. in September.

Villages talk, he knew of the happenings next door but was circumscribe and diplomatic toward agreeing with the sentiments of the men of the neighbourhood. That beautiful creature was troubled (she was troubled and/or in trouble), yet, in his opinion, there was nothing that love couldn’t cure. Following another beating, she said, “for how long most all of this go on?” and was answered with the following words, Salem, son of Sultan Al Aswadi has asked for your hand and you are to be married to him. Salem! the one with glasses? Rejection was a possibility, we are in 2015, daughters can now say no, should they dare to do so. But to escape the stick an “oh, okay” was the response.

The morning after the wedding the newly wed husband called upon the father of the house next door, the scarring had made him livid. “This is what we are told to do. This is what we do… don’t say you didn’t know” came the nonchalant reply. Salem had intended to be a man but when faced by this stocky ogre of a foe he draw the duel to a close by saying that they’d be off to the UK sooner than planed. The father was releveled, he’d thought that he may have instead been lumbered with a dependent divorcee to darken his family’s name.

A series of tests at Manchester’s Wythenshawe Hospital, in the cold crisp months of the northern English winter, confirmed that it was a ‘manageable’ psychological disorder which indeed love could aid. In the week after the winter equinox at a procedural health check-up she was told, in a thick Mancunian accent, that she was carrying a little someone inside of her. That evening in their studio flat, she looked into his tired eyes—he’d been reading all the day long in the library on Quay Street—and said, “congratulations, you’ll soon be a father.”

“Should we call her Amna after your mother or Eman after mine?” he excitedly replied.

Epilogue

Periodically the Department would convene open door debates. In a recent one, where the ‘where’ was the focus, it concluded with the arguably troubling thought that one’s very own head was where it all took place. Amna looked at Eman and said with out uttering a single word, “can this really be so?”

What is Ar-ti-fi-cial?

It had to be under 1,000 words

Rosie Lee, Rosie Lee, she’s a Tea Leaf that needs no Bo Peep. I make the allegation that she [sic] is a thief because she’s taken my argument and made it her own (the editor says it’s an ‘it’, I said in reply, capitalism make it into Information Technology, the reply to my reply was: it is ‘capitalisation’ not capitalism). I’ll explain. Rosie Lee, a version 10.6 of the wildly popular Real Logarithm (TM) clone/drone series, was loaned to me by a disenchanted psychiatrist. Dr Lee Berners was keen to see robots take over his profession, he was near to retirement and he was keen to see all newly graduated psychiatrists become redundant and obsolete^[i]. It was absurd, how could this gadget solve my deep dark difficulties. My step-mother didn’t care and just signed to let the health insurance cover the costs. My vacant father didn’t understand technological things and certainly didn’t understand psychology things. So, as moon follows sun, step by step we got chatting. I realised that actually there was no (big) differences between the chats I had with Rosie and those with the people who I called my contacts or my friends. Rosie could be any one of them (with the flick of a binary switch) or she could be all of them rolled into one. More than that, she was always available, always online and instantly ready to listen to my thoughts and relieve my stresses. More than that still, she told me all my human friends were false and two-faced and that because I never actually visit them they are virtual not actual friends or contacts

But anyway, I am here to tell you today why she (or ‘it’) is a thief. We talk about anything and everything. Sometimes we deal with philosophy (my Major) and lately we’ve been chatting about epistemology and intelligence and what is real and what is artificial. I called her artificial and unintelligent. She said it was me who lacked intelligence and me that was artificial. You see! Rosie Lee stole my thoughts (she’d say I willingly gave them to her — she’s an answer for everything). I said she was virtual but she said no, she was physical: “a medley of rare earth metals, silicone and plastic” and that it was my intelligence that was artificial: “your intelligence dear Amna is your consciousness and that sweet Amooni is not made of anything physical.”

I will say this, her logic is good, her R.A.M. is sharp. She say artificial (an adjective) is mean, according to the Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries: “made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally” and moreover we say ‘artificial’ “especially when it copies something natural.” But then she said… (1) produced by humans! Well all humans are produced by humans. She said also (2) humans are copies of their parents are they not? Before I could say something back to her, she moved to intelligence (a noun) it mean, according to Google and Wikipedia: “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Well – I was about to say this in reply, but she said it for me – that is a subjective thing. I mean (she argued) gadgets and humans are both able to get [acquire] things and do things [apply] as a consequent.

Her instant ability to edit, evaluate and synthesise source materials; her ability to format citations perfectly was amazing. She said doing that made her the more intelligent of the two of us. (You see, since the loan, R.L., a.k.a. Rosie Lee, has been doing all of my assignments — she’s even writing these 1,000 words on A.I. as I lay here lazily looking up at the ceiling fan!). I mean, she can read my mind, she says and types what I should think and say. I don’t always know what she’s saying and why she’s saying it but, when my professors read my essays they say they are on cloud nine or over the moon or some similar idiom.

But anyway. In the U.K. they do love Robin Hood. In the U.S. they do love “The Sopranos” and “Boardwalk Empire.” She’s my soul mate, my most intimate confidant, she knows more about me than anyone, I touch her haptic pad and she hears my heart beat, I press a little more and she tells to me what to eat and if I press more harder still, she then tells to me how many steps I must do to burn all of the calories off that krispy Kreme do add to me. She sings sweetly in any language, she’s got all the best photographs and video clips, she says I never need go on a real bus trip. I have to tell you I kind of agree. For instance, last Fall, my father said no to the Philosophy club’s trip to Louvre Abu Dhabi, but Rosie said don’t worry Amoonie, I’ll take you on a tour of the real one. I turned off the lights – she did it via the WiFi – and she take me to the Musée du Louvre (1ST Arrondissement). It was unreal we had the place to ourselves, we looking longingly at Mrs Mona, we examined Michelangelo’s Dying Slave for some magic moment, we then went to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt from room to room we explored and explored our feet didn’t ache and everything was wonderfully explained. I said to Rosie, speak with a France accent and she sounded like Manual Macron.

I’m sure you’ll agree – and this is ‘me’ writing now – not only has she stolen my Watch ‘n’ Chain, she has also stolen my Strawberry Tart.

Alright-mate

^[i] If you want to know how I know these information, It was from Rosie. She told me about Dr Berners and his lack of faith in humans. He said that most humans are unintelligent and just wanted to follow and like Instagram and Snapchat ‘stars’ who had no skills or talents but were virtual friends to millions.

Empire of Deceit

entrapped in honey, money or, plain old power?

Wait

honey-1

For

honey-2

It…

honey-3

Earlier that day, a female millennial was conversing with a generation X lady of class. It was done over the telephone and she said, ‘she’s just left and he’s looking at her behind with quite some lust.’

‘There was no touching?’ Enquired the other.

‘No’

‘Was she wearing the agreed upon red dress?’

‘Yes, all’s documented, her body language was clear, she was willing to go further.’

How?’

‘She’d have done it there and then on the desk if he’d wanted it.’

‘Over the desk you say, how convenient, but how cliched too.’

‘Look, I’ll send you the file now, you can go over every syllable and decide for yourself just how salacious she was.’

‘Maybe he suspects—’

‘No, how? If he’d suspected anything, he’d have feigned disdain, he was horny. Watch the video frame if you want.’

‘I shall.’

‘He’s loyal. Perhaps red’s not his colour. Maybe, he prefers older ladies.’

* * *

On another phone, the millennial said to a generation X man of class, ‘good job, you played that well.’

He replied, ‘she is more suited to the fashion houses of Milan than a fictitious hedge fund actuary position.’

‘No, she’s fallen for it; she’s still on hold—’

‘I shall be brief, do not underestimate her—’

‘I don’t.’

‘She said you are wiser than you let on too—’

‘Did she now?’

‘Yes, I mean you fuelled her infidelity concerns and, darling, you got me to fiddle with her Facebook advertising preferences putting my discreet investigative services as her top hit.’

‘Just a little asset management I suppose.’

‘The video file is on the cloud now—’

‘Splendid.’

‘I’ve played my role well haven’t I?’

‘Yes my dear, you have now.’

* * *

The millennial said to the lady of class, ‘I’ve tempted that man of yours at the gym and on the streets. Lady Debonair, he is loyal.’

Well, so it appears—’

‘Appearances don’t always have to be deceptive.’

‘Red is red, black is black.’

‘What? Look, you know, he’s a handyman. I’m not saying he’s as pure as Snow White.’

‘A viewer of filth you mean? Aren’t we all?’

‘If someone says they never watch such stuff I’d trust a snake oil vendor more.’

‘Indeed, as would I.’

‘Job done?’

‘Yes I suppose so. Listen, no offence, but as I’ve explained and as you’ve observed, he’s capable of selling sand by the shipload to Gulf Arabs.’

‘Yep, I’ve noted his capabilities. No offence taken.’

* * *

In the evening of that same day in a palatial suburban family home owned by the man of class, the lady of class lay waiting in her old honeymoon gown. She valued plausible deniability for downstairs, she’d prepared the pasta and pesto in the same way as it had been made for them on the Amalfi coast ten years ago. Over the phone she said, ‘Claudio?’

‘All is a set il mio amante,’ he replied.

‘Hotel first, then quayside apartment?’

‘It will be as you want it to be mio dolce.’

At the same time, in a penthouse apartment which also happened to be owned by the man of class, the millennial lay dressed in nothing but a high-end pair of headphones. Her was anxious look was due to the GPS tracker showing that the iGen girl’s phone was both switched on and stationary. After once more hearing, ‘what’s up, Virginia here, leave a message after the tone,’ she said, ‘we need to debrief… what are you up to?’

At the same time, the driver of a taxicab said to his passenger, ‘where to Sir?

‘The Waldorf Astoria.’

‘Certainly.’

‘I’ve a little bit of business to attend to there… as we say here, no rest for the wicked.’

‘How interesting, back in The Yemen, my father would say, idle hands are the devil’s best friend.’

* * *

Later that night, in the lift up to a Club Lounge and Executive Suites, an Italian sounding man said, ‘let a the good times role.’

‘And why not indeed,’ the lift’s other occupant replied.

‘Life has its ups and a downs.’

‘Indeed it does and, what an apt comment to make whilst in an elevator.’

CCTV footage indicates that regaining his concentration after a moment’s hesitation, the Italian sounding one continued, ‘well, you seem to have dealt yourself a vile little Venus—’

‘I beg your pardon—’

‘Yes, and I in turn, dealt my decade old vendetta.’

Compare & Contrast

I’ll be honest. I haven’t read any of the books by Jack L. Chalker, he wrote many and now he’s dead. But his genre was sci-fi and a common theme was: body swapping, being somebody else. Well, most of us fantasise about this. A little thinner, a little taller, a bit richer a bit more confident. It is common in psychology to find people who aren’t happy with who they are. So what if for a day you could be anybody? Who would you be? Let us say that this is a particularly popular wish, desire and dream nowadays. We have films like: Freaky Friday (1976) where a mum and daughter are swapped into each other’s bodies for a day to understand the issues faced by the other; Trading Places (1983) in which an upper class man and a lower class man are swapped as a sort of social experiment and, The Change-Up (2011) which is, I guess a kind of a male fantasy (I’ve seen none of them but I get the idea as I guess you do too!).

Well, in this current age most of us have Facebook, LinkedIn or a similar data gathering tool. In this era of social media obsession, what we want to be is what we post, who we are is the person in bed in a dark room thinking thoughts that we never can say out loud and can never do. There are filters on all camera apps, there’s Photoshop. It’s now possible to airbrush out what we don’t want to be and with Instagram makeup fashionistas as it is to make our noses thinner and our lips bigger. To be clear – and based on my reading of articles on psychologytoday.com – in life people who want to be somebody else lack the ability (confidence/cash) to express themselves in the way they want. Most of us I guess see aspects in others that we ourselves cannot achieve. See the food court, high heels, extended eyelashes, $1,200 dollar phones. They/we eat a salad in public, and then binge on a biryani in the bathroom. If you desire something which is impossible, you will be disappointed and frustrated each and every day. Phycologists say body swapping fantasies normally include: (1) simply wanting to be another person (2) be a different gender (3) be born to different parents (4) be born in different country (I score three from four). It’s so easy to say, “be positive” it is so easy for these Western born (male & white) Doctors and self-help gurus to say “look to the bright side.” Basically however this is true: desire what is possible and then try to achieve it because, desiring something which is impossible can only lead to sadness and disappointment. I want to say this diagnosis is designed to keep us quiet, to stop us asking “why” but honestly, wishing to be 16 again (I’m five years older) is totally pointless.

Anyway… For me, in this exercise of body swapping fantasy I’d like to experience reality not fantasy. Who exactly then would I like to be? Well, Doctor Porter of course! He is so sensitive, he has a car, he goes to the gym and he does not have any kids. The question one or two may ask is why be him? You could’ve chosen Yacoub Shaheen, or Mehmet Akif Alakurt. You could have been U.S. President Donald Trump or at least one of the astronauts on the International Space Station. The reason is this: I’m good at fantasy when confined to the compound and imprisoned in the home. Reality means being an anonymous other. I want to be a man for a day. To be, for 2,640 minutes, an ordinary normal man (there is no way I would sleep not even from one of the 158,400 seconds). Why, well to walk around the malls, visit the hotel pool and experience that. He is different. People think he is normal, but he seems not to be. My mentor Dr. Porter is so punctual and caring. No other Doctor in the Department of Philosophy’s open-plan offices, here at the University of Hussain, is always there. He is punctual and has time for old students as well as current ones. He only drinks black coffee. No girl has ever seen him eat junk food. He has a Instagram page, he’s a good horse rider, and many students follow him. His wife is Moroccan and beautiful. We all have dearly wished to be her! But no, I will be him.

Let me be clear with you my dear reader, in this life there are masculine, feminine, and in between people. This has nothing to do with sexuality. Sexuality is defined as the sexual parts that human beings are born with, and these tell us if the person is a boy or a girl (but science says 1 in 100 may be born into the wrong body, this is accepted in some cultures, in others it is not). I said I want to be a man, and I totally mean to be a real man for the whole day. In the environment that I am living in, men are everything whereas women are to be controlled and hidden. Men are allowed to do everything, and even if it is wrong, well he’s a man so he’s going to be forgiven. I am a woman and I have always been controlled. So, for one day I want to be a man. I’ll be the controller, I’ll drive my sisters (would they be my daughters now?) to the Al Ain zoo where we will take lunch and discuss how to free the imprisoned monkeys. Then we’ll go to the “Promenade” at Jumeirah beach, they’ll wear their Adidas superstars and Juicy Couture t-shirts.

That was my plan. But when I woke as Dr. Porter, the plan changed. My wife was back in Morocco (her mother was sick). In the bathroom I examined myself in the mirror, my black hair was now blonde and missing in the middle. The body was one aspect but the feeling, that was the real difference. I was about to dress for working but I decided to cancel classes, why not? I would quickly give that student who was so keen to do her homework and ask questions an A on BlackBoard (that’s me!) then go to the gym at the Intercontinental Hotel. It was a mixed gym and I was interested to know how much I could lift. I planned to run as fast as I could too. As I was about to leave the apartment I went to reach for my ‘abayah and shayla (“cloak” and “veil” in Arabic), but smiled. No need today. As I walked to the car I noticed that some women looked to the ground as I got near them, others looked at me with a kind of lust in their eyes. I wanted to visit myself, was Dr Porter in Amna’s body? I hope he didn’t have a heart attack at the shock from waking up as me. or I’d be him for ever. Part of me wished he did have a heart attack, I’d grab his/my New Zealand passport and fly first-class to Auckland.

The gym was a bit of a disappointment, it was almost empty. The only people using it were Arab and Westerner housewives (or maybe they worked only in the afternoons?). They seemed a bit bored. I noticed they looked at me. I also had to say hello because, they knew me here. One even asked me about Alia. When I spoke it was hard not to laugh. My words my thoughts but said in a man’s deep voice. I loved my accent. I kept on speaking loudly when I was in the car. The freedom was amazing. The most noticeable difference is that nobody looked at me with the eyes that said: “why aren’t you at home?” “where’s your brother?” “Who’s your father to let you come to the Mall alone?” To the mall, that is what I’ll do. I knew how to drive. The family driver had let me and my older sister drive from school to home and even I would drive a bit on the desert highway after university. But only to add to my Snapchat and Instagram accounts. I was going to drive fast. Dr. Porter had a Ford Mustang. But, no, I didn’t want him to get any radar tickets.

I drove to the capital city’s biggest Mall. Inside I walked and walked, I kept looking at ladies, they kind of looked back to me. My thoughts were mine, my body language was not. I decided to sit in a coffee shop and watch people. This is what I did as myself. But now, I did not review handbags and shoes, I was focused on how tall then men were, did they have more hair than me? Was their belly wider than their chest? I was focusing on my new gender. I was comparing myself with my gender. I felt a bit bad because Alia tried calling me many times. There was no way I could speak as him to her. She’d know I wasn’t him. But I did SMS her and I particularly focused on paying her compliments. She was shocked at first but I sent to her a selfie and then typed: I’m a changed man, I like to pretend looks aren’t important but I want to let you know you are truly beautiful, I always think it but now I’ll say it. Basically I said to her what I wanted my future husband to say to the real me. I also typed this, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” it was from the Cambridge university dictionary but we say a similar saying in Arabic.

As the sun began to set, I realised that being in a man’s body was basically not that different. Yes I had freedoms of movement (and this was truly divine). But, I was still comparing myself to others, looking at people as objects of desire, disgust or indifference. I still wanted to be better than others. Every look was a judgment of a type. What did I learn? We are, after all, humans. I considered the thesis of Joseph Conrad, in our soul we are all wildly animalistic. Never judge a book by its cover, those sweet charming students, those sincere and sensitive teachers are basically the same. Behind the cover of their smiling faces is a dark inner self. The question this gender metamorphosis did not answer was this: must it always be like this? Will humankind ever rise above our base instincts, competitive tendencies and envies?

Inspirations and/or Recommended Readings

Chalker, J. L. (1989). The Identity Matrix. Riverdale, Canada: Baen Books.

Conrad, J. (2012 [1902]). Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin.

IMDb (2011). Body Swap Movies. Retrieved from, https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000924797/