If one's typical life journey should see its onset from childhood to
teenage (driven by the will of the parents, spent at school, mainly preparing
for work), reaching the peak at young manhood/femininity (driven by the will of
the self, mostly spent at work), then falling gradually at the middle age
(driven by the will of the society, totally spent at work), and finally
decaying at the old age (driven by the will of age, spent at home as a
consequence of an entire lifetime of work!), so is one's existence based upon
work? Do we work for ourselves or for others? And do we exist for ourselves or
for others? Or for work?! It captivates you, it identifies you, it feeds you
and feeds upon you, and then it dismisses you: from an aim to a responsibility
to a duty to a burden to finally a memory.
"I am terribly sorry, but you left us no choice. The final decision
has been made, and your services are no longer required." With these cold
words Omar left the manager's office, bleeding from the wounds caused by the
bullets of words the manager shot at him, shockingly struck by the blinding
lightening of astonishment, stunningly startled by the deafening thunder of
numbness, caused by words of disrespect, words of underestimation, words of
dishonesty, words of disloyalty, words of gossip, words of injustice, words of
sympathy, and even words of empathy. And there he is, still standing a couple
of steps away from the manager's office, staring at the floor, so quietly, so
peacefully, but only from the outside, as from the inside no quietness or
peacefulness is involved, but battles of emotions, of thoughts, about the self
and about others, about the past and about the present and about the future, about
work, about life, and about his whole existence.
Too many emotions to handle, too many thoughts to perceive, too many
words to endure, and not too many wafts to breathe: suffocated, strangled. The
atmosphere is turning into airless vacuum, places are turning into dark boxes
of solitude, and walls are jails of barbed wires, getting closer and closer,
till they tear your flesh apart, till they get you totally crushed. And the
people, they turn into hollow shadows, with no marked features, no faces, no
details, just piles of dust surrounding you, staining you, infecting you till you
turn like them. And you, you cry inside in pain, down in the cage of
depression, your body responds with weakness, and your mind joins with indolence.
Yet, you can feel it all: your lungs are not producing much oxygen, your chest
is so contracted, and your heart....well, it is going bloodless! So Omar takes
a last look over his office, where a considerable piece of him lies, and he tries
to collect that piece with him, yet he cannot, for it is shattered along his
other shattered pieces in this ominous place. And he leaves earlier than
always, but more painful than ever. And he leaves once and for all.
The way home this day felt different, the metro felt so much crowded
than ever, the heat of people's breaths, the smell of people's sweat, the
multiple shoulder hits from the passersby, the darkness of that closed
underground, all unbearable. And inside the tube he gets. The way home felt so
much longer this day: "Everything seems different today. Worse. Much
worse! 'And if you were tough and cold-hearted people would abandon you.' Well,
physically this is not happening since I am stuck to the flesh of the men next
to me in this canned tuna box! And if you were nice and kind people would stab
you at the back! And nobody cares! And why should I care anyway that nobody
cares?! Everybody uses you; everybody wants a piece of you, and what is
dramatic is that you simply give it to them willingly!" The metro stops
and the door opens, to unload and load, flesh beside flesh over flesh, and Omar
is still inside.
He goes back with the time machine of his mind to the last week in his
work, when it all started. It takes only one mistake, one little mistake, the
slightest deviation from the road, a single wrong step and you will be exposed
to the booby-traps of the enemies of success, and if you are not well prepared,
you will fall an easy prey for others' envy and greed. You put your trust on a
person you thought you knew well. You believed everything that person says,
everything that person does. You believed in the best of him. You saw something
in him and ran after it like a little child, till you got captivated. Like a
puppet, you got manipulated, you got used, you got played with, and like a
puppet, you faced one of two eventual fates: either you got broken and damaged,
or you got thrown away. He cannot imagine how naïve he was, how ignorant, how
straight and clear, such an idiot! But it is of no use now, isn't it? The anger
and frustration and anxiety and disappointment are forming a poisonous aura
around Omar, inhaled not only by him, but also by everyone around. Realizing
that, he sets the time machine back to the present, at least temporarily. And
with this shift in time, another stop comes, another unloading and loading takes
place, and in the tuna box remains Omar's status.
You are the hero of your own drama, and you keep on fighting and
fighting. And like every hero, there comes a fall. But like every hero, after
the fall comes the rise-up. It is a funny feeling to feel so attached to something
or someone while you already know that even life is lifeless, so eager for
stability while you surely know that change is inevitable, and so depressed
about your existence although that very same existence is part of a universal
chain of existence that cannot stand without it. Life goes on, and so should
you. Another stop comes, along with another unloading and loading, but this
time Omar is not there, for it is time to keep going after a long stop, and it
is time to really and finally go home.
جامعة القاهرة
