The bro code

Some eight years ago, just across our facade- Baghdad/Iraq

' If you ever come back here , I'll beat the $#%5 out of you ..you understand ' He shouted at the fourteen year old boy at the time ; Shoshta -that's how my brother likes to call him.

Of course , despite the fact that my father had literally chased Shosta with a brick that day and threw him out of the house (I can not recall another occasion when my old man was literally out of his mind apart from this one... because...drums please  Shoshta was a bad influence on my little brother !)  .
After few years however I think my dad had come to realise  who had been the bad influence on whom ! Looking back at it , its fairly apparent  who hid the hookah in my bro's closet and where all the naughty stuff   found in my brother's room came from .Shoshta!?

Despite all the trouble with the parents , Shoshta and le brother continued to be very good friends ..After all , they went to primary school together and well ...that's about it! Different high school ,different unis and now different jobs but you know what they say it is a true bromance ..not too easy for me to understand to be honest giving the fact they have got nothing in common apart from .. craziness maybe!


Yesterday ; with everyone in the car on the way to the restaurant to break the fast ... Amman/Jordan ; Over the phone with le brother

'Ramadan Kareem dear '
'so you did it ..you flew over to the parents .. '
'I did..now you tell me how are things in Baghdad ? how are you managing alone ? where are you breaking your fast ?'
'He's doing it the way you have been doing it when you were alone in London' said my uncle..Oh for god's sake , why did he have to speak now ..I can't even talk to my brother in peace.. 'can you not focus on driving uncle'...zero privacy at this place I m telling you ..

Laughters ..ok at this point I can't even hear my brother ..

'Sorry..did you say Shoshta ?! did you guys order anything ?'
'No he cooked for both of us ..four different dishes ..they were lovely .Well apart from the rice ..it tasted abit like Chinese rice ..he still blames it on the brand  '
'Who were you with ?'
'Ahmad had to leave ,so we broke the fast just the two of us'
Right ! how romantic ! plus I don't know who Ahmad was ....To be fair, I think I tend to do this as well.. throwing random names and being less cohesive when I tell a story.It didn't matter ..
Have you just heard what I heard! Shoshta was cooking in our kitchen and he was shouting over to me to say hi to the parents ..
The weird thing is, all my mom was concerned about was how he dared criticise her posh rice ...
Time can truly change some things !

When the heart starts failing

Do you know what it is like to have a zealous relationship with a rewarding lover?

I was just a raw teen full with optimism when we met. He took me under his aged arms for six years. I have to say our first six years were of late nights that were nothing but exciting. Granted there were some anxieties at first but he became the centre of my world .He was without doubt my first love.

Two more years passed by, when things started to crumble around me .When I couldn’t do anything about it, he was always there, satisfying me in different other ways. But truth to be said, I no longer found comfort in him. Even my parents who were initially uber excited , very proud about how well we were doing , they started to be a bit skeptical sometimes even synical of the way things  were heading.

He took a lot of my time, drained a lot of my energy. No matter how hard I tried, it was always a fight before letting me spend quality time with my family. He didn’t even bother to support me. Few words of his wisdom would have been enough but instead he engulfed all of mine.

I felt bitter, almost aggrieved by it. I decided that I didn’t have to put up with things the way there were. It was about time for a break. Who would know maybe for the best of everybody.

But like all true lovers, I couldn’t do it for long . Despite my resentment and the fears of going back to the hands-on life of medical wards and unsociable style of its shifts. I’m back. I have made a conscious decision to re-sparkle my relationship with clinical medicine. The truth is I never intended to leave .  For the past couple of years I’ve been a postgraduate student .Which is theoretically less demanding .Hmmm that’s a lie actually it is probably as demanding but far more flexible . I m trying to write up my thesis now… with virtually no time left .I was never good at multitasking.Add to it this growing  urge to leave everything behind and just bury my head in the sands .I was literally at some serious cross roads and was happy to finally decide on keeping it only to lose it a couple of days ago… which wouldn't be that bad (that's a lie :p)but I couldn't even look at a mirror (see here to know why) … 
I couldn't hit my one month target by the way I had to stop this cute challenge for various reasons. I know I promised to tell you all about it and few other things  but..but has it ever occurred to you ? You have a pen , your lucky pen , your favourite pen .. you open up your heart to it , share all your worries and your concerns together with all your goals and desires . And for some reason , you become less and less fond of it . At first you start leaving it at home together with your journal then you no longer wish to tell it as much as you used to and before you realise you forget all about its existence. 
But ,as good things always do, the idea of writing started haunting me again ..reminded me of all the satisfaction I get after pouring it all out of my chest. So I went back to my pen ... abit nervous , heart pounding , head full with stories I wanted to share with it ... I opened the box , got the pen out and  the very first thing that made sense to me was  feeling it's pulse..I tend to do that with every soul I care about  ..it's instinctive for me but cry-out-loud weird for everybody else ... Nothing would have prepared me for what I came to realise .. I couldn't feel a pulse , the ink has dried ...I haven't left it for too long I thought plus I had all the good reasons /excuses to tell my favourite old friend why I'd left for that long  .In the past few weeks I have successfully cried for England ..been homeless for a good week and dead worried about what's happening to family in Baghdad, I have starved a rabbit in the process  and got myself in all sorts of trouble . 
But guess what ; the pen didn’t say anything back ..I don't think it's dead rather I'm sure it doesn't care ..I left it long enough for the ink to dry ..I can no longer use it and that all it mattered . The truth is after what had happened I don't feel like writing in this diary anymore.

Hope you are  having a better day :)

Until next time-Maybe not ! , you keep smiling best friends !

not on this enrty apparently:P  I was literally homeless , and what do I do ? Chilling out in Westminster .Note to self ; bloody prioritise (I had a crappy week afterwards) lol

Letters from the front line

Hello there best friends ……

'Letters from the front line' will be  a series of entries to my random diary . Its basically about my very last holiday as a student in the UK - July-August - . Though it was relatively short but quite few interesting, exciting, distressing and crappy things happened. Not necessarily in that order. 

Here's a teaser of what had happened ;

• Hit by a London bus - ouch -
• Almost hit by a london bus -again!-(seriously whats wrong with them buses :P) if it wasn't for a law enforcement officer accidentally passing by  -How romantic ! -
• Impersonating Sherlock Holmes in one of the most mysterious Arabian -ISIS flavoured - nights in Baghdad 
• Blood pressure shoots up (for real) on any mentioning of rabbits .You'll know why !
• My story with A rabbit 
• A very special night in Baghdad - in a good way :)
• All about my ambitious to-do-list in Iraq 
• A couple of new friends  
• My visit to the doctors'
• My latest chick read
• Summer shopping ...anyone?
• A follow up on my Eid resolutions 

All that and more had happened in less than 10 days ! 

Stay tuned and until I see you next time you keep smiling ...