Desert feelings

An empty page is the most intimidating thing. Which word to start with. Maybe the words of Uncle Khaled, who said he had reframed his thoughts. He kept playing squash and his advice to all young people was to continue playing sports. I thought he was perhaps just saying this because he had found that I was a handball enthusiast, like many in his family. I turned out to be mistaken. He really had a philosophy related to that. Some years ago, he had stopped thinking about how old he could get – because thinking towards a specific age was also accepting that one would die after that age. He realized this and his motto today is to just keep living. Being alive. Continue enjoying life. Every day he wakes up telling his mind and his body to keep living. Playing sports. Eating nice. Being active.

Keep living.

Feeling alive. That was the thought that came to my mind during a conversation under a starlit sky in Nuweiba. Nuweiba is in Sinai, where the mountains stand in a majestic golden color and the sea is so blue your mind has a hard time replicating it. Mesmerizing to the point of almost no return. Many don’t return, spiritually attached to moments in Nuweiba, leaving their souls to wander the sandy shores while their bodies go back to the bustling city life. Others even stay behind, wanting to linger in that magical feeling the energy of Sinai brings them.

Those nights in Nuweiba were under the full moon. The moon has always had its effects on me too. Something about sitting there with no obligations to anything except the sea, sand and sky dragged my old artistic self out of its shell. A shell it had crawled into to hide from hostilities and perceived dangers.

Many truths were told on that beach. Many wounded hearts sharing their stories. I didn’t really share, I listened. I felt the need to encourage those around me not to lose hope in love. I guess I’m hopelessly romantic, no matter what I go through, at the end of the ill-lit tunnel, I always see love in a bright glow.

All you need is love, said someone sometime. Burst out in song. “Love. Above all things, I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong.” I know I’m quoting hopelessly romantic films here but there are always some truths to the words.

So, when a person turned to me, commenting on how the moonlight night was making them lonely, I felt for them. I knew they wanted to be with someone during that moment, and the person wasn’t there. The hurt made them want to turn their heart to stone. Freeze it. It was too soft, got hurt too easily.

As if having a soft heart was a negative thing. That kindness was weakness. Instead of seeing the ability to love as the most profound gift we can be given, the hurt had made them want to avoid love altogether. I get it. But just like the ocean moving in tides, inspired by the very same moon we were staring at, love ebbs and flows. It’s not something singular. Keep your heart open and it will receive love as much as it can give.

People who truly love, do not start wars.  

But I do understand why someone would be tempted to freeze their heart. The story was something like, in a different dimension, different timeline, those feelings could have grown. In this one, unfortunately, there were family decisions forcing the separation of two people who in some fleeting moments wanted to explore their timeline together. It was electric. Where the skin burns from a touch and every cell in the body is pulsing with the heartbeat of the other.

Nothing else mattered. But alas, it wasn’t meant to happen in this life, much to their sadness. My advice was to let the heart stay soft, not to stand in the way of the little drops of love life throws in our ways. Little drops like a white speck on a black painting.

The sadness would eventually turn into a memory to be revisited, some sort of mutual dream that could evoke electricity like no other. Or - I hope that for them, I said. At least, do not freeze your heart.

Keep living, like Uncle Khaled said. His advice for all young people and the old alike. Stay alive. Stay active. Stay loving.