The Handmaid's Tale

Rare is it to watch television so searing as to elicit a visceral and almost continuous feeling of tension and slow-creeping fear. But try, as a woman, to watch The Handmaid’s Tale and not feel that parts of you have been bruised, others ripped open.

The vivid brutality of the world evoked by this series is breathtaking, its power the result of economy. Not all violence comes in technicolour. Disenfranchised women, offered an outlet for their rage, savage a man to death with their bare hands. A newborn baby is wrenched from its mother, as she cries out in soundless agony. A man lasciviously licks the stump of a woman kept alive only to pleasure him and others like him - because in this society, all female body parts except the reproductive organs are dispensable.   

The basic premise might once have been termed the stuff of Orwellian nightmares. Now it feels more like eerie prescience. In an America beset by environmental and social problems, with catastrophically declining fertility levels, social restructuring has been orchestrated by an elite that wields its power mercilessly. Still-fertile women are subjected to ritualistic rape for the purpose of procreation, its baseness in no way disguised by a veneer of religious ceremony.

As with all good totalitarian regimes, the new state is peopled by an extensive spy network and designed to subjugate any attempts at free thought. Academics have been sent to a toxic wasteland or brutally murdered; books have been burned, museums and churches destroyed, games outlawed. The sterility of sanctioned interactions is embodied by the accepted phrases and greetings used: joyless praise bes and blessed days pepper this social wasteland, where, we are told, carbon emissions have reduced dramatically, crops grow and children are born. Only the ominous under his eye carries with it a deeper meaning – a reminder to watch others as you are watched, that privacy has been abolished, that your eye can be plucked out.

But this series made me recall recent – unrelated – conversations with two female friends who, by coincidence, each said the same thing: still so much about conception is a mystery.

So too parenthood, so too sexuality, so too human connection. Life finds a way. A defiant sentence etched into a wall can penetrate a person’s psyche. Trying to reduce a group of women to bland uniformity, to erase individual identity, may instead create a solidarity so powerful as to give birth to resistance. As two people find each other after long separation, they are reminded that familial bonds are not always of blood, but they cannot be artificially created. Women who have been robbed of their agency in every possible respect wield what weapons they have to fight back: they speak their own names, they tell their stories, they insist on being remembered. One steals a car and deliberately, with exhilaration, runs over one of the faceless men who has served as a warden in her open-air prison. The viewer shares in mixed fear and triumph at the bloody mess she leaves, knowing a worse fate awaits her, encased in walls of clinical white.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a glorious celebration of humanity’s enduring ability to give the finger to forces that would have us cower, even as it is a warning against the growth of the totalitarian regime in sheep’s clothing. Its female characters are not only real and vivid; they, in particular, resist easy characterisation and are accorded a depth and complexity equalled by no male character. Two of the women who in some ways govern, were part of creating or at least perpetuate the system are shown, as the series progresses, to be compassionate as well as bitter and petty, to wish to protect and nurture even while they continue to bully and torment. You see flashes of their anguish and remorse, and you see how these feelings fuel their fury.

In close-up shots exposing both wrinkles and inner thoughts – each one perhaps equally dangerous for women in this society – steely resolve can crumple to vulnerability, smug complacency can turn to confusion and revulsion can be painfully pushed to one side to make room for mock-flirtatiousness.

The ultimate success of this series, for me, is that you are never invited to judge the protagonist. She is sympathetic but refuses to be saintly. She swears and rails against the unfairness of her situation but she seizes her chance to seek pleasure for its own sake and she won’t apologise for it. You feel every violation of her body, whether it is the crack of a whip on her feet or the slithering of an unwanted finger running down her arm. You feel the potency of her barely-contained rage and you find yourself waiting, breathless, until the moment when it will finally explode into life. 

#MeToo

Aged 10. On holiday in southern France, you see that your mother doesn’t want to leave you waiting outside a restaurant in the street on your own. She is all fierce and protective Mama-bear. When you ask why, she tells you it’s because of the way men are looking at you. Confused, you protest: but I’m ten.

It makes no difference, she answers. For them you have a woman’s body. You’re fair game.

You feel dirty and stop wearing shorts for the rest of the trip.

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Aged 13. It’s common knowledge at school that one fifty year old maths teacher twangs the bras of his students. He does it and then he laughs. You have always been grateful that he was never your teacher and you wonder why the girls who have been harassed by him don’t complain to someone.

But he’s not the teacher who one day comments on your breasts casually in a passing conversation. And when this happens you wonder if it was somehow your fault. And you don’t complain either.

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Aged 17. You go to a friend’s house party and a 24 year old army soldier that your friend met that day and invited home tells you that you’re pretty. You don’t know anyone except your friend, who has gone to bed, and the only place for you to sleep is the floor. When he tries to kiss you and you say no, he starts shouting. The only way you can get him to stop is by agreeing to sleep beside him on the floor. He whispers in your ear "at least now you know you have someone who really cares about you". Every part of you is filled with revulsion but you are scared of what might happen if you tell him to leave you alone, or if he gets angry again.

You want to call your parents to come and pick you up but don’t want to seem like a child, or make them worry, or be told you can’t go to parties any more.

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Aged 21. You go for dinner in Thailand with a New Zealand acquaintance who works at a local guesthouse. You don’t realise until you arrive at the restaurant on his motorbike, miles from anywhere, that he believes you’re on a date. He starts telling stories about all the women he has slept with, in detail. You panic internally.

You keep trying to steer the conversation away from sex. He keeps dragging it back. You tell him how conservative you are, tell him the story about the person back home you have feelings for, tell him point blank that you don’t want to have sex with him.

He tells you he is a reiki practitioner and that, if he can’t have sex with you, he’ll settle for lying naked in the dark, “exchanging energy”.

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Aged 25. Standing on a metro platform in Paris, a leering 50-something year old man with a giant, protruding hernia makes an obscene gesture and remark to your beautiful 23 year old sister. You are filled with rage. You have vivid fantasies about punching his hernia, seeing him doubled over in pain for even looking at her that way. But the crowds come between you and you wonder if the situation had escalated whether anyone would have stopped to help you anyway.

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Aged 28. Cairo, during the Friday prayer, in the middle of Ramadan. A man follows you home from grocery shopping without you realising he is there and squeezes your ass as you wait for the lift in the entrance hall to your building. You are furious but before you can even react he is running to his car. You think to cry out, but your doorman is immersed in prayer beside you and has noticed nothing, and what good could it do anyway? The man is already driving away.

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Aged 31. The man who you are used to thinking of as your best friend regularly tells you no one will ever love you the way he does, that all your relationship choices have been terrible, that he is the only person who really sees how beautiful you are. He is angry that you don’t love him. He tells you how selfish you are and you feel guilty, and then he tells you that you are the most wonderful woman in the world and he can’t bear to lose you, and you feel guiltier.

Friends tell you to cut him out but it takes four years for you to finally understand that this is a toxic relationship you don’t have to be part of and to tell him not to contact you anymore. The feeling of relief is instantaneous.

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If the point of the #MeToo stories is to show how widespread sexual harassment and assault are, I think we also have to recognise their insidiousness. I don’t believe there is a woman alive who has not experienced them in one capacity or another, only to find that there is little or no recourse for complaint or help.

Many male friends have expressed shock and disgust at the fact that women from all over the world, from all walks of life, are posting #MeToo today. We have not all experienced the most brutal and degrading forms of harassment and assault – and my heart aches for all those who have, female and male.

But we all have stories of insidious incidents of objectification and the abuse of power. It’s not limited to certain parts of the world. It doesn’t only affect certain women. It has nothing to do with how pretty you are or what you wear. It’s the systematic abuse of power, plain and simple, which thrives in a festering climate where it is tacitly accepted that those who have more power (strength, influence, money…whatever) can do whatever they want with those who have less.

The Poet

The poet asked me to support his work on a summer evening. We knew each other only by name but he spoke as a friend.

He is a philosopher and a weaver of ideas. His job is to lift the gossamer curtain that hides the beauty of everyday interactions, of the mundane. A strange alchemy.

And I thought of connections that spread like giant spiders’ webs. Their tenuousness and their tenacity.

Of those who have never met in person but are moved by the same words.

Of the people you never believe you will lose, until one day they are gone.

Of the ones who come back to you.

And the half-light of dusk was luminous, and the wind carried the stillness of a city breaking its fast.

And all was balm for my poor cluttered mind.  

Terror and the price of fear

Manchester – Minya – Baghdad – Kabul – London

In less than two weeks.

News of yet another terror attack in both my home country, Britain, and my adopted country, Egypt. Every time this happens, it strikes fear and sorrow in my heart. And in the echo chamber of Facebook, I see my pain and fear reflected in many people I know and love.

There is nothing original in saying that the only possible goal of such attacks is to keep people the world over living in ever-greater fear. Fearful people are easy to manipulate. It’s so much easier to perpetuate an “us vs. them” narrative when people are afraid of what a frightening place the world has become, when we have become accustomed to seeing danger around every corner.

I do believe the world has become a more frightening place. And the frequency of attacks designed to provoke chaos, and that blind, visceral jolt that is the essence of the word terror is part of that, of course. Each person who died or has been injured in such attacks will have or have had loved ones, and plans, and a life ahead of them. Each one of them could be any of us. The idea that this raw violence can penetrate even our safe spaces — whether these be pop concerts for teenagers or ice-cream shops for children celebrating Ramadan — cuts to the quick. It makes our stomachs contract and our hearts beat painfully faster.

And that’s the point.

But the slow drip of fear that grips us in our daily lives as a result of the narratives fuelling these attacks is more insidious. Hate crimes, incendiary speech, racism, isolation, insularity — the greater the fear, the more readily narrow worldviews and vicious, divisive rhetoric spread and become normalized.

The world has become a more frightening place, not because startling inequality and monstrously unbalanced power dynamics exist now where they did not before, but because the fear that we are living with every single day makes it harder and harder to see beyond our own perspective.

And meanwhile, slow-moving tragedies are unfolding under our noses. Climate change will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable within our lifetimes; Syria and Yemen are burning; brave people get stabbed on trains because they challenge the xenophobia that is becoming louder and louder in communities and in countries that have long prided themselves on holding values of diversity and tolerance paramount.

I don’t believe it has to be this way. Even within my circles, I am remotely connected with people who offer extraordinary examples of how it is possible to remain clear-headed and compassionate and to fight fiercely for the values of a decent society, against this climate of fear. Brendan Cox, husband of murdered British MP Jo Cox, is one example of someone speaking out against division and vitriol with immense strength and dignity. Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour is a lioness, battling bigotry in multiple forms. Egyptian writer and activist Ahdaf Soueif fights to ensure the stories of people imprisoned and marginalised are heard, illuminating our common humanity even as she protests injustice. These people speak with intelligence, nuance and compassion; I wish their voices, and others like them, were amplified in the English-speaking media.

Britain goes to the polls on Thursday. A surprise General Election called by Prime Minister Theresa May sees her ruling Conservative party pitted against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition. Two radically different leaders, both polarising; two utterly different visions for which direction the country should move in. A lead that seems to be shrinking by the day. And dominating the campaign of each, existential issues that will fundamentally alter our identity as a nation: Brexit, the future of the NHS, state surveillance, Scottish independence.

The stakes are as high as our emotions. And again, that is the point. We will be voting on what we want our country to become.

Nothing I am saying here is new, but I feel compelled to utter something more than my usual generic, if heartfelt, expressions of sorrow and increasing despair.

Because one way or another, we have to change the narrative. We have to find a way to not let fear be the lens through which we view the world and our place within it in relation to others — whether those others are sitting beside us on the bus, living somewhere on the other side of the world or just images we see through a computer screen.

--

Published on Mada Masr:

https://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/06/05/.../u/blog-terror-and-the-price-of-fear/

27/01/17

Holocaust Memorial Day.

My paternal grandfather was born Fritz Rudolph Marx. He was German, of Jewish ancestry. Fortunate enough to be born into privileged circumstances, he and his immediate family left Germany before the country was fully entrenched in the ugly grip of fascism. He was lucky that his uncle, already settled in the UK, had had the prescience to tell my great-grandfather to get his family out while he could.

When the Second World War broke out, my grandfather fought with the British army against the Nazis. He faced dangerous situations and was awarded the Military Cross for valour. After the war ended, he became a naturalised British citizen and changed his name to Frank Ralph. He kept the name Marx.

All his friends knew him as Ralph and even with family he never spoke about the things he had seen and experienced. He never spoke German with his children. When I was about nine years old, I found some pictures in an old desk in his study which must have been taken when he was involved in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I will never forget those pictures, or the fact that my grandfather must have been thinking as he took them of his own family members who were not able to leave Germany as he had done.

Living in Britain, my grandfather adopted a conservative stance towards issues of national policy, particularly economic ones. Though he died when I was 17 and we never discussed politics or identity, I think more and more of him as I get older.

I’m sure there are many things we would have disagreed about but he was a deeply principled man, who was never afraid to put himself on the line for what he believed to be right. Probably the most important thing he ever taught me is that you should always stand up to bullies.

Now I look at the world we’re living in and I vacillate between anger and despair at the wave of popular support for demagogues, riding on ugly prejudice and ignorance, and total humility in the face of people risking their comfort and safety to resist in the ways they can.

I know the world has been witness to genocides for almost as long as human civilisation as we know it has existed. The horrors of the Holocaust should not eclipse what happened in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, or what is happening today in the Central African Republic, Myanmar and I imagine many other places that are not even on my radar. The genocide of Jews in Germany and throughout Europe is not a greater horror than the genocide of any of these peoples, but it does have particular resonance for me.

I feel these days as though everywhere I look the bullies are winning – whether it’s on a huge scale in Syria, Yemen, Occupied Palestine, where the injustice is so brutally obvious as to take the breath away, whether it’s tacitly acknowledged but not talked about, as in countries not facing outright war but existing in a vacuum of minimal social and political freedoms and human rights, or whether it’s in a country like Britain, which I believe has long basked in pride at having been on “the right side of history” in 1939-1945 but which is clearly in no way resistant to the current sweeping wave of right-wing nationalism that demonises minorities and lives off stereotypes and fear.

Clearly what is happening in the US at the moment throws everything into sharp relief, and I stand on the brink of being completely overwhelmed by what a Trump presidency means for the world as a whole – on everything ranging from climate change, to reproductive rights, to press freedom, to large-scale corruption and the threat of nuclear war.

But today, Holocaust Memorial Day, I am entirely consumed by revulsion at what Trump and his supporters are trying to do with their so-called Muslim registry. I am raging internally at their blatant pushing of a white supremacist agenda, their demonization of refugees, immigrants, citizens of colour, Black Lives Matter supporters, members of the LGBTQ community and anyone who does not fit their narrow, spineless, small-minded definition of being worthy to be accorded full human rights, compassion, security and support.

And I am disgusted beyond belief to see the British Prime Minister simpering and fawning as she tries to secure a trade deal with Trump to limit the disastrous fallout from Brexit by waxing lyrical over the fucking “Special Relationship”. Next thing you know she’ll be weaving friendship bracelets or engraving T loves D 4 eva into Westminster Abbey.

I don’t know what to do with all this anger but I have to do something.

I can’t look at this day and what it symbolises for me on a personal level without wanting to do more than show solidarity with people forced to live in fear, everyone being targeted directly or indirectly by an orange lunatic with delusions of grandeur.

A Present from the Past

I had heard wonderful things about A Present from the Past. So much so that I hesitated in going to see it, fearing disappointment.

The premise is universally relatable, even if the tale carries a touch of the extraordinary in the way it unfolds. A daughter buys her father, and herself, plane tickets to Italy from Egypt to celebrate his 75^th birthday. Having studied there in his youth, he returned to Egypt leaving behind an Italian woman who he promised to go back and marry. He never did, and the love of his youth coalesced into a romanticised story about the one who got away. Now the daughter, walking in her father’s footsteps as a filmmaker, suggests a trip to revisit the scene of a story she has grown up hearing, and maybe find the woman he hasn’t seen for 33 years.

Filming almost entirely surreptitiously on an iPhone, Kawthar has captured the flickers of detail that make up intimate knowledge of another person. She shows her father in lovingly prosaic attitudes: lying in bed with his feet next to the camera, crooning old love songs, vulnerable in sleep. Her tenderness towards him is striking from the first frame and she revels in the quirks of his character without ever offering an opportunity for him to be mocked. Careful crafting shows a character who pretends to shoot koshary sellers from a passing car, chuckling triumphantly, who hoards mangoes like a mischievous child, who claims that his eagerness to see Patrizia is mostly so that he not “disrespect all Egyptians”, by giving the impression that Egyptian men break women’s hearts without explanation.

So much more interesting than the Mokhtar-Patrizia relationship, which you suspect remains well confined to the past, is the film’s dusting of emotion over the fragility of old age and the importance of memory. Mokhtar battles contradictory impulses as he contemplates the probability that this long dreamed-of meeting will actually take place. He wants Patrizia to remember him as the “prince” she once saw him as, resplendent in the abaya he has resurrected for the occasion. The prospect of a meeting is full of romance and significance. He will understand, he tells his daughter, if she has been with other men in the years since they met. After all, he never contacted her.

Delicately, with deliberation, he examines his memories. A letter in which she referred to him as the man of the house is recalled with pride, the recollection that she never wore earrings disclosed as you would something infinitely precious and cherished. He will invite her to come to Egypt, he muses in his hotel room; she may be tired of life in Italy.

Woven throughout the narrative is the yearning of a man who is preoccupied with aging to remain relevant, to have something tangible to offer the world. He has devoted his life to children’s education and speaks dismissively of people who try to communicate with youth in a didactic or patronising way. Periodically he rails against his daughter for taking control of the trip and their itinerary. A palpable fear of redundancy is evident in his calls home to his capable wife, asking her if she is scared to be in the house without him.

Equal in stubbornness, father and daughter fight. And then sleep, heads on one another’s shoulders.

The film is multi-layered and an understated, moving testament to love in its different forms. Kawthar, fearing that she has raised her father’s hopes for nothing, pleads with a bemused Italian hotel worker to help her find a trace of Patrizia online. Gone is her habitual tone of impish teasing, gone too the simmering frustration you hear at other junctures; tearfully she explains that she just wants to stop his sadness, and she suddenly sounds very young.

Mokhtar’s paternal pride is exhibited less directly. It is transmitted through the prism of an Egyptian-Italian they meet and befriend on arrival in Rome, who shrewdly observes the alchemic potency of the trip, the way that Kawthar’s presence gives her father back his youth. It is evident as they check into their hotel, with his loud declaration “father and daughter!”

If the film is a reminder to cherish those we live side by side with, it is one that is issued in the gentlest way. Unlike the countless evolving intimacies of daily life, memory is shown to be both enduring and malleable. We may never know why a story ends, but the ending we give ourselves may not be that of the person who lived the story with us. When it has been all this time, how could I not have loved you? How many people must have asked this question in the middle of a one-sided imaginary conversation with no end.

We may never know how our lovers remember us.  

At the end of the film, like mirages stepping from the screen, father and daughter appeared to answer questions, so guilelessly like their film selves as to be almost disconcerting. Basking as the visible hero of a story now firmly embedded in the collective imagination of filmgoers within and beyond Egypt, Mokhtar looked younger than his film self.

Immortalised by his daughter, his legacy is enshrined in the love story of his youth. What a tremendous gift. 

On the awful sterility of things having to make sense

M has a particular look she gives me whenever I use the expression I don’t know if I did the right thing. We both realise that she doesn’t have to say a word for me to understand what this signifies. There is no right decision, only decisions. You will hurt people, and you have to get over it. Your boundaries are yours to choose and others may not understand them. It is intention that matters most.

Allowing space for my own complexities doesn’t come naturally. Letting go of the compulsion to explain, taking the risk of not being understood or being thought badly of, are gut-wrenching prospects.

But devoting time to things I don’t believe to be worthwhile is killing my compassion. And the awful backdrop of the Brave New World we find ourselves in today kindles defiance in me as much as it breathes melancholy. I feel that we are inclining more and more towards reductionism and its manifestations are everywhere.

I see it in myself at a personal level when I try to bridge divides that in truth are great chasms in understanding and viewpoint. When I pretend to myself that I can understand someone whose words or actions nevertheless trigger a sense of something deeply wrong, for the sake of being open-minded, for the sake of wanting the world around me to make sense.

Denying my need to let go when there are insurmountable barriers to understanding has created a rage that I have swept aside for so much of my life. Wanting to be likeable, warm-hearted, generous, I have pretended there wasn’t something much fiercer churning away inside me.  

But the only way I stand a chance of understanding anyone is by not trying to be understood by everyone. It seems that the stakes are so much higher these days, with what feels like a world spinning faster and faster out of control.

So I have made myself a promise, because I only have so much space and so much time. I will let go of what I have tried, and failed, to understand or connect with. I will allow myself to rage against injustice and lack of respect in all the forms I encounter them, and I will struggle against my own inclinations to be peaceable and accommodating to people who demonstrate them when I know I am doing it for the sake of social convention, or my belief that things have to be in order or make sense.

But I will keep looking for meaning, nuance and new ways to understand this world that overwhelms me with its complexity and its inconsistency. I will seek out art that disconcerts and unsettles me. I will see the beauty and the brutality in people, but I will not interact meaningfully with them out of a sense of obligation; the ones who get real space are those who spark joy or passion.

I will accept that I may hurt people and that the alternative to doing so is living in a world of bland sterility, where I am afraid to say what I believe to be true. I will stop expecting everything to make sense.

Airports

Always when I’m sitting in airports, I think about goodbyes.

I imagine us all as atoms – propelled like restless spirits in an endless dance of meeting and departure, scattering little pieces of our hearts.

The Taxi Driver Chronicles

Riding a taxi in Egypt. Given that this is an experience that I essentially undertake every day, it’s amazing how hit and miss it is as a process. So many variables affect whether your daily journey will be tolerable, even enjoyable, or whether it will make you want to tear out your own eyebrows, shout at the drivers of all other cars on the road and stamp your feet like a four year old.

It is the perfect metaphorical equivalent of Cairo’s traffic, where there is literally no way of predicting on any given day whether you will find yourself sailing triumphantly over the Nile with a feeling of soaring freedom or stuck, sweaty and miserable, in gridlocked traffic, the bus in front of you belching clouds of black smoke, and the taxi jolting you back and forth as it inches its way forward with desperate, painful slowness.  

One key variable amongst many is the friendliness and attitude of your taxi driver. I’m sure to some extent this is true of taxi drivers anywhere, but really never in any taxi I have taken anywhere else in the world has the driver been so much of a presence, his interests, musical taste, curiosity, mood, sense of humour creating a palpable atmosphere that stays with you long after your journey has ended. No London black taxi cabbies are these, affable and casually knowledgeable about their city. There is no sleek coolness, no stealthy silent manoeuvring across districts and down roads. Taxi drivers here are like the salt, herbs and spices of Egypt itself; they add distinct flavour.  

Recognising this, Egyptian author Khaled al-Khameesi wrote a book of short vignettes entitled Taxi, published just before I moved here. Each story recounts an experience with, or a tale told from the point of view of, a taxi driver – and if you want an insight into the social fabric of Egypt and the issues weaved throughout the country, I would highly recommend reading it.

My plan is not to poorly imitate what someone else has done so well, but really some of the taxi driver encounters I have are too good not to document here.

Take this morning. Personal information and the domains of the curious being generally regarded as public property in an environment where community is so important, there is nothing at all unusual in your taxi driver believing it is his right and his business to ask about your marital status, your plans for having children and whether you are seeking an Egyptian husband. It is one of many notable facets of a country in perpetual contradictory flux, where a taxi driver asks you why you aren’t married yet, but a male pharmacist gets flustered if you ask where the supply of Always is kept.

Anyway, all of this was covered within two minutes of me entering the taxi, along with the questions of my nationality and the length of my stay in Egypt to date. All standard questions that anyone living here will have encountered on a regular basis. Then things got interesting.

A little old lady asked to share the taxi and clambered, frail but animated, into the front seat. She immediately started asking the driver if I was annoyed at him accepting her as a passenger.

No no, he assures her, don’t worry. She’s British but dummha khafeefa (she’s easygoing). She’s been here seven years he adds, with the proprietorial authority of someone who has known me for a whole three minutes.  

Several iterations of this statement are needed on both sides before it is accepted as fact by both, during which time I keep quiet in the hope that the conversation will move on to other topics. No such luck.

Gliding through traffic, the taxi driver cranes his head to look backwards. Ya anissa, ya anissa, are there Muslims in Britain or only Christians?

We have many Muslims in Britain, I answer.

And you? Are you Muslim? You’re working here but not married. Did you come here because you’re Muslim?

I just came here because I’m interested in the country seemed like the best response to balance truth with brevity.  

Aha! His eyes sparkle. But would you think about becoming a Muslim?

Before I can even answer, the old lady jumps in, indignant and admonishing. What are you talking about? We’re all brothers and sisters in the eyes of God! Some of the best people I know are Christian. My doctor is Christian. My pharmacist is Christian. My neighbour is Christian. My grandson’s teacher is Christian. I have…two, four, six….at least six close friends who are Christian! She counts them on her fingers to give the statement an air of incontrovertible finality.

Yes, yes – we are all brothers, the taxi driver agrees hastily. But you know, when she has children… he adds in a low voice.

If she marries a Muslim man her children will be Muslim anyway, the woman counters, entirely without irony.

Yes, and she really should marry a good Muslim man! The taxi driver has regained his enthusiasm for the cause. She is respectful and beautiful…and not married yet!

The old lady pauses, perhaps to let the shock of this powerful statement sink in. I shuffle further down in my seat, intently looking at my phone, praying for light traffic and a speedy arrival at the office, trying to be invisible.

You know… the old lady muses, half-lost in thought, I do want my son to get married. He’s 35 and an engineer. He’s a good man and I do want to find him a wife.

Aywa! The taxi driver’s enthusiasm, unbelievably, still has room to grow. This is perfect! This girl is nice and respectful. She’s lived here seven years, so she obviously loves Egypt.

(Has it been only seven years? Surely this conversation and the taxi ride alone have lasted seven years.)

And look, she’s amoura (she’s lovely). Simultaneously, they both turn around to look at me. I wipe the back of a sweaty palm across my upper lip and try not to look too much like a cornered animal.

Yes yes, very nice, the woman allows. Well I have to think really. He’s an engineer, and a good boy.

Take her phone number! If I was younger, I’d marry her myself. He beams at me.

Hmmm, I suppose I could. The old lady is undecided.

Yalla – take her phone number, the taxi driver urges. You can call her up, arrange for her to speak to your son. Everything will be easy!

Is now the time to tell them I literally never answer my phone, I wonder. Do I finally risk causing offence by telling them I am simply not interested in being fixed up with the old lady’s son – or, indeed, anybody?

Finding myself having the most typically British of internal debates brought with it an irony that was not lost on me. Drenched in social awkwardness, the fear of offending these two very nice, well-meaning, solicitous people, as they busily and happily agreed on my future plans and prospects, blithely unaware of or unconcerned by my intense discomfort at the situation, outweighed said discomfort in a way that surely anyone but a Brit would have found completely ridiculous.

Fortunately, timing was on my side. Arriving at work, I was able to utter a quick goodbye before scuttling to the office like a crab competing for some kind of special Olympics. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought wryly of how we had all conformed so beautifully to national stereotype.

And within minutes of exiting the taxi, with the whole encounter having attained the crystallised sheen of something that has passed, I found myself recounting the story to colleagues, Egyptian and non-Egyptian. And we always laugh in such situations because they seem so improbable on paper, and yet they are an absolute part of many lives here. And though awkward and infuriating at the time, these are things I will one day miss.  

Blue is the colour

Of all colours none has been so recognized and celebrated throughout art and writing for its many depths and hues, its mysterious timbres, as blue.

This awareness forms the backdrop to the first of Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy: Blue. Throughout this sombre, lovely film, blue in its various shades accompanies the protagonist, a grieving Juliette Binoche, as would a latter-day Greek chorus, illuminating her actions, giving emphasis to moments of understated emotion or dramatic tension.

Images or ideas reverberate throughout the film. The flood of light permeating a family room bereft of all contents bar a lampshade made of exquisite blue glass is later echoed by the image of a sugar cube being slowly saturated by liquid as it is gradually lowered into a cup of coffee. The implications are hinted at, rather than spelled out. So does blood seep into clothes after a wound; so can sorrow subsume the human heart.  

Binoche’s emotions, as she tries to navigate a world she doesn’t want to engage with for fear of further pain and loss, play across her face like musical notes within a symphony – neither discordant nor quite harmonizing. The sensuality as she swims alone in a pool of almost electric colour forms an uncomfortable juxtaposition to the sight of the baby rats she cannot bring herself to kill, the sheen of blue only just visible on their translucent skin.

Throughout the film there is interplay between emotion and physical sensation, as gradual revelations of her husband’s secrets emerge, as she starts to rediscover the ability to connect with others. The friendship Binoche establishes with the prostitute who so revels in her work and her sexuality is characterized primarily by tenderness. The casual brutality she initially shows to the man who loves her, in a deliberate reduction of his feelings to mere lust, later gives way to the realization that he, unlike her much-lauded dead husband, wants nothing more deeply than for her talent to be fully acknowledged – paving the way for the possibility of a more profound connection growing between them.

It would be too simplistic to say that blue within this context represents melancholy; the film is both more subtle and more substantial than this. Rather it is interwoven in the narrative through images that are both light and visually arresting. A flash of blue jeans, the light of early morning; Kieslowski’s blue is by turns prosaic and diffident, vibrant and luminous. It is emblematic of having lost what you love, the depth of the loss being uncontainable because it is inescapable. Turn around at the wrong moment and an ordinary object sparks a memory.

But it is also a symbol of the shimmering, ever-changing nature of both love and grief, their encompassing of rage and jealousy, cruelty, kindness, desire and finally a weary, hopeful compassion.   

Ramadan

My mother forgets to feed her animals
because it's only fair.
She rushes to them when
she hears hoarse roosters crowing
and billy goats butting
over a last straw.

This month the moon becomes a princess.
The stars fan her,
Jupiter pours cups of wine,
Mars sings melancholy mawals.
Bearded men holding prayer beads
and yellow booklets stare at her
and point aching fingers at her waist.

In our house we break a fast
with dates from Huun
and glasses of buttermilk.
Then on to bowls of lamb soup
flavored with mint, trays
of stuffed grape leaves,
spiced fava beans drenched
in olive oil and lemon juice.
And that is only the beginning.

The spirits of Johnny Walker and gin
hide in the trunks of white Peugeots.
In the nightclubs of my city, waiters
serve only non-alcoholic beer
and belly dancers cover themselves.

Father of sixteen children, our neighbor
visits bringing two kilos of baklava.
He washes them down with a dozen
demitasses of sweet sage tea.
Before dawn he runs to one
of his two wives, both named Salma,
and loves her hurriedly,
his hands barely touching a breast.


Khaled Mattawa

My only weapon was the word

The beautiful short film Good Night Sarajevo explores the slices of an individual’s humanity that are jeopardised, but also that which is retained and preserved, in times of war and conflict. Woven through the story of one man’s life and wartime experience are both explicit and oblique questions of what it means to tell stories, as an affirmation of what is meaningful in life, rendering the whole film a paean to verbal communication.

Indeed, in one of the most memorable lines of the film, its protagonist, Boban Minic, reveals his creed with the solemnity of an incantation: mi única arma era la palabra.

My only weapon was the word.

Such weapons, it is clear in this context, seek not to wound but to heal. Minic’s relationship with the city he loved and eventually had to leave is threaded with stories of personal loss along with recollections of the social and cultural ties that bound together a place that he describes as having once been a bastion of diversity, replete with art and beauty. He risked his own health and safety to preserve a little of that through his radio program, where talk of the arts, an imagined future and news of estranged families floated on the air, throughout and beyond the city, even as snipers lurked high above its streets.

Director Edu Marín takes pains to emphasise that the story he wanted to tell was not the story of the Balkan wars in any definitive sense, repeating that such a story was not his to tell. Rather, this is the tale of the storyteller himself, of a man who has lived his life according to the maxim that giving a voice to humanity’s highest aspirations helps to free humans from the prisons of our own minds, especially in times of great cruelty and suffering.

Watching this film for the second time with a Serbian friend who lived through the wars, I was struck by her immediate response after it had finished. While Sarajevo as a physical space was completely unknown to her, so much in terms of the common language, songs playing in the background as people talked, short film clips, exerted a nostalgic pull over her senses.

And there is the essence of storytelling if it is done well. In hearing another’s story, we feel a tug at our own memories and perhaps, if we can allow ourselves, our own hopes. To imagine that we humans will ever forget all of the differences that proliferate to create such bitter disputes among us seems naïve, in this era more than ever.

But it is so good to be reminded that everyone has their story to tell.  

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The trailer for Good Night Sarajevo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82p7GXLFsYA

Choices

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey describes a moment where, in encouraging his daughter to share a toy, he inadvertently robs her of her agency and her right to choose. He makes the point that, to really share something, one must first have a full sense of possessing it, of it being ours to give.

It is similar with me and choices. For me to fully live my choices and be at peace with their consequences, I must feel that they are mine to make. I don’t think I realised until tonight how important it is to me to feel that my choices are my own, and how much the feeling of doing something because it is expected of me makes me feel like a hollow shell of a person.

Choosing what I want to do and then acting on that choice feels like the most empowering thing I could possibly do, even if the choice has really terrible consequences. I wonder if it is possible now to reframe my choices, and reframe the narrative of my life that plays in my own head, to remind myself more frequently, and more clearly, that everything I have done in life has been a choice. That even if I didn’t feel that much of what I have done in the past was of my own choosing, that the very process of declining to choose or evading choice is in itself a decision (just not one that I should be very proud of).

And most of all, in reframing those past choices and understanding my reasons for making them, perhaps I can reinforce to myself the message that every moment I find myself in constitutes a choice, that situations can always be altered, that my fear of being trapped or stagnating is a misplaced one. That moment to moment, situations can be altered and different choices made in the future than in the past. Meaning not that bad decisions are reversible, but just that better ones can be made in the future. 

After Eight

I am dancing, one of a mass of rhythmic gyrators in a Downtown bar that calls to mind early illicit house parties. Everyone is drinking (now not-so cheap) beer. We are soaked in sweat and smoke but we smile beatifically at one another.

A wiry man with abundant hair moves across the dance floor, through the pulsing mass of bodies. The track changes to a popular sh3bi song and I start to shimmy, as the music seems to demand it. He looks at me and throws his head back, smiling at the ceiling, raises his arms and shimmies with utter abandon. 

Returning from his moment of solitary communion, the smallest of nods accompanies an impish smile, as if to say to me “Your shimmy wasn’t so bad really”.

Hemingway

Write hard and clear about what hurts is the injunction and I touch the pain with tentative, inquisitive fingers. Like all living things, it breathes.

And it tells me dark things. Whispering my inadequacies; tempting me with half-suppressed desires; taunting me with images of the ideal, of the person I cannot be.

There is no escape. This blade will cut my eyes so I can see clearly, and I will embrace it.

Confronting the paralysing fear of an empty screen or hackneyed, clichéd words. Speaking in half-truths has become second nature to me and my candour assails people as I hold it out as a last desperate weapon. You never used to speak like this, their eyes tell me, you’ve changed.

But my internal voice equivocates, trying to chart a course through tumultuous waters. Some days I am consumed by all the things I cannot alter, the raw unfairness of a world where the colour of your passport matters more than the size of your intellect, where worth is measured by Facebook likes and children die in their beds.

And passion flickers, elusive and intermittent and inconstant as a moth.

Intoxicated, I crave the heady rush of seeking out my fears and I revel in their sharpness. For the first time, I understand people who find pleasure in pain.

A series of thoughts cycle through my churning, restless mind. Times I have let people down, not been what they needed me to be, not been able to give them what they deserved. The stupid decisions, and the brave ones. Words spilled in a reckless, overthought torrent of feeling. Moments of silence, when words should have been spoken. The wrench of intimacy, like ripping off a layer of skin. The person whose touch made me tremble.  

There is no reasoning away the contradictions or the conflicting impulses.

And the pain is clear, and cold, and sweet.  

Only Connect

A beam of white light touches a prism and suddenly both are transformed by a flood of colour.

   

Connection is fear and longing. It leaves me shaken but nourished. How could you ever predict who will utter a word of the language spoken in the deepest recesses of your mind? An ordinary person touches the pressure point unlocking a place you keep hidden and when you look up they are ordinary no more.

And you are soothed in wounded places. And you scratch at them.

Weight of the most powerful life force. They taught me that Namaste was the way of saying “I greet the part in you where we are one”.

And you talk for six hours.

And as you dance the music enters two bodies like a breath. You are suspended in time and space.

And a stranger speaking in a crowded room fills you with such emotion that you don’t trust yourself to reply.

So you rub desperately at the rawness inside you - as if a visceral reaction, any more than an overplayed thought, could possibly offer protection from the corrosive nature of your own self-doubt.
  

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A hand shifts our birdcages around. Some are brought closer. Some move apart. Do not try to reason it out. Be conscious of who draws you, and who not.

International Women's Day

I wish that there did not have to be an International Women’s Day, because the very premise of equality should be that no one group is singled out for special treatment. I wish that a truth which should be self-evident – that we are all equal in our value, regardless of gender, nationality, sexual preference, political persuasion or who our favourite Beatle is – was manifest in the world we live in.

To me, equality is not about trying to make everyone the same – it is about respecting pluralism and giving people the right to have choice and agency in their own lives. And tragically, so many people around the world are still denied this. Why focus on empowering women above other marginalized groups?

Firstly because gender inequality is so pervasive. Women are subject to judgement, scrutiny and a lack of equal opportunities everywhere from the boardrooms of the wealthiest companies to the homes of the most poverty-stricken villages, from government offices around the world to the shops, restaurants and streets of every country.

Secondly because this gender inequality has a negative impact on every other crisis we are facing globally. Undermining the choices and rights of women is not only unethical – it is helping to compound and worsen every problem faced by humanity. Empowering women helps economic growth, improves the health of communities, reduces violence, helps to stabilize population growth and helps with resource allocation (feeding hungry mouths, etc).

Every person should be able to make choices about their own body, who they marry and when. Everyone should be given the chance to receive a good education and to choose what they want to do with it – whether this means working and generating an independent income, using the benefits of that education to raise a healthy, well educated family or both. Nobody should have to live in fear of violence or discrimination – especially not for wanting to live in a world where they have autonomy and agency in their own lives.

Too many people are not given these opportunities. Too many women especially.

So for as long as there needs to be an International Women’s Day – and a Women’s History Month – for us to draw attention to these issues and speak out about them, it makes me hopeful to see how many people have their eyes facing forward, on all the things we still have to work on, but also how many are taking the time to celebrate the strong women in their lives – and the strong men who are not threatened by strong women, but want to work together to build a world where every person has the ability to freely choose how they want to live.

I celebrate all the indomitable women I know and have known. My adventurous mother, who travelled to the UK from New Zealand in her twenties and made a life for herself in an unknown country, little knowing she would one day inspire a daughter to do the same. My beautiful and fierce sister, who has been scaring people who tried to give her crap since she was three years old (and has only got better at it with time). My two grandmothers, whose lives have been so different, but who have handed down to me directly and through my parents the values of hard work, treating people fairly, being part of a community, appreciating what you have and never, ever giving up. My boss, whose great passion in life is women’s empowerment and who earlier today held a conference room full of people completely attentive, rendering them virtually speechless, when talking about it. Um Abdallah: she can electrocute rats, undergo an operation, work nine hours, manage her family and still find time to joke around with me – all in a day’s work. The many smart, creative, unconventional, funny, irreverent, soulful, questioning, compassionate women I know – often deeply stressed and not sure if they’re getting it completely right (who is?) but still so full of inner power.

I also celebrate the many men I am lucky enough to know who support equality in all its forms by supporting the rights of women and being our advocates and partners. My father, who has always supported every (seemingly crazy) career decision I’ve ever made and the change of country it has entailed – even if he didn’t agree with them. An old and dear friend who was the first man I’d ever met to openly proclaim he was a feminist. The incredible guys of Dignity Without Borders, Tahrir Bodyguard, Shoft Ta7arosh, OpAntiSH and others who risked their safety to help ensure that Egyptian women had the same opportunities to have their voices heard as their male counterparts. Men who support the women in their lives to make their own decisions about their education and career prospects and who proudly celebrate their successes. Men who are not afraid to question established beliefs about gender roles and enter into discussions about equal opportunities – even when they know they might receive a tirade from frustrated feminists.  

I can’t wait for the day when International Women’s Day isn’t needed because equality for all is enshrined in our institutions, our ideology and our behaviour – but until that day comes, happy International Women’s Day everyone. 

Detox: all about the juice

They don’t call me Juicy Lucy for nothing.

The last five days have consisted of purely liquid lunches (and breakfasts, and dinners) – and not the decadent, can’t-walk-in-a-straight-line-once-you’ve-finished-them kind.

The cleanse part of the program involves consuming five “meals” a day: vegetable juice for breakfast and mid-morning; soup at lunch and dinner; and a smoothie mid-afternoon. All are made by Anni and hand delivered to your door. Along with this, you drink warm lemon water first thing in the morning, a lot of herbal tea and at least two litres of water.

Of all this, the soups in particular have been a revelation: thick, spicy, flavoursome. I love soup anyway and this has given me great ideas for flavour combinations. Because the idea is to cut out salt, the flavour comes from herbs and spices; and the taste of ginger, cumin or coriander only enhances the flavour of the tomato, beetroot, carrot, pepper and other base ingredients. The soups change daily and this, along with the fact that I’m allowed to heat them, has made them the uncontested food highlight of each of the five days.

And by “food highlight” I do of course mean “overall highlight” because something that has really been hammered home to me throughout this whole process is quite what an important place good food has in my life. Not only is the relationship between food, physical energy levels, sleeping patterns, focus and mood much stronger than I had really realised previously, the psychological impact of eating food I enjoy is huge for me.

Food and sleep have become my drugs of choice. I am so rock n’roll.

Without wanting to sound too evangelical (and please don’t call me Gwyneth), I am really amazed by how much better I feel since I’ve started doing this. My skin is softer; my eyes are brighter and less puffy; I wake up more easily and can go an entire day without yawning. My mind is sharper; and now that the period of turbulent emotions seems to have passed I am making better decisions, focusing more easily, less troubled and preoccupied than usual. I feel lighter, more playful; I have more appetite.

Which is good because tomorrow I’m back on solid foods and the prospect of eating avocado and nuts in my salad is the source of great anticipation. I’ll probably pass out the day I’m finally allowed a burger.

Detox: the fluctuations

Pre-tox (aka the period of blissful ignorance)

This is the gradual weaning-off period, where over the course of four days you try to prepare your body for the barrage of nutrients it’s going to be ingesting – and more importantly for the absence of all the crap it’s used to.

Day 1 saw me drink my last cup of coffee with ceremonial deliberation and hold a kind of impromptu hen party with Rasha (a lot of beer; no male strippers) to say goodbye to my old habits.

Days 2-4 involved a gradual reduction of all the food and drink that needed to be cut during the detox, which I undertook with all the nonchalance of one destined to be felled by hubris. Thai beef curry …who needs you? Bread and peanut butter? I laugh in your face. Chorizo and batata? I could give you up anytime.

I am now seeing so many batata carts as I walk around the city, I suspect they might be a mirage. Meanwhile my poor bemused colleagues have got used to my plaintive face as I ask to inhale their open jars of peanut butter and steaming cups of coffee, treating me with the cautious sympathy you would reserve for someone who’s just on the brink of losing the plot.

Days 1-4 (aka the period where pride comes before a fall)

The first day of the proper detox program I admit felt easy. The way the program is structured means that you eat regularly, so unlike a lot of dieting or even fasting, hunger pangs are not really part of your experience. Breakfast is a mixture of fruit supplemented by vegetable juice (prepared by Anni and delivered to your door); you snack mid-morning – fruit or nuts; lunch (also with vegetable juice) is a salad with some protein; mid-afternoon you drink another juice, this time sweet; dinner is another salad. You are encouraged to vary the fruit and veg you consume, as you will be getting different vitamins from each item. You are also advised to eat organic food, as an essential part of the detox is eliminating any chemical residue from pesticides.  

All went well until the evening, when I decided to go for a walk. In 30 minutes of meandering through Cairo’s streets, you would imagine I would have encountered enough to keep my mind off food.

You would be wrong.

I walked past the Yemeni restaurant, Hardees, Pizza Hut, shops selling nuts, shops selling sweets. They might as well have been calling me by name. Before long, I had Yemeni bread, curly fries and pieces of baklawa dancing along the street next to me. I’m telling you, those carbohydrates know how to move. They are funky. Were they real? I was certainly in no position to judge.

After that low point, things stabilised.

There are definitely worse things to be eating every day than fresh fruit and vegetables. And once you know that salad is basically all you’ll be eating for three weeks, it turns out you become a lot more creative about what you put into it. You discover combinations you had never realised would be so delicious – like strawberries and basil, delectable when eaten together. You also learn weird and wonderful facts with which to dazzle others in the future (ahem). Whoever knew for example there were so many different kinds of lettuce, and that some of them could be almost creamy in texture or have bright red stalks?

The most immediate, and most welcome, surprise was how much and how well I started sleeping. Having struggled to fall asleep unless absolutely exhausted for all of my adult life, I suddenly found myself sleeping easily and deeply – and for long, long periods. It was almost as though a switch had been flipped in my body, telling it that now was the time to catch up on the 15-year sleep debt it’s been walking around with. And now my body just wants to sleep all the time – although when I’m awake I feel more alert than I have in ages.

Days 4-8 (aka the period where I just don’t know what’s going on)

After a few days of essentially hibernating at home, it became necessary to interact with the real world – and not just by going to work. There were birthday parties to go to, friends to see, things I needed to take part in.

I rarely think of myself as having a will of iron, but really after this period they will have to name a new house after me in Game of Thrones.

Test number one – work event at the GrEEK Campus, hosted by Abraaj. Voya and I enter a room in which there are probably more glasses of wine and juice than there are people. “Mmmm, imported beer” Voya effuses, while I sip my water and try not to look like Scrooge. Later as we leave, Voya eschewing the free food in a gesture of solidarity, the manager of the GrEEK Campus comes running after us to ask why we are leaving before we’ve eaten. I growl inwardly.

Test number two – Rasha’s (first) birthday party, at her house. I arrive with my large salad and start munching it while we await the birthday girl and everyone else awaits pizza. People keep asking me, innocently, why I’m dieting and I keep trying to explain that it’s a detox intended to increase energy. I sense that my constant yawning is not helping my cause. My friends are kind people but they can’t resist waving pizza, luxury chocolate cake and beer under my nose gleefully. “Trust me – I’m a doctor” Wael says, eyes gleaming.  

Test number three – Rasha’s (second) birthday party, a salsa night. This night is essentially a blur of faces and hugs, the occasional drink being waved at me in friendly deliberate provocation. I start crying for no discernible reason as I’m getting ready to leave. Strange times.

The see-sawing emotions and the craving for sleep as if it’s an incredible drug continue for days, accompanied by vivid, perplexing dreams. I honestly can’t remember my sleep being this refreshing and restorative since I was a child and when awake I find I’m much more capable of focusing and remembering information than usual. Whatever is going on in my head, it’s clear that there is some deep processing taking place, as my mind and emotions try to sort out my feelings about incidents old and new.  

Detox: the decision

I’ve decided to go on a detox.

I like to think of my relationship with food as a love affair. There is passion, yearning when I am deprived of a food I’m craving, intense satisfaction when the desire is fulfilled, the occasional bad experience that shakes me to my core, making me wonder if I’ll ever enjoy food again…and then before I know it I’m back in the saddle, feasting once more.

But lately, the relationship has been turning sour. I first noticed it during Ramadan, when daily fasting plays havoc with my body anyway. It got me thinking about how much what we do (or don’t) feed ourselves affects our every waking moment. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt truly energised, nor could I shake the feeling that a general inertia, or sluggishness, interspersed with occasional mania, was the normal state of being not just for me but for many of the people I know. The feeling that every activity was an effort to be psyched up for, physically and mentally, and that a nap would always be welcome. A feeling that I’m certain I’m not supposed to be experiencing with such regularity this side of fifty.

Like many people, I consider myself healthy. Healthy enough, anyway. I eat vegetables. I go to the gym. I dance. I don’t binge eat Lindt chocolate bunnies (except at Easter).

But I hardly ever get enough sleep. 2am on a weeknight is not a rarity for me, or anyone in Cairo – truly the city that never sleeps. My days and nights are constantly crammed with activities. My time is badly organised. Otlob (Egypt’s online food delivery service) is both my best friend and my worst enemy; I order from it every day. I consume a lot of caffeine – sometimes more than six cups of tea and coffee in a day. Finally able to shake the shisha addiction I acquired shortly after arriving here five years ago, I started smoking the occasional cigarette as a substitute. So nights spent with friends who smoke (many – this is also the city that never breathes clean air) quickly turned into beer and cigarettes for all.

This feels like Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Lucy, and I am not as healthy as I think I am.

So, I decided to detox. I felt that I needed to do something radical, to shake myself out of at least some of the bad habits, or at least reduce the impact they were having on my life. I’m sick of feeling tired all the time, of catching colds that last for a month and of feeling that many of the things I most want to be doing (writing, new ideas for work projects, further education, conversations) have to be put off to some indefinite time in the future when I have enough energy to tackle them. I have had enough of feeling as though I am sleepwalking through my life.

And there are more tangible health worries. Watching friends who have faced cancer scares, some very serious. The fear of aging. The realisation that despite growing up in the English countryside, surrounded by cats and horses, I have somehow in the last few years developed an allergy to both. Noticing that the hayfever I’ve had since I was a child now causes me to wheeze when the pollen count is really high.

Knowing that I stood no chance of sticking to the detox plan if I embarked on it alone, and wanting the guidance of someone I could trust, I contacted Anni, the founder of Pure Scandic, who I had met socially and who I knew offered tailored juice cleanses and detox programs. She recommended a 19 day program: seven days of a raw fruit and vegetable diet either side of a five day juice cleanse. Cramming my body to capacity with nutrients and eliminating all the bad (but delicious) things. Supplementing all the fruit and veg with some protein, but eliminating all meat, alcohol, caffeine, processed carbohydrates, added salt and sugar.

So this is what lies ahead of me for the next (nearly) three weeks. It’s quite a feat for a girl who would happily live on sticky rice and koshary if left to her own devices. Let’s see how this goes!