How Can I Doubt My Heart?

At dawn, I checked the day's temperature on my phone, it was reading 22 C, and by midday, it was going to rise up to 32 C (I have yet to familiarize myself to Fahrenheit ). I made my mind to leave early for library so by midday, when I am out of fuel, I could come back home. At bus stop, I met my Muslim neighbor and as conversation started, I told him, what was on my mind, "It is 22 C now and going to be 32 C by midday. It is a bad news in Ramadan." His reply was a usual Muslim's answer, but it really struck me, as I realized that I am actually complaining, "The longer and hotter is the day, the greater is the reward by Allah"... I felt like, if I was a King in ancient Babylon, I would had failed in renewing my rights to throne for the coming year. 

In ancient Babylon, the new year was beginning by a ceremonial ritual to purify the city. The King, as head of the state had to prove himself as a purified person in order to get approval of high priest for next year as ruler: "According to protocol, the king would enter the temple of Marduk, Babylon’s chief god, and tell the god that he hadn't done anything wrong in the last year—for example, slapped the cheek of any of his subjects. The high priest then slapped the king but good; if the king’s eyes teared up from this unjust punishment, he was telling the truth, and Marduk approved him to rule for another year."

Well, usually when one realizes that he is complaining for nothing, one might doubt the sanctity of his heart. Of course, if I was a dead citizen of ancient Egypt, I had to be scared of facing Anubis ( having a human body and the head of a jackal), the first god of death for weighing my heart, as it would prove that I had lived an unjust life (while, in fact, my heart was heavy, because I had lived complaining about troubles that I had faced).

It is month of Ramadan and the month of self-accountability, but I have no way to measure my heart (For that I need Anubis' weighing machine) but what I can tell with certainty, is that I do not have a good heart as  the two teen girls, Malala Yousafzai and Anne Frank has/had.

Anne Frank, the teenage Jewish girl who wrote her diary in hiding and died in the Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15, writes in her diary, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” This sentence of Anne echoes in my heart, whenever, I doubt someone's heart (for being unfair) or my own heart for being egoistic or judgmental at times. The Malala's (a Pakistani teenage girl who was shot by Taliban for writing a diary for BBC Urdu, detailing her daily experiences during Taliban's control of Swat Valley ) response to Taliban who attacked to kill her is reaffirmation of Anne's belief in people's hearts. She says, "I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him."

My dedication to these two courageous-innocent hearts 

I can only believe in goodness of human heart, if religion and ideology doesn't change it. Either, it was ancient Babylon, ancient Egypt or Jew or Muslim, a human heart is sacred and remains the same, unless we doubt its existence.

To Victims of Quetta

As humans, we are not that different physically and biologically, but in terms of hearts and minds, each of us are world apart from the rest of us. We can't feel the immensity of a loss just by mere names unless we know, what was going in their hearts and minds. How they became the persons, they were. What were their fears, their passions, their struggles and their visions. How many eyes have been waiting with patience to see them grow up. How many hearts were becoming impatience not seeing them for a while. 

The words betray me, if I try to paint the holes in the hearts of the loved ones of the victims. I am just unable to create a body of flesh with a soul just by words. I can just look up at heavens and silently question each torn up fallen leaf. 

The Damn Solution!

There is a Farsi saying, "The one bitten by snake fears black and white rope". I saw a demo of this saying at the local store. I was in the store to buy some essentials and there was news on TV about the shootings on pro-Morsi protesters. The Algerian guy was nodding his heads and keep saying, "This is exactly what happened in Algeria. May Allah save Egypt". Despite being in the favor of separation of religion and state, I share his fears. Violence may begin on a small level and on a single issue, but it soon grows to bring in unexpected issues and draw in more players and in no tome can go out of everybody's control. This is what happening in Syria. It is no more a revolt for democracy but wars inside wars. The dynamics of population is not as easy as zealous rebel youths think or some planners out there think. The population is a crowd of diverse interest groups that are so connected to each other, that if one group is imbalanced, it is going to imbalance all other groups. I really like the example of solving malaria problem in Borneo by WHO (Word Health Organization),

In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization (WHO) had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. DDT killed mosquitoes and malaria declined, but roaches, which have a high DDT tolerance, survived. Gecko lizards feed on roaches and started sickening from DDT that they were getting from eating roaches. The sickened geckos were easy to catch by village cats and the cats started dying by getting DDT from sickened geckos. By decline of cats, the rats started moving from forest into the villages. To solve the problem of plague-bearing rats, the Borneo authorities parachuted in fresh cats, which having driven off the rats. The cats the started catching back geckos. The decline in number of geckos resulted in enormous increase in number of caterpillars which geckos had kept in control by feeding on them. Now, the village roofs started to collapse by these caterpillars. 

People were hoping that Arab Spring will solve the problem of tyranny in Middle East but like DDT solution for malaria, it is creating new problems. I can just hope that Egyptian people will not take the road Syrians or Algerians had taken. 

Sorry Muhammad Morsi !!!

A twist in the legend

To my understanding, the legend of Adam and Eve is about desire of a surreal place for home (Garden of Eden: the original home) and the inherent contradiction of human choice (Fruit of Knowledge at cost of losing the original home OR comfort zone). There is an additional factor in this legend, and that is the irresistible urge of making a choice under inherent pressure of curiosity. Many bring harms to themselves just to satisfy their curiosity. Some get addicted to drugs, being just curious about the experience at the beginning for example. 

At times, we like to be poetic in our thinking and I categorize legends as part of poetry (They are as surreal as any other form of poetry, and there is no reason for excluding them from poetry). Here is my play with Adam and Eve's legend:

If knowledge was the fruit that Adam and Eve chose at the cost of losing their place of origin, then every man should be scared of knowledge as something dangerous. Instead we look to knowledge as the only tool that has the capacity to turn the earth into Garden of Eden. The only thing that humans are equally scared of is death. If I have to write the legend of Adam and Eve, I replace the fruit of knowledge with fruit of death ("Every soul shall taste death").