#Africa

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    Trilemma

    I am standing now on crossroads, in a serious acute trilemma. I am seeing three clear paths to choose from for my future life and the irony is my heart is divided for all three. A long time back Ertyass asked me of why it is not possible to love 2 persons and the whole world at the same time, i was naive and emotional back then but while standing on this cross road right now, i am remembering her words. I want to live all these three lives that i define but my heart is equally divided. The tiny hearts within my heart city are lobbying based on their…

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    Night and Day

    Night:“A perfect naked moon and still something is missing, isn’t it”. That was a surprise statement by Ertyaas……She seemed to be in a somber mellowy mood today, for she always talked about hope and today she seemed to be standing on the dark side of the world (or may be i thought that way)…. It was a perfect moon view from my Dar-es-Salam apartment balcony today though i missed the moon rising from the sea. The moon was coloring the whole sea in her own yellow color, and there was one ship made of lights completing the whole portrait like a mole on her infinite white beauty.The song playing on…

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    Lions…Family…India..Politics…Dolphins

    With torches in our hands, me and my newly acquainted family member Sobi were going towards our camp when we saw three lions just few meters away from our tent. The torches were more to see any wild beast around then to find the way in the dark jungle, and we unluckily saw what we did not wanted to see. It is so strange, sometimes we look around just to ‘not to see’ what we donot ‘want to see” and assuring ourselves of being in control of only that frozen moment in the ambiance around, knowing in our hearts only that every coming moment is as uncontrollable, and this was…

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    Haunted house

    A house which remains empty for a while often becomes a haunted place for the ghosts to live. Perhaps that has happened to me too, but the worst thing to imagine is am I becoming habitual of living with these ghosts ? these ghosts, these intangible invisible beings living in the deep corridors of my mind, jumping infront of me all of a sudden, from this smell door or that feeling window, or popping out of the drawer or even inside the fridge whenever i move from one freezing thought to another….. reminding me of their silent presence in most creative ways possible.Sometimes they show up in large numbers, dancing…

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    The longest night

    Yesterday 21st december I celebrated the Yalda night with my newly found persian friend and his mother in Dar-es-Salaam. Shab-e-Yalda is the longest night in the year , and for some reason i enjoyed the persian optimism, of the longest night being over and now the days will start growing, the morning will be coming earlier second by second, day by day, everyday…………We started with the dry fruits fresh from persia, followed by water melon and pomegranates, with the Hafiz recitation of peotry singing at the back. And then our friend played with his first love Santoor, filling the room with the persian musical notes . These persian people, they…

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    We are two nations living in one land. who doesnot understand each other

    Right in the middle of a lovely hilly city of Kigali in a land locked African country, lies the white building, built to remember the killing of millions. It was my second trip to this country which is also called a country of thousand hills, and i always felt good about the tranquility of the place, but after visiting this white building i was silent and this silence was not a satisfying one. It was the silence asking all of us on to what level of madness we humans can go. The building starts with the pictures and history about the divisions of hutu and tutsi tribe by the Belgians;…

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    Istanbul to Dar

    Dear ErtyaasA beautiful apartment facing the enormous indian ocean, a long balcony to look at the passing boats and ships,the rising sun from the depths of the ocean, the sea changing its colors from white to yellow to blue to black and then a silvery white, as if a child is born in the morning and grows old with the moon the same day………… my new nest where i am trying to settle just like a ghost trying to settle up in a big palace, not wanting to be disturbed by the events around, and yet determined to live…… some times i think I too am becoming a ghost, a…

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    Black Jack…..

    Playing black jack is like passing a complete life in a fast forward…. each card presenting us with options… each hand representing chances and choices… each deal showing how the people around us are reacting to decisions of there lives, enjoying, celebrating the fruits of mere luck or being concerned of loosing what is already there…. and the dealer like a god in real life, in his own humble way, keeps on inciting people to play though having a conviction of wining in the end all what is laid on the table. Is it not so similar to what life is all about, just a bit more slower in passing…

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    My “hope” mistress… A converstion

    I want to write something so desperately today….. But the words are running far away from me, and like an old lion I am running aimlessly for them… I tried getting hold of this word desire but to no use… she was so close for a while and so far suddenly now….i looked for the word life and no success either….she is keeping a distance like the two rail tracks, always a step ahead…… a last try I did catching happiness but like an inexperienced jockey, the happiness horse easily got rid of me, wounding me seriously….. I finally am giving up the idea of hope now…. Sitting for a…

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    The water falls … called time

    “Are you religious” asked her…. a difficult question in a place like this i thought… “who created the water, why is the water falling down” asked my friend Tawfiq……and i started thinking if this is just a coincidence every body is becoming philosophical or is it some old witch doctor’s spirit still floating around Wli’s water fall putting all these questions in our minds……It was a beautiful place, a big water fall i havent seen that big before in my life, like an amphitheater, the mountain covering the three sides and the stage is hazed with water actors playing their final acts of martyrdom,happily charging towards their own death with…

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    Miles to go before i sleep….

    I laughed after a very long time, and laughed like hell.. there is this laugh which is unstoppable, you try your best but you simply can’t and you just laugh ,and that laugh happened to me..Even Ertyaas was looking at me with a surprising smiling look. Sitting at the main center square of Amsterdam’s red light area, where the smell of hash is making all of us high, we discussed on the same question of what to answer if our child asks the reason of creating her…. and she insisted on me being afraid of the responsibility and i told her i want to adopt a child instead of having…

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    Sitting on Kafka’s shore….thinking…..waiting……!

    Kafka’s shore is where things transform and become better or worse , the reality becomes a dream , the concept of time shrinks and expands with the amount of emotions we want to live in them and that’s how Ado’s beach happened to me. A place where a great river enters into an even greater sea,all eternal….all symbolica lone tree… a lonely fisherman…. a fish that wants to be caughta river which knows its destiny …. a sea which accepts all I am beginning to see an irreversible change happening in me, as if I am being pulled into higher concentrations of existence ,these connectivity of symbols showing a way,…

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    Fading laughter (A Ghanian poem)

    It is not all laughter, all the time.Who can laugh when the roof leaksAnd the walls give way to floods?Laughter is the seasoning of salt, andSalt is not food, but a seasoning for food.They have their sorrows, these men of the landPoverty stalks them by the hourAnd the Kente is a flesh in their lives: (Kente is a ghanian traditional cloth)Handed down through the rungs of the yearsFrom uncle to nephew through mother’s streamTimes disintegrating fingers, have by stealth,Loosened the threadsWhere the weaver of bonfire had joined the stripsThe dyes in the colors, red, blue , gold and greenSapped by the devilry of age,Have paled to where they can fade…

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    Raw Happiness. Some thing we lost in my land……

    ” I think we modern people have forgotten the taste of real happiness” i said to ertyass, and she frowned at me as if not understanding what i really meant. I was sitting with a kind girl who invited me on a local Ghanaian music concert, the ambiance was quite bohemian, with people who were still trying to live the hippie dream and the university students who were still forming their dreams……. the musicians started playing instruments i never seen in my life, instruments you may laugh at seeing them but all having such raw but mellow and pure sounds that you become entranced as if some old voodoo spell…

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    Holly Un-happned…

    ” I know we have just met but can you promise me some thing…..” I was lost in my thoughts when she asked and I for no reason was ready for everything, and still I don’t know whether she asked much off me or given more….…. It was a long night, and I am trying to collect those past butterfly moments now …. She had a very sublime but blunt style of entering into your thoughts and then letting you fly with the flow, moment by moment, sentence by sentence, note by note, setting up the overture, raising up the tempo, as if a musical conversation is happening between two…

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    Holly….

    “Is this a good book?” she said. And that was the beginning of a long conversation that is still ongoing till this date. Holly, like her name had something holistic in her, as if you are talking not to a person but with thoughts without any efforts, free, sublime and serene thoughts. She was coming to ghana for her vocations and for drumming lessons and we met on the plane…….I said ” not much to see here, but few good deserted beaches and some poverty shock”… but when I met her the second time, I had to say that I am seeing africa for the first time with you. She…

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    Stray thoughts on Kokrobite beach…..

    For the past few days now I am listening to some europian music, I think it is french and italian and somehow enjoying it a lot although not understanding a word of it…..Made me think today of this music I am listening to… these words possibly having totally different meanings tied to it, possibly talking about some tangible things and I thinking them otherwise, taking them for some ode of old love…….like this song “La Mer” which I now know is about the sea…though somehow it is tied to old love hanging always around us like the sea……. Made me think of do we all create our own realities to…

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    Remember, Remember, the 5th of September

    5th September 2008….An other day passed in my human life. Wondering around the streets of Stockholm, i finally settled on a bench in front of Strut-Gallerian near Kungsgatan Ostermalmstorg, and allowed my self again to break into those tiny pieces of my intangible but solid existence…..these pieces, “memories”, “emotions”, “destiny”, to name a few; all having their own lives and their own deaths and all detached from each other like the crowd i see now on this busy street… all in pursuit of their own happiness. The “Memory”, thinking about all the people I want to remember and all i don’t want to remember and trying to find happiness in…

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    Transit lounges…..

    I found my self on a transit lounge again, in a different land and in a different time. This time being in AddisAbaba(Ethiopia) and with a different person, a young man to pass the next 5 hours.Transit lounges sometimes become so symbolical and majestic to me, as if depicting the whole world in a small place. Allot of people from distant worlds and different times, trying to make their way from one gate to another, all these people acting like ships, floating in the sea of time, carrying loads of memories and experiences and a desire to keep the ship moving. The standing aero planes becoming the vessels of “desires”,…

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    Freedom…….

    Freedom…. One of the things I am enjoying in africa is getting a lot of time to read and think which keeps me busy most of the time. I recently finished two very long and great books. “The road to freedom” by Nelson Mendela and “Shantaram” by Gregory Roberts. Both were autobiographies, the first one about a freedom fighter fighting for his countrymens’ freedom from his own countrymen, the second about a freedom fighter fighting for his own freedom from his own countrymen…….. Nelson spending his 27 years in prison in the persuit of freedom for his people and Gregory breaking the prison and living for years on run for…