I drift in and out of so many hobbies. Generally, I don't mind that because I always come back with a fresh sense of curiosity. However, I find myself getting into the habit of reaching for my phone to scroll, and scroll, and scroll during my down time. I do have the awareness to identify this as an issue. But the brain yearns, and the lethargy craves ease. Ease of access, ease of comprehension, and ultimately, ease of reward. The glowing rectangle becomes hypnotic, and here I am all glass-eyed and drooling.
I exaggerate, of course. I am able to step away from it often enough. To read, to write, to make art, and to go out and walk around the neighbourhood; touching grass and such. But in times of great stress, in times of struggle, passive entertainment masquerades as a lifeline. It does very well to distract, to sooth my racing mind. So, I scroll to the point where I am not entirely sure I am actually taking in any of this information. It all blurs together into a blob of lights and sounds. My notebook helps with taking me out of this void. If I see something interesting, I stop and note it down, and I make sure to pursue it further either at the moment or later. However, there is a level of dependency that I am not satisfied with and I am currently working on addressing.
Now, one thing I want to actively avoid is replacing one dependency with another or to replace one all-in-one device with another. What I am trying to do is to revert back to days when the computer (and the internet) used to be a place I went to. So, I assessed what I wanted this experience to be like and began customising my laptop to meet those needs. Of course, I am aware that this remains a form of escapism, but it is an escapism that is easier to walk away from. An escapism that is less passive. The physical characteristics of the device allows for this type of relationship. I do not believe escapism is inherently bad; it can be quite healthy and nurturing. The kind of escapism I found myself lost in was and remains damaging though. What I seek now is to use my laptop as a tool to enable and encourage creativity, and to provide space for curiosity and wonder.
Games have become a good vehicle for that. Showing my age here, but I have been gaming ever since my parents gifted me the PS1 when it first came out. Although, I distinctly remember playing games on the home PC back when it ran DOS. Even before that, I remember having many a knock-off Sega and Atari machines. Good times, lots of bleeps and bloops. The most recent consoles I own are the PS4, which I picked up in 2015, and the Switch Lite, which I got a couple of years ago. I still enjoy these on and off, but I missed gaming on a PC/Laptop. There is an intimacy to it that is quite satisfying to me. So, I picked up a couple of small indie games off of Steam. It has been a joy to explore the massive catalogue on there and to find interesting projects developed with passion. I mean, I cannot claim to know the developers and artists involved, but still, one can tell when a creative work is made with love. I go for these types of games because a) My laptop can perform alright with larger games, but I would rather not push it, and b) It is just fulfilling to support small studios and developers in their creative endeavours. Besides, if I am keen on playing larger scale games, I can always pick something up for the PS4. Although, I guess it is slowly dying out at this point. Can get some good deals on used games from CEX though! Anyway, here are some of the games I have been enjoying recently:
1. The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa
2. Verne The Shape of Fantasy
3. Narita Boy
Here is my body walking down the pavement. Let's say we are going through Leith Walk past St. James and toward Leith proper. There is a bit of sun but without much humidity; almost taps-aaf. I have cheap earphones in to hold off the city, but not seal it out. I feel my body. I am contained inside of it (often derogatory). The thighs have the intention of chafing and I'm starting to sweat. I am running on four hours of sleep and around one hundred and twenty minutes of blue light, blurred dreams, and cat tomfoolery. The senses are slamming at the walls all snarls and white foam, ready to consume before I open my eyes in resignation. I try to pace myself.
I find focusing on one thing (or one type of thing) at a time helps mitigate the sensory overload. For a time at least. I try not to focus on people because I don't want to creep them out; you don't wanna be that person. But folk are always interesting. The fashion in the neighbourhood alone is something I find enjoyable. I am not a big fan of being perceived as a general rule, which is ironic given the nature of my day job. However, it cannot be helped, people are interesting. It’s like when you are passing by ground floor flats and you know you shouldn’t peep, but you’re just a nosy fellow. You gotta do it on the sly. People ARE interesting. Especially around these parts, where folk from all walks of life go about their day. People from all over the world, those who are visiting and those who have made a home for themselves in the neighborhood. So, even though I often fail to avoid watching folk, I try to look and not stare. I just take a quick mental snapshot which I can wonder over on my own time. I find myself asking: What is your story? Have you had a nice day? What are you having for tea this evening? What are you carrying in your heart? Do you experience existence as I do? What keeps you going? The questions are endless and I begin to feel the senses squirming against my attempts at control.
But I am conscious of my skin. I realise there is a stray bit of cat litter in my green sneakers. I start wondering if I am wearing that white undershirt, the one that smells of damp, where the stench remains dormant until I start sweating. Cannot seem to fix it. Foiled by laundry detergent once again! It is not working today, I think. I can't focus. My eyes dart from one spot to another. Did someone steal two of the Elm Row pigeons? At least my favourite is still sitting there. Silly boy. The tram rolls by with an airline ad. FLY BETTER in large type so you can see. Big smiles everyone! Some kid is doing a wheelie down the road while a gran drags her shopping trolley; the wheels squeak. Signs and posters, the writing on the walls. The pawn shop has set up RGB speakers with some radio station advertising one thing or another. 24-hour bakery and a train set. Great metallic acrylics right there. I feel the thud of each step in my joints. There's dampness on my eardrum. Focusing becomes an impossible task so I stop trying. I let it wash over me. I sink into myself. The sights and sounds are endless and they morph together into a roar demanding to be heard, to be witnessed. But no, no, they don't make demands. What would an aged cobblestone need of me?
My balance is all over the shop. I try not to bump into folk. My eyes narrow and my forehead prickles. I remind myself that they are not the enemy and I am not a monster. Neither the people nor the sights or sounds or textures or smells or experiences. There is nothing to fear. I remind myself that I want to observe. I greed, not in malice, but in awe. My body yearns for stories and my need is endless. I need to absorb the world, to sustain myself on life and all of existence. To hold them in my heart; the tragedy of being finite.
Egypt is an odd place. I mean, you do not exist for this long without acquiring particular quirks. One of these oddities relates to languages. Growing up in Cairo (at least in certain parts of Cairo), one could get roasted for not being able to speak English. At the same time, one could get roasted for speaking English fluently, and double roasted for speaking with a perceived Western accent. But then again you could get roasted for speaking fluently in an Egyptian accent. There is a lot of roasting going on is what I am trying to say. Folk would end up code switching depending on who they are dealing with. This kind of code switching is usually so smooth it would baffle an outside observer.
Almost all schools teach English with varying degrees of depth. On the one hand, it is taught as a small part of an otherwise Arabic curriculum, where you have an English course but everything else is taught in Arabic. On the other hand, it is the opposite. My own education was closer to the latter type, becoming more anglicised as I progressed further. Now, we cannot talk about language in this context without at least highlighting the Class side of things. Being fluent in English is a class signifier, just like French was in the 1800’s. However, this became less binary as the country developed post occupation. Still, there is an assumption (and I am generalising here, but not by much) that being fluent in English flags one as possessing some level of wealth. This has permeated into Egyptian culture, especially when it came to media consumption. Some folk only consumed only Arabic media, others only English, with a spectrum in between. My own experience growing up leaned more toward English language media when it came to books and music. I did enjoy Arabic language films and series, but again, they still had to compete with Western media, which seemed much more fascinating.
As my understanding of the world developed, I began to ask why that was the case. Why was I more comfortable with Western media? Well, my education to begin with. I simply practiced English more. One might wonder how existing in Cairo did not count toward practicing Arabic. Folk may know that written and spoken Arabic can be quite different. Even spoken Arabic itself differs from region to region. Basically, written Arabic, at least in literature and technical works is presented with various degrees of linguistic complexity (to one who is out of practice) depending on the author, but overall, it is a lot more dense than spoken Egyptian Arabi. This made it less accessible to me. Exaggerating a bit here, but it seemed like there was a world of difference between what you would hear at home and in the city and what you read in books.
I was having a conversation with M. (my sister) about this and we realised that we consumed a lot more Arabic language media when we were kids. Children’s books, comics, radio shows, etc. So, it seems like the further we progressed in school, the less Arabic language stories we were reading. We also thought genres were quite limited for some reason. It did feel like genres were limited in terms of films as well, mainly comedy, action, and drama. At least in the mainstream, which is what we had access to at the time.
Another reason I leaned more toward Western media was due to my own bias and my internalised classism. Upon self-reflection, I realised that I unconsciously carried with me the aforementioned idea of English = Fancy, Rich, Refined, and Arabic = Base, poor, ignorant. Even though I did not grow up wealthy, I still carried that thought within me. I was lucky enough to be exposed to ideas during my late teens and early twenties that facilitated that self-reflection. This revelation was uncomfortable, of course. It carried with it a lot of shame and guilt. Almost a betrayal. But there was nothing to do but to face that shame, face that truth, and find ways to address the issue. So, I began to read more Arabic works and found a lot of joy in that. I am still not at a place where I can say that my reading is balanced, but I strive. Once I moved to Scotland, it became harder to find Arabic books. However, that made things more exciting somehow. Now every time I visit Cairo, my sister and I go to Diwan in Heliopolis and hunt for books from my reading list. As a foreigner in a foreign land, these became a safety line, a link to my home and my people.
This serves as a bit of a background on my experience with language, which is a topic that has been on my mind recently. I initially wanted to discuss my inner voice in the context of being bi-lingual but figured it would be good to provide a background before getting into it. I was musing on whether I thought in Arabic or in English, and how that impacts my thinking process, especially when considering this from a critical perspective. So, thank you for reading and be sure to look out for further posts on the topic.
I have been an avid reader since my teenage years. Of course, there were the ups and downs of the hobby over the past two decades as life changed and such, but overall, I am quite happy with my consistency. My day job requires a lot of nonfiction reading, so the scope of my leisure reading has focused on Fantasy and Sci Fi, but I also enjoy ancient texts. I still read literary fiction but at a lower rate compared to the former. The same goes for non-job-related nonfiction and Arabic works. Although, I like to take my time with those. I am also a big fan of audiobooks, especially for things like Star Wars novels, 2000AD tales, dramatised novels, etc. A hell of a good time to be honest.
Over 2024-2025, I started organising my reading habit a bit more. I was never one for reading lists, but I recently started keeping a pocket notebook where I write down any music, films, artworks, and books that I hear about and want to explore further. Kind of like a key to the algorithm’s exit door. My notetaking is chronological; I just tag the note with ‘Film’, or ‘Book’, and that’s that. Every now and then I bring forward previous notes and catagorise them into lists with check boxes to make sure I take time to locate and explore the items. Long story short, here is my current reading list in no particular order:
So… only a couple of books, really. I have already picked up and read some of these, but I am on the hunt for the rest. The search itself is such a joy, especially because I am avoiding online purchases. So, catch me around Edinburgh bookshops on the weekends!