You.

You’re so important to me,

So important.

You give me things no man can ever give me; balance, truth, love, appreciation, stability. You give me back my reason, you take me back to myself when I lose myself.

You came when I needed to start from the beginning, to go back to the start, in the midst of all the chaos, pain, sadness, violence, aggression, disappointment, lies, depreciation, my soul screamed STOP! STOP! Go back! This can’t be my reality! Start again! Go back to the beginning, I want to be born again, I want another chance, a fresh start, a clean slate.

That’s why you came, I needed to see myself born again, only this time I was wanted, loved, appreciated, cared for, protected. It’s so perfect, you’re so perfect, I’m so perfect in your eyes.

Jori and mummy 2009

Seven Billion

Seven billion hearts beating

Seven billion hearts at once

Twice as many eyes

Fourteen billion eyes looking at something, seeing something completely different

And all the perspectives, numerous, incessant, incalculable, floating inside minds and space

In the Arabic language there’s a difference between looking ‘Nathar’ and seeing ‘Basar’

You look with your eyes, but you see with your soul, unseen things, absent people, feelings

You see pain, suffering, you see love, devotion, you see integrity, you see your dreams, you see the end.

Purpose

The erect tomb stone, purposeful, durable, grey and always the same

The rain always falling downwards and determined, calculated, pounding a moist earth

The tulip always pushing up its beautiful head from beneath the soil every spring

The magnolia tree majestic and generous, reaching its open hand, flower fingered and offering

The poetic clouds that possess a mysterious symmetry despite their fleeting nature

The tender rose, elegant in her gradual death, darkening edges, curling inwards

The moon, self-rationing and self-important   

I envied stability, consistency, reason. I envied things that belong

I don’t know belonging, I don’t know stability, or consistency

Purpose, usefulness and necessity are beyond me.

The Day I Built God

When I failed to define what God is, I decided to define what God isn’t.

Like a sculptor I had to chip away at the hard stubborn marble,

so rigid with endless years of untouchable, unquestionable divinity

hardened by eternities of terror, judgment and watchful scrutiny,

so determined was he to sniff out pitiful blasphemy.

I carved the cold dismal stone; God isn’t cold, God isn’t violent

God isn’t rigid, God isn’t austere, God isn’t deceitful,

God isn’t dishonest, God isn’t insecure, God isn’t insensitive

God isn’t opportunistic, God isn’t manipulative, God isn’t distant,

God isn’t cowardice, God isn’t misogynistic, God isn’t righteous,

God isn’t egoistic, God isn’t proud, God isn’t demeaning,

God isn’t male.

The kiss

He walked me to my car

the night cold and wet

a bright crescent moon hung, a crocked smile

the gentleman in him leaned forward, offering an

innocent goodnight kiss on the cheek,

a gentle peck, a soft brush of cautious lips

his stubble sensuously teased my skin

his seductive fingers firm around the curve of my waist

that familiar and dizzying scent of a real man arousing me,

the wanting female finally opened her eyes after her long loathsome sleep,

she rose, yearning and hungry. I grabbed the stiff collar of his coat

bringing his lips to mine, my bruised red heart, iron hot and aflame

every cell in my body aching, vigorous and alert with desire, trembling in his

powerful embrace, I was at once the strongest and the weakest woman alive

the darkness around us suddenly still and attentive, the moon watched

the silence grew enormous, the startling quiet that swallowed the whole universe

for this, this one incredible moment to occur; all the elements stood at attention

in fear, in hope and in awe; a new love, a new birth and a new death.

A Day to Remember

My solo art exhibition at The Asylum Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, Friday 15 – 20 April 2016

I was so pleased with my art show at the Asylum, a great turn out of about fifty people and five paintings sold (Depression I, Depression III, Hope, Fish and Butterflies). What was most wonderful for me was all the interest I received, how everyone wanted to talk to me about my work, they had interesting questions and very intriguing remarks, it was so refreshing for me to be able to discuss my art with intelligent, artistic, creative and likeminded people, even the fact that I sold my favourite five works shows that there was a strong connection between me and the viewers who came to my show. I was touched so deeply by how the women in particular came and told me that every painting had resonated with them, that they related to the work and were moved by it. I couldn’t possibly receive a higher praise as I was working hard to convey the complexity and depth of the female emotion and I’ve succeeded and I’m very proud.

I'm so grateful to The Asylum Art Gallery for believing in me and for all their moral and financial support, for all the time and effort put into making my show a success, they took care of the promotion, the printed flyers and posters, the online marketing, the labelling and hanging of the paintings, the drinks, the music (which was an amazing mix of Jazz - my favourite), the photography and the filming of the event.  

The Asylum Art Gallery, Wolverhampton.

My solo art exhibition at the Asylum Art Gallery in Wolverhampton is this Friday from 6 - 9 pm and will run until April 20th  http://www.theasylumartgallery.com/#!belonging/ci0e

Naturally I'm very excited as I've been working hard towards this exhibition and am really looking forward to it. It's also a very ironic and interesting coincidence that I would be exhibiting at the "Asylum" when I have recently been informed that my request to reside in the UK on grounds that my ten year old daughter was born here has been rejected by the British Home Office and now I am in the process of leaving the UK for good. I'm not sad, a bit disappointed, but not sad; I've always thought of myself as a traveller, a wanderer, I can't imagine living in one place for too long, I've always questioned the concept of "home" and "belonging", these concepts are not real, they're lies invented by man to justify his other lies of "loyalty", "nationality" and "patriotism".
I'm looking forward to the future, a new beginning, a new place to live, new people to meet, new relationships and new experiences, I'd like to live somewhere warm, where the people are warm, friendly and kind, I struggled trying to make friends here in the UK, people here don't communicate unless it's by text messages, e-mails or facebook! They can't relax unless there is a screen between them and the world and even through these limiting, detached means of communication they still maintain their distance and their boundaries. So, I've got my eyes set on Dubai a young, exciting and vibrant city. Dubai is diverse, multicultural and cosmopolitan, full of new opportunities and hopefully full of people who believe in real human relationships :)


Some artworks I'm exhibiting at The Asylum Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, April 15 - 20/ 2016.

I named this painting "I Belong Somewhere", it represents my feeling of not belonging in the UK but also not belonging in the country where I was born (Kuwait). The subject is half immersed in the sea swimming with the fish while her other half is above water turning into a tree where birds build their nests. She belongs neither to land nor sea.

I named this painting "Broken", it represent violence and abuse against women.

Kintsugi ("golden joinery") or kintsukuroi ("golden repair") is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates and emphasises the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi makes the repaired piece even more beautiful and more valuable than the original, revitalizing the artifact with new life.

I like the idea of a female being the most powerful chess piece (chessman). The queen in a game of chess is not only the most powerful player but also the most flexible in movement, she is strategically moved on the chessboard to protect the king who is less flexible and thus more vulnerable to an attack.

The superiority of the female as the Queen is often reflected in wildlife; in a herd of elephants the oldest and the largest female elephant in size "The Matriarch" leads the herd, makes all the decisions and is obeyed and respected by the rest of the herd members. The Queen Bee dominates the bee colony or hive, she is specially fed, followed by all the bees in the colony and is fiercely protected.

In this painting I mixed Arabic calligraphy with the art of painting, Arabic is my native language and the text in the painting is a quote by Gibran Kahlil Gibran, my favourite Arabic poet, that's why I named this painting Gibran. The quote translates:

“A woman’s heart does not change with time, nor does it alter with the seasons. A woman’s heart may for long suffer and endure but does not perish. Her heart is like the wild which man destroys with his wars and his massacres, he pulls out its trees, drenches its rocks with blood, and yet it remains, calm and tranquil. In a woman’s heart spring remains spring until the end of time”

The Past

She opened the window and said to the past: "If I let you go, will you let me go too?"

All of my painting's (in one way or another) portray women. Why? Because women are magical beings, we are deep, complex and multidimensional, we are the source of all creation, beauty and inspiration. I am forever fascinated and intrigued by depth and complexity of the female emotion. I also enjoy painting women who look like me; tanned skin, black hair, brown eyes and full lips. Most women in works of art have Western features i.e. white skin, blond hair, blue eyes and rosebud lips, they are very beautiful of course, but I'd like to see more Eastern and Middle Eastern women represented in works of art, beauty in art should be diverse and relevant, not limited to one race. 

Today

Today I rode my worn-out pink bike around the city, I felt free and light. The sky was grey with a cool wind blowing. I enjoyed breathing, I felt my lungs expand and my heart inflate, I felt my skin pores open up to inhale the clean air, my blood pumping strong and powerful and shooting up to my brain, awakening tired cells that have been lazily sleeping. I enjoyed feeling cold then warm as the heat of my body rose each time I struggled to cycle uphill, I enjoyed letting the wind carry me downhill without any effort of my own, taking my feet off the peddles, legs spread-out and laughing joyacly. I was a little girl playing again, a little girl wasting time because time was meaningless if not wasted in play, because nothing really matters and nothing ever will, and it took me a long time to see this. I softly hummed to the songs my mind was playing for me, happy playful songs, I took the long way home, I saw budding tree branches, shy little flowers slowly blooming, a new life unfolding, so much is still unwritten - I thought - and I was happy, I was free, I was beautiful.

Forgetting: A good skill

My daughter sometimes asks me what it was like; what it was like when I was her age? What it was like at my school? What it was like growing up the way I did? With the family I had?

There was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming and cursing, but I don’t tell my daughter that. When your mother tells you at least once a day she wishes you were never born and you live your whole life apologetically, trying to exist less, is that really living? Is that considered a life? And isn’t it mind rape when your parents tell you they never wanted kids but they just kept on having more? They had us just to tell us they wished they never had us. And like disappointments we came, one girl after the other, one tragedy after the other.

I don’t tell my daughter that I’m trying my best not to remember what it was like, I don’t tell her that I take medication to help me repress the memory of what it was like either, but I am better at forgetting now, forgetting is good, forgetting is a healthy skill, I’ve taught myself to forget something every day, delete a day or two of my life every night until I have no past, no angry hateful mother, no scornful raging father, no distant selfish sibling, no abusive husband, no apathetic friend, no insensitive insincere lover.. delete.. delete.. delete. Or perhaps deleting is not really forgetting but abandoning, when you’ve finally crossed an ocean you leave the raft behind, you don’t carry it with you, you just abandon it, but it’s still there, you remember it every once in a while, it exists, like a document you’ve deleted from your computer, it may not be in any of your folders anymore but it’s somewhere, hovering in cyber-limbo, in digital nowhere land. I can continue forgetting or abandoning the past but it will still visit me, the past is highly patient and disciplined in the sense that I can suppress or bury it in my wakefulness when I am conscious, but I won’t have that power in my sleep, in my subconscious, where it waits for me. 

Under His Good Weight

Some days I have to start from the beginning. I rise from sleep as if emerging from under deep murky waters. I wait for my hazy vision to adjust, a good while before the muck dust and stains are wiped off my tired sad eyes and I can see again. A throbbing in my head, it is worse when it’s a cluster migraine, I can almost feel my whole face slope to one side, sliding towards the pain. My left eye, the left part of my lips even my nose is pulled to the right side of my face and is pulsing, my deformed face bloating and shrinking, bloating and shrinking with each agonizing beat. My heart is pressed under a massive heavy black boot that stomps and stomps hard, a dull slow THUMP, THUMP, THUMP that shakes my whole being and my limbs are achy and weak. Sadness leaves me soft and gooey as if there were no muscles, no bones in me.

On days like these I start from the beginning: Who am I? Why am I here? How old am I? Where did I come from? Why am I still alive? My dry chapped pale lips part and I want to say your name, as if your name will help me find myself, I remember that you don’t love me anymore and I swallow, I swallow all my burning hot grief, like a fireball stuck in my throat, then the tears come and my tears are hot too, etching their way down my cheeks like lava slithering down a mountain.

Many years have passed, why do I still hold on to you? Because (I hear a voice inside me say) out of all the men you desired, had and grew bored with, he was the only one who reflected all your colours, not only your reds, not only your blues but your whole rainbow, he was the prism that absorbed all your white light and let you shine through the other side a spectrum of every shade and hue. In his strong warm arms, under his good weight, every time he entered you, you were radiant and complete.

A Conversation with God

What happens after death?

Why do you want to know?

Because I’m curious

Why are you curious about death?

Because I don’t enjoy living

Why don’t you enjoy living?

Because I suffer

Why do you suffer?

Because people disappoint me

Why do people disappoint you?

Because I have expectations

Why do you have expectations?

Because I want more

Why do you want more?

Because less is not enough

Why is less not enough?

Because there is more

If you know that there is more why don’t you go find it?

I can’t

Why?

Because I’m tired

Why are you tired?

Because I’ve tried and failed many times before

Why don’t you stop trying then?

But if I stop trying I won’t get what I want!

What do you want?

Fulfillment

What is fulfillment?

I’m not sure

Why aren’t you sure?

Because I never found it

Why have you never found it?

I don’t know, either because it doesn’t exist or..

Or what?

Or I already have it.

Ladybird

I let the six-legged tiny creature crawl on my hand, its weightless round body, its shiny red polka-dot Elytra shielding its delicate wings, I marveled at its intricate magnificence, the beautiful complexity of its engineering. What amazing mind? What majestic imagination? What exceptional intelligence could conjure such a mysterious wondrous being? Faultless, complete and perfectly individual the ladybird explored the uneven skin covering the surface of my hand and as I considered it, it considered me. What did it think? What would it say? if indeed it wasn't already saying something to me right this instant which my limited human mind could not register or comprehend. After a short contemplation it grew tired of my awe stricken gaze, it turned its head away from mine, opened it's lustrous metallic shell, released its paper thin wings and flew.