Laughter cures all ails?

I am hereby advocating self-fondling, self-exploration as it proved useful to me when one night when I was having a whale of time with myself, I found a lump in my beautiful, gravity defying left breast, and which later turned out to be cancer.

Don’t panic I said to myself, I promptly had it removed and followed it up with a month of radiation and a trip to Chernobyl as a top-up! you know, better be safe than sorry.

I tell you that place is still highly contaminated but it was a fun trip! Here’s a picture!

 

Contamination at Chernobyl power plant, Ukraine

The good news is that my doctor said that radiotherapy will effectively freeze my boob in time as it were, my left boob will forever be young and upright when I am in my 70s and my other boob is in my sock. Win some, lose some!

To start the radiation, they give you some tattoos (just dots, barely visible to non-boyfriends) and they ask you to not lose weight or maintain your weight so that the beams are targeted and accurate, obviously for me, all I heard was don’t lose weight and I ate like I was dying in three months!

So when later on I didn't die, I was like...fuck!

I may well be the only cancer patient who put on weight during treatment. Is there like a trophy for that?

 

It was an ordeal yes but I think it was less traumatising than some of the things people said or did to me over the years, as I sat there contemplating my life and my limited possibilities, I realised I was far more equipped to deal with cancer than with people in general. At least Cancer doesn’t talk back!

 

Anywho! Now I am fine and in remission for the next five years, waiting to see if Corona doesn’t take me instead.

 

Thug life!

 

Let’s talk ...Period!

Day 19 of Ramadan, Day 5 of period

Yes my period, you know that time of the month when women bleed from their vaginas and sometimes have red spots in the back of their skirts (not me)…of course these are not the only symptoms or consequences of this monthly torment but that was already covered, remember?

I find myself increasingly eager to talk about my period to anyone willing to listen or not, something so overwhelmingly natural, half the earth's population endures from the ages of 12 (sometimes even 9) and reluctantly until menopause yet we are not supposed to discuss it openly and without shame and men refuse to acknowledge it unless it brings relief, because the wife or girlfriend is not pregnant or bad news because it means no sex (unless he's into that sort of thing) because the flow came to town (I love this expression haha)!

I like to talk about my period, I just blurt it out nonchalantly like discussing the weather, I say things like I am in pain, I have my period, I am a woman, can I have a box of tampons please?, What’s your strongest period pain drugs?, I am due any minute now I can feel it, I think we’re synched now, I say things like “urgh get over yourself, it’s just a period, we all know it happens”.

Men get squeamish and twitchy and pull faces like you just said Bogie sandwich, some women get a bit timid, most get horrified with shame, others only discuss it in whispers and euphemisms, whilst others just laugh and add on a layer of much needed girly complicity, I personally just like to put in on the table! Yes I HAVE MY PERIOD, I BLEED FROM MY VAGINA and I have several hormones playing havoc with my body! The sooner you deal with it, the sooner you’ll grow up.

And no I am not one of those vulgar girls who likes to talk biology and anatomy in unscientific words, I am not a rebel, I am not a “feminist”, I am just a woman who recognises that a period is something very very natural she’ll experience about a thousand times in her life and would like the world to stop behaving like it’s witchcraft and get “au fait” about it, would like for people to stop behaving like bleeding women are the devil and that menstrual blood is bad, and stop thinking that vaginas are evil, because they don’t seem to mind them when they’re not bleeding.

And now it’s Ramadan, so really I am not supposed to talk about Vaginas or women in general because a woman is really just a vagina.  I am certainly not supposed to eat in public when menstruating because it’ll mean that I have my period and that is shameful; to whom exactly it’s still unclear to me! I certainly don’t want people to start having mental pictures of what’s going on in my knickers but I will not hide my period, or the pain it causes me or that my reproductive system is functional, because really, that’s all it means, if anything it should be welcomed news!

I do not need to be brave, courageous or have a big mouth to discuss my period, my moon cup or which tablets work the best, it’s a natural biological process of the female body, I am proud of my body, when it runs a mile, when it lifts 80Kg, when it withstands 9 months of pregnancy, when it fasts 19 days in a row or when it bleeds for 5 days!

Dz-Chick…You’re Welcome.

A Socratic Love Logic

Film still from Adam and Eve by Liliana Basarab and Costel Chirila

As I ponder the many possibilities of love, I can’t help but wonder if it’ll ever happen to me, then I swiftly discount the thought as a mere weakness, an expression for the needy and the romantics. I think about how I love chocolate, my family and Algeria, how I love England and taking long walks by the river, how I love the ice cold wind as it hits me on the face and I believe it’s making me younger, how I love many things and many people and think so what’s so bad about love anyway?

Why does it scare some people so much, to the point of rejecting it from any source and in any format. But I know better, I grew up in Algeria….or in your case… (insert Arab country here….).

Where love is synonymous with mother or motherland, country, weakness and other futile and bad things, where it is secretly practiced never uttered, where only the love of the mother is implied never expressed.

Where there’ll be no holding of the hands, or touching of the hair, no fornication (in public), no adultery (in public), no homosexuality allowed (in public or otherwise), in fact no mention of love, where porn is 5% sex, 95% guilt, no fun or display of, not even liking, for God’s sake, just no affection related sentiments or acts!

Where the very concept of it is too much to bear, where love should only be for God and the prophet (pbuh), sometimes the other prophets too, but preferably only for Mohamed (pbuh).

Where the very thought of love should be banished and reduced to a feeling of guilt and shame, how can a man love a woman, surely only his mother can love her and therefore deem her a suitable mate, her father owns a business too so that’s always a positive, and so she was deemed a suitable mate by all (not you, your opinion doesn’t count).

Where love should not be fostered or encouraged. Heresy I say! A great source of debauchery and evil, reducing great men to their baser instincts and bringing out their soft side, which if not controlled, will make them disciples of the devil and the West.

Where a suicide bridge is preferred to the bridge of love, where sexual Jihad is encouraged and innocent love is condemned, where the word itself is so taboo it’s haram. It’s evil, it’s damned, it’s so small it’s big.

Where obscurantism is common practice, hatred is fostered and love is silenced, segregation is actively encouraged and sexual frustrations cultivated, where a man knows so little about a woman, he fears and loathes her, imprisons and mutilates her, violates her, hides her, degrades her and obsesses about her. He, who gave her a rib, then threw in the cage for good measure.

Her forms, her soft yet strong being, her frail yet robust body, her fierce beauty and satanic mystifying bosoms. He hates how he loves her, how he needs her, how he wants and desires her, how weak he is in her presence and at her hands, he almighty bearded man who knows all, realised she’s the source of Love, she is the embodiment of Love and therefore evil and he never forgave her for bringing him down to this wretched earth.

Dz-chick… women are Love. Love is evil: women are evil