a german again

I kept nagging my friend to leave. It's easier for him to get hooked up. He has got the total arab hunk look. Popular product on the gay market. He is staying because he wants to keep his optiions about. He already got a hot guy hooked on him, but he has eyes on another sexy guy. I wanna go home and sleep. It's been a hard week between working and learning german. I'm turning into a zombie and there's nothing this zombie wants more now than a good long sleep. 

The guy on the next table is smiling another time. Maybe we saw each other before and he's smiling to validate that old encounter. Or maybe he's high on something and he sends his smiles to signal the high he's having. I begin to put my jacket on preparing for the impending coldness on the street. 

He steps towards me. staring into my eyes with a smile that's now taking over his face. It was a comforting warm smile. he talked me into staying and having another beer. I didn't feel ashamed telling my friend that I'm staying after all. He would have also done the same whenever he gets a real chance. 

I am curious where he's from but I feel it's rude to ask. I am thinking he could be turkish? Souther european? Those turks can be so confusing, they can look so white, especially when they have the hipster attitude. He said he's german and my heart dropped. I had stop giong out with german guys a while ago. Two of them broke my heart already. The one who disappeared after we had three intense dates. And the other kept me as a toy while he tries to get his ex boyfriend back. Many other encounters made me feel bitter and angry, the distance they kept, the lack of empathy. I thought no more of them. 

The conversation was warm and I was thinking if I would change my mind. Give them another chance. This one right here feels very warm, and he kisses really well. He's not so big so I won't be scared of him physically overpowering me. I enjoyed the kisses and his compliments about my eyes. I started wondering, is this how our relationship can begin? Right this moment at a cruising bar? Maybe this when love is born. 

We go to the dark room. I'm more attracted to him. I love the feel of his body. Yes he doesn't have the drive to please. A problem I have encountered all too often. However something in me felt empowered to tell him what pleases me and he was happy to oblige. I feel like I try to regain the old slut spirit, the one that was more adventurous and fearless. The one who cruised on Cairo streets. 

He asks me if I want to go with him and my heart is fluttering even harder. So maybe there's actually something here, he doesn't want to end it the level of a dark room hookup. I pretend to consider shortly but in my head I already said yes. I am happy that I'm finally going to get to sleep next to someone. I'm surprised by the fact that my body is actually able to have with him sex one more time. 

When we wake up he says he's going to ikea to get new furniture for his new flat. The one I envy heavily. The pain of the search for the flat grips my heart when I think of how far it is for me to achieve the goal of having such a place for myself. I wondered why he is not offering to have sex wi th me again. I thought we both implied it in our jokes about being hungry and eating last night. Is this the beginning of rejection? Is this when I begin to feel less in this relationship? 

He suggests a breakfast together and my hopes go high again. But I didn't know that this will soon completely changes. We talk on the way there about egypt and asks me

Do you go back?

No I haven't since I came here.

You don't want or you can't?

I can't

Why?

Because I came here through asylum.

What does this have to do with it?

I realize at this point that he knows nothing on the matter of asylum.

He asks me questions as I explain to him the asylum process and rights you get denied from when you apply for it. He listens without commenting. Without saying anything about how that must have been hard for me. of how it's painful to think of the separation I have with my family. It wasn't until later when were having our breakfast when he began talking about his struggles living in south america and how he missed good techno music and was mad about the lack of air conditioners that I realized that I was expressing my understanding and support for his feelings while he didn't give me the same thing. It wasn't until then that I realized how he failed to provide any sympathy or support. I started to notice that I censor myself to avoid raising issues that will break our bond. I notice that he asked me if I work for the third time and this irritates me. he offers to pay and I ask if he's sure. I think for a moment, I don't want him to pay because I don't want him to feel that he was superior to me. I don't want to him to assert his power even more. However I quickly decide to let him do it. Why should I reject taking our money back?

As we walk to the station, we smile to each other. How our feelings beyond our smiles have changed so quickly. He leans to me and gives me a kiss I know I will miss. I realize that we didn't exchange phone numbers. I know I will miss this kiss but a part of me is quite relieved.

Death and Sex

It has been often written that our existence  is based on a mix between the desire to death, to be annihilated, to go extinct. And the desire for life represented in the libido, to have sex whether to enjoy it or also to reproduce and recreate life. Perhaps a certain balance is needed to preserve our emotional stability. But it's also possibly a lens through which we can analyze human behavior. 

If we look at the state of exiles through this lens, we can make new observations. If we begin by death, since it's the heaviest topic, we can immediately think of the recent Syrian refugee suicides, whether the ones who took place in Lebanon, Germany or elsewhere.  This cannot be dissociated from the layers of trauma caused in the home country, on the road, or the new state of exile. 

Looking at death from another angle, and particularly examining the state of burial rites practiced by Syrians in diaspora reveal a grim reality. Those who wish to bury their loved ones or relatives face several hurdles whether in europe where there are laws that restrict muslim burial rituals, whether through temporary grave rentals as in france or the obligation to use a cascade as in parts of germany. In Lebanon, turkey, Egypt and Jordan, Syrians face similar hurdles in relation to hostility from host communities, and the general financial exploitation of refugees. 

Apart from the legal and societal hurdles, the act of burying in diaspora carry heavy notions. It's a harsh reminder of the inbetween state. Would we still be here in the future? Should we smuggle the body from turkey to Syria so they can be buried in the homeland? So that we could visit their graves when we're back? Would we ever be back? Where would we die and where would we be buried? 

Looking at the more positive notion of desire to live, we can observe that escaping into exile is an act of life preservation. People flee because they want to survive and eventually to thrive, and because they want their children or loved ones to have a better future.

In exile, we see thriving artistic and cultural spaces, you see people experiencing new tribulations but also passions and are posed by major questions that stimulate the psyche. The new space enables many to express freedoms and enjoy encounters they would have had elsewhere. I'm particularly intrigued by the case of Antonio Suleiman, who's a Syrian who sought asylum in germany and starting making porn films. 

Of course porn is seen in different ways, and indeed there are problematic aspects to porn. And then again we're faced with many abolitions who believe that all sex work can naively be eliminated from the world. Porn tabs into human deepest selves and their most unseen. The sexual fantasies, memories, practices and exchanges we never divulge or disclose. It helps us connect, discover and access pleasure. 

Antonio Suliman is creating pleasure and is using his body to please, also as a way to earn income. He went on to say "Yes, I used my body. I used it to show that this body can make love, can have sex, and does not only exist in order to die." He speaks about the Syrian condition and the suffering faced at home and the racism faced in the exile. Indeed now the Syrian body is imagined as a dead or maimed body or a body carrying the threat terrorism. Suleiman changes that by inspiring desire and celebrating the body and its possibilities.