I imagine my days to be bedtime stories you wrestle your senses to stay awake for but always fail to do so. The kind of tales kids ask their grandparents to tell in a persuasively deep voice by the fire one too many times.

I never thought a city would take sides in a breakup, it never occurred to me that I’d be splitting the city with her some day, marking my spots with x’s and hers with o’s.
It’s all in my head though, this diplomatic response to murder. The x’s and o’s don’t exist, a white winged dwarf didn’t go rogue and double-cross me.

I never really counted on finding friends in a city like Beirut.

Who would’ve thought I’d be lonely in a place overpopulated with self-loathing fucks like myself…who would’ve thought I’d find a friend in a street cat.

My victory parade around the ever-lively Doha was short-lived. The red and white blinking lights atop the city’s iconic piercing skyscrapers seem to have abandoned their task of keeping all the malevolent crap floating around from ever landing.

I take half-measured comfort in the truth that my mother named me after a prophet, Ahmad.

However, in truth, I couldn’t care less what my name is, I just wish it didn’t have to start with a vowel.

It wasn’t the first thought.

It wasn’t the second nor the third.

I had hoped it would come fourth, but it didn’t.

And that’s when the guilt started creeping in.

There I was, standing in front of God, with no thought of Him rowing through my mind.

She’s always been a Saturday, even when it was ten past seven on a Sunday night with Thursday’s leftovers on the stove, clogged up with all the typical gloomy shit associated with the day before Monday.

I’ve been around, you know?

That wasn’t always the case, anyways.

Thinking about it gets me all huffed-up with vanity, inflating me with fleeting gratification about how far I’ve come.

I’m back.

It’s been seven years, and it feels eerie; it’s unsettling how petrol can ignite progress. My brother once said, ‘God gave them petrol because they lack common sense.’ He hit the mark; God can’t help but be fair and objective, regardless of how enlightened and educated we are, he can’t throw all his apples in one basket. Who’d stick around to praise him then?

I find myself handing out sympathy to the most preposterous things. The airport highway was the lottery pick that day. I had to feel bad for it, no one else was. Sunlight clings on to asphalt like mosquitos to sweaty skin; it was having a horrid day. If that wasn’t bad enough, it had to carry more than a hundred short-tempered people, driving cars that couldn’t wait to break down.