Culmination Johara Al Mogbel
PUBLISHED & DESIGNED BY JAFFAT EL AQLAM CULMINATION © 2016 BY JOHARA ALMOGBEL COVER PHOTO © 2016 JOHARA ALMOGBEL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS ZINE MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PUBLISHER’S WRITTEN PERMISSION, EXCEPT FOR BRIEF QUOTATIONS FOR REVIEWS. Ed. 2, 2016 JOHARA ALMOGBEL // WRITER & PHOTOGRAPHER SARAH AHMED // FOUNDER & CURATOR AMNA SAIF // EDITOR DEENA RASHID // EDITOR
DEDICATION To my heart, my home, my everything: my family.
INTRODUCTION You sit down at your computer. Switch it on. Watch it come to life. Whisper a little hello, maybe. (When no one’s watching.) You wait as the screensaver shows. Count the icons one by one. Put your music on. Go through your favorite list once. Twice, maybe. Open your writing software on the third listen. Poise your fingers right over the keys and. Stop because there’s a ruckus outside the room and you have kid brothers. (Oh, children.) Sort it out. Breathe. Make a peanut butter sandwich. Eat it. Start again. Will your fingers to hover over the keyboard again and wait with bated breathe as… As… As… Nothing. Maybe this needs another try. A different playlist. Cereal? Maybe second time’s the charm. No. Wait. Maybe third time’s the charm. You need this. Your insides are hollow with the want of it. It has to happen. But. Nothing. You stare at the screen, watch as the blinking cursor mocks you. Write, it says. Write. Write. WRITE. You disconnect from the world. Shut the door. Stop the music. Start it again, louder. Think. Lay on the floor. Think. Stare at the ceiling. Think.
Nothing. Think. Give up. Get up. Mute the volume. Shut down your computer. Kill the mocking cursor. Feel the odd thing in your chest smother it. The missing piece inflate. Today wasn’t your day, maybe. This week wasn’t your week, maybe. But it will be. Has to. You wouldn’t be able to bear it, otherwise. No. You wouldn’t.
IT It’s dank. Dark. Ugly. You don’t remember where you are. How you got here. What you’re meant to do. But you push on. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Push on and hope for the best. Because you’re a human. And humans are strong. They’re freaking strong, and you’re freaking strong, and you’re going to push on like a freaking human. Because that’s what humans do. So you grope blindly in the pitch black as you take a step forward. And then another step. You’re doing it. You’re moving. And suddenly the sounds of demons come rushing behind you, and you know they’re demons just as you know that you’re going to die but it doesn’t matter anyway because you have to run. And run and run and run and run. Except there’s no where to go anymore, there’s no where to run anymore, and your heart is beating like crazy and your lungs are jumping out of your throat, and you collapse. And the demons catch you. And then you realize where you are. Because the monsters, they look familiar, they look like you and it’s all you can do to stop the scream ripping out of your throat as you scramble up and run faster, lungs bedamned. But it won’t do you any good. You know it won’t do you any good. You’re in your head. And in your head, there’s no escape.
DREAMLAND
shanghai gp3 120, iso 100, lubitel 2
FIFTY SHADES OF EARTH’S DEMISE Her wide, beautiful, eyes, the color of an ancient mystic Chinese jade dragon, glittered in the dawning moonlight, drawing the strong and mysterious and black haired, very muscled, billionaire Jones closer and closer because there was this magnetic power pulling them together even though he just saw her like, five seconds ago andThe old lady stood, brushing commas off her pants as she did. It was getting quite a bit tedious, this business of badly written novels, she thought, picking her way through the scattered similes from the last dump load. Not that it wasn’t good money. Or that she would ever judge a book based on content, oh no. It was not the way. For she was the keeper of the words, and the keeper of the words would never commit such a blatant act of pretentiousness. Never. Except… Except. The place was starting to look like a thesaurus, really. And everyone knew a thesaurus was not a very healthy environment for well-bred wordians, not at all. It had the most peculiar effect on delicate sinuses. Which she had, of course. Sniff. It would, she reflected, be nice to get a decent story every now and then. With proper sentences and perhaps not with such an abundance of exclamation marks. Exclamation marks were quite the bother to clean up, what with the small dots always fluttering off to who-knowswhere and clogging up her drains. And they were very hard to sell on the market.
Maybe a poem or two? Yes. Something with the air of a Poe would do quite nicely. Or perhaps a long-lost Orwellian tale! That would be such an excitement. Oh, the old days had been much more enjoyable. The keeper of the words still remembered when Bram Stoker’s Dracula had come tumbling down the chute. Very lengthy, but a proper horror with very decent vocabulary. Not like nowadays, where they pranced about glittering and making triangles with werewolves and all other sorts of embarrassing things. She snorted. Vampires indeed. The chute clanged about, indicating another load coming through. I want you to become well acquainted, on first name terms, if you will, with my favorite and most cherished part of myOh, bother. It was that one again. The keeper of the words put on her macintosh, donned on her surgical gloves, and waited. That sort of literature was always bound to be sticky, after all.
WOOL AND FLUFF There once was a girl, as plain as can be. With a green dress, as blue as the sea. Who woke up one morning, needing a wee. Except her bladder wouldn’t go, not even a pea. So she went to a doctor, sympathetic was he. “I have looked up your thing, and all I could see You have a fly in that hole, a crab and a flea.” “Oh dear! Dear doctor! Will I need surgery?” “At once! We must! Tis quite an emergency!” And so the story ends. Except he wasn’t a doctor But a witch. And so she died.
HEADSHOT
Don’t you ever wonder what kind of lives the people passing you live? If they’re sad, or happy, or if they’re inbetween fixes, or if they’re in love with their neighbor next door, or if they just got a kid and feel so overwhelmed they just have to sit on a bench and not think for a minute because the kid keeps crying and they don’t know how they’ll afford the next 20 years. Where they’ll find the next meal.
A TALE OF TWO MINDS Once upon a time, within a land far, far away, there was a story waiting to be told. It was a very patient story, as stories usually are. Twenty two years it sat in the release station, watching as other stories passed by. Watched, and wondered, as great glittering stories climbed aboard with the dull ones, the grand, the evil, the happy, the painfully thin slivers, the stories barely young enough to totter about, all left the station at some point. Some boarded the train towards salvation. Others, perjury. Yet others, limbo. But this story… this story waited. For the right moment, the right feeling, the overwhelming sensation that this was it. Nothing less would do. Nothing more could happen. It would be told, or it would languish in the waste of it. It shifted a bit, finding a more comfortable spot in the bench it camped on, the withers of time lending a new handicap the story referred to reluctantly as old age. To think it was a fresh young babe in a swaddle once, just thought up the back of someone’s mind. It hadn’t been attached then, not yet, roaming freely amongst the words, the emotions, the vestiges of characters from a ravaged mind, the remains of the tales from more contented selves. It learned quite a bit, those days, picked up enough to grow into a full fledged consciousness, made up of little parts of all the imprints of the someones, the big parts of something else it had met on its way. You’re probably wondering now if the hero of our story was a sham. A cheat. A plagiarism of other people’s more original thoughts, a feeble echo of anothermore’s thoughts. But you can’t be blamed, for you’ve never been to that land far far away from yours, never spoken to a thought or a conscious, never given the knowledge all citizens of that universe know to be true. And in that, you are forgiven. Ignorance isn’t a sin. Yet.
For the truth is, there is no purely original story. There is no original thought, in the way that you define it. They are all built upon years and years of previous wonderings and ideas, discovery and chance. All of it, all of them, they are all a mixture of a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, the person you passed yesterday, the book you will read tomorrow, the headline you read in the newspaper, the passing words of an acquaintance, the squeeze of a loved one’s arms. And in this mess of a melting pot, amidst the haphazard collections you have’ stolen’ from the others and from the things, is where a most wondrous thing will happen: the birth of thoughts. Thoughts that are completely, and absolutely, original. Absolutely yours. They are original in the same way no two children are the same, no two fingerprints alike. No two snowflakes, though they come from the same sky. These thoughts were made in your head, imprinted with your particular brand of something that makes you you and nothing and no one will ever be able to take that from you or them. And in consequence, this patient story of ours. Except this story was different. In a flash of a moment, as it wandered aimlessly, it had brushed on a line and suddenly, irrevocably became something else. A connection between two minds, tethered to the importance of the events it carried within it. And that was when it moved to the station. And decided to wait. For you see, this wasn’t just any story. Oh no. It was the story. That story. Her story. His tale. Their life. Their end. A bell whistled, and yet another train puffed in the distance as it approached closer to the release station. The story capped its thermos, bundled the blanket that had been on its legs, and packed it all neatly in a small carpet bag that had been lying by its side. It got up, its old knees creaking as it left its place of so many years, and slowly walked towards the loading area.
The train rattled to a stop and opened its doors, the carriages, for once, empty. The story hesitated a second before shuffling ahead. It entered the train, dropped its bag, and found a seat. It didn’t quite know where the train was headed. Or what stop it had to leave at. But it couldn’t bring itself to care, not really. Because it had felt it, a minute ago. The something different. And it had known, all the way down to the bottomless pits of its existence It was time.
DRINKING HOLE
Oh, darlings. You’ll get a little older soon, and a little sillier, a little saner, more mature, a lot more boring. And a watering pump will just be another thing that’ll be less magical, another hazard for your 300 euro sneakers from Collette, as you poison your lungs to look cool.
HONGKONG
lomography 1120 color negative, iso 100, lubitel 2
HEAL Line your eyes, powder your cheeks. Smear your lips with rouge. You cannot be seen in the flesh, you cannot be the real you. You are an automaton, and automatons look good. Walk straight. Don’t breathe. You are not an adult until your hair is straight, you are not human until your back is straight and you are not safe until your skin is hidden beneath layers and masks and words. Paint yourself, and paint some more, paint until you reach your lisa smile and then again until you’re nothing but a statue in the midst of other statues in a square draped with ivy and smothered in fog. And then raise your head, and be proud, and let your unnatural beauty shine. For now, now, you are acceptable. You will blend. You will be free. Until the night comes, and you wash it all away. [Wake up flawless.]
JULIÁN AND SOPHIE He would see her in the fractions of the stars, feel her in the heat of a beckoning flame, as he set about his night. Wish and want for the day she would enter his world, and cross his path. She would dream of him, in the empty void of her existence, dream of his reflection in a million shattered mirrors, as her day caught the light. Wish and want for the night he would come to her, and bring her to life. She waited, as she watched the flutter of wings, shined on the joy of a child, helped the bud of a rose grow. He waited, as he heard the echo of silence, lighted the paths in the darkness, cloaked those who hid. And waited. She was the sun, and he was the moon. And together, they could never be. Because apart, they made the world.
THEM They were everywhere. At work. In the subway. The deli where he ate lunch. The cafe he bought his tea from. They were shadows, as he walked, flitting away as he stumbled back to look over his shoulder, disappearing into the night and melting into the sun, following him, following him, wherever he went. They were in his bathtub, behind his curtains, under his bed. Everywhere. Everywhere. They were everywhere. And they were after him. Sometimes, the days where the flowers seem to smile, when the mornings were so bright not a shadow could survive, the man would wonder. Wonder whether he was finally losing his mind, going cuckoo, falling off his rocker, losing his marbles. If he had started seeing things. If he really was just a doddery old fool without a nerve left in his backbone, dammit!, like his missus used to scream. Used to, because she wasn’t alive anymore, bless her nagging soul. But then he’d walk past his apartment building, and his heart would stop. Again. And he’d know. He’d know. They weren’t in his head. They were there.They were there. A shadow flickered behind the lamp post. He quickened his pace. Another shadow looked out from a window. The man’s heart began to beat painfully. Just a few more blocks. A few more blocks, and he’d be safe, at work. A taxi driver honked as he rushed across a red pedestrian light. A man with a newspaper looked at him. A shadow. Thumpthumpthump. The girl sweeping the front door of her shop stopped, a menacing look in her eyes.Thumpthumpthumpthump. Shadow, shadow. The sound of a helicopter buzzed in the sky.THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. Just two more blocks. The man’s palms were sweating. He had to make it. He’d make it. A sinister black car cut off his path and he yelped, breaking into a run. He would make, it he would make, he had to make it, he would get
away. Sounds got louder, people were yelling after him at him, a hand grabbing his coat sleeve to catch him at last, at last, butnononono, they would never get him, not while he lives, and one last burst of energy he jumped into the street, saved! thump thump thuMENTALLY UNSOUND MAN RUSHES INTO STREET, HIT BY BUS, a headline screamed. A man in a black suit folded up his newspaper, shaking his head and tutting. So many deaths these days! Really, the government should do something about all the crazies that have been running wild and accidentally killing themselves. Suddenly, a small thinlipped smile snuck its way onto his face. Well. He was late for work. And that would never do, oh no. The man walked out in the sun. He had no shadow.
OH, LOVE
 Do you remember, darling? That day you burned the meatloaf, when you accidentally walked into a light pole. So clumsy, my pumpkin. The time I had that important business meeting, and you forgot to iron my shirt. You burned your hand on the curling iron. So forgetful, my apple pie. And the day you looked at that guy in the shoe store in a funny way, and then you fell on the stairs. So fickle, my sweet cupcake. And yesterday. Yesterday, when you packed your bags. Do you remember? How you made me sad. How you wrapped your own hands around your neck and strangled yourself. So cold, my little lovely corpse. But I forgive you, my love. Every time, I forgive you. For how I love you so. Till death do us part.
THE BIRDS AND THE BEES A teeny weensy pinch of salt, a speedy peck of whey. A dash of cinnamon and then halt, and stir it in the hay. Mumble jumble twice as much, add a clump of clay, A skip, a hop, a man named Butch, leave it simmer and play! An hour’s passed, and back to work, clockwise stir then crunch. Plop in a tadpole, watch it lurk, and give the lot a punch. Add a queer. mayhaps two? they add in quite some raunch. Give it a rat, then a firm pat– oh, foo! it’s time for lunch. Back again, is your tummy full with cakes and honey and pie? Nevermind that! here take this wool, line it with hay and fry. We’re nearly there, just a smidge more of that honeycomb basil, oh my! Quick! lick! lay it all on the floor, you’ve done it; let out a cry! And that, my darling children, is how babies are made.
THE INTRUDER
SELF-PORTRAIT
TO BURN The Little Fire People lived everywhere. In wood, in clothes, in oil. They crowded out in forests, and in homes. Watching. Waiting. Hoping and wishing for the Spark. The object of their dreams and nightmares. Their purpose of life was very simple. They lived, only to die. Their clothes were of brimstone, their houses of lanterns. Hundreds and thousands and millions of lanterns, dotting the villages, floating in the air. There was a giant soundless bell stationed in the middle of every village square, a humungous sort of thing that created silent waves of sound when it was rung. The Spark Bell, they call it, in their curious tongue. Pick up a small wooden stick. Look, there, can’t you see? The little people hiding behind the doorways? See their heads peek out in apprehension. Here, take this match. Strike it. Light the tip. Don’t be shy now. Watch closely. See the bell ring? The Little Fire people rushing out from behind the doorway, breathing their souls into the lanterns, the dull orange glow as the paper takes to floating in the air. Five seconds, the tip is ash. The Little Fire People are no more.
CULMINATION
DON’T JUST BE ANOTHER FACE IN THE CROWD. I BELIEVE IN YOU.
ABOUT JOHARA ALMOGBEL Found as a baby by her adoptive parents in an abandoned rocketship, Johara first discovered she had superhuman strength when she lifted a car at the tender age of 2. An avid reader with a permanent case of wanderlust, she (unfortunately) feels no shame in plagiarising Superman’s origin story. Also, pizza will one day rule the world. Ahem.
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A B O U T J A F FAT E L A Q L A M Jaffat El Aqlam is an e-magazine that celebrates Middle Eastern artists, writers, musicians and creatives. Our goal is to be an independent publishing house that publishes work from MENA and by MENA humans who live abroad, while simultaneously creating a haven for content to be published in the world wiLD web.
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