Original by Abdelhamid Abdellatif, translation by Dina Al-Mahdy

The insomnia tearing at your soul is the outcome of the paradox of adopting wisdom without applying it, like someone who’s dying of thirst while holding the water.

Simply put: “Drink, idiot!”

Complexly: “I can’t!”

But why not?

“Why” is the battle ground.

I wake up to find myself wearing black with a big white question mark on my chest. On the left side, my attention is drawn away by Sargon Boulus’s words: “Here I’m waking up once again a stranger in my own body like a man suddenly gets up to find himself in a lifeboat away from the shore”. On the right side lie what I can smell and feel, but fail to meet, R. Hughes’s words describing Emily’s feelings when it suddenly flashed her mind that she is who she is.

To realize who you are, and fail…