Project Pen

ProjectPen was created to publish the work of a new generation of writers out of the Middle East.

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ATTENTION WRITERS!

projectpen.me is now

PROJECTPEN.COM

Please click here to be redirected to the brand new site!

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إعلان لمتابعي موقعنا الأعزّاء من الكتّاب والقرّاء

متابعينا الأعزاء،

انتقلنا في مشروع قلم إلى موقعنا الجديد:

www.projectpen.com/ar

شاركونا قصصكم هناك :)

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'Her story is simple' - By Sarah Fodlord

She is a young woman who’s in love with life, who’s inspired by a song, by the rain, by a love story. She’s doing everything she can to make her dreams come true, sacrifices will be made and regret won’t be felt as long as it’s for something worth it, and she’s 100% convinced that it’s worth it.

No way to stop, not until she sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Love is expected, friendship as well, along the way people will come and go in her life, she will spend good time with them, take dozens of pictures, and then leave again, cry all the way to the airport, write everything she feels on her diary, and convince herself that this isn’t the end but only the beginning.

After a while she starts feeling better, after all, it was meant for her to leave, and live new experiences and love stories, that’s her destiny.

Destiny, the only thing she knows about it are her plans written on a piece of paper, hoping that’s what would exactly happen to her, it’s destiny…

She dreams about freedom, faraway from any place she ever knew, far enough to dance under the rain freely without being judged, speak up her mind without being misunderstood, to reach a top of a mountain and scream out loud: ‘’Life is beautiful, and I’m living my life!’’

A new day will rise along with her dreams and hopes…

- Sarah Fodlord

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'It Is Over' - Yara Hani Abu Kadija

She was crying without a single tear. She was sobbing without a sigh. She was screaming without a word. Her heart was talking loudly enough to reach the unknown with no one to listen. She showed a smile so deceiving and so fake that she wondered how he believed it!

She hated her pride but mostly she hated his. She was sailing in the sea of life while she was motionless in her spot. Her mind flew far so she was there but she didn’t hear a thing. She thought.

"Why would I listen? Didn’t he say everything in a word?"

She stood there with her head held high, while his was low. He was explaining an apologizing. He was running cowardly and he was convincing himself and her desperately that he was saving his dignity. She didn’t believe a word and I can tell that not even he did.

She let him finish silently. When he did, he asked with a fake sad face.

"Isn’t this is the best for the two of us? Talk to me and tell what do you think."

She knew exactly what she wanted to say to him. She wanted to tell him that he is the last person to tell her what the best is for both of them. Since when he was responsible enough to take decisions! He never took a stand. He was never strong enough to tell her the truth. He didn’t even tell her that he loved her. He wasn’t man enough to admit it. He assumed that she was man enough to figure it out and to act according to it.

She answered with a light nod and a question.

"Did you finish?"

He told her with confusion.

"Yes, but you didn’t …"

She didn’t let him finish. She turned the page and she walked away.

He screamed.

"But it is not fair"

She didn’t even turn her face toward him. She just walked leaving him behind to the remorse that will eat him alive.

She was woman enough to admit that he was not worth it. She was woman enough to have a pride that he will never understand. She was woman enough to forgive and forget him.

She took a long walk thinking of the four years she spent with him. She thought of those four years that she lost. She hated the fact that she let it get that far but she understood that this life. She understood that in life there are men who with or without their willing send bad vibration to women. As hard as women try to pull them out, they drag their women with them down.

When she arrived to her home, her mother asked her impatiently.

"Tell me what happened with him?"

She asked with astonishment.

"Who?"

 - Yara Hani Abu Kadija

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'They' - RM

They,

are both fickle and fey,

for with each new day,

the words they say,

the messages they convey,

alter and sway,

according to whichever of their fears they hope to allay

- RM

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'Breathless Night' - Lia Allouzi

All my life, since my lungs began to taste the air All my life, since I was put with the finest pain to bare All these days I spent with piercing brief I couldn’t share Truth was as blurry as the lights in winter beneath the fog And I chased those lies that seasons offered to mog I thought of life in a different state, maybe it was hope I thought of you every minute, in loneliness tried to cope Your name was that melody, that lullaby I heard every night And there was no better dream to my eyes than your sight Now I taste the air again… I taste the wounds and the brief I can’t steal your heart without feeling like a foolish thief Time is collapsing like the walls I built to keep you in If only you knew the corruption you had caused within Now as I think of the distance to your sight My misty eyes are tearing, in this breathless night.

- Lia Allouzi

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'Moon Dance' - Natasha Shesha

Love dances lost between laughs and tears,

I never thought I’d look back at those laughs and cry,

Through years love has whipped away my tears,

And held my hand through tears and joy…

Whenever I see the moon I see your face,

Shining down from up so high

I know your watching over me from outer space,

through the darkness of the nights that passes by…

If you’re haunted by your thoughts and fears,

Feeling that you’re love is going a stray,

Be sure that I’ll be there through the years,

And our love will grow stronger day by day…

Whenever I see the moon I see your face,

Shining down from up so high,

Asking me to follow your trace,

To a place where we never have to say “Goodbye”…

- Natasha Shesha

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'Untitled' - Izzy Afyouni

I do not want your recycled poetry

you have fallen into the trap of minimalism

I am a naturalist

I do not stick to gesture lines

I search for half-tones, for light shapes

for more than this someday

a haiku 

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'Unknown Legend' - by Ammar Majali

He lost her. Crude tiny microscopic cells invaded her body, overnight. Colonies took abode in her lungs, left kidney and half a liver. Cancer - the big C word ravaging the body, yet retaining the mind and soul.

They were one. A unit. In the summer of ‘71. A pair of shiny Harley Davidsons on Route 66. Holding hands on an empty stretch before a setting sun. Wild hair, Indian shirts, leather gear. A strand of blond hair escaping the helmet, blowing in the wind.

Young and in love. They continued on that highway till the end. Till the Harleys become heavy with life’s responsibilities; children, a career, cash. They stored them in the shed under a tarp. Oiled and majestic yet in exile.

Their children became adults, got married, did all the proper things. Weddings, bells, cards, dresses, another stretch of the highway.

Old age crept under the wooden blocks. Passed through thick socks and boots. Resided in cold chests under knitted sweaters. Separated them in bed, yet made the summer of ‘71 more memorable.

The end came, a pain in the arm, ache in the leg, a cough, fever. Reaper ready to sough the seed of life. The blonde hair became snow, the face shrinked, the smile didn’t fade.

The last kiss on a white starchy hospital bed. Under florescent lights. The same old thin lips. She battled silently with her eyes - her books, her silence and pride. She was his unknown legend.

Somewhere on a desert highway She rides a Harley-Davidson Her long blonde hair Flyin’ in the wind She’s been runnin’ half her life The chrome and steel she rides Collidin’ with The very air she breathes The air she breathes.

You know it ain’t easy You got to hold on She was an unknown legend In her time    - Unknown Legend, Neil Young

- Ammar Majali

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'Forgotten' - Deema Qaffaf

Alone, she stood in the town square, shivering with fear. All the people she had known in her life gathered around her like wild beasts. Only her father and brothers faded away with shame like Autumn leaves on a windy day :no one can defend a girl accused of what she had been accused of.  

Doubts had been enough to condemn her!  Within the blink of an eye, her life was taken away by her cousin’s sharp knife, he thought to himself, “It was very easy. A few words spread through town, like fire they burned her, after all; I deserve to take my revenge with pride.”

Until this day, nobody asks why she was killed. She is forgotten, as If she had never existed.

- Deema Qaffaf

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'I'm Your Grandpa' - Mohammad Maini

I like you, I don’t know why, it might be because each year that you come you bring me Dates. This year, you also brought me one Jordanian Dinar (I’m a coin collector).

Last year I kept for you a book of word puzzles in Arabic. I welcomed you and gave you the book. You told me: “Thanks grandpa” and gave me in return a warm hug. You are different than your siblings, maybe I like you the most, because I see a light in you, though I don’t know how to tell the difference between you and your twin, you look very much alike.

This year I re-tell you the story of that hot summer day, in your uncle’s car, when you were seven years old. When I (pick-stick) you too many times. I used to pinch my children also a lot, from the eldest Noemi to the youngest Eliecer. I kept pinching you, until you turned red and told me: “You’d better stop, or I will make my dad come and punch you,” you were very angry.

I don’t know if it was you or your twin, you look very much alike….

How time passes!

That’s what comes to my mind when I open the door of the room, in which you are sleeping. You slept-over yesterday, because you are leaving today for Jordan. You have grown a lot.

I think I won’t say goodbye to you, I woke up early today, to pay a visit to my brother Oliver. I don’t like to wake you up, really. I will leave you to continue sleeping, though yesterday we shared a few words before I went to sleep. You asked me about my health, and I said it was fine, you told me: “You should take care of yourself, health is the most important thing grandpa”. That sounded like a farewell.

I will miss you. I hope next time you come it won’t take you six years like the last time you were here. I close the door quietly, put on my hat, and leave.

- Mohammad ”Panama” Maini

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'Nobody's here alone!' - Rim Rafei

How much we get indulged in our problems, in our sorrows, that we think we’re all alone in this world.

The fact is, nobody’s here alone, everyone is fighting their own battles every single day.

If we just stop for a while and take a look around us, we’ll realize that we’re not the only ones facing hard times. 

Sorrow is a part of a healthy life, yes it’s a part of it. In order to feel happiness we’ve got to deal with the sadness.

At last, we don’t need to be that much indulged in our problems, we’ve got to accept the past failures, past pains, to be able to live happily and peacefully! 

- Rim Rafei 

@r_IsForReal

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'1f' - Heba Jarrar

There is nothing as beautiful as water and sitting nearby, wishing to stay like that and write a novel; a novel of life, a novel of joy and bitterness, a novel of delighting and sorrow. And finally just write to every person you knew or ever met in your life, and give them your opinion about him or her, even those who hurt you - to be honest with them and with yourself in the first place - to cross over in peace, or as said in Italian, “attraversiamo" - "let’s cross over".

- Heba Jarrar 

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صدفة

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Seas of Ecstasies

Lo and behold the wretched me!

Black, wrathful and a mystery

From the jinx of misery

And phobia of agony

  Accurse my lips, envenom skin

Leak your kisses slowly within

Let them poison my sanity

Add to the seas of ecstasies

  Touch my hands, enkindle the lust

Break down the pain, scatter the rust

Let my banes fade out instantly

Into the seas of ecstasies

                                 As I join the arch revelries

Dance on soporific symphonies

Sense and time combust in the mess

Pain glistens in her crimson dress

Stands on outskirts of sanity

Just gazing at me silently

Nears, caresses, and laughs deadly

Then drown in seas of ecstasies

  But sobriety will prevail

Bogus seas will dry out to nil

All ecstasies will vaporize

Misery and pain again rise

  This carmine wine and wretched drink,

Only manage to help me sink,

In illusions of dashing hopes,

By the hangman’s sinister ropes.

  - Adam Lebzo 

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'Of bleeding livers, cowardly hands and ammoniac tears' - Ron Mathew

Toast was as unusual to his seventy four year old grandfather as the rain that failed to arrive in August's prime. The bland hospital coffee lent an odour to his breath that even the fresh sloshing of cheap disinfectant couldn't cure.

Before pulling the lights he spread a soft lotion over the old mans skin. Processed air had shrunk it's pores sucking all of the moisture through the hospital's air conditioning.

The fourth day had come with a smoggy brain. Best friends were dismissed with mere nods and grunts. Tears bore down his grandfather's heavy eyes as memory proved to be Korsakoff's bastard child. In his young arms lay a man who had loved his grandson an entirety. Hands that held his childhood trembled as his soul quaked under the dying liver. It wasn't the fear of death but of the inability to hold on to fragments of a life that was slipping away.

"The toilet", the grandfather announced to his only heir. The sixth day had come with a desire to bestow a grace upon him. "You will have to wash me"

The man who had denied help collecting the daily urine for the lab's scrutiny had succumbed to his weaker instincts. The grandson entered the bathroom with his grandfather.

Fields dried up and the earth smacked up the last drops of water that filled the wells. Rain failed as death did the man in the sick bed. Veins welled up under his skin as did the cracks in the earth. The sixth night was one of sweaty sheets, grandfather's hands in his. Pain scratched the old back bringing up blood and tears.

"Please...", the grandfather begged on the seventh night, eyes travelling from the fruit knife to his crying grandson. A flood had shaken the man's rocks, his shoulders had given in and his legs were sinking. The vultures lazed around in the distance.

In his hands the grandson took the fruit knife. Its blade was dulled out by the remnants of the kiwi he had cut.

His innocence was the dirt in his grandfather's nails as he drew out in wet mud the alphabets he had learnt that day. Smiles were hidden in the birthday cakes they shared as their birthdays were only a day apart. Roses were buried in the old man's chest where his younger self had slept in peace so many aeons ago.

His grandfather closed his eyes as he brought the blade close to the pulsating vein.

*

On the ninth day it rained, the monsoon had begun.

The grandson sat in the rain, the smell of fertile mud and waking seeds reminding him of his grandfather who he couldn't kill but had died, right before the world had awoken.

He was grateful for the coward he was.

- Ron Mathew

http://renutva.tumblr.com/

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'Raccoon Beats' - Mishal

It was a long time since Monday, or so reckoned the trivial calendar hanging on the rim of the medicine cabinet - a cabinet that was even more replete than the refrigerator - in our purple and blue-walled kitchen.

“I’m very courageous”, “Cold”,”Boob”, “Go free”, “High Lions”, “Soap”, “Her”, “All I need”, “Door”,” and more images nonchalantly wandered randomly through my head.

It was 5 O’clock and I’d swallowed four.

I could hear only myself, and the six ticks of the clock for every tepid breath I take (in and out).

A lick of cold numbness pinched right through my right foot, I stood there, bare, and roughly aware. So I shook my head and took a deep breath simultaneously, exhaling it created a sensation of shivers slipping from the back of my auricles down to the bottom of my neck, releasing the tension from of my shoulders.

Three little leaps to the left had me on edge. Meanwhile, the numbness in my feet was vanishing to a tingly funny feel.  I raised the bar to three ticks per breath, and tottered my way through the corridor all the way to my bedroom. 

–Two ticks per breath-

I kicked the door open, the earliest range of the balmy sun-rays was already sneaking into the room. They landing on the mirror and upon the Cello underneath it, reflecting a dusky natural irresistible colour as I approached to pick it up to pluck the strings.

-One tick per breath- I’m not there!

The mirror is empty, I’m in bed.

Wake up

- Mishal

@Mishal_KY