Rude Awakening

SPLASH! With that, my best friend Saif, and so-called “gentle giant”; came down on me like a bucket of ice-cold water on the face of a sleeping Chinese political prisoner. The gentle giant, was gentle no more. Good friends listen intently and suggest alternatives to your dilemmas; better friends deliver the pain, tell you things you NEED to hear rather than what you WANT to hear. And when you add his cold and calculating bluntness with his plethora of profane-yet profound choices of vocabulary, you were in for a mental and verbal beating of the highest caliber. After listening to him tear my Sudanese ass in one simple email, I now have two mental black eyes and a critically collapsed ego. Time for physical recovery, 2 weeks. Time for mental recovery, at least a month. Psychologists used to recommend that a person undergoing a mental breakdown should be slapped firmly on the face, my buddy Saif -I think- figured that if a slap can bring someone down to their senses, then a good ass-whooping will do no harm. Thank you, my friend.

Realizing that one is wrong is horrible feeling, realizing that you are wrong but choosing to remain stubborn is a worse feeling for me. When I first started studying, I wanted to be a physician, a life saver, -actually my mother wanted me to be physician and I went along until my third year of university when I realized that saving lives does not only have to happen in hospital-. However, I have songs that have saved my life, and don’t think that 2pac; Bob Marley and Sade had medical degrees. The point that I am getting to is that I was taught to be persistent and patient when lives were at the stake. Somewhere along the way, that ethos was transferred to my everyday life. I became persistent and stubborn about ALL my endeavors. Whether it was in my work or relationships, I never gave up on anything or anyone even when the situation clinically dead and I needed to move on. I was the guy giving a dead person CPR hours after the flat-line life monitor told the story more clearly than anyone. Someone needed to get me off the dead person and inside where I can wash up. I’m just thankful that like many, many other times in my life someone cared enough to whack me upside the head and tell me to move on.

Mojahed? (I hate the way he insists on spelling my name) Stop playing necro with dead person and let’s go for a smoke!

Sounds like a plan! Why didn’t you say this earlier?!

I was admiring your tenacity with the dead cause there. Beside I already had a smoke but I will be happy to share yours!

You’re all heart, Saif

And you got to first base with a cadaver!

I met Saif for the first time in 1997. We were in high school and he was a friend of someone who I thought was my best friend. Somehow, someday we caught up without that friend and realized that we had real tag-team partnership going. I was the level-headed, polite friend who his parents loved the supposed “influence” of. Saif was life sized, adventurous fun-loving Lucifer, but the good kind. Little that Saif’s parents know that you can lead Saif to water but you couldn’t really make him drink. Why? Because Saif never wanted to drink from the watering hole that everyone else frequented, he always wanted to drink from the watering hole that was forbidden to everyone else. And so, the adventures began with me in the passenger seat of a stolen 4x4, and Saif putting pedal to the metal and dishing out his own brand of street justice to unsuspecting peoples of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and everywhere in between. Our friendship also included a “spin-off” year where Saif did America and I tried to do Australia. Eventually, both shows were taken off the air due to the graphic violence, high intensity car scenes and the copious amounts of “herbal essence” but we always remained friends. He’s a busier man these days, a father of two and married, which is great but I think we both know and feel that, like anyone who lived a fast-paced life in the past, which you can’t help but get a twitch when someone mentions the crazy past. It’s the same feeling a retired fireman gets when he hears about a massive fire burning out of control, or even a retired rodeo person –Don’t know what they are called to be honest. Idiots trying to combine bestiality and voyeurism?- when he hears about a bull no one can “ride”. You just want in for that challenge and then to go back to your slow-paced life. In cheesy American movies someone often screams when the hero is nearby: “Is there anyone out there that can stop this madness?!” You bet your ass there is lady! But first, I need to find Mojahed and drag his ass along whether he likes it or not!

“But Saif, I exclaim, vandalism of private property is a felony, not a misdemeanor! No one will buy that you did it under martial law! I’m too pretty for jail!”

“Shut up, you try to confuse! –a common Saif random catch-phrase- Now wait in the car and play “My love is your love” by Whitney Houston and pump that shit real loud, it’s a good getaway track!!”

As a result of sitting in the passenger seats of a speeding Porche, BMW, Land Cruiser, Mitsubishi, and Mercedes over the past 13 years, I have to confess that I no longer have fear of sitting in any speeding vehicle. Not because I have blind faith in the driver –I do Saif, don’t get mad-, but I figure, there were at least TEN situations in the last 13 years where I had lost all hope making it and actually began wondering if Saif and I would be given beds in the same hospital ward –I’m a sucker for punishment I guess- and nothing happened. So that if something does happen, I was given so many get-out-jail cards in the past that when it does happen, its karma for the other ten times nothing happened! Some people bungee jump, some sky-dive, I sit in the passenger seat of my best friend’s car, buckle up and blast “My love is your love” by Whitney Houston...