I was always asking, what is my dream, where do I belong, but getting no answers.
I was one of those people who never dreamed of becoming anything. I never had a dream. I grew up in the Middle East, in a lovely, functional and practical apartment, reflective of the lovely, functional and practical nature of my parents – my mother was a school teacher and my father was an engineer. Late at night, when everyone was asleep, I would sneak into our living room and sit on a large brown couch where I had an unobstructed view of a perpetually star-filled sky. (A distinct advantage of growing up on a desert island, Bahrain, is that the skies are generally always cloud free!) I would sit there for hours and stare at the sky asking only why I had been placed on this earth and what I was to do with my life.
Was I going to be a dancer? No, I had two left feet! A movie star? No, no height, no looks! A singer? I was tone-deaf, so no on that as well. Would I be a person people looked up to? Would I travel the world in 80 days? Would I be a teacher? A doctor? A healer? A lawyer?
I was ten, then.
In fact, star-gazing became a tradition on New Year’s night for me and my friend Nazu. I guess we never had a glamorous social calendar. We’d lie on the trunk of my father’s Volvo and pick out the stars that would help guide us and show us the way. One year, out of the blue, Nazu, gave me a book to capture my poems which I seemed to write endlessly. After that, I would sit and stare at the stars and write in my book. It overflowed with poems about longings, waiting for curtain calls and love to show up at my door. I was always asking, what is my dream, where do I belong, but getting no answers.
I had a hard time fitting in school. I was the one left behind when the girls went for a movie, the last one to know any gossip, the ugly duckling who never seemed to blossom. I was a geek with no imagination, a chemistry genius with no chemistry with any boy in sight and a passionate poet with no inspiration. I wanted to change the world so I could fit in it. I wanted the world to like me but I did not understand that I had to like the world first.
