I cringe when someone flippantly calls me “dear” as though it were nothing more than a dog whistle. Ya Hayati. Ya Amar. Ya Rohi. My Life. My Moon. My Soul. This is how we speak to each other in my culture. This is how my Teta spoke to me. "
“Ya Hayati,” Teta would say whenever she saw me. “My Life.” Unlike the antiseptic “darlings” and “dears” of the English language, endearments in Arabic are raw. More than a name, they are an expression of how much you mean to someone, how cherished you are.
Had you not been lying on the ground among the animals, you would have been unable to see the sky and the stars and wouldn’t have been set free.
Franz Kafka, 1915.
And so those children did not fear the dark.
They feared the light instead. The mInds had a devil in their skies now that raged so white and fearsome it threatened to burn right through to the sense in things
Man had a black corridor he dared not send his intellect down ,that corridor was called death. It was too much even to stick a thought out in it. In fear of that corridor man had produced mechanical children that did not age and would never have to face the dark.
Throwback to the time i went online panicking that i was turning 14 asking Yahoo's online community if i was getting " old " and one person says " Wait till you turn 16 😏 " AAAAAAA