“At the end of the day, you should try to remember that it’s not about the number of followers you have or the numbers of likes, comments, and shares your posts are getting.It’s the number of people who will be present in the hospital room when you fall terribly sick.It’s the number of people who will remember your birthday like they remember their first name. It’s the number of people who will invite you to celebrate Christmas or new year’s eve.It’s the number of people who will actually show up to look at your newborn child or to bless your newly bought house.It’s the number of people who will actually cross an ocean to see your face.It’s the number of people who will wipe your tears when one of your parents passes away.It’s the number of people who will make a slightly larger than a thumb effort to be there for you.”
— Malak El Halabi
“I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water. Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Be your own solace”
— Malak El Halabi
“Now that your eyes are open, make the sun jealous with your burning passion to start the day. Make the sun jealous or stay in bed.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Perhaps your notion of relationships is different than mine.You want something that would be a long term safe bet. I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in eternity or safe bets. I believe in the unavoidable now and that the unavoidable now in the condition that it is pure with the best intention is eternity in itself.I want to love you and to feel your love as much as this is possible, as far as this takes us, and I hope it will take us far.”
— Malak El Halabi
“And I will remember how we made the sun blush every morning.”
— Malak El Halabi
“It was the moment I heard your laughter. The moment I heard us laughing, two cascades in the middle of a desert, careless and uninhibited.”
— Malak El Halabi
“I learned by heart the lines of your face. I can draw them blindly on a water canvas.Your face in the middle of an inflamed argument. Your face in the middle of a mild one– when you’re at fault.Your face filled with rainbows of laughter. Your face filled with clouds of distress.Your face, fluttering, when I open you the door. Your face, agonizing, every time I stand waiting, for the elevator.Your face, eager, when you kiss me. Your face, surprised, when I lead you to bed.Your face in the middle of pain. Your face on the outskirts of pleasure.Your face, with a baffled look, when you wake up. Your face falling asleep, with total surrender.Your face the first night we met. Your face the last night we parted.I learned by heart the lines of your face. They all led me into hell.They all led me into heaven.”
— Malak El Halabi
“There is a hole in the heart called “absence”. You live in it my dear.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid’s most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his “suit of light” or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence “About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I’ll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull surrounded by a matador and his six assistants. To watch the matador confronting the bull with the capote, performing a series of passes, just before the picador on a horse stabs the bull’s neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal’s first loss of blood… Starting a game with only one side having decided fully to engage in while making sure all the odds will be in the favor of him being a predetermined winner. It was this moment precisely that made me feel part of something immoral. The unfair rules of the game. The indifferent bull being begged to react, being pushed to the edge of fury. The bull, tired and peaceful. The bull, being teased relentlessly. The bull being pushed to a game he isn’t interested in. And the matador getting credits for an unfair game he set. As I left the arena, people looked at me with mocking eyes. Yes, I went to watch a bull fight and yes the play of colors is marvelous. The matador’s costume is breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of claps the spill of blood is getting was beyond what I can endure. To hear the amount of claps injustice brings is astonishing. You understand a lot about human nature, about the wars taking place every day, about poverty and starvation. You understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse (verbal and physical), sex trafficking, and everything that stirs the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Replace the bull and replace the matador. And the arena will still be there. And you’ll hear the claps. You’ve been hearing them ever since you opened your eyes.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Be the man who has the spirit of a ruthless tiger, ravaging every dusty corner of my soul.Be the man for whom I will tame myself voluntarily..Be the man who can make me forget my birth date in moments of utter dellusion.Be the man whose arms are my harbor, whose lips are my shore, and whose name is my only salvation.Be the man who erases my past and draws my future with trails of roses and kisses.Be the man who makes me sigh behind the windows of Poetry, longing to be written. Be the man whose cigarette’s ashes are confounded with mine.Be the man whose voice moves mountains inside me.Be the man whose eyes devour the innocence within me with every piercing glance.Be the man for whom I will transform exceptions into rules.Be the man who will dare to tear this poem from my hands.The man who will rewrite with the uncertainty of the futur every single one of my verses.”
— Malak El Halabi
“He says “You are my property” and I feel relieved. After all, no one wishes to shatter what he owns.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Like a tenacious ivy, your presence clings onto the drab wall of my existence. Cling harder onto me love, like a blood sucking bed-bug who is never satiated.”
— Malak El Halabi
“You are the Arabian stallion that neighs on the crossroad of my heart ache covering me with the dust of my own ardor.”
— Malak El Halabi
“When the wind blows in your face,when you feel you are losing your head,when the going gets tough,and when all else fails,look inside you,you are not alone.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Count your salted wounds then name themlike the stars of a bright constellationCount your scars and bruises then give themthe wings of forgiveness to fly”
— Malak El Halabi
“I didn’t sleep all night, thinking. I thought about you, about those puppy eyes you give me, when you fake your sadness to make me smile– and that upper lip of yours that brings life to all of my senses. I thought about your laughter when you get tickled, and that soft mellow place near your arm pit that I wish could be knit into a pillow for me to hug all night long. I thought about your stomach, your soft and sensitive stomach, scared like a baby kitten under the pouring rain. And I remembered the feeling of protection that comes washing over me when I get a glimpse of it, the feeling of covering it with the layers of my very own skin. I remembered your head when it rests on my heart, a rock sheltering itself on the verdure of infinity. I remembered your silky black hair, and how I never imagined that hair curls so thin could twirl, in the way they do, the rigid core of my existence.”
— Malak El Halabi
“The sea is in your eyes. Your face is an eternal summer. Whoever told you otherwise is a fool!”
— Malak El Halabi
“Build my night with your cheeks.”
— Malak El Halabi
“You have the body of a god and the smile of a demon. I walk towards you, barefoot, a believer walking a religious path. I wrap my arms around your neck, a priest hugging his crucifix. I offer you my all. Burn me like incense. Let’s make all the church bells in hell ring just for us.”
— Malak El Halabi
“No one made sense of the love they shared. They didn’t get the hang of it either. But together, the clocks of winter stopped.. And autumn’s fallen leaves turned, swiftly, scarlet.”
— Malak El Halabi
“You don’t need an ocean to feel like you’re drowning. You feel it, between your chest and your throat, the weight of it stretching you outside your self, like a dead fish on the shore.”
— Malak El Halabi
“You have the face of a man who gently caresses field flowers and dandelions. And a smile that is like a dagger, cutting the sun in halves.”
— Malak El Halabi
“He wasn’t like those handsome men you see on the fashion billboards. He was handsome in a rugged way like a wood cutter with an unkept beard or a man who just finished fixing the engine of his car, wiping his oily hands over his white flannel shirt. Like a man who knows that he has starry eyes that can bring stars closer but doesn’t even bother to look.”
— Malak El Halabi
“There are people that damage you for life. The day they walked into your life will forever be a turning point you will use to label and count your years with… Your own BC and AD.”
— Malak El Halabi
“There are people you meet that light the darkest corners of your mind. They don’t ask you questions. They don’t intimidate you. They just look at you and they smile. They smile because they know what it feels like to have been where you are or because they have this inner ability to understand where you are coming from. They don’t hold your hand. They don’t hug you. They don’t tell you it’s going to be okay or shower you with words of love. They give you some of their time and a bit of their presence. And something only few people really master:To listen genuinely to what you have to say.”
— Malak El Halabi
“And then there are those you stop counting the years with because they are here to stay.They are here. And they aren’t going anywhere.Nothing will make them flinch.Nothing will make them think twice.They know you at your worst,the worst you didn’t even know you had.They know the sound of your mood swings, the color of your anger, how you curse when you curse, how you shout when you throw a tantrum. They know when you’re avoiding a subject. They know when you’re lying. They know when you’re jealous. They know your vices by heart and they celebrate them. They celebrate you– vices included.They know your lost dreams and how life fucked you over. They know the battles you lost. And they think your fabulous when you think you’re just an unlucky mediocre person who once thought will make it big in life.They know the last time you were happy. They see the unspoken sadness in your eyes. They know the words behind your silence. They know the photographs playing in your mind when you’re looking afar.They know YOU, the naked YOU, the raw YOU, not the embellished YOU people see, not the YOU that will be read in biographies or in elegies once you’re dead, not the YOU that introduces you to others.They love you from the bottom of their heart. They are your family regardless of their blood. They are your squad. They are your people.And no matter how many times you make them open the door, they can’t walk out. They just can’t. Because, just sometimes, when people say forever, they mean it. They do.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Relationships are like walls painted off-white and every time you’ll hurt me, it will be like resting dirty shoes on them, like bashing holes in the walls, one after the other. And then there will come a day, where the walls will be filled with so many holes, that there wouldn’t be any place left for you to place the tiniest kiss. Only then will I walk away for good.”
— Malak El Halabi
“I want to be the thought that takes your mind off the road and your hand off the steering wheel.”
— Malak El Halabi
“Our mornings were never “rise and shine.” They were “rise and fight.” They were loud and ravaging. They were heavy and unnerving, like the after-math of a war, with unresolved territorial disputes. They were never serene, but they were beautiful. More beautiful than the smile you wear when you step out of the shower, more tempting than the sight of you brewing coffee from across the kitchen bar, more promising than a glorious victory, bigger than all our tumultuous past. Bigger than you. Bigger than I.”
— Malak El Halabi