• I do not think about marriage often, hardly ever if I am honest. But there is a pulling in my heart after watching this, a nostalgia. And I am aware how important love is. Companionship. How necessary it is to have someone to share your life with. Yourself with.

• He has the type of personality I could fall head over heels with, Mr Darcy. Aloof, mysterious and stand off-ish with the world. But gentle, honest and with a heart capable of intensity with her.

• I fell in love when I was a teenager. Wholely and completely. And he was just like Mr Darcy. And I was always nervous around him. All smiles and butterflies. Four years he took root in my heart. But I was too young. Too afraid of rejection. I wasn’t ready to love. Didn’t think I could be loved so I buried it in the pit of my stomach.

I never told a soul.

• They never kiss in the movie. Nobody does. There are no bodies, no flesh, no fumbles in the dark. It is all hearts, all soul and eyes and breaking open. All trusting, risking and growing.

• I am still trying to teach myself all the reasons I am worthy of love.

This song… It moves through my body in a way I just cannot explain.

Always left mezmerized!

Tonight I feel a terrible sadness. A peircing loneliness. And it feels like drowning, alone. With no-one to see. No-one to save me.

I am back in London.

Oceans and acres away from the cousins and aunts and uncles I’ve left back in Egypt. I miss their smiles. Their eyes. The tales told late into the night, the queing for the toilets at fajr.

I miss them.

I am in my bed, the sound of my father’s snoring drifting in through the wall that seperates our rooms. My father is not one for conversation. He is withdrawn, aloof. And I am always tentative around him. Always trying to say the right thing.

My mother is the light that binds us. All noise and laughter and perfume. She is what makes this house come alive. The reason why the furniture and walls are mismatched. The reason why this is okay.

But she is still in Cairo.

I lost my aunt and cousins to Egypt three years ago. I loved them unashamed. When they left, I was left with a gaping wound in my chest, a hole in my lung and a mind full of moments too hard to remember.

This feels like losing them all over again.

I tell myself I enjoy being alone. Because I do not want to admit how much it scares me.

Excerpt from:

The Russian Concubine - Kate Furnivall.

hypotheticallyofcourse:

Hey sister,

I love how the silk gently holds your face

How you carry your head high with such a beautiful grace
 

Hey sister,

I love how your hair skips in the breeze

How your eyes sparkle like the blue seas
 

Hey sister, 

How I’d love to talk

My hair and your ḥijāb can dance in the wind as we walk

BroganDinsdale.

This goes beyond
Any barrier, any stereotype,
Any hate force fed to us by the media.

Any notions of “us and them”.

This is understanding,
Reaching across borders,
Bariers, beliefs.

This is building bridges between bodies,
And hearts and souls.

This is love.

All love.

Hey sister, this is beautiful.
So beautiful.

thenakedbusinessman:

withmyheartwideopen:

golgibodies:

Teddy Roosevelt’s diary entry from the day his wife died. He never spoke of her death again.

Ted was what every man should strive to be.

(Source: threeoverten, via theglueensemble)

I have been in Cairo for almost two weeks and it is even more wonderful than it was when I first came.

This time it is change. It is revolution!

Graffitied walls and burnt bridges. It is new names, new faces. New dreams. Tentative, cat paws on hot sand.

There are posters all over the city. Black and white stencil sketches of candidates. Yesterday the voting began and today there are fingers. Painted fingers. Stained black.

It is change.

I have to visit Tahrir, however much I am told I cannot. I must not.

The air in Cairo tells me I can. I must!

(Source: awomansplaceisinthestruggle)