My grandmother, who greeted us from an early age when a stray bullet from the “neighbor’s son” exploded. She was playing with her gun in front of her house, and my grandmother sat outside in God’s safety, reassuring, her eyes enjoying the jasmine tree blooming in front of her house. She loved her plants and their growth, and the more she smelled the scent of jasmine dishes, the more my grandmother’s body secreted a perfume that resembled the sweetness of the stillness of her face … before it hit the blood of that breath that the creation of the Creator won, so the bullet shook the jasmine branch to penetrate my grandmother’s eyes and the kindness of her body next to her plants outside.
My grandmother wasn’t very moody and she wasn’t one of those women who went out for fun. She did not leave the house except to visit the doctor, or on the balcony that she gives on the street to communicate with those who give peace and complete their journey. She was a “beaten” woman. She used to look at her wounds in front of the mirror with a broken heart, until her death, and she too prevented herself from feeling anger at those who polluted her home with that bullet and that blood. My grandmother was not “submissive”, but rather tolerant of those who had caused her so much agony. She hated her face and got lost in painkillers, so she stopped flirting with her “boyfriend”. She even replaced the glow of this turning and revealing it, with all the meanings of her bitterness. I lived with my grandmother, her face “disfigured”, her illness and her pain, the woman who forgave the author’s bullet even before her wound was healed.
I have never been someone who has looked outside of her inner circle for a “successful woman”. When my friend tells me about Maya Diab, she talks about a sexy and glamorous woman, beautiful, independent and seductive with her fame, ambition and reputation as an advocate for women’s rights and gay rights. But, in my opinion, Maya, who, for her aspect of her, serves the logic of an “influential Dakar”, despite her declarations against the regime. Maya and her colleagues promote an expensive life, as their plastic surgeries match Nancy Ajram’s song “Shakhbat Shakhabit”. Maya has tackled the chaos of violating women’s rights with a costly “extension”.
My grandmother’s face did not match her dreams, one eye stretched out in front of lovely women who pitied her. My grandmother was not happy with that arrogant affection of her, she was just waiting impatiently for a living body that would resist that bullet and free her from her sense of inferiority. I was negligent too, because I didn’t realize then that her wounded face would give me so much confidence in my body today. My body, with its flaws and cracks, has become a stranger to sculpted bodies for the summer and to the camera. Half my strength is earned by simple, conservative and probably broke women. I learned how to protect my body from my religious and divorced mother. She shared with me her stories about pushy men, so I kept one of her secrets that guided me and gave me a lesson on harassment and the man normalizing the concept of “a woman is a body” .
When Sherine Abdel Wahab sang in front of her audience with overweight, full face and a haircut, through which she revealed the extent of her dissatisfaction and her psychological state, as a weak person, was more of her nature than any other. previous stance on the stage. Sherine took to the stage knowing in advance that she wouldn’t bother concealing elaborate makeup and liposuction and fearing that she wouldn’t live up to the standards in her fans’ minds. Everyone stopped by Shireen’s appearance, to ask her to soften her gaze and repost her photos before her crisis and compare them with the present. She forgets that this well-known artist is a woman who can ignore the fashion of filters and the contemporary obsession of “Today”, to bring a new Sherine, a slap in the face of the stereotypes of Arab artists.
It is bad this promotion that cosmetic women have become “the leaders of this age”, even if they are ashamed of something they deserve, which is aging, they lie in the wrinkles of their faces and in the contraction of their asses. How is it that the camera and the eye have always wanted the familiar? My grandmother’s face is familiar, among all those faces we no longer know how to say.
