Grandmother's song

I'm sipping on perfectly foamy and smooth Turkish coffee. I bought this batch of coffee last week, at a specialty store, on our way to Saida. We used to always get coffee to our people there on our way, it became a tradition of a sort. The aroma of coffee has always been very enticing to me, but until recently, I was not a coffee person. The guy from the shop approached us in the car and asked if we wanted the order brought to us in the car. I was already out of the car by this stage, I told him we're getting in. I've put the stupid mask on and got inside with my sister. I waited until she put her order, then I requested mine, after a little investigation. It is her mix I am taking, two thirds blonde, one third dark, and extra cardamon. He scooped the coffee beans from the huge container in front of us, added the cardamon, and put the mix inside the electrical coffee grinder. Packed inside a paper bag, handed to us with extra cardamon written on it. We ordered some few other bags to take with us, different mixes. The aroma of all that coffee inside the car was so sensational, tormenting too as there was nothing we could do but inhale it in and wait until we have some nice coffee soon. 

I didn't have nice coffee until now. I made it with pure cane brown sugar, and boiled it only very gently to perfection. 

I am not a coffee or cigarettes person, generally speaking, yet I seem to be really enjoying myself engaging in such rituals of recent. In lots of ways, I wish to know what it feels like to do those, ritualistically, routinely. Both my parents were smokers and did coffee, regularly. I was not of coffee age when I passed. I miss them. 

The missing, and writing about it, can go on forever, it is when I am not missing that I should get concerned. I tend to block myself from feeling very often, in order to be in my yang state, and get things done. I haven't had a man in my life, in the proper sense of it, in a truly long time. Perhaps I never had one, involved directly in my life, since father passed away. In lots of ways, I feel I am getting into my father, in order to give myself, and my daughter, what we need. When I was a child, one of my nickname used to be Mahmoud. Endearingly, close people to the family would call me by his name, because of the resemblance. My child mind could never comprehend then the similarity, I would look at our faces, and never be able to see it. As the years went by in my adult life, I started to know truly, deep within, what that entailed. I am truly Mahmoud and Haybet, and my writing journey will enclose many words about them. 

I've made it through three cups of coffee, flipped my cup upside down, will get Yasmina to read my fortune, for fun, mostly hers, as she has been finding immense pleasure in such witchy musings and activities lately. 

In the background, I've been playing on repeat a newly discovered song called "I hear the voice of my grandmother's calling me...", I shared it with my cousin to show it to Mila, her daughter. Mila is a very special child girl, and to some extent, I feel I truly know her. Her grandma, my auntie from my mother's side, passed away a year and half ago. They buried inside my mother's grave, it was her wish, and in Islam this is something that could be done. Cousin Hisham, who came from the States to be his mother for the last moments, ended up burying her himself. He described to me how they gathered the bones of my mother, put them together inside a bag, move aside, and then in her place, the body of my auntie was placed. I got the chills when he told me, but in lots of ways, it made me content in some sort of strange way. 

"I hear the voice of my grandmother's calling me... 
I hear the voice of my grandmother's song...
Saying: wake up, wake up child, wake, wake up. Listen, listen... 
Saying: stand in your power woman, stand in your power. Listen, listen... 
Saying:give birth, give life woman, give birth, give life mother. Listen, listen... 
Saying: teach and be wise, grow, teach and be wise. Listen, listen..."