Ayman Elkhidir

Dedicated to all the Sudanese guys and girls living outside Sudan.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE SUDANESE WHEN…..

• Your parents think everything besides 3aseedah, kisra, and moolah is junk.

• When your momma used to dress you, your clothes didnt match or weren`t right for the occasion, because all she was concerned about was you having some clothes on.

• You’re eating a simple snack and ur whole family gathers around u to eat with you.

• You talk too loud on your cell.

• One of your relatives always eats everything with their hands, even at fancy restaurants.

• When at least one of your male cousins will wear flip-flops to any occasion from backyard cookouts to weddings.

• You’re parents pronounce stop as “ee-stopp”; world as “wer-lid”; and father as “fazer”.

• At least one person you know was a doctor in sudan but is now a taxi driver or pizza man.

• Your grandparents think everything Americans do is haram because to them, they are all “owlaad haram”.

• Your mom walks around smelling like mahlabiya with henna on her hands and feet.

• Your family believes everything is better back in sudan…water, air,etc…

• When shops have sale they call your mom.

• You still have, stored in suitcases, clothes that you used to wear when you were five. And sometimes given to relatives as gifts!!

• You call an older person you’ve never met before “Ammo” or “Khaltu”.

• You hide everything from your parents, but they still think they know everything about you, and make you believe that they actually do.

• If you are a boy you start worrying about the (Khidmah Elzamiyah) when you reach puberty.

• You look for universities as far away from home as possible.

• You learn how to beg the personnel at the airport to allow the excess baggage you’ve got as soon as your father stops doing that for you.

• When you FLY BACK home you find 20 people waiting for you at the airport.

• Everytime you fly back home you meet relatives you never knew existed, and they look nothing like your family.

• You always curse at Sudanese when you are back home, but when you live abroad you only make Sudani friends.

• When you come back from University you still have to live with your parents, and fight over curfew allover again, as if you never left them before.

• Your relatives alone could populate a small city.

• Everyone is a family friend (amoo wa khalto).

• You fight over who pays the dinner bill (yes the old hospitality routine).

• You talk with your hands.

• When you go on a date you start thinking of lousy places where nobody would go to so you wont bump into family or friends.

• You end up in a lousy place and still bump into the relative with the biggest mouth.

• You think you are liberated when you can’t even smoke in public.

• If you are 25 and not married yet, your parents make you feel that you are getting too old.

• Getting married becomes the only way you can escape your parents.

• You tell your friends how to rebel against their parents when you can’t even stay out past midnight.

• You always say “Open the light” instead of “Turn the light on”, “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car” or “cut it off” instead of “cut it out”.

• You or your parents pronounce your P’s as B’s (bebsi and bolice).

• You ask your dad a simple question and he tells you a story of how he had to walk miles just to get to school.

• Your parents were ranked first in school (so they say).

• While in the states, you tell everyone that you are a “successful businessman back home” when you are really just an unemployed goat herder.

• You use Sudani parties, gatherings, picnics as a social ground to meet potential wives/husbands.

• You only walk on the streets in groups of seven or more people and talk really really loud in Arabic together.

I found that I’m having quite an effect on people around me.

First was my sweet sister Eman’s entry to the blogosphere 6 months ago. Eman is a great writer and poet. She is amazing both in poetry and normal writing and even story-telling, even though she prefers writing in Arabic most of the time. By now she’s way ahead of me in blogging as she keeps coming up with interesting and light topics which are really fun.

And now my dear friend Monica has also got very excited to have a blog. So she gets a nice one set up on blogspot. This girl has so many thoughts and opinions in her head that can’t wait to come out on paper (or web pages, in fact), so a big welcome applause for Mon to the blogging world and can’t really wait to read her writings.

So you must have noticed the change in the design of the site.. Actually I found out that the old one wasn’t very IE7 friendly. So even though I’m not an “Internet Explorer” fan, I changed the whole thing for the best of all. I AM CUSTOMER-CENTRIC, YOU KNOW!

Some of the new stuff is the post categories and the search engine, which will turn to be very important as the number of posts increase, hopefully. I removed the photo album and will soon be adding it here but it will be a bit different. How different? still didn’t decide on that.

The Music Jukebox is still here, being the most popular part of the site and I added about 20 or so more songs to the English playlist; all my favorite hits.

I added a count-down timer to remind me (and everybody) of coming events, as I don’t remember these dates, naturally due to me being a guy.

And for those RSS feed freaks out there, now you have a direct link to the RSS feeds for both the posts and comments on aymanelkhidir.com. You can find it on the right side bar. For those who don’t know what RSS is – and I know a bunch of them . I will talk about this in another post.

A new feature as well is the AnswerTips. Remember when I spoke about this website before? Well, now it is built into my site. If you see a word which you don’t know the meaning of, or want to know more about the topic, just double click on it and you’ll get a pop-up with some info, from-which you can click around to get more details.

So when I start using difficult language, or may words of non-English origin, you don’t have to pick the phone and call me to know about them anymore. Just double click on the word. Try it with any word on this site (any word that doesn’t link to another site, obviously), or even try it on this intentionally imagined paragraph (anyway, I believe someone who writes like this normally should be hanged in public):

On the Yuletide of the year 1245 A.D. near a scalene-shaped building, a man was lollygagging around the fountain when he was confronted by a mighty knight. When he noticed the quillon of the sword, recognizing the knight, he dropped down on his knees and cadged for mercy in a tawdry manner. Suddenly, the sound of the guards’ horns was heard and the knight absquatulated in fast steps.

Yeah I know it seems like an awkward title.. but just before you start accusing me of terrorism and all, there a story behind this..

It all began in Summer 1997. I was just starting my final year in high school and it was the right time to start thinking about where I would go for college. There were lots of options; here in UAE, back in Sudan, or even an Arab country like Jordan or Egypt, but i didn’t care about all these options. I had a dream of studying in the US and I wanted this so badly that I headed to the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi where they had a database of all US colleges and Universities.

I went through the sophisticated searches where you input the area of study you want, your budget limit, the states you want to limit you search to, etc. I ended up with several choices, made some print-out and came back home to study them further.

Down the year, I had discussions with my parents about this and even though they were furiously objecting the idea of me going so far to study, they couldn’t resist my insistence and gave an initial approval. Eventually, I had a chance of admittance to the College of Engineering at UAE University which was an offer I couldn’t refuse, being a very strong college, free of charge and in my own hometown. Still, I got a promise that I would go for higher studies to the states once I finish mt B.Sc.

Since day 1 in college, I never slept without dreaming and wishing my college days go fast so I get to go the states and live the American dream. Through the days, I finalized my destination, a university called Virginia Tech.

I used to check their website everyday and check up their news and activities. I knew everything about this university and even started knowing students over there. It was the perfect choice for me.

September 11, 2001: Boom, the world trade center tragedy and afterwards news was coming from everywhere about hate attacks on Arabs and Muslims in the states. My parents got the excuse they were looking for. Bye bye my American dream

Few days ago, a Korean student at VT kills (33) students in the Engineering building in a big tragedy to the VT society. I felt so sad about this as if I was a student at VT itself.

Now thinking about it after all those years, I found out that if 9/11 didn’t happen, I would be in my second and last year of M.Sc at VT by now. I would have been in that building when it happened and perhaps would be one of the victims of that tragedy. Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya would be making reports about me and playing camcorder clips of me with my friends or during an activity in college. They would be interviewing my mom and dad where they talk about how a good son I was and how I insisted on going all the way to USA for studies and they’d show the TV crew my room back home with my pictures and my B.Sc certificate hanged on the wall.

You could read this and say I’m thinking in a wrong way or being pessimistic, but if you could know how much I loved VT and how bad I wanted to go there, you would be joining me in thanking Osama and his pals for urging me not to go.

My deepest condolences to the management, faculty, staff and students at Virginia Tech and to the families of those who passed away and I hope a quick recovery for those who were injured during this crazy day.

I had a rough day yesterday.

On Friday, I got a call from a dear friend from Sudan. He told me he’s here in Dubai as his father went through a heart surgery a few days back in a hospital here in Dubai. I visited them at the hospital and his father was recovering well from the surgery. He was talking and joking and everybody was feeling lots of relief after a few tough days.

Since he wanted to spend the night close to his dad at the hospital, I told my friend I’m picking him up the next day (yesterday) and he would stay at my place as long as he needs to, and since everything seemed going fine, I had a good plan of showing him around Dubai and all.

Yesterday as I was on the way to pick him up, he calls me and says: Ayman.. My father passed away like an hour ago.

Needless to say how tough yesterday was. We spent the whole day at the hospital with him and his family while everybody was running around coz there were lots of procedures to be done for arranging the funeral and all. Slept that night with a headache.

The next day I woke up in the morning, skipped work that day and was getting ready to head to Al-Ain for the funeral when I got an SMS from a close friend/colleague who just had a healthy little baby girl that morning.

It is amazing how life is. It takes someone in a minute, while bringing to it a new soul the minute after.