Fighting Dorian Gray.

I had a portrait that I hung inside my heart because I didn’t want anybody else to see it – for I am sure that if anyone did, their eyes will fail to see it the way I do. Through the years, I didn’t mind change to seep through anything – including my physical traits, my social circles, my phonetics and spelling, my religious core, my drinking hard core… and any other core that there is. But I won’t let change touch that portrait. I fought so hard for it to remain the same way I see it. And I’d burn with jealousy when someone claimed they saw him the same way he looks in my portrait – but I won’t show it, because I am a very hard-to-see-through person and all, trust me I am… I mean I must be.

That portrait was more important to me than the person it impersonated. In my darkest nights, I’d kneel on my knees, clasp both hands, weep out my eyes and pray. I didn’t listen to Souad Massi or Billie Holiday and united my state with a miserable blue woman’s voice nor did I listen to Mohammed Mounir and felt how “7a2ee2y” he is and how I must know everything about life just because he’s on my playlist. I didn’t whine to girl friends over the phone, even though sometimes I’d do that to Purgatorio online – but only sometimes. I didn’t use my recently-acquired hard core drinking habits to fake drunkenness and call him up instead of kneeling in front of his portrait. I didn’t do any of that… I just prayed.

I prayed for dreams that were the victims of genocide, I prayed for a future that might have flourished, I prayed for resurrecting the past, I prayed for a final chance… but above all, I prayed for forgiveness. But just like those millions who pray daily to their own God, for the flourishing of Egypt in churches or for the freeing of Palestine in mosques… none of what I prayed for ever came. And again just like those millions… I still prayed.

The existence of my portrait slash god corner could have remained longer and grew stronger, for I am full of persistence and all… I mean I must be. However, there is this one thing that I couldn’t fight back – for he came and ripped off his own portrait and how I have seen him for all those years went down to the abyss. He’d boast off how low and cheap and sinfully human he has become and how lustfully he fucks obsessive mistresses, and that all those traits can’t belong to a god… and he’d go a step further to prove it by scratching the inside walls of the heart with blades. Apparently, he thought I deserve all that and all.

Now I am portrait-less, with a rectangular space that looks awkwardly clean other than the rest of the wall in the place of the portrait, which was removed. I don’t want any votes for a god, thank you, I am better off. It really hurts though, that he took away the only imagery I looked up for; it’s just not his right – he can vanish and lust and fuck, but not alter the portrait I had.

I am idle now on them dark nights... and I really don’t want Massi, Holiday or Mounir around.