Let’s hope 2018 will be a better year.' I don’t know why this statement sounds to me as one full of defeat and hopelessness. It is a statement that many people repeat one year after another, even though they know deep inside that it is a fake form of optimism we console ourselves with, like a scared child singing in a dark alley to keep himself distracted from darkness.

The whole concept of “competition” needs to be revisited. In my view, competition and wisdom are two different paths that will never intersect ... we need to seek wisdom rather than playing games and politics against our peers to get status and power.

On my right side there was a young couple making out in public. On my left side an old woman was staring at the young couple maliciously, either wishing she was part of it, or mocking the whole ‘lovemaking’ scene as a grand project of separation.

After everything I have experienced in Iraq over the years, there is hardly any disaster that can take me by surprise...Not even death itself will get the pleasure of taking me by surprise at this point.

They say: there is time for love and time for death...I say: we don't realize it's time for loveUntil it is almost time to die...

They will not even dare take a minute and stand in front of a mirror to examine their faces lest they suddenly realize how defeated, how duped they have been all these years. There is something about staring at ourselves in the mirror that makes us question our very existence, and whether we are the kind of people that we wanted to be, a question that so many people avoid confronting.

The Eternal FriendsThe three eternal friends, Time, Loneliness and Death, met at a small old café.'You won’t last long. I will destroy you at the end,' said Time to Loneliness.'And I will drain every minute and every second in your life.Nothing will give you joy no matter what you do or how hard you try,' Loneliness responded.After a short silence, once Death pronounced its sentence, Loneliness vanished and Time passed.June 20, 2013

I thought how artists, writers, and thinkers who are genuinely and strongly connected to their time, place, and peoples always sense disasters before they befall. They are not magicians with crystal balls. They simply use their other well-trained senses, beyond the five senses, to feel the upcoming earthquake, to sense the eruption of the upcoming volcanos, the approaching hurricanes. They signal what they sense in their works, while many people don’t take their warnings seriously.

Christmas and New Year should not be a temporary dose of heroine to sedate people and have them consume more goods, go on vacations, or sit with family and friends at the dinner tables of triviality to boast presumed ‘achievements’ or share pathetic stories about ‘changing the world’.