Smile

A smile is a precarious thing. Thought to be the expression of happiness, it can hide away other things. A shy smile is to let that blue-eyed boy next to you know you like listening to him talk. A broad smile is to let the shy girl know you think she’s lovely. A shared smile is to connect over a joke, a feeling, an understanding. These are the ones known to everyone. But there are those who use smiles in a different way.

A plastic smile, to let your friends know you’re all right, but it hides away your pain and hurt. A wide smile is to assure them you are telling the truth, but you aren’t, are you? That smile that shows no teeth, it hides your anger, doesn’t it? The Cheshire grin heralds the malicious pranks you’ve pulled and the jokes you’ve made. Don’t let these upside-down frowns drag your day down into the dumps. Instead, find the beautiful smiles.

The one covered by both palms in an effort to contain your laughter. The open-mouthed smile that lets out whoops of joy and wonder. The soft smile that follows a kiss from the one you love. The victorious smile, beaming towards others after a comeback with your team. The knowing smile that lights your face when you see friends flirting.

Show the world your pain along with your smiles. There’s no weakness in pain or suffering. The only weakness is in deceit. You are beautiful the way you are and your smile just makes you even more stunning. Smile your favorite smile, for you never know who will fall in love with it.

-Hailey
Regular, undecided teen. Loves the snow others despise. Believer in the saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword"

 

Explosive Smile by Daniel Perkowski

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A Bulb to Brighten

Like many of us try to deny, I am insecure. Maybe it isn’t for the specific flaws another person might have as theirs but just like everyone, I have insecurities. 

It is impossible to perfect yourself if you are not even aware of who you are. Everyone has their own light bulb inside of them. You cannot be someone else. In other words, you cannot steal a replica of another human being’s bulb and try to shine it as bright as they are capable of. That way, one has their own bulb switched off and the stolen one slightly dimmer than the original indicating you will never reach the top being someone you are not. 

Some of us forget how important it is to be ourselves. One affects the entirety of the world by not being themselves. One pretends to be someone for love, reputation, attention. Most of all, one loses who they were fated and meant to be. How you walk, how you talk, how you write will just be ordinary and something you learned from someone else. ‘Someone else’ who was just busy lightening their own bulb. 

You will be but a replica, a dimmer bulb, of someone bright. And as the time flies in the journey of us attempting to become something we are not, we also happen to complete the journey of losing who we were or could be and lastly we unintentionally break the bulb only we could brighten individually. So for now, think about what you have become if it is you or if you have a bulb to fix or a bulb to throw.

-Iman Javed

Burger Aficionado. Crazy but Preppy Muggle.

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Chains of Glass- Part 1

Sometimes, several times, I think I saw evil in me.

I hadn’t grown up in a bubble; I was raised in an enormous oblong glass box. The extraordinary thing about this glass box was that I could see everything of the world without. But to that world, I was completely invisible. The box was impermeable, it was impossible for me to shine in the radiance that showered around it. The glass simply reflected its bright glares. None of the beams reached within.

But that never really bothered me, I was too busy looking outside. There was too much light inside the box already, and the glass just trapped it within. And almost always, it fluoresced.

Yet, sometimes, many times, I think I saw darkness- outside, inside, and either time- in me.

If I had had a desire, even just a slight yearning, to shatter this glass that interposed, like I wall, between me and this world outside, this glorious existence that I could only see, sometimes smell, almost taste, but never feel- it wouldn’t have been sinful.

It’s not sinful to crave what you don’t have. It’s human. For as alluring as this world was to me, I knew, and I could tell by the lust in their eyes, that this invisible sanctuary of mine was something they could die for, and they did.

In that was my sin.

When I was a child, the bad times drifted past. I later learned there were several, but my memory could hold only a few. Those it did, I accepted. It didn’t matter whether it was losing a parent or moving into a large glass box. I simply accepted, maybe a little too easily.

In our world, outside the glass boxes scattered miscellaneously, there are always bad times. Or in other words, times are always bad. As you grow, you become more sensitive to pain, to sorrow, to despair. There is so much of it to feel in this world. Too much. It’s unbearable.

Wars were raged, are raging and even now, are promised to be raged, from north to south, east to west. Then when they get bored of their enemy, the wars still rage, this time north to west, east to south. Peace is nowhere, not in any country I’ve heard of. Their wars only rattled the serenity within our sanctuary of a glass box. 

(...to be continued...)
- Bushra

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Goodbye

The Goodbye Girl by Olga Noes

They looked at each other with a sad face. They were overwhelmed with a mixture of emotions, a little happiness with a partial sadness, an excitement with nervousness. It was time to say good bye to the person she had respected all her life. He was the one who had supported her at all times, held her hand and guided her towards the path of light. And today, she had to leave this very person.

She was filled with guilt for leaving at a time when he needed her support the most. She touched his face, feeling his soft wrinkled cheeks wet with tears.

“I’ll miss you a lot, baba,” she whispered as a flashback of the entire life she had spent with her father unfolded before her eyes. Ever since she was born, her father had been her only companion at home. He would cook meals for her, take her to school, helped with her homework and not to mention, supported her financially. She was his little princess and he had always been ready to do anything for her if only it put a smile on her face.

But today was her wedding day. The day when she would become her husband’s responsibility and will leave behind the most precious person in her life. All his life he took care of her and now when he needed to be taken care of, she had to leave him and that too for his own happiness. His dream of getting his daughter married had finally come true.

The fiesty celebrations were coming to an end. The guests were about to leave. With tearful eyes and a blurry vision she could see girls wearing their abayas and old women wrapping themselves up in their huge chaadars to cover before leaving the wedding hall.

All close relatives had gathered around waiting to be hugged by the bride. But she was not ready to let go of her father. She felt a warm hand over her shoulders and knew at once who it was.

The warm hand had always been her support after her father. Today it was the day to hold it forever. With tearful eyes, she looked at him through her shoulders and heard,

“It’s time to leave,” her husband said calmly. While still holding her father’s hand, she hugged her relatives and then, finally, let go. Her husband placed his hands around her waist and walked her towards their 'chariot'. The car was decorated with hundreds of roses but right now nothing was going to cheer her up.

Before getting in she turned to cast one last glance at her old and weak father and then finally shoved herself in with a heavy heart. The only thing to do now was make a silent prayer.

“Oh Allah, I trust you to take care of my baba when I won’t be there with him anymore,” the car engine roared and a new journey begun.

-Aisha Idris

A nomad exploring her talents. Discover more of her works at www.aishaaboo.wordpress.com

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This is NOT how it is

When I was growing up, the unspoken philosophy of Egyptian society was “this is how it is.” As an Egyptian living overseas, I was constantly exposed to the sickening caste system and the chasm it created between the rich and the poor. While many Egyptians struggled to make ends meet, others drowned in luxuries like Lexus cars and ski trips to Switzerland. Whenever a naive child, not yet touched by life’s cruelty, asked, “Why?”, the response came as mechanically as if it were programmed: “Because this is how it is.”

Finally, a miracle happened. Yes, you guessed right- the 25th January revolution. The Egyptian citizens, who had till now boasted of a remarkable, record-breaking history of being ignorant and enduring whatever may be the circumstances they were subjected to, erupted in a wild yet civilized rage.

To me, an upper-class thirteen-year-old on vacation in Egypt, the revolution seemed irrelevant, and I tried to steer clear of any discussions or debates about it. I suppose it was not because of carelessness but rather to avoid seeming like I knew nothing about why the demonstrations were happening. Eventually, though, I made a decision that changed my life forever—I decided to go to Tahrir Square, the heart of the Egyptian revolution, not to support demonstrations but to understand what was going on. Although it met with great opposition from everyone I knew, I doggedly pursued the plan, and the story unraveled before my eyes in a way I could never have imagined possible.

Slowly, I started to develop a sense of gratitude towards things that I earlier saw as ‘Basic’ or ‘Normal’. The real concept behind all the community work I did unfolded and a sense of loyalty suddenly sprang up within me. It was like I finally saw the light.

Indeed, my intuitive decision did not fail me even for a second. The blurry, vague image in my mind cleared as I understood who I am, which I believe is the first step towards understanding who I want to be in this world. It was an experience like no other. The one place where you can say whatever you want without being subjected to the prejudice that had till now defined my society.

I found myself standing next to a black woman with a ragged ‘abbaya’ (common Muslim, female dress in Middle East), a young adult dressed up in designer clothes, a barefoot teen who just couldn’t afford shoes, and an old lady wearing the Christian Cross around her neck. A feeling of immense peace and security swept over me as I realized that in this place, when I fall someone or the other will bend down and help me up. Here, you could look past the differences straight into the similarities… One Heart, Two Lungs…We’re all fighting for the same cause. Not a particular political or religious affiliation but simply requesting the basis of humanity. ‘Democracy, Liberty and Social Equality’.

We were not asking for a lot. Nobody was demanding to be moved from rags to riches. We just want to feel that we have an identity, that we’re not puppets in a tyrant’s deceptive political ploy. After this experience, I realized that what was foreign to us was not always bad. In this case, it was a blessing in disguise!

I’m pretty sure many things have changed for the better, and even more haven’t, but at least now, when a little kid asks about the reason behind the mess we’re in, the response won’t be, ‘This is how it is’.

- Adam Ashraf 
New York idolizing, art loving, wannabe author.

The Arab Spring may have become old news for many, but HASH doesn't want to be disadvantaged by an insignificant time-delay. Some of the world's best, most beautiful and timeless literature, stories, art and creativity was born in times of war and uncertainty...then why should today be any different? This piece reminded us of the power of something as seemingly simplistic as the written word in conveying a story, delivering a message, evoking the deepest depths of human consciousness and emotion at a time that shall go down in history as one of the most defining of our era.

So, what's your Spring story? Your experience of war and awakening, conflict, confusion, chaos and rediscovery? Get in touch. Let's share it with the rest of the world.

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Tick-tock

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once” –Albert Einstein 

Frozen Time by Qiang Huang

Time has endless definitions and meanings, but it has only one use, to measure. Time is seconds, hours, breaths, heartbeats, moon’s phases; you can use any unit for it, but its sole purpose is to organize our lives, to schedule them, and we are forever bound together in an hourglass from where we can’t escape but keep on drowning in the sand until we can’t breathe anymore. Time doesn’t make the world go round, but it helps keep chaos off the world’s face. If it weren’t for time, our history would be a jumble and our present lives even more so. So though time may be freedom diminishing, it is immensely essential.

I’d like to go back in time. Not by a couple of days or years, but centuries, millennia. If time was in my grasp I would travel to and fro from the glittering ball gowns of the Victorian era to the scorching hot deserts of Arabia, and witness every occurrence I ever pondered about and meet every person in whose curious life I was interested in. The person I’d like to meet first and foremost would be, without a doubt, Albert Einstein. A man of peculiar abilities and unusual methods who defied the definition of a scientist, because though a scientist is a person who experiments, he never did an experiment his whole life, but rather proved his theories based on a rather complicating series of calculations. He untapped the potential of the human brain like no average human had ever done before, and his normal yet powerful logic brought great discoveries and the equation E = mc2 (the theory of relativity) which is a beauty in itself. Along with him, I’d like to meet Sir Isaac Newton too. Both these scientists are my chief inspirations. Though I am no resident genius of physics, it is a marvel to find out the natural mechanisms behind the simplest actions. What will be better, than to be an apprentice to these legends, to be a part of their life-changing discoveries?

There is no one event or occurrence that holds the place of the top shelf for me. In fact, there are many incidents that I’d like to encounter, some great, some minor, but important just the same. Many points in history whose mere existence I doubt, and taking the advantage of today’s technology, I’d like to record those miraculous occasions in a camera. If we could change the past, then we could stop the numerous wars which resulted in outrageous amounts of deaths. But how many wars? How many disputes? How many invasions? We’d like to omit the fact that our history has been written with blood, innocent and guilty, but it has. The world map, ever-changing, was implemented through treachery, murder and other appalling sins committed to gain control and power, but no one ever did, though Hitler, Attila the Hun and Alexander the Great are the closest names to this title, and their ways? No cleaner than a chimney sweeper’s brush.

If we did change the past, would our present be any calmer? But many would despute and say that fate and destiny would prevent things from happening any other way than they already did. So, what would be the notion of time machines if they’d bring good to no one? So many secrets to unveil, so many mysteries to solve, I could spend a lifetime voyaging the past and never live the` life entitled to me.

Though sixteen years is nothing to boast about, I’ve learned and matured every step of it. If I had to go back... well I wouldn’t. I don’t want to alter anything about my past, because that would change the person I am today, and every experience I’ve had, whether good or bad, whether accompanied by laughter or tears, was a solid foundation of my personality. If I would, I’d go and relive my childhood, the days of carelessness and carefree attitudes, when we were so intent on growing up we never realized how much we would miss those days, where endless accidents would happen and be shrugged off, and dancing princesses and a cat chasing a mouse were enough for our entertainment. Life with no obligations, no boundaries, no responsibilities. Hakuna Matata.

-Asma Sohail-
Aspiring Neurologist. Book Freak, Cat Lover.
(Also potentially unhinged for wanting to do nothing more with a time machine than meet Albert Einstein. Like really, Asma?
PS- Love from HASH)

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