I ignore the honking taxi drivers looking for a fourth passenger to start their journey. On Wednesdays, I always walk home from work, although it is not a very convenient distance. My mind is busy in arranging all the jumbled-up thoughts and tasks I have planned for the weekend.
I’ve been living in this country, away from family and all the comforts of a home, to earn something for the comfort of my loved ones. Sometimes, I wonder if there is anybody waiting for me. I don’t want to believe that people for whom I’m working desperately only wait for my bank draft, and not for me, every month. But why am I being drifted away by the vagaries of mind when I’ve so many plausible plans to think about.
I have to look for a modern health centre, plus an exquisite beauty clinic with all the luxuries and facilities suitable for mind and body harmony. Their exorbitant bills make a hole in one’s pocket, but in return they promise to revive, revitalize and rejuvenate both your body and soul.
I am intensely tired of working ten to twelve hours a day. Now, I am in desperate need of someone to erase the lines of tiredness and fatigue from both my face and mind. A bath with exotic ingredients and glorious fragrances would spruce up my looks. I am also thinking about the dinner on Friday night with a friend. I have to look superb and beautiful for the dinner with a man of choice in dim candlelight, soft music and haute French and Mediterranean cuisine.
Oh, I almost forgot, I have to buy some nice evening gowns as well. I revise the names of the world-famous boutiques in some of the elegant modern shopping malls. I must hurry. I comb my hair with my fingers to prevent them from falling on my face and feel their dryness and roughness. They need a treatment, too. I am going to discuss it with the hair specialist at the parlour. I better give a thought to hair colour as well. Chestnut brown or dark brown may be suitable. I’ll think about it later. Perhaps, a few streaks of a lighter shade will give a striking look to my appearance. I must buy some in-fashion hot colour cosmetics for the eyes and lips, too. A little flaw can ruin the overall image.
How easy it has become to be smart and beautiful. Just a capsule a day to promote healthy, young and radiant skin. Five, ten minutes of aerobics in a gymnasium to vanish the flab and fat.
There is grit in my shoes which is irritating me. I stand by the pole and take my left shoe off. The friction has made a hole in its sole. I shake the shoe and wear it again. A few corns and chipped nails without polish appear disgusting. Consultation with manicurists and pedicurists seems a must. I don’t think they are going to cost much. Hands and nails must be smooth, shiny, soft and well-decorated with nail tattoos. How much this world spends on manufacturing cosmetics to make people look young!
It’s very important to have a holiday in some remote place at least once a year. A chalet somewhere along a Mediterranean beach, or humming romantic Italian tunes in a boat in the canals of Venice. It’s all so simple and easy. Anyone can buy such a package on the Internet or from any of the tourist companies. After all, life is another name for enjoyment and pleasure. When so many options are easily available, it is ungrateful not to avail them.
How much is all this going to cost? Never mind, who cares. In this society of affluent people, money is the only thing that is superfluous. Restaurants, coffee shops, shopping malls, parlours are all over-booked. Beautiful, smart and charming fashionable medians are roaming everywhere. I wait five hectic days for a romantic weekend.
Miseries, injustice, famine, drought, diseases, threat of nuclear weapons and environmental hazards have become the topics of the haunting past. Nobody thinks about them now.
Suddenly a piercing horn shakes me. “Taxi ma’am?” a driver protrudes his head out of a car window.
“No, no,” I wave him away.
I can see the balcony of my flat on the seventh floor. Two of my flat mates are spreading their washing there. There are two more and I, the fifth one. I press the elevator button and wait while looking at the blinking numbers. I’ve saved two dirhams at the cost of my stiff, aching legs. Sometimes, I skip lunch in the office in order to save eight or ten dirhams. I compensate my lunch with an apple. It’s easy to convince colleagues and myself that I’m on a diet. After all, it is fashionable to show that you care about your weight and count your calories more than you count the money you earn. Clanking and rumbling, the lift is begging for a long-overdue retirement, but nobody cares.
I wake up early every Friday and go straight to the corner of the street where a newspaper hawker is selling colourful, fantastic dreams for only two dirhams. Every newspaper publishes an exquisitely thick magazine with an attractive cover page to take you away from the harsh realities of life into a beautiful world of extravagance. I visit a supermarket on Friday evening for my weekly groceries, and more glossy dreams waiting on the shelves wrapped in cellophane bags.
All the colourful and attractive magazines lined up on the shelves of big supermarkets and bookstores entice you to a whimsical world of fantasy, where everything from your body to your home, your kitchen and the restaurants in your city is stunningly beautiful. Thanks to all those people who work so hard to create these wonderful dreams, I also want to share this world, no matter if only in dreams.
I ignore the honking taxi drivers looking for a fourth passenger to start their journey. On Wednesdays, I always walk home from work, although it is not a very convenient distance. My mind is busy in arranging all the jumbled-up thoughts and tasks I have planned for the weekend.
