One Pie of Experience and Two Pies of Ecstasy

Day 8

Dear Journal,

To start with, a gloomy mood encumbers the day. The breakfast with the same fruit loops and milk have become too annoying and then LGM is all about making a judgment on a guilty soldier who killed a family under command and deciding on his punishment.

We enter the Holocaust Museum and that's when the true gloominess swells in on us. I knew about Adolf Hitler killing many million Jews but I never imagined 'this'. After rising to power legally, he created certificates to distinguish between the Aryans (pure bloods) and the Jews that soon turned to brutality. Benches in parks were separated for the Jews who were discouraged to marry or reproduce, a Jew child was held back from all educational and medical benefits or poisoned to death if found diseased; holes were made to dump their bodies down moving their large piles of corpses with trucks like they were 'toys'. Jew women were beaten up naked on the streets and disrespected. Worst of all, Jews were used in experiments to find out how cold temperatures could Aryans survive while drowning or how much pressure they could endure at high altitudes where they would freeze to death or scream. The videos and pictures pierce through my mind. Laying out the facts as it is in this paragraph says nothing, makes you feel nothing compared to actually seeing the pieces of those evidence in the Holocaust Museum. I believe if you are human, your mind wouldn't allow you to think for a second what religion these people were following and the first thing that would jump to your mind is "this is wrong, this is wrong, this is FUCKING wrong." And you would keep repeating it to yourself in your mind. That's what I am doing.

A refreshing drizzle buckets down on us that makes us all return. At night, we have cultural exchange program where you give a brief talk of your culture and show your group some traditional material, and I should say my mom is the most amazing mom ever. I realize now I don't have any material to represent my culture but hey! Remember the kamees that mom forcefully put in your luggage which you didn't want to bring?! She is so cool! In the program, the Australians give a lot of key chains (kangaroos- as you might've guessed); we get to taste tim-tim, their most famous made-in-Australia chocolate product. A Saudi Boy, Firas, treats us to very sweet dates that make us all run to get water so we can quench that sweet thirst. Of course, born and brought up in Saudi Arabia, I have grown up with fridge full of dates, under-bed space full of dates and kitchen storages full of dates. I have had moderately sweet, very sweet, sweet, neutral, big, small, hard, soft, charcoal black, brown and all other kinds of dates there is. So the thirst doesn't come as a shock to me but many are intrigued. An interesting traditional marriage I get to know of is Zimbabwe's – with every step into the bride's house, the groom has to pay a small amount and on the night of their wedding they are left to enjoy. The next morning, the sheet of the bed they slept in is swept into the sky to prove the girl was a virgin. (WHAT THE FUCK?!!)

This cultural exchange program distracts me a little but at the end of the day, thoughts from the holocaust museum begin haunting me again. You know, how you see scary stuff- like a horror movie sometimes- and plunge into thoughts about life. Deep shit. And it isn't like other circumstances are helping. I am just informed that my sisters are being cyber-bullied. I fucking hate bullies; always did and always will and I am fucking furious. I go sent messages to the inbox of each bullies "fuck yourself, you lifeless cunt". Only I get to call my sisters "assholes" and "bitches", no one else can. If it is their fight, it is also my fight. I will never abandon my sisters in situations like this and believe me when I say if those cunts ever have the courage to say a word in front of me and not like a coward behind a computer screen when I'm a million fucking miles away helpless to my sisters, I will make them pay for all that they said to them. We then share ourselves a cliché moment crying over Skype missing each other fucking bad. I will never forget today. I learned who I need to protect and from what and I learned how strong I can be and for who.

It is midnight 12 and I still haven't packed, showered or anything! Tomorrow we are leaving for New York. Oh I am fucked. I probably have to stay up all night.

Love Always

Huda

o