My Backpack

well in a few hours i will be on my way to the airport ... flying to riyadh for my interview ... i talked about it earlier ... it's a logistics position ... i'm feeling pretty confident since i already met with the country manager and he liked me ... now i will be meeting the man who will decide if he wants to hire me or not ... inshala he will ...
i haven't been on a plane in a long long time ... more than a year ... and that was a domestic flight ... just like this one ... except that one was to jeddah ... this is to riyadh ... it only takes an hour or so to fly from here to riyadh so it's not exactly an exhausting trip ... i'm coming back by bus though ... that's a slightly longer trip ... four hours longer to be exact ...
anyway i was at the mall earlier today ... i went to buy some clothes for the interview ... pants, shirt, and tie ... i can barely fit into my old interview clothes ... those were purchased a short time after graduation a little more than a year ago ... i've gained so much weight since then ... so anyway i needed some new ones ...
later on when i was packing for my little flight ... well i don't know if you can call it packing ... i'm only taking my backpack ... but anyway ... so there was a lot of old junk in my backpack ... so i started taking all that junk out ... then i sat down on the bed and started to look at it ...
there is a manila folder stuffed with all kinds of souvenirs and mementos from my college days ... it's literally bursting at the sides because it is so full ... every poster and picture i had hanging on my wall is in there ... there is a very special birthday card in there ... there are takeout menus ... flyers that were distributed at the university gate ... pages i ripped out from my notebooks ... i wanted to bring my notebooks with me but there were too many so i just went through them and ripped out the pages that i really wanted to keep ... i'm glad i kept those things ... i even kept a napkin from this one date i had where the girl was trying to teach me a little french ... so she wrote me a little french lesson on the napkin ... very basic things like how to say he, she, they, we ... she would write the word then next to it she wrote how to say it in french ... for example ...

je = i
tu = you
il - elle = he - she (singular)
there's a few more but you get the idea ...

there was also a spiral notebook in my backpack ... i started reading it ... i found some journal entries i had written ... dating back to late 2006 and early 2007 ... i was still a fresh graduate then ... i still hadn't started working yet ... in some of the entries i was talking about my final days in beirut ... there was other stuff in the journal besides those entries ... for example there were some love poems i had written about a girl i was involved with at the time ... some self-motivational speeches i had written to inspire myself ... keep your head up kind of things ...
i also found some papers in my backpack on which i had scribbled addresses for places i had interviews at - interviews that did not work out i might add ... i found old airline ticket stubs ... i found a hotel receipt from my brief stay in jeddah during january last year ... it was actually very emotional for me to see all these memories all at once ... kind of overwhelming ... i admit my eyes actually teared a little bit ... i even found some cigarettes in there ... as well as a lot of rolling paper ...
so anyway after i was done reminiscing ... i didn't throw away any of the junk (except for the rolling papers) ... i put it all in a safe place ... after i come back from my trip it's all going back inside the backpack ... so anyway now my backpack was empty ... except there was still a lot of dirt and stuff at the bottom of it ... like tobacco from the cigarettes and what not ... so after emptying it out, i went into the bathroom and held it upside down over the tub and proceeded to shake it violently ... my plan was to then turn on the water and wash everything that fell out down the drain ... then the strangest thing fell out ... a nice decent sized piece of black hash ... i mean it was easily one joint ... a joint that would blow your mind ... ok yes i admit ... i used to smoke up ... even after i graduated ... even after i started working ... i would occasionally smoke up ... but not nearly as frequently as i used to ... i mean during college it was like all the time ... especially junior year ... that was like literally all the time ... but after graduating it was like once every three or four months ... anyway when i quit my job i decided to quit doing that as well ... i mean do i regret doing it ... i don't know a little bit but not really ... it's just that there comes a time when you need to stop ... just like girls like playing with dolls when they are young ... there comes a time when it just isn't appropriate anymore ... besides one of the reasons i quit my job was to start a new chapter in my life and there was no place for drugs in this new chapter ... so i picked it up from the bathtub ... i looked at it for a few seconds ... i will admit the thought of keeping it crossed my mind ... but then i threw it into the toilet and flushed it ... in the old days such a discovery would have caused me to celebrate ... it's like finding money in one of your pockets ... but not anymore ... anyway now that i was done with my shaking ... i turned on the water and washed it all down the drain ... then i went back to the room and put everything i want to take with me into the backpack ...
by the way i've had this backpack for a long time ... even during highschool ... it's blue except for the bottom part which is black ... the brand is polo sport ...
so it's not just the things inside it that bring back memories ... the backpack itself brings back memories ...

in closing ... i leave you with this beautiful recitation from the holy quran as a thank you for reading this long post ...