It's been a pretty rough time the past couple weeks.

Mostly, because wessam got busted again.

Around a couple years ago, he was high as a kite in the middle of the street - a life he lived every night he didn't have college the next morning - and, with wavy hair down to his shoulders and a heavy metal shirt, cut jeans and big black boots, he rolled a joint in the middle of the street. Of course he got caught doing it, and it was completely his fault, but he got away with it after a night in jail and a trial that he was spared from.

And i guess once isn't enough - but this time it was his friend's fault. The day i wrote the previous entry, we drank sweet wine at the studio and jammed, while i sang, and as usual, wasn't heard. But being drunk had lifted my bad mood, and i was pretty neutral by the time i got home.

The next morning, not surprised that he hadn't called me as he usually would every night, i signed on to msn and found offline messages from him at 3am, telling me that the police did a check on his car while mido was buying cigarettes. Wessam, believing there was nothing in the car, sat back and let them do it. As soon as they got to mido's bag though, they found a piece of hash that he'd never told us was there. Mido ran off while wessam dealt with the blame for a piece that wasn't his.

All night the police harassed him. They threatened him with 25 years in jail. They took his phone, looked through the videos and pictures, hissing and whispering about the pictures they saw of us together, then reading the love note text messages we used to send each other, before my phone entered a perpetual state of no credit. They took the piece of hash they'd found, smoked it while they talked with him - one of them sat next to him and asked all about the sex life he has with 'the hottie on his phone' while he was really high on tramadol. Police? Police my ass!

I've given up smoking cannabis altogether. While i'm high it makes me paranoid, makes me twitch constantly, sometimes makes me forget to breathe unless i concentrate, makes me think too much and shrink away - but when i'm drunk i have all the balls in the world and i'm comfortable even standing on my head (if i ever had the balance to).

But wessam never felt the need to quit, and mido - he's a lost case, going back and forth from being drunk and stoned to high on pills. He'll quit the self destructive happy pills and tell everybody, and later on start them again, with another 'legible' reason why. He's a nice guy, but he could never accomplish what wessam did when he quit tramadol.  Maybe he just never had a good enough reason. Wessam only stopped a year ago because he realized he was with a barely 16 year old chick from a completely different world, that had just started cigarettes and barely ever drank, and experiencing the fake feelings of love that it creates, and snatches away as soon as sobriety comes along.

He's changed a lot now, though. When i first met him he was all about alcohol and weed and nights out and music and having fun - now it's as though he wants to be a responsible, reliable guy. He thinks for the future, not for now. Most of it may just be dreams talking - he often creates goals and forgets about them even more quickly than i forget mine (running every day to lose the weight he's put on since he quit pills, or never eating after 7pm, or studying very hard, or praying daily as he should) but there's a difference.

That's why it's disappointing that he took the blame while his immature and irresponsible older friend ran off. I was relieved that all he got was punishment from his parents, but upset that we were out of contact for a long time. There was no sure way of knowing what was going on, and i spent most of my time miserably sitting at home, wondering what was going on. The cell phone and computer had been taken away, and when he started using his brother's, his mom locked up all the cell phones in the house. Four days later though, he could freely go online.

He was more upset about missing out on the studio recording than anything else, while i spent a lot of time crying because i believed i wouldn't see him for a month. On the saturday after it happened, i went to the studio, nervous and sort of emotionally fragile, to explain to his band that he couldn't be there, and wouldn't be there for a while. The three of them are covered in tatoos, donning heavy boots and heavy metal t-shirts. Only one of them was cute-faced and funny. But they turned the whole thing into a joke, to my relief and to sherif's. He invited me upstairs into his house, where i talked with him and his wife about it all over beer and cigarettes and tea.

On monday though, a few distant, extremely affectionate friends came over. It was more just Rania and her sister and the two girl's boyfriends, but we had a nice time, sharing a wine bottle in my room. I was relieved to have some company and wessam seemed pretty upset by it. He always told me he missed me, but he was more upset about missing out on his music, and made that extremely clear to me.

Within a week of the arrest though, he'd found a way to get out of the house. His dad had told him that he'd go with him to meet me, get to know me a bit and give us some time alone, but in the end, he let wessam go by himself. The first thing we did was go to the tattoo studio to meet his band, and while he talked with them, being the bigshot, saying "no, i had to go out, i couldn't keep away from my music for longer than a week," when he'd told me something completely different. I sat around pretending to have interest in the albums of tattoos that the drummer had given in his studio for around 45 minutes while he went on with the guys. I knew he missed his studio so i never nagged him to get going - i did what i've grown used to doing and shut up completely.

 I never saw the same kind of relationship dynamics between the male and female teens in the uk - the girls were rather dominant, actually. But i'm with an egyptian - so what can i say? He has to be dominant. Even though i'm the one that pays for gas in his friend's car, he has to be the one to hand over the money and make it appear as though he got it. Even though i pay the bills at a cafe, he has to be the one to take the money from my wallet and hand it personally to the waiter. Even at his cousin's birthday party, when i had a bottle of rum for him, wessam told me to leave it in the car. Half an hour later, he left me with a bunch of people i didnt know and came back with the bottle, handing it to his cousin as if he was the one who'd taken it and he was the badass giving him an extremely expensive bottle of whiskey for his birthday. Over the noise and the loud music, it was hard to express to his cousin that the gift was, in fact, from me.

Later on the first day out, we went back to the studio. He assured me that he'd be spending the time talking with me, but when a migraine caught me by surprise, he wound up worldessly going down the stairs to the insulated room and playing guitar with a bunch of strangers.

The band's toned, attractive vocalist came out though, stood there smiling at me, and i broke the silence by asking for a light for my cigarette. He was pretty friendly, sticking the burning tip of his cigarette against the intact tip of mine, watching closely as i puffed until i had some of his fire. He was easy to talk to, and he didnt beat around the bush. He sat down with me, talking about music, asking about my voice and how well i could sing, and eventually we talked about religion - he made it clear that he was interested, made it clear that he found me extremely beautiful (egyptians would find anybody showing off their arms to be a piece of eye candy), and i made it clear that the guitarist blowing everyone away downstairs was my boyfriend.

It was nice to have somebody blatantly pointing out his interest in me for once - it held more meaning than the daily harassment i get on the streets, at least - and somehow it turned into a confidence boost, after the months i spent under wessam's scrutinizing eye ("you have a huge problem, this nostril is smaller than that one, this eye is smaller than that one, this eyebrow is higher than that one, this side of your jaw isn't as sharp as that one, your lips stick out sideways (wtf? i look in the mirror and dont see my lips sticking out anywhere they're not supposed to), your eyes are sleepy, you have yellow teeth, ladidadida")and half-assed compliments, and the even more scrutinizing eye of his pumpkin shaped mother.

Right after he finished his guitar playing, he decided it was time to go. I accepted apathetically and shrugged off any bad feelings i had, mostly because i didnt want to feel disappointed anymore.

We got an unpleasant, random visit from his parents the other day. They demanded to know the exact location of the studio, and followed in their car while we drove towards it. I spent most of the time sitting in the car while he went to his parents and argued. I wasn't in the mood to have a visit from them because one of the things that drives me crazy is the scrutinizing, judgemental, self  righteous being that never matures enough to understand the saying 'don't judge a book by its cover.'

But to my face, they were both nice. Wessam came to the car, told me they wanted to say hi, and dragged me over to them while i tried to act natural and sweet. Wessam's parents are both short and both round, surprising because they have a son that's so tall now. His dad is fluent in english and he made jokes and laughed with us - suddenly i felt a little easier. The majority of the time they were joking and laughing with wessam in arabic, and i was standing awkardly next to his mom.

"Did wessam tell you what happened?" She asked me.

I confirmed it, and tried to explain that it was all mido's fault and wessam's only mistake was in trusting a drug addict. She discussed it with me in the best way she could with my non-existent arabic and her limited english, and i tried hopefully to believe that she wasn't so bad and wessam was just exaggerating when she constantly pointed out all the things that she found wrong with me.

It turns out, though, that when he got home that night, his parents debated. His mother said that the only thing about me that wasn't irritating to look at was my hair, and complained yet again about the asian eyes and the ugly face and my abnormally big hips. It turns out that one of wessam's cousins has given up trying to get married because every time he brought a woman to his family, they complained that the woman of his choice was hideously ugly and refused to let him marry her. Real monster in laws they will be. Wessam's dad, on the other hand, was pinching his mom and arguing back. "All i said about your cousin's women were that nobody would chase her and give her trouble trying to win her over. Don't worry, though. When it comes to your girlfriend, she's probably fighting them off daily. Only problem is, her teeth aren't white - she's probably a good cigarette smoker."

And his mom retaliated, of course, attacking with her point that there was a lot more wrong with me than unwhitened teeth.

What i've come to realize is that i have never been judged so harshly like that in my life - except with one other girl in my sixth grade class - a child rival. Every grown parent i've ever met has been above that kind of thing - they'd have much bigger, more important things to do and say than sit around shit talking their son's sixteen year old girlfriend, when they themselves look like pumpkins. Part of maturity is knowing that looks are beside the point - love is blind. Not only that, but the inner being defines the value of the person you're looking at - not their beauty. My parents know that i'm more attractive than wessam is, and they've never even once complained about the way he looks - or the way any of my exes looked. It's part of being courteous and part of being dignified.

A lot of the family friends back in the UK have some very attractive sons, who choose young women that are much more brains and personality than beauty. And the parents never once complained about their looks - because looks simply aren't important when it comes to having a good woman or a good man. They were raised in a place where it's an important part of reaching maturity, to know that it's obnoxiously and pathetically rude to judge somebody so harshly by their body or face.

So i guess his mother and the rest of their family never reached that maturity. It's hard to picture such old, round, aging parents of three young men, sitting around with their equally old and equally maternal sisters, shit talking a seventeen year old for vain or racist reasons. Its almost amusing - but it pisses me off. Why do i care? Cause i'll be dealing with them for the rest of my life. Or at least, until they shrivel up and die. At least wessam's cousin will be free - hearing that he couldnt get married cause his relatives didn't find the women attractive enough, calling them hideously ugly, is probably one of the stupidest things i've heard from a family that thinks so highly of themselves and believes i'm the loose-moraled one.

It pisses me off, yeah.. but i don't know why i care so much about the way i look, and why it's such a hard hit to hear insults like that, or deep criticism from the one i love. I guess it's cause i dont have much brains (getting kicked out of school is enough to prove that) or personality. People always have and will continue to base my value mostly on my beauty, and since it's been like that for around seven years now, i feel like its all i have. Most of my boyfriends in trinidad were only with me because of my beauty - my mother's only connection with me was through our beauty, as well as my father's - and wessam and i barely knew each other when we got together - my beauty was the only thing that made me worth getting to know. In the end, it paved my way to acceptance, because my personality and my brains were rarely enough.

Anyways. My birthday's tomorrow, and my maid, while looking through my condom/nude sketches/poetry/diary/lubricant drawer (i dont know why the hell she'd be in there - you can't go through people's drawers) found my brother's missing cell phone. I needed it a lot in the past few weeks and i paid back all the credit i used - but i dont think that'll be enough for parents like mine.

I just hope they give me a break for tomorrow.