The most amazing thing you will see all week.

The Picture of Everything

The funny thing is: it’s not even completed yet.

Some zoom ins:

(A Braun hairdryer ad from 1980, picture by Gugue on Flickr)

My hairdryer blew up last week.

Blew up is the wrong word. I was hearing funny sounds coming from the wall behind my toilet for a few days. Finally, I decided to check the electrical outlet of my hairdryer only to discover that the white piece and the plug where melted into each other. Permanently.

I spent the rest of the week going to work with weird-looking hair.

I didn’t feel too sad for the Braun hairdryer, because I have had it for the past seven years, and before that, it belonged to my mother. Duty well served, I thought, after all, it has been used daily by myself and my mother before me for at least 15 years. It was time for a replacement.

Today, we went to Smart Buy to get myself a new one. It was to be the very first hairdryer that I bought myself, and I wasn’t looking forward to the experience. Most of today’s hairdryers have a weird thing going on with the buttons, and I am very happy with the one button on mine.

Imagine how exceptionally pleased I was to find that Smart Buy stocked the same model from Braun. Of course, the design is different. It looks much slicker, with the transparent Lucite covering the plastic as well as a multitude of other nifty design decisions. Yet, the shape is exactly the same, and the buttons are in the same location and do the same thing (as opposed to new hairdryers, like I mentioned earlier, which confuse the hell out of me).

(Picture from MidCenturyDesign on Flickr)

Later that night, I told my mother about how my blowdryer incident and how I happy I was to have found the same exact one at Smart Buy.

She goes, “What? That dryer blew up? Amazing. I didn’t realize you still had it, it’s been in the family for over 25 years.”

“25 years?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” she goes. “I bought it when I was working at Wafa Al-Dajani Storehouse. You must have been around one or so. I took it with me to Riyadh when we moved there in 1988, and you brought it back with you when we moved to Amman.”

Wow. Shit.

My melted hairdryer is a vintage. Given the 1-year life cycle of new models when it comes to gadgets, the one I bought today is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the one I had last week.

Creepy for an electrical gadget to last that long, isn’t it? Thank goodness for the Germans.

Now my old hairdryer rests in it’s ancestor’s new box in the back of my closet. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to throw it out. 25 years is a heck of a long time.

Rani: Eish hada, remove the “ma ba7ebesh”, ana ma ba7ki “ma ba7ebesh”, ana ba7ki “Ma ba7eb”. “Ma” is not, and “ish” is another not, that’s a double negative.

Not + Not = True.

(After a conversation where we were trying to get Rani, drama queen a la excellence, to stop freaking out)

Rani: Ma ba7abesh at3amal ma3 ashkhas, ba7eb at3amal ma3 computer. Beddi atzawaj laptop, fee 7ada 7awaleh laptop zahri?

Translation: I do not like dealing with people, I like dealing with computers. I want to marry a laptop, does anyone have a pink laptop lying around?

Reading.
The Internet.
Reading.
The Internet.
Drying my hair after a late night shower.
Reading.
Unexplained urges to think too much.
The Internet.
Reading.

Tonight, two things are causing me the loss of precious sleep, although I have barely slept this week: reading the entirety of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today (for the sixth time, I’m such a NERD), and an explicable urge to consistenly check my email every few minutes, and as you can see, blog.

Damn.

I was 14 when I was first introduced to Harry.

We were out for Friday lunch and I didn’t have a book with me as my mother had just placed a new family rule; no reading while eating.

My brother Omar, on the other hand, had a book report the next day and was thus allowed to lug a book around, and that book happened to be “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”.

I picked up the copy to entertain myself during lunch, and I was immediately sucked into the brilliant magic, devouring that book and the second installment within days.

Ever since that fateful Friday 13 years ago, I have been looking forward to a Harry Potter something. The books, the movies, news about the books and the movies. You see, I grew up with Harry.

When I was 15, we went to Bahrain one Eid holiday to watch the first Harry Potter movie. I read the fourth book during the 35-minute drives back from school in Riyadh in my final years of highschool. During my freshman year at university, my mother got two copies of the fifth book so that the boys and I don’t argue over reading rights, and I read most of it in English 102. I watched the fifth movie with Musa and my family, and that was the first time that Moose got to meet them. Omar and I stood in the line outside Prime Megastore at midnight to get the sixth book. I read the last book in my first ever day as a member of the workforce, cursing the fact that I couldn’t start the job a few days later to finish it first.

A conversation from 2006:
Omar: “Roba will read Harry Potter first and I call next.”
Hisham: “No! You can’t call next! I already called it next two years ago! This is the first time you bring it up.”
Omar: “Two years ago is too long ago, I’m reading the book after Roba.”
Gus: “How about I read it second?”
Hisham: “No. You’re too slow. I’ll definitely read it second, I’m the fastest out of you three.”
Mom: “So they released the book?”
Roba, Hisham, Omar, and Gus: “No.”
Mom: “When is it going to be released?”
Omar: “Umm, still no date decided.”

:)

This year, the epic franchise that is Harry Potter comes to an end. I have one final Harry Potter something to look forward to, the final movie this July.

I will be 26 this July, 13 years older than the day I met Harry. With Harry, I started highschool, applied to universities, got a degree in Fine Arts and Design, went through my first job ever. It is not often that a story becomes so embedded in one’s life.

Harry, I will miss you.