Time: right after the prolonged lunch break (since we spend the lunch break hanging out and bringing food, we need to eat afterwards)

Place: In a closed office somewhere in Shmeisani

Battled parties: Ola (Yours truly) and Ruba (new on the block)

Circumstances:

- The following misfortunate event took place right after having a maliciously delicious chicken philly, since both parties involved enjoy crappy unhealthy food and not ashamed to admit it. Mind you that this could have a serious toll on the brain function.

- It was Saturday and we were like the only ones working among the people we know, so everyone was either sleeping, going out or whatever but not working. So, we needed to do something to forget that reality.

- It was rainy, rainy days makes you feel you want to go out or stay under a heavy blanket at home watching a nice movie… whatever! That’s a lame excuse anyway

- Ruba haven’t had her after-lunch coffee yet, and I am on allergy medication, which you know can have side effects. Another lame excuse…

- She was bored, and that was one of the rare times I felt like working. Clash of wills, a battle was bound to ensue.

Prelude:

Ruba went around going from desk to desk whining about how bored she was and how she didn’t feel like working at all. Then, all of a sudden, she’s standing by my office, dropping things deliberately on the ground. I tried to be patient by picking things up and telling her to buzz off because I was trying to work, which hasn’t happened in a while, but there was no stopping her.

The Last Straw:

Ruba grabbed the calendar that was on my office and held it up, threatening to drop it on the ground. It wasn’t much about the calendar, but well, I blew a gasket anyway and threatened her that if she did, I’d do something she wouldn’t like.

Zero Hour:

As I had no idea what I was threatening to do, I grabbed the first thing I could lay hand on, which happened to be the seemingly harmless mouse pad. After some hesitation, she went suicidal by taking the very unwise decision of dropping the calendar. The next thing I knew I was sweeping my arm back and tossing the mouse pad as if it was a Frisbee, forgetting the fact that I took lessons at school in tossing something like the frisbee, but a lot heavier. For a fraction of a second, my heart sank within me because then it hit me that we might need to buy her an eye patch after the perfectly horizontally tossed “Frisbee” snatched her eyeball away. Thankfully though, she managed a maneuver that made her left side of the head take the blow.

Aftermath:

Thankfully as well, there was no aftermath. Ruba is the kind of girl who takes those fights with more than a grain of salt. She only looked up with a look that says: “Oh my God!” and a grin that says: “Wasn’t this whole thing ridiculously funny?” Later on she would take me by surprise and throw a rubber pencil holder at my back. Ah, she also said: I hate you, to which I replied: Get in the line.

Conclusion:

- Never underestimate the power of a girl working on Saturday.

- Never mess with a moody klutz, especially if she has some seemingly harmeless objects at hand.

- We should do this more often, just without any hard objects.

An earlier scene to set the record straight:

Girls leaving the building…

Ola: A lady does this… [and then kicks the big glass gate open]

Ruba: Yeah! way to go...

You know what I’m talking about now?

Case in point is the less than curious incident that took place few years ago. Doesn’t really matter how many years, it might only make it more embarrassing.

It was such a perfect summer evening, so serene, so fresh, and above all, so boring. I couldn’t sleep, or just didn’t feel like it. My brother too, apparently, wasn’t particularly drowsy. We sat in the guest room, which is technically the living room (I don’t know why I keep mentioning this) gibbering about this and that. There was nothing unusual. And you know how when there’s nothing unusual you go out of your way to take the most trivial, constantly recurring, usual, boring, dull of things, and turn it into a premeditated crime.

So as we chatted the dull minutes away, something creepy that way came. Or did it? We heard the clacking sound of keys coming from outside, and more precisely, from our neighbors’ porch, which was right beneath our window.

A robber? That was very likely to think, if our neighbor wasn’t a doctor accustomed to working late. Yet, we chose to brush our senses aside for the moment.  The next thing we knew, we were staring dubiously at each other, wondering who the late night visitor might be. As I look back now, I have the feeling that we both knew in some lower layer of our conscious mind that it was our doctor neighbor. Everything in the universe supported that fact. Yet, we didn’t need to be sure. A little suspense wouldn’t harm, or would it? Well, maybe when combined with some self-inflicted brainlessness.

As I mentioned, the porch was directly beneath our window, in a way that doesn’t allow you to see the door unless you bend out like 180 degree. But make no mistake; we were willing to quench our curiosity whatever it took.

We headed to the window, my brother got on the sofa, opened the window and leaned outside to see what was going on, still he couldn’t see anything. In a desperate effort to see who was standing at the front door, he leaned out of the window more so almost the entire upper half of his body was hanging in the air, and then it happened. As he was standing on the sofa, with most of his body weight enjoying the fresh air, and even it wasn’t that much of weight, the sofa lost its balance, and in a fraction of a second the biggest part of his body was hanging loose in the air. It all happened in a flicker of a moment, his hands were waving in the air, the hard stone porch gazing at him from beneath, and as I learned few years later, even though it was less than second or too, but he managed to think. Well, I said he managed to think, what he thought about was a different story.

Since his thinking system was already shut down in order to put him in that situation, the only thing he could think of was this: “There’s nothing I can do, I’ll only succumb to gravity and wait till my feet reach the edge of the window, maybe they will hook to it and I’ll be spared.”

I’m serious.

Then, seeing that my brain too was hibernating, my survival instincts kicked in, and I grabbed him by the ankle, fixing him on the sofa just like the twins will fix the flag on Everest (in sha’a Allah!) so the sofa retained its balance, and he went back in, incredulous and gasping for air.

Now, if you still can’t see how stupid this was, let me give you the picture perfect.

1- As mentioned above, our neighbor was a doctor. He worked late and took on night shifts frequently.

2- What thief in his right mind would try to break into a house that overlooks the street in a relatively friendly neighborhood from the front door, let alone using keys and making all that noise.

Now, that was a lesson to learn, and, elhamdu lellah, we were spared the consequences this time, and as you may know, unfinished tragedies turn instantly into farces. As we reminisced this, we imagined how it would’ve been if he actually fell down the window onto the porch. And how our neighbor, who was peacefully coming home from work would feel when he turns around to see someone with a broken neck at his front door. We imagined that inspector gadget (that being my brother) would get up to his feet, shake dust of his shoulders and say: “What a lovely night!”

Moral of the story: If you enjoy insanity, don’t live in the same building as a doctor.

Peace.