A Biblofilian Wonderland

 

I've always thought of myself as an escapist. It's not that I cannot deal with reality, and by extension choose to distance myself from it. No, it's more that I refuse to deal with reality and so I construct a better existence in my mind.

And that is why I read.

I started reading children's stories and books at the age of six. What I read was mainly silly colorable stories with a simple line or two under each picture.  They were engaging and I enjoyed them very much. They are probably why I love colors so much. My Dad noticed this and step by step the stories started having more lines than pictures in them. I moved from stories to small novellas to huge 300-page novels. Reading, to me, was the most beautiful adventure I could ever go through.

When I was in the fourth and fifth grades, around the age of ten and eleven, I had a beautiful tiny collection of stories and books that I was extremely proud and protective of. It was a passion, which, again, my Dad fed by supplying money—lots of it, which did not please Mama back in the days— and numerous trips to a big bookstore we have in Gaza's old marketplace.

I am socially awkward. It's a fact of life that I have come to terms with a few years ago, and I'm really not bothered by it anymore. The thing with books is that they don't judge you. You could spend hours with a book with a constant supply of ideas and an endless amount of passion exchanged between the two of you without having to apologize for being yourself. Books showed me that there is no limit. The sky is not our final frontier, nor is the depth of the ocean. The only limitations we can face are the ones we set for ourselves.

Up until the age of fourteen, my reading was in Arabic, my mother tongue, but as I grew older, the need for more perspectives on the world, more worlds to live through, was far greater than the boundaries of language. I read several short stories and poems at the beginning of my reading in English. However, my first complete novel in English was Twilight. I was fifteen when the movies were coming out, but through the internet, I had learned that twilight was originally a series of books, so during the two weeks break between the first and second terms of my first year in high school I read the first three books. I know it probably wasn't the best kick-off for my English reading days because of how problematic Twilight can be—I discovered this after my third re-reading of the novels two years ago; late, but better than never, I'd say. However, Twilight, despite its tolerance for abusive boyfriends, emotional manipulation, and sexism, showed me one thing that the Arabic books couldn't—the endless possibilities of a narrative.

 I had grown up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dracula (I think I've seen every remaking of Dracula that ever came out to my Dad's greatest displeasure since he saw no use in me watching them) and several other shows that featured Vampires. And all of them were consistent in their idea that Vampires were blood drinkers, creatures of the night, and most importantly driven by an unquenchable animalistic desire.  Twilight gave me a sparkling Edward Cullen and a family of vegetarian—the use of the term here is figurative since they drank animal's blood—Vampires. I was mind blown. So, despite having messed up royally in many aspects of the novel, Stephanie Meyer offered a new narrative to Vampirism that was the spark for years of wild imagination for me.

After Twilight, I started reading Harry Potter on and off for about three years. I honestly cannot put into words what Harry Potter is to me. If I do anything good to my future unborn children, it would be reading these books with them. Harry Potter shaped a big part of who I am as a person. Despite wishing many things have gone differently in the books, they remain one of the best reading experiences I had the pleasure of having.

Books are letters sent across time and space telling you that someone somewhere is going through what you're going through or had gone through it before you. You are never alone.

I have read many, many, books since then. Being an English major kind of compels you to read relentlessly. I read many classics, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Lord of the Flies, Heart Of Darkness (which I hate with a burning passion, but that is a story for another day), Animal Farm, many Shakespearean plays—Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, The merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, to name a few—and many contemporary novels. All these books, as varied as they are, have shown me, time and time again, the endless possibilities of a certain narrative.

I know that reading is not everyone's cup of tea and that every person has their own way of navigating the different narratives life has to offer. But I have to say that you should read it. Whatever your passion is, I bet you there is at least one book about it out there. Find it and read it.

The Nigerian writer and feminist extraordinaire, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, gave a Ted Talk a few years ago, in which she talked about the dangers of the single story. She said that throughout her childhood she had almost exclusively read western books and that the discovery of Nigerian books had saved her from having a single story of what literature is. She said that she finally was able to see herself as a possible contributor in the stories she read not just an outside looker. I, too, was blessed with the many stories of what is literature. 

I wouldn't be exaggerating when I say that books are the elixir of life. I would never be content with only one narrative, or one existence; I am always striving for more which is why I am so thankful for my biblofilian tendencies.