Aiham

Rooftop Rhythms, Abu Dhabi, 22 Nov. 2013, Night

[AUDIO okay]

In addition to this, I am also comfortable sharing the following item(s):

[ ] The city of residence of the recipient of this letter/phone call
[ ] The recorded audio of my 5 minutes of questions
[ ] Incidental recorded audio (conversations had, questions asked, enthusiasm expressed outside of the official 5 minutes
[ ] The transcribed text of my 5 minutes of questions
[ ] Complete and utter faith in the artist

Furthermore, I would like to add:

"Do what you wish and good luck"




[…]
00:00:00-9
Yannick: —this is ah, I've got all of the materials for sending letters, paper, pen; you write a letter to anybody in the world, doesn't matter where they are, you bring it to me, I'll stamp it, I'll send it, I'll pay to ship it out, but in exchange you've got to talk to me for 5 minutes about who you sent it to.

Aiham: Who I sent it to?

Yannick: Okay.

Aiham: Okay. Give me 10 minutes to decide who to send it to, let me come back.

Yannick: I'll tell you what; I'm going to give you an envelop and a piece of paper

Aiham: /sounds good/

Yannick: /and then you come find me after the show's done, and then we can talk, and then I'll (send the letter out.)

Aiham: Sounds good.

Yannick: So let me give you a nice piece of paper.

Aiham: Thank you very much.

Yannick: Thank you.

[…]

[conversation is in progress (recorder was off)—the letter is written to his friend from Uni in Australia]
00:00:38-6
Aiham: —there—she and I have.. a really good friendship, to the point where I can write her a letter ridiculously and then she'll laugh at it and then we'll talk about it probably the next day. Yeah.

Yannick: And uh, would you mind telling me something else about her?

Aiham: Sorry?

Yannick: Could you-could you tell me a little bit about her?
00:01:00-0
Aiham: Uhm.. (tsk) she's Australian. She is from the town I used to study in which is called Toowoomba. It's about an hour and a half away from Brisbane in Queensland. Um, she… she was very nice to me in the beginning, to the point where I—second semester I was there and .. we lived in the same college compound, but we never spoke. But after the first class of the second semester where she saw me, she actually waited outside class till I got out just to talk to me. So that was very nice of her and, ever since then we've been really close. I've been to her house a couple of times her family was basically me—the second family in Australia for me. They took me in and they cooked for me and .. they—they're really nice, and they helped me out, and I'm forever grateful for them.
00:01:57-8
Yannick: Why are you separated?

Aiham: Me and her? Uhhh she still lives in Australia and I had to come back home, here, where I'm from. Yeah.

Yannick: Uh, and how did you choose her over anyone else?

Aiham: (inhale) Uhh—I'll tell you the process, the process was first thinking about it and then I couldn't think of anybody to send a letter to, and then I started flipping through my phone on Facebook, and she was the first person to come into my mind but I thought maybe take this opportunity to send to someone, you know, really really really special, but .. she was the most special out of everybody, honestly. And even on Facebook, like through the messages, she was the one that was just saying hello just for the sake of saying hello. She was very genuine, as she was always, she always is, so you know, might as well take a laugh out of it. Yeah.
00:02:54-4
Yannick: Do you guys stay in touch? or/

Aiham: /yeah! We do. We talk on "What'sapp" sometimes, like—yeah we stay in touch. I spoke to her yesterday for the first time in 3 weeks. Just a couple of words, it was nice. She actually, uh said I had a nice display pic, because I got a photoshoot yesterday, so (laugh) —yeah it was nice of her.

Yannick: Do you miss her?
00:03:18-3
Aiham: Oh absolutely. But I—I miss everybody in Australia it's a—I haven't been there since .. December, last year. It's almost a month now. I mean a year, sorry. Almost a year now, so um .. yeah I miss a lot of people there, but she's definitely one—one of the top on the list.

Yannick: And how do you feel when you miss someone or something?

Aiham: How do I feel if I miss someone?

Yannick: Yeah, when that happens, what do you/

Aiham: /um, look I lived away from home for 3 years. I've learned to live with it—you know accept it as a hole inside you that will never ever be filled—so, you just learn to live with it, but you know the way to heal it is to keep in touch, and, to Skype and to talk on "what's app" and to keep in touch with each other as much as possible.

Yannick: hm—and when you feel it—so say I'm a doctor and .. I've never heard of missing.

Aiham: Okay

Yannick: And you're trying to describe this to me. What's like.

Aiham: (inhale) Ummm … if you're a doctor .. I would say that .. you wanna be with that certain person, but … distance, miles and miles separate you both and there's nothing you can do about it. Um, if I had the choice to be with that person, I would, right now, just for the sheer enjoyment of it because we enjoy each other's company—nothing romantic about it, like we never dated or anything, but we enjoyed each other's company so .. . Um, it definitely hurts, yeah I'll tell you that. There is pain involved. But like I said, you just learn to live with that pain.
00:05:02-6
Yannick: And is that—is that pain sort of a trade off of having had that experience?

Aiham: Sorry?

Yannick: Do you think that pain is inevitable? In a way?

Aiham: Yeah. It definitely is. There's no way of escaping it, there's no way of treating it—you might feel better about it for a day or two, maybe a month, but (inhale) it's gonna come back to get you in the end and there's nothing you can do about it. You just gotta .. live with it.

Yannick: How do you live with it?
00:05:31-4
Aiham: … (inhale) you know, same pr—same way as if someone breaks their leg, you know? Next day they're not just gonna stop living. You just_ learn to continue to walk with crutches. you know? You continue to live with missing someone. There's nothing that .. you can do to take that completely away, it will always be .. in there.

Yannick: And in the same way, you know, she'll always be with you.

Aiham: Yeah, absolutely. And she-she is always with me. yeah
00:06:05-7
Yannick: Well you're—you're at your time, but if you've got a second/

Aiham: /yeah keep going, keep going man.

Yannick: /tell me just a little bit about yourself to wrap up?

Aiham: Um I'm from here, I'm Emirati, half Egyptian. I've lived in Sharjah, I've lived here in Abu Dhabi, and I currently live in Dubai. Um, (tsk) lived in Sharjah for my high school. You know? Came to Abu Dhabi after that, for a little while, and then went to Australia for a few years, to study uh in university, my degree, in film. And uh, came back last year and ever since then I've been really pushing myself to get myself out there here, because things have completely changed since I was last here. Um, three years ago, I would never even heard—hear of an event like this, you know. Different people gathering to, you know, share a common talent or a common, you know, passion. And um, I uh—I'm also—I currently work at Dubai Metro, as a Station Manager, but I freelance as an actor and a voice actor. Um, I'm about to study filmmaking at New York Film Academy. And uh, probably the biggest thing I've done professionally with my freelancing is the voice of Elmo in the Emirati Sesame Street.
00:07:35-4
Yannick: //Nice!//

Amani: //oh!//

Aiham: (laugh)

00:07:38-8

[…]

END
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