En 27-41 Hello Ahmed,...

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Her favorite author was Nabokov. Olga discovered that he spoke well of the works of Alexander Green, considering him as one of the most remarkable authors in the Soviet Union times in Russia. She immediately found Green's, "The Scarlet sails", which she had read in her childhood. A touching story about kindness. Listening to the audiobook in Russian was pleasant, as if you were listening to a vinyl record, there were such devices thirty years ago. Then she found the English printed translated text and began to compare it with the Russian version: everything is not the same, it is difficult to convey all the nuances of a foreign language when translating. She felt like either Assol or a storyteller lost in the woods.

The message - 7 -
Hello, Ahmed.
Have you ever read the "Scarlet sails" of one of the best soviet (XX century) writers Alexander Green? Sure, you are not. Today I have found this episode from the book:
"In this respect Assol was still the little girl that had prayed in her own way, lisping fondly, "Good morning, God!" in the morning and: "Goodbye, God!" in the evening.
In her opinion, such a first-hand acquaintance with God was quite sufficient for Him to ward off any disaster. She imagined herself in His place: God was forever occupied with the affairs of millions of people and, therefore, she believed that one should regard the ordinary shadows of life with the polite patience of a guest who, discovering the house full of people, waits for the bustling host, finding food and shelter as best he can."

And so I say: “Hello, Blackhole!”
I appreciate your silence. You ARE able to kill me with one only word obviously, so let all go for the better.

"Actually, I shouldn't have asked you your name. I'm glad it's such an unusual one, so sibilant and musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the whispering of a seashell; what would I have done if your name had been one of those pleasant but terribly common names which are so alien to Glorious Uncertainty? Now less do I care to know who you are, who your parents are, or what sort of life you lead. Why break the spell? I was sitting here ... when suddenly the stream washed up this yacht, and then you appeared. Just as you are."

Today is Grin's day :). Ahmed is a beautiful name... but common. All Ahmeds I  knew were jovial and intelligent Arabs.
I wish you smiled at me. All the spells for the smile. It could be a humiliating arrogant contemptuous smile or wrinkled irritated smile, or...but I wish it was a happy one.

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Olga loved learning languages. Those courses, which were a gift of fate (she attended them with her daughter at a local University), gave her the opportunity to learn English for free with Africans from Ghana, Chinese with students from China, Arabic with guys from Yemen, Spanish with a boy who looks like a cute monkey from Venezuela. At school and uni, she learned German and used to know it well, which meant that she could easily translate with a dictionary. However, she loved German, but at that time she did not have a special passion for languages.
Ahmed is a common name among Arabs, and it is not surprising that the first thing that occurred to her to describe in her messages were lessons from the Arab students. She typed the first thing that came to mind, not thinking long, but remembering with pleasure. It was a pleasure to exchange views about life, and everyday routine specific to nationalities, to notice what distinguishes different Nations and individuals within the same nation. It was the best thing about those free courses. All the guys and the girls came to teach voluntarily and with fire in their hearts. They really wanted to teach their students to speak their own languages, and teach them quickly.

The message -11-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
That woman was not a spirit, a divinity, a goddess. I experience such delight when I see something perfect. She was a perfection. There was no room in her for sham or artifice. I love these types of people.
"You can touch my neck to feel how your throat should vibrate," she came closer to the guys while they tried to learn the Russian sound "d". It is difficult for both, Arab and Chinese, to differentiate Russian sounds D and T.
One of the Chinese' brashly got up and pressed down his arm to her neck.
"Dddddddddddddddddd! Do you feel? " she glanced at him seriously. He nodded, drooping his eyes.
Then all of us trained our tongues. It is very important to have the right prepared muscles of your tongue. We showed up and hid it again many times. Evgeniy was sitting and looking with his attentive eyes around him. He always looks like he is always thinking about which decision to make, measuring the impressions, and making a point of mentally correcting his thoughts.

The message - 12 -
Hello, Ahmed.               
I cannot listen to my book till I write to you: my thoughts wander beyond what I am listening to.
Arabic               
The lesson was over. The woman now seemed a common girl about 32, being usual, like all lecturers are. Indeed, people look more beautiful when they do something professionally or even when they just do an action. Even all sculptures do something: they are pointing in space or going or riding, thinking, lying, dying... Try to create a sculpture of somebody who does nothing. Even if the prototype was doing nothing, the sculpture transforms the composition of him into an active form. I can see: this one is waiting, the other one is thrilled, other...— the form always expresses something through my imagination and fantasy. In real life, we are not stone figures. But when someone has been doing something for a long time, one becomes a type of sculpture. I think so.
The guys turned to us with their faces, and I saw that most of them were a little bit ugly. Young Arabs are often too slim, have long uneven noses, big ears, and round stomachs. Only their eyes look beautiful, and the wavy hair is fine. Our two guys, as I got, were handsome men compared to their mates.  I guessed that the second guy was from Tajikistan. I thought, might he agree to learn Arabic with me in pairs because, when we were in the room upstairs, he said that Arabic is a beautiful language.
I slightly put my hand on his shoulder: "Would you like to learn Arabic with me? "
He wondered but quickly nodded by his head, smiling.
"Fine Abdu, I am glad." I told him "Then, let's go to that guy — Ammar! We need to ask him." Abdu had a misunderstood look. However, we headed to Ammar.

The message -19-
Hello, Ahmed.
Today is my day off. Recently I forgot to eat something for lunch. Also, I missed a couple of dinners, so yesterday I felt weak. That's why I spent half of 'today' in my bed. I was listening to Buddhism sayings, aphorisms, parables. I understood almost nothing. But I concluded I am a bit Buddhist:)
Firstly, I am always ready to die. After the death of all my relatives, I always keep in my mind that I have the same genes, so I have to be ready for a disaster. And I had learned how fast a human can quit life. Probably that is why I have been living with my man for so long. We have a daughter, and in the case of my rapid death, I will not leave her alone.
Secondly, when something good happens, I always know that it can't last for long. If something bad comes, I remember that there are many people around me who are more unhappy than me and there are much worse situations than mine. Also, recently I have read an African proverb: "If it is getting easier to go along, it means you go down the mountain." Not always the good is for the better.
Third. I've never envied. I was not conceited. I was calm (even when I say I hated or admired someone). Because I know: everything is relative and deceptive. I stopped wanting things that other people, who I know, have.. When I wanted something, it had already been mine. I can stop thinking about something I know I don’t have to do. I tell myself: "Here you must stop. Let you stop." It works.
But... I rarely felt I am suffering from life, in a whole I was happy. But I realize that my life was empty. It didn't have an aim, a goal, a significance, a mission.
Sometimes I feel the world is my imagination, and my thoughts can change it. But I rarely can see the situation in such a view.
I don't believe in karma, in the dharmas, in the illusory nature of the world. I believe in autophagy :) it's my own religious vision.
PS: All I have written can undergo significant changes.

The message -20-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
It turned out that both guys, Ammar and Abdu, were Arabs from Yemen. I got terribly uncomfortable: if Ammar himself suggested teaching Arabic to me and Vera, then Abdu did not say anything about it. I told him that he could refuse to take classes with me, but both guys were smiling and nicely insisted that they both be my teachers. They were going to teach me weekly: firstly one guy, then the other. I felt extremely embarrassed. This meant that I would be the only one to study with each of the guys alone, because Vera refused, and there were no other people who wanted to. After exchanging contacts, we parted till the first lesson.

The message -21-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
Abdu. Several times we were sitting near one another. He sat, watching his smartphone, and corrected my Arabic. I tried to avoid mistakes. Once he relaxed as much that had shown his nature. He told me loudly and irritatedly that I made an error, and did a move as if he attempted to hit me with his hand. It lasted two seconds, then he dropped his eyes back to his phone. I am not saying that he got used to beating his sister or women, but obviously, he tends to be rude to women. It is not because he hates them, it is just simply normal to him. Also, he totally avoided looking at me. Once I noticed he hardly coped with his feelings, took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes when I was too close to him. I hoped it was just my imagination or, for example, I smelled bad. I am twice his age! But all the other meetings I sat so that the corner of a table always divided us, just in case.

The message -25-
Hello, Ahmed.               
Arabic
Ammar and all his family live in a six-story building. The first owner of the house was his grandpa. Who his grandfather is, Ammar, avoided answering. Grandpa has several sons and daughters from two or three wives, I don't remember exactly. Most of the sons are adults and have families. Each of the families takes a floor of the house. And the kitchen is on the sixth floor. The building is very ancient, there are many such buildings around his area in Sana. But they are not made from clay as those in a city near his. They say, inside such buildings could be hidden riches. Some people have found it. Ammar said he didn't know exactly how many rooms there are in his house. Somewhere could be a walled-up-room with ancient gold and treasure. His dad is an architect and he tried to calculate where it could be, but the building is not easy to read.

Today I had a day off, so I could make time to watch a movie. The movie was in Japanese without subtitles, the name "Kiseki". It was launched in 2011. It is for kids. I like good movies for children. There are no scenes of violence, sex, adult problems. Japanese seems much easier than Chinese in its pronunciation. I understood four words: papa, mama, bye, and Cosmos, the name of a flower. In Russian it is Cosmea. We have a lot of these flowers each summer everywhere.
Family movie. This one was an extraordinary family, I think, even for Japan. There was one character in the movie: an old guy was sitting in the company of friends in the house of one of them. They were drunk and the women in the other room served them. This guy started to put off his big colorful sock holding his foot almost over the table with snacks in a demonstrative manner. I imagined that this guy could be professor Shikio Nayashi (I have a fine article about him that describes what the person he was like, but all articles lie). Everything is mixed in my head. Later the boy from the house discovered the sock on the edge of the sink: he staggered back as if he saw a snake.

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Olga finally bought a gym membership. There were several different fitness halls at this chain: one within a two-minute walk from the place of work, another just a stone's throw from home, and several were remote. She also visited one of them out of curiosity, but it seemed too crowded. The selected two gyms had separate rooms with full-length mirrors along walls and were almost always empty. The one she visited during, or rather, instead of lunch on working days, even offered two halls: one for martial arts, all covered with mats, the other for aerobics with a rubberized floor.
Here she could train for an hour and listen to audiobooks: it was impossible at work, all the time was taken away by customers.
She listened to a lot of books on the one-hour way home and to work, and at the gym at lunchtime. These were popular science lectures on physics, chemistry and astronomy (she listened to several lectures on black holes, of course). Lectures on psychology, lectures by neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and quantum physicists, books by Pelevin, Akunin, Rubina, and a lot more that was available..Japanese and Chinese, Greek philosophy and philosophy in general..notes of Marcus Aurelius and Buddhist parables..how did her head hold up? Of course, it was empty, just like before. They left only traces, impressions, sensations in her head. More often than not, and better, she remembered what she read. But there wasn't much time to read. If she had a spare moment at work, she tried to understand the mathematical calculations of this Ahmed, from his works: what are statistical modeling methods, fractals, who is Shikio Nayashi and what are his methods. Much was read, little understood. There was great doubt about the reasonableness of Ahmed's work. They seemed simply unnecessary, not a single line was written there about for which such a study was done or about its results, practical conclusions can be used. As if they were made just for the sake of doing it. But she didn't write to him about it. She considered her judgments shallow and superficial.

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Ahmed received strange messages from Olga, read them almost every day, but did not consider it necessary to respond. For the first time he encountered the phenomenon of stalking, and, he hoped, it would be the last time. He never thought that he might be the target of a woman's surveillance. It's like he's a superstar and he's being chased by a fan..it was kind of interesting. She sent him a photo of his uncle with a funny and not entirely tactful comment, apparently she did not find any other relatives. She sent him some drawings: a graph with a black background, where nothing is clear, the negative of a graph, a negative of some graph of the dependence of the complexity of the object on the duration of life, where he, Ahmed, was the described object whose complexity grew exponentially in time, and the scale of “complexity” was illustrated by his photographs of different years paired with pictures according to the level of complexity: goose-Apollo- Samurai-Buddha. Was she making fun of him? Why? He felt unease and was determined to ignore the bully who was studying him so closely and  he was keeping an eye on her.

The message - 30 -
Hello, Ahmed.
I always keep in my mind that photo of your alleged uncle I sent you in the Blackhole.
He seems to be so defenseless… I decided I’ll launch my own photos there. Honestly, I nearly never used to place any of my face photos on the web. When I did an account on PenPals, I kept a photo of my hand instead of my face because all the people required a photo. The photo of the hand seemed like a compromise and looked magnificent. But they still wanted to see a photograph of my face, so I placed a photo that I did once for my CV. Each part of my face and body is incredibly beautiful, but on the whole, all looks terrible.  Also, now I look like an old madam. My gestalt is unpleasant to me.
My husband knows I have interlocutors on PenPals. Sometimes I tell him about what they write to me.
But I never type letters or chat, or speak with somebody when he is at home: he, I suppose, would not like it. He is Muslim (has Muslim attitudes), a foreigner from a Muslim country. However, I changed him much during all those years we have been living together.
The day before yesterday I had my day off, and I took several photos of myself. For me an exhibition of the photos is an act of self-humiliation, even destroying and harming myself. But I need it. Why? To be stronger and calm.
Strange...my heart is beating so strong. I am sorry. I didn't want to frighten you.
Olga sent him a series of photos of herself. It was a photoshoot in bed, but nothing sexy. The body was covered with a thick blanket, only the neck and the head were visible. She was dressed in a pale pink knitted shirt with sleeves. Her medium-length brown hair was spread out in a wave on the pillow. There was not enough light, so there was a lack of sharpness, wrinkles are almost invisible, but they spoiled the face with hints. It is clear that the woman was not young, but young-looking, because she was very thin, like a teenage girl. Her neck was thin and fragile, and her collarbones bulged. The head seemed small, but the face was large. Her nose was thin, but with not the most beautiful shape. She had close-set large eyes, either gray or blue. The face was gentle and at the same time defiant. Not an evil face, but not a good one either. Not happy eyes, but not unhappy, not smart, but not stupid. It was tense...expectation in her eyes. She almost didn't try to show off in the photos, she was photographed just as it is, without makeup, in a mess, as if she had just woken up and opened her eyes. Full-face and profile photos, from bottom to top, from all sides, like an overview of a car. Ahmed felt a little sorry for her but remembered that he could not trust her, not even her directness. He didn't reply to her.
   
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It was the end of January. The press and television started talking about a new viral and very dangerous disease that appeared in China. The whole world was following the events of a large-scale and rapidly spreading infection in China and the introduction of strict measures to prevent it. There were the first infected people in other countries, among those who visited China, or the Chinese. There are a lot of Chinese people in Japan: workers, employees, and students. Not much in Algeria. Ahmed treated the Chinese well. He came across smart, decent, and hardworking people: the environment and occupation, and hobbies form the appropriate environment. The Chinese were encouraged to leave the country. All the foreigners were anxiously awaiting their fate. They could also be politely asked to leave Japan.
Every day Olga sent him a photo of her appearance. She wasn't ugly. In general, she had a pleasant face and the figure of a teenager. Almost beautiful, feminine, girlish tender, despite her advanced age. Her smile was forced, artificial. There are faces that radiate happiness, or seriousness, or childlike joy, sadness, thoughtfulness, intelligence, energy, or anger and envy. Olga's face showed a shy arrogance, the quintessence of a joint of contradictions, doubts and hopes.
She described to him his appearance, that was, her feelings from looking at his photos. He had already read her praises of his appearance in previous messages and was taken aback by them. He thought he was sympathetic, but not as handsome as she described. He found himself pleasant when he wasn't smiling: crooked teeth marred the impression of bright light-brown eyes with short black lashes, and large features that gave a masculine look to their soft, thoughtful expression. Therefore, close attention was paid to the teeth. At the very least, they should be healthy, clean, and white. He loved sweets and lost all his teeth long ago. Almost all of them were implants and crowns. Dentists in Japan must have been enriched by receiving fees from a lucrative client.. Ahmed was used to compliments, but most often, as is customary in the Arab world, from men. Algerian women, like Japanese women, tactfully avoided this topic. Olga tactlessly, openly, and frankly described him as one praises a horse for sale.

The message -31-
Hello Ahmed,
Excuse me, Ahmed. I keep some of your photos on my PC.
As if you are an object of my exploration, I should have data for detailed analysis.
With our African teachers, we once had a talking-meeting where I met the question if the appearance of a person is important for one’s life or not and which impact can have an appearance in order to have become successful. Is the appearance of other people important to you?
Nobody admits it is. They sang about it, that it is not significant for me, I love with my heart, I judge by my inner mind, and so on.
However, watching them I saw quite the opposite situation.
I think it happens because usually, people think about “beauty”. “Beautiful” appearance means all features are regular and have fine harmony in all the parts of it, in the very forms. I will think it is a “beauty”. But appearance and “beauty” are not the same. Don’t know how it happens, but all people I know mean an appearance in the sense of a good-looking person’s appearance.
Appearance can be disgusting or pleasant, two the opposite side and “beauty” here I would not mention. I accept this person in whole with all his fine eyes and ugly nose or I deny him. Where is a perfect “beauty” here?
Yes, for me appearance is important as also all the motions of the person, his/her voice, manners, how one glance, how he holds a bottle of water, which hands he has, and so many other petty things that all the plethora of feelings, thoughts, seeings is occurring to me in an instant: immediately I am able to say if the person attracts me.
Ahmed’s appearance is probably attractive to me. My first  impression of his image you might read earlier, I had written to you maybe three weeks ago. It was changed a bit.
Now, yes, I see: Ahmed looks older than his age (photoaging is responsible here I suppose. Avoid sunbathes, Ahmed!)  His lines are regular, have good forms. Wrinkles make his face look kind, more interesting, don’t spoil him. He has a good form of ears, not small, not big, nice short earlobe, but a neoplasm on one of the ears looks a bit unsightly. All the rest artifacts on his skin give his appearance a flavor. His teeth are white, look normal despite being uneven. His hands are not big and have good form. Also, he has a very long life-line, heart-line, health-line, and mind-line on his palm, which is a good sign. Short fingers: I love longer nails. I used to know one Chinese guy, he has this-type-like-Ahmed’s fingers and I remembered him when I saw Ahmed's fingers for the first time. What is the scar on his palm?
Ahmed is looking fine in both cases: wearing a smart suit among women in the meeting-room, and dressed as a samurai in a gym. Quite beautiful clothes is that form for Aikido: I was wondered by how many men in Algeria are adepts of Aikido. And even girls I saw there, but no women. Okay, nails are important: normal, clean. On the whole, hands look very tender, I don’t believe this kind of hand can hit somebody. He holds his glasses, the microphone, the cell, the bottle very soft and tenderly, I like it.
Then I had read some of the comments about Ahmed on Safebook, the constant characteristic I met there was: he is very modest. In several photos, his hands show the same (I only suppose): in the photo of the whole Aikido group he clenched fists, in the next photo he stood in close-pose/protective posture. Seems he feels more relaxed among women, these are his waters. I am sure he loves women and they love him generously too."
The problem arises: how much can you trust people with attractive appearance? Why do “beautiful” people not always seem attractive? When we see a person, how do we evaluate his appearance: by “beauty” or by his/her attractiveness, and do all people do it the same way? What happens when “beauty” and attractiveness are combined in one person in the perception of another one? Attractiveness is subjective, and beauty is universal and not depends on the subject of perception, isn’t it so?
Why is it so often confused: "beauty" and attractiveness, whatever kind of existence it may concern?

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In the morning, when he was getting ready to go out for work, Ahmed froze in front of the mirror, looking at his reflection. That day was his 49-th birthday. He recalled how Olga described him the day before: “..Ahmed looks older than his 49 years…”  Ahmed always thought that he looked much younger than his age. He moved away from the mirror to get a better look at his features. He was farsighted. Beautiful eyes..bright, intelligent, with smiling wrinkles on the outer edge of the eyelids... Just that the eyes were a bit small. He even usually took photos with glasses because they visually enlarge his eyes. He turned sideways and squinted at his ear: ordinary ears. His skin, yes, was freckled, and he didn't like the gaiety of it. He straightened up and smiled broadly at himself in the mirror. He spread his hands: one of them had a scar a long time ago, and it was almost invisible in the photo: how could she see it? And his crooked teeth in those photos: he never thought anyone would notice. In Japan, every second person has terribly crooked teeth, which is not considered a flaw, but even, on the contrary, a highlight of appearance. In Japan, Ahmed was used to not paying attention to his uneven teeth, but there were difficulties with treatment because of this. Now he remembered the feeling of chagrin when he was a teenager and looked in the mirror, pleased with himself, and then smiled..., and immediately became upset for getting an unsympathetic face, only for his taste. “This Olga notices too much”, he thought. Now he felt as if someone was looking at him from all sides with a magnifying glass like a strange insect and there was nothing he could do about it, not even twist around and punch the observer in the eye, as if he had been pinned with a pin.

The message -32-
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I think Ahmed doesn’t like ceremonies and photo-sessions. He feels like a fish in the water when he is lecturing, so in all those photos he looks more natural, less tense. Maybe I am wrong.
I can guess so many versions of how it could be indeed. Let me try. When I want to forecast/guess something, I make all the possible versions of the future or an alleged event, or the current state of things. For example, Ahmed’s relation to women (you did not tell me if you are alone or have several wives, so I can only guess):
1) He has a wife
2) He had many women until his marriage
3) He had not many women until his marriage
4) He has a wife but she doesn’t live with him
5) He has a wife but he doesn’t live with her
6) He has a lover or more
7) He has not a lover
8) He has one or several lover time to time with deep gapes
9) He has one or several lovers all the time
10) He has a wife or several wives and a lover or time to time or all the time
11) He has not a wife.
12) He has several wives
13) He never had a wife
14) He used to have a wife or several wives
15) He is divorced once or more
16) He is a widow once or more
17) He never had a women
18) He doesn’t like women but he is not a gay
19) He cannot be a male physiologically or psychologically
20) He is a gay
21) He was a gay
22) He loves women and men
23) He loves to kill//torture//so on women and/or men
24) He used to be a man
25) He used to be a woman
26) He is and always was a woman
27) He is and always was a man
28)        He is not a woman and not a man or sometimes he is a woman, sometimes a man
29)        He is a man and a woman simultaneously
I started supposing if he has a wife but ended up thinking if he is a man, strongly speaking.
Okay, keywords ‘modest because’
1) He is modest because of his noble character
2) He is modest because he knows he should be modest for different reasons
3) He seems modest because he wants to be modest for different reasons
4) He seems modest because he wants to seem modest for different reasons
5) He seems modest because he’s not self-confident for different reasons
6) He seems modest b/c he hides something for different reasons
7) He seems modest b/c he knows: nobody is able to appreciate him or his …
8) He seems modest b/c all the rest are idiots (they are incorrect calling him modest)
9) Poor fantasy…

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A person's appearance is not just his face, form and demeanor. It is more than his dressing and hairstyling, his habits of manipulating objects. We cannot separate the appearance from the inner content: the outer and inner configuration of a person's emotions, feelings and thoughts grow together too tightly.
The most important thing for every person, no matter how he deludes himself into thinking he’s fine by himself, is relationships with other people. People instantly read the appearance of other people on a subconscious level. It's another question whether they trust what their sophisticated mind tells them, or, after going through numerous verifications, stumbling upon an incredible number of patterns and associations, the image of this other thing comes to consciousness distorted beyond recognition or completely opposite to the original "raw" analysis.
Opposition
“Society  — person”,
is the same opposition as
“Inequality - equality”,
"Unattractiveness - attractiveness, or beauty." Beauty in the sense of attractiveness.

The existence of one always implies the existence or potential of the other. This means constant monitoring by a person or society and assessment, weighing of reality. To stop evaluating - does it mean to stop any actions, that is, death?
Slowly, century after century, humanity seeks to get rid of the evaluative relationship between countries, nations, people, seeking to recognize their equality, but in reality, these were only attempts to hide inequality, to make it vague, only the appearance of equality was created.
When everyone openly begins to speak and demonstrate without fear his “weaknesses” and “shortcomings”, changing his own way of thinking and destroying by such transformation fears and complexes in himself and in others, when the meaning of the word “lack” becomes blurred, then gradually a new the way people think and perceive life, their surroundings and themselves. Will this be the value of the future? The value of being free, the right and value of being scary or beautiful, old or young, sick or healthy - the value of being yourself.
The cult of beauty, or inequality, did not disappear in the foreseeable history of mankind, but the very concept of beauty and the spectrum of the "beautiful" were transformed from century to century, together with minor, or noticeable, shifts in the systems of moral values. However, there was, it is true, a moment in history when the "beauty" virus appeared among people as a cult. Its forerunner was utility, benefit for the survival of society. Apparently, this is the point about which they say that natural selection almost stopped acting on a person and a person became independent of the surrounding nature. In fact, human natural selection still exists, but it is strongly influenced by the activities of the person himself on the selection factors. Humanity, as it were, forms itself, so far not purposefully. At the same moment in history, luxury goods appeared - objects without which one can survive, but which somehow show or increase the status of an individual in society and his self-esteem, thereby stimulating the development of the concept of "beauty-attractiveness" and deepening inequality. Originally, beauty was about status. And now this is so to a large extent, but not entirely, because “beauty-attractiveness” began to become more complex, exfoliate, become overgrown with science or “antiquity” in accordance with the number and quality of the emerging increasingly complex social associations.
From the point of view of man, even animals have a sense of beauty, in birds it is pronounced. But in fact, the beauty of the peacock's tail is usefulness because without such beauty the survival rate of the genus is lower (is it so?) And no one knows (except the peacocks themselves) whether peacocks have an aesthetic experience of beauty (it would be nice to experiment with brain waves of peacocks in the process of perceiving different tails :), if such experiments can give even a grain of understanding in this matter. Is the aesthetic experience of a person somehow fixed by instruments?). With all the luxuries and beauty that a rich or ordinary person now owns, his fertility becomes higher, and his offspring are better? This was not so long ago. Perhaps beauty has become one of the most powerful factors of natural selection in human history, created by man himself and inspired by nature.

How can the value of being what you and other things are, the decision to openly call things by their proper names, the rejection of the cult of beauty of anything as the basis of equality, and morality? Is it possible?
Japanese and Indian practices of monasticism seem to be an experiment in eradicating inequality in strictly hierarchical societies. In Japan, the vision of beauty is inextricably and deeply connected with its opposite and harmoniously flows into one another. The departure of Japanese monks from life (as well as some types of monasticism in many religions) may ultimately be associated with the desire to avoid this human peculiarity, to compare everything and everyone.
Denying life, they praise death as the personification of the impossibility of avoiding the instinct of comparison, which is necessary for immediate survival, which is inherent in the very nature of any living being. To give up the endless comparison of everything with everything is to give up life itself. If you don't compare, you won't survive.
Having come to the conclusion that the cult of beauty globally stems from the instinct of self-preservation, one can say that beautiful people and beautiful things are the most tenacious, adapted to life, useful and fertile. Is it so?
There are statistical experiments about the analysis of “beauty” (as a harmony of features) of a person's face and its attractiveness for the opposite sex, which often show the absence of a direct correlation between these two characteristics. People rarely allow themselves to choose their ideal ideal. They are victims of their own comparison and their fears. Society is steeped in fears, because everyone knows that they are being evaluated, because everyone does this procedure thousands of times a day with other people and things. This softens the "killing" power of beauty a little.
Inequality is the basis of life, even in animals and bacteria. The instinct of comparison cannot be avoided, but you can cunningly use its nature for the benefit or harm of humanity, and, like any other instinct, "humanize". Balancing inequality, finding compromises - was the meaning of the life of a Homo sapiens. What does the future hold for a new person? Will there be a system of values ;;that will level out beauty and, as a result, inequality in all its manifestations? Or a system that proclaims everything that exists in the world to be beautiful, and a non-existent something as ugly? Or a view of the world as a unity of equal in importance opposites, which do not conflict, but are in absolute harmony? How would the language of humanity change if all hints of inequality were removed from it? How would the economic activity of people change? What could advertising be like if it is possible within such values?

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There is evidence that a person can simultaneously communicate directly, maintain an emotional connection, and have a circle of people who are important to the person at any particular time, numbering a little more than 40 people.
Just over 40, for example, 44 people are simultaneously important to varying degrees. If someone new appears in your social circle, then inevitably someone from your previous acquaintances falls out of it. Another new acquainted person has squeezed out someone of your former one. Illusion or self-deception of a wide circle of communication: just because you know a lot of people does not mean that you communicate with them all, keep their face and voice in your head, sympathize or resent their problems. In short, communicate in the full sense of the word in real life, by mail, or only in your head.
It seems that Olga replaced thirty people with one Ahmed at once: of all the acquaintances, only he was in her daily thoughts.

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Ahmed roared past his opponent, holding yari ready. Today he was dissatisfied with himself. He felt disgust, contempt, and pity at the same time. Olga was so pathetic in all her manifestations, as an illiterate, poor, husbandless Berber woman without electricity in her house, where an important official came to talk about the demolition of her house because there would be a road there now. Olga, however, had a husband, as she wrote in her previous letters, and that Ahmed could not understand: why this married woman corresponded with men, without hiding her married status. In the Arab world, this is impossible...if an Arabic woman conducts herself with such correspondence...she is hidden under a mask of an unmarried European woman, he supposed.
His conscience would not have allowed any dialogue behind Olga’s husband's back, and he did not want to: she was not his type. She was stupid, in his opinion, too slim and slender, and her face lacked the lively joy of life. But she wrote him such childish, open letters...That is why he felt wrong.
"She soaks up a bit of a foolish laugh, and she will stop bothering me," thought Ahmed, then he jerked forward with renewed vigor and issued a threatening cry, squeezing out all extraneous thoughts, unnecessary, boring thoughts with this sound.

The message -34-
Hello, Ahmed.
I have found this book: Multiplicational Quantification with the application to analysis of social phenomena by Shikio Nayashi.
I am hardly sure I am able to understand anything in that, but I want to try.
I always tried to jump higher than I could. I have no knowledge and base for taking a grasp on things that require deep studying. The same in English: I know I should read more Grammar books, study rules in order to improve my level of it, however, I prefer using it intuitively.
Even if I were a bit coding (the best time in my life, the most amazing satisfaction that I experienced was from solving mathematical problems) I made my decisions based on only my sense “it should be right”. I’ve never had a good memory and any logic. That’s why I lost the faculty of  Physics.
My daily photo of mine:

The message -35-
Hello, Ahmed.
Ahmed! I believe you are a good person, you have never been envying, evil, lying, cheating, you are not a goat. Maybe you are experiencing depression from time to time. I think you spent so much time in Japan and were involved in their culture so deeply that it changed you. You are so successful there! I assume you feel yourself an alien between Japanese and are not quite Algerian now. You would be glad to enjoy life as most Algerians but it is difficult for you now. I'm sure you love people, on the whole. You hate only me :) I am kidding...you feel nothing but indifference. But I am wondering why you didn't block my account: obviously it is better to block an account than delete the Telegram app. Thank you for your existence, dear Ahmed! I like you.

The message -36-
Hello, Ahmed.
Looking at all your photos I believe all I said yesterday. But, Ahmed, the memory of all our short conversations sickens me to think of it in such way.
The first action you did, you sent me your photo. I was startled. I looked at your vivid face and thought: "He is not that guy who could be interested in me, what does he want from me?" Also, I remember you were interested in why I blocked you on PenPals. Then, if I am not mistaken, you sent me your portfolio, the link on your account in a University, and several other photos with Japanese old madams. (I deleted them all then.) I thought you tried to give me evidence you are a real man and not a liar. I was a bit negative (I said your buildings looked a bit unfriendly) in my answer about the portfolio and you promised me to send some photographs of a villa you had been designing at that time. Also, you modestly said that your work is just nothing interesting. Then we exchanged a couple of sentences, after that you sent me the last message that you are fed up with all the idiots surrounding you, Ahmed. I decided you were suffering from depression. Or that you said that I am an idiot. Thank you. I know.

An important question is why did I write to you. I don't know. You are talented obviously as I can conclude from your portfolio. Don't know if you are clever or not. You seem a good-kind-person in all your photos. I forgot that you were arrogant and dismissive of me. Now I recalled step by step that all. It was a bit of a pain. I never stay indifferent when people, who I like, deny me. I just forgot you were...

Okay. It doesn't matter. I will think about you and keep in my mind all the best. I will live only for you during this long 1000-36 messages. I will dress for you, care about myself for you, eat for your name, sleep remembering you and get up speaking with you in my head. I will do my work keeping your image in my heart. I will breathe by you just because I want. I want a big wonder in my life.

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"I want a big wonder in my life." The line swam before his eyes... Ahmed was sensitive. Each time he fell in love so much that he forgot everything in the world, and was ready to make any sacrifice just to be with his beloved. Both of his marriages were very happy at first. A bright, rich wedding and then seven heavens of happiness, and endless adoration. But gradually everything was killed by mutual selfishness, domestic difficulties and mismatch in sexual appetites. The situation when a woman begins to restrict a man from sex is the most common cause of divorce in Algeria. Algerian men lose their minds, and women become withdrawn or aggressive. And after the divorce, they do not stop searching for a second partner and wait for a miracle. The wonder in the life of Ahmed did happen more than twice, because he was amorous and every love, even if it did not grow into a real love affair, was experienced very violently and secretly, without showing his feelings. Aikido saved him from depression and destruction. Perhaps Ahmed's love for Aikido was no less violent than his love for earthly women. Ahmed invested his thoughts, time, money, and energy in Aikido as passionately as in his sweetest love. He loved to love everything from the fish in his Japanese home, foreign, Japanese and Algerian colleagues and students, whom he always sincerely and altruistically tried to help, to his father and his entire huge family and, of course, his country. He had a warm relationship with his brother and a touching relationship with his sisters. Love for family and relatives was not shameful to show, it is accepted in the Arab world. In this sense, Ahmed was a real Arab. Many times and for a long time, his sons and relatives from Algeria stayed with him in Japan. Nature has generously rewarded Ahmed with the ability to warmly show love to people in general and the ability to be lively and energetic in communication. Algeria, Ahmed's long-suffering homeland, as beautiful and diverse as the gardens of Eden, was another bitter wound in Ahmed's sensitive heart. Corruption and ignorance, injustice in the country worried and outraged him to the depths of his soul. He did not want to accept the current situation and take advantage of existing opportunities. He hotly debated with colleagues and relatives when the occasion arose:  "I feel contempt for this society that does not respect its doctors.."  or " …Honestly, I have had an unpleasant experience with our Algerian society, even before I left Japan. Our society walks out of history.. A society that understands everything and discusses you in anything..", or "Even if there are good architects in Algeria, this country failed in making good students in architecture, and therefore, good architects.. The educational system is empty and quite meaningless..", or "I was and still am against how our society, seen as conservative, sees the father-son relationship .. This society just makes people miserable, developing a guilt complex at a young age..". What did he want from life? Easy to say, but complicated to do. He hoped to design spaces where people can feel happy. In Algeria.

The message -37-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
I met my teachers once a week or even more rarely: they were studying, were activists in the University, had many trips in other towns, meetings, sessions, round-table talks. I found a study book to learn Arabic. It was the only one book, more for teaching than studying Arabic language on the internet at that time, exactly the literary Arabic (fuskha) language, but Ammar did not want to use my book. He gave me that all in spoken Arabic. I just had to write everything from a blackboard in my notebook and then at home, I tried translating in order to understand something in my book and in my notes. 
His language was not coincident with the language from my book. I loved fuskha, it sounds like a song, but spoken Arabic seems unpleasant to me.
Another guy, Abdu, I told you about, was doing nothing but listening to how I was reading.
 So three months went by and the learning year ended, both guys spent their vacations at home in Yemen.
The new season in September Ammar wrote to me inviting me to study, but I softly almost refused: I said I would like to meet once in two weeks now. Abdu also invited me and we met several times, until one day when one of us misled and came at a different time.
That day was Saturday, on Sundays University doesn't work. I told him we can meet next week. He offered to meet on Sunday. I agreed: okay, we would meet in a library. He offered to come to my home. I got his hint but played a fool.  In the end he was interested: who I live with.
" I have a husband and a daughter", I replied. "I need a Russian wife," he said, "Help me to find one."
"All my acquainted women are adults or old, you'd rather look for a wife among the girls in University."
"No, I don't need a young wife," was the answer.
"Do you want an old wife? Why?"
"I want to stay in Russia forever."......so on.
I was so disappointed: I was a slice of useful but unpleasant meat. It was so disgusting! Flesh. Of course, I did not exacerbate the situation, I made a lark, we agreed to meet on another day. He didn't invite me again :) and I did not ask him, but we had written to each other for a while, he always sent me kisses. Horrible.
I investigated later: Abdu lived with his uncle due to the fact that his father died several years ago. Both of his brothers were soldiers, he, Abdu, also had photos with a machine-gun. His uncle had many sheep, camels, and several horses. Each year on the death anniversary Abdu copy-and-past all the same memorial words on his Safebook account. Maybe it is a tradition in the Arabic world.
About another guy, I had only one case when I felt an unease with him. We just entered a room, I turned my head off him, speaking about something, and then quickly glanced at him: he was gazing at me with eyes as if he wanted to slay me by piercing through me. It lasted several seconds: he got what I guessed about his wish but he didn't change his eyes, stood motionlessly, and gazed. I understood that I could kill him too, easily if it turned out he is my dead enemy. Then he lowered his eyes, smiled softly, and said something polite, as usual.

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Shinji wrote that this weekend he will come to Nagoya with his daughters to see the castle. He invited Ahmed to come with them. At the appointed hour and day, Amed met them under the Golden clock and they went to inspect the castle.
The day was warm and windless. The girls chatted animatedly and begged for cold coffee or cakes: how can they eat so much?
At the entrance to the castle, there was an organized queue along the marking lines. The people were different: adults with teenagers, young people with children, old people, girls in groups, guys in twos and threes, and, of course, couples. Everyone was very differently dressed, people were noisy or majestically quiet.
The air smelled spicy, like herbs. Beyond the gate, directly from the entrance, there was a long row of pavilions with exhibition samples of chrysanthemums and bonsais of various types. An immense kaleidoscope of colors, shapes and strange combinations.
A huge collection of both stretched for five hundred meters to the entrance to the Palace itself. There were many pavilions in which multi-tiered shelves were constructed from bamboo and wooden planks, on which precious exhibits were placed.
People walked sedately from pavilion to pavilion, stepping carefully on the gravel. Gray stones creaked under the soles of their miscellaneous shoes, and all this polyphony merged with the soft sounds of voices, laughter, rustling clothes in one very pleasant chorus that rose into the high sky, above the ancient trees surrounding the castle, to the soaring long-winged birds.
Recently, Shinji and the girls have visited some place where they observed the process of dyeing fabrics in the traditional Japanese indigo color. The older girl recalled how, while helping a worker squeeze paint out of a piece of fabric, she dipped her finger in the paint, and even though she was wearing gloves, the finger remained blue for a long time like some chrysanthemums here. They probably used the same dye for those chrysanthemums. So, chatting with the girls in English, as Shinji asked Ahmed in advance, they came to the entrance to the temple. Here, a whole crowd of school children put off their clean sneakers and set them in neat rows and walked forward to the altar.
Ahmed watched as they took turns completing seemingly meaningless actions, automatically, without thinking, without musing, just because everyone did, repeating the sacred gestures that their ancestors performed centuries before them.

The message -38-
Hello, Ahmed.
I did not have time these two days for writing to you: there were many customers at work and in the evenings I had what to do at home. My daughter, for example, needs some attention: sometimes she becomes very wordy. I always stop all that I am doing and listen to her. Yesterday she told me about railways in Russia and in Japan (high-speed trains) comparing them, then she told me about world rates of Universities, then news and facts about coronavirus. Also, she showed me a photo of a big spider from Australia (she thinks she has arachnophobia) which was, in its body without its legs, bigger than the palm of a guy in the photo.
Arabic
Several months later after I ended my meetings with my Arab guys I met on the Internet a public invitation to a free Orient school: lecturers from one of our Universities offered five courses in the themes around languages and the Orient as a whole. That was: Chinese, Hebrew languages, Mesopotamian cuneiform writing, History of Religions, Arabic, Theory of interpersonal communication in the East.
I attended several of them (Arabic, a couple of lectures in Hebrew, cuneiform, Chinese was for beginners so I attended only two lectures, in short, I visited almost all lecturers except History of religions: had no time). All the lectures were brilliant except the one from an old lady in the Theory of interpersonal communication. Long time I didn’t see so many strange generalizations and incorrect statements about nations. One professor always softly corrected her by his short stories from his travels in the East. ...I must go to the gym, it is lunchtime here...

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They came to the castle moat. It was a very beautiful view. The castle stood on a small hill and was separated by a moat dug along the perimeter, overgrown with grass.
Ahmed noticed a bird hovering above the castle. It was a very large bird, probably a big hawk, for it hovered in the air for a very long time doing circles, with its wings spread wide, and looked down from its height, almost disappearing, at the tiny people below. Then it, and Ahmed with it together, returned to the same spire, on the highest point of the castle, once and once again.
“We, people, tend to take not the best position for viewing, but the one that is more convenient for us. But this is not always effective.”
“Who should I be ashamed of?”
“Myself. We should be ashamed of ourselves, of our inner selves. If you are not ashamed, you have no moral sense. You are insensitive. You are sick, your mind is sick. And no one hasn't learned how to treat it yet.”
There are people who lack empathy, it is a personality disorder when a person is not able to understand the feelings of others. People are affected by this disease to varying degrees. To be healthy — it is fashionable and vital. So it was invented to replace the internal, genetically, naturally inherent in human empathy with religion. People play in virtue. It's a dangerous game when you don't understand the real rules.
Russian writer called this feature of some people as "aristonomia". This property does not even depend very much on the nature of the environment in which the person was raised. Such people are only a necessary part of the community, necessary for its survival. Species diversity ensures the sustainability and survival of humans as a species. Everyone is needed and important: smart, stupid, noble and low people, the embodiment of kindness and the embodiment of the beast.
“Performing rites just thoughtlessly, following tradition and fashion, does not mean internally experiencing the sacred priceless experience that should be understood in these actions. Most believers don't understand why they do this every time, and most of them do it insensitively.”
But some faces, especially older Japanese people, were very focused at the moment of the ceremony and after, their features softly tensed and their eyebrows raised as if they had found why they came here.
“How to find a position where it is better and really important to be, and not the one where you can better see what seems important?”

The message -39-
Hello, Ahmed.
I had no time today even to eat so I am having my too-late-lunch and writing to you right now.
Arabic
Lecturer in Arabic was a master-student from Egypt as it was figured out. For the beginning, I thought he was Russian went , for example,  from Dagestan because his skills in Russian were perfect. The first education he got in Egypt, historical faculty. His name was Ahmed. He was about 32 years old, not tall, with deep bald patches on his head, big eyes, thick lips. He was vibrant, jovial, and had high energy.
He offered us to follow studying Arabic in a three-month course in University, for free. Some of the people attending his lectures agreed and on the whole, for the first time his course had about 24 pupils.
Firstly, he invited my familiar guy Ammar as a teacher. His friend Abdu was with him two times, I didn’t come close to him. But later Ahmed noticed the inefficiencies of Ammar’s teaching and started to be our master.
Ahmed was awesome. All he wrote on the blackboard I understood easily. He controlled the progress of each of us. He was very polite and jovial. Cool guy. We met once a week for classes and sometimes in the evenings he invited all to watch an Arabian movie in Arabic, I was only once. It was an old historical film. The room where we met was a big modern auditorium with a big screen, so we could see the picture in the size of the entire wall. Battle scenes shown in such size seem real.


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Ahmed and Shinji with the girls said a warm goodbye at the train station. For the rest of the day, Ahmed went shopping and bought a new scarf, the kind he likes: voluminous and with ponytails around the edges, brown and gray in a cage. In stores, everyone was forced to wear a mask. Ahmed, coming out of the store, felt the smell of his own teeth in the mask after the cake and with disgust shoved it into the already bulging pocket of his jacket on the way out. The notification grumbled:

The message -40-
Hello, Ahmed.
Today is my day off. I went to my gym today. It looks like an entrance in it, but they did not allow me to enter its territory because I've not been there in my time. The gym is located on the fourth floor, so I can see that kind of graffiti on each wall of the stairs. To enter I should have a card and also, I must put my finger on the scanner. I have deals today in other places so I am forced to miss my training for today.
The day before yesterday on Google Maps I looked at that hotel, former “Transatlantic”, that you placed on Tiwtter. Mistakenly I visited the page of the “Transatlantic” hotel in Casablanca. What a beautiful name for a town! When I was a kid, I guested my uncle in Sevastopol, a brother of my dad. In his young years, he was a sailor and he has been to all the world, even in Antarctica. When he told me stories about his travels, his fantasy had no borders: once he told me how he had found Atlantis, was hosted by its czar, and so on.
I have his black-white photo of him in Casablanca. Several palm trees, people dressed in unusually long clothes...It was a very impressive photo in my childhood. The hotel I have found is small but cute. There are many cheap bronze statues (lions and naked niggers), columns, hand-modeled gypsum details and arcs, many quite different furniture in various styles, many small souvenirs. They write that it is decorated in Art-deco style :) Moroccan. There's a tiny yard in the heart of the hotel (not as beautiful and presentable as Biskra's one) with several palm trees that have grown here twice higher than the building.
I said I would like to visit this place and my daughter immediately showed me how much fly-tickets cost, how many hours the flight takes, and, also, that I could visit Morocco, having only my international passport (I have not yet). Morocco is visa-free for Russians. Summary: I could take my month's wage, apply for a passport, buy tickets, book the hotel, and … way to go!
I'm just not sure if the trip will be interesting. My daughter said that such a trip could be dangerous for a single woman: I could be robbed there, for example. I objected that I look like a poor, old, ugly, modest person and nobody will be going to take any damage to me there.

She sent a photo of her hand duplicating the graffiti gesture that was drawn on the wall: it was a huge, full-width hand with an outstretched finger pointing up the stairs.
Ahmed laughed: well, how could it be possible to distort the simple English language!? What does this Olga have in her mind: nails for hammering into Muslims?
In Casablanca, he was passing through an ordinary Moroccan town, quite unlike those reconstructed sceneries familiar from American films. In Michael Curtis's" Casablanca " 1942 with Ingrid Bergman, there is not a single shot taken in Morocco. Ahmed loved sometimes to look at the bright romance. There is almost nothing from the film in the real Casablanca, and this city is actually poorly planned. “It would be better to go to Marrakech or Fez if she wants to see North-Arabic exoticism." Ahmed thought.
An hour later she changed her mind about going to Casablanca:

The message -41-
Hello Ahmed, again.
I am afraid of insects so I think I will never go to such a place as that hotel in Casablanca. It just looks nice with all his cheap souvenirs. I saw a cockroach in one of those photos.
One or two years ago I dreamt of sailing on a sailing vessel. We in Russia had only a single big sailboat available for tourists named "Kruzenshtern". They offered an eight-day trip around Europe from Russia to Russia. It didn't cost a leg and an arm, but that time I had a very bad job, I had to support my daughter and him (he did not work that time!) on the wage of only 10000 rubles ( about 150 dollars) a month. I was angry at him. We lived using credit cards month after month. But it was for the better: I have learned how to live almost without money, I have learned how to save money and I still practice this skill.
That time, I every day wanted to go to the sea, to the ship and now cannot recall the moment when I forgot about this dream.

"HE must be her husband." Ahmed wondered at her tiny earnings, "As if she lives in the most backward country in Africa and doesn't have any skills to find a better job. A man earns as much as he deserves", Ahmed thought, "Survives — the strongest, earns well — the best."
He could not say that he was very invested in his work, because everything was not a burden to him and seemed to be given relatively easily, although time was spent a lot — all his life he had to learn, learn and learn again…

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The next morning, Ahmed woke up as usual, went into the shower, undressed, turned on the water, soaped himself with frothy mint soap, and rubbed his entire body thoroughly. He bent his head and lifted the head of the penis to see if the tip was red: it had been itching a little lately. Two small brown eyes stared at Ahmed from a soapy pink head. Ahmed flinched and dropped the thing. The soap cap flew off the tip with a whoosh. Ahmed bent his penis back toward him.
"You don't love me," it said in a plaintive bass voice and sobbed, its whole body shuddering. Ahmed stared at it with round eyes. The penis had a face, a pink cute face, with a pink wet mouth, and there were several large moles on its "face". It looked like an animated smiley face.
"I'm booored," the mouth piped moodily, and the thing strained its body.. Ahmed washed off the foam, slipped out of the shower, dressed quickly, and dashed out of the apartment and into the street. He walked fast. It was even hotter today than yesterday and Ahmed wished he hadn’t wrapped a new scarf around his neck. He stopped in front of a random glass case and began to remove his scarf, looking at himself in the reflection of the glass. Then he noticed that it was a display of women's underwear, very sexy.
"I'm boooored, and you're a scoundrel!" the penis screamed and made several convulsive movements. A pretty Japanese girl in a short skirt was walking by. Convulsions ran through Ahmed's entire body. Ahmed jumped up as if stung, and with a long scarf hanging around his neck, he flew towards the nearest park with all the speed in his legs that he was capable of. There he found a bench, sat down in the center of it, and put the bag on his stomach.
"Who are you?" he asked the tense little body under the bag.
"Peppino. You can call me Peppino," it said from under a heavy leather briefcase with a laptop.
"What do you want from me?"
"Chocolate." it snorted, panting and getting weak.
"I just want to know what you are and why you suddenly speak in a human voice," Ahmed said politely, trying to calm down and control himself.
"I'm just tired of being silent, I can't take it anymore. You don't notice me. I don't seem to be there. And I'm your other half.." Peppino said in a smiling bass voice, and Ahmed felt warm and calm inside from this cozy voice. He relaxed and sighed, "It's not my fault. No one likes me, and I don't like anyone to the point when it comes to this...that.."
"Sex?"
"Well, Yes..", blushed Ahmed, "..love".
"You've been torturing me with your love for four years now.. I'm hungry and ready to eat anything, even a dried roach," cried Peppino, "even a raw potato!"
"I can't help it, it's not up to me. I did everything I could."
"Haven't you tried what you can't do!?"
"How is it?"
"Oh, my God! You're like a child. It's time to wake up, sugar, and become a real macho! Are you learning Spanish for nothing?"

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Ahmed remembered where he was going: to work! "I'll be late!" the blood rushed to his face. Ahmed did not like to be late, although "late" in Japan meant arriving later than 40 minutes before the start of the working day. He jumped up and rushed to the side of the University, overtaking passers-by.
Phew! Showed up for work on time. Business immediately engulfed him: greetings, meetings, discussions, lunch, classes with students, tinkering with paperwork. Everything was as usual, everything was in a fog, everything was like in some computer game: all events were repeated, but the characters or clothes on them and the situation varied. Even the phrases were memorized. He could guess in advance who would say what and how they would behave, how they would look, how they would shrug their shoulders.
What was new was that everyone was strictly forbidden to appear without a mask. Previously, it was only in public places, now even at work you have to wear a mask. The new virus was slowly spreading around the world: one or two, five or ten cases a day in different countries. The news was all over with photos of the Chinese doctor who first discovered the disease and died of the coronavirus.
After work, Ahmed had dinner at his favorite diner and went home. It was a lovely evening. A faint breeze gently stirred the golden under-the-lamplight-leaves of the trees and the woolen threads on the plaid scarf. His body was happy with every movement after hours of sitting in the office. Of course, he wasn't as restricted in his movements at work as the unfortunate cashiers, for example, or bus drivers, but there weren't many options to stretch while working, except for running from one office to another and lecturing standing up. He stopped and realized that he was looking at the same display of women's underwear where he had had a strange attack in the morning.
"I'm here," Peppino said, "We need to talk."
"I don't want to!" Ahmed answered and walked faster.
At home, he sat down in a chair, went to the Telegram, where he had not been for several days. Olga wrote:

The message -42-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
So, I spent about three months with my first teachers, then met Ahmed. At the same time, I made an acquaintance with a man from PenPals, Ibrahim. He was 53 years old Egyptian, divorced with two small kids. His former wife was a beautiful singer and he was a math teacher in a school. He lived near his school, I could sometimes hear rings for classes and very loud nasal exhortations to prayers from a Mosque.
I did not have a photo of my face in PenPals, only a pic of my hand. He agreed we will speak on Skype on audio-only and he will never see me or ask for my photos. For the first time he begged for it, but then forgot. We met on Skype almost every day when my husband was absent. Ibragim studied Russian because he dreamed of finding a Russian wife.
I told him I am married, and not going to divorce. He was very kind with his children, with his sister: I refused to see his video too when we conversed but I could listen to his relatives when he needed to make a break for them. He was a bit ugly in my opinion, but his hoarse voice I liked. Sometimes I miss his voice and warm tones in it.

The message -43-
Hello Ahmed,
One Chinese guy wrote to me that we travel to ensure the world or the place matches our notion.
I go to the internet, see photos of the place, read someone's review, read articles, watch movies, speak with some citizens on the internet. I have known so much that if I go to the place, at last, I would have known almost nothing new. Should I go there to ensure there are many bedbugs and cockroaches there? Or that each early morning there are a lot of used condoms on a sidewalk near the hotel? Or that the sculpture of the lion is made of bronze indeed? How does it smell there?
I think most people go on trips looking for adventures. They are waiting for something new, unusual. Some even change their behavior abroad. Oh..no..I don't know what they are expecting. For me, this is true: new, or familiar from the internet, places and nice landscapes don't touch me very deeply. I can watch. But observing does not change me. To be changed, I should be sociable and active. I know that I am afraid of people and I will never gaze at people and there's no force that will make me feel free and relax with strangers. I cannot imagine I would find something interesting for me on such a trip because I would spend all the days in my jail (that I would book). I would prefer to work there. I need to feel the place. That would require me to be involved in the life of the place as a constant common part of it. It is impossible in a short visit.
One kind of trip attracts me: to a forest, to mountains, to a lake or a sea with a backpack, to go hiking on my legs. Here I feel freedom and fear coming only from the greatness of nature. But it gives me rest, doesn't give me something new if I am alone.
It is not that time I need a rest. I need a curious teacher, a patient guide, and a good friend to travel with. This is neither my daughter nor my husband. I do not have such friends. So the trip is canceled for now. Or I will buy a ticket to  such a country which I've never heard about.
And at the end: what is the reason I'll spend a month of my life, toiling at work, to have a look at two or five days of someone's life? It is worth it only if I want to meet my good friend or relatives, or their tombs.

The message -44-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
Ibrahim. He taught me fuskha, he knew it. The difficult thing was he tried to teach me from Arabic study books of his children. It wasn't a book for adults. I chronically was a bad student. We also used my book in Arabic and for him, I found a book in Russian. One day he taught me Arabic — one day I gave him Russian and we repeated it again and again.
The most complicated thing was: he tended to think that if I didn't work, I could wait and move our meeting later or earlier than we had planned. It took a long time until he finally realized that I cannot change the time of the classes.
Day by day he told me about himself, his children, bit by bit. I saw both of them, the girl and the boy on Skype. I told him nothing about myself. Another one town with a beautiful name was his hometown: Alexandria. Near the sea. I met so many guys who lived near the sea: from Ghana, Britain, Costa-Rica, Egypt. One Sweden man had a wife-sailor. Each year for several weeks their family went to a lake on the yacht she owned and steered. Cool woman, I think. I love the sea.
Ibrahim said Alexandria became dirty in the last several years. It sounds sad. He was ill, his kidney needed treatment.
Our meetings lasted several months until I blocked him on Skype and refused the next conversations.
I asked him to begin in time, he tried to do it, but then our meetings were getting longer and longer due to him taking breaks for five-ten minutes-half-of-hour...I wasted my time. It was several, many times, I told him I cannot wait. And once I blocked him. He explained something to me in PenPals, I said no, it's enough.
A year later he'd seen my photo in PenPals, wrote he was missing his teacher, and wanted to start anew. I replied I stopped learning Arabic. It was true: I refused the idea of learning Arabic, Chinese, and English at the same time. I focused on English.
Ahmed: his course went about three months until summer and vacation. Then in October, I met him in celebration of the opening of the Chinese center in our University. He started saying he planned to proceed to a new course in Arabic soon, I said: "Stop, stop, Ahmed. I am sorry. I will not be studying Arabic or Chinese anymore. You are the best teacher I ever met. I appreciate your patience and work, but I cannot visit your courses now and I have to stop." It looked like: I almost said to him "I love you, but have to leave you", such it sounded sad. He was disappointed because at the end of those three months of the courses there were only four students in the group including me, one of whom was that lecturer in History of Religions, his Jewish friend.
I heard later that in a half or a year Ahmed made arrangements for a new course and a big Arabic presentation with a concert in University. This time there were about a hundred people. I hope he had many pupils.
I know he got married a year ago to an Egyptian girl, he even took her here to Russia: I saw a photo where they are smiling happily in a snow forest.

The message -45-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
My results in Arabic are deplorable. Now I remember nothing and I forgot how to read letters. I still can intuitively translate German that I was learning tenuously in school and University despite not having learned it or opened a vocabulary book for twenty-five years. But the languages that I studied so hard, I forgot immediately. What a pity!
I always say to my daughter that she should study now and memorize, and train her memory so far as she is young. I stimulated her to learn English, Chinese. We tried to learn Spanish with a guy from Venezuela, but she did not like it.
Several years I paid her tuition in Chinese and for the last two years, she had a Chinese student-teacher, who helped her for free. She was good at Chinese. But this year she is preparing to enter a university so I have to pay to English and History tutors. She knows English very well despite having never had any tutors before. She has a deep interest in English and can cite long dialogues from her beloved movie "Pride and Prejudice". She says when she feels bored she speaks it in her head. She cited for me a long dialogue very fast, with the similar intonations after the actors, that I found a bit boring: I understood nothing from that.
She wanted to be a translator in Korean, Chinese, or Japan, loves French, wants to know it, but had no opportunity. Now her idea is to enter political science faculty or historical, the school of diplomacy, with a tilt to orient languages. We do not have many Universities in this area. We even were thinking of sending her to study in China, but I am sure (looking at our foreign students) the first education should be in native language. Now we are waiting for her exams at the end of March, then in June and results to figure out that she really can pretend to.
Her English tutor promises a score of 96-100 from 100 and History just about 70 but they have four months left until the exam. She did not have any knowledge in History last July.
My role is small: give her money, encourage and trust her, and wait.

The message -46-
Hello, Ahmed.
Arabic
When I'm reminiscing about all your photos as a whole as one big object, I feel about you: "He is tired or genially bored, there's some sorrow or a muse in his image. What is he dreaming about? Where and what is the consolation he has found?"
I can imagine Ahmed comes home after  meeting, kisses his wife and lays in dull despair, and spends long hours musing and thinking and doing nothing. Then he again goes further as a robot. Maybe he drudges each moment of life sleep robbed him of.
But I noticed in some of the photos in the Biskra university meeting he used his phone often: when the meeting in the midst of it all, when at lunch, or in a president chair. It doesn't look like he was bored at that particular time communicating with his smartphone. Haha, there's two such contradictory images of one person.
So many Arabians I have known in PenPals and met when I was studying Arabic: from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, Muslims from other countries in the USA, Iran, Pakistan, Ghana, Tunisia, don't remember more.
I've never met Ahmed, but among all the Arabian people who I communicated with, he is whom I know better than others despite him not writing me more than four short messages in the last year. Apparently, he's not a common Arabian or Berber. Why are you so modest, Ahmed-sensey?"

She sent several photos of herself over the past few days. One where she was in a black dress above the knee, Ahmed liked it, he gave in to the impulse and wrote her the answer, "You look nice."
"Whom are you writing to?" a sly bass voice sounded. Ahmed replied before he realized who or what he was talking to, "a woman whom I met on a dating site has been texting me for months, almost every day."
"Wow! And what does she write?"
"About her Arabic classes with Arabs. About her daughter. About her husband.."
"Funny," Peppino chuckled, "got a husband, no tits..and what country is she from?"
"From Russia."
"Oh! Well, that doesn't suit us. Do you know how far it is? And Algerians need a visa there. It's easier to get to Paris or Dresden, but it's better to look for a hot chick in Madrid.."
"I don't like your rude expressions. This is an uncharacteristic vocabulary for me, it jars my ears. Couldn't you be more careful with this?" threatened Ahmed with the next argument ," otherwise I will never talk to you again, you know me.."
"Okay," immediately Peppino agreed sadly.