I once had a friend named cherine…

I once had a friend named cherine…
She is someone I kew from my years at the faculty of mass communication at cairo university. I am one day older than her, what a coincidence!! We both belong to gimmini. When I first met her, in my second college year, I didn’t really like her. The way she used to mock of every thing was strange to me. But afterwards I found out that she uses mockery either to cover her shyness or as a way of socializing. Anyway, once we had a few serious discussions, we became best friends. I found out that cherine is the only female friend I have that really cares about the same things I care about, that is politics, culture, Egyptian current affairs, ..etc.
Before knowing her, most of my college friends were from the opposite sex, as I couldn’t find pleasure in talking with girls, who were most of the time occupied with cooking, fashion, actors and singers, other peoples relationships,..etc. and first of all I find no joy in talking about these stuff and second, I have nothing to say about it.
But with cherine, it was somethong else. We could spend hours arguing about a practice of some political leader, or analyzing our friends, or discussing a favourite book. I’ve alaways found our conversations amusing and I felt like we complete each other. We nearly use the same way of thinking, but we always draw different conclusions. And although our opinions were at odds in many occasions, I always respected her way of thinking.
I once asked my mother, how come you have no friends at all? She said that off course she had school and college friends, but as life went by, everyone got busy with his own life and they couldn’t stay in touch, adding that having to travel to another town because of my dad’s work accelerated the end of her friendships some how. At that time I thought she is wrong, as I believe that it takes two persons to end a relationship, and that kids, housework, work or lack of time isn’t a good execuse to lose your connection with the people you love and the people who are important to you.
And when I first left Egypt to work in another country, I was keen to stay in touch with my friends and family members. I was perhaps the only one at my work place that received too much letters, that one of my collegues asked me “does all of Egypt write to you?”.
Well. Not anymore. Today I managed to stay in touch with very few friends. I even don’t write to them or receive their letters or e mails on a regular basis. I just write when I feel it has been too long since I last heard from them. I found out that it’s impossiple, given my current circumstances, to keep in touch on a daily or even weekly basis with all the people I know, so I decided to save my efforts to contact the people I love and care about most. And cherine was one of those people. I felt very happy as we kept on emailing each other on a dialy basis, I even didn’t complain when we only contacted weekly, but then weeks became months and I am afraid that months might become years and that we will end up like mum and her friends.
I once told cherine, that because I am the one who is away from Egypt, I need to stay in touch with my friends more, as it makes me feel less far away and eases the bitterness of my choice to live outside my country alittle.
I know my friend still remembes me and she is probably tormenting herself with a guilty feeling for not writing to me, and I know that her new post have nothing to do with it, as some people might say. With cherine, the reasons is some social laziness and the vicious cycle of (failing to stay in touch- feeling ashamed of it to the degree that she can’t talk or write to you, and so not writing then feeling even more guilty about it and so on).
So, please my friend break this cycle and try writing often.