"Moment of victory is the moment of a wrong answer"

I learned when walking in the street or following events how to decrypt codes in front of me and transform them into questions. Buildings are not stones but sentences that carry high questions, and people around the street are not human beings of flesh and blood, but are rather dynamic sentences saturated with questions!  This may be because of my indifference towards the world of material and my passion for the world of ideas…as I transform what is concrete to something abstract to be able to decode what I see.

For example, as I saw that charming girl yesterday on the street, I read in her a question addressed directly to me, “Do you like my look?” And then, I discovered that it was not a single question, her appearance raised a deeper question…“What is beauty in your opinion?” After that, questions broke my solitude without permission…“do you marry a girl having the same appearance of me?”, then the question dived deep into my life…“Do you originally want to marry?” That girl asked thousands of questions which I do not pretend that I was singled out to answer them, as I do not claim that she asked the same questions to passers-by; she perhaps retained the right to ask the first question to everyone!!! She created a long dialogue with me and which lasted almost half an hour, even though I saw her only a few seconds!!! I would have kept on continuing the dialogue with her, if somebody had not changed the exam paper and surprised me with new questions.

Somebody I think I had known before and whose appearance coming from far away was asking me a question… “Do you know me?” I could soon answer the question either through approaching him and examining his features, or by asking him a question…“Are you this or that person?”

I also noticed that there were people whom I did not care about in the street- just as I thought that the girl did not originally notice my presence in the street amid hundreds of passers-by. But that does not mean that those whom we do not care about do not ask us questions, perhaps they use a language that we do not understand, or we ignore the answer… For that old woman sitting in a corner on the ground and selling tissues, I can pretend that I did not receive any question from her…but to be honest, I found the question so strong and shaking…“don’t you help me?”, and with a little listening and depth I found the frightening question in her eyes: “Do you know that there are millions of people like me?” … I chose to answer the first question, perhaps because it was easier, so I got my wallet out of my pocket…but, apparently the wallet also was posing questions, and as it ratted me out, wondering…“is it possible to steal this person easily?”, a skilled thief answered it and snatched the wallet out of my hands. I managed to see him, and his skinny body asked me provocative question: “Do you dare follow me?" I answered him by attacking him.

We were exchanging punches of questions and answers in a crazy and fast manner, and I believe that any conflict can be considered as an exchange of questions, as each side asks its opponent a difficult question to see how the latter will answer.

The street became suddenly crowded. Apparently, people gathered to express their appreciation for what I had done with the thief. I got dizzy from the great number of people surrounding me, and I hoped I could regroup them in the same way as for students in schools, telling the small persons to move forward and the tallest to move backward, just to be able to see… to see the questions…the long question and the short one!!!

The crowd deceived me…It was a group of young people who were insulting a football team which they support. Having been dominated by confusion, their eyes threw a question at me…“we won last time against the same team through the same plan, why have we been defeated this time?”

Some people have the joy of discovering a new successful way, thinking that they have found the way to excellence! And that is true only if they face a stupid and lazy adversary, but it would make a difference if the opponent is intelligent. He should improve the art of asking new and surprising questions. Using a new means would mean throwing out a new question that the opponent has not yet been trained how to answer to; therefore, the likelihood of a false answer will increase, depending on the difficulty of the question. But if the same question is asked once again, a wise opponent is supposed to get ready to answer it. You can keep on asking the same question as long as you know that the opponent has not yet found the answer, taking into account that you have lost the element of surprise.

So, newness and surprise are two important elements… Surprise drives the opponent to stammer, even if he knows the answer; while the new means provides greater opportunity for error. The lesson is not just asking a new and sudden question, because sometimes one gets an unanswerable answer, as the nuclear answer America responded to Japan, leading to a catastrophic disaster in the Second World War and leaving new question marks that history will never forget. New and sudden questions should be well studied; it is then that hope for the moment of victory would be legitimate; it is the moment of getting a wrong answer, rather than the moment of asking a question.

The charming woman- who asked me questions- returned to the street…It looks like she was running errands…I heard someone flirting her… the situation is evolving very rapidly…a huge man, who was very agitated, got out of his car…God, it was her husband, he was waiting for her. I don't think I need to describe what happened to that teenage who was flattering her…As his answer to the girl’s question was false, her husband threw him with thousands of bloody questions!!!

I wished he had read San Suu’s saying, when putting strategies for the art of war- the same saying can be applied for flirting: “We are responsible for protecting ourselves from defeat, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself due to a mistake he can commit.”

Written By: Wael Adel

Translated By: Zoulikha K