++Magazine

Man will become better when you show him what he’s like – Anton Chekov

From the first time they had sex, he knew he couldn’t handle the fact she would have sex with other men once they broke up – Andrew McInteyre

One wing man ain’t enough, you need two wings to fly baby! – Stephane Mbeki

To have rules is good, to break them even better – Zeynep Aydin

I’m not born to be cool, I’m born to be happy – Nebil Guven

Listen to your heart, while using your brain – Evren Dogru

1.
A song for the sad

I wish I died sooner
Cause life is too hard
Don’t want to give up
But I’m not moving forward

I’ve let go of my goals
The weight is off my shoulders
I look around and see nothing,
Smell nothing, care bout nothing

Tylenol, XTC or Aspirins
I’ve lost track
I take them all
Looking for better days

No more tears
No more sad
Just me
And my remaining time

By Ufuk Asik
—–

2.
The sound of coming

Kama Sutra, Yoga, Buddha
I want to know it all
It’s the only time when I seem to be free
Letting it all out
On her face and in her mouth

I look in the mirror
And see this guy with his dick in his hand
The sparkle in my eye makes me say:
Ain’t life grand!

By Stephane Mbeki
—–

3.
Didn’t we live here?

The Jews are coming
Close your doors
Hide your children
This isn’t the time for joking

The Jews are coming
To claim our country
No one’s going to help you
They gave them money

The Jews are coming
Don’t just sit there, do something
Total chaos
Look at everybody running

The Jews are coming
To take away our freedom
Until one day Karma kicks in
And gives peace a chance to win

By Ilkin Yildiz
—–

4.
Disco Fever

I’m addicted to dancing
When I do it I’m happy
No tomorrow, no career
Just me and the beat

My body understands it
Moving my feet
It’s not about others
But about freedom

Don’t look at me like that
I’m not insane
Can’t stop anymore
I’ve got Disco Fever

By Martha Gilroy
—–

5.
Camel

Cramp in my feet
Must have been the driving
Did I turn off the gas?

These people stink
Big mustaches and white shirts
I hate religion

The sea is cold
Diarrhea is on its way
Hey look! A camel!

By Nebil Guven
—–

6.
Jesus H. Christ

Fingers like a pig
Are you dumb?
Look at your fucking kid

No respect for my rules
Just do whatever you want
You’re no Christian

I’m going to tell
My dad, he’s going to
Send you to hell!

By Zeynep Aydin

The glass was just standing there. Empty like that. I didn’t get it. I bet he wanted to have lipstick all over him and maybe some leftovers from some nice French white wine? But unfortunately these good days were gone forever. Now he was just an ugly shaped glass that his owner got as a present from her mother when moving here. It reminded her of the oppression of her parents so she never used him. Instead she drank out of cheap little water glasses and poured her cheap wine in them. He didn’t want her dry lips on him, but he hoped that one day one of her girlfriends would see him in the corner, all dusty, and see the beauty in him and took him out. He would be back in business soon after that. But that day didn’t come.

What did happen was that one day, a regular rainy day, the cabinet got opened and he saw his owner’s hand get closer and closer until she picked him up. Her hands were wet and had some dirt on it. ‘What was happening?’ he thought to himself. She brought him to the guestroom. It was empty so what were they doing there? ‘Is she going to kill me? Is this the end of my life?’ She stopped and was looking up. She was blocking his view so he couldn’t see what she was looking at. Finally she put him down and he felt a drop. Rain? Yes, but why just one drop. Then a couple of seconds later another drop. She smiled at him and said ‘So, now I’ve finally found a reason to get you out of that cabinet and be useful’. Another drop. ‘Oh, yes! Freedom and every day fuller than I was ever before! I’m the luckiest glass in the world. I’m the leak-holder’.

Memories of that day overshadowed the rest of her life and that didn’t make sense to him. Why, statistically seen, would one day out of so many thousands of days have such a big impact on somebody’s life? But she told him: ‘Not everything has to make sense in life’. This was her explanation for everything in life that she couldn’t clarify logically.
It wasn’t even the first time that it happened, but nothing he could say or do would change her feelings. She was hurt badly and maybe she was hurt the times before, but this time it was different. The circumstances were simply perfect for a trauma.
While their marriage lasted the rest of their lives, she never forgot that day and actually never had forgiven him for what he had done. He felt this hatred towards him, but because he didn’t know why she felt this way, he had never been able to make her as happy again as before the day it happened. They got older and older and she gave up on her dreams of romance and passion. He gave up on his principles of never cheating. And that’s what they called love.

I remember them. The friends I grew up with. I used to live in a little town in Italy. Back in the days our friendship meant everything to us. Now it’s a fading memory and I’m scared I’ll lose it forever. Like you forget your grandfather’s hands or the way your childhood attic used to smell.

Do I have to make a choice between letting go and holding on or can I do both? My husband told me that it was my choice to leave my hometown and move to Rome. So now, he says, it’s on me to either go back or just accept life the way it is. I wish I was more like my friends and could be happy with staying at one place for the rest of my life. The thing is, I tried, but I felt locked up. Locked up in our small town, where everybody knows what I’m up to. Where even the butcher knew about my first cigarette. Where you couldn’t have a lay in the hay with a boy without it being printed in the town bulletin. Where it was impossible to be different, because you simply wouldn’t get accepted. I don’t think it really was my choice to move away. I think it was inevitable. The town couldn’t have handled me and I couldn’t have handled the town.

But now I lost the only friends I had, that were for life. And my friends back home still have each other after all these years. I can’t stop and think if I made a mistake or not? I think the only way to live life is accept every choice you made. For there is no way of going back and finding out what would happen if I would have gone right instead of left. My husband is correct. I’m the only one who can decide to accept my fate. And from now on I’ll see my friends, not as lost, but I’ll see them as I see my grandfather’s hands: a warm memory that belongs to my childhood, but one that really doesn’t exist anymore.

On the morning of the interview I was pretty nervous meeting Tamir Ziad, the creator of this site and also our ‘boss’. The putting together of the crew for this site wasn’t an easy task. Nobody knows each other personally. We all reacted on a post on a young writers site, which ironically isn’t online anymore. In that post Tamir explained his concept for this site. I’m the first to meet him from the writer’s crew and hope to give our readers and writers a good idea about who Tamir Ziad is.

How did you come up with this site and the post for finding the writers?
I was thinking of creating a platform for a long time before I actually took action. One day I was surfing the web and saw a site dedicated to young journalists and writers. I felt like that was a sign that I should get off my lazy ass and start this site. There are young people that want to write and there are young people that like to read. I thought posting an ad on that website was the best way to bring those people from all around the world together, on ++Magazine.

Why start a new site and not use the available site?
That site was not a platform. It wasn’t a place where I could post my writings, but it was for Journalism students who had just graduated. I wanted something appealing to people like me. I was always scared of criticism and thought I wasn’t good enough to write. So I thought, if there are people who think like me, they will like to write for a site where the only two prerequisites are having a positive vibe and me liking you. We can learn from each other while writing and also share the big step of putting yourself out there with each other. The hardest part was actually finding out if the people who reacted on the post, were the people I was looking for. So I conducted a lot of e-mail interviews and chat sessions. If I had the feeling they had something that could make other people think about life on a positive way, I told them they were part of the gang. Just like it went with you!

But why didn’t you ask people you know to write?
I have friends who like writing, but being friends doesn’t mean you like the same style of writing or the same movies, music or whatever. I understood that there is a big difference liking each other and liking the same kind of literature. My friends didn’t really like the stuff I wrote. It wasn’t that good, but I didn’t think they got all of my intentions. When I used to recommend a movie or a book to them, most of them wouldn’t like it and I would get sad. I wanted so badly to make us all like the same stuff, but that just didn’t work. So I thought, if I like it there must be people who like what I write and I’d probably like what they write. Finding them and sharing our experiences was my goal and what is a bigger network than the Internet?

You have a Jewish first name and a Palestinian last name. Has your background influenced you in wanting to build bridges between people?
Definitely. I have a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. They met in Jerusalem at a student party and had a one-night stand. I’m the product of love between enemies. Or lust, haha. They never married but they stayed in touch for my sake. My mother raised me, because when I was four my father was killed during an Israeli attack on his village. That gave me the insight that life consists of moments. Those moments where people fight, hate and killed. But for me especially about those moments where you feel love and share it with others. To me that’s life, probably because I owe my whole existence to one of those moments. I don’t think there is a big scheme on which everything is based and so religion didn’t work with my ideology. I didn’t think it would make me happier. It was a rational decision. My parents didn’t force me to be religious and they couldn’t. Which one should I chose? It would be a choice between my mom and my dad.

What’s this obsession with positivity?
It’s not an obsession. It’s more about our life. The way we think we have to lead it. Everybody is chasing a career without ever taking the time to think about where their life is going and what they want. Look at books like The Secret. It’s a supposed to be a book about achieving what you want. But is it about happiness? No. It’s about money, career moves, feeling better than your friends. To me that’s not success, that’s closer to misery. The whole world turned into this racetrack where people are doing anything to come out as winners. I don’t want to think about my CV when I do something. I want to think about liking what I’m doing without hurting anyone else. But it’s hard to change the way people think, because if money makes the world go round, how are you going to preach against this ideology without money? That’s where the Internet comes in handy. You need to have access to it and that’s it. No million-dollar companies to reach the masses. No big media moguls feeding us with lies and such. Just through simple stories that tell about our lives and the way we think, we can achieve happiness.

Don’t you think you sound like a new age missionary
That’s pretty upfront towards your boss, haha. No, I’m kidding. I don’t want to be a preacher. I don’t want to change everybody. We will always think differently. And that’s okay. But there are people who feel lost and looking for a way to make the best out of life. I think we can help them. The change I want is to be able to share this with more people. To feel the connection with somebody in Zimbabwe, who thinks like me, is heaven! It’s a way of thinking and it’s a certain kind of person that thinks like me. It’s about being positive. If you don’t think alike, no sweat. I don’t think this is the golden path. But I do think there are people from all classes, sexes, nationalities, cultures that think like us. For me to achieve my goal I had to do the things I did and I have to do the things I’ll do. If people join me on my journey I’ll be even happier, if they don’t I’ll be that crazy guy that wanted to live in a fantasy. But like one of our colleagues wrote: ‘at least I tried’.

What are your future plans?
++Magazine is just the beginning. As I said before, in the digital world, problems like a tight budget constrain you less than in the real world. I feel like the group that came together can achieve much more. I’m not only thinking of literally ambitions, but also about some kind of platform in the music industry, movie industry, and perhaps an online concept store for beginning designers.

Do you have delusions of grandeur?
Haha, a lot of my friends think that. I don’t think so. What is big and successful? Being rich? I don’t want that. I want to offer people the means to get-together. This is what I’m missing out there. A site where, without being a writer/director/painter/whatever, you can just join the community that you feel you’re part of. You look at movies and listen to music and recognize so much of your own life. You want to share your life with those people. ++Magazine makes that possible. Because by spreading our positive ideas to our readers, we try to make them spread it as well. Kind of like a virus, but then a very benign one.

To end this interview, the most important question: are you happy?
Life is great. I love the good times and the shit times. It’s all part of life, my life. A friend of mine once told me: “the thing that I really like about you is that you always look at things like you see them for the first time”. And I want to hold on to that, experiencing everything like it’s the first time. I don’t want to get bitter when I get older. I hear people my age already say stuff like “you’ll never fall in love like the first time”. Well my second time was bam! So different and so good. It felt like love and that relationship didn’t work out as well. So the next time I’ll have that same feeling again in a different way, but it doesn’t make sense to idealize your youth and act like it all goes down from there. Learning from your mistakes and being open-minded are not mutually exclusive. A lot of people call my way of thinking naïve and naive is a bad thing to a lot of people. They got older and gave up on their dreams. They call it growing up and getting wiser. I call that losing joy in life. As long as I keep on thinking this way, no matter what happens in my life, I think I’ll be happy.