Kifah sits in a Cafe with a couple of friends, and has a chat about missing old childhood series, and is almost breaking into tears of desperation...a friends of mine tells me about an E-Donkey based arabic community, and advices me to look in there, and wishes me good luck
I log in and register and decide to download a couple of files, and even make my own first e-donkey based releases
My Happiness and Enthusiasm are muted by the slow download rates, which takes weeks and weeks for many files.
December 2003:
I find some topics about a sharing technology called "Bitttorent"....wait a minute, those are the files i tried to download about a year earlier, and the break in the middle and fill my harddisc with none working File corpses!....but some people one the arabic emule community are saying it is fast and reliable....hmmm....i guess a lot has changed in the meantime....why don't we share those bittorent files then? The admin of the forum is not empressed, and blocks the discussion....alright....where there is a will, there is a way!
Beginning of January 2004
I decided to "study" the torrent technology, and i find out that "studying" is the suitable word, and as hard as preparing for my Thesis was.
Dead trackers
Tracker admins deleting files they do not get
Not knowing the technology (tracker announce, seeding)
Akhhhhh...there is no short cut, i need to relax and learn this bit by bit.
Will it work out:
See in the next episode
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Mid January 2004
finally...eureka!.....i had this thing running, and i managed to make my first release! and it is one of my personal favorites: Mafia by Ahmed Elsa2a.
Now it is time to promote it, so i start posting it in several movie and multimedia related arabic forums:Eftekasat, arabuser, and the lot.....
the masses are uncontrollable, and a mass hysteria of PM's and
emails fills my email box, and breaks down the Internet backbones all over the globe.Well...i am exaggerating maybe there....it was in Germany only, not the whole globe
A guy named Noah, i met on the E-donkey community is infected from my Bittorent virus, and decides to give it a try to, and releases "West beirut"....
Another guy from the same background, by the underground name of "Kasonkas" (If you have no clue what it mean,
don't worry...even he himself does not know what it means!) starts releasing as well....and voila, a community is starting to build up!
Alright...sofar so good...slowly but surely we start to feel like beduins, moving from one tracker to another....there has got to be a while to settle down guys,
we gotta find an oasis to settle at...but where is it? only mirage in the horizon.
Now at one point, a guy called Jamal (what an original nickname!...then again, Kifah is no picnic either) decides to drop me a PM, saying...."dude, i am watching
one of your releases "the lion King-arabic" with my little sister right now, and we love it...please add me to your MSN list, i gotta talk to you"
Aha...fan mail again, that is nothing new :P....nevertheless i add him to MSN, and we start to chat...the guy tells me about some web projects he works at,
and he makes the suggestion, me and him should set up the first arabic bittorent sharing community....hmmm...well...i am kind of sceptic, since i hardly
have time to commit to that, but i say alright, let us give it a try...we have nothing to loose.
Alright...Jamal takes care of buying a domain, we agree upon www.al-aflam.com....and we launch our test board on the 26th of January and start playing
around with it like little kids with a new toy.
Alright...the launching should be on the first of febraury,we got some time to prepare some kick a$$ releases for it....i use some of the public trackers
(www.torrents.us to be specific, which closed short afterwards 3ala wijihna), and start posting topics and the rest....jamal takes care of the technical
aspects.
already by the 27th of january, the audience starts pouring into our theater
, so it is prelaunch somehow, i still have no clue how they found out,and where they came from....i told a couple of guys and girls about the new "secret" project starting at the first of febraury, but i guess they could not
keep their mouths shut
, jamal's friends also gave their best!Alright...so we have a site....wooow..our own little causey home, no more bullies kicking us out, no more racist north american tracker admins, banning our
"bin laden secret torrents" from their trackers....no more "torrent-allergic" e-donkey fans
How did our first months pass by?
More in the next episode
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
Spring/summer 2004
I am spending half of my days releasing stuff....and running after dead torrents on public trackers...
The other half of the day, i am spending teaching other people how to seed, since they are either too lazy to the word "make torrent" into google,
or i am just way too nice for this world
it feels like a one man show....But it is alright with me, the community is growing and everyone seems to be having a ball.
Thank god other guys decide to rub their palms and join the show, and help me out a little bit, the pioneer team consist of (feel free to add if my
old man's memory misses someone):
Jamal (was a nightmare teaching him, since he is impatient....but you can see and enjoy all the exclusive
goodies he is giving us right now, so it was defiently worth it
)Nawawe (not sure if he is my student, but he was one of the fast guys
)Kasonkas (the name is familiar to you alread,y scroll up!)
Noah ( scroll up, or just stay there!)
Kaher (his own student, my kinda guy...miss you man)
Ibro (not my student...but the youngest member sofar, he was a quiet boy, but he showed he can be different
, brought some pepper into the receipe )Issam (one of the coolest persons this little community has seen sofar, we all miss you)
So we kinda ganged up, and slowly but surely we became a little family...and i hope we still are till now.
The killing spree of public torrents went on and on, and if we managed to stick one of our torrents on a public tracker, you were sure 2 minutes later it
will be shot down by some "bin laden secret torrents" hunters...so we basically stopped having any sign of social life, and turned into robots
who spent the whole day uploading and reuploading torrents, or having nightmater about that at nite
Most of you know the rest of the story, but i am coming with the finale
same place same frequency tomorrow
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Summer/Fall 2004
alright....it is time to take a timeout....lay on the beach, with a couple of sexy carrebian girls, and do some salsa dancing.......well...almost.
I am travelling to visit my family in Palestine.....i am so excited, and i am setting up some meets for people in palestine...some users from arab 48 kindly contacted me by Email so we could meet up...sorry guys.....THE WALL...anyway...no politics
Nevertheless, i had the chance to meet up with the one and only Ibro....i called him a couple of times on his cell...could not reach him, but i did not mind since he has the funniest answering machine message
(how about you make a "release" of it Ibro )Anyway...so finally we set a meeting, and we meet at the ambassador hotel in East jerusalem, very nice garden, and nice ambient, and Ibro comes with a friend of his....the little X admin insists on inviting me to dinner
and we have a chat about the site, the situation in general, and how often he has to to deal with bullies in his city Jerusalem Anyway....this meeting is being described so thoroughly, for one reason...IT IS THE ONLY ARABFILES TEAM MEETING SOFAR...so, that has got to change.
Anyway...i try to login, to see how everyone on the site doing, and i find jamal happily experimenting with the site look that every visit i find something new.
anyway...the good news is, we have our first PHP tracker online, and it looks pretty busy....wooow...this site seems to work better when i am NOT around, maybe i should stay longer here.
So after 21 days of nice vacation with my family, i come back to the "thanks" and "amoot fil aflam" attacks on the site on each topic.....hmmm...this looks cute, but it is not geniune, those are some leechers who need to "beg" for the files...it is not right, we need to do something else.
Moving on, moving on......we change the look and feel of the site AGAIN....and buy a new domain arabfiles.org.....the intention is too move slowly but surely into an open platform, and offer much more than movies.
The move was recieved with scepcism of many of the team members and regulars...what the heck, let us make the best out of.
Well....we apear to have more hits on the server, and out cute little tiney servers seem not to handle it....as the great P Diddy once said: "Mo money, Mo problems".....so we time to get into real buisness, and buy some kick A$$ server, the current one!
Last episodes till the anniversary....next, and sorry for the delay
, next time u come i pay the taxi and u the mat3am 
yallah ma3lesh
story and ending , good plot for a movie
