Disordered Lights

I love my little country, and I love my compatriots, and I say this completely and totally out of love: we do not know how to respect laws. Whatever order we have managed over the years has stemmed purely from culturally defined and propagated manners, and what has become socially acceptable practice.

One such socially acceptable practice has been “it’s alright to break the law if you don’t get caught”. After the seat belt law/fine was introduced a few years back, taxi drivers, wanting to unburden me from dealing with the moody seatbelt in their front passenger seat, would reassure me that I could ignore it as there was no police around. Same goes for speaking on the cell phone while driving, going the wrong way down side streets that had their directions (illogically) reversed overnight (both of which I will confess to having done myself), and more recently, driving through a red light.

There is something about a red light that absolutely deters me from crossing it. Perhaps it’s my engineer nerdiness respecting the technology that is making it run, or perhaps it’s, quite simply, the psychology behind that glaring red light staring down at me. Whatever it is, I have great difficulty crossing a red light, where many of my compatriots don’t. And for all the mish-mashed history of non-governance, the faulty logic of street planning and other such backdrops to our Lebanese driving stories, I forgive them all for these actions (whizzing past me as I remain steadily stationary), whether I condone it or not.

What absolutely incenses me, however, is when we are, through whatever magical spell, all respecting the order of the traffic lights, only to have a sprightly police officer encourage us to ignore it and drive through. It literally drives me nuts. Whereas I could and have ignored my honking fellow drivers as they try to loosen my stubborn brake at the red light, this little police officer demands my attention and forces me to move. My flush of silent rage as I reluctantly obey this mis-order is accompanied by an almost hopeless sadness. How will anything ever change when this master of his domain, this product of our culture, thinks it’s alright to break the law if he doesn’t get caught?

Too beautiful not to share

From the coffers of Gibran Khalil Gibran, and with my heartfelt thanks to Suad who shared it with us...

البعض نحبهم
لكن لا نقترب منهم ... فهم في البعد أحلى
وهم في البعد أرقى ... وهم في البعد أغلى

والبعض نحبهم
ونسعى كي نقترب منهم
ونتقاسم تفاصيل الحياة معهم
ويؤلمنا الابتعاد عنهم
ويصعب علينا تصور الحياة حين تخلو منهم.

والبعض نحبهم
ونتمنى أن نعيش حكاية جميله معهم
ونفتعل الصدف لكي نلتقي بهم
ونختلق الأسباب كي نراهم
ونعيش في الخيال أكثر من الواقع معهم

والبعض نحبهم
لكن بيننا وبين أنفسنا فقط
فنصمت برغم ألم الصمت
فلا نجاهر بحبهم حتى لهم لأن العوائق كثيرة
والعواقب مخيفه ومن الأفضل لنا ولهم أن تبقى
الأبواب بيننا وبينهم مغلقه...
والبعض نحبهم
فنملأ الأرض بحبهم ونحدث الدنيا عنهم
ونثرثر بهم في كل الأوقات
ونحتاج إلى وجودهم ....كالماء ..والهواء
ونختنق في غيابهم أو الابتعاد عنهم

والبعض نحبهم
لأننا لا نجد سواهم
وحاجتنا إلى الحب تدفعنا نحوهم
فالأيام تمضي
والعمر ينقضي
والزمن لا يقف
ويرعبنا بأن نبقى بلا رفيق

والبعض نحبهم
لان مثلهم لا يستحق سوى الحب
ولا نملك أمامهم سوى أن نحب
فنتعلم منهم أشياء جميله
ونرمم معهم أشياء كثيرة
ونعيد طلاء الحياة من جديد
ونسعى صادقين كي نمنحهم بعض السعادة

والبعض نحبهم
لكننا لا نجد صدى لهذا الحب في قلوبهــم
فننهار و ننكسر
و نتخبط في حكايات فاشلة
فلا نكرههم
ولا ننساهم
ولا نحب سواهم
ونعود نبكيهم بعد كل محاوله فاشلة

.. والبعض نحبهم ..
.. ويبقى فقط أن يحبوننا..
.. مثلما نحبهم.


جبران خليل جبران

Plato deserves his own post...

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
- Plato

Souvenirs

I collect all sorts of souvenirs from all sorts of occasions.

There is the champagne cork when Anne and I marked her last night in Beirut before moving onto greener professional pastures.
The menu from the magical day that was Moni and Scott’s wedding.
A plastic trinket bracelet the girls made for me when they slept over one distant pre-teen night ago.
There are notes, and train tickets, and directions scribbled on hotel stationery…

I noticed today that we have a different set of souvenirs that we’ve started collecting and holding on to.
A bottle that once held some potent Limoncello, the only alcohol I had at hand during the war of 2006 which saw me through those nights, has been washed and dried and placed firmly on a kitchen shelf.
Digital souvenirs come in the form of SMS’s, warm and supportive, that I received from friends abroad during the May 2008 conflict, and which I have not been able to delete.
Tania has pictures of where the bullet came through her bedroom window, and through her built-in cupboard.
Dany kept a few of the bullets that landed by his feet, ricocheting off the wall as he solidly held through an 'active' night up in his village.

He has other souvenirs from those May events, which we share in slightly different forms but for similar reasons – he has his occasional nightmares.

What I wouldn’t give for a postcard and a cheesy t-shirt these days…

Love - a work in progress

Elusive love
Have you embraced me? Or did I create you?
Did I imagine your touch?
Elusive love, passing like a breeze
Should I believe the feeling you leave behind?
What are you? That my palms should sweat?
That my breath should go shallow
That all my senses should tingle so

What are you? That should bring such parts of me to life
Meanwhile, losing sight of who I am
As if we cannot coexist as we are
But must change and bend to each other’s will.
Love, you remain, elusive.

Coffee

The scent of freshly ground roasted coffee wafts through the cabin. “Why would anyone take coffee back from Amman to Beirut?” I pondered briefly, noticing that the stash was in the compartment directly overhead. A stewardess closes the compartment, sealing off the smell, and my mind wanders to other observations.

A pair of young ladies, displeased with their separate seating, feebly attempt to negotiate a seat swap. Not possible yet, sadly… I hear a click, and that warm scent of fresh coffee returns, carrying me to my morning with Jumana, Jabal Lweibdeh, walking casually from one art gallery to the next, enchanted with the smell of coffee being roasted in a large brass bin. The smell makes us look up from our path, out of our conversation, and I suddenly notice the bare tiny store boasting the shiny brass container in its window… a meticulously turbaned sheikh with a sweet Santa-like beard inspecting the vegetables that are lined in the back of a truck, fresh for purchase… a lady’s voice in mid-phonecall comes from one of the balconies, its bars coyly lined with cloth to allow for some privacy from the street… An area Jumana likes, she describes it as ‘real’, and I would have to agree. Interestingly, this tiny street carries the contrast of simply lived lives with the ‘pushing the boundaries’ art on display in the galleries we were visiting. I was fascinated by how inclusive this little area was to host such extremes, and wondered where these two pedestrian gallery visitors fell along that spectrum.

The fully booked flight has carry-on laden passengers struggling with overhead cabin space, moving up and down the aisle inspecting all of the compartments. The one overhead opens and shuts, and that beautiful coffee smell rhythmically pours out like lackadaisical waves lapping on a soft sandy shore. Each wave carries me somewhere else… to the peaceful mornings with my coffee mug in Jumana’s closed kitchen balcony… huddling on an armchair in a coffee shop with Nizar as we try to catch up on the past 22 years… the empty shaded tea garden at Darat al Funoon, completely unchanged from the day I took that picture of Mona on our first visit there, as we sat to recover from our spiraling route up the hill to its entrance (the picture still sits on my shelf)… the afternoon at Nisreen’s, our saviour with the coffee machine, where the long-desired cups of coffee set off an energized impromptu dance session…

We are instructed to fasten our seatbelts, and the scent is sealed off once and for all. The trip starts, putting an end to my meanderings.

One last letter...

أهكذا تموت الأبطال؟

مضى أسـبوع على رحيلك، يا حسـام، وقد ملأت هذه الصفحات بجمل ورسـائل لم تكتمل... خانتني اللغة مرة ومراراً، ورفض منطقي الكلام عنك بصيغة الماضي... عنّدت، كذّبت الخبر، كذّبت كل ما قرأت عن الحادث... وأنت تعلم تماماً أسـبابي، تعلم كيف يبني المرء جداراً في صميمه ليحمي نفسـه من وقع الفاجعة، لفترة بسـيطة على الأقل، كي تسـنح له الفرصة ليسـتوعب ما جرى ويقوى على تقبّله.

واليوم، عليّ أن أقبل أنك رحلت. عليّ أن أقبل أنني وجدتك منذ عامين، وجدتك بعد بحث طال العشـرون سـنة منذ تخرّجنا المدرسـي، ليس لأفقدك اليوم، بل كي أكسـبك في تاريخ حياتي كالرجل المسؤول، كالأب الحنون، كالحالم المخطط الطموح الذي وصل الى مراده دون قسـاوة أو غرور... هل تعلم كم يفرحني هذا؟ كم يفرحني أن حياتك كانت ملأى بالحب والنجاح والمغامرات... أنها كانت ملأى بالحياة، وأن من حسـن حظي أن أسـمع عنها منك.

يفرحني أن الطبيب الناجح لم يتخلّى عن صفات شـبابه، وبقي كريم النفـس والعزّ، بقي بتلك الضحكة الخافتة، شـبه الخجولة، وتلك الابتسـامة الماكرة الدافئة التي طالما جعلتني أضحك على غلطتي التي كشـفتها دون أن أخجل منها.

يفرحني أنني اسـتعدت صوتك في آخر كتاباتنا وأننا عدنا أصدقاء وليـس ذكريات.

وسـتبقى هكذا، يا حسـام، صديق عزيز حثّني على النجاح والفكاهة... والاسـتمتاع بالحياة.
فإن عدت الى السـؤال الذي طاردني طول هذا الأسـبوع، يأتي اليّ الجواب ببسـاطة: نعم، هكذا يموت الأبطال، فمَن عاش بطلاً، يبقى بطلاً أبداً.

وداعاً، عزيزي، في أمان الله.