ملل عميق

ماذا نفعل الآن؟

بعد أن حصلنا على شـهاداتنا
وبرزنا لأعمالنا في هذا المجال أو ذاك
بعد أن قرأنا وحلّلنا وأصغينا وانتفضنا
وهتفنا في الشـوارع مناصرين أو مناهضين

بعد أن شـاركنا الحبيب قلبنا
ورمّمنا ما تهدم بعد فراقنا
بعد أن سـاندنا أصدقاء نحبهم
وملأنا أعماقنا بضحكهم
وفرّغنا أحزاننا على أكتافهم

بعد أن كبرنا وصغرنا وكبرنا
وعشـنا ومتنا وعدنا الى أهل نعشـقهم

بعد أن جرّينا الشـمس
وطوينا حافة الظلام

بعد كل كل هذا
ماذا نفعل الآن؟

Forever Beirut

Bring out your colours, your mornings and flowers
Endless waves rolling in and out
Igniting countless dreams and wonders
Round up your lovers, your thinkers and fighters
Understand that after their worlds burst and crumble
This city, their city, our city... Beirut, will remain.

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.