On the Streets of Beirut These Days…

Driving in Beirut has always been a challenge to one’s patience, good graces and wits. I love driving in this city partly because I simply love driving, and partly because, on a day when I am particularly stressed and trying to contain it as best I can, the streets will always offer me an opportunity to yell at the top of my lungs and r-e-l-e-a-s-e. Don’t underestimate the therapeutic effects of screaming at another car behind locked doors and closed windows.

The scene is a little different these days, however. For one thing, road, tunnel and bridge constructions, and other detour-causing activities, have produced more bottle necks than over-extended, irate traffic policemen. This becomes ever more apparent when you hear a siren and use every spare accident-missing inch to try and make way. But that’s not all… With the state of affairs the way it is, you wonder where the ambulance is coming from, and if the poor soul being urgently rushed needs medical care for illness, accident or clash. You edge a little closer to the sidewalk, curve into the corner behind that other car. You are relieved to hear the siren steadily approaching, making its way to its destination. The siren is now next to you, you look over to find that it’s a police car… and it’s not alone. The car is part of a short convoy, and the car in the middle is tinted, bullet-proof and unmarked. Only one thought comes to mind now: car-bomb target!!! You do everything short of abandoning your car and running in the opposite direction. The realization makes its way down the queue of cars like a rolling wave, and space is fearfully carved out for the convoy, followed by a moment of stillness; nobody moves until we’re quite certain the car is in continuous motion and has reached a safe distance away. Moment over – and we all rush to take advantage of the fresh free space to speed towards our own destinations, instantaneously recreating our earlier traffic jam.

Typical day on the streets.

Home

Inspired by a ‘No Comment’ segment on Euronews this week*

Picture this: you’ve been out on what feels like a very long day. You’ve managed to get some of your errands done, but others have been postponed yet again to another day. You’re tired, you haven’t eaten right, your feet are throbbing, aching to tear out of your shoes and breathe. You’ll be home in a little while. You can already anticipate that sense of security when you walk through the front door and shut out the world. The book you were reading will still be next to your favourite chair, you’ve already started craving the leftovers in the fridge, and you can’t wait to treat yourself to a soothing shower, to curl up into your bed, your pillow, with that lingering detergent scent that reminds you of your mother and laundry day as a child. Maybe you’ll go through some of the old photos to cheer yourself up, listen to the worn down tape your friends made for your 25th birthday. It’s been a tough day, but you will soon be home, and you will be safe.

As you approach, you feel a strangeness, something has changed, is out of place, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. With a hollow, sinking feeling you realize that what has moved is your house. It is, simply, no longer there. Your neighbours count you lucky because you weren’t at home when they came, so you weren’t dragged out by four soldiers, piled into a truck and forced to watch the bulldozer make its repetitive, predatory blows. You stare blankly at the space, the ghost of a home now replaced by bulldozed, flattened bricks, pipes, tiles… clothes, sheets, books, photos…

I can’t picture the rest of that scene, cannot for a moment imagine the depths of the ensuing confusion and loss.

Can you?


* Scenes were from a village near Nablus, Palestine.

Mis-Politics

When I was a child, in the midst of various news broadcasts that carried news of war in what I was told was my home country, I developed a complete and utter aversion to politics. I basically thought anything political was evil and to be ignored. As I grew into a pseudo-activist university student, inserting myself in the world outside my school walls, I began to re-think that long-held opinion and realized I needed to learn more about what was going on in the world of politics. At that point, I began to idealistically consider politics and its tactics as clever, unarmed strategies for socio-political change (as university students would).

Now, many years later, I’m beginning to think that my first opinion as a 4-year old was actually more on the dot. Politics are evil. Or, perhaps I should be fair to the academic and intellectual world of politics and specify that politics as is now being practiced on the world stage is more akin to mis-politics, and is malicious at the very least, if not outright evil.

Our current mis-politics are no longer unarmed, and far from clever. Or perhaps I have become a little smarter. How does that saying go? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me… Shame on us indeed. The tactics are too obvious, the deals are too cheap, and our lives do not hang in the balance, they plainly don’t count for anything.
How did we become so devalued? And how did the standards of admission to this group of ‘world leaders’ become so skewed as to plummet so far down the negative scale?

If you’ve been following mid-east politics, then you would not be wrong in assuming that this little rant is influenced by yesterday’s events – a car bomb in Beirut and shelling in Gaza. All to commemorate Bush’s trip to the region, where he comes with gifts of arms deals or the like in exchange for, what else, leverage. Can't understand how he expects to solve anything by bringing MORE arms into the region. And this leverage, love it - leverage that helps sweep some of these pesky regional problems under the carpet so that he can exit his presidential term with a seemingly neat slate, which his successor will trip over. What’s more, they will trip over us. Again.

How pathetic… when will we ever learn…

First post of the new year…

You’re going to laugh at this. In one of several “So what are your resolutions for the new year?” conversations, I found myself waxing philosophically and saying “that the only audience I care about is me”. How appropriate for someone who maintains a blog, dontcha think?

Well, let me also say that I have grown so accustomed to writing in this space that I won’t be disappearing any time soon. Even though what I have been writing in the last couple of weeks has been a little too personal or private to post, even anonymously, I will be reverting back here very soon.

In the meantime, hope your new year is off to a great start!

So Close…

This morning, as I was beginning to think of what would be relevant to the new year’s wishes I’d like to send out, I was reminded of previous such essays that were often mired with an end-of-year tragedy. There was the Lockerbie plane crash, the earthquake in Bam, the Tsunami, to name just a few tragedies that took place in the very last week of the year. I am sure that if I were to sift through the annals of recent history, there would, sadly, be similar disasters taking place throughout the year, but the last week has different implications. Perhaps because January 1 is in sight, we’re just so close to a new beginning that it feels like we’re holding our breath for this very last stretch… we’re psyching ourselves into a positive disposition, a hopeful fresh start, we’re pushing that barometer as high as we can so that the new year, the new page, the new path can keep us afloat for the 365 days to follow.

So here we were, December 27, and I was silently thinking, with perked ears, that though we were recovering from personal tragedies, this last Monday to Friday was running relatively smoothly with no major turbulence on a global scale. Seemed as if nature and the warmongers had taken a break, and we might be able to usher in the new year with smoothed sheets, a clean slate.

Well… almost. Until news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination spread. Goodness gracious...
I am not about to compare this incident with others mentioned here in terms of the enormity of casualties, or any other comparisons, for that matter. Frankly, that’s not my point, I’m not keeping count (that would be too depressing). I will, however, compare it to others as a destabilizing force. And in our current day and age, this not only affects friends currently in Pakistan - and I don't want to think of what's going through their minds - but the domino effect on the widespread geo-political web in the region.

Sigh… we were so close… guess we’re going to have to work a little harder to keep that page clean and bright and light…

رحيل

الأولى في ثلاثيناتها والثانية سـبعينيّة
تباين أجيال وتجارب
تسـاوت الأمس برحيلهما

هل اكتفيتما فجأةً من هذه الحياة؟
هل تسـاوت أمامكما الأيام، فانتقيتما هذا كعيدكما الجديد؟
هل وجدتما في آخر أنفاسكما ما يغنيكما عنّا؟

خدّرتنا الصدمة
فنحتار من حقيقة أصواتكما في مسمعنا
نتعامل بحزننا بكتابات، بدموع
بصمت عميق يخفي عنا ضجيج النهار
نغرق بحوارات مسـتمرة معكما
نعتذر، نودّع
نلَملِمكما في قصص لم تُختم
بأخبار لم تُسـمع
بسـلام أخير لم يُرفع
نحضنكما فينا
كي يعيش في غيابكما
ما أهديتمانا في حياتكما

بطلات كنتما في الحياة
وملائكة تبقيا في الممات

وداعاً أيتها الجميلات

Wordplay

Inspired by the dead time provided by a grueling traffic jam…

تعلو قهقهة الرفقة من قرنة المقهى
كشـال حريريّ يحفّ على حدة الحوار
كثيراً كتبنا كي نتفادى الكلام
فيبقى بيننا بريق بسـمات البنات