A Short Lebanese Prayer

Another visit to Beirut, and another personal journey comes with it.

Earlier this week, I joined my Mom on a visit to pay condolences. I had known the person who passed away as the wife of my father’s friend, and the mother of our childhood/school friends. I didn’t know that my Mom had also considered her special, mostly because of my inability to discuss war times with my parents.

The visit for me was life altering in a very deep way. My childhood friends are of similar age to us – my older sister and I. I had known and met both their father and mother when we were kids. And I remember their Dad very well because he used to bring a COMPUTER to our small apartment in Beirut in the 1980s. It was an extremely alien machine and a magical thing that we were not allowed to touch. But it was fantastic. Sadly, my first memory of my own father crying is the day his friend, their father, was injured during the Lebanese Civil War. I remember Daddy walking in to our flat, and asking where is Mommy. And when my Mom showed up he started sobbing and she was trying to understand what was going on. He said, Mazen is injured. The next day, his friend Mazen passed away, our friends became orphans, and everybody’s lives changed forever.

When we went to pay condolences this week, I suddenly felt like an adult. A very adult adult. At the expense of our friends’ mother passing away. I thought, I now have friends whose full parental life cycle I witnessed. Or so I felt. And I couldn’t stop replaying the image of my father walking in to our flat and crying that his friend was injured, over and over again. I know that at that moment I was playing in the long corridor of our flat – it was the evening of January 1, 1987, and I don’t know if I reacted at all. I sometimes wish I can watch my own life when I was a child, to see what went wrong, where and when. But I should probably be grateful that I can’t do that.

After we paid our condolences this week and got in the car, my Mom told me, “I will never forget how she supported me after Heba passed away during the war.” Oh! I say nothing, because I generally find my heart in my throat whenever Heba or the war are mentioned. “They and these other friends kept us going when Heba died. I think we were in shock.. I will never forget that. May Allah reward her for it.” And it suddenly adds so much context to this friendship between their family and ours. The two young men, their dad and my dad, brilliant at Physics and Math, studying abroad and returning to Lebanon in the 1970s to teach at the Lebanese University. Remaining friends after marrying and having children during the same years, and then a child dies. The kind of presence it requires from a friend, the amount of support, during wartime – is unfathomable.

All this suddenly makes my father’s wound on that day in 1987, the day his friend was injured, makes it a lot more vivid for me.

Wounds come to life in this city. Death happens in Beirut. Life happens in Beirut.

May Allah reward every person who helped my parents, and all the people of this country, remain sane and raise normal children (more or less!) during its most difficult times. And may Allah punish all the war criminals and corrupt politicians who still make the lives of my parents, and the lives of all people in this country, difficult. Amen.

Broken Sentences 18.11.2023

Unlike my usual complex feelings before the trip, this time I was excited about coming to Beirut. It was meant to be super simple. Like a sweet addiction, I expect it to take me to a different state of being, an extreme low, that allows me to write. And then the writing gives me the high. And life goes on. This low-high cycle never fails. I even opened my text application on the laptop before I boarded the plane in Istanbul and kept the cursor ready… but the recipe didn’t work this time. The physical journey happened but the trip didn’t.

As I type now, a song plays from my phone:

“The journey got tired
of how long we’ve walked,
you and I.”

An Iraqi man sings this version, way before a Syrian woman gets to sing it decades later. And they both walk very long journeys, Iraqis and Syrians.

The words keep failing me though I pick up the typing in my head at various times. At my parents’ home, the nights are long and my PTSD insomnia kicks in. The waiting in Beirut is endless and you never know what you’re waiting for. A next war? A rebirth? Death? The city waits and withers. And those who wait wither away with it.

And my thoughts, the personal, in the national, in the regional, in the present, in the past, in the future -what future? My thoughts keep pacing in a multidimensional existence and then disappear into thin air. I am dysfunctional somewhere.

As I type this paragraph, I am now sitting on the airplane, ready to leave Beirut back to Istanbul. The airplane is ready to depart. I am not ready. Something makes me want to stay here and wait with those withering away this time. And I can’t help but wonder if this plane is a sitting duck for Israeli warplanes as I type. And if someone on it had planned to “escape” to start a new life somewhere else. They must be really anxious. The plane is late. Every minute counts when you’re desperate to escape and start a new life somewhere else. But I watch the beautiful blue sky, the hills in the distance, the airport runway which has endured so many Israeli bombings before in its lifetime, and peacefully wait. There are no fighter jets in the horizon. But I know that you generally don’t get to hear the rocket that kills you. We learn that as Lebanese children. If you hear it, you’re good. The sound is always slower.

I am a storm inside. Yet always composed and peaceful. The polite kind. I can’t produce thunder. Not the Beirut thunder, anyway. It comes so angry – that thunder. You feel it in your bones. It generally works in a very linear fashion – thunder, bombs, fear, nightmares. Simple.

This time though in Beirut, the thunder also felt dysfunctional, just like me. It was just thunder, thunder, thunder, thunder. No fear, no confusion with bombs. No nightmares. Thunder. And then rain, life.

Perhaps it is a spirit of challenge in the air that is not allowing me to get to the low I so desperately seek. Challenging death. Upon my arrival to Beirut for this same trip, I had to wait a few minutes at the airport, and I wondered if Israeli warplanes will suddenly show up and bomb it. But it didn’t happen. And when Nasrallah spoke on another day, I wondered if a full blown out war will start and we will get some action, but it didn’t happen either.

As the plane flies away and Beirut gets smaller and smaller, I get to my sweet spot. The mental trip this time is a million cups of shame and a million cups of helplessness, both regional, mixed with immense sadness, personal. Day after day for more than forty days, I have been watching death unfold on my social media and hundreds of children go where Heba and Bissan went before them. To rest in peace. And I know that the pain of one child departing can break families and hearts. And the pain of two children departing can break mountains and societies. But all these children departing at the same time; how can it not break the whole world?

I wonder as they all leave us in this torment to question the nature of our relationship to this land or that. And ask meaningless things like who started this fight or that, and what makes a victim and what doesn’t. And then to deal with the bizarre problems of Lebanese daily life. And in the middle of all this, to try and get some work done.

I know now that there is a part of me that wants to participate meaningfully in the shame, even if it means getting bombed. That feels way less helpless than watching the news of death and writing letters to congress. And way more important than worrying about electricity and disease. How can it make sense to find dignity in humiliation, death and defeat? But I failed to participate. The plane is now taxiing towards its gate in the cold and rainy beautiful city that I now call home. And I will soon have to go back to my life and have to answer questions of “How are you?” with, “Fine” or even worse, “Great!”

This is where my thoughts pace, while messages trickle into my phone and all kinds of inboxes one after another from all parts of the world wishing me a happy birthday.

It was my birthday yesterday.

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy effing birthday to me.

Written in Beirut on November 16 and while flying from Beirut to Istanbul on November 18, 2023

More Broken Sentences

Tuesday November 15, 2022 / Flight from BEY to IST

As much as I enjoyed space geometry back when I was a teenager in high school, my spatial abilities in real life now are so lousy. I am always lost in Beirut. And, yes, it is not only physically being lost in Beirut, but there is that, too.

As we drove past a Beirut suburb on Sunday evening, I asked Bayan where we were. She said, this is where y(our) Grandma is buried. Oh. “And Bissan,” I thought, to myself.

Yasmine recognized the place immediately. “Yes, this is where our Grandma is buried.”

“And Bissan,” I am thinking. “Perhaps we can do something.”

But we drive past the area and the words remain in my gut. Bissan’s name is heavily present but unspoken.

Bayan and I have driven past the Beirut Port since it exploded in August 2020 so many times.

This time I suggested we stop for some “war tourism.” I laughed. I always do. Laughter has been my resort for a while. If you have better avenues, I am all ears.

I missed the Beirut Blast in 2020. I was in COVID lockdown in Istanbul, when someone asked on the family WhatsApp group if “this” was an earthquake. And then there was electronic silence for a few minutes while the port exploded. I am glad not to have been there to witness the explosion. Though I still struggle with the guilt of missing it. And immense sadness for my people.

And, quirky enough, I keep thinking of all the wheat when I think of the blast.

The first time we drove past, there were mountains of wheat at the port under the silos. And people were hungry.

This time we drove past a hill of wheat and mountains of rotten smell – or so they say: The smell of fermenting wheat.

When asked what the Beirut port smells like today, this is what you get. But everyone knows what the Beirut port smells like. It smells like murder. But it remains unspoken.

During this visit, a blast happened in Istanbul while I was in Lebanon. It happened really close to where I live – physically close. After I made sure everyone I know was physically safe, I felt like a professional escapee. The dark humor wasn’t lost on my Lebanese friends, who checked in on me, when I said I was in Lebanon.

— Overheard on my flight: “At least this salad has no cholera. Eat, eat!” —

After we boarded this plane, I noticed it was a 737-8 Max. And I thought of Karim Safi. Karim was a student at a workshop I once gave in Belgium, and he was on one of the two 737-8 Max planes that crashed a few years ago. Those planes were faulty back then. I couldn’t help but wonder if this plane is going to be faulty, too.

Sure enough, as soon as the plane took off and the seatbelt signs went off, a man was screaming at the top of his lungs, “YA CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!”

I was so sure the engine was on fire. I switched off my noise cancellation and heard people talking about a jammed seat (?!@#$%&). The planes must have been fixed, after all. We landed safely.

Beirut was so heavy this visit. Maybe because I have lost some weight? I wonder. I cried it off in the shower while processing the war tourism, Bissan, and the fermenting wheat.

Only God knows what percentage of water running through the shower drains of this city actually falls from the eyes and not from the taps. The Beirut Sea is a bed of blood and tears.

The Bearable Heaviness of Watching Documentaries

Some of you, my dear readers, may know that I spend a significant portion of work hours watching documentary films for my day job. Thanks to my solid team at TRT World who filters them, I mostly only get to watch the good stuff. But the good stuff is not always easy to digest when you are hunting for films about human, social and environmental issues. For example; since 2020, I can’t recount the number of times I have had to see the Beirut Port explode over and over again from different angles and in different narratives. I was born in Beirut. It is impossible for me to describe my relation to the place because of how many emotions it has created in me.

This year, while judging for the final round of the News and Current Affairs Documentary Emmy Awards, I have had to go through several films about the pandemic. And it suddenly woke me up to how traumatic the past two and a half years have been for most people around the globe.

But today, I was lucky! I got to watch a feel good documentary about children in California who have great ambition, and an environment supportive enough to nurture and support their dreams. Films like this make me truly feel horrible (yes!) because I immediately think of the less privileged. My thoughts wandered towards children who have so much potential but live in places like… You guessed it: Lebanon!

Children in Lebanon today are lucky if they can eat enough, if they can shower -let alone shower when they feel like it, if they have enough electricity to study or to avoid heat in summer and cold in winter, if they have the luxury to play what they want when they want it, and if they can receive medical attention and supplies when/if they need those.

But the documentaries also remind me often of how magical and beautiful life can be. I get to see people appreciating the little things over and over again: Celebrating love, getting on a plane for the first time, reconnecting with family, healing from traumas or diseases, rising beyond disability, saving others and the planet from greed and destruction, and generally making the world a better place.

For all that, I am blessed to be doing what I do.

“…For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

My Parents…

I am blessed not to have human children. I would have said I am blessed to have them, if I had them, too. I believe anyone who can read or see or hear this post has many things to be grateful for. I am one to advocate for being content. But I believe in moderation. Being content, in moderation and aiming for more, in moderation.

Back to the beginning then. I am blessed to have four cats in lieu of human offspring. And they are a blessing, of course, for they sleep a few hours a day – to name but one extra blessing. And I rarely need to sing for them or actually put them to sleep. They will do me this favor on their own without much help. “Raising cats” makes me in awe of my parents, many times, every single day. I will probably need to break this down to multiple posts to be able to count the types of things my parents did for us, and that make me in awe of them, every day.

Some of my furry children are picky about their food. One will not eat beef. One will eat fish but not with rice or vegetables. One will only eat salmon, not just any fish. And so on and so forth. Needless to say that I don’t cook this food for them. I buy the food at a store nearby. The purchase happens usually in daytime, in a peaceful environment, and the cost of the food is not a challenge. And if/when I don’t feel like going to the store, the shop owner will get the food delivered to my doorstep. I don’t serve my kids breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. All I have to do is get four little plates, once or twice a day, scoop some food in each of them, and serve the food where their royal highnesses would like to be fed. It used to be that they ate where I chose for them to eat, but I have now been tamed.

This obviously was not the case for my parents when they had to feed me as a child or as an adult (because they still do when I visit them). I am one of eight siblings – seven girls and a boy. We grew up in Lebanon during war time and economic hardship, for the most part. My father was a teacher and my mother a housewife. I don’t even want to start to imagine the cost of food during those times so I will just ignore that challenge. Yet we were served breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks every single day of our lives for as long as I remember. And if my memory serves me right, we were bloody picky about what we will eat and what we wouldn’t eat. Our food was not bought readymade. It was prepared, every single meal.

On school days, we were served a quick breakfast at home and then my dad usually would prepare sandwiches for each of us to take to school. The school had a shop that sold some kinds of food but we probably couldn’t have afforded the cost of buying it every day for all of us, and my Mom was never fond of “external food”. Daddy would ask each one of us what we wanted in those sandwiches. It was, of course, simple options like labneh, cheese, zaatar or cream cheese – but he would still ask. And he would wrap those sandwiches perfectly in sandwich paper and then put each set of them in a plastic bag and distribute them to the five or six of us going to school that year. My parents used to buy wafers or chocolates in bulk (think Costco style). On most days, we would find an Unica or a Hobby or some sort of treat in our food bags.

Every day when we returned home from school, lunch would be ready. There would be separate dishes so that each and all picky ones of us are satisfied. My jaw drops now at the thought that my mother had to make food types and varieties to satisfy six or seven children of varying ages and tastes, every single day, and that she and my father would gladly eat of. And she would always make sure that we all sit, wait for each other, and eat together. These were precious family times. Find me any mother who does this today and I will fall at her feet. (Yeah, I may be kidding about the falling bit because I have a knee issue)

My parents pampered us at a time when pampering seven children was truly an extreme luxury that only the richest of the rich could afford – financially and mentally. And like many pampered children, I only begun to realize this long after I left home and saw many of my siblings and friends become parents. Spending money on toys and food is no tough feat. Making food for your family from fresh produce and basic ingredients every single day is hard. If the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t taught us that yet, I don’t know that anything can.

We used to have breakfast for dinner when we were young. That is something I still enjoy a lot. The same options available for school wraps would be available again in the evenings, sans the rush. We would gather for dinner around a low height table that my Grandfather specially made so we can sit on the floor and eat. In winter, we would gather around it with a small electric or gas heater lit behind us, eat labneh, olives, cheese, zaatar, what-have-you and blabber away (or probably argue and fight). I can only imagine what a precious time that must have been for my parents. I found three of my cats sitting close to each other one day and thought, “Awwww, what a cute gathering!” But I can’t gather the cats around a table and have them chat away to glory about nonsense. That must be an event reserved for special people.

These were some food memories from my childhood that elevate my parents to saints in my eyes. There are of course many outstanding food memories where the parents went above and beyond — school birthdays, Ramadan Iftars, bake sales, etc… But those will probably have to wait for another post and another day.

Four Years, and Four Cats, Later…

It has been almost four years since my last blog entry here. I feel like it was a different lifetime entirely. 

I now write (and visit Beirut) from the magnificent city of Istanbul. Beirut is but one short flight away, and yet our love hate relationship keeps it as distant as it has always been. For that, the frequency of my visits hasn’t really increased. Beirut hasn’t been helping, either. The history that repeats itself has been doing exactly that, repeating itself. Hopelessness after hopelessness, helplessness after helplessness, and exile after exile, the Lebanese move on. Or stand still. 

I have four cats today, and I use them as an excuse to think small. “They narrow down my worries,” (بيصغروا الهم) I keep telling my friends. But the truth is that this pain called Lebanon won’t go away even with a million cats. My parents, my siblings, my friends, my nieces and nephews, and a lot of loved ones who must endure the challenges of daily life in a failed state that was meant to be our home. 

The thoughts of home, identity and belonging seem to get more challenging as I grow older. I thought I had resolved these by embracing the “We are all human” motto a long time ago, but I was wrong. 

I am only writing this here, now, to try and get back into my writing habit. And to blow some steam. I hope my next entry will not be four years later. If you read this and think I should write more often, please encourage me to do so!

Weapons of Mass Creativity

Iraqi and Cambodian Artists turn war metal leftovers to works of art

By: Niam Itani, Co-Founder at Snazzy Bazaar

Growing up during the Lebanese Civil War, which officially ended more than 25 years ago, I am constantly amazed at how that war continues to define me as a human being.  The war has left an everlasting mark on me. I tried to get rid of its traces for many years, but eventually I surrendered and embraced the fact that it will always shape who I am.  This is why I find myself in awe of people who are able to rise above war and even try to undo its effects.

Sinoeun Men from Cambodia and Fattah Mohammad from Iraq do that on a daily basis. Both men have lived many years of conflict in their own countries, and today they are dedicated to creative initiatives that transform material war remnants into works of art.

Read Full Original Post at: https://www.snazzybazaar.com/blogs/news/weapons-of-mass-creativity

Dear Beirut…

Revolution suits you!

بيروت…

الثورة بتلبقلك

انتهى

I Left Beirut

And so, I left Beirut (again), one day…

My experiment as a returnee failed miserably.  You need A LOT of self motivation and positivity to survive in a place like Post War Lebanon – unfortunately.

I have much better feelings towards Lebanon when I am away.

I love it more, I am more proud of it, I defend it when someone speaks ill of it,  I am able to read more about it and tolerate it, all these things are way easier to do when I am outside the country. Most Lebanese people with dual nationalities, or who don’t reside in Lebanon full time, have similar sentiments.

As I progress in editing my film and the theme of home keeps popping up, the concept and definition of “country” fades away.

We grow up repeating slogans such as “My Country is more precious than My Life”. But I feel that our countries are not more precious than our lives.  Countries are man made.

And then again, back to the initial thought, what defines our countries? Google Maps? The signs at the entrances and exits of our cities?  The place where our families live(d) or descended from?  I ask these questions about belonging to the country while most Lebanese people embrace and sacrifice their lives for belonging to more limited entities  – the village, the tribe, the sect, the religion, the party, the elite… the ZEFT.

And we’ve been conditioned to believe that life is worth one of these things -except for the Zeft; which comes free every election season or another –if elections do take place.

The first step into growing beyond our fanaticism and narrow mindedness is to strip naked from these attachments. They are a major obstacle that prevents us from moving forward with our revolution against corruption and political sectarianism.

How Lebanese act at home vs. when They’re Living Abroad

How Lebanese act at home vs. when They’re Living Abroad.