sixty-seven

19:37:51

I’m sleepless at Dubai International Airport.

Expect the unexpected. Days, weeks or months can pass by without nothing worth the time passing, but then suddenly, spectacularly, time stops and one after the other stories and encounters start making appearances.

The last few months in Paris have been life-marking. Paris brought to me what I had not anticipated. I am still digesting what had exactly happened since I had last left Beirut.

I had expected a period of bloom, but instead I had shriveled even deeper into myself (did not think that was possible after years of self-reflection!) and learned that I was really the kind of person I did not want to be: shy, docile, and fearful. It took months to get over the insecurities that had resurfaced all at once.

Hence my silence and my “morbid” rantings and ravings. However, I am glad to say that I had managed to redeem myself in the last week I had spent before my summer vacation. The unexpected happened. In a blink of an eye, I was no longer shy and no longer a prisoner of my fears and paranoias and life happened. Life pranced right in. I have so many stories to share that I do not know where to start. I haven’t even had the time to sit down and breathe, hence the use of waiting time at the airport.

I am drowning in my own…beautiful, spectacular and long-awaited…strange encounters of the sleepless kind.