tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49750103581066726232024-03-14T11:20:16.465+02:00Sleepless in BeirutUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-61284285942658181202014-01-22T12:56:00.000+02:002014-01-22T12:56:32.356+02:00The in-between: #notamartyr<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“AAAAAAAAARGH!!!”</i> – the sound of animal, from the center of
the gut through my burning mouth. The wrenching pain is excruciating and I
can’t feel anything else, but a high-pitched burning that simmers every pore to
cinders. It’s unbearable, it’s too much, and I close my eyes and fall into a
numbing blackout.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I unglue my eyelids, I’m still exactly where I was a
second ago: bodies rolling around in blood and ashes, anthracite smoke
billowing into the clear blue sky, the oranges from my grocery bag still
rolling away from me…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I get up and look down: my body, my beloved beautiful
youthful vessel of skin and muscles, is lying there open, gashed and mauled and
practically unrecognizable. I admire the scarlet of my blood and flesh; I look healthy!
And then, I realize that <i><b>the news</b></i> has happened to me. I cannot believe it.
Boom, gone, just like that, in the middle of fucking grocery shopping. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I check
my pockets for my keys and phone, but cannot find them anywhere. If only I
could just call everyone I love and tell them that I’m okay, that it’s okay,
that I’m here, but not really…that I didn’t want to go, that I love them and I
loved my life, that I was taken away by force, that they should probably avoid
going to identify my body – it’s looking bad, it’s not me, I’m here, I swear, I
can see it all…people running to see what had just happened, victims screaming
in pain…but the sound is fading away, little by little…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I feel that my time is running out, so I turn into the side
street away from the chaos. I see my car parked at the entrance to my building;
it needs a wash as usual. I think of my building and of my neighbors and I hope
that they’re all okay. I climb up three flights of stairs and come to my door,
but I cannot open it. And then, I hear my cat meowing, meowing like mad
and scratching at the door. <i>Oh my poor cat! What is going to happen to you?!
Will anyone remember that you lived here with me and come to rescue you? </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I hear my phone ring from inside my house: must’ve left it
inside!!! I know who’s calling, I know it because it doesn’t stop ringing and
ringing and ringing. He just wants to hear that I’m okay. But I’m not really
okay anymore. This is it. In between rings, I hear a message of concern pop up
on Whatsapp. She must’ve heard news of the blast. And then another one…and
another one…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I collapse at my door. The world is silent now and I’m
helpless, without any physical grip, without any physical presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I wait for the grace period to terminate, I think of my
love, my little sisters, my brother and my parents, my friends and my silly
cat. I think of my unfinished projects, I think of my happiness that I will
never feel again, I think of my oranges lying there in the street, being
stepped on, being crushed by boots that are trying to save other lives. I
know it’s useless to ask <i>“Why me?”</i> as much as it is useless to cry. I wasn’t
the first to go nor will I be the last. We all go eventually…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I feel grateful to be able to sit here and write this. Up
until now I’ve been counting the blasts, observing their frequency, their
locations, their timing – calculating their distance from me. The car bombs, so
far, have always gone off no less than 3 kilometers away and that gave me 3000
meters of setback. Unable to really feel more than disgust with the current situation,
I threw my imagination forward as a bystander too close to survive. That’s when
it hurt so much I cried, cried in remorse, in fear and with an unwillingness to
experience even an ounce of the pain that the friends and families of the
victims are enduring and will endure for years. I only hope that they be spared
more losses as much as I hope that I be spared as well.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-18736809770255185392013-11-25T20:32:00.001+02:002013-11-25T20:32:31.056+02:00hundred-and-eleven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">18:38:18<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s back to the usual around here. Only two out of sixteen
bulbs in the house are lit, my cat is curled up in a bundle and glued to my
left hip and I’m at a crossroads of what to do with this evening. Mom texts me
to announce that they’ve landed safely and that this time, they really enjoyed
their visit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A few months ago, I finally took the leap and moved out of
the parents’ house. Dad was more accepting this time; end of last year I had attempted
a two-month long camp out which was met with a <i>“Never do this again.”</i> I had not
planned on repeating my felony, at least not so soon after, but when the
opportunity prostrated itself on the table the eve of my birthday, I would have
been a fool not to jump it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Three months into living here, and I could not be happier.
Home feels like home and it’s been a journey back to enjoying the little
things, like walking out of the apartment instead of taking the car, like
displaying my little knick knacks from here and everywhere the way I want to,
like walking around in nothing or talking to my mind out loud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But what made me happier still was having my mother and
sister choose to stay at my place rather than our house when they came for the
weekend. They saw what I saw <a href="http://sleeplessbeirut.blogspot.com/2010/06/two.html"><span style="color: red;">when I first walked into this apartment</span></a>, years ago
– a space to be in and a space that inspires. What a joy high ceilings are, and
what a loss modern day housing has suffered in dropping the room height from
4.00 to 2.80. Here, there is almost enough air to not have one seek it
outdoors. Indeed, I have become quite a homebody and that has caused me to be
the butt of criticism. Hell, when I was living in a place that did not feel my
own, I was never home. And that is the misfortune of most other people my age
who fill the streets and sidewalks of Beirut – back home is no more the place
where they belong. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s wonderful when family is accepting, but growing up
entails a pace of change that usually outruns the people that have raised us.
At some point in the race, we feel the urge to break away and that is most
often than not met with anger or dismay, <i>“Why do you want to leave us?”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My mother puts it well, <i>“I have raised you to be your own
person, and as much as I love you, I do not own you. I only hope that I’ve
provided enough for you to start your own journey. If you ever need us, we are
always here, but do not feel accountable to us. Your happiness is the only
thing I want from you.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And it is because of this particular philosophy of hers that
I have been able to summon the strength to do what I really really want this
time. In a short span of time, a series of subliminal messages piled up into
one big awakening – <i>“The life you want, you have to create it. And the time is:
now.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So like all life turning points go, I went all out: I fell
inappropriately in love, I moved out of my nest, I quit my job and I bought
myself a new set of wheels: a bicycle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A month had passed since I last clocked in and by the end of
it, I was beginning to panic and ask myself a panel of questions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Did I quit for a good enough reason?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Isn’t misery just a part of life?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Am I acting like a spoilt brat?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>How am I going to pay my rent?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Am I talented enough to do this?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Has my ego brainwashed me?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Do I even know what the fuck I’m doing?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By the end of that week, I was close to falling apart. As I
was about to send a kind reminder to the last office I had applied to, my
doorbell rang. It was Turns. He never came unannounced, but this time it seems
he had felt the urgency for an intervention. After about an hour of pep talk, I
was more or less back on my feet, with an elbow on his shoulder for support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then, the Universe happened. The following day, I
received a request for a meeting from the one and only, The Man – if I ever
wanted to work for someone, he would be it. And then, I got a call from my only
client who needed me again on a short notice. And then, all heavens broke
loose. Suddenly, I went from nobody to somebody everybody wanted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I told my mother the story, she replied, <i>“What you
experienced was that critical moment of faith under fire. It is at this point
where people choose to stick with their gut or cave in to their insecurities
and it is one of those decisive moments in the story of your life that make it
a story you want to tell or skip through.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And it is because of this particular philosophy of hers that
I decided it would be a good time for my frowned-upon-choice-of-lover Turns and
my dear mother to meet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-44898726121406421952013-11-15T21:40:00.001+02:002013-11-15T21:42:10.041+02:00hundred-and-ten<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">20:57:10<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I just woke up from an ill-placed nap. I should already be
getting dressed. I grab his shirt and wrap it around to trap the warmth of
sleep against my nakedness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The weight of wanting to stay home pulls my every move backwards.
Fidgety fingers slide over the sheets to find the ice-cold smooth screen and
the home button and the white light illuminates the entire room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Awake?”</i> I text my +1, on whom I’ve placed a heavy bid to
drag me out the door, and hopefully have me come with him in his car, because
mine is so sweetly parked just below the entrance to my building. I like to
keep it there for days, even though it attracts every dust speck from the
nearby construction site. I like to keep it there, away from parking tickets and
side-view mirror thieves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He tells me he’s awake, but unable to go out, as he has to
be on call for work. A continuous influx of Syrian refugees is expected on the
northern border and he might be needed at any moment. We became friends through foursquare, so I don’t really know what
he does, or how seriously he can affect this influx, but I know enough to not ask any
more questions and leave him be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Too bad.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“I know.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The pull to scroll down and text my usual Friday night’s
company is growing. How did I become so attached to him?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tomorrow will be our 9<sup>th</sup> month milestone. I have
never dated anyone this long. Partly it is because I don’t date anyway. I fall
into immediate tightness of being. And because of this instantaneous intimacy, my need for space and fresh air sucks me out before <i>being</i> becomes
<i>dwelling</i>. I would rarely dwell on anyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But this time, it’s different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So different, that ever since the story of him and I began,
I couldn’t put a word down to describe it. I was blocked and scared to package
it into concise sentences and paragraphs for fear that I might jinx it all. But
now, awake and hungry for an excuse to stay in and do something that would one,
keep me home for a good reason – and self-expression is always the best reason
– and two, keep me from texting him, but keep my mind on him, I remembered
Sleepless in Beirut – the blog that saved me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The gap between my last story and today is beyond wide. My
life has been transformed so greatly, that it looks like a before and after
diptych for a plastic surgery procedure. I’ve had a spirit lift, a heart lift,
a sex lift, a lifestyle lift, and a smile lift. I have never been so happy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, for the past week, the high I have been feeling
without end seems to be losing its momentum. And maybe that is why I’m turning
to Sleepless in Beirut for guidance, hoping that it will walk me through this
rough patch as it did before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I do not want to promise a dear diarrhea of writing, but I
do feel like I owe Sleepless in Beirut its happy ending and the After Me a
clear beginning. So without further ado, I’d like to serve you the in-between –
the stuffing for my absence, the ending to Sleepless, lonely nights and the
clearing of the table for a new chapter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-364107785657573722013-01-09T21:48:00.000+02:002013-01-09T21:48:35.712+02:00hundred-and-nine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">20:39:45<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m quivering in Beirut with the rest of the community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The TV antennas are swaying in the wind like burnt fennel
stalks and likely causing additional anguish to the huddled families hoping to
capture a clean signal for this evening’s program. Wooden shutters are banging
on the walls hoping to be reunited with their better halves. Ugly and torn
curtains throw themselves out of balconies, but on second thought draw
themselves back in, now cowardly and ugly, torn between wind promises and
balcony comforts. A lonely frozen raindrop lands on the windowpane and melts my
heart, past all the layers of clothes worn in the wrong order, past my prickly
cucumber skin, past my thawing flesh and in spite of the basic discomfort of
feeling cold at home. This little spitball of ice unlocks my longing to see
Beirut dressed white, its icy veil trailing through the streets, its
crystalised eyelashes sparkling in the street lights and then weeping in the
rising sun, yes, I want it to snow! I want to wake up in the morning, right at
dawn, and run out into the street like I used to as a little girl, barefoot,
braveheart, squeal with joy at leaving the first footprints in the immaculate
blanket of silence. I shall even set an alarm. I shall even risk slipping. If
it snows tonight in my street, I will experience a happiness so profound and
inexplicable that if I were to later talk about it at work over morning coffee,
I will risk total social quarantine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The headlines we’ve been reading and the photos we’ve been
sharing move me to wonder whether crippling thunderstorms as the current one
could possibly be the messiah we’ve been waiting for. If only it would linger,
stay a moment, a moth life, a month longer, perhaps the imposed house arrest
would humble us and our people, the flooded roads would ultimately cripple even
the most highly perched snobirds, and perhaps as an outcome, our catastrophic
infrastructure and transport system would receive as much attention as do our
billboards - torn away one week, slick, sleek and back up by the next. What
mighty deluge must we suffer, how many death counts must we swallow, how many
bloated cars must we fish out of the water, how many tires must we replace, how
many more hours must we steam in traffic, how many buckets must we buy for
leaking ceilings, how much longer do we have to sit and wait for this Leba-non
to become a Leba-oui?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In this light, waiting for snow seems less ludicrous…</span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-86492756335300410382012-12-31T23:49:00.000+02:002012-12-31T23:50:49.873+02:00mmxiii<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYk7lkNzmkrmx8HdE7S-rOu7N8T74Yfciw1CFpPhPcMpFLRZJV0ebWB1cDy1UoRzUVWKIFELJf0LGPfF7p3sx6o-LgBJUOj8eXAUQjj6hSsVa_1M5berQMox2Ul2dEiLt05lzqP4gCq9Fd/s1600/sleeplessmmxiii-s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYk7lkNzmkrmx8HdE7S-rOu7N8T74Yfciw1CFpPhPcMpFLRZJV0ebWB1cDy1UoRzUVWKIFELJf0LGPfF7p3sx6o-LgBJUOj8eXAUQjj6hSsVa_1M5berQMox2Ul2dEiLt05lzqP4gCq9Fd/s400/sleeplessmmxiii-s.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Be brave. It's only fireworks.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-7601002577332590402012-12-29T15:41:00.000+02:002012-12-29T15:41:30.477+02:00hundred-and-eight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">14:24:30<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless with wet feet drying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Looking out over the roofscape of chipping paint, antennas,
water tanks and cranes, we saw two flocks of pigeons circling. They drew a
corkscrew from low to high, from dense to barely visible, from two to fused and
then in a split second, they disappeared completely. Somebody had won the
pigeon war and somebody else was probably smacking his forehead in the name of
momentary loss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Is it not strange to breed pigeons, to live amongst the
infamous aeronaut rats of modern cities, to paint their inner wings red, to
make them bead collars, to stand on roofs circling large wooden sticks,
training them for hours for the mere purpose of stealing someone else’s pigeons
at the risk of having one’s own stolen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One man’s passion is another man’s bewilderment. Pigeons
aside – for they are quite a beautiful quirk to our city, and their shit has
yet to become a problem soliciting spiky sculptures and window sills – what
bewilders me the most is that in spite of all the passions I have ever called
my own, I have yet to find the one that will salvage me, and of course it will,
from this certain numbness that follows me around like a stray dog that finds
something in me to feed on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And looking around, piercing as deeply as I can, I see that
I’m not alone in this predicament. Have people always been this way, morally
adrift, ardently astray? We do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a
dabble here, a dally there, johns, jacks and marys of all trades, masters of
none, masters of sidewalks, intake and launch parties. I mean really, how can I
sustain a passion if I keep it strapped to the backseat while I drive from one
worthless distraction to the other? I think it’s time to start placing the
building blocks towards something constructive, time to empty the boxes of
dusty memories, time to stretch the mind to new limits, time to work the mind
and plant new seeds in it, time to carve meaning into every gesture and
decision, time to start making sense to myself first before others, or just a
time to <i>do</i> while I am still sane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There come the pigeons again, flickering little eyelids of
white, black and brown, winking to the perched single cooers who join in and split
at their ease. The flock turns and then splits into two, seven beneath the long
nose of the crane, seven above, so playful for a scatter of pea-sized brains.
Their rhythmic motion has an allure of a campfire; I could watch them for
hours, buuuut, that’s a distraction I can keep for another day, when I wake up
early enough to not look up in surprise and wonder where the day has gone to.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-53260709683559207372012-12-25T13:55:00.000+02:002012-12-25T13:55:34.734+02:00hundred-and-seven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">12:37:11<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m tanning in the Christmas sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The last Christmas celebrations…I cannot even remember. They
all blend into a single memory of lunch at grandma’s house, which is like every
other lunch except that we sit at the dinner table and take longer than usual.
We’ve never been a jolly family as a whole. Most of our best moments together
were spent in batches of different configurations, my sisters and I, my parents
and I, mom and I... So this Christmas, to save me from sneers, I would give up
the forcing of “special”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(Un)Conveniently, this Christmas fell on a Tuesday, which
was a pain, alas, if you happened to have the extended family’s humble abode be
tucked away somewhere in the far reaches of Lebanese topography, and have work
on both of the days that snuggled the 25<sup>th</sup> ever so tightly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But as much as you’d like to fight the Christmas spirit, it
catches up on you as all friends retreat to family and friends’ dinners, as the
streets empty to the point where you can walk down the asphalt spine of Gouraud
Street without touching the sidewalk, as cars leave empty parking spaces to
clog mountain and valley road flanks, as everyone shuts their doors expecting
that even the loneliest of people had made plans for the eve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I hadn’t made any and I was going to stand by the notion
that the best plan is no plan. If the night were meant to be magical, the
faeries would find me in some form or colour, regardless of my hideout.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I was a little human forty-eight inches tall helping to
decorate the house with paper snowflakes pressed on frozen window panes, or
when I was only three foot six waking up in the middle of the night to see
whether Santa had delivered my modest requests, Christmas was the day when the
books and stories that I read came to sit with me and only me. Maybe it’s
because I didn’t take the hiding seriously, or maybe it’s because somewhere
deep inside I did not really want to be alone on the night that was the most
awaited time of my childhood years, that the ho ho ho came knocking on my door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was unexpected that at an hour to midnight I’d be greeted
by a lovely lady in red after a day’s worth of tire shopping, car shoeing, street
roaming and poster gluing. , She introduced me to grandmas, aunties, uncles,
cousins, nieces, nephews, one of whom handed me a plate of pumpkin soup for
company. Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him was nowhere to be seen except on my
phone’s screen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Wainik? I can meet
you down. I’m waiting for you to eat.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m up.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then he appeared looking slightly fazed but quite handsome,
and looking at the lady in red I deduced that good looks ran in the family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It felt strange that I was happy, far removed from familiar
faces, yet so warmly surrounded by a large family that didn’t seem to have ever
indulged in the well of Mediterranean disputes. Of course, it is always easy to
idealise an image that one covets to be one’s own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then came a touching moment, that stirred the walled-off
barricaded me. Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him had grabbed a stool and a Santa hat
to hand out the gifts. He called my name. My eyebrows reconfigured into a
puzzled wave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Me?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes, you, come over
here and give Santa a kiss.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was so endearing that he had fished out a last-minute
emergency gift, probably meant for someone else, and wrapped it up from him to
me. It was the only gift I would receive this Christmas, but it got to me like
only a simple loving gesture could. I took my time to open it, savouring the
notion that someone cared, enough, and I felt a crack run down my wall, split
me open just enough to see that I sort of cared enough about him as well.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-53728884085345590352012-12-18T23:50:00.000+02:002012-12-18T23:51:06.085+02:00hundred-and-six<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">23:07:28<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The skies have finally opened and the bawls of heaven have
washed away the dirty paperbrown laundry hanging over Beirut. It never rains
here, never drizzles, never pitter patters, only pours. And when the buckets suddenly
start tipping over my desert, the hibernating whims and desires come out to
flirt and play with the raindrops.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is a lush autumn garden. Scarlet and sensual, ripe and
covetable, almost sinful, almost like a trip back in time to that chapter where
Eve in a fig leaf showed Adam where the party was at – but instead of thanking
her, he’s been bitching about it from that bite onwards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is a lush autumn garden, crimson and passionate, sweet
and perfumed, almost heavenly, almost like a trip back in time to those days
where behind every tree there was an Adam stripped of his fig leaf, almost like
the picture of the kingdom I’ve imagined for myself, like the picture on a
postcard from the land I used to reign, signed by me, happy to be lost in that
forest, in that jungle, dancing to beats of every single tree trunk drumming
its fingers in waiting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The pieces are falling into place and the celestial bodies
are moving towards some prophetic configuration: either harmonic or
catastrophic, I cannot tell, but I’m counting on Venus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The night after Kavinsky and I laid down, our terms and
expectations, we crossed paths at “Reasons to be pretty”. We saw him before the
play started, going up the stairs. I was sure he wasn’t alone, but the lights
went out and there was no telling where he had disappeared to. I was sure I
didn’t want to bump into him looking like the drenched pile of hair and fabric
that I was, caught by the biblical storm the moment we left Deprague. I was
sure that it was going to be awkward because only yesterday he had given his
word, <i>“You will not see me with anyone.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After hours of sitting in wet boots and jeans watching
actors shout, argue and create drama over a most benign slip of tongue, I
spotted him giving a standing ovation to what must have been a walk down memory
lane post-divorce.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the foyer, while turning to head towards the ladies room,
Kavinsky’s face appeared so close, so suddenly that I received a punch of
adrenaline straight in the stomach and let my legs carry me away, away, further
away soon as the third kiss on the cheek was complete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He called me half an hour later to excuse himself, <i>“I’m sorry, I felt uncomfortable, she is
just a friend.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For the entire week that followed, his name would pop up
every now and then, inquiring about my whereabouts, inviting me over, always
last minute. Clearly, it was getting too comfortable on his part...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Martini was part of the group that chose to sit next to
Yamamoto and I at the party where I first met <a href="http://sleeplessbeirut.blogspot.com/2012/10/ninety-two.html" style="color: red;">Joos</a>. They were older and a
little dusty, not hitting too hard, just a group of boys at heart with belts
cutting them in two, slight bulges. The other two were doctors, a gyno and a
plastic, and Martini “sold Chiclets”. He was the first to make conversation,
but it felt more like the buttering of a set up between the surgeon and I. We
didn’t hang around too long; clearly their age was a red card to be held up by
Yamamoto. I was tipsy and every song was my favourite; the perfect guise to
drag me away from the elders and into Joos’ spinning wheel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">While I was being twirled, I spotted My Boss, or at the
time, my future Boss. I knew it was him because I had done my research
following our anonymous exchange. He was cute and I loitered around so that I
could, one day, point out to him that we were within inches, imperfect
strangers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Foux was there too with his buff and tight posse, and we
would come ear to ear every hour to discuss the comings and goings of the
melting pot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“That’s My Boss, he
has no idea who I am! He’s cute, non? And, oh look there, the guy in brown,
that’s Brick, I met him in London.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Before we could call it a night, the towering Gyno took me
out for one last dance to some remix of an oldie. I was turned and twisted so
much, that the cumulative sum of the evening would have had an abacus go
haywire were it not for the lack of expensive drink in my blood. When I went
back to the table to collect my things, the trio stood up to exchange numbers
and cards. It felt slightly theatrical, the table nearby watching our phone-lit
faces mouth numbers and correct spellings, but I was glad to step unto the
stage for a change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The following day, Martini sent me a wordy maladroit message
and I dismissed it. I recalled him having been handsome, but I also recalled
previous lessons of drunken phone number exchanges and decided on passing the
course.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Months later, when we were carrying on Birthday Girl’s birthday
celebration to Iris with Ohlalah, Yamamoto and Joos, I saw a familiar face
across from me. I couldn’t pin point where I had seen him before - and there is
nothing more annoying than blunt ends and tongue tips – so I picked my brains
for a good fifteen minutes until I recognized the Surgeon. He seemed to be
sitting alone, so I walked over to say hello.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But he wasn’t very talkative. I don’t think he even
remembered me. Which turned out to be a blessing as half an hour later I saw
him approach the table that we had all been, discreetly I hope, eyeing. There
sat two very conspicuous ladies, who turned down every mongrel that couldn’t
live up to their standard dollar, and it was clear that a dollar or two was needed
to finance the treatment of inflamed lips, histamine-stricken boobs and pinched
noses. How ironic, I thought, that the doctor find his patients during his darkest-hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Only when the skies opened up a week ago did Martini unexpectedly
join the showers of sudden attention falling over me. The earth was all wet now
and any extras could only whet it further. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-76432617519690810892012-12-08T11:42:00.001+02:002012-12-08T21:16:20.001+02:00hundred-and-five<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
</div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">21:00:00</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I'm sleepless in </span><span class="s2">Dictateur</span><span class="s2">.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">Some time after midday, the urge grew so strong that I thought I was having a panic attack</span><span class="s2">. I didn't even need to close my eyes, all it took was a prolonged gaze away from the day's work to see the two of us tempting fire, t</span><span class="s2">o feel it lick my sore neck, </span><span class="s2">wring me free from that</span><span class="s2"> suffocating chair</span><span class="s2"> and send blood down my sleeping limbs. I bit my lip to keep it from betraying me in this cold interior. I would have to wait it through.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Call me.</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"What time do you finish?"</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">As the clock struck leave, </span><span class="s2">I was out of there like a wrong number and in and between the taillights like a criminal, polluting the </span><span class="s2">neighbourhoods</span><span class="s2"> with the trashiest, loudest songs I kept for such breaches.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In his driveway, it was dead silent. He buzzed me through and came out to meet me.</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"Do you like it here better?"</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">"</span><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">More than before."</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">It looked like it had been modeled after him. The lighting was </span><span class="s2">more </span><span class="s2">dramatic</span><span class="s2"> and the effect reminded me of the</span><span class="s2"> pair of lions that stoo</span><span class="s2">d at the gates of ancient cities</span><span class="s2">, intimidating the aimless wanderer</span><span class="s2">s, warning them to steer clear. B</span><span class="s2">ut it stood alone and him beside me.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"Let's have dinner. I'm starving."</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I was late, again, but my lack of punctuality would</span><span class="s2"> soon be forgotten. We carried the plates of sliced avocado, turkey sausage, </span><span class="s2">thin </span><span class="s2">leaves of </span><span class="s2">batarekh</span><span class="s2"> and few pieces of </span><span class="s2">fatayer</span><span class="s2">to the table.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">"I am ha</span><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">ving vodka. I don't know why I am so stressed today. What can I get you?"</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I lingered for a moment, never having bee</span><span class="s2">n one to go for strong drinks, b</span><span class="s2">ut there was no wine, only red, and I didn't need my teeth grinning scarlet.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"Just add some ice and orange juice."</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I gave it a</span><span class="s2"> tast</span><span class="s2">e only to choke on it. He glanced</span><span class="s2"> at me with </span><span class="s2">a look of </span><span class="s2">surpris</span><span class="s2">e reserved for little kids</span><span class="s2"> caught doing grown up things. At that particular moment, I felt the age gap stretch like an accordion </span><span class="s2">– the</span><span class="s2"> resurfacing of delicate mathematics is inevitable.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">It was quiet, too contained</span><span class="s2">. He asked me about the pronounced veins on either side of his forehead, </span><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">"This has never happened before</span><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">, what do you think it is?"</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">And instead of assigning it to stress and</span><span class="s2"> fatigue, I let </span><span class="s2">slip the possibility that it was something that could pressure him for </span><span class="s2">time, that</span><span class="s2"> </span><span class="s2">it </span><span class="s2">could ignite a state of emergency to sign off a deal before he…</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"I'm leaving after tomorrow. For a few weeks."</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">Seductive Europe, once agai</span><span class="s2">n, will devour yet another</span><span class="s2">. This affair of take </span><span class="s2">aways</span><span class="s2"> and leftovers w</span><span class="s2">as beginning to seem deliberate - a diet imposed, a rationing miscalculated, a full course meal to dream of.</span><span class="s2"> Will a moment ever shift into linger?</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">His imminent departure, though e</span><span class="s2">arlier than expected, would</span><span class="s2"> serve as a conveniently raised rug under which we could sweep the bout of foolishness that was about to and bound to happen.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">We went downstairs to "watch a movie". I had never been so deep in his lair; the difference between the private and public halves of the house was quite tangible. The walls above spoke of majesty, depth and sophistication, yet the guts below were digesting loneliness in front of a large TV screen that lit the barren walls with ghostly light. There were hints of the upper floor, hints of good intentions, but it was easy to tell that the supposed family room had not witnessed much joy or laughter since its journey from paper </span><span class="s2">to four walls.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">There was not much to choose from in his DVD collec</span><span class="s2">tion, so I indulged in metaphor for backdrop: </span><span class="s2">a BBC documentary on wild nature.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">Fast forward. Pause. </span><span class="s2">A still of mountain goats wrestling.</span><span class="s2">Play. The TV cast my shadow large over him.</span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">"Look at me. Look at me."</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">They were both strong, two throbbing masses in tight lock, both trying to break free from the other to launch a final blow.</span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">Play speed x0.</span><span class="s2">5. </span><span class="s2">A close-up of muscles growing</span><span class="s2">, </span><span class="s2">the skin taut around them and the ribcage holding everything in from total explosion</span><span class="s2"> with all its might.</span><span class="s2"></span></span></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="s2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="s2">The tall redwood trees crashed into the grass. It was loud,</span><span class="s2">beautiful and tragic. The last</span><span class="s2"> chapter of the </span><span class="s2">Kavinsky</span><span class="s2">chronicles </span><span class="s2">was nearing full punctuation</span><span class="s2">. I left him be in the empty parcel spotted with stumped limbs and tree trunks. Though it's hard to admit, I left him be not without limping.</span></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-888333407267459332012-11-29T09:22:00.002+02:002012-11-29T09:22:28.779+02:00hundred-and-four<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">21:40:18</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There must be a name for it, teetering on a thin line
between adaptability and self-deceit. I’d like to think that I’m keeping my
balance, but in the back of my mind I know that balance is a religion of minute
proportions. At any moment, if I’m caught off guard, I could slip.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I feel like I shouldn’t put it into words, I feel like what
we have is sacred and only ours, but I never, never ever, want to forget that
day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It all happened rather suddenly. I had e-mailed him after
spending a few late night hours going through old photos.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I want this end to
end.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Little by little, over the course of a few days, I grew more
adamant. I was anxious and scared, but I wanted to see him, I had missed him.
Yet the old paranoia of being too unabashed, borderline invasive, kept me from
taking drastic measures. I messaged him once more, I called him, but there was
no clear sign that he felt anything more than a shadow of kindness towards a fond
memory.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then one morning came an e-mail. It wasn’t personal per se,
but enough of a glimmer for me to call him up just one more time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Botticelli picked up, <i>“Coucou.
Long time!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Finally, finally, I
got through to you!”, </i>I laughed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Do you want to have
lunch? I’ll be operational in an hour,”</i> he said closing the conversation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I threw my hangover out the window, jumped into the shower,
changed three times, and flew through the streets, singing, “<i>Ain’t no sunshine”</i> at the top of my
lungs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What was meant to be lunch, turned out to be a glorious
feast, followed by a walk, the pinching of cheeks, incessant talking,
remembering, sharing, brainstorming, sketching, working, hugging and holding,
holding, holding unto the dearest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">People have come and people will go, but the ones with who
time stands frozen are the people one must shelter from one’s vanities and
selfish whims. People that will care about you will be few; they will be few
when you are twenty and they will be few when you are eighty. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I have betrayed my responsibility towards them. I thought
that if I had been dispensable to others, others should become dispensable to
me. People can make it almost impossible with their parade of foolishness, but
they must not be taken lightly. Ultimately, you should dispense of those that
you cannot care for, those that you cannot give anything back to, those that
are beyond your reach. Dispense of empty relationships, but own up to those
that try despite your own foolish circus.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had betrayed him. I am sure of it because I sensed a shift
in responsibility. I had always thought that he owed me something for being
distant, for keeping me at bay, but he was right to do so. And now, sitting
there with him, listening to his actions, he didn’t have to say a word for me
to realize that he had given me something worth guarding. I am in debt for his
honesty and I have to make it up in weight. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was past midnight and <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>I didn’t want
to leave, I was fearful that my harebrained pack of wolves would have me
running with them to sniff out buried bones the moment I stepped beyond the
threshold of his home. Fifty-nine moons had risen and fallen, to howl yet again
seemed almost primitive, to promise anything was just as wise, but I felt it
this time, I felt it against my ribcage, that I should never, never ever let
him go again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-77171214799529965442012-11-19T19:26:00.000+02:002012-11-19T19:26:25.689+02:00hundred-and-three<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">21:12:40<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Be-uprooted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The day had been heavy. It was impossible to shake off the
feeling of unease. Lebanon was shaken hard. I was tired, but I didn’t want to
come home to echoing footsteps. I washed away the day’s worth of smoke and
dirt, wore light colours, no black. Deep breath. 21:00. Time to leave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Kavinsky had already set the table. He poured the champagne
and served me the quinoa salad he claimed to have made. It was delicious, but
was he capable of delicious?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You look great. I
really like what you’re wearing! Did you lose weight? There’s something
different about you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Maybe a little. But
thank you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Sleepless, why do you
always complicate things? It’s like I have to run and run after you. Stop
playing these games, you’re becoming a typical Lebanese girl…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I interrupted him then and there, <i>“I am not, shh, shh, I am not and you know that’s not true. You
complicate things for me. You are inconsistent. It’s like you change over the
course of the day, not to mention the week. I really didn’t like the way you
treated me that night, or how you only invite me over at night, for parties, to
bring girls. If it weren’t for my conviction that you are not the person you
portray yourself to be, I wouldn’t be here. But I know, I know that you are not
this sleazeball, this party animal, this whatever…. I understand, we all have
to put on a face, especially when we go through difficult times, but don’t put
it on for me.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He went still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You like this
painting?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Do not change the
subject. Listen to me, listen to me when I’m trying to say something to you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Sorry, I am
listening, I’m listening…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I hate playing games.
Before, when I used to meet someone new, I’d give him or her my all, my trust
and respect and then during the course of the relationship I would play
accordingly. But, that hasn’t worked for me. I give too much too fast to people
who don’t deserve it. You may not be that person, for all I know, you could be
deserving, but you’ve been inconsistent and I cannot give you more than I have been
giving because I don’t trust you with it. But really, I’m not like that, I’m
the simplest of people.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m simple too.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m simple, but over
the course of my stay here, the local social dynamics have obliged me to work
within it.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Can I be
straightforward with you? I like to tell things as they are. You know what
turned me off about you? All those limits you put. The girls here they think
that if they play these games with me, eh w la2, I will pursue them more. I do
not understand what they want from me, so I let go completely. I am not
interested.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I understand your
position, but you also have to understand mine. I don’t know you, yet, not
enough.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s been what, half
a year now?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes, but during that
time how many times did I see you? Ten?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“My problem is, I
don’t trust people. You’re a smart girl, you know that? You’re dangerous. Very
dangerous.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m learning.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He had said that before, in March. The first time I
dismissed it as pure flirtation, but now, I kind of agreed. Not with the
dangerous bit, the smart bit, not intelligence or knowledge, I know my
limitations there – I do not know <i>a lot</i>.
Yet what I do know, is that I can trust my intuition, and intuition is not just
a fairy that lives on your shoulder, intuition is more about subconscious
situation assessment. I know that I can trust my intuition, because every time
I fuck up, it’s because I waver or think too much. Every time I become
flustered, it is because my thoughts are too loud and I cannot hear that inner
voice. I mustn’t think; I should learn to let my brain think quickly,
efficiently, and then take it from there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What I was thinking at that moment was the following: he is
discussing limits and portraying them in a negative light, so that he could
manipulate the situation in his favour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What my brain was relaying to me, via intuition, was that I
felt good, better. I felt like he <i>was</i>
being honest. He was not making up love stories, nor was he the kind of man who
was incapable of being open-minded or simple. He very well could. If I could
be, why couldn’t he?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After dinner, we went outside. He motioned for me to sit
next to him. I thought, no, this is too close for comfort. But I felt, like yes, I wanted to feel the
warmth of another human being. So I shut up and sat down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was the perfect close to a hefty day. The sea and the sky
were pitch black, only the lights of the fishing boats spoke of teeming water.
The city was far away. There was only the sound of waves, the wind in the tall
grass and the random frog <i>ribbit ribbit</i>
every now and then. His dog was curled up next to our feet, excluded, but
loyal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Kavinsky placed my hand in his and I was surprised I didn’t
flinch. This was it; I was going to listen to the brain pixie. I was going to
immerse myself in the Kavinsky experience to see where it would take me. No
pre-meditated limits, only the considering of immediate comfort zones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was now curled up next to me like a baby. It didn’t feel
smart, nor did it feel dangerous, it simply felt good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It felt good to believe that there was a chance this inferno
of moderation and sobriety would be put out. I may have finally met my match:
somebody who never stayed around for long, who locked all doors before going to
bed, but always kept the windows open, somebody who was essentially lonely, too
proud to admit it, yet always hopeful to stumble upon momentary tenderness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I left my mind outside, with crossed arms and a vexed frown,
to watch over the whining dog that couldn’t make sense of what had come over
his master and friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We would bring it to boil, then let it simmer, boil and
simmer, boil and simmer, until the heat became unbearable and we unglued and
reconciled with the idea that today we would keep it civil. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You want dessert? I
have the most amazing chocolate cake ever”, </i>he proposed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-71510491313669705192012-11-13T14:12:00.000+02:002012-11-13T14:12:17.091+02:00hundred-and-two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">19:08:20</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The following evening, I told Yamamoto that I had resumed
contact with Kavinsky and that I had spent the previous evening with the girls
and his friend.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She was skeptical and slightly taken aback.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You know I was giving
him attitude because of what he did to you. If I knew this was going to happen,
I wouldn’t have been that rude. You’re my friend; what you do reflects on me.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You didn’t do
anything wrong. Chou, you would have wanted to accept his invitations to dinners,
boat trips and house parties?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“No, but I would have
handled it better.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the midst of our conversation Kavinsky messaged me asking
me where I was and whether we wanted to join him and his friend at Lux.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What should I tell
him?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yalla, let’s go see
him. He doesn’t know I’m with you, does he?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We paid our bill and drove down to the port. They were
sitting at the bar, winding pasta into beehives with their forks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was an easy evening, discussions of the market and
discussions of iPhone apps.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Look, I have this app
that can take your pulse. Here, place your finger over the camera…”</i> his buddy entertained us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Once more, Kavinsky was being obscure and distant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You know what I feel
like? Watching a movie.”</i> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“But it’s past eleven,
no cinema will have a new session now!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“We could all go to
his place, it’s not far...”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We weren’t going to take the bait, innocent or not. Always
tired, we, always tired. Kavinsky must be starting to doubt the strength of my
immune system.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The following afternoon I saw him at the traffic light. I
called him up to share the coincidence. I love coincidences; they make me
smile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Sleepless, hello, ah,
really? Where were you? Listen can I call you back?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ten minutes later I received a message saying he was dealing
with some family issues. He was sorry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then I forgot about him, until weeks later when my phone
announced his birthday. I wished him well, and he called me back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Where are you?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“In Bekaa.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Coming back tonight?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes, but we might be
back rather late.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Let’s do something.
We can have a small party at my house, bring your friends.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Let me see what I can
do.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But then it hit me: I am no pimp and I am not one to accept
all these late night invitations to private pool parties with girls and questionable
outcomes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Hey, listen, I don’t
think I’ll be able to make it tonight.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s okay. Enjoy your
day.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And that was that I thought. The end of Kavinsky. The final
chapter. The end of the chronicles. And I was fine with it. There was nothing
in it for me. And nothing in it for him either.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The thing about coincidences is that they feed my belief
that there is something of a plan for each one of us, a sort of template, a map
of our pathways, possible crossings and detours and roundabouts. I do not think
it is something as strict as fate or destiny, because we are indecisive and we
choose and then we change our minds and we choose a hundred times over. I feel
that it’s more of a map of possibilities; a magic map if you will, that is
constantly evolving and is connected to the maps of other people. I have this
other belief, that the universe sends you signs, and if it is generous it will
send you back the ones you’ve missed or dismissed. When I saw Kavinsky’s name
appear on my phone a month after his birthday, I was beginning to think that
this was a deliberate knock on my door that I had to answer. A half yearlong
knock must mean this future event wants to, almost <i>needs</i> to, occur. I couldn’t tell whether it was the knock of an
unavoidable death sentence, or whether it was a missing piece of some puzzle
that was being entrusted and so viciously thrust upon me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Hey, how are you?
Long time. I miss you. What are you up to?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m heading north on
some family business, how have you been?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Good, good, I’m with
my friend, just came back from Europe. I’d like to see you. Pass by tonight.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Say hi to him. I
can’t, I’m travelling tomorrow myself.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“When will you be
back?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“In a little more than
a week.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was good at that, remembering when to call, promising to
call and keeping his word. So far, this was the only constant quality to him
apart from his habit of starting conversation with “where are you?”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He called me a few days after my return, he was in Gemmayze,
I was going home. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Tabb call me Friday
and we’ll see.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He called me on Thursday. And then he called me on Friday.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Listen Kavinsky, I am
working hard these days and leave work exhausted, can we please just do
something on the weekend, during the day?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m proud of you! …I
have people visiting me, and they are here till next week, so this weekend I
cannot promise anything. How about tonight? Dinner? Early? Can you do 19h?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Errrhm…I leave work
around 19h and then I need to go home, shower, rest a bit.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What time do you
want? 21h? I’ll cook dinner.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Fine, but I need to
tell you something. Please, no funny business. Take it easy on me.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Don’t complicate
things, I’m attracted to you, you’re attracted to me, we’re not getting married.
Just come, and I’ll take it easy.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This insisting, this constant knocking <i>tuck tuck tuck tuck tuck tuck tuck,</i> maybe meant that somebody
wanted to come in, badly, for whatever reason. But before I would even consider
answering it, I had to listen to my self, closely.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-20219795870688624242012-11-11T15:28:00.000+02:002012-11-11T16:34:19.949+02:00hundred-and-one<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">17:35:30<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m on a roll today in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My parents were back in town and after a long humid day of
shopping, we stopped for a coffee at Gordon’s. My dad was losing my mom’s
attention with an historical political story, while I was grumpy that he hadn’t
liked my new long black dress. Aren’t fathers supposed to like length?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Sleepless!”</i>
boomed a voice from beyond our table. <i>“How
are you?!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Oh dear destiny, why now and why him. Act normal; do not
arouse suspicion in the elders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Hey, I’m good. How
are you? Long time. What are you doing here?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m renting a room
here for a couple of days and then I’ll be traveling.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Mom, Dad, this is
Kavinsky. My parents.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Hello, nice to meet
you. So what have you been up to these days?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Spending time with
the family, yeah... Well, it was nice to see you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You too, take care.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As soon as Kavinsky was out of earshot, my dad asked <i>“Min hay?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“He’s a friend.
Remember that dinner party I went to?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“La2, I mean, min
hay?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I elaborated a little and to my utter surprise my father
relaxed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“They are such a nice
family. We met with his parents once on business; they have a very beautiful
house, very cultured people, and not snobby! His mother…what an elegant lady, she
served us – ‘this is our wedding porcelain set, it is the first time we use
it’. Very nice family...”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Oh dear father if only you knew what a nice asshole he had
been a few months ago, but I’d rather you didn’t. My mom though, she knew that
there were more colours to this “boy” from such a nice family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“That’s the crazy guy.
The one I told you about.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Really? But he looks
much younger!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What?! No! You didn’t
see him properly. He’s your age!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So not only did Kavinsky call me the following day to tell
me that I looked all cute sitting there with my parents, but every now and then
my dad asks me about him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“So, do you still hear
from Kavinsky?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“No dad, he is going
through a lot of stuff right now, and I do not want to be a part of it.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Clearly, dad’s approval, though misinformed, softened me a
little. I refused to think that this ‘such a nice family’ could have given
birth to a domino that would set my life into derail. Apart from that tights n’
shower episode, Kavinsky had been quite a pleasant distraction. To top it all
off, and this was the tricky bit, I had found him attractive. I liked the
colour of his skin against mine, the lush carpet of his hairy chest, his
perfectly shaped hands, the sound of his deep voice and the doughy quality of
his body. He was a passionate man, and of that, I was certain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But, I had seen a glimpse of his ugliness and I was weary. I
deserved better, I did, and maybe he too deserved another chance. I have been
handing them out for a long time now and who was to say that it had to stop
with him – every case warrants a bespoke trial. On that thought, I dropped a
notch in my attitude by the end of the conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Can I see you when
I’m back?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Fine, call me.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And so, three weeks later, as promised – he was very good at
that – he invited me for dinner. And an hour later he called me back to invite
me on a boat. And an hour after that, he told me that his friend would be joining
us and that I was more than welcome to invite my friends and that a little boat
party would be much more fitting for this summer evening. Fine by me; the more
to test the waters with, the merrier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My friend from Paris was in town, and only the previous
night we had celebrated her birthday, so I thought why not take this girl out
on a boat and see Beirut twinkle. She was fun, easy-going and not judgmental –
plus, I had already told her about Kavinsky, so there wouldn’t be any awkward
stares in my direction once she’d meet the pair that was nearly twice our age.
To add to the mix in our favour, we invited Ohlalah, her hot friend from Paris.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We arrived at St.Georges, swimming suits in hand, expecting
a thrilling night swim in the middle of pitch-black water, but instead we were
greeted with an anchored boat, sushi and champagne. Kavinsky’s friend did not
turn out to be a douche and we reveled in his pleasant lightness while
Kavinsky’s mind was elsewhere, gazing into silent space…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But around midnight, feeling apologetic for misleading us
with the idea of a boat party, Kavinsky suggested we head to his place for a
night swim, some music…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was a drive away, but we were all in a good mood and I
was kind of looking forward to replacing the final memory of that house with
something brighter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Birthday Girl and I were the last to arrive and when we
walked in through the open door and on to the terrace we knew that if anyone
were watching us from the tall reeds, it would have appeared to them as though Hugh
Hefner’s own private Tinkerbell had sprinkled some of its magic dust over the
place. Fortunately for us, we stood from within the bubble and saw nothing but
a story to be remembered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The swim was a refreshing escape from the hot, humid air and
Kavinsky and I were alone in the corner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“So you don’t know why
I never wanted to see you again?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“No. Why?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Because you totally
and utterly embarrassed me. What you said to me that evening was so rude.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I didn’t mean it that
way.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Well, you should know
that you cannot say such things to people.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I really didn’t mean
to say it like that.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When it was time to leave, Kavinsky had somehow discovered
that Ohlalah was without a car for the week, and he was now offering her his
set of wheels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Take it, I won’t be
needing it this week. Really. I once lent it to a friend for weeks.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Are you sure?”</i>
she asked with a nasal voice that was an undesired consequence of a nose job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I looked over to Birthday Girl and she was as apprehensive
as I – <i>“she shouldn’t take it!”</i> we
agreed telepathically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But she did and I was glad that at least it was Ohlalah and
not Birthday Girl – I would be one degree further from the shadow of bad behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then again, were it not for Ohlalah’s presence, Birthday Girl
and I would have had to bear the weight of the guys’ attention all alone. It
had been a fun evening after all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Kisses on the cheek, kisses on the cheek, our convoy left
the premises. I was happy Birthday Girl agreed to share with me this moment in
time, and grateful that she had made it light and easy with her boisterous laughter,
and even though I had never ridden in one before and was dying to feel its
rumble, I was glad she was the one who was dropped home in a frisky Ferrari. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-59446277285774472472012-11-04T18:33:00.003+02:002012-11-04T18:36:07.221+02:00hundred<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">16:15:25<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m unloading outdoors in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was relentless. <i>“Was
nice talking to you though :)”</i>. Didn’t reply<i>. “Hey…hope you’re well…Kavinsky”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What was I going to do with this one…I didn’t want to push
him away, but neither did I want to lift a finger. He’d have to work a little
harder this time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The first week that followed our initial meeting was
exciting. He called me up on the weekend and I accepted his invitation for an
hour long lunch in the old port, and then he took me out to dinner, I came with
Foux to his lavish house party where Kavinsky wouldn’t leave my side for longer
than he could allow himself, he picked me up the following day and we went to
his friend’s conference in AUB, we had lunch in Hamra, passed by his flat for
an afternoon siesta, I then went on to another AUB lecture and he went to a
business dinner. Later, Yamamoto and I met up with Scooter, a nice guy I had
met at the house party, for drinks in Gemmayze, we met his friends, it was fun,
and we continued the evening by joining the other party guests Downtown, where
Kavinsky reappeared…and paid their bill. I felt like that was a bit off…and
clearly unnecessary; they were all employed…The previous night I had thought
they were fun and easy-going, but now, I started to see the bigger picture.
These people he called friends, were just in it for the breadth of his wallet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Where are you guys
going next?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Behind the Green Door
and then maybe B0!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Let’s head back
home,” </i>I whispered into Kavinsky’s ear. I did not want to witness any more
of this bullshit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“I’m tired. We’ll
party another time. Call you tomorrow”,</i> he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">They didn’t even insist. I guess they could afford the rest
of the night on their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He asked me to come over, but I declined. Always tired, me,
always tired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The following week, he invited me for a smaller gathering <i>“to enjoy the leftovers of the big house
party”</i>. This time, I’d bring Yamamoto with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That morning, I had packed my purple heels, a light summer
dress and a navy cotton sweater. Then in the car, on my way out, I thought of
the chilly March sea breeze and stopped by for a pair of stockings. “<i>One pair, matte, nude please.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had to work till late, so I changed into the evening
outfit in the bathroom and came straight to his place, half an hour earlier
than the rest, like a boss. That last detail I hadn’t been sure about, but Foux
thought nothing of it and encouraged me to show that little extra something
whatever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The door was open; he greeted me, poured me a glass of white
wine and out of the blue wanted to dance. I didn’t feel comfortable. It felt
like a page in a hidden agenda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then he said, <i>“You
know, you dress funny.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Come again? I was sure I looked decent. It couldn’t have
been the purple shoes – they were quirky but cute.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Your tights. They
don’t look nice.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I looked down and he was right. That lady had given me the
shiny ones, the ones that make your legs look like sausages wrapped up in
cellophane. I was suddenly embarrassed – this was all taking an unexpected
turn. Of course I would take them off; they were hideous. I took a moment in
the bathroom, there, all better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He held me close for a dance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What’s that smell?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Huh? I froze.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Did you take a
shower?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Yes…this morning.” </i>I
was flustered, cheeks ablaze.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Here, smell here,”</i>
he motioned to my shoulder. I turned my nose. Fine, there was a faint body
smell, maybe I took the wrong sweater, maybe, but was he serious? I wanted to
run the fuck out of there, but Yamamoto was on her way and I did not want to
explain to her what had just happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Wait, I have
something in the car.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You could use my
shower. I can give you clothes. Don’t worry, I will not walk in on you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And guess what ladies and gents, I actually went to take
that shower. If there was ever a moment in my life where I felt mortified that
was it, but what mortifies me the most, to this day, was the fact that I went
downstairs and took that shower. Where was my pair? Where were my pink
testicles of self-respect? Did they slipped off with my stockings?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yamamoto arrived when I was all fresh and dressed, but the
mood was strange. I introduced them, we were talking and then his phone rang.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Hey! You’re coming?
When? Great. I can’t wait to see you. Take care. See you soon – this is my
friend from the UK. I named my boat after her.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yamamoto was pouring herself a glass of wine in the dining
room, so I leaned in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“She must be a very
special friend for you to name a boat after…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You know, a friend,
like you and I,” </i>he said with a smile that I did not like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then the guests started arriving. There was Scooter,
some new faces and the troupe of free loaders that I couldn’t but feel disgust
for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Kavinsky was now in the dining room laughing with the whole
lot of them. Yamamoto and I went out for a one-on-one in the darkness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t like the way
he touches you.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t know what I’m
doing here.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Let’s just leave.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“But we just came.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Do you really want to
stay?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We finished our drinks, took a few farewell pictures and
went back in to bid our goodbyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You’re leaving?! So
soon? You cannot be serious,”</i> he protested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Always tired, we, always tired. He came with us to the coatroom,
still unbelieving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’ll call you
tomorrow, okay?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It was nice meeting
you Kavinsky. Goodbye.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The gust of fresh air, the churning gravel and the walk away
away further away felt like an escape from hell. He stood there on the steps,
lit by the tall rectangle of light, probably wondering how I had found that
secret hiding place where he had stowed away my balls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That was it for me. The end of Kavinsky. The end of that
world of fake friends and lavish lifestyle that I had mistakenly stumbled into.
This was not my place. Not yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But as the small size of Beirut would have it, there is
never a final end…</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-42883468590420571772012-11-02T22:15:00.001+02:002012-11-04T18:16:07.883+02:00ninety-nine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">20:08:02</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I'm sleepless in Dictateur.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">On a 24 degree evening like this one, when lovers are sick in bed, shopping for a plastic gun to complete their 007 costume or chewing on Europe, when friends are having dinners with their ex-boyfriends or celebrating their fourth year anniversary in Paris, there is nothing more precious than to spend it with yourself and listen closely to your own wandering eyes and spirit.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">After a week of moving within the limits of the car's turning radius or the office obstacle course, I found my secret parking spot and let my legs travel. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">J j mm <= the words of a fallen avocado on the touch screen.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Red sends me an image. He is dressed as Ceasar.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Wein James Bond, ya Ceasar inta?"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><i>"Who is Bond to Ceasar?!"</i>, he replies.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">On an evening like this, when time opens up to accommodate whims and folly, I'm glad that my plans for the night can do the same. My mind has space to run with it, to roll around like a roll-over command, to bark, to mark street corners, and to fetch an idea that it had thrown sometime on Monday. I pet myself because I am still okay. I've done well on the resistance front, because years into my war of identity, I haven't betrayed either side.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">This dichotomy of mind used to worry me - mustn't I make a choice? Is it not important to know on which side of the front you're standing on? Is it not important to assume a style and stick with it?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">A month ago, my mother's childhood friend said to me, "His power laid within his unpredictability." And it hit me: this is where freedom may reign and this was the only thing I had going for me, this ability to walk the line, this balance under a growing mountain of weight.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I've yet to feel inevitability, the inevitability of a cul-de-sac and no way out. There always is. Hope can sometimes feel like a disease, like a cloudy film wrapped around your senses, or maybe, like a sixth sense with its feeler tentacles stretched in front, groping, carressing, testing how ripe an occasion is. You determine the twist.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Of course, doubt turns up every now and then, knocking, knocking, like a preacher, barking, barking, like a dog sent in from Cartesia. My only concrete fear is that of "Revolutionary Road" - to discover that you were moving in the wrong direction and think it too late to change course. It's strenuous to constantly question yourself, "Was this a good decision? Did I do the right thing?". Fuck that. Adapt. Outrun your hounds and leave them panting with regret for ever having run after you in the first place. Outsmart yourself. Be brave. You're on your own and you are your own, do whatever it takes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I gave normality a chance. I said "No" when it was expected of me, I took it slow, I thought it through and I can safely look back on it as the dullest year ever. I tried your way of reason and it didn't thrill me. It didn't leave me broken hearted, true - but it broke my spirit. I had even saved a psychoanalyst's number and dialed it once to schedule an appointment, but hung up before I let self-pity do the talking. I wasn't in that deep, not yet.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I like to let my thrills spill over me as much as I like to spill them over everything I see. I like to count them, list them, draw them, think, write and talk about them. They make me as much as I make them and I'd be naked without their company. I'd walk past all their houses without smiling, I'd move through Beirut without turning corners and I'd leave in a second the moment it would blow up. I like to let my thrills add a bit of weight to my story, a bit of complaint from the baggage handlers and a bit of a bitter aftertaste to my initial sweetness. I like to be alone on an evening like this, with my glass of wine and busy fingers.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-42180992775393019542012-10-30T18:54:00.000+02:002012-11-04T18:18:18.707+02:00ninety-eight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">01:34:32</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m not sure if it comes with age or if it is a natural
ability that I’ve improved on or whether the walls of my heart have been so
stretched by shoulder-brushing occupants that there is newfound space for
additional rooms. The nature of my emotional engagement looks almost like a
flow chart of the check-ins and checkouts in a hostel. Objects of desire are
constantly flowing and moving in and out of the frame. It’s as though I watch
them move within its borders until I see the perfect shot <b>– click – </b>and I’m done. The duration of my interest is
like the gaze of a people watcher stationed on a park bench: an attractive
figure enters far left, approaches, approaches, when in close proximity my neck
begins to turn slowly from left to right until I cannot see the face no more,
and while I turn my head back to look out at the far left for someone new -
play that in slow motion - the amount of time it takes for the head to turn
from the right side back to the left is equal to the lingering of the memory of
the figure that just passed by, and the further I turn away, the less I feel
and oh, in comes a new one! And the cycle resumes.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4975010358106672623" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I am at once amazed
and concerned with this nonchalance. Would one person ever be enough? Or is this monogamy business an unrealistic model for our modern times to begin with?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I recently read a
book, <i>“How to Think More about Sex”</i> and it made me feel less alone. Alain de
Botton, whose writings and acute observations I cherish, explains how monogamy
came to be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Taking a step back, what distinguishes
modern marriage from its historical precedents is its fundamental tenet that
all our desires for love, sex and family ought to reside in the selfsame
person. No other society has been so stringent or so hopeful about the
institution of marriage, nor ultimately, as a consequence, so disappointed in
it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the past, these three very distinct needs
– for love, sex and family – were wisely differentiated and separated out from
one another. The troubadours of twelfth-century Provence, for example, were
experts in romantic love. The libertines of early-eighteenth century Paris were
just as devoted, but in their case to sex rather than romance. For its part,
the impulse to raise a family has been well known to the largest share of
humanity since our earliest upright days in East Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The independence, if not the incompatibility,
of our romantic, sexual and familial sides was held to be an untroubling and
universal fact of life until the mid-eighteenth century, when, among members of
one particular segment of society in the more prosperous countries of Europe, a
remarkable new ideal began to take shape. This ideal proposed that henceforth,
spouses ought not to be satisfied with just tolerating each other for the sake
of the children; instead, and in addition, they were to regard it as their due
to deeply love and desire each other. Their relationships were to wed the
romantic energy of the troubadours to the sexual enthusiasm of the libertines. Thus
was set before the world the compelling notion that our most pressing needs
might be solved all at once, with the help of only one other person.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was no coincidence that the new ideal of
marriage was created and backed almost exclusively by a specific economic
class: the bourgeoisie, whose balance of freedom and constraint it also
uncannily mirrored. With a little extra money to spare for relaxation,
bourgeois lawyers and merchants could now raise their sights and hope to find
in a partner more than merely someone who could help them to survive the next
winter.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The notion of entering into a loveless or
indifferent marriage was as much anathema to a bourgeois as the concept of not
having outside affairs would have been to a libertine.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Certainly, I would love to find somebody who could incarnate
everything I love, desire and care for, and I know that a certain amount of
compromise would need to be involved. Even if there are such perfect-fitting
persons out there, what are the chances of the two of us crossing paths?
Meager, to say the least. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So I thought, why not Red? Ten years down the line and we
still cared for one another, we got along and we understood, if not wholly, the
notion how either of us worked. After seeing him in Dubai, I found myself
thinking more and more about the prospect of us coming to a sort of conclusion.
<i>“Right here, this is where our search
will end, and we will work on making us work.”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But at the moment, I am not ready and neither is he. We are
too young and still hungry and still hopeful. I can see it happening a couple
of years down the line. We have the chemistry, we have the love; all we would
need is conviction and a continuous exercising of effort to not fall through
the comfortable cracks of commitment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So I wrote to him. I laid out my logic, I laid out my
feelings and it felt good to click send and not worry about being rejected. He
wrote back to me the following day and I was touched. I felt cocooned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s a fucking shame
that we currently do not live in the same country, I would have definitely not
let go of you if we did. I’m going to finish up by expressing myself in four
words and hope that you truly understand me when I tell you: I love you too.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What more could I ask for? Nothing. This is all we have,
this perpetual love that resurfaces every time we cross paths. Yet, in the
meantime, I do not see it necessary to cling on to something so virtual as a
feeling of love. I love him, I do, but I am not there with him and neither is he with me. What foundation other than a high-school romance and a warm fuzzy
feeling do we have to build on?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was missing him too much, so I decided to turn my head
back to the left for now and wait for him to pass me by again at a more
convenient time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I sat there on the bench, looking ahead for no one, when in
came a familiar figure. It was <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://sleeplessbeirut.blogspot.com/2012/04/eighty-four.html"><span style="color: red;">Kavinsky</span></a> </span>and his phone was to his ear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Where are you?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m going home. Just
left.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m in Gemmayze,
come!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I was just there. But
I’m tired, and I need to get up early.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Oh come on.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“No, really…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What are you doing
this weekend?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m not yet sure.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I miss you. I want to
see you. Let’s do something.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Tabb call me Friday
and we’ll see.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This man, I had sworn off, but there was a pull of gravity,
still. Amazingly, I still felt I had another chance of handling him better. I
didn’t know how, but I trusted I could improvise…after all, you live and you
learn.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-51840934300494256472012-10-28T18:22:00.001+02:002012-11-04T18:21:15.727+02:00ninety-seven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">19:16:32</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’m sleepless on a balcony.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Three hours before the curtain was due to go up, I was buying us tickets to <a href="http://sleeplessbeirut.blogspot.com/2010/07/twenty-one.html"><span style="color: red;">Lulu</span></a>’s </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">play. It was a new production, one that didn’t really catch my attention when I had first seen the poster, but as soon as I discovered he’d be in it – I called up my friends.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The sun was out and so were all the people. In the main square, there was a huge colourful procession of this year’s freshmen, groups of tourists and the timeless skateboarders. I had my cup of coffee to go so I could sit down and watch the people going. It wasn’t long before I was approached by one of those men you cross the street to avoid. The skater boys watched him walk towards me; the smiles on their faces were clearly in anticipation of some impending disaster. But I held my ground.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“I hope I won’t bother you.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Maybe, maybe you will.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“You’re a candy girl, aren’t ya…it’s a beautiful day. The elections are coming soon, I wonder what they will…taxes…life is…I’m unemployed,” he blabbered on, my focus elsewhere, I kept checking the foam in my cup.</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Well, I will be leaving now…”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Ciao, good day!”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">His tracksuit-clad figure disappeared somewhere behind me. I wore the strap of my bag just incase he was planning on grabbing it or something. You never know with these types…better a prude than sorry.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I walked through the park, damp golden leaves softening the click-clack of my boots, wearing the wondrous expression of a drifter back from exile. Nobody knew me, yet everyone and everything felt familiar.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was thinking of what to do about Lulu. Should I see him after the play? Should I call him the next day to tell him I had enjoyed it? Should I just hope he’d see me in the audience?</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I decided on flowers. I’d get him a small bouquet – the gesture would be subtle, affectionate and elegant.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“It’s for the theatre, nothing big and clumsy. I like the burgundy ones. And in the middle, place the sprout of tiny white blossoms. They will look like snowflakes.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Does the play have anything to do with snow?”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Maybe…there was a polar bear on the poster.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He was the first to come on stage, pulling and tying a rope of an imaginary ship. He wore a huge, savage-looking fur coat and big leather boots. When he spoke, his voice was forcefully deep and rusty.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It took me a good hour to disengage from the fact that it was Lulu, the flirtatious, charming man that had once stolen my heart with a single. At one point, he was looking straight at me, but I couldn’t tell if it was an empty stare or whether he was supposed to be flustered in the script. Near the end of the play, he forgot his lines, he struggled and tortured himself in order to remember the ending of the story he was telling and only when the fellow actress yelled out a cue, he wavered back on track. I was hurting inside – poor Lulu, this was not the first time I was witness to his overcrowded mind.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The curtain was lowered. I fetched the bouquet from beneath my seat. Then came the applause.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Do not chicken out this time!” </i>I said to myself.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The actors came on stage. He was himself again, and not the brutal warrior that he was wrongly cast for. My friend nudged me, <i>“Go! Go! What are you waiting for? Just tell them to stand up and let you through!”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I got up and made my way to the first steps, but the actors had already taken their position centre-stage.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lulu spotted me. I’ll never forget his expression of dropped mouth warm smile bright eyes. I was surprised he recognized me after all these years, but I was so happy he did and I was so happy I held this pretty little bunch of flowers all wrapped up in silver paper and tied with a ribbon.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">They came back for the second round of applause and I took those few long steps to greet him. His face was all like “You shouldn’t have” and his sweaty cheek was all like next to my cheek and I was all like blushing…</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I didn’t want to linger around, I didn’t want to bump into him just yet – what had just happened was perfect.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Yet, the following morning all I could think about was him. A part of me wanted to be this ephemeral appearance passing through his life, leaving him to wonder whatever happened to me calling him everytime I was back in town, and the other half was just yearning to meet him, me all grown up and full of stories.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So I called him. He was at practice and he would get back to me later. He sounded out of breath and formal. He’ll never call back…</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I wasn’t going to worry about it. I continued towards the other side of the river, over the bridge, unto a rooftop landscape, into the National Art Gallery, through the rooms that held some very surprising and beautiful artworks, down a staircase, across the street, into the shopping centre, in and out of a changing room, through a bookshop. Somewhere past the first room of paintings, I had completely forgotten about the click and dial tone. It was only when I was walking towards the bus station that his name appeared on my phone. Deep breath, sound cool and confident, slide to answer.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“What are you doing, wandering around the city?”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Actually, I’m about to head home, I’m having some friends over…”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Awww, too bad, I would’ve invited you to tonight’s play!”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Yes, we wanted to go but the tickets were all sold out. But listen, tomorrow we’re going to see another one of your plays…”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Naughty girl! You know it’s easy for me to get you seats, I told you this many times!”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Yeah, like last time…nevermind, I’ll keep you in mind the next time I come back.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“How long are you here for?”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Till next weekend.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Would you, um, like to go for tea, coffee, or…?”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“I would be most pleased.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“So let’s get in touch on Monday. Have fun tonight, bye.”</i></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The idea of going home for a nap was good as gone – I wanted to dance in the streets, I wanted to do cartwheels and flips and pirouettes.</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Oh, how my friends will shake their heads and fingers when they hear that we could have gotten us free seats!</span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While I waited for bus no. 6, I danced a little.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-32638359127723853282012-10-25T20:35:00.001+03:002012-10-25T20:38:01.914+03:00ninety-six<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">17:14:08</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’m sleepless and shivering in a tiny room of a bookshop.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’m. So. Happy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When the airplane emerged from the dense milky sandwich of wispy, feathery and swollen, we were right above the pitched-roof houses and the sight of the long moist blades of emerald grass sent a wave of tears over my lower eyelids. I. Was. So. Happy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Everything had been retrieved from the attic and replaced back where it had always been. Even the words of my mother tongue that I had forgotten made their way into my ears or through my lips. But there was something different, something I had not seen in over fifteen years – autumn colours in the trees and their burnt embers on the streets. The sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the coats were gray, black and brown, but the trees were inflamed, gloriously dying. Oh...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Throughout the day, even the best of memories were continuously upgraded. The oak floor at home felt warmer beneath my feet, the pine woods outside the window looked less ominous, the people in the streets looked happier, the girls were prettier – one after the other they had me check myself – the boys were more attractive – they were taller, less scrawny, more daring in their fitted clothes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Through the doorway on my left I could hear a commotion in progress: the dragging of chairs, heavily accented conversations between locals and foreigners, the camera reflex of lighting test shots. I asked the beautiful androgynous girl what this was all about.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“There will be a poetry reading.”</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s only been a day and I already feel swept up by a cultural deluge. There are so many things to see, to do and to participate in. Tonight I’ll be going to watch a play in the theatre where Lulu works. When I think back to the first time I met him, the effort I put into testing and making come true my conviction that he was someone to pursue, I feel proud of myself. This is how we get what we want out of life. We must ask, demand, insist and not give up until we lose all the necessary lives in order to remain on that game level. But then, when I think about all the times I’ve seen him since, the lunches, the coffee cups, the scooter rides, the gift-exchanges, the productions I sat through, I still feel unsatisfied. By the time I start to feel comfortable around this now-national-star and tabloid magnet, he has to run to practice or to the studio or to pick up his daughter or to go home to his wife. I never had the opportunity or the courage to ask him, <i>“What were you thinking when you accepted the aggressive pursuit of a fourteen year old girl?”</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I still remember his phone number. I even have him as a friend on Facebook. But none of these will do, none of these will guarantee any sort of exchange. I do not want to pursue him, because I am much the wiser. Yet, I want to and I’m now ready to ask him that one simple question that has been making rounds in my head since.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I pack my stuff, wait for one of the poems to be read to the last word and run out into the light drizzle. I know Lulu won’t be there, but a faint glimmer of hope sees me bumping into him in the arched entrance of the theatre.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-81765925121660100042012-10-25T14:03:00.000+03:002012-10-25T14:03:05.843+03:00ninety-five<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">13:47:46</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in 5A, next to the window, overlooking a
patchwork of green, blue and yellow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I am slightly nervous about landing the motherland and as
bewildered with the idea of flying in a huge heavy object across you-can-look-but-you-can't-touch lands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m always struck by the schism between memory and reality.
The layers of emotion leech the paved sidewalks of their cracks, soften the
sadness on people’s faces and discount the poverty that my country has been slowly
emerging from. I do not remember the eeriness of walking through the empty
streets alone at night, or the drunken beggars stumbling through them in the
middle of the day or the sad-but-true fact that I feel like a foreigner once
the initial effect of coming home has worn off.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What will this <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>landing feel like?</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-57206980886356217412012-10-23T14:38:00.000+03:002012-10-23T14:38:11.460+03:00ninety-four<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">08:41:33</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Terminal 1A.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don’t know why I challenge punctuality. I’ve been training
my perception of time for over half a year now, and even though there has been
some improvement, I am always tempting drastic consequences. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“A de badna tenousal
3al matar?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Se3a tnen minkoun
honik, mni7?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I wanted to tell him to drive faster, but I caught my tongue
before proposing endangerment of our and others’ lives for what was my, and my
alone, price to pay.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I slung my suitcase on the conveyor belt. 29.3kg! The guy
looked at me with apologetic eyes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Bti2t3a?” </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Shhhh…malezim
yisma3ouki.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I smiled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Ra7 7attik bil aisle”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Full capacity?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“La2, la2anik jeye
bakeer”, </i>he joked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ten more minutes and I would have been left aisle-less and wingless.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gate 19 was swamped with a strange broth of people whose
ambitions had seemingly abandoned them a long time ago. They were a soup of
ambiguous origins and amorphous aftermaths: those who looked Arab spoke with a
heavy American slur, those with conservative attire had bare-shouldered
pierced-lipped children. I didn’t mean to be judgmental nor have my thoughts so
preoccupied with them. Yet before every single flight, I’ve always secretly
hoped to I sit next to someone intelligent, interesting and funny – and so far,
out of all the flights I have ever taken, I can remember two, maybe three, such
occasions. And throughout the years, I have noticed that the 3am flights to
Europe are the most disappointing. The faces are so bleak, like the mugs in the
metro: expressionless, distant, <i>not</i>
happy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After waiting in line in the unventilated lounge for longer
than expected, it was ultimate relief to walk into the cool airbus. Yet, apart
from the nightmare of sitting in a stiff chair that put to shame its recline
button, I was beginning to get a sense of the impending four hour late-night
flight when I saw the children march in. One after the other, tired mothers in
tow, they skipped and ran and shoved to get to their seats. Some were dark,
others blonde, some were tiny, small and medium, and the older kid traveling
solo and sitting behind me was refusing to let the old man his place by the
window,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“La2! Ana jeet ablak!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Also, there was a faint smell of shit from the seat in front
of me…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Something was keeping the line of people from proceeding. A
German man’s seat was taken and for the next three minutes, while the air
hostess negotiated with the occupying Arab forces, his forehead was a frozen
ripple of bewilderment: how could someone possibly take over a seat that was
not assigned to them to begin with? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Looking at him, I was beginning to look forward to a week of
adhering to unspoken yet obvious rules of social decorum, to rigidity, to
public transportation and the basic normality of the Western world. I always secretly
reveled in the moment when our queue of arrivals would split between EU and All
Passports. I am grateful (to whom I know not!) that I was born in the “right”
place at the right time. How unfair and unjust these borders are! How base it
is to restrict or facilitate people’s movement based on where they were born
and yet, this is the most institutionalized form of racism. Who knows, maybe
one day, I will be as unwelcome and I will cringe at the memory of the walk
past queues of tired all passport holders…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the bus, vapour billowing from gaping mouths around me, I
witnessed yet another breach of etiquette. Two young men, hair gelled, muscled
arms exposed, sat unperturbed next to a standing couple weighed down by bags
and a baby. The other seats reserved for mothers and the elderly were occupied
by a Lebanese couple in their late twenties, which joined in the silent
orchestra of disregard. I threw them suggestive glances – nada. I could feel
anger begin to stir inside of me, “How can you be so inconsiderate? I had
better manners when I was five!”. But I said nothing. If the parents were
inconvenienced or afraid about the baby’s safety during the bus ride, wouldn’t
the husband or wife say something? They had every right and they weren’t deaf
or mute or blind. I wouldn’t be fighting injustice, rather lethargy and/or
timidity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet now, I wish I had intervened. How can better manners be
taught if bad etiquette isn’t punished nor exposed? I look at the people
walking through this European airport – they may not come off as warm or
approachable at first glance, but they sure make life easier by not standing in
the way (as opposed to doorway conversation – a new Lebanese trend), by not
talking loudly on their phones, by not whipping out cigarettes in the middle of
the airport (even though indoor smoking has been banned for a month now, I
could smell smoke as I walked to Gate 19 in Beirut Int’l Airport) and by not jumping
queues. I really wish these social efforts<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a> caught on
someday in the Middle East. Just like spelling and grammar mistakes make
reading unpleasant, the same relationship can be drawn between bad etiquette
and the quality of life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In here, lies a lesson for me – Be. On. Time.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-67757419209543843102012-10-20T22:58:00.001+03:002012-10-25T14:04:11.167+03:00ninety-three<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">21:51:07</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless at a distance from Beirut.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Red messaged me “Are you safe?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Exactly twenty four hours had passed since the blast in Achrafieh that cast a heavy shadow over our glazed eyes, and I was beginning to wonder whether this guy really cared about me or whether he watched every TV channel but the news.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was safe and I was happy. I was happy to escape into a corner of the country where I could love it with all my heart. The sea was a blanket of golden oil, one with the sky, and Yamamoto and I were zooming towards the blinding sun, our screams of free at last, free at last diving in and out of the waves and the wind pockets we left in tow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Let’s go to Cyprus!!! Yamamoto, shafte, shafte!”</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And she was a glorious driver, my peals of joyous laughter justifying the tears in my eyes. We saw nothing but a soft blurred horizon, a barely visible line between nude lipstick and skin, something of an allegory for the days to come.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“After yesterday, khallas, I am not neutral anymore, this is not normal…”</i>, her voice filled the car on our way to Batroun.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">No more neutral. No more neutered balls. No more neutered innocence and innocent lives. “Patriarch, Mufti condemn the blast”, I read that morning on some .com. Tell us something new old men, because we commend the new, because we condemn your century-old neutered balls and we commend the new. This is no country for old men who struggle with creative writing, who plagiarize pages of dated history and cheat and pay their way to a passing grade. Let’s face it – you are failures and you have failed us. All of you old-timers have failed your people, your people and every single one of your Gods is witness to your failure. I don’t know how you sleep at night or swallow your food or sound your sirens when you bully us on the road, when you bully us with your cancerous roadblocks and your cancerous ideals. I don’t know how you wash your hands, how you dry your dirty laundry in the public square nor how you came to be so apt in self-brainwash. There is nothing noble or honourable you can do for this rich (now depleted) magnificent (now scarred) ancient (still stuck) land that you were lucky to be born in, but do not deserve to walk on, let alone serve. There is nothing noble or honourable you can do because you, when alone in your head or with your sacred book on your head, cannot even serve yourself the truth that you are failures, failures, failures. Any self-respecting well-meaning man or woman would either retreat or try harder and harder and harder until implosion. Instead, you jerk off upon all of us and spread your defunct, impaired, curdled semen into hollow craniums that may as well have been dug up from some Stone Age mass grave. We condemn your frustrated strokes and tugs and your impotent cloudy trickles, and most of all we condemn your demand for us to swallow. No more swallow, no more neutral, we condemn the whole lot of you. We don’t want you. We want new.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-3505188060000277622012-10-19T14:39:00.000+03:002012-10-19T14:39:14.471+03:00ninety-two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">12:01:21</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m slightly fazed and confused in Beirut.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Last night proved memorable; or so says my text message to
Flutterby:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“We is high, drunk and in a convertible. If I die, I’m an
idiot. But I love you all!” followed by an audio note in which my friends
demand me who I am writing to over some bad dance music, <i>“What?!”</i>, I yell back <i>“I am
reporting my possible death.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now that I’m alive and unscathed, I feel that I may have
exag…actually no, that drive was pretty scary! I sat at the back, as their arms
waved in the air and their bodies danced to a song I didn’t know, I couldn’t see
how close to collision we could come, and the wind in my hair was wildly
playful, and the avoiding of potholes excited and frisky.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sitting in the back, rather immobilized by the ominous
cockpit and the Madonna-sponsored OMG party – words that I kept repeating over
and over again as I prayed for the consistency in Foux’s usually reliable
driving skills – I tried coaxing my mind into letting go that one extra neuron.
But I was handicapped - the grass had indeed been greener for the front half of
the car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I filmed their antics for future sober-day viewing at the
red light, Yamamoto turned around with her ever-lecturing finger, <i>“You’re not better than us!”</i> and
continued waving her arms in the air.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was only until we approached her home that Foux’s idea to
stop in the middle of a residential street with speakers in epileptic blare had
her stretch her arm and discretely decrease the volume bit by bit. Diplomatic
party-pooping party-loving Yamamoto – her gesture made me smile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As she was leaving the car, Foux asked her to say it. I had
no idea what was going on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“I can’t say it”,</i>
tried to break free Yamamoto from the chains of their inside joke.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Koussi mwal3a,”</i> I
heard Foux’s tongue and flaming lips splutter <i>“Say it Yamamoto, say it!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was now in the front passenger seat and Foux turned to me,
<i>“Chou? B0?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Yalla, B0!”</i> I
said half-convinced. And in a cloud of dust, exhaust and titanium we zoomed
through Beirut to sour smelly Qarantina.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Don’t worry about
anything! We’ll just walk in like divas!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It had been our years old vintage dream to go there together,
and finally the fantasy came true: our figures made their wobbly way down the
stairs into 80s kitsch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Foux was the perfect lead. He took me firmly by the hand and
into the middle of the club, spun me, threw me, caught me (or didn’t!), held
me, swayed me and after one shared drink of vodka-orange, he leaned in and… </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“I don’t mean to brag,
but I have been told that I’m really good,”</i> he had once said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hands up, defense down, he was amazing. Despite our
friendship and in spite of everything that would’ve normally deemed this
irrational and irregular behavior, it felt surreally appropriate for our
fantasy night out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I felt a tap on my shoulder. I moved to let the tapper
through. Tap, tap again. I turned around and saw an all-too familiar face at an
all-too wrong timing. My mind spelled w-h-a-a-a-t-?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">No this was not happening, no I had not mistakenly
subscribed to awkward weekly, my mind was still on the a-a-a- part when he
said, <i>“Hey.”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And I say…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">…all the wrong things, because I am unprepared for this scenario.
My train of thought had sent all its carriages in a wide-eyed frantic search
for easy let downs, curtsy retreats and possible reconciliations, but all it
could make out was a lonely steaming engine caught between two advancing cargo
loads. Here we go…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What are you doing
here? I didn’t expect to see you. I wish you had told me you were coming. This
is awkward.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was no more smoky mist hanging in the air to conceal
disappointment, frustration or any other facial contortion that should not
normally appear to Bon Jovi screaming “it’s my life, it is now or never” to the
jolly crowd that for a moment thought it would live forever. Tomorrow would
come, and tomorrow would still be awkward with a quivering a-a-a-. The
situation was crystal clear and surprisingly well lit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Caught in between what first looked like an exchange of
words, then an argument, then a friendly retreat on Foux’s part, I was hoping
somebody would take a hint.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had first met Joos on a dance floor back in April. It was
only four months later that we bumped into one another again. Yamamoto was a
friend in common and he seemed like a pretty cool character to add to the mix.
He was fun and he was funny and I was glad he wasn’t fluent in awkward, so the
bumping into became a scheduled event and it looked like Joos was staying on
the menu. I was open to the possibility that somehow, somewhere I would meet a
guy who would not read into my sociability and no-fuss attitude as an
invitation to find a hidden agenda behind good chemistry. Most people told me I
was delusional, <i>“and especially in
Lebanon!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Maybe I took <i>“He’s
just not that into you”</i> book too seriously and maybe I wrongly expected of
others to be versed in its rather basic philosophy, but if I were <i>into </i>you, you would know. But as Key
explained to me <i>“girls here are passive”</i>
and anything short of bitchy can easily be interpreted as a green light. So I
say…poor Joos! I would hate to be in his maladroit shoes! What a chore it must
be to be a man in the dating game – no wonder there are PUAs and AFCs and
forums that teach men how to upgrade their status from beta to alpha. And as
much as I feel bad for the men who must measure every single one of our moves
against some self-professed love guru’s calibrations, I feel just as sad for
the women who are taught from day one that they must wait for the knight in
shining armor to slay the dragon and rescue them from their tower. The dragon
might as well be the future in-laws, the tower built with the bricks of
patriarchy, and the knight just a poor consequence of the two with a bad case
of the Madonna-whore complex – which Virgin Gaga wouldn’t grow her hair to
escape this nuthouse? The answer is – very few.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Poor Joos and poor me – screwed by two ends of the same
system.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But all this empathy and self-pity comes later. I tug Foux
by his arm and tell him that I want to leave. <i>“But we are having fun!”</i> he whines!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Eventually, he goes up for a last smoke, while I
ineffectively try to butter the Joos dilemma with worthless peanuts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Who is that guy? Is
he your ex-boyfriend?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“I can’t tell you.
It’s complicated.”</i> I exacerbated the situation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Is he even
straight?!”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had had enough. What the hell was this? Jerry Springer?
The “makhasne” switch in my head was flicked. You brought this upon yourself
Joos, and I didn’t need or want to make it clearer to you any longer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t need to
explain myself. I have to go, the car is here.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You’re leaving?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“With him?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Why?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Because I’m going
back with him!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Why?!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Because I came with
him!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The glamour of dialogue under influence didn’t stop there.
In the car, Foux just kept repeating, <i>“I’m
so fucked.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was glad to get away from the hellpad, our arms were up in
the air, the wind blowing<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a> them clean…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the parking lot, in the car, under the gaze of the
uniformed McDonald’s drive-thru boy, we dug into a happy meal, and kissed
between the bites of sin-filled heaven.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“We are not going
to…!”</i>, announced Foux, clearly entertaining the opposite possibility, in
light of his two week old adventure with his ex.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We didn’t, but instead we stopped the car in the middle of
nowhere and danced self-indulgently beneath a street lamp. When the song was
over, we hopped back into the car, and as I turned to fasten my seatbelt, the
cops were already by Foux’s side, their window down, not saying a word, two
pairs of eyes looking at us. We tried to squeeze every ounce of sobriety and
innocence unto our facials expressions. An intense stare later, they motioned
for us to drive in front of them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Drive. Sloooowly.” </i>I
squealed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“<i>We’re so fucked.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-35344924775289221142012-10-08T18:42:00.002+03:002012-10-08T18:42:49.080+03:00ninety-one<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">18:22:13<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut, the sun setting behind me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m excited about tonight. There will be the cool evening
breeze, the smell of jasmine, the buzz of conversations and the promise of
laughter, cheer and unknown faces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My skin is still warm from the sun and slightly gluey with
sunscreen. Earlier, as I was rubbing it on to the objections of Foux, my
tanorexic friend, I breathed in the memory of <a href="http://sleeplessbeirut.blogspot.com/2010/06/two.html"><span style="color: red;">Botticelli</span></a> and I at the beach. It
was one of the very few times we had left his apartment together. I can count
them on one hand. Yet now, I’m about to run out of fingers to bend – over nine
months have passed since we’ve last spoken.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He had called me up one day, maybe a week after our second
meeting since my return from Paris, to tell me that he wanted to cut things off
between us. Completely. Not even for the time being. And I knew he was
stubborn, but I didn’t expect this. For over half a year I would feel uneasy at
the slight thought of him. I feared bumping into him, and I thanked heavens he
was a social recluse. It was only that one night in Hamra, as I was walking
with friends on the main street, past Madinat Theatre, that I saw him standing
on the curb, his heavy leather bag tugging on his shoulder, his face in musing contemplation
as he watched the traffic and people go by. I felt a heavy blow to my chest and
grabbed my friend by her elbow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Do not look to your
right, just keep on walking, just keep on walking,”</i> I said clenching my
teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She didn’t question me and only when we had reached the
church I told her that I had just seen Botticelli. I wondered whether he had
seen me and I wonder whether he had felt a similar blow. Secretly I wished the
sight of me would melt his heart and I kept checking my phone…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are days when I wish I could just call him up like I
used to and share with him snippets of life and observations that I know he
would appreciate. And if those months ago he had felt rejected, how I was I
supposed to feel? I hadn’t but refused to indulge in what had made my
relationship with him torturous (and I guess, for him, worthwhile?). He blamed
me for being dishonest, for having changed and I just didn’t want to take
things in a direction that didn’t feel right. When we had first met, all I
wanted was to be with him, and he would just retreat like plastic from fire
until I’d fall into the trap of accepting the unspoken terms, over and over
again. We would meet every so and so, but the breaks in between were necessary
for him, and then eventually for me, until I grew out of the idea that this was
what I could handle. In simple terms, I couldn’t be present physically, if he
wasn’t there for me continuously. And to think I rejected him…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And then to hear Red say, <i>“I love your smell. You smell the same way you did all those years ago.
Oh, and your freckles, I love them too.”</i> And he was referring to the
unsightly sunspots on my shoulders!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We were now sitting side by side on the 62<sup>nd</sup>
floor, at the end of the U-shaped couch that held all our childhood friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Don’t go,”</i> I
pleaded with him <i>“Stay with me. You can
always go on this trip another time, but who knows when I’ll be back!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I placed my hand on his inner arm to stroke his soft
hairs, he smiled, <i>“You know you have this
power over me!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I didn’t want to corner him, but I was dying to hear him say
he chose me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Fine, I won’t go. But
we’ll spend time together, yes?!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I explained my situation, that I would have to see more of
my family before traveling, and he understood and still, he didn’t go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By the end of the night, we were five. Red, Flutterby, two
boys and I – the original crew! Downstairs at the cabstand, we decided to head
over to my place to keep the night going.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was so touched to see these grown friends sit in the
candlelight of my porch, flirting, conversing, but I was most happy to just
have Red, sometimes in the kitchen, and sometimes by my side. By five in the morning, at the sound of the
first adhan, the boys were getting ready to head home; the cab would arrive in
minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I signaled to Red that he could stay over, that I wanted him
to stay over, but I didn’t want to insist to a crowd of candlelit faces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As soon as he was out the door, I texted him, <i>“I still don’t get why. What’s wrong with
sleeping over? What’s wrong with a pajama party? Pillow fight? (note the
innocent terms)”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Nothing is wrong, but
I can’t with your family there, plus Flutterby, doesn’t feel right.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You think too much.
You think too far. It would’ve been nice to have a 5hr hug.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Ok I’m coming”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Power to my power, I wanted to do a victory dance! Within
minutes, he was back at the door, still hesitant, still anxious and still
over-thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What if your mom sees
me?!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My argument was that nothing was going to happen, that my
mom was a fellow human being and that we weren’t kids anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I felt slightly guilty that I had brought Red into
Flutterby’s and my sleepover, but I just kept hoping she’d remember the
previous night when she had proposed the same scenario herself. In the end, I
knew she would understand that I needed this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You just slept?!”</i>,
she later asked <i>“Why didn’t you just let
it happen?!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In my room, with the skies brightening, he sat on the edge
of the bed to remove his shoes, his shirt, <i>“Do
you have a T-shirt?”</i>, he asked, and I thought <i>“There is no way you’re going to wear a T-shirt with this body!”, </i>to
take off of his jeans, <i>“Do you have
shorts?”, </i>and I let him have his shorts, the same shorts we were obliged to
wear to the gym in high school, the same shorts I once tipex-ed with obscenities
(along with a covert egg in his gym shoes) and was punished with that same egg
at high-speed to the back of my head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“No kissing,”</i> I
said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was the best sleep I had in a very long time.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-36387245622200935252012-10-03T16:33:00.002+03:002012-10-03T16:33:43.680+03:00ninety<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">23:11:24<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut, my feet upon a mound of bedsheets,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">and still recovering from being sleepless in between time
zones. The lost hours are not lost at all, they just accumulate and grow into a
tumor of heavy and laggard until you can do nothing but vanquish it by stamping
your face into a pillow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The empty stretch of bed to my left is where I came to the
last inch of my conclusion: this kid needs at least ten more years to feel like
a man. Excel was fun, he hardly ever bored me, he was brainy, he had managed to
acquire good taste in music over the last few years, he was quirky and he was
cute. Seeing him asleep in the morning I only felt slightly sad that something
was stunting his growth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You want me to be
more serious?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s not a question of
being fun or serious, it’s about maturity. You’re so jumpy sometimes, hopping
from one idea to the next without letting the other person finish.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“You know, you’re
right, you’re right. I’m so stressed at work that it plays with my mind. It’s
probably my medication,” </i>and he went on to explain his mild anxiety
disorder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“How long have you
been taking it?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“For about a year.
After that time in Paris…”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was referring to the weekend he came to visit me. Despite
his nervous state, so intense that even I was slightly disturbed, it was one of
the best times we spent together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Stop fidgeting! I
can’t sleep like this!”</i> I had told him off on his first night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On the last day we went for a long walk along the Seine,
into the Marais, through the galleries of Centre Pompidou and the Jardin des
Tuilleries. By the time we had two hours left to his departing train, it was
like a comedy of love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We laid on the grass beneath the overcast sky, crows picking
at leftover biscuits, his shirt over my naked shoulders and my head on his lap.
Looking at the scattered couples around us, for once I felt like I was living
the Parisian postcard. In the urgency of the last moment, it was pure and
innocent. I even wished he’d miss his train.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But we made it on time to the Gare du Nord, separating in
the tunnel that linked it to the Gare de l’Est. I may have been a little sad,
but having grown so used to dealing with separation, I only texted him with a
wish for a safe return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Come to think of it, Excel and I only ever lived such moments:
a day here, two days there. Yet, sitting here with him in the early hours of
the morning I felt like I was less engaged. Perhaps if I hadn’t met Red in
Dubai, I would have allowed myself to be seduced by the idea of making it work
with this boy with whom I played house with in 4<sup>th</sup> grade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Do you see us
together?”</i> I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Let’s just say that
whenever I’m with another girl, I always see you in the corner with a
disapproving look.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I didn’t need to dig further. He hadn’t answered the
question, the ground beneath us was still firm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">An hour later, it was Red standing in the room and I wished
instead that it were himself he was watching. I could only imagine how much
more ignited and intense everything would be. I closed my eyes and Excel was no
more.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975010358106672623.post-73474879032405459482012-09-30T17:58:00.000+03:002012-09-30T17:58:13.715+03:00eighty-nine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">17:43:53<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’m sleepless in Beirut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My second cup of espresso has just been emptied and my phone
is constantly by my side – a week of revisiting old friendships has left me
hungry and tired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I have laid to rest the question of home, at least for now.
I mustn’t shake my ground every chance I get. It’s a fact: my heart has been
split into four. I’ve rooted each cut in four different corners of the globe
and I have no choice but to appreciate the fact that every time I return, they
will be there waiting for me to nurture them further.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">During my flight, I had decided that for the moment my place
was here in Beirut. It didn’t deserve to be dismissed just because I had
allowed my life to stagnate. Beirut was not the problem, I was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And it was a challenge to turn around in the airplane and
see that it was barely making quarter capacity, to walk through a ghost filled
airport and into a loud argument between taxi drivers, past the soldiers adorned
with death hanging from shoulder straps, to have a random volunteer ignore me
as he stuffed the suitcase into the bulimic trunk, to get to Achrafieh in
10minutes on a Saturday night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Are you sure nothing
is happening that they haven’t shared on the news?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">to wake up tired, to have salesladies expect some kind of
good service <i>from</i> me, to see young
men do wheelies on the southern highway at 120km/hr, to pray that the shaky
wheel doesn’t tip one millimeter extra and scar me for life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What good could come from entertaining provocation? I nursed
the scattered irritations to rest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The entire day I couldn’t find peace, and when I found
myself in the sea of evening traffic flowing back to Beirut, I couldn’t escape
myself. My guts were churning with anxious moths, smoke was billowing out the
window like I was on a freight train and my voice was at its peak rapping the
same four songs over and over again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Somewhere near the airport tunnel I spotted the Red flag. I
was missing him damn it. I just wished he were here so I could walk him through
this gallery of Bacons and Dalis. Red would always listen. He’d put on such a
patient show that it seemed he was rethinking the same thoughts and feeling the
same emotions so that he could – one moment – get back to me on the matter. And
it was never soiled with judgment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So I caved in to my expectations of him and sent him a short
text<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Am I silly to not be
able to get you out of my head?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t feel silly,
so you shouldn’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Immediately, the tranquilizer was released. Somehow, I felt
less guilty about last night. I wondered whether I should tell him, but it
would have been the entertainment of provocation. Ever since we broke up on
that Valentine’s Day at school, there was no deal to betray. I cared about him
deeply and…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m going to bed, but
I felt I have to share this: care is an understatement when it comes to u, you
bring the best out in me, if that makes sense. I need people like that in my
life. Want you to know that.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was ecstatic to receive this in the midst of the comedy
that was going on at the table. For a long second, I felt like I was safe to
make a fool out of myself here tonight because someone out there thought that I
was immune to falling low. Bringing out the best in someone? It made sense.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Moments later, Excel called. He was waiting to board the
plane. I was glad we would once again have distance between us because now I
was sure: Red felt like home and Excel was a public holiday.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
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