fifty-nine

22:53:12


I'm sleepless in Paris.


The smell of something metallic would occasionally waft over from the right. It couldn't be braces. Would he taste of coins if I were to kiss him? His chair kept squeaking and he would sigh once in a while. I had chosen the movie and I was beginning to feel a little guilty.

"Oui, j'ai bien aimé, c'était assez fort comme histoire...les vrais rednecks, une vie dure..."

We walked to the metro station next to my house. Two cheek bounces and he disappeared into the Parisian underground network.

Phone buzzes.

"Je t'aurais bien embrassé, mais le film et toutes ces images s'y prétaient pas trop je crois..."

"Mais il y avait des chatons et des poussins!"

"Tu as dit que tu croyais que les chatons étaient des rats..."

"Pour un murmure je dirai n'importe quoi"

"Murmure"

There is something about the French language that let's slide the cheesiness. Nounours, chou, poussin - I'll sign upon delivery. But you can't put "baby" on my corner, I'll take the long way home, merci.

Yet, I couldn't figure it out. That Friday night out I didn't capture any signs of interest, at least not something that a couple of beers couldn't explain, so I began to spin my own web of ex's and why's.

Sobriquet, he knew Pope well. They were buddies, they walked in front of each other naked, they slept to each other's midnight moans and sighs, they might have even shared more than just circumstances and what if, I was to be a continuity of this brotherly sharing is caring saga?

I always introduce suspicions to my beautiful boys. Skin like wax, planted stubble, a spritz of cool, an I-know-where-I-come-from swagger, opinions to declare and stories to wear, a walking-talking best supporting actor replica and this is where I pause the film to think, "Was I cast for the right role?" because hey, I've got insecurities too and preconceptions about facial symmetry and your The Kooples shirt. Beautiful boys remind me of Calvin Klein campaigns, a lot of promises on a piece of paper and a pair of socks for stuffing.

Am I handsomacist? Perhaps. And I blame the media, in part, just as I blame the media for one-sided preconceptions about race and religion and foreign societies. But if media has the power to turn people against people, it takes the power of medium to turn people into persons 
and that medium is conversation.

We spoke and soon enough I picked up on signs of shyness and insecurities not so foreign to my own and I said to myself that posters are permeable and that this boy is beautiful, glossy print or not. That this Beninian knows about my problems too. That this Jew doesn't wish for my death either. That if we speak and listen, we might hear our own echo. That this world isn't ours, but yours is and it's a small plot of land to purge of contempt and prejudice.

So I'll pick up my mop, wipe those suspicions away and take Sobriquet at face value: someone without a hidden agenda, someone who has enough time for me in his agenda to merit enough trust on my part. It's only a little bit of cleaning.

fifty-eight

11:39:58

I’m slave to the Sunday laze.

Sweet temptations sundae sweet creep up on me with the first entry of a white sun caress on the wall, sliding, stretching.

I remember a night of camping in the forest of summer endings. Two hundred steps from the gentle rustling reeds massaged by the lake’s waters. The sunset, a burst of acrylic saturations, and then the wash of nocturnal indigo slowly sipped by the horizon.

My mom and her friends sat around the fire reminiscing about the long-gone braids and ribbons, pleated skirts and playground rumours. The flames licked their words, and sparks flew up to the sky to join the countless constellations.

They were neighbours growing up, flats 3 and 4. 3 married first and moved closer to the sea. 4 packed her bags and leaped over to the greener side. We stayed with them my fifth summer, and their daughter learned to walk. We’d both turn our heads when they called our names, there was always something yummy in the kitchen.

I remember the army of ants that invaded the guest room, and the colourful quilt that my mom’s friend had knitted, and the mechanical drill I stole from uncle’s toolbox to make a hole in a pebble I had chosen from millions that groaned beneath our sandals as we walked along the shore.

I remember wishing we’d live with them forever. His face was kind and he’d play games with us after coming home from work, and her laugh always seemed to rise from her belly, rosy cheeks and quivers of young mother fat, and the little one a miniature curiosity who followed me around.

They opened a second bottle of wine, laughter became louder all around the campsite, towers of smoke rose above the swaying trees and the young blood gathered near the shore to whisper, first kiss, to warm their hands on bellies.

I kept stealing glances. His eyelids were heavier now, his smile stickier and my affection for him never dead, but in the light of flames and flickers, different.

He wanted to take photos of stars and I knew my way with the pushing of the right buttons.

“It’s easy, come, I’ll show you.”

"Sure."

"But we have to move away from light. Let's go to the shore."

His wife glanced at us getting up, I thought I caught something in her look, but I dismissed it as a shadow of a criminal's guilt.

We walked slowly in the dark, the sand sinking into my shoes, he took my hand to keep me steady and my head, suddenly drained of blood, jumped over boundaries that someone with a broken angry heart drew for us on marble tablets.

We sat down. His arm warm and firm against mine, no silly boyish girth, but biceps that split up fire wood with single strokes, leeched me of everything I ever knew. No knowledge, just focus, intense like a pilot's concentration. Steady now, steady. Take pictures of the stars. The shutter speed set on bulb. My focus set on that piece of skin.

He lit up and gave me to try. I knew we were both there. You know these things. Like infectious vibrations of tuning forks, desire is detectable even in blindness. You can hear the pupils dilate, smell the exhaust of testosterone, feel the rush of blood away from the head. With a focus so intense, you cannot but hear the mechanics of their thoughts.

He put it out in the sand and we lingered there, side by side. I wanted to kiss him so badly, that now it's easy to remember that I did.

But the kiss escaped us.

"We should probably head back."

"Yeah."

He held my hand until we saw the silhouettes of wife and mother we were so close to betray.

fifty-seven

22:43:48

I’m sleepless in Paris.

Today I came across the term “touch and go woman”. If you search the term online, you will come across a wide range of interpretations, but I’ve come to adopt my own: someone who likes to get a taste of, but never stick around, her departure being vague and non-finite.

If I retrospect, it’s something I’ve been guilty of, but without the burden of guilt. Most of my relationships dwindled; that is to say, their endings never as abrupt as the snipping off of an umbilical cord. And I like that. I like that because I have come to amass an address book of worn down, yet unbroken ties.

There is a place of memory that I like to call The Morgue. It is a basement of past relationships and depending on your own story, it goes down a couple of levels.

A level for your broken or lost family ties.

A level for your handicapped friendships.

A level for your shattered hearts.

The Morgue is not the same as The Cemetery. The Cemetery holds those we will never forgive or those who will never come back to life. The Cemetery is not void of life. You revisit now and again, when something triggers the memory of that person, you pause at their tombstone and then walk away. Some things just cannot be undone.

The Morgue is that in between zone, where we house those we cannot let go of. Cadavers are at our disposal to be revisited, dissected and scrutinized, to be pardoned, to be chilled for a Cryonic Era.

My mnemonic landscape is comprised of a tiny cemetery and a very large morgue. I have troubled letting go.

The skewed confession of a monophobe.

Perhaps confessing to monophobia is taking it a little far, but then again, what are all those blue bodies doing in my closet?

Lulu, Botticelli, Freud, Capitalyst, Leon, The Pope, Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him not even Balding, have been buried. I even see them from time to time, outside The Morgue, where it smells of fresh beginnings. To paint them better, to turn their skin pink.

I saw The Pope the other week. We had drinks in Le Marais. He is the only one that stands out amongst the list. We called it quits back in Beirut, an official break-up.

I was a little shaky about meeting him, but all that got buried beneath the layer of getting lost and walking up and down wrong streets until I finally found number 78.

We sipped on white wine and caught up with each other’s lives, all the while seated, the cold slowly gnawing through the layers of coats and sweaters and T-shirts, until we could sit it through no more. He dropped me home and we promised each other a homely dinner in the weeks to come.

But as one corpse rots, other beings come to life. Out of the blue, or perhaps from underneath a pretext I have yet to trip on, Sobriquet, a friend of The Pope’s who I knew only vaguely, decided to put an end to my social emergency. He has opened the doors to a Paris that I would normally need a couple of months to arrive at.

I consider myself lucky, for Sobriquet has not been the sole hero. Roquette and Bonbonheur have allowed me to play my anonymous little game until the moment we found ourselves face to face. There is nothing more thrilling than meeting a walking definition of stranger, although I must say I did envy their position. I knew enough to know they were not psychopaths, too much information for thrills and chills, while I kept them guessing till the very last minute. 


I'd like to not know for a change.

It takes a certain amount of fascination, a certain humbleness in the face of the unknown and a certain amount of trust in goodness and sincerity. If there should ever be a pandemic, it should be of this unbruised mindset.

Volume VII

Click on the link below to access the recording.

Track 7:

Navigo

fifty-six

18:22:39

I'm having a strawberry mojito on Rue St.Andre-des-Arts.

So being alone is taking a little effort. I placed myself in the middle of two couples, red tiny circular empty tables on either side. The waiter moves me next to the French speaking couple, just to help me eavesdrop.

The seat is barely an A4 paper in length. "Dix euros Madame svp."

It's Sunday evening, I'll be hearing everyone until I fall asleep, mainly tourists and late-monday-morning French licking their last drop of poison.

Happy hour not so happy, I'd rather be the noisy laughter in the street, an annoyance to the driver, une vedette devant ses phares.

I keep myself busy with the caramel coated peanuts. I did leave home to find a patisserie, but thought I'd exercise my solitude. And to my surprise, it feels out of shape. So much for regaling all about it.

Even the movies I watch are of little help. I find myself walking hand in hand with leading men, chiseled fellows, testosterone Frankensteins, powder room residents. I dreamed of men and all I got was strangers, grandfatherly tufts of silver chicken wires in the après-midi seance. And I know that when you want a hand to hold, you get elbowed. I should want solitude, but it can't be forced, you have to let it creep up on you.

It's always people that make you feel lonely. Reminders of what it felt like. But if people are projections of how you want to be perceived, then why is it so hard to see yourself in their absence?

Perhaps it's not people, perhaps it's more specific, like people you can hear. Try as much as you want but you always end up knowing what each table is talking about. Why are words the hardest to ignore? Is it because you hope they will provide the hook for you to reel them in closer to you? Even if people have been nothing but disappointing, there is always the slim hope of finding better in a new city. And you fall for it every time.

Volume VI

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Track 6:

Like Three Six

fifty-five

11:51:59

I’m in Paris.

The city of a monumentally pierced skyline has taken me beneath its broken zinc membrane. Every morning, I wake up as though on a little boat floating on a sea of slopes and bobbing chimneys. Going down unto the street feels very much like a descent into depths, into an other world. These two worlds lie close to one another, like oil over water. The static and silent Paris of roofs and the vibrant and at times aggressive Paris of the streets.

It does not take much to fall in love. In the popular sense, lovers come here to celebrate their love, but I don’t think Paris is the ideal backdrop. I think Paris is the place to discover love.

Love is a word I hate to use. It’s too ambiguous and too liable to personal interpretation. But I think Paris and Love are both supplementary and complimentary to one another, almost interchangeable. They can mean and bring so many different things. Practically indefinable.

Here, I breathe freedom; personal, inner freedom. In spite of having been here many times before, I am free of the previous. It feels a little like the fantasy of being reborn into the world, free of the patterns of the life you lived, but with the memory and awareness that can only be acquired over time. Clean of the nuisances of people, it is a time for me to be alone and to learn why I once was my best friend. That close relationship I had harvested between me, myself and I as a single child has been lost in the multitudes of largely useless social transactions. I say transactions because according to personal observations, the majority of people are ready to settle for less, a residual conversation, a half-conscious thrashing in bed, in order to avoid an awkward silence, a sit-in with no one but themselves. Somehow, we fail to see that this particular silence is rich. It is easy to think that every moment of nothing should be spent fiddling with your Blackberry, your iPad, your mp3 player. We have forgotten that our ancestors used to go to great lengths, climb great mountains, build sacred spaces, to embrace introspection.

Here, I can roam alone without feeling conspicuous, sit in a café and watch people, or write, or read, without feeling like I’m something special – in Beirut, I’ve almost always caught myself with a perverse vanity on my shoulder.

I can explore me. The streets guide me, and all I have to do is walk.

I love, the anonymity. I love, the play of un/familiarity. I love, the technicality of not being a tourist.

Volume V

Click on the link below to access the recoding.

Track 5:

A Recital Stumbled Upon

Volume IV

Click on the link below to access the recoding.

Track 4:

You have to Take Off to Land

fifty-four

01:51:23


I'm sleepless in Beirut.


We woke up to the sound of twittering birds and the hammering of something to be renovated. The sky was finally back in the court of the Ministry of Tourism, but the air still fresh and loyal to the chilly season.


We stayed in bed for a long stretch. My head was still bobbing in a sea of amaretto sours; getting up and starting the day felt like a mission fit for Columbus. I wanted to stagnate, sink into the creases of ruffled bedsheets, unmove forever. That is the nature of mornings - like the discomfort of holding your pee, but opposite, unhysterical, not urgent, but potent and wanting. A case of pillow for a toilet bowl.


Later, finally out of bed and dressed in double layers, first mine that his, I looked out the window and realised that leaving Beirut will not be so easy.


"Never buy a one-way ticket - it's bad luck.", I was once advised.


I'm not susceptible to superstitions, but I do know that life has a funny way of shifting our petty plans for the benefit of a greater scheme, so whether I have a one-way or two-way, is not going to matter.


Looking out unto the building across, sunlight the perfect hue, I ran the scenario of NO-RETURN and caught it just before I could toss it into the nonsense bin. It played to a dramatic soundtrack, percussion exaggerated, mood intense. 


"What if?", I had to ask.


Suddenly, Paris became the newborn baby that took mommy away. It shrieked in foreign, face wrinkled like a crumpled tissue, its folds, milky, sticky, sex-shop-signboard red faced, rejecting mother's nipple, crying cold cold rain, diapers stuffed with metro soot.


I had to ask because ever until this moment I was too busy thinking about going, but never about leaving. Never about leaving because I...


...might...


...just...


...reconsider.


I don't reconsider things I'm sure of. Paris was it. Paris is it. It's what I've always wanted. But always is not a word fir for our lifetime and always is somewhere after the end of change and change is  the only thing I ever really needed, thus Paris is not it. Nothing will ever be it. Everything lies in transition. The moment when you were half stuck between your mother's legs, somewhere between conception and birth. That is what I'm after: the in-betweens.


But in spite of its static geodisposition, Beirut somehow succeeded in being a time frame rather than a destination. In part because I always felt I'd leave, eventually, or it would collapse under me, or I'd fall in love and replace it. Yet also because the air here is heavy with imminence. We know not when, but we know it could be, might be, should be, anytime, whenever, somehow, sometimes, soon. Beirut never sleeps. She never stops to think and in that lies both her beauty and her own destruction.


Careless scarred stripped wild child running into walls
Crumbling.
Crackling wires on her head, sparks and power cuts for bows, ties,
Ribbons of urine trickle in her bed, no river could wash away
Stains. Bullet holes. P.As of love, telephone numbers off bathroom walls.
Misunderstood misguided mad wild thing stumbling through the door
Intoxicated.
Tight in stockings and market things, sharing her one thing in exchange for
Shimmers and glitters and sky high stilettos. And uh-ohs
Resound in the backs of her minds. And oh-nos escape the nostalgic mouths.
Yes, uh-ohs and oh-ohs as she's fucked day and night.
Loud sweaty smiling wild kinky puss, looking to the ceiling laying on the floor
Lifeless.

Volume III

Click on the link below to access the recoding.

Track 3:

Windows and Guitar Strings

Volume II

Click on the link below to access the recording.


Track 2:
Dimlit

Volume I

You have been reading, but now it's time to listen. Sleepless in Beirut brings to you the sounds of her delectable city.


Click on the link below to access the recording.


Track 1:
Night Expedition

fifty-three

21:41:45

I'm sleepless in Beirut.

Come fire. Come rain. Come thunder. Come puddles.

The crackle of TVs in a silent street.

The pitter patter on the window like fingers drumming on the door.

The heavy thuds of neighbours shake the walls and floor.

The dripping showerhead on the bathroom tiles, water spreads beyond the cracks.

Days sew themselves together, a patchwork quilt of this and that, and
only the sound of needle poking through the fabric announce a new day
coming.

New ways to amputate time's swifty flight? I don't have any, except
the wait: it weighs you down to sit and watch the floor that's always
still and firm.

See anticipation doesn't do the trick, it moves you. Anticipation.
Even the sound of the word is happening, it's like a gust of wind
dispersing leaves, reeds, hair, whatever.

Waiting. Like a yawn, an early morning pulling you unwilling out of
bed. An ocean of stretch and drag.

Like the "and" between push and pull, I stand victim to them both.
Waiting. Anticipating.

But mainly wanting. Craving for escape and change. The problems here
are not mine. But then again they are, and then again...I cannot
imagine solving them without a gun. Eight and fourteen bullets, fired
in all flying colours. Fire works?

Fireworks.

Wouldn't that be a celebration!

My aim is good, no doubt. I doubt I'd do it though. So I choose to
leave and hope some other coward with a big idea turns brave.

Changes. We all want some big fucking changes.

But we wait, anticipate, the car arrives, 5,000 L.L. tip, the boy
delivers, IKEA opens up and next to it a depot of little exotic men to
do it for us.

Let's pray the airport road is fireproof when the shit hits the fan,
because escape is our number one export and we can't fail to deliver
this time round.

the in-between: minus eleven

21:36:02


We're sleepless in Beirut.


"We have no more government."


"3adi. Khaberni shi jdid."


"Yiii, shou sar?"


"11 ministers resigned."


"A7san. Shou badna fiyoun. Waja3 ras. Hala2 mninzal Torino nfesh khele2na."


"Ma ili jledi..."


"Yiiii, mama3e musi2a, shoo badi a3moul?!"


"People are going to die."


"Ba3ref. 3am bimzah."


"No way bokra inzal 3ala Beirut. Yiii, kif ma ili jledi hek osas!"


"L timing bit3a2ed, ma32oul ma mne2dir nsefir?"


"Aren't you French? Your bekhra will come to pick you up."


"Shou 7al balad..."


"Batalit balad."


"Fuck this shit."


"Kesssss..."




I.


II.


III.




"When do you want to meet?"


"Friday?"


"I can't Friday. Saturday."


"Tayyeb. Saturday it is."


"Drinks on me."

fifty-two

16:22:00

I'm sleepless in Beirut.

"One vodka cranberry please," I told the bartender with the long hair.

Those were the days when I could still down up to three glasses of vodka-something and still stand on something-inches heels. Those were the days when I went out every weekend to some dimly lit nook and tolerated the relentless banging on my ear drums. Those were the days when Behind the Green Door was still avant-garde and it was the it and the the and not yet Bee-ainde. 

By the third glass, I was that little bit more cooperative and that little bit behind the words that took a walk on the wild side of my mouth. Those words can take you places and that night they did.

Judging from the little peppering of white in his hair and stubble, he was the boy who grew up on shaking foundations and saw the world through quivering window panes. But I failed to see the boy that instant our eyes met, right then I saw an older man, a something I was always tempted to swivel in my glass and I kept him in mind while I scanned the room for something more promising. You see, he happened to be an inch shorter than me and I happened to be that mean roller-coaster attendant who stood outside the gate with a large ruler and wouldn't let you in for a ride.

But by now I was cooperating with the pheromones and the hormones and the moans of a single ready to mingle residing on my wrong shoulder. So I let the eye contact linger for longer, until his eyes were at the level of my nose and we spoke.

About this.

And that.

About me being a kid (Funny men, the elders. Stating the obvious, never failing to caricature, like that gap in Madonna's teeth, 3 inches wider, the gap between our dates of birth, pulled apart further to satisfy unconscious inklings of pedophilia.)

About how tall I was.

Or about how short you are, I thought. Enough restraint in me for this one. Lucky him spared by the grace of tongue muscles.

About how I was cold.

He took my hand with the silly hope of warming up and melting down my defense. They were small, but I cooperated. Not small, just like mine. Bizarre fit, shortcoming. 

I didn't mind his hand, our thumbs were playing a blind men's game of head-butt. He sat down next to me, because I had to pretend I was tired to avoid the dance. 

He had had his share of alcohol because his face seemed capable of expressions one would normally keep for self-entertainment in front of a bathroom mirror. He tried to be cute and he reminded me of Puss in Boots holding his hat to his chest and looking up at Shrek in that digital animation masterpiece of heart-piercing cuteness. I was serious and he was childish and soon enough he started breaking me up in a thousand little giggles. A rare find this charming little man amongst men so little they can't laugh at themselves between cigar puffs. Comic relief in a place named after exploding sexual tension, perfect fit, forthcoming.

About what we do in life.

About how cool it sounds.

About music.

"Wow, respect.", he said in veneration. 

I must be scoring points on his checklist of things-a-girl-ought-to-know. 

Allow me to illustrate with this little quote from 500 days of Summer (nice lines, crappy movie):

Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate.

But it seems this little truth always slips our mind when we think "Ah, so he/she is one of me! We're so alike." And it's only some dude who died a long time ago, always blue and singing about it. A fluke in logic, deceptive compatibility. You see and hear what you want to. And we both wanted something affirmative, something like a yes for a change, sick of no's splattered all over this city.

No smoking. No parking. No take picture here. No citizenship. No make civil marriage. No you go do it without telling God you want it.

"Yes"

We clambered into his car, Belle and I, and he dropped us off to mine. 

"Could I maybe have your number?"

"Yes."

It feels good to accept, to give in, to stop fighting, to nod, to give, to write down a number, to receive a message, to answer a call, to accept a dinner date.

You give to get. Move over fat NO, cooperate a little.

the in-between: Nef3a

14:42:11

The receptionist’s cubicle is surrounded by men tearing away at their tawouk sandwiches, it’s hard to tell who is in charge, or if there is anyone in charge at all. 

I approach the guy who isn’t eating,

“Where do I go to pay the Mecanique?”

“Where’s your car registration paper? The lines go by numbers now. I need to see it to tell you where to go.”

I give him the laminated document.

“Go to the last window on the left. You have all your papers?”

I nodded and climbed the couple of steps towards the entrance.

There were three guys in uniform, not exactly in charge, rather in conversation. There was no hall, just a room with a low ceiling. The paint must have been white some decades ago, but now it was smeared with God-knows-what-people-bring-to-the-Nef3a-for-lunch. There was a bundle of people inside, some waiting in front of windows and the ones behind them hoping to be next. Their clothes looked shabby and worn out and the few dusty bulbs were doing them no favour. The majority were men, and their dark hair and skin only helped to dim the place even further. It felt a little bit like a cave.

The smell of smoke pervaded the air. It was that stench of forgotten ashtrays and unswept floors and cheap tobacco and smoke particles nesting in hair. There was no escaping it, within five minutes, my clothes gave up my perfume and adopted Marlboro in its place.

Behind the windows, I could see the tops of heads of the staff. They were balding men, the rest of their hair graying, and behind them were metal shelves caving in from stacks of folders. The folders were torn and frayed at the edges, factory-coloured blues, greens and pinks that ought to be holding information from the Dark Ages. A donkey or a wooden carriage wouldn’t seem out of place in this world.

“What hole did I fall in?”, I thought.

I went to the far left window and waited. The man behind didn’t pay attention to me, which was weird because I looked like the cleanest face there. I saw that he had a computer, nothing fancy, but a machine that would spare me a place in one of the soft, split-edge faded folders. A cord of smoke was dancing somewhere in front of the screen, his waiting-to-be-seized cigarette, not a burning keyboard. I was wrong. He picked up his pack of Winston’s and lit another one. The cord was still dancing, happy that for the next few minutes they will be two.

He gestured to me to hand him my papers. Shlick, shlack, staple, pa2 pa2,

“Khaliyoun ma3ik.”

He then handed me a square piece of paper.

“3aleyki malyoun w miten w khamsa w tis3een. Dfa3iyoun 3a sandouk w rj3e.”

The numbers weren’t lying: 1,295,000 with my name under.

“Shoo?”

“Manik def3a mecanique. Alfen w tis3. Alfen w 3ashra.”

Ha! He thinks he can trick me because I look like the cleanest thing here! My eyes still large in shock, I go outside. I call Lumiere.

“Is this a logical sum? One million?”

Apparently it was. Apparently I wasn’t smarter than a fifth grader. Fuck my life.

With the fresh wad of liras in my hand, I went back in. In my absence, a line had formed in front of the cashier’s window all across the room and I had to place myself at the end, on the opposite wall. Naturally, people chose to cross to the other side between me and the guy in front, because nobody was going to excuse themselves, or break the line of sweat, smoke and testosterone lining up to leave this place a few hundred thousand liras lighter.

In Dubai, they always let the women skip the line, it’s a given. For a second, I expected someone to spare me the painful wait, to say tfadale and just step behind me. From the moment I had walked in I was expecting a special treatment because I looked like I didn’t belong to this world, but I had forgotten that this was a world I had chosen to ignore and on which I had turned my back. Why should they even notice me? I looked like a thing to push over, a thing to walk on, because I had no idea that this is the world for most people here. A world of waiting, of aggressive gestures, of stench, of faded colours, of lost causes, of lost hopes, of tawouk breakfasts, lunches and dinners, a world of push and shove if you ever want to get anywhere.

And then, not without the residue of vanity, I felt proud to be down here, to not have run away, to do the necessary, to face the ugly…

…but it was a questionable pride. In less than half an hour or so, I was back in my cushioned world of tfadale and tikram 3younik and the prospect of waiting in line was an entire year away.


I really have no idea.

Sleepless in Beirut, televized

switch the station, change the channel

 

fifty-one

20:13:19


I'm tossing and turning in Beirut.


All this scrolling has made me nauseous. I know I shouldn't have. 


Oh the shouldn't-haves! The taste of paradox on the tongue of your mind! The sweet temptation slowly reeling you in, the senses wide shut in anticipation of a shouldn't-see, a shouldn't-hear, a shouldn't-speak. And you could've walked away, but you wouldn't. Too close to fight the smell of dead-thing-in-the-corner, too curious to not turn it over, too disappointed to discover it to be just cat. Categorical sinner.


Sin-half-full. Not quite capital, but wrong at the onset and the outcome wronger still.


I knew I shouldn't have the moment I knew.


[phone buzzes. London calling. He should be on his way. Smell of something-in-the-corner.]


I don't know how he does it. How does he cope with living in a museum of my raw and naked past? Perhaps if it were a file cabinet in the basement of a library, the ex-files would not take on a role heavier than baggage but I'm one of those sentimental people who dare not throw anything away. I just throw everything around. My dirty laundry hangs above me like a cartoon cloud, follows me around like a red balloon, escapes through my mouth and lands on the ears of others where it doesn't matter. How does he not want to pop it into silence? 


I did it. I could say I stumbled upon, I could say it was coincidental, accidental, never intended for, but I would be lying and I shouldn't. I shouldn't have rummaged trough his file cabinet. I shouldn't have seen that picture. I wouldn't feel nauseous now. I wouldn't feel stupid, because


"Hey, I am not an envious person."


And of the old dusty past too! About two years ago, a hand on the waist, the smile I know, the smell of the neck I can summon at will, the girl he holds and who looks nothing like me and maybe I had a long day, shaky limbs, outdoor shivers, shaky grounds for insecurity? 


A cold, glass facade, impermeable to rain and reflecting sunshine 300 days a year, blocking UV, blocking views to the inside, mullions like knives up and down, across, insensitive at best, if not short of a technical term for apathy in modern materials. Ah, but if one could walk through walls and see the condensation on the other side - the winds of irrational jealousy that shake and quiver and make the droplets flow in streams, what a show of all-day-AC-ON problematics one would see!


How does he walk through the glass museum, the curator hiding in between the panes, exhibits of steam and memories in random rooms, open and coming soon, none of them really over, just covered in dust, or with traces of my nostalgic fingers running across?


The case of rummaging through the X-file. A bout of nausea. Never again. A shouldn't-have that should be learned from. Again and again.

fifty

03:25:26


I'm sleepless in Beirut.


I better watch out, I better not cry, better not pout, I'm telling you why, London is coming to town. They have made a list, they're checking it twice, they already know who's naughty and nice...so try and be good for goodness sake!


Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him and Balding should land in Beirut in the coming days. Or so they said. Or do I say this because I care?


I do remember.


I met Balding at Art Lounge. He was here on vacation. I was ordering drinks. He stood a little behind me to my left. I felt his gaze. He later explained he wasn't looking at me. I turned to ask for a light. He told me he didn't smoke. I used the candle instead. He made fun of my "do you have a light?" line. I retorted that it wasn't a line, I had in fact lost my lighter. He asked me what I did in life. I let that slip and I answered and reciprocated the question. He continued the conversation. I did not have anything better to do. He seemed like a nice guy. I seemed like a nice girl. We spoke until I left. I gave him my number. He said he'd call the next day. I then realized that he hadn't even asked for it. He must have thought I was eager. I thought I had made a terrible mistake. He waved to me as I drove off. I hoped that was the last I'd see of him. Ma2ele jlede. I had Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him and a plan to go to London.


Imaginary-Extraordinary-Him used to sing to me. He would play on his guitar and sing and I would replay the voicemail a  hundred times. We would both pour wine simultaneously and our video conversations would become increasingly frivolous as the drops collected in our blood. We would share the sounds of bath water, afternoon jogs and kitchen utensils and we imagined that the other was right there. We knew how we would feel one against the other, how we would fit, because the weight of our words made us corporeal. We would stay up for hours, past bedtime, past logic, past reality, past the present, past the future, absorbed in conversation, absorbed by the pixels sent via cables and satellites until we were close to collapse and sometimes past that. When Skype was beyond reach, we would pour ourselves down letters and text messages, and every moment would be missing something until we had exchanged a message or a comment, till we made poetry bleed from between the lines.


"I'm at Deir el Qamar. There is a girl on stage playing the flute."


"I'm at a really pretentious place called Kensington Roof Gardens."


"So much. So so much.   [pretend I am your ground]"


"I don't need to pretend...it's all relative. You're real."


"So are you. I don't even miss you."


"I do [saying the same thing as you in a different way :) ]...


...the next morning... 


...I woke up with bits and fragments of yesterday's attempts to read parts of your e-mail. Finding myself often scrambling for an imaginary pen and paper to pin down important thoughts I wanted to share with you before they slip out of my mental cavity or sucked back to some hidden parts of my brain. Your existence seems to be unleashing a dormant creature in me, like a third eye of spirituality, almost like I cannot imagine a world without you because it's so much more awake with you, Sleepless, a new dimension...well, in blunt honesty I'm not sure what it is but hell I can't wait to write you back. I hope it's not just out of curiosity, but even that is fine in our world..."


"To read that and try to reply...I'd only be lying."


"."


To share that and try to unbelieve it, would have been a crime against every fairytale I had ever read before going to bed. I had to believe it. I had to think that I had found that other person who could read my mind, who could navigate it and who could love it, because if I had been cynical, I would have died then and there. All hope of that special something extraordinary would have left me.


But maybe the trick of that extraordinary special something surviving was to abstain from ever touching it. Like a surface of glass, still and impeccable, mirror to the sky, ode to strolling clouds, a plane to a reflection matrix, once touched, even if by a wisp of air escaping the mouth above the water surface, would be perturbed from shore to shore for days, maybe weeks to come. And only when its unfathomable stillness would be restored, only when the earth would appear as though it had never moved, only when the last grain of sand settled at the bottom, only then would it be beautiful again and the eyes that looked upon the lake in awe and fascination would be long gone.


I think we both knew that, but the possibility of us never meeting became a projection of possible anguish and pain. I justified everything with a "What if?"


"What if you're the one? The one I could spend the rest of my life with? Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't it be something to have caught a frivolous thought of you being my man, my forever before ever having touched you and then discovering it to be a prophecy that came true?"


In the end, I just wanted to know. I couldn't weigh the What if? question in my head anymore. It became an obsession and all the signs, the dwindling communication, the change in tone, the broken promises, they never reached me through the fog. I succumbed to a sort of Saramagian blindness - my eyes were licked over with a milky whiteness through which I could never see past, but I always insisted on squinting in the hope that I sooner or later would.


So I bought my ticket to London. Willingly and consciously, the most beautiful thing was tarnished, and I think we both knew that, but the excitement of the trip lied to us. We were deceived by our very own lie. 


The truth was ugly. Or it didn't fit. It was two sizes too small. Or was our lie two sizes too big? It doesn't matter. The pantylines were obvious.


It's strange to know that we will be in the same city once again. It's strange to not feel the same excitement that I did last. It's strange to acknowledge that something extraordinary was but a figment of the imaginary. Or was it? Can something be dismissed as a hypochondriac's fancy once you have felt it in your bones? I refuse to think that the line between tangible and intangible is that clear. But the strangest thing is that I have come to terms with the failure. I admit to having knitted a sweater two sizes too big. I admit to having tried to wear it. I admit that the largeness of it did not bother me, but it was the prickly wool that made me take it off and stow it away.


I admit that I sometimes wonder why it plummeted and I admit that I cannot pin down why. I admit that I am curious. I hope it's just that, curiosity, because that is fine in our world.