The in-between: #notamartyr

“AAAAAAAAARGH!!!” – 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.

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…

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 the news has happened to me. I cannot believe it. Boom, gone, just like that, in the middle of fucking grocery shopping. 

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…

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. 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 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…

I collapse at my door. The world is silent now and I’m helpless, without any physical grip, without any physical presence.

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 “Why me?” 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…

.

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.

hundred-and-eleven

18:38:18

I’m sleepless in Beirut.

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.

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 “Never do this again.” 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.

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.

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 when I first walked into this apartment, 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.

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, “Why do you want to leave us?”

My mother puts it well, “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.”

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 – “The life you want, you have to create it. And the time is: now.”

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.

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:

Did I quit for a good enough reason?

Isn’t misery just a part of life?

Am I acting like a spoilt brat?

How am I going to pay my rent?

Am I talented enough to do this?

Has my ego brainwashed me?

Do I even know what the fuck I’m doing?

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.

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.

When I told my mother the story, she replied, “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.”

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.

hundred-and-nine

20:39:45

I’m quivering in Beirut with the rest of the community.

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.

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?

In this light, waiting for snow seems less ludicrous…

hundred-and-eight

14:24:30

I’m sleepless with wet feet drying.

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.

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?

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.

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 do while I am still sane.

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.

hundred-and-seven

12:37:11

I’m tanning in the Christmas sun.

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”.

(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^th ever so tightly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Wainik? I can meet you down. I’m waiting for you to eat.”

“I’m up.”

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.

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.

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.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, come over here and give Santa a kiss.”

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.