sixty

13:42:55

I’m a mess in Paris.

It has been so for some time now, this feeling of being at a loss, of being unable to, of putting up obstacles as soon as I jump one.

So I ask myself, what is that special place I yearn to be at.

Paris?

London?

Beirut?

I see hoards of tourists everyday take the same picture of Tour Eiffel, of Notre Dame, of statues and monuments that make up Paris. Paris is nothing but a pop-up postcard, a map of relics to an age long past, a large walk through museum with never-changing Parisian stereotypes. Paris is a marker-stick stuck in a river that moves an inch forward and bobs an inch backwards. It gives you the impression of taking you with it, but then pushes you back out.

London. London feels like a large river that carries you along, but doesn’t give you time to grab unto something. It impresses you with its speed and power, but it flows through you nonetheless and when you leave, you don’t retain, only the mud stains of dirty gritty Thames cling to you as reminders of what you did and what you saw and what you didn’t arrive to.

Beirut, a memory of strings undone and their ends shriveling into ends I can’t get hold off. Roots are rotten, friendships dried up, lovers withered – a lost paradise and I, a lost cause.

But that is all a made-up, that is nothing but a fantasy of someone sad. Places aren’t what they are said to be in Lonely Planet, they aren’t what they are marked out to be on a map, they aren’t friends’ stories, they aren’t what you previously experienced, they aren’t street names, nor corners, nor squares, nor houses. None of it matters.

The only place is inside your head and it is the place I think I have to go first, if I ever want to go anywhere.

thirty-six

21:43:46

I'm sleepless in the jabal.

The summer has receded to the coast and away with it tumbled down the lights of my neighbouring villagers, leaving me with the flickering TV screen of the village priest. He too has a God at home.

Having left behind the tumult of my first day back, I find myself without distractions. I find myself with fishbones in my throat and a writhing ball of maggots in my gut. Even the layers of shawl over jacket over cardigan over T-shirt cannot keep out the cold. Guilt writhes in my belly like a baby kicking its own mother and like a mother ridden with guilt, I stop breathing to make it go away.

I turn around for the last time and behind the curtain of rain and weeping glass I see Imaginary Extraordinary Him looking back from inside the car. I see myself drop my bags and run back towards him to say goodbye, to kiss him and to hug him, but I'm running late and I wonder why he isn't running towards me instead, so I pick up my things and run down the stairs and unto the westbound platform. My shadow lingers for a moment longer at the top of the stairs and I see him drive off into the mist of rain. A blur, a spritz, a shadow and then nothing.

I was too busy feeling angry and rejected. That morning I had placed a mirror between us, so that I wouldn't need to say goodbye, I wouldn't need to see dejection, unless I punched myself in the face to have the bullshit shatter. I deserved it, but my littleness didn't allow me to reach above my knees. So I slammed the door instead, pulled out my bag from the boot and walked away without saying a word.

If three years of life can seem unchanged on a bench at Hyde Park, then three days of life can feel like three lifetimes on a train platform. Mind the gap in logic.

So along with the two ticking clocks, the howling dog and the car roaring somewhere across the valley, I'm left alone with regret tied to me by an umbilical cord. Why didn't I throw my tantrum out the window? Why didn't I allow myself to feel fragile in his arms one last time? No amount of bedsheets I can burry under to feel a warmth like his surround me.

Although...it takes two to make a child. But it takes one to feed it. I'll starve it till it shrivels. I'll starve it till it dies in my cold womb. I'll starve until I don't recognize hunger. I'll starve until I meet a deprivation and depletion quota, until it's too late to sayve anything at all.

thirty-five

15:02:03

I'm sleepless at 27G on ME202.

I'm eager to return to Beirut, to unpack and to re-embrace my reality. An out-of-proportion storm has been stirred up in my cup of tea and as autumn begins to creep into my consciousness, I want to sit back and watch the tea leaves leave the hypnotizing swirl and sink to the bottom of the glass where they will dance until the earth stops moving from beneath my feet. I want to be still like those tea leaves and meditate on the now. My itch to run has been scratched.

Sometimes I wonder whether I will ever be able to turn around and face myself*. I'm always ahead of myself, always running, always escaping. Nothing can keep me still, not even an arrow to the heart. Shot, I limp and struggle like a pierced deer, spraying my blood everywhere, but taking my heart to die alone inside me.

I escaped the summer months by falling in love with a man who wasn't there. I escaped the only thing that kept us apart by flying over to see him. I escaped reality by forgetting that we were strangers. I escaped the love by smoking it as fast as I could. I escaped the goodbye by being late for my flight and by being angry. I escaped back to where he isn't. But will I escape my regrets?

I have to. Time moves forward. I have to move forward.

the in-between: brownie

thirty-four

15:40:13

I'm sleepless at Hyde Park.

Sometimes they feed the pigeons too, but I'm keeping the chocolate brownie for myself. It was a welcome gift after all.

So strange being here, it's as though I never left. Three years of life and a wooden bench is a clasp that links a line into a loop. The grass is as green, the pigeons as plenty, the squirrels as quirky a sight, the strollers as faceless, the sun as fickle and life as beautiful. Only this morning Hamra was as familiar, but mustier, damper, like a weight to the soul. The autumn leaves move with the wind here, echoing dryness against the rough paths. I lick my lips for them and swallow traces of chocolate.

That morning I left the Kensington apartments to escape the fact that I had passed out on the floor and my prettier friend got the bed with Victorian linens. She looked like a baby doll and I had the taste of liquor in my mouth. It was cold but sunny and the Household Cavalry were trotting by already. Jogging Shorts sat down beside me to tie up his shoe laces.

"I live nearby. I'm a finance this-and-that. Jogging is what I do in the mornings."

Never having understood finance, economics or commerce, I was drawn to him because he did. Or maybe because he lived round the corner and I was impressionable and dreamy and thought that I had tripped upon Prince Henry. Probably that and my weakness for luxury cars and a faint whiff of a Jaguar ride about town and whether there was a connection or not, I took his card and promised to call him.

He turned out to be a pretty ordinary fellow who I couldn't look in the eye, but who took me out for the most delicious watermelon midori I had ever tasted, who, despite boring me, made me miss my last tube back home and to make up for it offered me a space in his bed. I took the night bus instead and walked alone the empty streets with hurried heel chatter.

My pretty friend found him ugly and then so did I.

A girl is taking a photograph of a squirrel, which then climbs up her leg, mistaking itself for being admired rather than just being a plain curiosity to the common tourist. I like squirrels, most of all their puffy tails. I looked at one closely the other day and realized that it wasn't any different from a rat's tail except it had long hairs that always stood on end. Superficial tails, superficial me. Throw us in the water and we will emerge like toothpicks that were feathers, once. Throw a Jaguar in the water and it will sink.

Throw a paper that says "BEY ROUTH" and it will float, just like it did above the crowds waiting for the arrivals to exit. Throw a chocolate brownie in the river and it will melt, but the water will taste sweet. Throw myself off the London bridge and I will drift to his doorstep because he makes me float. Imaginary Extraordinary Him is a helium cloud in my body and mind, delivering me to the streets of London like the rolling autumn leaves carried by the wind.

So I sit here, hands blue and slightly trembling, waiting to see him again. He gave me the keys to his place, which would sink if thrown into a river, but that could open doors to places I don't think I have ever seen.

I'll curl up in his bed, and he'll find that his thrown jacket takes the shape of a curvy hip and he'll slip in alongside me and my hands will not be blue any more, but they might tremble at the fact that something imaginary and virtual is tangible and I came all the way to London just to tremble and shake the bits and pixels off a reverie.