ninety-seven

19:16:32

I’m sleepless on a balcony.

Three hours before the curtain was due to go up, I was buying us tickets to Lulu’s 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.

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.

“I hope I won’t bother you.”

“Maybe, maybe you will.”

“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.

“Well, I will be leaving now…”

“Ciao, good day!”

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.

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.

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?

I decided on flowers. I’d get him a small bouquet – the gesture would be subtle, affectionate and elegant.

“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.”

“Does the play have anything to do with snow?”

“Maybe…there was a polar bear on the poster.”

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.

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.

The curtain was lowered. I fetched the bouquet from beneath my seat. Then came the applause.

“Do not chicken out this time!” I said to myself.

The actors came on stage. He was himself again, and not the brutal warrior that he was wrongly cast for. My friend nudged me, “Go! Go! What are you waiting for? Just tell them to stand up and let you through!”

I got up and made my way to the first steps, but the actors had already taken their position centre-stage.

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.

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…

I didn’t want to linger around, I didn’t want to bump into him just yet – what had just happened was perfect.

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.

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…

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.

“What are you doing, wandering around the city?”

“Actually, I’m about to head home, I’m having some friends over…”

“Awww, too bad, I would’ve invited you to tonight’s play!”

“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…”

“Naughty girl! You know it’s easy for me to get you seats, I told you this many times!”

“Yeah, like last time…nevermind, I’ll keep you in mind the next time I come back.”

“How long are you here for?”

“Till next weekend.”

“Would you, um, like to go for tea, coffee, or…?”

“I would be most pleased.”

“So let’s get in touch on Monday. Have fun tonight, bye.”

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.

Oh, how my friends will shake their heads and fingers when they hear that we could have gotten us free seats!

While I waited for bus no. 6, I danced a little.

ninety-six

17:14:08

I’m sleepless and shivering in a tiny room of a bookshop.

I’m. So. Happy.

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.

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...

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.

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.

“There will be a poetry reading.”

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, “What were you thinking when you accepted the aggressive pursuit of a fourteen year old girl?”

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.

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.

ninety-five

13:47:46

I’m sleepless in 5A, next to the window, overlooking a patchwork of green, blue and yellow.

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.

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.

What will this landing feel like?

ninety-four

08:41:33

I’m sleepless in Terminal 1A.

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.

“A de badna tenousal 3al matar?”

“Se3a tnen minkoun honik, mni7?”

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.

I slung my suitcase on the conveyor belt. 29.3kg! The guy looked at me with apologetic eyes.

“Bti2t3a?”

“Shhhh…malezim yisma3ouki.”

I smiled.

“Ra7 7attik bil aisle”

“Full capacity?”

“La2, la2anik jeye bakeer”, he joked.

Ten more minutes and I would have been left aisle-less and wingless.

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, not happy.

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,

“La2! Ana jeet ablak!”

Also, there was a faint smell of shit from the seat in front of me…

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?

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…

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.

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 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.

In here, lies a lesson for me – Be. On. Time.

forty-one

22:35:54

I'm sleepless in Beirut.

Whenever there were plans to return to Otherland in the summer, I would sign up on a local social networking site with the intention of making a couple of friends to spend time with once I got there. As if by default, most of the contacts I'd make would be guys. Tower was one of them.

We decided to meet the day after my arrival, at 16:00:00 under the bell tower of the city's cathedral.

I was excited. Prior to travelling, I had spoken to Lulu over the phone and he had agreed to come watch a contemporary dance show with me. Over a year and a half had passed since I had first met and last seen him. During that time he had succeeded to rise to national fame. He was elected as one of the sexiest men in the nation, he was rehearsing for a number of plays that were to open in October and not to mention he was the host of a local TV show. I'd call him once a month to talk a little bit about this and that, but soon enough Google had all his updates at my disposal. Thanks to the tabloids, I discovered that he was dating a woman eight years his senior, who resembled Uma Thurman, a lady with strong facial features and who just happened to have the same name as I. Our conversations were never flirtatious, but I clearly remember one texting session that filled me with enough hope to last a year. 

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." - excerpt from "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

I hold these lines responsible for Lulu, for Italian Creep, for Candy Man, for Freud, for Botticelli, for Fuego, for Blue. Oh Vladimir, those encounters might never have happened had you not bewitched me with your words. I wanted to be a muse, to have someone think about me with such tenderness, with such forbidden desire.

I was still underage and elligible for the role.

Lulu admitted that it was one of his favourite movies and that the idea seduced him. Had I been a third person, I might have thought him a pedophile, but I was a melting popsicle.

I arrived to the ticket booth on time. They were about to close, people were shoving to get their tickets. I tried to squeeze in, to ignore my instinct to queue and wait, to be true to my Arab nature. Some old lady in an old-fashioned hat kept on rubbing against me. With some effort, I got hold of two seats. I paid and walked out into the busy street. Tower was supposed to meet me in an hour and I thought it would be polite to confirm. After all, the last time we spoke was a reasonable while back and plans are always open to change.

But, my phone wasn't in my bag. It wasn't in my pocket. I emptied everything out and it still wasn't there! Damn it, mom was right.

"Zip up your bag! You're provoking theft. This is not the Middle East."

It had to be that old hag. She kept on pushing against me. I remembered seeing the glow of my phone at one point. Fuck her! How can anyone take something that doesn't belong to them?

I felt violated and alone. The street was buzzing with people and nobody seemed to notice me. A tear rolled down my cheek. I looked up. The clouds hung like gray washed-out pillow cases. But there, at the end of the avenue, the golden cross atop the cathedral was glowing like a newly bought peg. It called to me. 

I went inside, a little shy, wondering whether it was possible for people to tell. Religion aside, the height, the light and acoustics of the space comforted me. I sat at the back, closed my eyes and waited for my breathing to calm down. Five minutes later, I felt a little better.

I had no way of contacting Tower, no way of getting in touch with my mom, who had the habit, like all mothers, to think the worst after one call unanswered. I walked across the street to the central post office. I'll buy a phone card, call my friend to have her call mom who didn't deserve to have a nervous break down right at the start of the summer holidays.

Having never used a pay phone before, I stared at it oblivious as to what to do next. There was a shop next door and I went in to ask for the shopkeeper's help. I must've looked distraught, because he asked me whether something was wrong. I bathed in the warm pool of pity pee and let the trickle of my measly tragedy reach his ears.

That lovely kind man pulled open a drawer and produced a large brick Motorola.

"There. You can use my old phone, it comes with a line and everything."

"Thank you, but I cannot accept. It's too kind of a gesture."

"Don't worry about it. You can return it when you get a replacement."

I was more touched than Botero's Adam. It felt a little like turning a corner and bumping into a mammoth. Samaritans are an endangered species. One must nurture their kindness.

I thanked him profusely and promised to return the cell phone as soon as possible. Suddenly, the world did not seem as ruthless and unfair, the clouds as oppressive, the people as cold-hearted and cell phones as important. 

I always go back to that day for inspiration. There is something so sincere in the kind gesture of a stranger. No hidden agenda, no benefits to reap. Perhaps after much dissection, one could find an underlying selfish intention, but feeling better about yourself by being an altruist is a malice of PG standards.

Tower proved to be a man of his word. At 16:00, I stood up on my tip-toes to kiss his cheek. His complexion was Twilight-pale, his eyes like werewolf's, his hair charcoal black and to his shoulders and his height neck-breaking. His face, his voice, his words radiated kindness. But kindness is a thing to be handled with care and as soon as I realised it, I recognised the possibility of my being careless and too childish and clumsy to sustain it without testing its elasticity. Perhaps that would explain my early childhood hours spent modelling plasticine; I would always knead it to the extreme to see how far a ball could be stretched.

We spent the afternoon roaming the city, hiding from the rain, drying our long hair over cups of tea and looking into each other's eyes for longer than necessary. It was a summer romance in the making...

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.

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.

thirty-three

01:05:26


I'm sleepy after Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal.


"Filtenin. Shoo filtenin na7na! We separate for one night and already we have stories to tell in the morning!"


Flutterby giggles, her burning joint quivering between her index and middle. We look at each other in celebration of the years of continuous madness that we've been sharing since high school. Bonnie & Bonnie, partners in crime.


She went out to meet her ex, to close doors courteously, but discovered instead that letting go was exiting through entering and not the other way around.


I went out to meet Diagonal from back home...


The ghostly glass towers echoed our excitement of being in a new place. We knew each other well enough to not compromise our freedom, our anonymity. Together we were no one.


"I have to tell you something."


"What? Is everything okay?"


"Yeah. Try and guess what it is."


"You got a tattoo?"


"No. It's something I'm born with."


"How am I supposed to know? It could be so many things. Is it physical? Psychological? Do you have a health problem?"


"Oh my god, how can you not guess?"


"Do you have a tail?"


He burst out laughing.


"I'm gay."


"Haha, very funny."


"I am."


"No way. You're bullshitting."


"I swear."


"Really?"


"Yes."


I was still nursing my disbelief, but I didn't want to make him regret telling me, if he actually was being serious.


"How? When did you know?"


"It's something you're born with. I was sure when I hit puberty."


"Wow," He must be telling me the truth. "I really appreciate you telling me."


"I'm sorry for misleading you with my text messages. It wasn't all fake. I mean I do think you're hot, but..."


By then I had sat down to better absorb the shock of it all. This was the final straw in my series of judgement misfires. I, the undersigned, pledge to give up on trying to discern people's sexual orientation. I didn't even consider the possibility of his being different. But ultimately, why would it matter? Why do people make it their own business where homosexuality is concerned?


Straight people have a very slight, if any, true understanding of what it is like to be attracted to someone of the same sex. I have had thoughts, yes, but I have never caught myself looking at a girl passing me by and thinking of sliding my hands around her waist and up her back and kissing her on her neck, gently. Such urges are solicited by men only. Fantasies involving girls creep up on me when I'm daydreaming or nursing some Neanderthal's freshly inflicted wound. Straight people should calm the fuck down and stop passing judgement on something they do not comprehend and have no active role in. Could it be jealousy, in addition to fear, that fuel their prejudices?


How is anyone concerned with what goes on between two people in the privacy of their own home? A popular argument is that if homosexuality becomes socially acceptable, we and our children will then have to witness PDA (public display of affection). Gay PDA makes a lot of people uncomfortable. A guy and a girl copy pasting their conversation on each other's tongues make me uncomfortable. A little kid begging me for 1000L.L. makes me uncomfortable. Terminally ill people make me uncomfortable. Wedgies make me uncomfortable. You deal with it and move on. The world is for everybody and you have to compromise and make space for others.


"So you're cool with it?"


"Of course, why wouldn't I be?"


We spent the evening walking in the park. He could relax now. I noticed every single touch and with each one I'd note that it didn't mean anything. We were just two souls trapped in two bodies which needed affection. No reading in between the brushings past, no wandering thoughts, just plain being.


By the time we returned to our neighborhood it was 02h00. Flutterby couldn't be reached and I didn't want to risk walking in on a reconciliation. He suggested I sleep over at his friend's place instead. I was shivering and too tired to argue.


"Would you come with me to the gay village?"


"I could. But what would I do?"


"I'm beginning to feel the pressure. I've been here for over a week and nothing has happened. I've never done anything, just childish fooling around. I came here so I could be free and discover what it's like. I'm still a virgin. I though I'd come here and try it with both a guy and a girl, but it's not as easy as I thought."


"You were expecting everyone to jump on you, eh?"


He smiled. "Yeah, kinda"


The mattress received my body like a marshmallow and I sunk into a deep sleep.
When I rolled over the next morning, Diagonal turned to me and asked,


"Would you like to try something?"

thirty-two

22:01:55

I'm sleepless on a train.

I've been away for a week and Beirut is now a place I come from, but don't belong in. I have never felt this myself in my entire life. The burden of being conscious of my self-consciousness has been abolished.

You know when you're sealed up in your car or walking down the street and listening to music no one can hear? You know that feeling of self-awareness when you're mouthing the lyrics of the song or moving your fingers to the beat, so as to project the act of listening to music to others visually (as if the headphones weren't enough)? You know that moment when you catch yourself about to look around you to see whether the others have recognized how up-to-date or sophisticated your taste in music is? Orwell's 1984 has inspired me to call this doubleselfconsciousness. But you see, I only came up with this word so that I could let you all know that I read modern classic literature and that you could admire me for it and that I could self validate myself by projecting my own image of who I'd like to be unto what I think the reader will be thinking. It's a loner's game.

So imagine the constant buzz of doubleselfconsciousness and how it impedes personal growth, and imagine it disappearing. My first taste of freedom.

I was walking down the street towards the tram station. The sun was behind me, burning slowly and stretching my shadow over the cobblestones like a stocking being pulled up the calves.

I loved being on my own. This was my first solo trip abroad. I had never been to Bordeaux before. Surely, I would have preferred it to be Paris, but my parents had conveniently watched Irreversible beforehand and had instantly grow allergic to the idea of me taking a Parisian underpass to safely cross the street...as though rape didn't exist elsewhere.

I looked up. Looking down was a shirtless smiling man. I smiled back and continued walking. Half way into the Place de la Bourse, I turned around and he waved back. Now waving is harmless an act, but when you are always on the lookout for others' validation, validation of iTunes playlist, of LV handbag, of your intelligence, of your hipness, of your superbness, of your uniqueness, a harmless act like that can seem like an affirmation.

[The guy to my right is playing chess on his MacBook Pro and shaking his head and lightly motioning with his fist at the bishop, as though inviting me to cheer him on and commend his mastery of the game in order to make up for my victory and his defeat in backgammon at the beginning of the trip.]

So he waved, and I imitated the gait of a rooster, and he imitated me with his upper body rocking back and forth over the window sill.

My tram arrived. I bid him farewell with an exaggerated arc and watched him disappear as the tram moved forward.

That night I watched an adaptation of Romeo and Juliette. She called to him from her window too.

The next day I returned to Rue Saint Remi. I looked up, but he wasn't there. I approached the entrance door to his building. He was on the last floor. M.Tournant. I ripped out a page from my notebook and drew a little sketch of a guy waving from a window. "Je cherche un M.Sans Chemise. Appelle +33.........."

I waited nervously for a phone call. Nervous. I received a text message.

"Salut, c'est moi, M.Sans Chemise. Comment tu t'appelle?"

We exchanged a couple more messages where we established that he was 27, and I added a couple of digits to my age, that he was a student of medicine and that we would meet the following day in a cafe nearby.

That's when it hit me: I had no idea what he looked like, but more importantly who he was! I rummaged through all possibilities to find the most extreme ones, rapist, serial killer, perv, and I laid them down on the table. What was I thinking meeting up with a guy who I found cute...four floors high up?

The next day I was so nervous in French one-on-one class, that I shared the entire story with my teacher who called me "une folle"...but encouraged me to go anyway. Curious people want to know how a story develops at whatever cost, the large sum being paid by you.

So after class and a long walk about town to calm myself down, I headed for the meeting place, not after walking around the block twice. But he was nowhere to be seen. I turned to leave and there sitting on a table was a T-shirt covering the chest of a man with a charming smile.

The story doesn't develop much from here on after. We had a great time together, my French was -surprisingly- impeccable, we shared the same taste in music, blah, blah, blah. Do these things even matter?

The first taste of doing something stupid and getting away with it. It wakes you up to who you are when you ask the right questions. Why did I do it? What do I need? What was I expecting?

Back in Beirut it's never these questions. Can I do it? Will people find out? What will they think?

These questions too are revealing, like X-rays showing a broken spine.

Spineless.

thirty-one

16:30:50

I'm sleepless above the ocean.

Play.

A hum like a well-oiled engine, hum like the ocean, and then a note rolls in, recedes, builds up, recedes wavering, bass buoyant on a surface of light...

Shimmm el ya-a-smi-i-ne

W dou2. El debs

The quaint hiss of the last -s did it for me. Hamed whispered surrender into my ears, sound surrounding us in our loss. I have seen him always serious and always from afar and that never helped to understand him. Too serious, discrete, like in hiding, and then rebellious and revolutionary, like a rockstar, like always one part of a diptych, the other, a part of a myth.

And then that momentary hiss of an -s. Nostalgic. Sincere. Serious for a reason. Discrete for a reason. Rebellious for a reason. Revolution that follows loss, and it resonates in me, because I'm going to lose. Soon.

Bi t7eeni.

Itzakar.

Itzakar.

That's when my throat begins to hurt, to turn hard the walls of the hollow tube that empties the insides of my stomach, filling it up with the sense of falling when I think of meeting Imaginary Extraordinary Him. His cheeks in my palms, his warm breath condensing above my upper lip, our lips fusing like mitosis in reverse, the rough wet surfaces of our tongues feeling each other's texture, mine slipping under his into the humid folds beneath his tongue and then giving his tip an upward nudge with the tip of mine, pulling his upper lip from the inside, so that it's far out enough to deliver my terminal nibble. That.

Itzakar.

And now it's not about anyone specific, it's about loss, not mine, but Hamed's. It's about a voice.

That, I'm drunk on that.

I lean backwards and close my eyes, feeling the left tear spill over the eyelid and the right one trying to catch up in bursting. I focus on their course, instead of their cause; the metawaterfall too physical, too overwhelming, like a bag of jumbled Scrabble letters, like a mirage of thoughts swirling in a cup.

The pulls exerted by his voice pull at my tears and they cusp my jawline. My hands cup his face like they did when we first met and they hold him long enough to say goodbye without actually saying it.

The whistling, the strum of the guitar encourage me to go through with it. Do it. Do it. Don't back away. C'est la vie. Nothing lasts, only moments that feel like they last forever, and if I will have to say goodbye it will only be because I said hello.

And the dreamy lyrics tawajli albi. It'll be worth it. Even my albi.

I'll buy the ticket. I'll cook him food. I'll iron his shirts. We'll name our kids. We won't make them, but we will make love. We'll forget to forget.

Bass inta bi baitak.

W ana bi Beirut, bi baiti.

W bainetna el bahar.

But now that I'm here, I'll go make memories that I will try to unremember the day when loss will become too much to bare and Hamed's voice will fill me up and soothe the pain.

Shim.

The in-between: up

09:54:09

I'm sleepless above Istanbul.

Skimming the tops of trees, teasing the surface of water, caressing the harvested golden down of wheat, a tiny airplane ripples through rolling landscapes. Its sister, reflected in the blue glass, powders her cockpit nose in the face of wind, leaving behind puffs of exhausted vanities. The always lagging thunder that follows betrays its peaceful gliding and for a moment the people down below are aware of the plane up above, but perhaps not so much of the people in the seats and never of you, sitting in 36D.

The body of the aircraft shakes like a just-touched Rembrandt thigh. I pause to check that we are not losing altitude and resume my rigid sans cible stare as the vibrations wane into a reassuring hum.

Flight attendants slide the raided trays back into their slots as we fly in parallel to breakfasts on wooden tables and morning coffee on sidewalks. Strapped to our stiff seats by seat belts that would bow their heads before their automobile comrades, we are breaking the curse of our featherless arms. And so are the hundreds of other passengers flying over land, ice and water.

I try to tap into the collective consciousness of this planet, hoping to be aware at once of its day and night, rain and sunshine, sands and rocks, winds and caves, bakers and butchers, gluttony and famine, orgasms and abstinence, raves and prayers, croissants and sushi,
oligarchs and war, wide avenues and walled-in communities, silverware and paper cups, sexy black trash bags and oil spills, elephants and jellyfish, funerals and weddings, a baby born in India and a baby dead in England, McDonalds and Italian mothers milling about in their cucinas, Argentinian cowboys and The Naked Cowboy, ballet classes and working the rice fields, smell of freshly brewed tea in Kerala and ground coffee in Brazil, sewage and blinding white Grohe toilet bowls, an ant on my kitchen counter and a cockroach at my neighbours', the size of Russia and the size of a human embryo, Mahler in the morning and Mahler in front of a fireplace, bottled water and wine, sip, sip, crunch, munch, slurp, step, tread, slam, sigh, sniff, cough, sneeze, fart, wince, TURBULENCE, heart drops to tail bone, speed of plane exceeding expectations, shit, something fell, am I going to greet the
world below as a pancake?

Khaiii, for a moment I considered air crash. In that case, I'd imagine my heart would start drumming, but I would remain calm, close my eyes really tight and start letting go...I once heard that sleepwalkers are more likely to survive a hard fall than those who are awake. Why is death teasing me these days? No. Why is my mind so aware of it? This was just customary turbulence, with the same soundtrack of seat belts being fastened, flight attendants' footsteps hurrying up and down the aisle, the pilot telling us to return to our seats, the radio crackles peppering his speech quarantining him in a far away safe place, away from vulnerable panicky us, making us all want to tell him to shut up because what does he know sitting in his invincible cockpit that will detach upon engine failure and drop him to safety in Zagreb where he will emerge a hero from beneath the red exhaling parachute.

This invention of flying never ceased to astound me. I am in awe that if I decide to wake up in Tokyo, I can catapult myself a couple of hours into the future and be there to greet the rising sun.

The labour in my grandparents' orchard would wake up at 4am, mount their donkeys and hiccup the mountain side, so that they could start the day's work at 7am and finish at 4pm, so that they would be home before sun down. By then I will be all the way across the world.

Like atmospheric dust. Like magic.