Sunday, December 19, 2010

Gibran Khalil Gibran

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

I hallucinate therefore I AM

A mug of coffee.
My brother's face.
Thunder.
The tree under the balcony.
Car headlights on wet Hamra street.
A phone call from an old friend.
A child and a fox.
My green fleece.
Having kids after twenty years of marriage.
A lover's sms.
Hot tea.
My mother's hands.
Grey skies.
A serious news presenter.
A text written only in my head.
Cozy theaters.
Hot soup.
Silent prayers.
Pain.
Broken hearts.
Broken hands.
The snow in Ghazzeh.
Bullets.
A dead bird.
An angry woman.
A stone prince.
A childhood story.
Books.
A long distance phone call.
Undeclared love.
Rumi.
Shams.
Istanbul.
Homes non-existant.
Souls astray.
Emptiness.
Ilahi Ishk.
Love.
Love.
More love.
My love.
Lost love.
Never lost love.
Eternal love.
All along love.
Placeless.
Traceless.
Me.
You.
Nothing.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Broken Sentences - 4

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 1:13pm

Doha, Qatar

The temperature outside is 25 degrees and the workers just finished yet another speed bump inside the compound we live in - Me, myself, and Niam.

A silly Lebanese man kept talking to me in English at the Doha Book Fair, after I selected few English books from a stand. I need to be reassured, I do not look like a foreigner, Heavens forbid. Do I?

I wished his English was good, at least.

A friend introduced two fine Palestinian gentlemen to me at work. One just finished his Masters Degree in Social Services, and the other is a journalist who is finishing his Music studies.

Both of them are physically blind.

In one moment, a prototype like that can set you back on the straight path to realize how much of a tiny nothing you are. And how great you could possibly be.

The ironing board stands alone in the corner of the room, looking me in the eye. It reminds me of my grandma, god bless her soul. When she died, my cousins did not go to school. I was sad.

Why did I have to go when they didn't?

The games we played during the war were all boy games. Girl games were usually to play "school". May used to hold a big yellow wooden block from our toys and use it as a ruler. She asked questions and graded us and all.

One day, Omar's new blue kite got stuck on the electricity lines in Ghazzeh. We used to look at it for years afterwards. There were always pieces of it on the lines.

When I look back there now, I can still see the blue kite. And our faces.

I left my heart once in an old house in Ghazzeh. And when I decided to go get it, it was gone.

Getting humiliated by the authorities in an Arab country is nothing new for an Arab. We are equally animals before the law. A moody officer asked that I be kicked out from a building once. Of course you cannot but collect yourself and get the heck out of the place:

"The officer is ANGRY"!

You are NOTHING in the attendance of an angry Arab officer. You are not anybody's daughter or sister. You are not anybody's employee. You are not a producer in a reputable institution. And you are certainly not a human being.

You. Are. An. Insect. (If you're lucky).

I am old school. I believe the pen is stronger than the weapon. I will WRITE the officer a scene. And I will never forgive him.

We will meet again. And on that day, I will not be the insect.

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”

Broken Sentences - 3

Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:33pm

Attention: This note may use or refer to Arabic words or culture. Please take guard and stay alert.

Lina advised me to read a story called "Bus al Awadem" (Good People's Bus). And to find this bus, mommy and I had to search several libraries inside and outside Beirut.

On mom's search, she forgot the name of the story. Remembered only the "bus". Dad suggested "Bus Al Afandi"? But mom was sure it was not afandi. It was something else.

The bus was not there anyway.

I went down to Hamra and scanned the fancy and unfancy libraries in the crowded street.

On one shelf, I surveyed attentively some "religious" authors. Aboona, Mawlana, Al Ab, Al Doctor, Al Sayyed, Al Sheikh. I looked curiously at the titles. They were not books about Allah or Jesus or Buddha. They were not even about inner peace or outer peace or any kind of peace.

They were all about sex. Religion is not selling anymore, I thought. Sex is.

God Bless....

BREAK IN:


On August 1, I was selected RANDOMLY for the special security check in Dulles Airport, when leaving the United States of America.

BREAK OUT:


I finally found "Bus al Awadem". The last copy was resting in another fancy library in Hamra. It is now resting in my bag for an airplane read, hopefully tonight.

The woman at the counter asked me if there are still any "Awadem" around. I suggested she read the story to find out.

The novels written by Lebanese writers are mostly about the past. I am not the only person who writes about the war. It is a comforting and a non-comforting thought.

I promise myself always that my next screenplay won't be about war.

Beirut is a beautiful city. The new traffic lights cannot but call my attention. Like jewels they shine beneath trees and on secondary roads. Red and green and orange.

Today I leave Beirut for the umpteenth time. And tomorrow I come back.

Like a naughty kid, I kick it and humiliate it. And like a hungry kid I long for it. And like any other kid, I have to accept it.

Beirut gives me the life, Beirut destroys me. It gives me the passion, it teaches me to hate. It hates me and loathes me and spits me on the coasts of foreign cities in the sea of my dreams, then it pulls me back.

I once visited Turkey in the future. And loved it. I wanted to die in it. But Beirut calls, and like in any super orientalist fantasy says, "Even death here is more dramatic, you don't want a boring death".

Right. Nobody wants a boring death. I'll probably want to die in Beirut one day. Maybe one day, I'll even want to live in it. Maybe one day, I'll want to live in it every day. And maybe one day, I'll wish I died in it one day. Maybe one day, I'll even wish I died in it every day.

But maybe, maybe, and only maybe, one day I'll wish I lived in it every day.

Broken Sentences - 2

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 2:43am

Sometimes I run out of stuff to waste time on, so I decide to check the NEWS. Believe it or not. And today I discovered (I hope I figured that out right) that Lebanon still does not have a government. The parliamentary election results were announced on Monday, June 8th, 2009. That is more than one month ago.

FUN FACT: On the right side of my laptop screen an ad says: "Where to Pee in NYC".

Yesterday is everything that happened before I wake up tomorrow.
Yesterday, I was a little girl in Beirut with a very good handwriting. Teta once picked me from the balcony to keep me away from the glass during the bombing. As much as she would never remember a tiny detail like that; as much the more I will. 1986.
And yesterday, I was waiting to register for the first time in the long corridor of the Fine Arts bldg in LAU. I wrote my name down on a yellow paper hung on the door of Hala's office. There were few names before mine. One must have been for sure the name of Rouba Korfali. 1997.
Yesterday, I found myself living in a huge house alone in Qatar, acting like a movie star, trying to find myself somewhere in the hundreds of DVDs or hiding inside a guitar. 2005.
Yesterday I was here in Hollins, stepping on American soil for the first time, waiting to find out what is America. 2008.

I'm almost a year away from getting what I always wanted. A screenwriting degree. A dream will come true. THIS is America. Dreams can come true when you plan.

FUN FACT#2: I already know that I will be RANDOMLY selected for the special security check at Dulles Airport when am leaving USA on August 1st. THIS is also America.

This is not a blog entry. This is a Classified Ad. If you found HOME please post the directions.
No bullshit please. Home is not where the heart is.
Hearts have been upgraded to Credit Card colors.
Last I checked, home was where the money was.

RIDDLE: Now the money is gone. Where is home?

Broken Sentences - 1

Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 5:41pm

Is facebook, twitter, myspace, and social networking media shaping the way we think these days?
I find myself during the day lighting up the lamp in my head and telling myself, "This is a good status for Facebook some day". "This has to go on xyz". " I definitely MUST tweet this".

Ras Al Abed (yeah I know its a racist name but this is its name) and Fairouz, are the only things that can unite the Lebanese people. I suggest we utilize them both to restore the broken ties between people.

Election Season.
The expats are going to Lebanon - free tickets.
The people of Akkar and Baalbek (and other areas also) are going places inside Lebanon - free buses - free sandwiches - free laban ayran - free pepsi cans.
Meanwhile, my mind is going coocoo (for free of course), and the whole thing makes me think, please God fast forward the day of judgement. This farce has to stop.

Oh, wait a minute. I am re-thinking the above statement.
Those who don't go on these free "mashaweer", they do that out of what used to be called "principles" or a "Matter of conscience". These terms are now extinct, and you get laughed at if you can really spell them properly. Get lost Niam. Seriously. What year do you live in? duh.

I am still trying to find a reason for why did the Lebanese Civil War happen altogether. If anybody has a clue please let me know. If your answer is Israel or the Palestinians please say it without much elaboration. I now know the cliches.

Sometimes I think again of Naher El Bared. On these second thoughts, everything is blurred. Did this camp exist? What took me up there? Why did I fall in love with a doomed place? Maybe it vanished because I loved it. I should never ever love a person or a place or anything again. They often tend to disappear.

This woman, whose name I forgot, was overrun by a car in downtown Beirut. Her son and daughter disappeared during the war. They are probably dead, and -hopefully- buried somewhere. She had been staying downtown to call the attention of the authorities to find her children. I am not into politics at all, but sometimes I wonder why does none of our big mouthed courageous *** (insert correct word in brackets) politicians ever ask about her kids? And why do none of the free mashaweer people ever think of these mothers and fathers and kids before they board their free mashaweer vehicles?

When May delivered her baby, the women cried. All of them. I even cast a tear or two. But I saved them knowing I will shed them later at the right moment. The AUH is a very horrible place for me to be at. Even for a lovely occasion like witnessing the birth of my neice. But this time I was thinking about Mommy. IF the AUH for ME is a horrible place, how horrible can it be for Mom? Whoever knows knows and whoever doesn't doesn't. When May was taken away from us to the operating room, I thought; how does it feel when the child is taken away from the mother. And does DEATH flash in her eyes when her child is taken away? The child may not ever come out alive from this room.
How did it feel when I was taken in to that room when I was just a kid? And how did it feel when Bayan went in when she was an infant? And how did it feel when a child was gone forever in a room in that place before that?