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.