Monday, December 10, 2012

Reblogged: "Sick of Beirut: Me, Beirut and suffocation"

This is a poem I am reblogging from sickofbeirut.blogspot.com 

Sick of Beirut: Me, Beirut and suffocation: I can hear my watch ticking next to me I can hear the music I am playing I can hear the AC blowing fresh air in my r...

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Wellywood Woman: Niam Itani (1) - Before the Venice Film Festival

Wellywood Woman: Niam Itani (1) - Before the Venice Film Festival: Niam Itani Niam Itani (also Etany) is the only woman director among the ten finalists in YouTube’s short film competition,  Your Film Fes...

Saturday, May 26, 2012


Super.Full. played at AsterFest in Macedonia yesterday. Here is the trailer of the festival which has an excellent line up of films from various countries all over the world.

AsterFest Official Website

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

It All Burns Down to...Memories

Everything. Whatever happened earlier today. Yesterday. The week before. Last month. The whole year that ended. Since I came to Lebanon. Five years at Al Jazeera. My agonizing years once upon a time. University. School. I wonder how many terra bytes can my memory hold. Two is very little. Maybe twenty. Or two hundred. Sometimes I want to write them down before I forget them. At other times I just tell myself, "forget". There will be space for happiness when you forget the pain. But is that really all what we remember? The pain?

I am only writing this because I needed to write, really. I miss writing. I secretly envy my students at LAU because they get asked to write and are given a deadline. I am left to write at my leisure.

I often go back to wanting to write about home. What I still fail to define and recognize, but miss nevertheless. Was Beirut ever my home? I hate to even think that there may be a yes to that question. Even if it would be a temporary one. Like for a month. When I was a day old.

People find it funny that I don't brag about Beirut being my home & my city. I mean, who wouldn't want a place like this for a home? Right?
And I wonder to myself, though I now know the formula, I wonder, what do they like about the city. The formula is simple. For foreigners, visitors, passers by who will never feel trapped in this city, they are at total luxury to enjoy its magic. They can come and go whenever they want. They are always treated well -for the most part- because they have money (mostly), they are interesting (ajenib!), or because it is simply cool to hang out with someone who "looks" civilized once in a while for a change.

Today I drove to Dahyeh to offer condolences to a relative's family. The single traffic light that I had to pass on Hadi Nasrallah Highway was a piece of furniture for many drivers (not all).

Close to the house of the wake, there is also a new sad story which foreigners might find disturbing and I find sick, but people here have grown to find it normal. A newly wed groom was bragging to his wife about his gun and jokingly fired it. Into her head. I don't think I want to comment on this incident. I leave it to you. Honestly, I don't know what the hell am I typing anymore. Good Night, Folks! 

Sunday, January 01, 2012

2011 - Fading Away

O Allah! Possessor of the kingdom, You give the kingdom to whom You will, and You take the kingdom from whom You will, and You endue with honor whom You will, and You humiliate whom You will. In Your Hand is the good. Verily, You are Able to do all things. You make the night to enter into the day, and You make the day to enter into the night, You bring the living out of the dead, and You bring the dead out of the living. And You give wealth and sustenance to whom You will, without limit.' [Soorah aal-Imran (3): 26-27]

"I came like water, and like wind I go" Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam