Sunday July 16th 2006

It was finally Sunday. We were supposed to have our family breakfast on this day. But the Kibar did not let us go to the village where Knafeh was sold. This is not to mention the fact that "the family"was not there.
The village had been bombed the night before and it is not safe to go there.
The final answer was no, but I insisted to get something for the kids who had been waiting for the yummy breakfast weeks before I came to Lebanon.
I went to the village and we made "Manakeesh" for everybody. It was a lovely morning, strangely calm. The breakfast was not sweet. Certainly not yummy. I don't know if there was a problem with the taste of the food or with my sense of being.
News, news, news. We had breakfast while listening to the news. There were no bomb sounds in the distance. Not yet.
Uncle Mohammad called his company and they said it is closed. No work for tomorrow.
No universities for tomorrow as well. So nothing to do tomorrow. And nothing to do today.
We did nothing after we had breakfast. At one o'clock a strange visitor came. It was the woman who worked in the farm opposite to our house. She said the factories that buy the milk have been bombed and the farm owner has 50 kilograms of milk to sell. We laughed at the idea of buying 50 kilos of milk. But, to our surprise, the kibar said we need this milk. They said they will make cheese and yogurt at home.
And of course we will have milk for breakfast. And probably for dinner.
We bought the 50 kilos of milk and started boiling them five kilos after another.
Nothing to do still. Boredom was killing us.
My graduation photos will have been ready by now. Ibrahim was supposed to leave to Mekka for "Omra" (Muslim worship) on Monday. Of course the omra trip was cancelled.
I still had one more DVD to watch but the kids did not want to see my Japanese DVD. They preferred Flightplan. We watched the film. Then there was nothing to do again. I was starting to notice that everybody was getting disturbed from the situation. Even MJ was getting surprised. Nobody wants to play with him basketball and soccer anymore. At one point we saw grandma –whose foot was hurting and she barely walked- throwing with him balls to the basket!

Grandma and Mommy were consistently telling us that everything will be ok. We have lived in a war before and we are still here, they said. This will also end just like the other ones. The other ones were more dangerous even.

But WE have not lived the war before. We were only kids. We did not think about the future then. We did not know that other kids in the world were living without bombs. I did not even know that there were cartoons and kids programs on TV. We thought it was news all the time. Not until I was 24 that I knew there was a cartoon called "Adnan wa Lina" that almost every Arab kid watched.
We did not know there were love songs. They were always songs of mourning and fighting. We did not know -then- that in other places you do not have to stand in long lines to buy bread, or take the car cables home with you so that it does not get stolen.
We did not have plans. We did not have dreams. Then.
But we have plans and dreams now. And they were certainly different than being stuck in the village with F-16s roaming our skies, dropping rockets that make the house shake from more than 50 kilometers distance!

To Be Continued---