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! 

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?

I wrote yesterday :)

Today I started a strange and new activity: Learning a new language; Spanish. It was a very nice and great experience that I hope will end brightly.
It was very paradoxical when we were repeating the alphabet after our tutor, a, b, c, ch, etc...
Rebrought me to the fact that people are always learning throughout their lives. Never should we stop learning new things till our very end.
THE END

Oh, since we're saying END, yesterday (Sunday) ended mmmmm.. did not end as well as we wished it would. We had our Iftar - Evening meal (since in the Holy month of Ramadan Muslims fast from dawn till sunset) and before we left the dining table Zizu started growing strange stuff on her hands. And soon the strange pimples spread all over her body.

At first Ummi (her mom) and I tried to house-treat those small creatures with some traditional cure. But after two hours things started to get really..... red!
There we were on our way to the ER at eleven before midnight. It seemed more like eleven a.m. since more than half the people in Qatar were on the streets.
Anyway, after an adventure to the ER the strange creatures disappeared as suddenly as hey appeared.

Since I arrived to Qatar less than one year ago, I have been to the ER more frequently than I had been to the ER before throughout my whole life. It was never that I am the patient though, thank God.
I hate the ER. I hate hospitals.
I remember the beginning of a very good film, "Pi", it has a part where Max the main character says, "When I was young my Mom told me never to look at the sun, so once when I was six I did."

When I, Niam, was six my Mom and I went to the American University Hospital in beirut to check on a weird creature in my body, then.
Since in 1986-87 Lebanon was in war, there were victims being brought to AUH around the clock. So basically mommy told me not to look at those "scenes". But I did. And since then whenever I enter a hospital for any reason, or smell the doctor's smell (there is a doctor smell I think) my state changes.. physically and psychologically. But more psychologically. I see again and again the same image that I saw when I was six. A man who was probably dead, because half of his head was full of blood and deformed, and his hand was tied or clinched to a metallic thing on the medical carrier which passed quickly past us. He always passes by me at all hospitals. Even here in Qatar he passes by. As if he is saying hello. He reminds me of the worst thing I can't forget. War.
And he reminds me of war atrocities. And I start wondering where is he now? was he dead when I saw him? Probably. But I think not coz his hand was a little bit upwards. Why would they bother his hand if he were dead?? If he is alive how does he look like? Is he fully healthy again? Is he poor or rich? Is he married? Did his parents lose him and he lives now alone? Millions and Millions of questions.

CUT
THE END

FADE FROM BLACK
I just opened the LAU website (www.lau.edu.lb) and found on the main page a picture of our Gulbenkian Theater with students in it. I think students in the Play Production Class with Dr. Mona Knio. I am still a very traditional and old fashioned person when it comes to teachers. I absolutely can be a living application for the arabic idiom that means, "I am the slave of whoever taught me one letter of the alphabet"(Man allamani harfan surtu lahu abdan). I so much admire all the people who teach, and hate whoever speaks bad of teachers. I think teachers are the most sacred living people on Earth and the ones who should be most respected.

And before I stop writing to go to bed, I like to say that my Aunt is a teacher and I love her so much. Her name is Saadia. I wish everybody had an aunt like her.
When we were very young, I remember seeing her doing stuff around the house. Mostly changing the decor of my grandmother's living room, to be honest. She loves changing the decor. No matter how simple it is.

Soy Niam. Soy productora de peliculas y tambien estudiante de espanol.
Good night senores y senoras!