Inspiring Passage from "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari

I was conscious, as I thought back over these seven provisional hints at solutions to our depression and anxiety, that they require huge changes—in our selves, and in our societies. When I felt that way, a niggling voice would come into my head. It said—nothing will ever change. The forms of social change you’re arguing for are just a fantasy. We’re stuck here. Have you watched the news? You think positive changes are a-coming?

When these thoughts came to me, I always thought of one of my closest friends.

In 1993, the journalist Andrew Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV-positive. It was the height of the AIDS crisis. Gay men were dying all over the world. There was no treatment in sight. Andrew’s first thought was: I deserve this. I brought it on myself. He had been raised in a Catholic family in a homophobic culture in which, as a child, he thought he was the only gay person in the whole world, because he never saw anyone like him on TV, or on the streets, or in books. He lived in a world where if you were lucky, being gay was a punchline, and if you were unlucky, it got you a punch in the face.

So now he thought—I had it coming. This fatal disease is the punishment I deserve.
For Andrew, being told he was going to die of AIDS made him think of an image. He had once gone to see a movie and something went wrong with the projector, and the picture went all wrong—it displayed at a weird, unwatchable angle. It stayed like that for a few minutes. His life now, he realized, was like sitting in that cinema, except this picture would never be right again.

Not long after, he left his job as editor of one of the leading magazines in the United States, the New Republic. His closest friend, Patrick, was dying of AIDS—the fate Andrew was now sure awaited him.

So Andrew went to Provincetown, the gay enclave at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachussetts, to die. That summer, in a small house near the beach, he began to write a book. He knew it would be the last thing he ever did, so he decided to write something advocating a crazy, preposterous idea—one so outlandish that nobody had ever written a book about it before. He was going to propose that gay people should be allowed to get married, just like straight people. He thought this would be the only way to free gay people from the self-hatred and shame that had trapped Andrew himself. It’s too late for me, he thought, but maybe it will help the people who come after me.

When the book—Virtually Normal—came out a year later, Patrick died when it had only been in the bookstores for a few days, and Andrew was widely ridiculed for suggesting something so absurd as gay marriage. Andrew was attacked not just by right-wingers, but by many gay left-wingers, who said he was a sellout, a wannabe heterosexual, a freak, for believing in marriage. A group called the Lesbian Avengers turned up to protest at his events with his face in the crosshairs of a gun. Andrew looked out at the crowd and despaired. This mad idea—his last gesture before dying—was clearly going to come to nothing.

When I hear people saying that the changes we need to make in order to deal with depression and anxiety can’t happen, I imagine going back in time, to the summer of 1993, to that beach house in Provincetown, and telling Andrew something:

Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash

Okay, Andrew, you’re not going to believe me, but this is what’s going to happen next. Twenty-five years from now, you’ll be alive. I know; it’s amazing; but wait—that’s not the best part. This book you’ve written—it’s going to spark a movement. And this book—it’s going to be quoted in a key Supreme Court ruling declaring marriage equality for gay people. And I’m going to be with you and your future husband the day after you receive a letter from the president of the United States telling you that this fight for gay marriage that you started has succeeded in part because of you. He’s going to light up the White House like the rainbow flag that day. He’s going to invite you to have dinner there, to thank you for what you’ve done. Oh, and by the way—that president? He’s going to be black. 

It would have seemed like science fiction. But it happened. It’s not a small thing to overturn two thousand years of gay people being jailed and scorned and beaten and burned. It happened for one reason only. Because enough brave people banded together and demanded it. Every single person reading this is the beneficiary of big civilizing social changes that seemed impossible when somebody first proposed them. Are you a woman? My grandmothers weren’t even allowed to have their own bank accounts until they were in their forties, by law. Are you a worker? The weekend was mocked as a utopian idea when labor unions first began to fight for it. Are you black, or Asian, or disabled? You don’t need me to fill in this list.

So I told myself: if you hear a thought in your head telling you that we can’t deal with the social causes of depression and anxiety, you should stop and realize—that’s a symptom of the depression and anxiety itself. Yes, the changes we need now are huge. They’re about the size of the revolution in how gay people were treated. But that revolution happened.

There’s a huge fight ahead of us to really deal with these problems. But that’s because it’s a huge crisis. We can deny that—but then we’ll stay trapped in the problem. Andrew taught me: The response to a huge crisis isn’t to go home and weep. It’s to go big. It’s to demand something that seems impossible—and not rest until you’ve achieved it.

- from Hari, Johann. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions (p. 252). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Highlights from "Less: A Novel" by Andrew Sean Greer

Kindle Location: 182
They might have done, many of them. So many people will do. But once you’ve actually been in love, you can’t live with “will do”; it’s worse than living with yourself.

201
Less looked at his lover, and perhaps a series of images flashed through his mind—a tuxedo jacket, a Paris hotel room, a rooftop party—or perhaps what appeared was just the snow blindness of panic and loss.

269
New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were in town and didn’t meet them for an expensive dinner, five million furious you didn’t visit their new baby, three million furious you didn’t see their new show, one million furious you didn’t call for sex, but only five actually available to meet you. It is completely reasonable to call none of them.

338
A man he almost stayed with, almost loved, and now he does not even recognize him on the street. Either Less is an asshole, or the heart is a capricious thing. It is not impossible both are true.

407
Where is the real Less? Less the young man terrified of love? The dead-serious Less of twenty-five years ago? Well, he has not packed him at all. After all these years, Less doesn’t even know where he’s stored.

415
Less’s generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite—do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain? Do you become a Buddhist?

442
He wonders when their conversations had begun to sound like a novel in translation.

885
Is there a pill for when the image of a trumpet vine comes into your head? Will it erase it? Erase the voice saying, You should kiss me like it’s good-bye? Erase the tuxedo jacket, or at least the face above it? Erase the whole nine years?

887
The work, the habit, the words, will fix you. Nothing else can be depended on, and Less has known genius, what genius can do. But what if you are not a genius? What will the work do then?

890
The tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.

932
Why do today’s young men insist on marrying? Was this why we all threw stones at the police, for weddings?

954
It was in the middle of their time together, when Less was finally worldly enough to be of help with travel and Robert had not become so filled with bitterness that he was a hindrance, the time when any couple has found its balance, and passion has quieted from its early scream, but gratitude is still abundant; what no one realizes are the golden years.

1,282
At ten, we climb the tree higher even than our mothers’ fears. At twenty, we scale the dormitory to surprise a lover asleep in bed. At thirty, we jump into the mermaid-green ocean. At forty, we look on and smile.

1,496
They knew trouble would come but expected it in degrees. Life so often arrives all of a sudden. And who knows which side you will find yourself on?

1,824
“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.” “Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

1,860
“I wish I were single.” Less smiles bitterly at the subjunctive but does not move his arm. “I’m sure you don’t. Otherwise you would be.” “It is not so simple, Arthur.”

1,872
He must have been lonely a long time to stand before Arthur Less and ask such a thing. On a rooftop in Paris, in his black suit and white shirt. Any narrator would be jealous of this possible love, on this possible night.

1,876
“We’re too old to think we’ll meet again,” Less says.

2,069
“Arthur, you’re going to have to figure something out. You see all these men over fifty, these skinny men with mustaches. Imagine all the dieting and exercise and effort of fitting into your suits from when you were thirty! And then what? You’re still a dried-up old man. Screw that. Clark always says you can be thin or you can be happy, and, Arthur, I have already tried thin.”

2,086
It is, after all, almost a miracle they are here. Not because they’ve survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines. Not that at all. It’s that they’ve survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have made it to fifty and to have made it here:

2,159
And I thought, Well, that was nice. That was a nice marriage.” “But you broke up with him. Something’s wrong. Something failed.” “No! No, Arthur, no, it’s the opposite! I’m saying it’s a success. Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever. Siamese twins are a tragedy. Twenty years and one last happy road trip. And I thought, Well, that was nice. Let’s end on success.”

2,176
“It’s true things can go on till you die. And people use the same old table, even though it’s falling apart and it’s been repaired and repaired, just because it was their grandmother’s. That’s how towns become ghost towns. It’s how houses become junk stores. And I think it’s how people get old.”

2,179
I think maybe I’ll go it on my own. Maybe I’m better that way. Maybe I was always better that way and it was just that when I was young, I was so scared, and now I’m not scared.

2,192
Why this endless need for a man as a mirror? To see the Arthur Less reflected there? He is grieving, for sure—the loss of his lover, his career, his novel, his youth—so why not cover the mirrors, rend the fabric over his heart, and just let himself mourn? Perhaps he should try alone.

2,249
“She told me she met the love of her life,” Zohra says at last, still staring out the window. “You read poems about it, you hear stories about it, you hear Sicilians talk about being struck by lightning. We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having an ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning. It’s what she always had with me. Isn’t it? But what if she’s right, Arthur? What if the Sicilians are right? That it’s this earth-shattering thing she felt? Something I’ve never felt. Have you?”

2,265
“What is love, Arthur? What is it?” she asks him. “Is it the good dear thing I had with Janet for eight years? Is it the good dear thing? Or is it the lightning bolt? The destructive madness that hit my girl?” “It doesn’t sound happy” is all he can say.

2,312
We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding.

2,322
Time has been waiting here all along. In a snowy alpine resort. With cuckoos. Of course Time would turn out to be Swiss.

2,323
Like a wintertime swimmer too numb to feel cold, Arthur Less is too sad to feel pity.

2,424
Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material.

2,657
They are not young, not at all; there is nothing left of the boys they used to be. Why not sell his letters, his keepsakes, his paintings, his books? Why not burn them? Why not give up on the whole business of life?

2,668
“Arthur, I’ve got a theory. Now, hear me out. It’s that our lives are half comedy and half tragedy. And for some people, it just works out that the first entire half of their lives is tragedy and then the second half is comedy.

2,697
“Arthur, I changed my mind. You have the luck of a comedian. Bad luck in things that don’t matter. Good luck in things that do. I think—you probably won’t agree with this—but I think your whole life is a comedy. Not just the first part. The whole thing. You are the most absurd person I’ve ever met. You’ve bumbled through every moment and been a fool; you’ve misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you’ve won. And you don’t even realize it.”

2,701
He doesn’t feel victorious; he feels defeated. “My life, my life over the past year—” “Arthur Less,” Carlos interrupts, shaking his head. “You have the best life of anyone I know.” This is nonsense to Less.

2,829
It was one of the grandest and most dismaying experiences in Less’s life—Marcel Proust, that is—and the three thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time took him five committed summers to finish.

2,866
There is that scene at the end of Proust when our narrator, after many years out of society, arrives at a party furious no one told him it’s a costume party; everyone is wearing white wigs! And then he realizes. It isn’t a costume party. They have simply grown old.

2,884
I know I’m out of your life / But the day that I die / I know you are going to cry.

2,893
“My marriage is failing, it has been failing a long time. Marian and I hardly sleep together anymore. I get to bed very late, she gets up very early. She’s angry we never had children. And now that it’s too late, she’s even angrier. I’m selfish and terrible with money. I’m so unhappy. So, so unhappy, Arthur.

2,902
And Robert says nothing; he knows the absurdity of asking someone to explain love or sorrow. You can’t point to it. It would be as futile, as unconveyable, as pointing at the sky and saying, “That one, that star, there.”

“The Only Democracy in the Middle East”

Please leave your house immediately. 

Do not call it a home. 

This is our home not yours. 

Security demands it. 

Always, always, security. 

Our security. 

Take nothing, ask nothing. 

Stand over there, against the rubble, where 

you belong. All young men, come with us. 

You may not see your families again. 

No saying goodbye or hugging. 

We have suffered too much 

thanks to everyone 

but you are the only ones we can touch. 

Don’t give us any trouble.

-from Transfer (American Poets Continuum) by Naomi Shihab Nye

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International

Excerpts from the introduction to Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman:

It was about two weeks after the July 2006 Israeli bombing of Lebanon. I was having dinner with a Lebanese friend, the gay novelist Rabih Alameddine. "I don't get it," he said. "In the thirteen years that I have lived in this country, many of my friends, maybe most of my friends have been Jews. We usually agree on everything. Sometimes they are more left wing than I am. We agree about the war in Iraq. But, then, Israel invades Lebanon, and suddenly they don't get it. They get it about Iraq, but all of a sudden they are telling me that Israel has a right to defend itself, et cetera. And I'm shocked. What is going on? Why don't they get it?"
(Kindle Locations 15-19)

"When I was in Argentina, the fascist police made me get down on my knees and bark like a dog, because I was a Jewish dog," he told Mike Wallace, a Jewish man who had changed his name to have a career in broadcast journalism. "When I came to Israel, I heard that some Israeli soldiers had made some Palestinian youth get down on their knees and bark like dogs, because theywere Arab dogs. And I asked myself, are these two incidents the same? And I had to answer yes."
(Kindle Locations 124-128)

What I have come to understand, finally, is that for Europeans, what they call laique or secular culture is actually a kind of liberal Christian culture. And so, to them, difference -switching between Jews and Muslims, depending on the historical moment-violates what they believe to be "secular objectivity" but is really basic Christian aesthetics.
(Kindle Locations 170-172)

And how did the Europeans, who caused the pain in the first place, get off scot-free, while the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with it, ended up paying the price?
(Kindle Locations 184-185)

The United States and the Allies needed a strong military base in the Middle East, and there was widespread guilt about the lack of global aid during the genocide. So creating the state of Israel as a place to dump the refugees and build a military footing in the region for the West served every-body's needs.
(Kindle Locations 208-210)

Does America support Israel because it loves Jews and wants to protect them, or because it just needs a military base in Israel from which to conduct wars and control resources? It's a naive question. All military alliances are strategic in nature. But the blurring gives both the illusion of independence and the illusion that the United States is a "friend" of Israel. The result is a lot of instability, false fronts, fear, and pretending. Israel exists simultaneously as a colonial settler state in relationship to Palestinians, and as a semicolonized project of the Christian West, the very people who caused the Jews' suffering to begin with.
(Kindle Locations 218-221)

So we lie to ourselves, because the truth is so much more frightening. The truth is that Israel's policies do not make the world a safer place for Jews or anyone else. To be a responsible government is to act as though other human beings are real and have lives that matter. In this regard, both the U.S. and Israeli governments have deteriorated into rogue states causing pain and inflicting suffering from a delusional place.
(Kindle Locations 260-262)

azure letters

Joe Bolton wrote in Departure:

"And if poetry is a bond between
Two hearts, it is a bond too frail:
That night words failed, I too, was lost--"

Poetry may be a frail bond, but sometimes it is the strongest we have. Which is why, when we are lost, a good friend finds us in a poem...

azure letters
by Katy Acheson

Thank you, dear, again and again...

Mou'sif (poème pathétique)

(give me i'll give you #10):
http://somethingkaty.blogspot.com/2009/01/
mousif-pome-pathtique-give-me-ill-give.html

Never Forget

A new e-mail from my brother:

". . . Because in the past five weeks I only lost four, and I still stand poor.

Every story on this planet springs from me, and dies in my arms, Pietà. This story does, too.

I live in a city that is not a city, I live in city that does not love itself, in a city thirsty, hungry, and kissing.

I know everything. I know the dreams and the nightmares that attack you just before sunrise, I know of the sweat at my armpits, shit, and I know of terrorism and globalisation but I will tell you of the rest.

Of the words written at the margins, and of the margins yet to be discovered, of only the things that I see and feel, of the bad air that I breathe.
. . .
I live in a country that is not loved by anyone, and that is open to everyone's Freudian fantasies (in both senses; sexual and aggressive). It is okay if our civilians are slaughtered, and Israel may block gas, food, and air from us upon any whim. No one shall object, anyway, because we are wléed kalb [sons of dogs].

Shall I tell you of the monsters? The monsters are those who we leave behind once we decide that it is okay if we asked for a decent life, id est a life where we do not need to worry about not having enough water, electricity, units, money, or security to-morrow. The monsters leave once we realise that we do not even have minima, and yet we love this place.

The monsters spring from Mohammad who tells you that you do not need to learn everything from your own bag, and that he cannot live again; all Mohammad had was one life.

The monsters are very simple. When they have (Japanese) tea, the monsters make jokes about the Lebanese not daring to plan for to-morrow, because they know that whatever they plan, it shall not happen.

And I am not mourning here, and I am not sad and not complaining. I am writing to tell you of the monsters that live inside of me . . ."

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Sublime Robert Fisk Pieces

• Paradise Lost: Robert Fisk's elegy for Beirut
• The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war

Literary Voices of Dissent

Here's an assortment of some literary heavyweights and intellectuals speaking out against the recent atrocities in the Middle East; certainly worth listening to:

• Jostein Gaarder (the author of 'Sophie's World') has written a very courageous and outspoken letter titled "God's Chosen People" that you can find translated into English here.
• Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Howard Zinn, Ken Loach, John Berger, and Arundhati Roy have signed a joint letter titled "War crimes and Lebanon" in The Guardian.
• A Letter from 18 Writers, including three Nobel Prize recipients, has been reprinted in The Nation, as well as Le Monde, El País, The Independent and La Repubblica, amongst others.

Call to Arms, a Poetic Stance

The poetic Call to Arms keeps on growing! (Recent additions in italics.) Thank you all!

• by Katy of something katy and pilot eye:
  Ummi
  Tired
  pieces
  the bee program
  let's pretend
  friends of war
• by Billy the Blogging Poet:
  For Lebanon / For God And CountryThe End Is Near / Fireflies
• Collateral Damage Made Real by Russell of Yuckelbel's Canon
• Arena by Bob of Average Poet
• Crestfallen by Ozymandiaz of Paper Tigers
• The Man Who Wasn't There by Glenn of Crunchy Weta
• Better Late Than Never? by Shirley of HouseMouse
• To the World Leaders by Erin of Poetic Acceptance
• Bitter Déjà-vu by Els of Houston, no problem we see Belgium
• The Last Lullaby (for Lebanon) by Scheherazade of Schadenfraulines
• Weep, Like a Cedar in Lebanon by Daniel of Talking to Myself
• (flag) by Cecilia of clearcandy daily

And from non-blogging poets:

• All the Dead Children by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
• Prophecy by Grace Halabi
• Women of my country by Nadia Tueni (translated by Delirious)
• Ours by Laurie Pollack

Thank you so much, Katy, for the magnanimous initiative, and all the poets who contributed so generously!

FROM EXILE TO THE PRISON: What shall I tell Jana?

(This is a translation of a very moving article that a great friend of mine, Roland, wrote in French, and that has been published in Canada where he had recently emigrated. He is now back in Lebanon; I'll let him speak for himself... I have translated the article into English here; the original text in French can be found here. And I'd like to thank Eve, Delirious, and Arlene for looking over my translation.)

On Tuesday July 25, 2006, while Canadians of Lebanese origin and the Lebanese with dual-citizenship descended onto the ports of their "promised land", I did what my heart and convictions begged me to do: I took a Montreal-Paris-Damascus flight to join my family and my country that have been abandoned to Israeli fire and death. The road from Damascus to Beirut, in the middle of the night, was a true nightmare: the sound of the planes roaring above the taxi (the only one that was as insane as I and that had agreed to take the risk) seemed like the drum of death that I had to witness up-close.

I knew that I had come to help, but I did not know how. One week already and I know that I will never look at life the same way again. Last Thursday I joined a group of young people, between the ages of 25 and 35, who had decided to remain and face this atrocious war. It’s been one week since I’ve joined them, each day in a different school, where hundreds of thousands of displaced, dismembered and shocked families were piled up, families of which one or two members have remained under the rubble, these fragments of families a part of which has been lost for good under the shells.

In the over-populated schools, these refugees survive under precarious conditions: the meager and rare food portions, some drugs for the cardiac patients and diabetics. We try to keep the children occupied, because they are hungry and, even more so, afraid: they cannot sleep, with the night being torn by the noise and vibrations of Israeli bombardments. Today we decided to make them dream.

With paints I drew on their small tired faces stars, moustaches, zebra stripes... And each one of them, for one afternoon, believed themselves to be a magician, a tiger or a lion, and could overcome their misery to spend the night on a small carpet on the ground with a bread crumb for dinner.

Jana is 6 years old. It’s been two days now that I’ve met her at the "concentration camp" (it is the best description I can find to describe these small rooms where the refugees pile up). Her father, who remained in Tyre to care for the sick grandmother, never returned. Jana is soft and seldom smiles. Today, she asked me to draw white flowers for her on her two pale cheeks. And, as if by magic, I also could draw for the first time a smile on her small angelic mouth. She did not let go of my hand for the rest of the day.

In the evening, when leaving, she looked at me and said: "If you come to our place in Tyre, I will give you a white rose from my rose tree which I planted with my grandmother." I looked at her soft innocent face as her words pierced my heart.

While driving home, I could not stop thinking of Jana, with her white rose tree tinted with blood, at her house crushed by missiles, with her grandmother and her father of whom nothing remains but ashes.

What shall I tell Jana? That the Grown-ups didn't want to stop the fire and that nothing remains of her childhood but memories? That the blood of her father stained the white rose tree and that he has left forever? That she has no one left anymore but her mother and her 2 year old brother and a few pennies, that she has nothing for shelter but a corner of the street without roof nor harbor?

What shall I tell Jana, that the grown-ups of this world claim that, for every answer, the response is "measured "?

I smiled to Jana and the broken heart I left in Beirut, a phantom city as of 3 p.m., not knowing if the night would bring more devastation and if the death of other children qualifying as "measured response" would be added to our misery.

I thought of Jana, while at home, waiting for the Israeli planes to release their beautiful gifts from the sky to the children of Lebanon... I thought of Jana and the other innocent children; I felt revolt at this cleansing blessed and legitimized by certain great powers. And I ask you to answer Jana yourself, you, citizens of the world spared of misery, because I feel ashamed to tell her what the Grown-ups approve still, until this very moment...

Thank God (/Apple?) for iPods!

A new message from my sister in Lebanon about the iPod Nano I got her for her graduation, exactly a month ago, just days before this nightmare began...

"I just wanted to thank u for the ipod. I listen to it every morning when I wake up, & at night (so that I don't hear the planes & explosions). I love it, & I LOVE U!"

An e-mail from my sister in Lebanon

To Bouboo in war

. . . We’re staying here, where the war hasn’t reached yet, for how long, I don’t know. There’s no bombing here, no shooting, the children play football all day, and people are gathered on the balconies having coffee and argheeleh, and yet we don’t feel safe. Every night when we go to bed, we fall sleep on the sound of “ta2irat el-2istitla3” [reconnaissance planes], and on bad nights, the low flying of military planes. The sound makes you wonder whether you’ll be tomorrow’s headlines or whether it’s someone else’s turn. Most nights I wonder if I’m going to wake up the next morning, and if we’re all going to be OK. I got used to sleeping on the ground after we decided that the living room is safer than our bedrooms (since the bedrooms have a panoramic view whereas the living room faces another building). For 19 days now, every night, I pull down the living room “tara7at” [cushions], spread my sheets and my pillow, and gather the things that are dearest to my heart in a small bag that I keep right next to me on the floor. Every morning I wake up, take my sheets and pillow to the bedroom, make my bed, put “el tara7at” back into place, and hide the small bag in my closet. The lies we like to believe…I’ve watched hundreds of buildings fall since the war started, and not one, not one, had a preserved room. They crumble like sandcastles, and the waves make no difference between a living room and a bedroom, or between a mattress and a bed.

I’m not complaining. In fact, I thank God a million times for being so lucky. I’ve seen families standing on the pavement waiting for a ride to safety when the Israelis threw “manshourat” [flyers] on El-Da7yeh, but all buses were full, and everyone was escaping with no regard to whom is left behind. I’ve seen men leave their houses and their stores with nothing in hand except pocket money and ID (el-hawiye), and then sit in a stranger’s house watching on TV their lives’ work and savings getting burnt into pieces. I’ve seen children, women, and elderly stacked in school corridors, waiting for someone to pass food and water for them and their babies. I’ve seen youngsters in the prime of their lives, sleeping in gardens (jnaynit el-sanayi3), being photographed and videotaped like zoo animals, deprived of any form of shelter and privacy. I’ve seen doctors in the South screaming on TV that the hospital in their surrounded (mo7asar) village needs anesthetics because they ran out of drugs and they’re operating on lucid and conscious patients. I’m talking about living people since I started out by saying that this e-mail is not going to be about the massacres, it’s not about the dead. . .

(Please read all here.)

The Last Lullaby (for Lebanon)

My dear friend Yasmin of Schadenfraulines has written a heartrending poem "in memory of the Qana Massacre" called The Last Lullaby (for Lebanon).

She has also written this touching poem of encouragement for me and Lebanon:

FOR BOUBOO AND YOUR LEBANON

there was a time
when a butterscotched tongue
was your candied retreat

now tin soldiers have sacked the sandman
and crept away with the last thick crumbs of sleep
sliding your peace under and out the door

where all the stars have fallen

but like Colossus
(remember, you towered tall like him once before
Bouboo)
you run on burning feet
scooping them up
and hurling them back into the sky

Yasmin, I thank you immensely...

Reminder:
Many great poets have also contributed to my dear friend Katy's poetic Call to Arms at Poets101. I thank them all!

A new e-mail from my brother in Lebanon

. . . When everything started, I was having my internship at a designer’s office near the National Museum, and I had to stop because commuting was dangerous. I was nonetheless accepted in a designer’s office in Dubai, and shall leave Lebanon in a week or so. I therefore had to visit my house in the Southern Suburb in order to bring my passport from it, and did so yesterday with my mother.

I was surprised at the fact that my house was still intact. Fortunately, the nearest bombings to my house were a street away, and my mother had opened all the windows of our house before evacuating. She had learnt from the previous war that that prevents their glass from bursting from the pressure created by the bomb, and it worked. Where I live is a very noisy area, and so it was strange to see it as empty as a ghosts’ village. I brought my passport along with a travelling bag and some clothes, bade my favourite cat farewell, and returned with my mother to our mountain house. It was important that we leave the place as soon as possible.

This is not to say that I am depressed. In fact, my first ten days here were rather calm; stuck between two mountain towns, all I did for ten days was sleep, play cards with my cousins, and read. Where I am you can hear and see the bombings on the Southern Suburb, but not so loudly that it scares you, and so with binoculars you can survey where the missiles are going with relative accuracy (that actually was yet another activity that my cousins and I did). The last couple of days I finally went to the village’s plaza, where there is an internet cafÈ, and sent a couple of mails that I had been typing on my laptop since the war started (that was when I read your e-mail). I also began my calls for an internship and a VISA, and designed a new logo for my aunt’s husband’s architectural firm.

Yesterday, my sister told me that England, the feller that the United Nations sent to Lebanon, announced that he was surprised to know that the Southern Suburb was a residential area of 920,000 citizens and not a top secret military zone. I wondered to myself; if someone at such a key position in the UN did not know something as simple and key to understanding what is really going on in the region, then who would? . . .
(read more)

(Ahmoudeh, look what Katy did for you...)

From my brother in Lebanon

. . . The first seven days here, I would type whenever I could to Josef, my favourite cousin who lives in Germany. I probably have told you about him. Brief, he is a person who touches my inner waters, which is why I love him so much. I had started counting the days that stood between us forty days before he was supposed to come. That night, when we were done with (the exquisite) Fairuz, and when Ma called us, telling us to meet her and Pa at our mountain house because it was not safe to sleep in Beirut, I thought of Josef and asked God not to take him away. I repeated "please please please" fervently. The subsequent morning we were woken up by bombings, and the Israeli army was bombing the airport. It was six days before Josef would come.

I started typing to the boy that same day I guess. I made extra sure that I was not being dramatic. I wanted to tell him what was going on without big words, without "mourning" was the word that I used. Over seven days I typed four pages, by the end of which I had told him nothing. Something in me said that he was too young and innocent, that it was futile to worry him. By the end of the four pages, I had dropped narrative and levitated to shreds and bits. I told Josef, like I used to last summer, of the dreams that I had and the songs that I listened to in my head. I recounted to him a couple of pieces from a beautiful nationalistic song by Marcel Khalifé called "Rita." I did not tell him of the 300 citizens dead then far, of the 1000 people wounded, and the 600,000 "naazihine," people like me who had to leave their houses. I am very lucky to have a mountain house.

To-morrow I shall hopefully visit my house in order to get my passport, for Ma said that things might worsen and that the Israeli army might invade Lebanon. In case it did, we would have to leave, at least until things get settled. I shall see my favourite cat and would bring with me my corn badge and CD's. When we fly, I do not want to mourn. I just mourn my feeling of usefulness to my country.

When I see my country being raped and know that all I can do as a citizen of the glorious Lebanese Republic is flee and flee some more, I wonder what I am good for. I feel guilty because all I am having from this war is being trapped in my mountain house and hearing bombings on my home region from afar, but had I lost my mother, would it have mattered? Would I have loved Lebanon any better? Love is treatment.

I feel guilty because I miss Josef while people are being slaughtered, but I miss Josef. How many apologies do I owe my country? Before I started typing this, I stood at the balcony railings and thought that I am very sane although I have been bouncing between two mountain towns for ten days so far, then I thought of how sane I would be in ten weeks and in ten months. My God, people lived worse than that for seventeen consecutive years. How did they? . . . (more)

O Lebanon… My Lebanon

(This is the text of a moving e-mail I just received from my best friend in Lebanon, Khaldoun.)

I am not sure what I am going to say or write about.
Been more than a week unable to think straight or put two sentences together.

I can't define what I am feeling, that is if I have any feelings left in me.
I have definitely bypassed the stage of sadness and crossed the borders of disparity.
Is it agony? I am afraid not.
It is the feeling of desolateness where nothing really matters any more. No taste, no color, no sound, no form… too many No's to list.

I look around, into the faces of the people, I find a lost smile. A shadow smile was just there, somewhere, and now it is all gone.
What incenses me is my mom's tear that escapes her hand wiping it off, hiding it from the rest of us to share some strength into our falling-apart dreams and hopes.
What torture me are the black circles under my sister's eyes that keep me wondering whether they are from her dispersed cries or even from all the nightmares she has while she sounds peacefully sleeping.

What a joke?
Here we are all sitting in front the TV; the remote control in one hand flipping channels to get a better picture or image on what is going on… no where but in the same territory where we are living in.
Ya territory… I dare not say country, because I am too ashamed to identify it as a country when all of this tragedy is going on and there is nothing we, the inhabitants, can do or even say.

We didn't decide we want all of this.
No one consulted us or asked for our opinion.
No one forewarned us that this is coming.
No one explained to us where we are heading.

We were planning for our future with some hope and trust. We were going to attend all those performances brought from all around the globe to this great country.
We were planning to go to the beach and get a suntan that others could envy us for.
We were planning to travel for a short vacation and come back with a long list of shopped items for family and friends.
We were planning projects and programs for the coming few years.
We were planning how to study and sit for an exam or even find a better paid job.

We were never forewarned.
Now we need to prepare ourselves for the worse, for dark nights and gloomy days.
Now we need to think where to hide and which road is safe to take.
Now we need to think when to flee and leave.
Now we need to think if we are going to be short on diesel and even bread.

And I ask myself why?
Haven't we been paying our dues on time?
Haven't we been throwing garbage in their proper places?
Haven't we been trying to abide by the laws?
Haven't we been respecting our responsibilities?
Haven't we been going to work everyday?
Haven't we been saying good morning and good night in a proper way?

Why? I am not sure if I am looking for an eloquent answer.
Just few days before all of this started, the cities and towns were decorated with all those foreign flags celebrating the World Cup; the Lebanese flag barely made it to few cars or balconies, one of which is mine.

Few months ago, we attended Majida El Roumi's concert. There she was, singing Beirut Sit El Dunia*; there he was, our Prime Minister, up on his feet listening to the 10-minute-or-so song standing as a sign of respect not for the singer but for the great city; and there we were, the audience, the Lebanese, sitting throughout the song and standing up only when there was a beat or a rhythm, drawing hand-signs that reflect our inferiority as subjects and not citizens.

I don't know if I should continue to ask myself why?
But well, no one has the right to impose his opinions, likes/dislikes, decisions, and choices on me as an individual.
I don't want this war; I want to live in peace. I no longer believe in causes or care for others' misery; our tragedies have been enough. I don't want to defend others' existence or support their rights; I look around and realize that I am not getting anything in return except words of pity and sympathy. I don't need this. Well, the song says "La Shay'a Ma3i Illa Kalimat"**.

I am almost 32. I lived half of my life in a civil war; 15 years of being scared and frightened. I witnessed the Israeli attacks in 1993 and the Qana massacre in 1996.
I was there throughout the devastations of 2005 with all the assassinations and bombs. I was so scared to continue my life; I wanted to stay in, move around the minimum possible; I stepped away from my friends and relatives. I could not reach out. I was scared. But now, I am not sure what I am feeling, if there are any feelings left inside.

My apologies finally go to a great country called Lebanon. I am ashamed of myself and of others for what we have been doing or even for what we haven't been doing. How trivial are our lives, our needs and opinions, our differences, and even our religions, compared to the continuous rebirth of a phoenix that never gives in.
There is a piece of heaven on earth and I truly believe it is called Lebanon; there is where the whole story should be or actually is; where history instigated and where it will always end. And who are we and our trivials in the existence of a great nation or mission or civilization (or call it what you want to call it), that I am more sure now that we don't actually deserve.

O Lebanon… My Lebanon

* = "Beirut, Lady of the World"
** = "I've got nothing but words"; the last line from Majida el-Roumi's song, "Kalimat" (Words)

Beating Back Diplomatic Defeatism

My dear friend, Jon Frietag, has finally started his own blog with a piece in defense of diplomacy; I highly recommend it:

. . . For quite a while it has not been that difficult to criticize America’s Israel policy. The U.S. has continued to fund the occupation of the Palestinian people and has tacitly approved the expansion of Israel’s West Bank settlements. Still, one felt the scant belief that American bureaucrats, regardless of their intentions, at least respected the notion that things ought to get solved peacefully. These Americans were called diplomats. But today they are nowhere to be found. In this current Administration’s worldview of “existing realities,” where what’s done can’t be undone, diplomats are derided as nothing but a bunch of dithering elites. And that goes for Henry Kissinger.

America’s blank check to Israel to bombard the civilian populations of Lebanon and Gaza is appalling, but not unconsidered. The U.S.’s withdrawal from negotiations stems from a conservative philosophy which promotes the unbridled use of military force on the one hand and the joyful abdication of diplomatic responsibility -- Politics -- on the other. It is a philosophy which ushers in physical brutality by camouflaging its contempt for diplomacy beneath a supposed exhaustion of diplomacy. It is rooted in a belief that the world is wicked, that nothing but force can tame it, and that the best role for civil government in these particular circumstances is in the drain of a bathtub. It is a philosophy we should not misconstrue as one of blundering incompetence, or unspeakable idiocy, but rather the embodiment of mindfully agreed-upon, wrongful policy options. (more)

An urgent message from my sister...

"Bouboo, there are 1500 people stuck in underground floors of a school in Bint Jbeil in the south. The Israelis are not allwoing them to leave, & aren't allowing the Lebanese RedCross or the international RedCross to deliver food, water or even drugs to these peopl, for 5 days now!"

I’m here and not here

(This is a translation of another touching post in Arabic by my dear friend, Eve, who is blogging from Lebanon, braving the terror of the Israeli offensive there... She wrote to me in an e-mail today: "i'm at a coffee shop, the connection at home seems to have surrendered at last. . . i dont know when i'll check my inbox again...")


I’m here now. From the other side of the sea, from the second face of the moon. Where everything is sweet, and calm, even if always cold.

I had to leave, you know.
Everyone was taking a bite off this land. And I… couldn’t stand it anymore.
The scene at the border was painful.
They all wanted to stay; they all had to leave.
I wanted to call out to them, I was about to hold their shoulders, shake them like this, and yell at them: “How could you? Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” I forgot that I, too, with the departing am departing.

The worst way for one to travel is by boat, you know? The plane, a few minutes and you’re flying. The car, a step on the fuel and you go. But on the boat, you stay standing, contemplating the marina, against your will… Looking at the land getting further away, at the people getting smaller, at a hand waving, and a hand, choked, that couldn’t wave. At a bag flying in the air, at a girl pinning laundry on a clothesline, at shuttered houses with no girl pinning laundry or clotheslines. Looking at your dream that they lost… At your dream that, maybe, you let get lost.

He didn’t understand me, my friend at the airport, when my head fell onto his shoulder, and I started to sob.

No, I’m not glad to be safe now. I am upset, I am crestfallen, I am choked from the inside…I am here in safety, and you are still over there. I am here a living illusion, no more, but you are at least alive. I am here but not worth more than five minutes of the news. I am a number. We are all numbers. Our identity is corpses and the stone that is shattering… Here were are barbarians, we don’t know how to live together, don’t know how to love. We don’t know that a homeland comes, always, before religion…

Me?
I’m here and not there
Here and not here
Here forgetting myself there
Never here
Always, with you, there

I’m starting to ramble. You take care of yourself. Do sing me that song from time to time… if you still sing.