Here’s to life…

To go where it all started.
To go alone
guarded
by nothing
but hope
hope of finding her again…
no hand to hold your hand
no one to confirm your fears
to tell you not to look back
to gently wipe the tears
while your insides get shattered
along the way…
“tell me your name again?”
the soft music was not tender,
it was quite
like soundless blades
running through your veins.
no one hears the pain
when we cry no more

“All we always wanted was a couple of drinks, and a long night ahead of us.” we thought while leaving the house that night.
“was it too much to ask?”

like a weary piano bar singer at two in the morning, she cooed her words in the receiver “to go where it all started”.
no answer.
“hello?”
no answer.
“was it something I said?”

questions about life. disillusioned lovers. internet connection. meaningless dates. meaningless sex. leftovers. stale coffee and overflowing ashtrays. some music put on repeat. distance. vague memories of happier times. busy lives without a pause. familiar faces that take your breath away. snowy roads. age, aging and beauty. shadows of the past.

How far do you have to move on until you feel you have a past?

No one hears the pain when we don’t cry anymore.
Like billions with me, I partake in the silent melancholic psyche of the world.
We see each other everyday, everywhere.
We share that quiet understanding look and sometimes an irresistible smile that devastates your very soul with this inexplicable feeling of ‘home’.
A smile that an old woman on the subway gives you, knowing too well who you are, knowing too well that you are part of her world… a sturdy peon in her fleet of sadness.
and one day you will return her smile with infinite gratitude, declaring your eternal servitude to her majestic sorrow.
but not today. today… you smile for me.

The scent of your laurels


I write you again with the hope that this letter too shall not reach you.
I do not wish for you to know what I think, how I feel. nor do I care to know about you. but I have to leave a message lingering in the air, aimlessly, until one day it reaches home uninvited. I do this for me. not for you.
The honest truth is that during the last 4 years I almost forgot how much our life was… is a crisis. but going back you reminded me. the tragedy that we contrived, that we chose to live in, that will torment us until the end. that you chose for us, really; but little does it matter for this is hardly the time to throw some blame around. the time for that has passed. decades ago. because of this, you see, I write this calmly and with composure. from the distance that separates us.
how far I am now from the hurried hug and the awkward smile we exchanged at the airport. like lovers making some grand yet inane promises that have no consequences the minute they part…
but look at me now… I can’t help the sorrow… I am mourning the distance with every passing minute. but always with that dignified pleasure, and melancholy. playing the role of the deserted, the loner… and enjoying it. truly.
I didn’t keep pictures this time. for needless to say, nothing could have captured the yearning, the disappointment, the change… not even my very words that fall short and empty as usual. but it’s the little things as they say… the scent of your laurel soaps that was awful. your thick coffee. black and bitter. the cardamom that made me sick after you left that morning.
but as you do know – and maybe are scoffing at this with disdain – all what happened could not confound my love… to you… and my hope. I left though. in spite of that. I crossed. I came back here. and through the gray kaleidoscope of unrest… death… despair. all I could see then was your face. a tiny white dot turning and turning in the midst of it all…
I shall not write you anymore. for better leave on this vague note of uncertainty and confused affection, and much more love than a child could have to a parent. better not illuminate where dark demons have been dwelling for decades. better not.
‘it was death… I chose life.’ is a haunting phrase that comes to mind. and it’s true.
I choose life…

Carefully delivered affection…


A smell of sulfur and a terrible yellow hue shamelessly covers the city. depression. mental weariness. crippled emotions. all are looming over the road from the airport.
Another planted bombed ravaging the silence. and only apathy is what you hear through the night. they don’t want to know anymore. they don’t want… anymore.

The sun shone earlier this morning. hours before its expected time. casting an oblong shadow of my head on the wall. decades of memory has been similarly projected here. momentary shadows that have never left a mark.
The sound of machine guns in the background hasn’t subsided yet. I could still hear it like some eerie music from a distant day. but life is as lively as ever on this day. I hear spoons stirring thick black coffee in quiet kitchens. clattering of trays and of small cups on small dishes… women readying themselves for the morning. I hear happiness swelling up like a rose bud waiting to bloom after all those years of gray winters.

Like a precious perfume bottled in crystal, packaged with care. so much care. for if it broke nothing could contain the scent of a dissipated relationship that never took place.
Like a thin film of oil on the surface, it preserves. keeps a lid on so much. things that are never to be revealed again. matters of the heart that stay – as they should – stagnant at the bottom of the bottle. small precipitates of time. seconds, maybe years, carefully settled at the depths of aching hearts.
“do you allow yourself a little time to cry?” she asked, thoughtfully.
from the life that I never had. one that I never wanted. from there, I see them passing by indifferently… banding about happiness that I didn’t know. and then a slight tinge of regret clouds my day.
she hands me my coffee with a smile that conveys a feeling of compassion, with a little bit of pity perhaps.
It irritates me.

“Come in.”


I heard these words. but that was the end of what I heard. of what I remember I heard anyway. I remember a door opened and then closed. an empty house swallowing me in like a fish a pebble. memories brushing against my face, defiantly, screaming “we are still here”: childhood cinematography… brutal and gruesome. brutal for still being so vivid, so ‘there’… when do memories fade? oh, when they do fade… they are nothing but few bits in the patch work of all the neuroses that… are me.
I laugh, you know, because you’re never to see this… to see it from the inside, nothing gruesome should be tagged to my past…
I still smell the gunpowder. I know it’s just fire works, but all the same it’s nauseating. ugh… make it stop.
when I stepped out of that airplane. lots of memories came flooding back of course. but not until I reached their house that… oh make it stop. I don’t care what day it is. tell the children to stop. no wait. don’t. don’t tell them to stop.
but this music is too brutal. please, play it down a little.

“your music is so so pretty peter. so simple and so elegant. you stirred feelings I thought.. they’re long gone… long gone! how pleasant you are! I haven’t known you personally, but I think if I had I would’ve liked you. you lovely, lovely darling!
yours truly,”
yesterday, while playing her favorite concerto, she wrote this note to Tchaikovsky. folded it into a small paper plane, turned the music up and flew her little work of origami out the window… with a sweet smile. (how charming!)
Until he told her to turn it down. how disappointed she was! he doesn’t understand her ears anymore. or was it just the fire works that really accentuated every bang with a small explosion. but she thought it fascinating… especially the cadenza near the end taking over all the bangs of a war site…

I was utterly destroyed by the scenery of the room. faded furniture, polished for the day. grotesquely displayed like a cheaply made up corpse in an open casket. ludicrous.
this is where life stops. this is where life stopped 30 years ago. history stunted like in some fairy tale. but everyone goes into paralysis in this house. everyone, even the hopeful lad who comes back at the end to awaken the kingdom. I can’t say it’s the ruins of anything, because nothing was ever built here. nothing. this is where people gathered to create a vacuum. no no not even a vacuum, because even that takes in energy. it’s where people stepped aside from the course of life, maybe by decision, to pose like wax statues in an ever empty (empty empty empty) museum. with an ancient gramophone incessantly playing the same music… for eternity.

“how was your trip?”

come spring... and I will


remember...

Tistifil Fayrouz…


When she comes back home every night, she always rings the doorbell although she lives alone, always has, and there’s never anyone to answer.
She believes that perhaps one night someone would open the door… welcome her home after an awfully long day with open arms and a ready dinner… or maybe she just thinks that if burglars were inside she would give them enough time to evacuate and evade an unwanted and unnecessary confrontation.
One night, she came back late, rang the doorbell, and waited for a few seconds. Suddenly another door opened. her neighbor stepped out with a beaming smile and said “you’re late tonight.”
“yeah. I was held up at work.” she said with surprise.
“I have dinner prepared. would like to come in?” he offered.
She did.
(candle light dinner. Fayrouz singing in the background.)
“I wonder if Fayrouz wanted to be Fayrouz… maybe she just wanted to be a simple woman from the hills she… colors in her songs… I mean, she was under the influence of a husband she never… well, she always sounds awfully sad!” she said, probingly.
“would you like to have dinner with me?” he interrupted.
“but I am!” she replied with surprise…
“no… I mean to go out with me… like a date.” he explained.
“not until you tell what you think about Fayrouz. do you think she wanted to be the woman she is today?” she asked in a determined tone.
“well… she’s great. she’s a legend…” he answered hesitantly.
“yeah… yes she is. no. I will not go out with you. thanks for dinner though.” she replied with… tender humor perhaps.
She finished the rest of her drink. dabbed her lips with the paper napkin placed next to her plate. blew him a suggestive kiss a la Marilyn Monroe. laughed and… left.
he heard her ringing her door bell again. waiting for a few seconds, and then going into her apartment.

Delilah


“How… how far would you go?” he asked [fear – hesitation].
“for how long have you known me, darling?” she replied [assuredness – tenderness].
“23 years” he said [confusion].
“have I ever stopped? short of death. have you ever seen me stop? back off? I have never committed murder, it’s not my style, but murders did happen around me quite often. I always get what I want. I always dispose of nuisances… rather gracefully, I believe.” she answered [satisfaction – smugness].
Like swimming in a sea of laughter, he laughed.
He removed her sunglasses; she looked at the ocean and smiled. no, she even laughed too.
They were happy: He took her answer carelessly; she knew that he would not see the end of the month. She felt pleased. Actually, she felt a tinge of tenderness towards him now, knowing that he will soon fade away into her past. She cherished him now as a distant memory, which in her mind he already is.

He still remembers when he first saw her… singing the habanera in some party in New York. singing with perfect intonation, with a sway of the hip and a clap of the hand, and one glance… one all consuming killer glance and he was captivated; captured, actually. enslaved… to her beauty, to her presence… to her. he’d have never imagined that he’d stepped on the web of a black window…

Babbling on the phone…


I used to listen to music while I go to sleep. I don’t anymore. I need silence. it’s more tasteful, I believe, to fall asleep to nothing. not even to a nocturne. it’s more private. the older I get the more private I get… reclusive; I won’t even share my moments of sleep with a long gone composer. or maybe that’s because now I listen more, or better shall I say. I can’t just take in the sounds without registering any emotion. any reaction.
and the sound of your voice on the phone, actually the ring of the phone itself, brings in a lot. sometimes, you know, I am apprehensive to pick up. for I know that… that your conversations are… charged. yes charged. it’s not an empty chatter about politics.. or the weather anymore. it’s all about us now. right when there is no longer ‘us’.
and your words… are shattered. they are vague. they cling to me. but only one by one. not in sentences. only words. you are shattered. yes you are. I get you piece by piece. like a joke that lost its humor for it was not told the way it should be. no no, not a joke. a plea. like a plea, yes. coming across… through so many layers. word by word it goes through – penetrates – every layer like going through… thin air. but the words are not sentences anymore. just words. shattered. vague. word by word. they simply… don’t make sense anymore.
haven’t you taught me to be a poet. haven’t you told me that if I listen to nature I could hear the music of a brook. so now I listen. and now I am filled with silent resentment… all building up… and to what? nothing. I am just becoming emotionally charged. yes, charged. you are not charged – I take that back. I am. you project. I receive. and keep it inside.
again. as I said. I can’t sleep to music. maybe it’s not you. I am becoming more… perceptive. (receptive?)
(static)
hello?
(static)
can you hear me?
yes. so… how’ve you been? and how’s Boston treating you?

MOULID...



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pic: Sayed El Badawi Mosque (Tanta)
Music: Mesr Yamma (sheikh Imam)

Forte-piano…


“Dearest. for all the notes that flow by… with every note, I still have more time to think about you than I would have ever imagined. the pianist at the ceremony plays incessantly, with mounting heat in every phrase. and I still think about you… with a precipitating rhythm… on changing keys. I try to match his piano to the life we had together. an accelerando for a soundtrack for a picture… about us. one that would make you cry. how charming we were. charming together. people would watch the picture and they would say that. how charming they are! we wish we were they… and then… and then, my dear, life would be utterly blissful. wouldn’t it? I wish you could see the smile in my heart when I think about you. when I write this to you. I love you, you know I do. I always loved you more than I loved us, for that my dear is what’s important… you loved me more than yourself, and that was not right. my wrong, not yours if I daresay, for I needed everything you gave me, and sometimes more. but that was then. now, I just celebrate you with mounting heat just like the music that surrounds me… but forgive me love for I will not be able to accept your invitation. I would have told you that I am too busy to be with you on your day, but you’d have known that it is not true; for nothing could stop me or you (I still believe) from being there for each other (and I still hope that this will always be true - and it will). having said that, I could only wish you all the happiness and love, from this distance I take. and I am sure you understand now how I don’t belong to their society, but never to yours, for you are mine…
yours as always.”
She looked into the mirror of this dingy restroom in this rather mediocre pub somewhere by the piers (she can’t remember where) in the very innards of this ugly city… She pulled a compact bag of cosmetics from her purse and started working on her face. ‘retouch’, she thought. She softened and darkened and reshaped and then dabbed any excess to look as if she was born with impeccable shadows and skin intonations. she took her drink from the edge of the sink, opened the door, gave the queuing crowd an icy look and walked by to her table. to him. to his table. to his conversation. to his gesticulating hands. to his agitated mood. to his domineering presence. to him. to where he has her grotesquely exposed to a crowd. to where he exhibits her to the room, a woman, his woman, someone to smile and nod, someone never to leave lipstick marks on his cheek or her champagne flute. someone who darkens and softens discreetly in a dingy restroom to always stay immaculately made up after he’s smeared and smudged with wet kisses and fervent hands… someone with grace and taste, a taste that’s tasteful to his taste… a trophy wife.
She sits and smiles and nods and plays her role. but under the table her hand wanders around in her purse, touching ‘his’ letter. her hands slowly, dreamily roles over the indentations of his words just like some faded Braille’s alphabet… for she is blind for not reading… not seeing what it is.
for a moment, she lost herself in the realms of this letter… of an award ceremony she never saw, of a piano recital she never heard, hoards of people she never knew, and someone constantly inhabiting her mind like the memory of a smell that stirs up so much in so little…
she felt the weight of a question lingering in the air, like she always does when conversation ceases and eyes expect. with an orchestrated smile she said “excuse me darling, I simply loose my focus in crowded places. what were you saying?”
“Did you finish the arrangements for the honeymoon? I faxed you my schedule for next week…” he said.
“yes.. yes.. would you excuse me.” she said, and then, bag in hand, she simply... walked out.

Since my first post…


It has been a year.
the canvas is still empty.
the door left ajar.
and I still have nothing to say.
my colors are still packed for better days.
my words are reserved and I haven’t shared with you the color of my insides…
the red well tucked in a tube. the blue waiting to sprinkle the white. and the white waiting to lose itself in someone else’s existence.
my brushes are dry. their hair virgin and smooth.
all I read is you.
I learned your expressions, your moods…
I did spill some of my red on this page.
but my canvas is still empty and I still have nothing to say.

Like magic...

Parody of a country…


She sat down on her kitchen floor, spread her crayons all around, and readied herself to draw new signs for the demonstration. So many things happened since she last did this. So many new affinities shaped her new moral grounds. She reached in the cupboard under the sink for fresh papers.
(Fresh papers for fresh ideas for fresh starts… a brighter future.)
She smiled, recognizing the marginal significance of what she’s doing.
She took out stacks of colored boards and papers. some used. some new. She looked at the old ones with a tinge of disgust, wondering how on earth did she buy into all this ‘crap’ before. “Indict Bashar”… “Syria out!”… “Stop the war”… “Stop the terror”… “No to America”… how different she is now, she thought… and she is different.
She put the old slogans aside, planned to destroy them as soon as she’s done, thinking that she wouldn’t want anyone to see what she was cheering for in the past…
She started working on her new series of “ana mesh ma3 hadane”… to accentuate her neutrality toward the whole scene of protests and protesters… to denounce all the parties, and thunder a new voice of neutrality, of independence… to teach people what independence really means. to show them how original she is… how defiant. how Lebanese. she is the true Lebanese, she thought.
“Ana mesh…” she started in red.
Suddenly she remembered her mother saying, with scolding looks and a severe tone “ma hadane la hadane ya mama”, and wondered sadly if this is where we are all heading. where they are all heading, she corrected herself…
Then she wondered whether - if anything - her neutral position was of the most aggressive. passive-aggressive… didn’t she owe it to herself to declare her war, her inner war on all that’s around her. didn’t she owe it to her children to scream at the top of her lungs like a mad woman slogans of disparate unity…
The national anthem.
she started humming the national anthem…
up to the point when it speaks of ‘fitan’…
up to the point when it speaks of men sprouting from mountains like lions…
up to the point when it speaks of the protection of god…
until she realized how far she is from all this…
from a declaration of ‘fitan’ right in the heart of her national core, like a stigma, to carry on forever…
from a sexist aggressive tale of lion-men roving the earth… she the feminist tigress who stood up for all she believed in more than any lion-man she knew…
from a god that she never believed in…
This deceitful little tune that speaks of work of literacy and labor but never mentions compassion. an anthem suitable for the most fascist of institutions…
she started to wonder if this is really her country… just like a child wonders if her parents are really her parents… then realizing that she has her mother’s eyes and father's chin, thinking in amazement how different they are, her family and she... or her country and she at that.
She wrote a different slogan “ma hadane la hadane?” and felt, really, that her question mark not only marked her indignation, but also her utter surprise at her mother’s intuition into life. her mother knew… but then, she remembered her saying with teary eyes, her head slightly tilted to the right “ma 2lkone gheir ba3ad ya mama”… she fell into despair…
For she realized… isn’t this just a travesty of what a real country should be like?
With a thick black marker she crossed all her old slogans, one by one, and below each she wrote “ma hadane la hadane?”

The tragedy of… failure.


Bossa nova music was flowing listlessly in the air… he stretched again on the park bench and rested his feet on her lap. she lay her head back, and stared at the sky. the music was faint… and vaguely saying “silver jet… take me… I’m all set… take me… through the sky… fly me…”
they recognized the song, and together went in a reverie… holding hands, following the silver jet… “make this trip non-stop…”
they dozed off.
when he woke up, he saw her bent with concern over the morning paper again…
He smiled and said very calmly “I haven’t been there in a long time, I simply don’t know how people are there… give me the paper again. let me read it a second time.”
He read it a second time.
“well, yes” he says “I understand what you mean. this should be resolved internally. but I think it makes sense for everyone to cut their losses and move on… you know, sometimes I imagine having another war… looking back now, it all seems so romantic, not so deadly, and tender, as tender as our young years… although it might sound very sick and no one besides another Lebanese our age could come close to understand, but the sound of a Kalashnikov firing away in the distance is so soothing, so melancholic… the safety of home, the lonely soldier… all that… you know the war brought people together over and over… this is what civil wars are about.. it’s violent brutal love. so it’s fine, you see? we could still go. it’s us. this is who we are…”
She looked away… at the children, playing happily on the green. she remembered their own playgrounds back home, back then… she still remember. how happy they were with so little. he’s right, she thought… no one would understand how they used to value all what life offered… because, well, that was life for them, all in all. to be happy with one hour of TV when the house comes back to life when the electricity is back… to catch a glimpse of their favorite cartoon shows if they were lucky… if they were good. to have vacations during the winter time… and the spring time… and any time, really, when life became too unbearable and their home too dangerous so the family had to leave. ‘yeherbo’ was the term, she thought… but they always came back.
“how funny it would be to do it ourselves this time.” he said “stock food for the shelter. get water. blankets… do you think they still have shelters?”
She put the newspaper aside, carefully. pushed his feet back to the bench, gently. stood up and walked toward the children. suddenly, as if transformed into a little girl herself, she threw her arms up and prepared to catch the ball. she laughed and ran and made friends. she kept her tears in for later times to come. and knew that she was doing this for one last time.
He looked at her. idly, tenderly and couldn’t help but to smile…
The bossa nova music continued to float over their hearts… “silver jet… take me… I’m all set… take me…”
take me back…

POMPEII…


“you know how it goes: like Pompeii. feelings frozen under so many layers of ash. frozen in awe. in fear. disbelieve. in anger maybe. on the surface one sees a nice quiet meadow. underneath, there’s always a face… distorted with pain, frozen in time.” he said listlessly swirling the drink in his glass.

“our relationship is an excavation site… digging for frozen time.” she said absentmindedly “did you decide about June? I need to get the plane tickets asap.”

“for all the happiness that left me… that left me behind…” he continued “‘to seize the moment’. to live the moment. I didn’t know it was only one moment, I thought it’d last since… since it’d have had just started…”

“How many glasses did you have so far?” she said not a little reproachingly.

“I was putting off being-happy… until the moment was gone…” he added to himself.

“this is why we need to go. fresh start and all.” she replied with fake enthusiasm.

“three. maybe four.” he said.

“listen I’ve got to go now. call me later and tell me what you’ve decided. we have the house till the end of July. it’d be a waste not to take advantage of it. at least for a week.” she said with exasperation.

“four, most probably four. where is it again?” he added as an afterthought.

“near Naples. right by the sea.” she said with a pleading tone.

“that’s where… Pompeii is. maybe we could visit?” he hesitated.

“sure.” she said, looked around the dingy bar with disgust, and stood up to leave.

Como que te va te va…


como que te viene viene…

The Art of Procrastination...

... but more than this, I wish you love.



and you. and you. and of course you. and the three of you. and you two. and you. and you too.

Paloma Negra.






She lifted up the hem of her veil and wiped a tear of his cheek. He looked up at her and felt like dissolving in the copious drapes of the black muslin niqab she always wears outside the house. He remembered them: warm, welcoming, smelling of fresh lavender, faint perfume… a home to any lost soul. He buried his face in her drapes, and took in her womanly fragrance… a thousand little scents telling the story of a nation… the history, the culture, the eloquence of a civilization that never faded in his heart.
She lifted up the white drape covering her face below the eyes, the only white in her whole attire, and gave him a gentle kiss on his lips…
He rested his head on her lap. She caressed his hair so tenderly as if her child’s. She moved her hand down his neck… his side… his waist… She slid her hand under his pants, and then in one swift motion, as if practiced all her life, drew his knife and plunged it in his throat. She didn’t slit his throat, just plunged the knife in it… he pulled away. tried to stand, but instead he dropped to his knees… in this kneeling position in front of her, he stared at her in pain, in shock, in disgust, and in grief…
She gathered the folds of her skirts… and flew away through the park, like the black dove she is… leaving him by some bench gasping for air, folded on himself, like the fetus he is… covered with blood… with mud… convulsing by the last spasms of life… of death.
By the gate of the park, perched on the high metal grills, she looked down toward that bench, uncovered her mouth, blew him a kiss and flew away…

“Paloma negra…” he uttered in his distinct sevillanos southern accent, in choking staccato she barely heard in her flight “¿paloma negra, dónde, dónde andarás?”

She replied in her clear translucent Arabic “Touhyee iza katalatte…”


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