To those who touch our lives and never know...

Thank you...

"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks,

and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth"...

(Khalil Gibran, the Prophet)

Tribute to the power puff girls...

When i was young, one of the hardest experience i had to go through was that of the displacement from my grandparents' village, my mother's village, Jlayliyeh.

i was only four then.
i don't even know today whether what hurt was memory or the reality of it.
i should have been too young to remember. yet, strangely i do.

i remember nathaly's toys, the moving supermarket that i dreamt i would inherit one day
i remember the field of flowers. i remember my cousin running with his broken leg, chasing me through the flowers

i remember when i fell from the small hill that seemed a mountain
i remember grieving the loss of my labneh sandwich that seemed like the greatest loss to a child's world...

and then he came. HE. Jeddo. grandfather...
He was the man of my life.
with his kepi, his white hair, his closed eyes... his Silence.
the way he loved me in silence. and i knew even as a child how much he did.

he came and took my hand and made me another sandwich. my mother even never knew.
he was enough to dry my tears...

when he got displaced, he lost everything.
his fruit trees
his olives
the paintings his son had left
his small flowers in spring...

i think he stopped living then. he stopped trying to live.

i remember his shivering hands.
he used to call my name in his semi-sleep. for he slept many years before he died.

this is why loosing Jleyliyeh was the hardest loss.
i lost him with it.


the only memory i kept of him was a smell.
it was a tree he had planted on the door of that beloved house.
i still smelt it years after his death.
i still smell it today.
and everytime i see it, i pick one of its delicate flowers and put it in my hair.

i had promised myself after his death that i would name one day my child after his tree.
a silent tribute to the man of my childhood.
a silent tribute to HIM.

Yasemin.

Y, if you read this , you will maybe understand.
i saw your blog and i read the mention you did of my own blog. you did it with so much nobleness, and so much silence... the one i cherish most.

i wanted to thank you.
for your silent presence throughout this year.
and for your dreams. because i still remember them. and your tears. because i know they were true, sincere.

this is a tribute to the three power puff girls, they will recognise who they are.
My friends.

R, for your silence, your just anger, your will to change the world, your fragility that you hide under this anger... for your beauty that i do not know whether you recognise. Please do...

V, simply for being.
the girl who told me with the Irish accent about secrets with an open heart. the girl who wrote me long emails and made me feel i was real when hell was breaking loose. the girl who seems like she does not care yet cares the most...

Y, for being aYasemin ...

love, r.

forgetting.

Is life supposed to wash itself?

Are we supposed to just erase and move on?
Pretend that the war ended, in our hearts, in our lives, in the dark corners of our minds.

It took ten years to erase the feeling of war, one that lasted twenty years?
Is the memory of pain proportional to the experience of pain? Should I do a regle de 3 and find in how much time I should forget this war. Let's see,

If 20 years equals 10 years of rememberance

one month equals 1/12 year equals X

x= (1/12 * 10 )/ 20
= 0.04 that is 0.03 month to forget.

I think i missed my deadline. Can i ask for an extension?

Patti Smith song for Qana

This song is not on Qana.
It's for Qana.

http://www.pattismith.net/audio/qana.mp3

hoping there won't be sad songs to sing in this part of the world anymore
hoping children will start singing again.

They say the war might not be over... yet peace still feels so real; today is a new day.
Hope is strong .

this is for all the blood that lies under.
this is for the small yet resilient flowers that will pierce our winter snow; small flowers never seen before.
this is for all the hope that survives.

Let us remember and live for those who died.

"The miracle is Love" ... (Patty Smith)

Farewell gift?

Sunday August 13th, 2006

I heard them fall, the smoke rose to my place...I knew it was another horror...
No electricity again... I wait... And this is what I find:

These are the news as showed on tayyar.org, I have inverted some of the order so that you'd understand the real chronology:

15: 05: The Israeli government, in a press conference, agrees to the UN resolution for the cease fire.

14:53: 20 Israeli air raids fall in ONE minute on the area of Rweiss in South Beirut

15:10: Many buildings are destroyed in what is qualified as the most violent air strike on Lebanon since the beginning of the conflict.


Now for those who still think Israel is targetting Hizbollah, as if the previous news were not enough...

15:52: air strike destroys paper factory in Neemeh
15:55: air strike destroys tyre factory in Joon

16:10. I watch skynews reporting on the strikes in South Beirut, where 6 families are reported so far to be under the ruins. I watch in awe as they still use the expression "Hizbollah stronghold".

For those who think the conflict is over, please follow the news.
A part of me fears that this war might be over...for it will never be.
It only means more impunity for the state of Israel.
It only means another forgotten war on an entire civilian population
It only means another 1000 civilians turned into figures.

Now i understand how some inidividuals spend their lives or give their lives defending just one cause...Unlike the world, they don't forget.

Marjeyoon.

In the town of Marjeyoon in the South, a centre gathered the different army and police officers and soldiers that were stranded in the area.
The Lebanese government took their weapons (for their own protection, so that they wouldn't be tempted to defend their lives) and appointed them to protect the civilian population of the area. And so the fleeing civilians found shelter in this place, protected by weaponless heartful soldiers.

Estimations say there were 300 to 400 persons in the centre, all civilians and unarmed officers.

On August 19th 2006, the day before yesterday, the Israelis invaded the town of Marjeyoon.
After having gone through an attempted ambush in a part of the village, they crossed the whole village and decided to take all of the centre's population as hostages.

The minister of interior had contacted the police and army forces and asked those amongst them who had individual weapons (i.e. guns) to give them to the UNIFIL so that they do not get killed whilst faced to the Israelis. And this is what happened.

And the Israelis surrounded this gunless, weaponless group of helpless soldiers and civilians.

Yesterday, after local and foreign interventions, the Israeli troops agreed to let the police and army forces and civilians leave the centre. Some of the civilians chose to stay behind...

A long convoy of cars was thus allowed to leave the village and the embargo to "safety land"...
They were escorted by the Red Cross.

The Israelis first bombed the road on the convoy's way out of the village.
The road was quickly covered so that the convoy would still make it through. It was said god was on their side...

I was watching the news regularely to check on them...They announced the convoy left the village... A deep breath and a smile... They are safe...

But they did not make it very far. For the Israelis have no friend, no ally, and no particular ennemy, which makes everyone in danger.

In the town of Kerfraya, the planes hit the convoy. The same convoy they had allowed to flee.
7 civilians were killed, more than 40 wounded.
One of the casualties is a first aider from the red cross.

i stare at the television in disbelief.
i watch the faces of these red cross volunteers, filled with nobleness, with pride, with selflessness and immense sorrow... they must have felt they failed the people. They must have felt they failed their companion.
How can one tell them it is so untrue...

This war is just meant to make us feel how alone we are and that our lives are worth nothing... they can be taken whilst the whole world watches.

Bravo IDF. You are a noble ennemy.

Remote resistance.

August 8th, 2006

"Now we know that the world after you is not enough"...
This is how i feel... this poem addresses Beirut and i have heard it too many times when there "was war"; when i was 13.

i spoke to the only childhood friend i am still in touch with yesterday.
i have very little friends left after this war.
I seem to be "unecessarily provoking" people; so i decided to stop because I understand they would want to burry their guilt under layers of denial...

she is now pregnant. Before the war, she was running around everyday buying things for her child to come.. and now she said to me: the whole day passes sometimes and i forget he is coming soon...

noone deserves to have his happiness turned to emptiness...
Reversed wombs... this war is all about reversed wombs; emptying children ...emptying hope...

i used to meet with this girl and another friend of ours, each time in a different house, and we used to produce pamphlets that we wrote with our hands, hundreds of them...
pamphlets to incite people to resist; those were the days where the syrians were occupying Lebanon. Those were the days where we had an innocent dream.
We were only sixteen back then; we used to go off late at night and then at dawn behind our parents' backs for they did not need to know their precious girls were in "the resistance".. and we used to distribute these words, over entire areas... walking to get there...

we got caught many times; there were many times we had to run for our cover...
these words were not as worthy as we thought; they did not free Lebanon.
Yet, we felt different from the rest; we felt we were trying to do a small change with our small hands; that if a hundred persons read us, one at least would feel something, or would know that someone cares...

Later on, there was the cedars revolution and 2 million persons went down on the streets.. i don't think it was the pamphlets...they were all different.
i know today it was just a small awakening before another long sleep.

i know there are many Lebanese who share my vacuum.
i know there are many people who are making a change and fighting this nothingness...

i just wanted to say to my friend that it is people like her and her child to come who will make the world enough for all of us after this...
these small children are our resistance... and i hope they will never have to write pamphlets in their lives...

Music and tragedy.

To add the last touch to our tragedy

they sent us a few days ago a group of egyptian actors...

Has any of you ever watched an egyptian movie?
Well, unless it says comedy, you are always guaranteed tragedy and a lot of tears (when you are not sharing the tears it gets a bit annoying to hear them after a while).
Violent scenes would contain head buts quite similar to what you got to witness during the last worldcup ...
And then, only more tragedy.
A knotless plot... A plotless knot: those are egyptian movies in my head.

When i was very young, i used to watch them in secret.
my cousin who was older used to severely punish me if she caught me doing it: she thought they were cheesy and tragic..

Judging on the colours and content of my blog, i would say i did not fail her; i am today the cheerful person she hoped i would become!

To make a long story short, please don't send anymore egyptian actors.
First our prime minister is not acting; he is sincere, and plus he already has a job.

We answer the straight and cold faces of people such as Gillerman with tears;
Although some would say they'll laugh at our weakness, I think it is a necessity to cry today.
If only to prove to ourselves , and not to others, that we are still sane...
we are still real...
we are still Human...

Let's stand up to cruelty with warmth.
To heartless faces with faceless hearts...

And to erase the taste of drama, I will recommand an article on music in Beirut I had read on Haaretz. "when the last note sounds on peace"...
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=749085&contrassID=2&subContrassID=11&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

It is simply beautiful although so sad...

to all the beating hearts on both sides of this conflict...
Shut your ears.
open your eyes and hearts instead : only then you will hear...