You tell me.
Category Archives: Dear diary
On Living a Vegetarian Life
Dogs in Beit Shabab Village, Lebanon
I’ve been living for a month now in a very tiny village called Qalhat [Qal7at] in northern Lebanon. It is so tiny that it doesn’t have a single veggies store. And we’re talking about a village here, but no veggies stores. Kinda interesting yet frustrating especially for a vegetarian person like me. There are only two mini-markets and no other stores are found. I kid you not. But that’s because right next to this village there’s another village called Fee’ [Fee3] and it has almost everything. And that’s where I buy my veggies from.
Antalya
I’m here to participate in a conference, I arrived today and here I am enjoying one of Antalya’s cafes by the sea. The local beer is good. The waitress is hot, very short hair, the way she walks, she’s avoiding eye contact, she’s shy maybe.
Turkish women are incredibly beautiful, it’s kind of scary. And they know it.
I have a workshop to facilitate the day after tomorrow and I am still confused about what exactly I want to say.
Anyalya is so beautiful, it reminded me a bit of Homs, small city, organized buildings, wide streets, except you can see women in the streets.
I’ve seen a lot of mothers in this cafe, maybe because it has a children section. One girl fell and she started shouting in Turkish, she started crying when her mother saw her falling down, I think she was saying: “it hurts! it hurts!”.
I like the waitress. I like Antalya. Thank god we’re not in Istanbul, I hated that city very much. It was designed for tourists, Antalya is tourist- friendly but I love how nobody here speaks English. I am using weird body language to communicate, and people find it amusing. Nice people, people of Antalya.
I hated their airport though, I had a fight with them, their security check is humiliating, and everybody was obsessed about my hat, like I am hiding a bomb there or something. Assholes.
I thought the plane was going to crash, actually I was prepared to die. The captain was funny, the plan would move on and on on the side, and there was a moment when the plane moved fast that I thought this is it, I am going to fall on the sea, I am going to stop breathing as I am falling from the sky and onto the sea. I won’t be able to shout cause the scene is so scary. people are shouting around me. If I ever make it alive in the sea, I thought, I am going to save the children and the baby cat. The cat’s owner is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. Dark skin, fair hair, green eyes. Amazing body, but I won’t save her, I am sorry but I am more sympathetic with children and animals than pretty bodies.
I think the Asians at our plane were Japanese, and I was to say to them “Baka”. But a couple of them were whispering about the Hezbolla sign I attached to my backpack. What a turn off.
So yeah, dying, been thinking a lot about death than usual lately. Isn’t amazing, that one of humanity’s biggest fears is death, yet I am fantasizing about it on my way to a nice gathering?
I know why I like death, and why suicide is an interesting concept. I hope I can explain my thoughts about it one day.
I can’t believe I am writing again on this stupid blog.
Anyways, gotta start preparing for my workshop. Jana!
Would You Be My Palestine?
We can buy Almaza and get to your uncle’s place while he’s having his Argileh with his friends outdoors.
We can buy some of the Armenian nuts you like.
We can sit next to each other on the Sofa.
We can get nervous.
We can allow silence to be so loud.
This is it.
We can turn Valentine into a sacred sin.
Would you break the law with me?
We can wait till we finish our first bottle.
We can forget about your tomorrow and mine.
You can let me start right here and now.
Oh I Would Love to Dump You, Syria
Why oh why, I don’t care about you, Syria.
I don’t. I sincerely don’t. About its men, women, gay or straight people. its submissive or its courageous people. Its prisoners of conscience or its enemies or its leaders. I don’t understand what is it exactly I feel about you. I mean I don’t really hate you, obviously I don’t like you, but why do I follow your news so much? why do I feel excited when my reader mentions your name? like hey, I know this place better than I know any other place on this planet. Like I have the feeling, that because I know a lot about you, I have this illusion that I care about you, or even that we are related. But see, we’re not related. See here at this very point that I just wrote, I wrote so many sentences then I deleted them. Not because I want my sentences to consist with each other and actually make sense to the readers, but rather, I don’t think I am writing what I truly feel. I really don’t know how I feel about this space called Syria.
The Making of Heroes and Enemies
Palestine (nation) is constructed by its defender.
Some believe Palestine will be back only if we destroyed Israel, how original.
some believe that the one-state solution is the only solution that would guarantee Palestinians’ rights, oh that’s me by the way.
some dont approve of the right of return, and they happen to be non-palestinians who have a say on that matter only because they’re “pro-palestinian” or “academics”.
and some are pro-palestinian and anti-hezbolla. please madam, define hezbolla?
and who are these people? they are the lebanese diaspora. diaspora doesnt mean that you should be living in another continent, you can be living 300 meters away and be foreign to a one single moral adopted by Hezbolla which speaks a lot about the ethics of Hezbolla as a community: a promise is a promise.
here in Achrafiyeh, in Hamra, and other “liberal” and “open minded” areas in Beirut and in lebanon where they’re proud of their French and English, but not of their Arabic, five Lebanese who fought for self-determination were considered criminals. they are considered criminals in a segregated society in lebanon, and in a segregated world. what do i mean by segregation?
in a sexually segregated society, a male becomes exotic to a female, and vice versa. but thanks to a world where sex is sexualized, they will always try to reach each other, via healthy means? nop, not at all.
unlike in syria, beirut’s society is not sexually segregated, it is rather ideologically segregated, and i did not use the word “sectarian” alongside “segregated” ’cause i think sectarianism is an outcome and not a cause to the lebanese problem. and it is an outcome in the sense that it is constructed by politicians and Europeans to be used to control the masses.
back to segregation, in an ideologically segregated society a group will only meet, live, process itself apart from the potentiality of being exposed to a total foreign thought and a foreign idea, and that’s how racism, sectarianism emerge in a materialistic, economically controlled world.
living for 3 years and a half in achrafieh, i meet amazing people everyday, who despise hezbolla and the people of hezbolla just like some people in other continents in the world who never been to the south, do.
it’s all about our spacial context.
its easy for southern lebanese to hate achrafieh people, and it is easy for the latter to hate the former, but for me, i cannot hate anyone who i’ve shared good memories with.
because i am living on my own, meeting everyone, i had the chance to process a lot of systems i was brought up with.
i am no longer syrian, i no longer believe in these nations, nor in any belief systems, including atheism, not in bombastic slogans Arabists go on baffle me with, seriously, humans are pathetic creatures struggling to belong to an idea they constructed it themselves. to a system they want to be forever comfortable with.
justice is not an idea, it is a meaning.
hezbolla is an idea, Kuntar is an idea, neither are heroes, nor evils.
so far i can’t see no justice in the air.
