The Algerian Rose

It was in the 90's. Back in Africa. That was when I was a little girl sitting in the backseat of my father's car as he drove us around in the evenings after work. He would play Warda on cassette and we would listen to Batwannis Bik. "Dad, could you play that again?" I would rest my head on the window, little as I was but my dreams larger than me, and I would watch the trees, the little houses, and the street vendors...

But for me, Warda's most beautiful piece was Fi Yom W Leila - one that evokes in me the deepest kind of feelings, emotions of love lost and found, and hope.

The first time I heard it I was still in Africa, and still a little girl. I was at a house party with my parents - back then, the community of expats was small and their only means of entertainment was limited to either dinners at the same Chinese restaurant or house parties on the weekends. These house parties, or gatherings, included hors d'oeuvres and drinks, a buffet style dinner and then some tarab towards the end of the night. This particular party I remember very well. I was cuddled up to my mother when the host, a blonde with the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, began to sing Fi Yom W Leila accompanied by her husband on the oud. I was smitten and I never forgot that song when we got back home...

It feels like a long time since that night, and it has been indeed: some twenty years maybe. And I went through those years listening to Warda, listening to music of such magnificence, music heartrendingly beautiful, and divine, and magical - remedying an empty, sometimes lonely, heart inside my chest. In some way, I also felt closer to my father, like he wasn't far from us, like he was right there.

Yesterday, I was on the bus somewhere near Marble Arch when I read the news of her passing. The tears began to run down my cheeks and I couldn't help that I was surrounded by strangers. I was overwhelmed... Those of you who grew up listening to ballads by Warda, like me, probably feel her loss the most. That is another great voice gone...

I rested my head on the window and I watched London, the lights, the traffic, and the red double-decker buses... But all I could think of was Beirut, a beautiful evening in early September, when the breeze was light and the night sky was clear, and Warda was there to sing. That was the night I saw Warda for the first (and last) time in person. I close my eyes and I can see my sister and mother to my left and they are smiling as Warda walks out on stage. She is waving and I think she is waving to me. Wahashtiny ya Warda...

There was this little girl trying to get mommy's attention.

She tugged at mommy's skirt, but mommy didn't look.

She tapped mommy on her leg, but mommy didn't respond.

She cried and cried and cried, but mommy didn't hear.

She sat in a corner and sulked, but mommy wasn't troubled.

She did it all over again, but mommy still didn't move.

Just a thought before I sleep

There is this (famous) black and white footage of Marylin Monroe arriving late to sing for President Kennedy at his birthday gala. Marylin was known to be late almost all the time. She was wearing this shimmering silk dress that fell freely over her slender body. She trotted hurriedly in these fine heels along the stage. The gentleman who presented her helped her out of her fur wrap and left her alone. She tapped the microphone and then adjusted it towards her.

There was a sudden moment of silence. It was Marylin standing there: a goddess from another world, her hair like carved marble, looking like a doll. She had everything a woman could possibly dream of. And then music started playing in the background as Marylin stunned the crowd with her singing, it was like a whisper, trembling, almost breathless. And all that time, she wore that smile of hers. She seemed happy. Only, she was far from it...

I had just happened on this footage of Marylin and her smile confused me. It seemed like she was the happiest woman on earth, but the truth almost always lies beneath the surface. We are all not very different from Marylin. We wear a smile only to hide so much sorrow. Marylin was indeed very unhappy. At least in all that I have read about her. I think it must have been easier for her to be unhappy. If only she had allowed herself to be happier.

This seems all too idealistic, the notion that we could will ourselves to be happier versions of ourselves. To learn to be happy. Or even to unlearn to be unhappy. To a certain level, yes we can. We find livelihood from the beauty that is around us, from the natural world, from a tender touch, from the love of our friends, from the arts, from reading, from music, from solitude, from late afternoon walks, from the mundane.

Such is happiness.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind -
As if my Brain had split -
I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before -
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls - upon a Floor.  

Emily Dickinson (poem 937, 1864)

Dabke

I was having dinner tonight at one of the restaurants in the trending Zaitunay Bay. The music in the background was at a comfortable volume - low and just how I like it. This song came up and I remembered one of my favorite sounds ever. There are some things that we love but for some reason they slip into the back of our minds...

There is something about this song (and the video) that arouses this need in me to love, and to love more, the land of my fathers - a little country amongst several countries that form the Levantine region. I love the dabke but there was a time many long years ago when I was more westernized and thought of our culture and traditions as unsophisticated and unrefined. I remember my father would explain to me the beauty of the dabke: this noble act of holding hands together and feet stomping the ground in accord as the ultimate expression of unity and harmony. I never understood what my father was trying to tell me. I continued to listen to rock music.

But then, living as an expatriate in London made all the difference. I studied at a school that encouraged all things Arabic and I saw our world from the perspective of an outside observer. And then I went deeper into the study of our history and that's when the search for my identity took a different turn. Arabic is a beautiful language, Umm Kulthum is a great singer, and the dabke is a magnificent dance...

They say time changes us - sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. I still listen to rock. But I am not that person anymore who thought that I was above the dabke (or what it represented)...

Some dreams I had...

I've been having really strange dreams. I want to write about them some time later. But for now I will write about a dream I had last night. Actually two.

I was driving my car through an empty and winding road in what seemed to be somewhere back in Africa. It was in the night and my grandmother and her sister (both had never been outside Lebanon) were in the car with me. I felt terrified because it was absolutely dark and the road was unlit. For a second, I thought I was going to crash into a tree or something due to lack of visibility. But then we all ended up safe and drinking some tea in a kitchen - a kitchen that felt familiar but I don't really recognize it.

Then in another take, I was being chased by a man in his mid twenties. I think I'd seen him in a previous dream and in that dream, I must have done him some harm. I must have really done something bad because in this dream, he was after some revenge. He chased me into a dead end, maybe a cliff. And he got out of his old jeep, and shot at me. He aimed at my left leg and at my right hand. He obviously did not want to kill me. He just wanted to hurt me and have me live through the pain. Maybe I'd be able to understand the kind of pain I'd inflicted on him...

These images are all metaphors for situations that happen in our lives when we are in a state of wakefulness. Do we always know where we're headed? And do we not sometimes find ourselves in the dark and challenged to search for the light? Do we not hurt some people when we don't mean to? And do we really understand what we've done to them? And is this not part of this human life that we live? - to do wrong and be wronged, to hurt and be hurt, to lose and be lost. We are never always winners, but we are also never always losers. We eventually have to find a way back, there is no other way...

I love black. It's me. But, at the same time, my eyes are tired of the black background and white text. However, this doesn't feel quite right yet. So, this is only tentative for now.

I'm also having my eyes checked. For me to be getting tired of the black background on my blog after five years, then something must be wrong.

Almost twenty years ago, when we were still living in Africa, we would often visit Lebanon in the summer - usually leaving my father behind because he had work. My mother, brother and myself would stay at my grandparents'. I would often sleep with my grandmother in the same room. Every night before I fell asleep, she would tell me a bedtime story. Then she would draw the peach and beige quilt over to my chin. She would turn the lights off and leave the room to finish her chores.

In the morning I would wake up to an empty room. My grandmother was a teacher and she would remain at school until the early afternoon. I would spend the early morning in bed and then leisurely rise and rush into the kitchen. I would find hard-boiled eggs, white cheese, labneh, olives, zaatar, bread and a glass of orange juice that my grandmother had carefully arranged on the rectangular table. My mother would be running around after my toddler brother. Or she would be reclining on the red and white striped sofa watching television with baby boy on her lap.

I spent some of my time playing with my grandmother's cat. He was a German Rex and his name was Minouche. He would usually repose on top of the wooden chiffonier in the dinning room. I would call out for him, "Minouche." And with an air of arrogance, he would emerge. Foolish as a little girl, I would sometimes pull on his tail or wash him with soap and lukewarm water. I am sure he did not take pleasure in my ways. Little did I know. In my defense, I petted him more than I did my baby brother and he always followed me around - me and my white stuffed cat that I often carried under my arm. He passed away not many years later.

I remember one afternoon he was nowhere to be seen and I started crying. I wanted to see Minouche. I loved him too much and he had become my one dear friend. In the late afternoons, I would curl up on my grandmother's bed and watch cartoons with the cat resting in the space between my bent knees and chest. But that very afternoon, he was gone. I asked everyone about him but they all told me the same story: he had traveled. I believed them. And with time, I got used to his absence... And I lost my white stuffed cat. But I never forgot what they both looked like.

How time flies...

"عندمـــــــــا تعجـــــــــز النفـــــــــس عـــــــن رؤيـــــــــة  الأحبـــــــــة

فإنــــــــها تشتـــــــــاق لهـــــــــم بصمـــــــــت مؤلم ..

إيـــــــــــاك أن تظــــــــــن أن الصــــــــمــــــــــت نســــــيــــــــــان ..

فــــــــــاالأرض صامتـــــــــــــة ولــــــــــــــــــــكــــن

فـــــــــــي جوفهــــــــــا ألــــــــــف بركـــــــــــان .."

أبي

وعينا أبي.. ملجأ للنجومِ

Tonight at one of my favorite restaurants in Jbeil (and probably all of Lebanon), I was telling my friend about this sad but beautiful poem...

I love this performance by Taim Hasan.

And it's been four years...

April 5, 2008.

I had my last cigarette. Then I threw away an expensive Marlboro Lights cigarette pack.

April 5, 2012.

It has been FOUR YEARS or half a decade minus a year since I had that last drag. I cannot believe it. It has become part of who I am to not be a smoker that I almost forgot this date. But, I had made a mental note and it only took the Posh inside my head to give me a little nudge to look at my watch.

Yes, it has been this long. I am a very passionate woman and I go by my whims and desires, by what my heart wants, so to speak. Not to say that that's good or bad... But quitting cigarettes is probably the only thing that I have done wholeheartedly from a place of forethought and logic and prudence and will and strength of character. I say this because I am still tempted to smoke. To light up a little one whenever the going gets tough. And the going has been tough, I feel depleted. I want to be saved, but I know that a cigarette cannot do that...

There's this little secret. I actually tried quitting in January 2006 following a very serious ENT illness that had me in a hospital for a week. I managed to quit for a few weeks after that and then I went and bought a pack in secret and I hid it in the drawer. I was living in London and on my own so I think I was hiding it from myself, mostly. I would steal a cigarette or two every day and it felt great. But then I felt silly for lying to myself, and so I gave it all up. I went on to smoke for another two years until I left it in 2008.

I can never say for certain that this is final. We, and life, are unpredictable. But I know that this is a decision that I choose to honor this time around. I guess I'll eat a cake or have a chocolate bar whenever the going gets tough. That'll do for now...

This evening I stood in front of the mirror - a mirror that I have looked into for over a decade. I looked into eyes that seemed empty. I could not see myself in them... And I listened to a voice that seemed hollow... I could not hear myself in it. I feel like someone who had a life and then left it. And it is this feeling of imminent loss that humbles me, to a point where everything becomes blurred in my mind.

But I have also just been on a plane and I am short on sleep. And you know what they say: "there is nothing that a bit of sleep can't fix". I am going to do just that. I should be fine.

Warda is with me tonight... Habibti ya Warda, how I love this song Fi Yom We Leila.

فيروز - سنرجع يوما

A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years . . .

Every Thing On It by Shel Silverstein.

Alice asked the Chesire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, "What road do I take?"
The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know", Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it really doesn't matter, does it?"

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

الاطلال

I am going to sleep as I listen to this beautiful song by Umm Kulthum.

I just had a conversation with my good friend, with whom I used to share a flat along with 4 other girls back in 2006. It was at a time when I had started my second Masters degree and this degree was very important to me because I mainly did it in order to qualify for a PhD degree. I was not sure I'd get accepted into the PhD program but I sure as hell was passionate about my Masters degree and I made sure I worked hard for it.

Tonight I was telling my friend how I have been feeling recently. I have not been very happy and I have been feeling sad over a few things. There's always this lump in my throat... And tonight I've just realized that I lost my gloves that I adore and paid so much for. I've been losing many material (and expensive) things. I don't know how the hell I am doing that... I am angry at myself. And I'm angry at everyone. And I'm angry at the world.

It is much easier to give up. And I don't believe in giving up. But sometimes I feel tempted. What she said to me in response touched me deeply. She told me that I should remain strong and hold on as I submit in less than 6 months.

"Do you remember how you used to write your essays? Do you remember how you used to get excited about being the best? You used to have the drive. You were such an inspiration to all of us girls. I came to study with you in your room just for that. Do you remember how much it meant to you to do a PhD? You worked hard for it. Don't forget that."

I didn't know she thought that way about me... I was moved by her words.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
- William Wordsworth

Last night, I acquiesced to this desire, to dream yet again. I closed my eyes and it was some day in June. I began on the balcony of our chalet, on an early morning, looking over to the sea, as the sun had just come over my face, and the breeze fluttered through my hair. The light outside was bright and golden and the beach was made of sand, rocks and pebbles - they were small and big, in all shades from gray to brown, stretching in all directions. There were people walking, some swimming and some sat smoking and talking in the sun, and children played around the sprinkler. I stood there waiting for my little friend. We got on our bicycles and rode down on the concrete. That day, I saw beauty.

So nostalgia has her way with me. That's life, I tell myself.

 " فمن خلالِ الدمعِ يا حبيبي

أريدُ أن تراني

ومن خلالِ النارِ والدُخانِ

أريدُ أن تراني ..

لنحترق .. لنبكِ يا حبيبي

 فقد نسينا

نعمةَ البكاءِ من زمانِ "

من شعر نزار قباني

يا حبيبي تعالى إلحقني شوف إللي جرالي

This is a beautiful rendition of the original song "Ya Habibi Ta'ala" by Asmahan. I dare say it is better than the original. At least for me.

And now I shall close my eyes and drift into a faraway place of dreams.