Part 1. Adopting a feeling
Initially, there is an image from before my time. My father, young, full black hair, a linen shirt, my sister on his back. She’s a pretty baby and she’s smiling into the camera and so is he. Behind them extends a dusty road, a run down empty building in the distance. The light is warm.
My parents moved to Beirut in 1983, in 85 my sister was born. They stayed until 1987. The Civil war separates the city along the green line, they move from west to east Beirut.
Other pictures from the time include one of my mother sitting on a couch in a simply arranged living room: a black leather couch, a low glass table before it, against the walls piles of books and vinyl’s. The table is covered in empty bottles. In a handwriting that looks familiar, but different to the one he has today, my father wrote, “she always liked the booze”.
Something about that time in my parents’ lives. They were young and adventurous and getting along. Amidst many uncertainties, one persuasion remains undoubted (I do not want to turn into my parents). Yet, I often find myself searching those images for a hint, a clue.
When I arrive to the city for the first time, I exit the airport and wait in the warm and mild November night to be picked up. I realize I have a memory of this place. What is that: A memory of something that you haven’t lived.
Here in Beirut, my parents have been happy (or so I imagine). And I find myself searching the streets for a sign of that past happiness.
Part 2. Confrontation (the present)
Now, Beirut: sky-blue and sandy ochre are the city’s colors. The boy’s skin is still soft/ His hair wirier, knottier, longer. There is a slight smell of sweat that wasn’t there before. Kisses are warm.
The streets carry traces of the past: Ruins, bullet holes. Military men look bored, the way they stand in their uniforms all day, watching over the street, playing with their smart phones. But they also look ready.
And then, traces of the present. The newly built buildings are empty, so are the malls and shiny Downtown restaurants. There is a war next door and it is affecting the economy, tourists stay away.
On the day of the bombs at the Iranian embassy there is a spooky gap between what I see on my computer screen –blood, shattered glass, headlines announcing the spillover of the Syrian Civil war onto Lebanon- and the atmosphere I encounter when I decide to get out of the house in the afternoon. A quiet calm, no perceptible difference to the days before. The taxi driver takes me to Gemmayzeh, I ask him how the city feels today, he says, now it’s okay, something bad happened this morning, it’s a shame. How are people ever going to come back here, if these things continue to happen. Since two years, less and less visitors. Although it is the perfect holiday destination: skiing in winter, swimming in summer. It’s a shame. But what can you do.
The same paralyzing tone from an encounter in front of the communist bar, a small room on the ground floor of a plain grey building, dominated by a conspirative silence, its walls plastered with Che Guevera portraits and guns. The street leads down to the sea. What can you do, says the young man. He is a filmmaker and if he could, he would leave his country behind. Corrupted politicians and never ending conflicts over something bigger than you and me and everyday-life. A fight over something as old as religion, a heavy weight, what can you do, there is nothing you can do, says the young man.
At the same time, accompanying the refusal of an unreliable, non-functioning political system, a light creativity. The dancer, the painter, the singer, the actor, the activist, the writer.
Part 3. Engraving
The cartoon plane slowly moves on the screen in front of me. North, north, always north. While I watch the green and blue map, and the little plane symbol, my thoughts drift. Regrets: One, I should have visited the Palestinian Refugee camps (and why didn’t I). Two, the whiskey-veil over last night’s ending, I can’t seem to get through (I try hard, the memory remains brittle).
The plane hits the ground and is fiercely thrown forwards. The American couple in front of me applauds. I step into a grey cold November afternoon, traverse the airport taxiway and leave the plane behind me.