Concerning the "Jours tranquilles a Beyrouth"...

Artwork based on the cover of the book "Jours tranquilles a Beyrouth"

Has the war ended? Is it about to end? Are we closer to a peace or peace deal? Depending whom you ask. You get different answers within the same nation (trying to remain vague....). And now what? Now we are as always stuck in the middle. I have previously wrote about this (here):In her brilliant book "Beirut fragments" author Jean Said Makdisi wrote about an anecdote whereby she saw her friend, in Hamra, all coiffed. The friend told her about her hairdresser who bought a generator and provided electricity to his shop and women were all getting their hair done. All bang in the middle of war-torn Beirut during the 1982 invasion (where no shred of electricity was present).

So, today I was asking a friend about Beirut. "Hey, what's in like in Beirut these days?" his answer - you wouldn't believe - "windy at night". No, he did not say anything about bombed hotel rooms, about planes hovering day and night, about people being in the streets or not, about the refugees on the Corniche, no, all of this did not come to his mind. What did come was "windy at night".

And I don't blame him mind you. I mean one tries to find normalcy in the most outrageous situations, which obviously reminds of the book by Nathalie Bontems and David Hury published in 2009 (here), about the "tranquil days in Beirut". Where everything and everything gets interwoven. And yes, about my own Beirut Maykem-ek (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII), where everything intermingles with no logic or chronology or reason. I once met one of NY's hottest book agents, and out of the tens and tens of people who showed him their work, he got interested in mine. He just said "give me a beginning, middle and end and I will buy this" to which I replied "this is Beirut, there is no beginning or middle or end" and left the table to the astonishment of everyone.

Jours tranquilles a Beyrouth...

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

So here we are, again.

Waiting, in Beirut once more.

The title of this post is borrowed from the book by David Hury and Nathalie Bontems (Nathalie is a lovely character if there ever one, and no I am not going to tell you about the state of the villa in Harissa. Sigh). You can still find their book here. 

I did say it before (here for example) "A long time ago (in 2008) and in an interview with a Swedish newspaper, I said "Beirut is like a snake, it needs to shed its skin periodically" - not caring who or what it hurts in the process." But at some point - and even if the myth of Beirut having been destroyed and rebuilt seven times has been debunked and is not correct - one gets tired of being in an exoskeleton.

And now it is the waiting, once more. And this, I said, prior (here).
… And the bombings over Beirut intensified, and I found myself…
Strange how some statements seem ageless and dateless, as if their only reference is simply their own being. The above could have taken place anytime between 1975 and 1990, then sporadically – yet recurrently – after that, although choosing 1996 and 2006 would give a better statistical opportunity of be dead on. Excuse the pun. It seemed the same as saying “the sun rises”, a benign statement with no implications whatsoever in the grand scheme of things, a mechanic, repetitive act – a little like sex when the initial impulse of the discovery of the other’s body has gone.

I envy those who can still play this mental game, ad infinitum. Personally, when I add everything I am going through over and above this, I feel simply tired. If this post seems like rehashing old sayings, maybe, just maybe, because we are now in the same old places and times.