It has snowed in Beirut today. There was a flood two days ago. Both very unusual for Beirut. I am kept wondering. Climate change or bad engineering? I cannot decide but my thoughts took me back to when there were heavy rains as we were growing up. The water used to run under the sidewalk. The sidewalk might have been as wide as two feet or three and the water that was running, was that wide. There were no floods. But then again, it could be climate change.
"WHAT?" I wrote on Facebook to a friend who had posted pictures of the flooded city. I wanted to write another "WHAT?" but that would have taken me to the What-What area of Beirut where I used to live. And I went.
Here I am at Beirut Airport. All my family is here with "Welcome Home Arpie" banners. I have been away only for a year and half but so much has changed including the scary ride home. Have rules changed since I was gone or did I also used to drive like this? We get so used to order that what seems disorderly conduct is nothing but a necessity. When in traffic, find the shortest way to get to destination even if that means going the wrong way and getting angry at the incoming car's driver for not letting you pass.
Many things had changed since I was gone including at home. My medzmama (grandmama), Sara, who lived with us, had passed away so had my Uncle Arshag. My two sisters were now married and a few months later, in August of that year, Sanan, my niece was born. We were so happy. to welcome her into this world as the first grandchild and niece.
Jubilation in time of war. We had already escaped to our summer home in Broummana at the start of the civil war in the city. And viewing Beirut from atop a mountain at night had taken a turn. The gunfires and rocketfires looked like fireworks. It gives a new meaning to Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover.
In the meantime and as there were intermissions between gunfires, I found a job at Singer Sewing Company. My boss, a Scottish-American man, was always gone and I did not have much work to do until he returned. We all got paid for the days worked and not worked, including, once, for a whole month.
The theater group I had left behind had had many productions and was starting to rehearse for Barefoot in the Park. We couldn't even start but some years later, they did produce it.
As the war went on, we stayed up in the mountains except when it was safe to return to the city to work, but come October, people started realizing that this was not the civil war of 1958 which lasted only through summer. And I realized that I could not stay home all day reading books forever. In fact, the little bookstore of the village had run out of books. I read everything I could get my hands on; science fiction, romance, French books, English books, magazines, newspapers, literature and trash.
It was nice living up there in peace, away from the areas where civil war was raging. It was quality time spent with family and friends all over different villages which we drove to. My restlessness, unanswered, took form of a mild depression, followed by an apathetic attitude towards the war from lack of understanding its meaning.
Back to Los Angeles maybe?
But before I go back there, I invite you to read my previous attempt at writing about my return to Beirut.
Intercepted by a presidential election in the United States, a
weather storm on the east coast, a civil war in Syria where everything
that country held sacred is being shred to pieces; and Beirut, where, a
week ago, a car bomb turned a residential neighborhood into a war
zone. The latter, just as I was to start writing about my return to
Beirut in 1975.
In the month of May 1975, everybody
thought that what had happened on April 13, 1975 was another incident we
all can leave behind and life will continue as before. Only a week
after my arrival in Beirut, working as a translator in Hotel Phoenicia's
International Business Fair, I heard tanks passing by the street
outside. An hour later, I was running a fever and had to excuse myself
and go home. Never to return. That was the start of the civil war that
would last fifteen years. The hotel was one of the first casualties of
the rockets.
My past and my present are not leaving
each other alone though. They are fighting for supremacy. We all know
that the present is where it is at but when someone throws a bomb in the
present, we become aware. This is not the tree that fell in the forest
and all of us are still asking if it made a sound. It is here, in this
room, on my computer. I am seeing the pictures and feeling the pain.
What
attitude one must have to fight such an onslaught on senses in order to
keep their mental balance and continue the daily routine
uninterrupted? Should we not hear the news? Should I put my head in
the sand and hope that things change miraculously when I come up for
air?
For the sake of argument, let us admit that the
news we are reading are already old news. The present news, those that
are happening now, we will hear about them later. Therefore, in
actuality there are no news. And if there are no news, wasn't that
called good news once?
