Monday, August 07, 2006

In Beirut

Mirvat, big thank you for the translation! Click here to listen to the post in Arabic.


In Beirut

In Beirut,
there’s something, like that, just like that…
Stuck in the air, printed on the walls of small roads,
Dripping little by little from the trees right after the rain…

There’s something that makes my foreign friend drive recklessly and ignore the traffic lights. Something that makes him tell me about some of our places. Places that I haven’t had the chance to see and colors I couldn’t understand. He starts understanding the difference between mjadarra and mdardara, he starts talking politics, he loves Fairuz even when he doesn’t understand a word she says. He starts building a house in the mountain, where he would spend the rest of the summer. And sometimes, so many times, he would get carried away and say: “Us Lebanese will never learn…”

In Beirut,
there’s something that makes him love her more than i do…
There’s always a shortcut road that takes you to the sea. There are always cameras taking pictures, fearing that the eye would forget, fearing that the heart would drift…
There’s a road built just to carry your dream, while you walk, not knowing where.
There’s something in people’s eyes, like a question, like the old buildings, like an escaping look, like the ruin.

In Beirut,
there’s a secret that you don’t know until you’re at the airport with your bag… until you’re estranged stranded in young cities, one after the other, forever longing to your crude city, the city where “the difference between the darkness and the light is one word”… And you miss the familiar chaos where the cars park on sidewalks and people strut in the middle of the streets… And forever, for as much as you hide away, you’re haunted with the fever of Beirut, and you know the illness is part of you and you know that she will never leave you.

In Beirut,
There’s something bigger than me, and bigger than you. There’s an April that never ends. And a place, a place that, whenever you lose yourself, whenever you fall, whenever you hurt, you come back whispering the letters of its name once anew, in Beirut.

In Beirut, there’s something, like that, just like that…
Stuck in the air, printed on the walls of small roads,
Dripping from the trees after the rain…

3 Comments:

At Tuesday, August 08, 2006 5:41:00 PM, Blogger Angelus said...

g déja lu ce texte en arabe, il ne perd pas de sa beauté.
a+

 
At Tuesday, August 08, 2006 11:58:00 PM, Blogger Mama Fusla said...

Beautiful

 
At Wednesday, August 09, 2006 11:38:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Eve

I reached your blog by accident when I was doing a google serach for Lebenese restaurants in Dubai, where I will be visiting for a week starting Staurday 12th.

I feel strongly about the Lebanese situation eventhough I am neither Lebanese nor Arab.

I wrote an entry in my blog on indiatimes about the Lebanese sitauation.

The link is here:

http://o3.indiatimes.com/rosecolouredglasses/archive/2006/07/20/1033940.aspx


I wonder what you have to say about my blog entry.


And if you can help me with my original quest, i.e. finding a good Lebanese eatery in Dubai, I would be grateful.

Thanks

:-)

Zaki

zakiduckie@indiatimes.com

 

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