Category Archives: Blog

When my friends and I need a midnight ice-cream cone, a post-party cigarette, or a candle when the lights go out, we know where to turn: to our neighborhood’s mom-and-pop Syrian shop, where everybody knows our name–and, day or night, they’re always glad we came…

“In case there’s war, you need to stock up on water too,” my Lebanese friend said yesterday, as we parked in front of the building above. She was speaking from experience. Staring at that scarred shell of the past–rendered in concrete pointillism–I wondered if I was staring into the future too.

To have water delivered to my house–I went where I always go–to our beloved Syrian shop, which never seems to close. Day or night–work day or week-end–you can find whatever you need–or have it delivered home in ten minutes or less. Last night, on the television opposite the check-out, news anchors were discussing (in Arabic) America’s upcoming intervention next door.

You would think it might be a little awkward, as an American in a Syrian-owned shop, to hear television commentators screaming–for all to hear–that America is just days away from bombing targets in Syria–especially since most Syrians in our neighborhood are sympathetic to the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party–which supports President Assad. But in our mom-and-pop shop, where my American friends who smoke get scolded for buying too many cigarettes–and the owners always hold up the check-out line to admire my pet–we’re all just helping one another to survive.

“Take your time walking home, and then I’ll bring the water,” said the young Syrian man–who always drives the water to my gate. Since we can’t drink from the tap, mineral water isn’t necessary only for drinking–but for cooking too.

Last week when he brought me water–I asked him where he’s from.

“Aleppo,” he replied. Though he had fled to Beirut, his family was still back home in Syria, trying to survive.

So last night, when he brought the water to my gate, I asked him how his family is holding up.

“Alhamdulillah, they are good,” he said. Though he wasn’t happy about America getting involved–he wasn’t surprised.

“This is what America does–they are always interfering in the Middle East and ruining our lives–and for what?” he said. He was speaking so quickly in Arabic that I didn’t catch everything he said–which may have been a blessing, since I didn’t know how to respond.

After we dropped the jugs at my door, he told me to call him if I ever need anything–water, food, whatever.

“Thank you,” I said. Both of our hearts felt heavy, fearing for the worst. It was clear to him why I had bought so much water–without me having to explain.

About an hour later, while I was editing my work for an archaeology journal, my phone buzzed in my bag with a new message. I was surprised to find that the text–in English–was from the young man who moves water:

I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover
on your heart, and there is no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings
sprout on your soul, be quieter than a dove.
Don’t open your mouth for even a cooooo.

— Rumi

…

“The world is a play, a children’s game,
and you are the children.”

God speaks the truth.
If you haven’t left the child’s play,
how can you be an adult…

The same with the fightings of mankind.
It’s a squabble with play-swords.
No purpose, totally futile.

Don’t wait until you die to see this.
Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies…

— Rumi

“19 to 10–you are destroying me!” I said, just one point away from defeat. Across the fussball table, my 11 year-old rival–bald and smiling–was confident victory would soon be hers.

I was foolish to challenge Rasha to a fussball match this week at St. Jude’s, where I was volunteering. I’d forgotten that she plays like a pro–and I’m just JV.

“Well, I do get a lot of practice,” she said–before flicking her wrist, and scoring her winning goal.

A frequent visitor to the cancer center–and hence the playroom–Rasha has missed many days of school this year–while becoming a master in play. But this week, on yet another trial of chemo, she told me that she’s tiring of all the games, tricks, and puzzles she’s already mastered. After she whipped me in fussball, I could tell I wasn’t worthy of another game. UNO and Monopoly no longer hold any appeal to her, and she hasn’t been in the mood to draw.

“How about…Hangman?” I said, noticing a white board with markers near the door.

“Um, well, okay,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and wheeling her chemo pouch across the room.

It’s been decades since I last gave Hangman a shot–I’ve never even played it online. I couldn’t remember if the sad little stick man gets fingers or ears, so Rasha picked a word first–and gave me little time to guess.

“Hurry up, pick a letter,” she kept saying–like an impatient coach.

At least I remembered to pick the vowels first–and thankfully, she picked a word that was full of them.

“What in the world is a cartoonito?” I asked her, filling in the last letters. Though I was tempted to cry Hangman foul–the word was so unexpected–I wanted to know how she learned it.

“I just saw it behind you on the TV–it always appears on this channel,” she said, surprised I didn’t know more about the Cartoon Network. Since I’d never heard Cartoonito–a pre-school brand owned and distributed by the Turner Broadcasting System–I never expected it would be the word a Lebanese pre-teen with leukemia would choose in our first round of Hangman.

Rasha and I played Hangman until it was time for me to leave–when my shift was up. Unlike other games, she hasn’t grown tired of Hangman just yet. Leaving her at the hospital–with some DVDs to entertain her in her room–it was clear she was sad to see me go (when she followed me to the elevator), and I was sad she had to stay. It wouldn’t be right to say “Hope to see you next week,” since the fewer days she spends sick in the hospital–the better. Though I never say it, each time I leave I think: while I love playing with you, I’m hoping I don’t see you next week–because that would mean you’re one step closer to getting better. One step closer to being cancer-free. One step closer to going back to school, and leaving all these tired–but life-saving games–behind…

In this world there are hidden stairs

that climb all the way up to the heavens.

These stairs lead to the heavens step by step.

Every group has their own stairs.

Everyone likes his own stairs.

They are all unaware of the other stairs.

However, all of them lead to eternity–one way or another.

— Rumi

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind. — Thomas Jefferson

Four mattresses–I can’t get them out of my head. Four yellow, ratty mattresses–far away from their bed. Four wheels, for four mattresses–is better, I guess, than being dead…

Last month, when I took my family to Baalbek–despite bombs falling from Syria near the ruins that week–our trip was much different than when I took students there on a field-trip a few months before–all because of those four fraying mattresses.

On the Iranian-funded road back from Baalbek to Beirut, it wasn’t the fifty men with machine guns at a checkpoint that made my family and I concerned. No, our worry was triggered by those four old mattresses–strapped onto the roof of a car of Syrian refugees–fleeing their home, and passing us on the road. In the backseat, the children held large boxes on their laps–and it was a miracle that they could breathe under the weight of all their household goods crammed into every inch of that tiny car.

Before those four mattresses, my family and I had been celebrating our successful trip–and planning our next big adventure. But when those four mattresses passed us on the road, our smiles were replaced by slow rolling tears. Though our journeys shared the same road, that busy highway was split into two–two different and distant realities. We were coming back from a beautiful–though harrowing–day of sight-seeing, and they were leaving their old lives behind in the midst of a civil war. It was only natural to imagine if they were wondering whether or not they would ever make it home again…

Four thin, stained mattresses–stacked on a rusted roof with rope. Though I’ve spent plenty of time with refugees, sharing yoga, acupuncture, and Ramadan iftars, seeing refugees in the midst of their flight–in the liminal lane between a past life and an undefined future–is different than watching a two-minute story about it on the news. Through their window, we could see what toys the children were clutching in their hands. Witnessing the shock frozen on each forward-looking face, it was easy to conclude that any war is a disgrace. Though our collective impulse was to say something–or physically reach out–the wind on the highway was whipping the mist of our tears out of the window–instead of our words…

Go, rest your head on a pillow, leave me alone;
Leave me ruined, exhausted from the journey of this night…
Flee from me, away from trouble; take the path of safety, far from this danger.
We have crept into this corner of grief, turning the water wheel with a flow of tears…

— Rumi

We all face death in the end.
But on the way, be careful–
to never hurt a human heart.

— Rumi

Tonight–as I write this–I’m the one packing my bags, and getting ready to flee. I won’t be taking my mattress with me, but I’m packing up all that I can–just in case. Tonight, I’m trying to fit my entire world into a suitcase.

When I told my Lebanese friend last night that I think we’re screwed, she said: “We have always been screwed. It’s all about the various degrees of screwing we go through.”

Before this week, when ruminating about those four flying mattresses–I was viewing them from a distance, knowing that their flight was an experience I could never understand. But with bombs exploding in Beirut and others landing elsewhere in the Levant, I’m no longer seeing those four mattresses from the backseat of a taxi–instead, I’m closer to contemplating them from under the weary roof struggling to hold them up…

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension…would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. — John F. Kennedy

“Whatever you do–after tomorrow–do not go down that street,” a Lebanese friend told me this week.

The street in question was a busy one–filled with rowdy restaurants and bawdy bars. Though I walk down it every day, I never knew until this week that the office of a “very important person” resides there–and is considered, by some, to be the perfect target.

Oh, she’s just overreacting, I thought–on my way yesterday to run an errand in a store right near his office. When I stepped inside the bank, usually bustling with commotion, nobody spoke–and everyone stared. The clerks who usually smile–scowled. Wrapping up my business, I wondered if it was the last time I’d ever be visiting that store–or even that street.

Stepping back out on to the sidewalk–I found myself trapped in tape. A line of tape–waist high–had been wrapped around the block–and stretched 6 feet into the street to prevent cars from parking near the buildings (and blowing up the block). When I couldn’t spot a way out of the tape–without walking first all the way to the end of the block–a faint panic seized my steps.

Get me out of here, I thought–my steps becoming more hurried, and my eyes darting back and forth from backpacks to passing cars. Was I more worried about a bomb, or the fact that the landscape of my neighborhood was changing so quickly in subtle but serious ways–displaying the dressings of war?

As the war drums beat louder each day–with President Obama planning missile strikes against 50 Syrian governmental targets– bombs could begin falling next door as early as tomorrow morning (targets likely include: Mezze airbase, the 4th Division of the 155th Brigade, and the Republican Guard in Qasioun). And when the bombs start falling–things here in Lebanon are bound to get ugly. And then I’ll have a lot more to worry about than some strategically placed tape…

As you can see in the photo above, even Anubis is concerned about how an American intervention in Syria might trigger blowback here in Lebanon. He’s got his “serious” face on a lot these days.

“Go and get a rabies shot,” my Lebanese friend implored me yesterday.

Not for me, of course, but for my chihuahua–because pets need a passport too to fly out of a war zone.

When we got to the vet, and I explained to him why we had come, I both expected–and wanted–him to say: “Oh stop it, you’re just overreacting.” Because if he did–then it would mean things aren’t as doomed as they seem.

“I think it’s a good idea,” the vet said, “because you need to be prepared.”

Though it was the opposite of what I wanted to hear, I was relieved to hear I was doing the right thing–taking rational not hysterical action in the middle of a burgeoning crisis.

Across that steel table–where the vet gave Anubis his shot–the eye contact which the vet and I shared had a subtext I may never be able to write. It’s easy to talk about war from a distance–but when looking into shy eyes like his–darkened with dread of an oncoming war, and wounded with memories resurfacing from the last one–no words capture the acute ache of impending tragedy pulsing more quickly in the stomach–than in the heart.

In the face of war, even the most mundane encounters–like a trip to the vet–become an existential dance–a grave contemplation between two souls who both know that death may, in fact, be on the way any day…

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass–
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.

— Rumi

My shopping detour this week ended on the sea at Maison de l’Artisan, an enterprise dedicated to keeping Lebanon’s traditional arts alive. In the shadow of the oncoming sunset, these glasses–set against the backdrop of the sea–refused to let my eye free, perhaps because I’ve been mourning glassblowing as a dying art.

Every good shopping spree, of course, must come to an end–and when the time finally came for me to leave the souqs and shops behind, I left Maison de l’Artisan to run my initial errand–a trip to the organic supermarket to stock up on groceries–in anticipation of war.

Buying in bulk for a hurricane–that I’ve done. But filling up my pantries for something far worse–is a first. Because when the eye of a hurricane strikes–it can be brutal, but it keeps on moving and passes through. But when the eye of war comes–it has nowhere else it’s supposed to be…

Whether I’m digging up pots in the Egyptian desert, or shopping in Beirut–it seems like I’m always surrounded by pots–of all sizes, shapes and colors. While technology has changed drastically over the years–especially in the past two centuries–the fact is: for thousands of years, humans have always needed pots, and we always will (well, until they invent the ipot).

And when I need a pot in Beirut, I know where to go. This week, I was taken on a shopping detour while ostensibly on the hunt for groceries to prepare for war–and found myself strolling into WAW Design in Beirut. WAW is my family’s favorite store in Beirut for creative and zany kitchenware–and all of the store’s unique creations are handmade in WAW’s own workshop.

The brightly colored, hand-painted (and Yemeni-inspired) serving trays, the large metal work tables, and the copper calligraphic cookware add a special and subtle Islamic touch to any happening home. Every six months, the shop sports a new theme to feature a specific component of Islamic design–from Ramadan nights to Ottoman turbans (like on the pots below). Most people outside of Lebanon forget that this region was once under the Ottoman rule too. Today, the empires are still doing battle to see who will control the prized and volatile Levant. So a hundred years from now, who will be featured on the pots?

As promised, here are some photographs from my retail therapy adventures in Beirut–where I’m currently dealing with impending war by sneaking daily into souqs and shops. These photos were taken at Barjis Design Shop–an enchanting boutique filled with eclectic furniture pieces and whimsical plush pillows. The word “Barjis” comes from an old Persian game played on a velvet cloth with brass pegs and 5 shells.

Part of the reason I like stopping by Barjis each week is because the designs of the couches, chairs, pouffes and door-stoppers constantly change, as new pieces pop into the collection, and older pieces take up residence in houses across Beirut. How one person–the talented Hala Habib–creates all of these brilliant masterpieces in such a short period of time (wrapped in high end fabric by Rubelli and Dedar), I will never understand (but I’m grateful and in awe).

Any of the tiny triangular bags pictured above–decorative doorstoppers filled with sand–would make a wonderful gift to brighten up the dark and cobwebbed corners behind any heavy door. As a writer, the chair in the last photo (below) makes me want to find a typewriter, sit right down, and get to work. Just like Orient 499, I would buy every item in Barjis if I could. And I know I’ll keep coming back each week, because the store–to me–is more like a meditation on magical mashups of fabric–than just any old boutique.

I’m into Beirut shutters–especially the red ones…