Whirling on my roof (Photo: Eddie Chu)
Coffee with Sufis in Beirut (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
— Rumi
Today in Beirut, I whirled with Sufis in a ceremony dedicated to those affected by the deadly bombings which struck Beirut earlier this week.
While sipping on Turkish coffee after we whirled, one of the Sufis–who lives next to the site of the blast–recounted how the force of the explosion ripped through her home, and shattered all of her windows. While many in Beirut have returned to their everyday affairs, others are still picking up the pieces.
While my friend and I were taking a stroll later this evening on the Corniche overlooking the Mediterranean, a poor refugee stepped directly in our path.
“Please, I am Syria–money?” she said.
For a moment, my friend and I were rendered speechless–by the poignancy of her grammatical mistake. Without knowing it, she had cast herself as the symbol of a nation suffering from incredible need–and displaced by endless violence and war…
