Author: Nour Abdul Reda

BA in Journalism, MA in Communication Sciences. Writer, dreamer, peacemaker.
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I just drove you to the airport.

I took the wrong road to the airport and we ended up driving a little to the South, and I kept apologizing because even though you leaving is killing me inside, I would never do anything to hurt you. We drove in circles for a while, but eventually I did drive you on time. 

I was trying to speed as much as I can, because this is what I do, I try to stupidly outrun my pain by speeding, but my leg was shaking the whole time. It was shaking so hard, I couldn’t control my brakes, but I managed to hide it from you. You were playing your hilariously weird songs and singing along them and the sun was in your eyes and you were way too beautiful and I was way too enchanted to let you know my leg was shaking so hard and my heart might stop at any moment. 

I am sitting right now on a stairs at the airport, sobbing with the ugliest face ever, hiding behind my face mask, my friends are trying to make me laugh, but every bone in me is crying that this was the last moment I saw you.

I said goodbye to you. I never thought I could ever say goodbye to you. It was short but sweet, an undeserving goodbye, a goodbye I did not expect and did not know how to handle.

How could I say goodbye to you? It is unreal, I refused to believe it. I kept on holding to the slight hope that this is all a lie, that you are not leaving, that this is just an awful nightmare and I will wake up to a world where you are still beside me.

I said goodbye to you, as Cate Le Bon sings in my head: 

He’s leaving

He’s leaving 

Town

And I do feel like dying

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It’s 1:30am. I need to wake up at 5:00am

It’s 1:30am. You texted me at 5:30am today and told me to wake you up at 9:00am if I were awake. 

I woke up at 7:30am, my body aching and the thought of you burned my brain to the core. I made coffee, put on lipstick and, still wearing my pajama, I wore my raincoat and drove to your place.

You woke up the very moment you saw me, which was a first -you’re usually the worst to wake up. I would put on the most annoying song on blast, sing vivaciously, sit on you, shake you and pull your hair out, and you wouldn’t wake up. You eventually do, wake up, look up at the sky and say to God: “what have I ever done to deserve this?”

Today, you woke up right away, and I left you my coffee to drink, and we looked outside the window and we saw a plane flying and you said, in your usual boyish attitude: “look! That’s my plane tomorrow.”

The worst part of all this is that you are happy. You are happy to leave, as you should, but it’s so hard to be happy for you when you’re taking away all I could ever possibly offer. How could I be happy for you when I’m this selfish? You’re asking me to be happy for you when all I really want is to have your arms around me and have the time freeze then and stay stuck in that moment for all eternity. And you expect me to tolerate the idea of you leaving?

A week ago we were also looking at the sky; the sun was setting and the clouds were all pink and fluffy, you looked at the sky and then at me and said: “where will I ever find someone like you?” And I told you with my most serious tone: “don’t even think of searching.“

Here were are, hours away from you leaving. I couldn’t see you tonight, I was with my sisters and you were out drinking with her, behemoth wicked witch of the west. It’s 1:25am, I am seeing you in 5 hours, and I need to sleep, but I know waking up is going to be so painful.

I’m dreading the morning. I’m dreading the 9am that will take you away from me.

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You, everyone will know who this is about

I just drove you home. You were singing along with the songs I have played – I thought of you while picking the songs, I thought of the way your voice will fit perfectly with every melody, I thought of how every word will remind me of you, of all the untold stories I could never say. 

I listened to you hum, and my heart broke to pieces because with every hum, I couldn’t but think to myself: “this is the last night you’ll ever spend with him.”

Your voice is still stuck in my head, like a lullaby, singing. You weren’t singing to me, but I want to believe you were, I want to believe all those nice words were meant for me, it’s been a while since you told me you loved me, and I am longing for a talk you promised me with, and we only have tomorrow left, but you are seeing her tomorrow night, and not me.

It’s 10:00pm. I stop at a red light, and you stop singing and look at me. You look me with those boyish puppy eyes and tell me that you really want coffee but you don’t have any money, and I tell you I will get you the world if you ask me to. We stop at a coffee place on the street and you get plain coffee and I get Nescafe, and I drive you home.

We reach another red light, and you tell me that this is the first time you drink coffee with sugar, and it tastes disgusting. I smile and tell you my Nescafé does not taste good either. I drive you home; I only say goodbye to you in a rush because it’s already 10:25pm and my curfew is 10:30pm. 

I am writing all this, as I try to keep every memory of you alive, as I cry because tomorrow will be the last day I get to be near you. I listen to our song as I remember last January, when you said you wanted to dance with me to this song and I shyly refused. I didn’t like you back then, you were just a friend. Little did I know that I will be lying here, cold and distraught, thinking of all the times I could have spent with you, holding me, as we danced to nothing at all, as I smell your perfume mixed with your warm aroma and you-smell that no one has but you. How can I survive without smelling you? How can I survive this? 

Teach me how to survive a world without you. Teach me how to listen to songs and not have them remind me of you. Teach me how to be brave and honest, and tell you that this is about you, that I could/will never love anyone the way I love you. Teach me how to imagine a world where you are not here.

It’s past midnight. Last night you texted me at exactly the same time and asked me if I was still awake. I was getting ready to sleep, but I felt like you wanted to tell me something. I didn’t give you much chance, I wanted to sleep so I could wake up the other day and see you. 

It’s 12:13am, and I have an urge to wake up early tomorrow and see you. I want to wake you up, in the annoying way I usually wake you up with. But this time, I want to let myself hug you until I fall asleep, absorbing all the warmth I could take from you. I want to feel you for the last time. 

I need you

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Unfinished drafts compilation

Hi, hello, and welcome to the unfinished drafts compilation saga. By reading this, you will benefit nothing-except wasting time and possibly losing some competent brain cells. I, however, will achieve my long-lasting dream of having no pending drafts and start my 2022 free and with new mundane stressors to obsess over. 🙂

I am currently listening to party music, which might not relate very much to the tone of this post. For each post, I will-or might-introduce the background and context behind the writing; most of these posts are unfinished because of 1) lack of time and/or 2) writer’s block and/or 3) too mentally hard to continue.

Some are only titles because sometimes a phrase or word compels me so much that I decide to write a whole post about it-but due to lack of time (and energy), the post never sees the light. I might get back to them later. Anywhoooooo, without further ado, these are my unfinished posts for 2021(:

#1 – Take me to Naples

Date: January 15, 2021.
Background: I am in love with Italy, the ’60s, Sophia Loren, old movies.
Post:

Take me to Naples in the 1960s. Take me to Naples, where Sophia Loren danced to Americano in front of Clark Gable and where Neapolitans sold fish in the morning at the fish market and sang l’Italiano in bars in the afternoons.

Take me to Naples, where violence and unrest were allies, and people were too modest for the luxury life. Take me to a Naples of women dancing with torn dresses next to the Miseno with cheap jewelry around their necks. Take me to Naples, the city that was destroyed 100 times during world war and its people still belly danced their nights away.

#2 We don’t talk about Sophia Loren as much as we should

Date: January 18, 2021
Background: I still want to talk about Sophia Loren. She needs to be talked about. Soon, soon.

#3 I can’t think of you. I can’t even entertain your thought in my head.

Date: January 26, 2021

#4 21 days in solitary confinement

Date: January 30, 2021
Background: I wanted to write a diary of my days with COVID-19, but I got too discouraged.

Post:

I honestly do not know where to begin. As a journalist student, I thought of this post on the very third day of my isolation. It’s a habit we develop to see everything as a story and think of how it’ll look on paper.

It is solitary confinement, being punished for something we didn’t do, but it happens to the best of us, I guess, and for now, I’m glad it did, and I am so very glad it’s over. For a very people-orient person and someone who is out almost every waking hour of the day, being put in a four-wall room for 21 days cannot be easy.

The first few days were the hardest, of course. I felt chained by the throat, and it felt like the walls were closing in on me every second of every day. I think the hardest thing is that I did not choose to be here, I was forced to, and I hate someone else deciding what I should do; it makes me feel as if I don’t have control over my life.

#5 Teach me how to focus

Date: February 2, 2021
Background: working from home during lockdown,
Post:

Guys and gals, my attention span is so bad.

I was reading “Administrative Guidelines for Offices on the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic” shared by our head of office, and I suddenly found myself playing chess with a computer, so I was like; “Nour, you need to focus.” So I started searching for ways to increase my focus and attention, and then I remembered that I was reading the guideline, so I went to read it, and I found myself writing this. Then I suddenly stopped writing, and I was watching the music video of Hasta Siempre.

THE GUIDELINE NOUR THE GUIDELINE

Or I can be reading “all poems and speeches about Che Guevara.”

What do you usually do to get yourself to focus? Or finish tasks you really don’t want to do? I procrastinate and read poems on Che Guevara. Is there any other, healthier way?

#6 So the wind won’t blow it all away

Date: February 4, 2021

#7

Date: March 1, 2021
Background: I wanted to write about my dad, the two weeks of him being sick and the doctor saying he is going to die. But I couldn’t continue writing it, I still can’t (he didn’t die).
Post:

It’s raining. I’m listening to new nice songs, I just ate, and the three weeks of work madness is over. It feels right; I feel okay.

Two weeks ago today, I didn’t think I would ever live a happy day again; I thought I was going to lose my happiness

#8 The women victims of war: rape as a weapon of war and means of ethnic cleansing

Date: March 11, 2021

#9 Success & resolutions

Date: March 27, 2021
Background: this one’s too funny because I could not even finish the sentence and write the year.
Post:

It’s almost April, and I have yet to write down my resolutions for

#10 Golden

Date: May 10, 2021
Background: I had an epiphany, and I was obsessed with this song.
Post:

To be running in a meadow of green and beauty

#11

Date: September 24, 2021
Background: this would have been cute if I actually did finish it.
Post:

It’s Friday (!), and I’m in the office, and the people at the other end of the floor are listening to All You Need Is Love by The Beatles, which of course made me smile to myself and made me realize, it’s the end of the week.

This week? It has been well, the workload is insane, and I am still lagging so, so, much even though I’m coming an hour early and leaving hours after, and I just remembered that my work week only started on Wednesday- I had an incredible two days getaway on Monday and Tuesday.

Done, thank you, lovely ladies and gentlemen.

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But it’s our home, Cecilia

This was written on September 2, 2021. My definition of home has drastically changed since then.

My Finnish colleague just returned to Lebanon after an extended stay in Finland; she was greatly affected by the Beirut blast, physically, and has been suffering from psychological trauma ever since to an extinct where working from the office was too much of a trigger for her.

Reflecting on coming back to Lebanon, she felt too concerned because even though she misses Beirut, we never notice how burdened we are by the city itself until we leave it, and it’s like, please don’t make me go back.

But then we come back, and we get attached again, almost too much that despite the pain and the extremely unnecessary stress, we don’t ever want to leave.

It’s a toxic relationship that could nearly kill us, yet we choose to stay.

This isn’t my case anymore. I used to be like this, so in love with the city and everything my land stands for. I loved every nook and cranny and defended Lebanon against all that criticism, and I was so full of hope and dreams, and I could see myself with a future. Right now, I am burnt out, exhausted, angry, and I just want to get out. I seize every opportunity to leave the city for a couple of days, and even though I stay in Lebanon, I make sure I am detached from all the daily corruption and starvation.

I know what I’m saying is terrible; I should not be so oblivious of the reality, I should not put myself first when people are starving, but honestly, I cannot anymore. The case right now is not that I can’t help all the people; I don’t even want to. I am frustrated with all the missing solidarity that we Lebanese don’t even know, yet we gash about it day and night. We don’t care for each other, not one single bit.

In times of literal starvation, people are stealing from the poor, exploiting shortages and outages, storing medication until it expires, murdering for the money, the rich are getting richer and are feeding off from the flesh of the poor, the warlords are drinking their expensive wine in the comfort of their penthouses, the corrupt people in charge are still in order, and people still support their leaders.

How can we survive something so broken? As if we’re holding on to shattered glass, our hands are all bloody, and it hurts like hell to hold on, but we are addicted, and just like heroin, it is impossible to sober up.

This country took away everything from me, it took away my safest people and havens, and I am holding so much grudge and bearing so much agony. If I were anywhere but here, they would still be around me, loving me, keeping the safe alive, they would still be here, and I would not be counting the seconds until they leave and take away every piece of happiness in me and leave me in an endless void.

Lebanon, I love you too much; I just wish you could find it in your heart to love me back.
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Let me tell you about Younes

I think one of my saddest personal news that happened in 2020 was that Younes café closed down in Bliss. I felt like a little piece of me died as I read the paper saying they were “moving.” As if they could move a whole world and justify it. How could they?

You might have passed by Younes once or twice, and if you passed by the Bliss one, you are fortunate. It’s a little vintage coffee shop with wooden chairs and tables and wooden everything. It can get crowded during exams, but I was lucky enough to reserve myself the “terrace” spot for years.

Younes cafe was my favorite place on earth, the warmest. My waiter, Mohammad, used to call me “the ashtray girl” because I always asked for an ashtray. They didn’t have any ashtrays because they didn’t have a smoking zone, but for someone that uses tissues as much as I do, I needed an ashtray. So Mohammad started to get creative, getting me small plates and paper cups. On my birthday, he cut out a Younes cup and wrote “happy birthday manfada (ashtray).”

He was so welcoming and sweet. I started going less when my best friend traveled, and I promised Mohammad that if I ever came to Younes with anyone but my best friend, it would be with my crush. I broke my promise and came with others, and I would have to tell Mohammad that “no, this is not my crush; you can stop with the goofy smile and winking at me from behind the glass.” I never came to Younes with my crush, and just like my crush, Younes went away.

Nestled in a busy street near Bliss street, Younes is a vintage cafe with a wooden interior and beautiful atmosphere. I’ve had breakfast near the window on a rainy day, had my heart broken and drank my Ethiopian coffee to wash it all away, waited to see Ghassan Kanafani movie, and sought comfort after one of my very first anxiety attacks. A place like this is too hard to be forgotten and too hard to let go of.

They re-opened a few streets away, in an old yellow building, one of those famous old Beirut houses, they even took the chairs and tables and all, but it wasn’t the same. They don’t have honey mustard chicken ciabatta anymore, and the people are too modern and different, and I never saw Mohammad again.

I had so many photos of the interior, from the big dining/meeting table to the portraits to mirror selfies, but they are lost in between the endless photos and memories. I’ll leave you with a few photos that I saved from my social media accounts.

Hot chocolate with cream 🙂

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Three days until 2022 and I am confused

Five minutes until my work hours finish and three days until 2022, and I have a lot to say, meaning I will write very little. Lol. I’m just going to say that this December, just like other Decembers, has been incredible, spent with incredible people, and it was safe again. Now that December has ended, just like the summer, the safety is slowly vanishing, and I am again searching for ways to overcome the emptiness.

Do your colleagues work less during the last week of December too? No one is coming to the office, and I only received 12 emails today, and I’m like? Weren’t y’all crying from work just a few days ago?

Don’t get me wrong; I am happy my colleagues are resting and taking some days off to reflect, relax, and party their lives aways. It’s just that I need as many people around me at the office as I can get, especially this week. Being the only person working on the whole floor surely isn’t the drug I need right now.

I will be writing my resolutions this year, I promise. I have written yearly resolutions for years that I found really useful and fed into my hysteria of organizing my time and achieving, but 2020 was so bizarre and hilariously awful that I am in the last week of December. I still have not written my resolutions for 2021.

So I decided to skip 2021 resolutions, bounce around and see where it gets me. It got me very high, I must say. It was a wonderful year, filled with so much love and so much pain. But this is for a later post – maybe. Hihi.

Other than writing my 2021 resolutions and sharing them with you, pretty peeps, I will also publish all of my unfinished drafts. I have 15 drafts, and they DRIVE me CRAZY because of UNFINISHED WORK!!!?! And I wanted so bad to finish them, but I haven’t. I decided to publish unfinished in one post and try to finish others that I deem important (for me) to be written and shared. 🙂

For now, I shall leave my chair and walk to Mounira, my lovely car.

See ya later, alligator.

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Those absent sleep on Christmas night

Those who are absent sleep on Christmas night. A title I just read of a long article I did not even skim. I know the content will be depressing, just like our country, a eulogy of Lebanon, Beirut, of what we were, of all the emptiness lingering in the toxicity of the acid rain pouring on the naked backs of the poor.

Those who are absent sleep on Christmas night. They sleep the joy away, in their graves, in a foreign country, in the hearts of all those they have left behind.

I’m listening to Vixen by Miguel, and my soul is slow dancing with yours in every moment. My stomach is hurting because I am drinking a coffee jug before having breakfast, and I just apologized for attending a Christmas dinner.

I am in bliss right now, well aware of the melancholy awaiting, but for now, it is alright. It is Christmas, and I always feel more than okay on Christmas.

Last night, my friends celebrated my birthday a month and 23 days late, and it was funny. I am now looking at a giant moodboard-like portrait of my friends, and as much as it is giving me joy, I ache for all those absent.

We have lost a lot, I have lost a lot, yet I prospered, healed. I grew more than I wanted. But this is for another post.

Plans for today?

I need to finish all my work in the upcoming two hours as we have an early release today, and I need to shop for my secret Santa then meet up with my friends for our photography lessons. I haven’t figured out the rest of my day yet, but I’m sure it will be a good one.

Wishing you the most peaceful Christmas night. Wishing you love, now and always.

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Is sadness a choice?

sadness

Sadness is a choice, you said. I wish it is, sadness, I wish it is a choice. I wish I could wake up one day feeling super happy and go like, “I am kind of bored with this feeling of joy; I shall squeeze my heart to suffocation and cry for three days.”

This is an actual conversation I had with a friend, a dear friend, I must say. I usually am quick with shutting people out, especially if they talk about mental health as a choice, but he’s such a dear friend, and it upsets me so much that he doesn’t understand. I do not feel sad by choice; I do not like being sad. Sad is not healthy for me. Sad is painful.

I wish it is, though. I promise you, if it were a choice, you would never see me so much as frown. Hell, I would delete this whole blog. If sadness is something I can pull in and out of a magic hat, I would pull it out and feed it to my friend’s stray cat who ate its children, twice.

I wish I can be normal, be worthy of you. But I am not, normal, and I am trying so hard but I am failing. And I am sorry.

I wish I could stop whatever I am feeling and go back to whatever I used to be, or whatever you want me to be. I wish I could turn this off, sleep it away, close my eyes, and when I open them, I only feel peace in my heart and warmth in my soul.

It is back. I feel anxious, a lot, and I lost my safe space. My anxiety is terrible these days, and I do not know how to fight it. I am trying my best, believe me. But the fear in my heart and pain in my bones make it so hard to be normal, and I am sorry.

I am sorry I am not the friend you expected, I try. I know I dramatize everything; I make things so much bigger than they are. I know I am over-sensitive and easily triggered, and I know I am a crybaby. And I’m sorry, but all I want for now is someone to hold me tight and hug me to sleep. I am sorry for being so needy.

I keep asking you to wait on me, but you have every right not to. Nobody wants someone that brings the group down; nobody really wants a sad friend.

I won’t ask you to wait on me, or understand me, anymore. You can leave; it’s okay; please do leave if you feel so uncomfortable, if I have upset you in any way. It is okay; you do not have to feel bad for me. I know you love me, or at least loved me before my drama, but you can leave.

I’ll get through this; choice or not, I have to get through this. It doesn’t seem like God wants me any time soon, so I’ll have to fight it, whatever it is.

Thank you for sticking by for as long as you could. I appreciate you.

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I am listening to a song about depression

As my friend drove me home last night, she gave me this song about depression, and as I listened to a preview on the car radio as she sped through the dark street to the roundabout, the song consumed me.

It is so raw, so real, so painful.

The song starts with soft whistling, almost a plea for the simpler time where whistling in songs was to show nonchalant. Then the piano starts echoing the notes of the whistle, and the singer begins describing depression at its best.

Depression is controversial. The opposition and the hypocrisy of this feeling feed off every part of rotten skin and grow the fungus within. The song explains the battle inside us that is too suffocating for anyone to see.

The silent killer. I see it as a behemoth ebony beast. The beast is bigger than a human being yet lives inside it- imagine the weight of a bigger body residing inside your body. The beast is always laughing, with sharp teeth and spitting saliva all over because nothing outside your body is worth making you this sad; the monsters outside are not worth not smiling for. It is the beast inside of you that is the problem. The beast within you mocks your fragility, tells you that you are too frail to speak up.

On most days, the beast disallows you to show part of its gruesome teeth out in the open. The beast tells you that no one cares, that no one will understand, that they will leave you. They will abandon you if you so much shed a tear. Every day, the beast cites all the reasons why everyone you care about will hate you and stop wanting to be friends with you if you tell them anything, and you believe it because why would it lie to you?

The song explains depression as a him, the singer.

“A voice inside me calls me from far away. I recognize it but I go astray. It’s a drop of white in the darkness, it is flesh calling to stone. It’s naive innocence, which I, the two-faced world, always disown. I am its cellmate and its jailer, locked in; I hold the keys but I’m too cowardly to open. I am the perpetrator and the victim. I keep on asking why, although I am every reason. He is I, and I am he. War rages on inside of me. It’s deep in me, it’s killing me, I can’t escape or flee.”

A drop of white – Cairokee

Then the song intensifies, the words get lost between the many musical instruments being played fastly. We run as the music runs and the singer’s voice gets higher. And he tells us that time waits for no one and that it is his fault for believing all the false promises, and it keeps on running, and the loudness gets higher and in the middle of intensity of the emotions and self-blame and loathe;

The music stops. Complete silence, except for the sound of a whistle. The same whistle we heard at the beginning of the song, the same rhythm.

It has comforted me.

Fyi, remember the chicken I told you about in the previous post? The cover photo above is it. (: