Ola amigos, Como Estas? I’ve missed you.
I am currently writing on my flight back to Beirut from Dubai, after nine days of getting out, escaping, exploring what it is like to be in a place where all fundamental rights are given abruptly, where menstrual pads are offered in bathrooms and where my male friend can go out wearing black nail polish and be admired for it.
It is not that I like Dubai more or that I am praising it despite the transparent fragility of artificialities and faux pas; it’s just that we all deserve an equal chance to live with less stress and more social freedom. It is okay to be discrete and diverse and have people not know your name or where you come from. It is nice to be free.
I love how vibrant and social Beirut is; I do. You know how much I am very much in love with Beirut, you all know that, but Beirut refuses to give us an open window to breathe, to get out of its people and colors and insanely social occasions and obligations and the must trys and the frowned upons. It is indeed an exotic city and, at the same time, so conservative, and its existential crisis is driving my own existential crises down the abyss.
It was my birthday last Monday, November 1st, and it rained in Beirut, like every year-I like to call this God’s birthday gift, and I wasn’t there to celebrate my rain. I was soaking under the desert sun, buying Afghan bread, and observing cultures lurk through the bustling streets. It was hot, but instead of my usual agitation and sun loathe, I did not mind a little sweat in return for mere coexistence.
I want to tell you all about it, and I have a feeling I won’t because I don’t know why I always avoid writing about significant things that happen – maybe because I feel too much and I always avoid writing about the big things because they require a lot of energy and I am a sulker at best and a sloth at worst. (:
I might not tell you about the whole trip here, but you can ask me whenever and we can talk about it over coffee. What I will for sure be telling you about is the incredibly aching play I watched on my last night because I cannot stop thinking about it – so alluring and painful that I have been thinking about the play all day.
For now, I am listening to Amy Winehouse and thinking a lot about her these few days for different reasons, and I skipped the airplane meal because it is so inedible yet devoured on the coffee – who knew airplane coffee could be this good? I just finished the fourth episode of the second season of You, and I am thinking a lot about all the victims of sexual harassment who watch their lives burn before their eyes from a touch unwanted.
It is unfair, unjust, and crucial that most women experience, one way or another, sexual harassment. I have no words and will never fathom why a person would ever think he has the right to abuse another.
My airplane is starting to land, adios mis amores for now.
<3