Beirut Airport, April 2023 As of the end of March 2023, I’d officially been in California for 2 years. Since I first landed in 2021, I kept seeing mentions of The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing pop up in Instagram comments or Twitter replies whenever someone asked for book recommendations, especially in relation to Los Angeles. In the book, Laing analyzes her own solitude in NYC through the work of artists (like Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper) who have also experienced a form of loneliness in their lives. I promised myself that I’d read it while living there a ..read more

Artwork by @tracychahwan As of 2 weeks ago, I’ve been in California for a year, and everyday since, I ask myself that question. It’s the same one my dad asks me every few months.  My peers have been leaving Beirut since I graduated in 2009. For every ten that left, one would quietly return after a year or two away. They’d finished their master’s degree and couldn’t find a job or they were unhappy abroad. When I’d hear of their return, I’d think it was because they couldn’t cut it on the outside, they were weak, and they came back to their comfort zone where they knew the potholes, the dek ..read more

@katschneids It’s been almost a year since the Beirut Port Explosion. I have typed that sentence out again and again, changing the number value each time I revisit this draft. After the blast, I read many thoughts and threads about the gap. The gap when you’re the only one at the table scrolling through posts on Palestine while others talk about patty melts and new Marvel films. The gap when you twitch because a Cessna flies overhead and it’s not a reason to move away from the windows. The gap that comes with seeing activists online screaming for all issues equally, except for those that ..read more

I take notes on my phone or in a Star Wars Moleskine gifted to me by Mo, a former-colleague-turned-friend. I have scraps of notes on napkins and post-its or recited to myself as voice memos. After August 4th, I typed out every new note as an Instagram post. All my thoughts were a discombobulated mess and I stitched them together publicly. The place that made us relive all the sorrow of that day was the same place I found others who were searching for words like the ones I was getting rid of. We bonded over all that was broken. The “Beirut Blast” as it’s called today is why I haven’t written h ..read more

“We are all affected and all of you are responsible.” We recently watched Lucien Bou Rjeily’s Heaven Without People and one line keeps playing in my head since: Lebanon changes you. And it wasn’t said to refer to the obvious ways living in a particular country affects you. Lebanon changes you because you become too resilient. Too malleable. Too resourceful. It becomes your default. It sinks your standards. Your baseline for the bare minimum morphs into 3al 2aleele 3aysheen. The rot is so much deeper than the sulta alone. It’s us too. It’s become our factory-setting of how to maneuver, how to ..read more

Artwork by Adra Kandil of @dear.nostalgia I used to say it was what made us skilled at maneuvering socially and professionally. I used to believe in that narrative too. That being resilient was a strength that made you innately resourceful because nothing worked the way it was expected to, because your baseline was a failed system you could not depend on. Being resilient meant you had a backup, you knew how to wiggle out of a jam, you knew how to overcome. What you allow is what will continue. How did they trick us? How did they convince us to take pride in this quality to the point where we ..read more

There’s a tightness in my chest. It’s not the virus (I hope) but more likely a cocktail of anxiety and allergies emerging as the weather shifts again. I spend my days drawing out the skeleton for the week. I fill the pages with golden eggs that seem to be popping out of me like a broken gumball machine. The heartache of my early twenties taught me that my coping mechanism is to drown myself in work. It’s not a denial of emotions but a denial of their power. If I can keep my fingertips moving and creating maybe I won’t feel at every moment I am breathing. Maybe I won’t feel the intense claustr ..read more

Martyr’s Square, Oct 18, 2019For the last 6 months, I felt like I was in a daze. From the economy to the lira to the environment to the emigration, every grain that fell through the hourglass was another piece of the country collapsing. Lebanon was disintegrating. It felt like we were suspended in gelatin, unsure of what was waiting for us after the new year, unsure of what was to come with every parliament meeting, unsure of where we were supposed to put our faith except in the hands of one another. In February of 2020, I had gone for a walk in downtown. It dawned on me how my own fee ..read more

I haven’t given up. I believe change is here, this revolution will continue. But I didn’t discover my belief in Lebanon as of October 17th. My belief is rooted in the little nothings. In “Allah!” when someone trips. In the “khalilna ndayfik shi” as you’re buying a kilo of cucumbers. In the “zeiteitna atyab,” be it from your Southern teammates or the Northern competition. Old houses eaten by moss and sunshine. The light. Oh, the light. In the “yen3ad 3aleikon” that means may you get to experience this again. It’s a wish for the return of an annual celebratory moment in time. As lives are of ..read more