Smokers are humans too

For long, smokers have suppressed non-smokers and imposed their smoke on the noses and lungs of non-smokers and for long non-smokers had to suffocate and inhale that shit and not utter a word, but that was long ago. Today, even smokers take pride in asking other smokers to put off their cigarettes. That's all fine and okay. Smoking has been banned in public in many places around the world and that's fine. Airport smoking rooms are designed to give you an idea of what hell feels like. That's also fine. But in coffee houses which are my favorite hangout places, discrimination against smokers is not fine; Non-smoking sections are always nicer with much more comfy couches almost inspiring you to quit smoking altogether just to enjoy those seats. When trying new coffee houses, I am naturally attracted to the non-smoking sections, not because they smell nicer but because, in Lebanon, they are usually empty and more dimly lit with lower coffee tables and nicer seats, only the waiters see my pack of cigarettes, lift their eyebrows and point to the other unappealing side of the place. On that side, it's like another world. There you are like an outcast. You understand the need for this segregation but all you ask for is an equally nice couch and some warmth. You hardly find a couch in the smoking section, mostly uncomfortable chairs, the waiter hardly takes notice of you, but they do change your ashtray after every puff. Is that some kind of punishment for our vulnerabilities? Until they ban smoking in public places, I demand an equal treatment of non-smokers, or otherwise charge us less!
P.S. Smoking is banned in my house, except in the kitchen where there are no couches but I don't charge people in my house!

My gray hair talking

Today I also thought that Life is short enough to endure its sufferings and long enough to forget them. But I might change my mind tomorrow.

Unbreakable

Today, I remembered something that my father said to me long ago, when I was a kid. I don't remember anymore the context or why he said that but surprisingly, his words survived somehow the damages in my memory. "I think that nothing surprises me anymore and that nothing would break me anymore. I have reached a kind of immunity that makes me bear anything, anything", he said, or something along that, but pretty much the essence of it. Despite my young age, those words shook me, and I thought that I understood exactly what he meant. I started imagining the worst of situations and thinking whether he would truly be able to get through them, like: even if I commit suicide? or if I lose my sight because you mistakenly hit my eye with a pen? and some worse stuff, and I had no answer if that wouldn't break him. But now I know, that what he meant to say was that he had seen the worst. No one would dare say such a thing unless they have seen the worst.

A glimpse back

Sometimes I read some of my older posts again and I feel that I am reading them for the first time, as if someone else wrote them, and there are times when I truly get interested and start nodding in a sign of approval, but there are other posts which I totally don't agree with. Is that weird? Is it a matter of forgetfulness or am I just changing (let's not say growing)?

Love in the time of Poo-lera

I was enjoying the Sunny Sunday today when I saw this couple on the street and they so seemed to me like a framed painting on a wall so I couldn't stop myself from taking that picture. I did breach photography ethics, maybe, although their faces don't show and the street was poo free. If you happen to know them, you don't need to tell them.

I can't throw away all of my shoes!!!!!!

Ashrafiyeh people, I have noticed, love dogs. There is a dog, at least one, in almost every house in Ashrafiyeh. I am still trying to figure out why. I lived in Hamra street for a while, and many people there had dogs too, but Ashrafiyeh seems like a dog city. Dogs here almost outnumber the residents. I have nothing against dogs, on the contrary, they are cute, but their poo isn't. I mean if it is dry, I can stand it, but, you gotta try to understand me, sometimes, I wear high heals, and other times, I read my messages while walking on the sidewalk, and these little nice poos left by your cute dog stick on my shoes!!! How can I say this without hurting your or your dog's feelings? What if you clean your dog's poo from time to time? Please? I wanna keep my shoes.

Mothers' Day

A short drive in the streets of Beirut these days, ahead of Mothers' day, most advertisements send these not so subliminal messages: Mom, there you go: now you can cook, clean, and get fitter.

The taste of gray

Cooking and gray hair. Those were my two latest discoveries. They do not necessarily go hand in hand but they did in my case. There isn't supposed to be any correlation between the two or any cause effect relation, and there wasn't, they just coincided, or did they? Cooking for me is some form of yoga and spirit lifting. It gets me thinking (sometimes just singing). I also do it for fun and get to boost my ego when people like my food. There is something magical in that. I am not flattered when people praise some of my traits (I do have many), but when they say "emmmmm", I find myself saying "isn't? isn't". I now do that so often that I guess many people are afraid to tell me sometimes that my food wasn't so great!. And I got to understand why my parents talked about how delicious the food is while having lunch, while I used to take that for granted. That was fine until the first gray hairs started mushrooming on my head. Everyday, I discover a new one. I have no feelings towards them, or more precisely, I don't know what to feel. I do care but not negatively, nor positively. Something is changing in me. It feels like a new age phase and it doesn't at all give me the impression of any signs of more wisdom. I am just naturally thinking whether I should dye my hair or leave the natural whiteness invade the rest of my youth. It is so sudden a change that I am reluctant to accept it. Maybe growth should have some intermittent phases, preparatory ones in between age eras. When gray hair seemed to be a very far away concern, I tried all sorts of hair colors. I dyed in red and black and I was blond for a while, until I screwed it all up and was relieved when my hair finally regained its natural color. But now that it has, I have to start dying it all again? dye it to its natural color? or the closest I can get? I refuse. Anyhow, this brought with it a whole new dilemma: how to address some people. As you grow up, you often find yourself not knowing if it is more appropriate if you keep on addressing certain people with "'ammo" (or uncle) or "tante", as you used to, especially with a particular "breed" of them, those "tantes" who are age freeks, often believing that they do look young, sometimes even acting as teenagers, and who get annoyed if you hint in anyway to their age. "Do I look to you like a tante?" they would say, although you grew up addressing them this way. This also applies to many men as well. As you approach thirty, many people in their fifties or sixties start looking at you as a peer, and you feel truly uncomfortable addressing them by their names, you are not used to it anyway, take your parents' friends for example -some of mine are truly following Benjamin button's growth pattern- you end up avoiding some sentence structures that corner you to address them. With gray hair the matter becomes worse. You have more gray hair than they do! Now cooking only complicates matters. You are sincerely interested in learning from their cooking experience, but they want to talk to you about liposuction, of course! They also insist that you should dye you hair and remove your belly, because the way you are makes them look fake. The whole world should change for them to seem natural. You are still bewildered whether you say their name upfront, you hesitate and you remember that woman who dyes her children's hair blond so that no one doubts that she is a natural blond, even when her eyebrows and hair roots betray all her goals. Then you remember the first time your mother bought you a bra and how proud you felt wearing it that you wanted to show its laces off, to tell the world that you are no longer a kid. You are a grown up. You go to the kitchen, smell your almost ready food. It maybe smells like your mom's. Then a short glance at your first gray hair reminds you that maybe they did bring with them a little more wisdom that you thought.

El amor en los tiempos del cólera

I saw the movie "Love in the time of cholera". It is a good movie in itself and intimately faithful to Marquez's masterpiece but its only problem is that it cannot touch you if you haven't read the book. I wouldn't however attribute that to flaws in direction or scriptwriting or even acting (Javier Bardem never disappoints me). The flaws stem from the irreparable gap between the imagined and the real; between the seeing and hearing of the mind and those of the eyes and ears. If you read the book, the voice of Marquez will resonate throughout the movie and you might like the book even more.

Nothing New Under the Sun

It has all been said and done, one way or another, we just say and do it again in other forms.

The Facebook Kids

The controversy over whether the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions are internet-based, or as some like to call them, Facebook revolutions, is very interesting. I personally stand at midpoint between those who believe that the tools vary but do not alter the outcome and those who strongly adhere to the belief that it was only successful because it was driven by social media platforms. Yes, it is the people's response that counts but I cannot just view the new communication technologies as mere tools such as Gutenberg's printing press- as someone said- or phones, or broadcast media. In this same token, it is also naive to disregard all the historical, political, economic, and social factors that stand at the root of those revolutions, or any other revolution. To assume that people mobilized because of a Facebook page is stupid but I strongly believe that for the first time the message and the tool have become one. Ousted Husni Mubarak named the Egyptian youths "the Facebook kids" and that holds a strong meaning. This labeling does not only reveal an ignorance from the part of this dictator about the power of the social media but also unravels the gap between two generations, the pre-digital and the post-digital. For me a revolution that deserves its name is one that revolts against a whole set of social concepts that are ignorant and backward in the least, a revolution against an older generation, in simple terms. It is in this sense that the new tools derive their meaning. Imagine this very simple anecdote: Before the age of mobile phones, young lovers who wanted to meet had to come up with very complicated scenarios of diversion, conspiring most probably with others in order to meet secretly and only for a short while behind the bushes. The mobile phone made this very common behavior a lot easier. Young lovers could text secretly very easily under the blanket in the middle of the night. This behavior would drive a conservative older generation mad. The medium in this case is not a mere tool of communication, it is rather a tool of deception (for an older generation, who for the sake of argument, we can call the oppressor) and a tool for breaking free for the younger generation (the revolution). Some would like to argue that the difficulties before the mobile phone technology render the experience more enjoyable. They are wrong and they can ask those who did it to find out. Now the cyber space allows for much more maneuver than mobile phones. The room for deception is much wider here and the real-time factor is of essence but the most relevant factor is that a new generation has identified itself or has been identified by an older generation with these tools. They did not defend themselves against such an argument. On the contrary they themselves identified with these tools and proved to their "oppressors" what they or these tools can do. This generation, my generation, has been long lectured about "its failure", "its meaningless", "its nothingness", and "its uselessness". What this generation proved is that the older generation was wrong. What Facebook came to say is that "You have underestimated us". And in this sense, yes, You can call us "the Facebook Kids". This is what the "Facebook kids" did.

A matter of perspective

I am thinking: The Internet technology effects are still beyond anyone to grasp. I find it hard to imagine what the next generation will be able to achieve. I see kids no older than 2 years old- I still call those babies- typing on keyboards, browsing the net, operating DVD players, and timing the Air Conditioner. The other day, my father, who still cannot grasp how Skype is even possible, was at awe when he saw a PC connected to the TV to play youtube videos on a wider screen. "I won't be surprised anymore, he said, if you make a call now using the washing machine!" that was his comment. Once he even asked if the phone I use is a camera that can make calls or a phone that can take pictures. When I told him that it is even more than that, that it is a small PC, he shook his head and said "the first time I saw an escalator, I hesitated before taking it and I was scared it will eat part of my foot." He remembers that people in his village still recount that anecdote about that man who talked to his brother in Brazil over a device called "telephone" and how people laughed at him and thought that he was crazy. The possible and the impossible are only a matter of perspective after all.

Shopping for Gynecos in Lebanon (For females only)

I have lately been shopping for gynecologists and obstetricians... shopping literally. I have seen a handful of them so far. I do understand that visiting a gyneco will never be a comfortable experience, but it shouldn't at least be a traumatizing one! However, in a frustrated society like ours, finding a good male gynecologist is hard and finding a good female one is even harder. I remember back at university when that stupid Med student used to brag in front of other guys how lucky he is because when he becomes a gynecologist, he would see as many naked women and women's genitals as he wishes! He did traumatize me to be honest and I still remember him every time I shop for a new gyneco. I would enter the clinic, scrutinize the Doctor, look for any lust in his eyes, and ask all sorts of questions, as if interviewing him for a job. They could be the best gynecos ever, but that doesn't make the experience any less pitiful. After seeing many of them in Lebanon, I ended up with a sort of categorization. You have the stupid ones, often religious, who would ask you "Miss or Mrs.?" to find out whether you are sexually active! and those who would instantly assume that you are married if they find after check-up you weren't virgin. Tell them you are single and you would get that forced smile betrayed by the round eyes!! Now you have the other category of gynecos who ask you to strip the moment you are in the clinic. They do the check-up in every single visit even if you were there just to ask a question. The third category is those, usually the older type, who look very nice at first, the teaching type, drawing vaginas and uteruses on paper, explaining all sorts of things you have to know, you say, finally that's the one, then, once the lecture is over, they take you behind the curtains, and ask you to strip while they stay there watching... sometimes even offering a hand! And finally you have the female gynecos. Those come in two types, the frustrated, never-had-sex-type and the hell-with-confidentiality-type. The first category are those self-hating women who give you the face of disgust and nag about how horrible it is to be a woman. They would be anything but gentle during check-ups. Now the- hell-with-confidentiality-type are the funniest. One of them once asked me where I am from and noted it down on my file (I now have files all the over the country) and when I asked why she needed to know this information, she said so that she doesn't give me an appointment that would coincide with another woman's from my area. At the end of that session, she offered me coffee and told me the life story of the woman who had left the room right before I came in, not only disclosing all her medical history but also telling me all sorts of gossips about her personal life! I never visited her again, and I opened a new file somewhere else. Now there is this one Doctor I visited lately who falls out of any categorization. I hated him at first, maybe because he was very handsome and relatively young. He also had this smirk that was hard to decipher. I thought that he is the arrogant type and that what goes through his mind is "all of you stupid patients who visit me!" He probably thought "if you are not a doctor then you are stupid." I judged him right away, and my first impression was that this guy is masquerading as a professional physician and said “the worst is yet to come!” But to my surprise, the visit went extremely well. He didn't ask for a check-up on my first visit and he kept a very decent and proficient attitude all through. Finally, a genuine gynecologist! I found out later that he is gay and that was truly relieving. Impartiality! I thought. That’s what makes a good gynecologist.

At the end of the Tunnel

Dear sectarian Lebanese people, those celebrating and those lamenting alike, amid those comi-tragic moments that you are all passing through, I bring you good news. Cheer up, the end of the tunnel is near. Dear Maronites, Christian Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, Alawites, Armenians, Druze etc. etc. etc. worry not for soon you will have a new sectarian government that will be more sectarian than ever so that it represents you all. It will be much more balanced than you have ever had so that it preserves your national unity, and it will be much more retarded than it had ever ever been so that it can respond to all your concerns and address your fears. Dear Christians, fear not, for this government will impose contraceptives on all Muslims. Dear pious Lebanese, fear not because art control and media censorships will be imposed stricter than ever not to scratch your feelings (in the meantime use your remote control devices). The next government is one that has learned from the lessons of the past. It will not allow a soul to dare insult your sectarian leader or religious figure. It will impose on buses and cabs to dangle crosses and crescents from their rear-view mirrors to give you a choice in which to ride. There will be equal Christian transportation means as Muslim ones, and there will be mixed ones too with a cross and a crescent embracing for those who have reached higher levels of co-existence and brotherhood, for the new Government will give you a choice. So why the long faces? Cheer up, the end of the tunnel is near.

The day I woke up with a silly mood

I don't know what it means to live day by day yet I decided today to live as such, to live today. But in what sense? does it mean, not to think about tomorrow? or not to plan for next week or next year? or not to care for yesterday or last year? or is it rather not to worry about the after? For some, it could mean no more than to put food on the table today and God helps tomorrow. For others it is merely to take Nancy out today and worry about Carla tomorrow. But for me this morning, it just meant to wake up and try to lead a normal day, a day I would not care to remember. I told myself: today, live with no aim, delete the word purpose from your dictionary, and let dreams be your worst enemy. Ask no questions and look for no answers. Just wake up and let each breath bring you a new fragrance, open your eyes and see (as Saramago says), listen to the music in words and forget the words, just be led by your senses. Carpe Diem? I wondered. Maybe. But it is funny when you think that the more you live by Carpe Diem the less you might leave this world with a mark, the less you will be remembered over the ages. But who cares if your life was watched in a film strip or read in a book or searched over the internet a hundred years after you are gone. You are gone. Maybe it is not important after all to leave a mark in life, maybe, it is more important that life leaves marks on you.

Beyond doubt

I attended the other day the funeral of a man in his late seventies. At the funeral, I heard people talking about his widow's "'Iddiyeh" or 'counting' which refers to a custom still practiced among some Muslims where the widow must lock herself at home for 100 days before she is allowed to go out. To be honest, I didn't quite understand the reason right away until I realized that this has to do with sex. Of course! When it comes to religion, sex and dignity have some mysterious links. She should lock herself in so that, in case she found herself pregnant, society wouldn't doubt for a second that her late husband was indeed the father. Poor woman, I thought. When he died, her husband was almost 80 and she was in her late sixties for God's sake!

P.S. In case this crossed your mind, let us be clear, this practice is not common among Christians not because of any greater enlightenment, but, because if a Christian woman locked at home after her husband dies, gets pregnant, there is no way to tell whether the father is her late husband or the holy spirit!

Prices taste too!

Why do I happen to know some of those Lebanese who befriend you depending on how many cheese varieties you can name provided that Halloumi and Picon are not among them? Those might be rare, you think? but take the ones for example who rate the taste of food by its price. It must be delicious because it is expensive. That's also how they choose where to dine, for instance, by the price list! And the lesser the food in a plate the merrier! They won't tell you that the food is great because it is expensive, they are not that stupid after all... they will only say that they like the place because it is clean. Recommend a cheaper place and you would directly hear the phrase "it's too popular" only to mean "filthy" or "poor", two words they usually use interchangeably. So those people will find the same camembert they eat in Beirut for 10 Dollars more tasty than the camembert baring the same label in Paris, (of course!) and those people would find Somali Banana in Beirut utterly delicious and local banana in Somalia just Yuck! To those I say: if you cannot cure yourself from your inferiority complexes, you can just cut it short and chew a 50 dollar bill for breakfast, a 100 Dollar bill for lunch and how about a Diamond for dinner?

One of their favorite sections

For better and for worse

Since I got married I have been removing broken eyelashes from my husband's eyes in rescue more than I imagined I would.

From Marquez again

"Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good". Love in the time of Cholera.

Beirut

I love this line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez for I can almost read Beirut hidden between the lines: "How noble this city must be (...)for we have spent four hundred years trying to finish it off and we still have not succeeded." Love in the time of Cholera.

Or did we?

Nothing annoys me more than this

How can some Lebanese people not see that this is a sectarian emblem? I mean this is so evident that any further explanation would be like defining what the word is is. We will never have a decent state or regime or nation or whatever you may call it until we stop seeing people as such, and it differs less if the cross and the crescent are embracing or pointing guns at each others. It is just the same thing. The more you see this emblem the more you realize the levels of sectarianism that this country has reached. You won't need a Boutus Harb to remind you of that.

Lock yourself in

I lately spent too much time at home which made me forget why I took the decision in the first place to lock myself in. In short, since I stopped going out I started enjoying every moment of my days and nights and then I had this sudden outburst of "loving life" and a rush to go out and meet the sun. So off I went to meet the sun and then...regret. Let me explain what going out in Beirut means these days: a reminder that the main problem of Lebanon is not "sectarianism" as I always thought (which does not bother me anymore by the way... because habit makes normal), no, surprisingly, the root cause, and note this in the introduction of a conflict analysis strategy about Lebanon if you are planning to draft one, is STUPIDITY. It is stupidity magnificently manifested in the view of the Hamra street from the sky, if you ever had the chance, during Christmas and New Year holidays. You will see a stupid woman (me loving life again) in the car, or more precisely, only the lower part of my body in the car and the rest hysterically protruding from the window with rage in my hair defying the laws of gravity, gazing madly at that stupid boy on his motorcycle trying to squeeze himself and his vespa between my car and a truck larger than the street itself confidently blocking the way while three stupid women are happily crossing the street right in front of my car with stacks of huge shopping bags inhaling the black dust coming out of the truck and so indifferent to the deafening noise of the street only to find themselves stuck with their shopping bags in the middle of that apocalyptic scene. I go back home, and as I was in front of the door of my house, I pledge not to be on this side of the door unless necessary. Then a beautiful thought crossed my mind: I will spend New Year's eve at home.

New Year

New Year's is an illusionary beginning. Every morning is an illusionary beginning and New Year's is the king of them all. It is also an illusionary ending. There are beginnings because there are endings... and how can there be happy endings if the greatest ending is commonly known as Death? Beginnings always bring with them hopes, wishfulness, and fortune telling. They are survival musts, the hopeless longing after the ultimate illusion: happiness. A wise man's wish on New Year's eve would be for a few glimpses of it.

Santa Clause

I don't remember ever believing in Santa Clause and I am not sure I like that. I was never brought up to believe in magic or fairy tales. No one tucked me in with a bed story. And among animated characters, I liked Pink Panther because he never talked. I never believed in talking animals, or fairies who could transform a king into a frog or a carriage into a pumpkin, not even as early as 3 or 4 years old, at least I never remember I did. Three geese attacked me early in my childhood and that was enough to scare the hell out of me of anything moving on four for the rest of my life. And yes, if you ask me, I will tell you that geese, ducks, chickens, and birds have four legs. Throwing a horrified cat at me few years later didn't help much either. I had another bitter experience with a cow who suddenly somehow entered my grandma's kitchen and four men tried to push it back through the narrow door. I crawled under a table at the corner of the kitchen screaming madly, and peed in my pants, I am not sure if it was out of hysterical laughing or of a panic attack. To see animated Disney characters talk and live in houses didn't trigger much imagination or any fondness in magic. I preferred the real stories that my father used to recount about his childhood: the scarecrows that scared them more than the birds, the ugly doll he made out of mere sticks and threads, and gave to his younger sister, my aunt, as a present, and the chewing-gum they hid from each other and no one dared ever chew. The first thing I remember about Santa is that there is no Santa. I never thought much about it anyway but I remember wondering once about the stupid idea of making Santa come from the chimney. We never had a chimney, not one that can fit someone as fat and not when it is lit anyway. I was amazed this Christmas when I saw a group of kids anxiously waiting for Santa on Christmas eve, and when he arrived, one of them screamed: this is not the real Santa! Another three year old, hid under his mother's skirt and only showed up again when Santa was taking off. He waved good bye to him with a huge smile and in his heart, he hoped, he will never show up ever again.

Peace

Peace is rain on green meadows.

Of love

One form of love is longing for a hug from that same person who just hurt us. Love is in a way a form of masochism.

Miscalculations

Force yourself to laugh and you were never sadder.

Don't drink wine when you are sad. It creeps down your throat right to that burning lump.

When you are sad, look in the mirror and note down one more mistake.

Why smart people are often depressed

Excerpts from the article shared by wineofwisdom in his comment on "Why stupid people are often happy":

"Both perspectives, pessimism and existentialism, wouldn't necessarily see depression as a malady existing in a person's head. A pessimist and existentialist might, in fact, agree that the world itself is screwed up, that social norms are themselves pathological, that feelings of despair, anxiety, loss, and pointlessness may be typical in people who are exceptionally intelligent and observant."

"Philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, William James, and Friedrich Nietzsche suffered the worst throes of depression. A host of other artists and writers suffered the same fate, including Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, Mark Twain, Wolfgang Mozart, Charles Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath."

Why stupid people are often happy

Take this guy for example.

Lebanese chauvinism

The new ad by Audi Bank.