It's been nearly 5 months.
Moments of awakening gently crawled into my memories. They pushed me to writing, to expressing their delusional states.
It's been nearly 5 months.
My compass rotated for some time now.
When I landed in Bagh-Dad, the very smells in the airport crippled my senses. A wave of contradictions carried me back to some dark past I've only read about in history books. The people swarmed out of the plane like a breakout form a prison. The lights were dim. The police officers struck me with their same-looking mustaches. Most of all, i was devastated by the gate of the airport. It was in ruins. The pillars were crumbled down; the lights fell off a long time ago; the wires, uncovered, were colored with death.
Sitting in the car, passing through the airport security, the scenery changed acutely. Suddenly a very modern piece of greenery appeared. I started to feel the colors come back to life. On the road, houses were made out of bricks. Their stagnant grey and yellow contrasted beautifully with the turquoise mosaic of the mosques.
Sometime passed. I was trying to incubate everything around me. This is what my life will become from now on. This is IT. I've toiled much in the past, in Beirut. Beirut... how i miss Beirut. Whenever i felt like clearing my mind, regenerating my strength or just simply go for a ride, my one and only destination would be Beirut. Hamra str., Downtown, Ashrafieh, Rmeil, Starco str.
To each area a story, to each story a lesson, to each lesson ... ME.
Right after we hit our destination, i started to compare everything here to everything in Beirut.
It was a not-so-cool experience so far. I was scared. I was on double thought. Could this be it? Is this even a place? A country? Do people actually live here? Am i being blinded by nostalgia to Beirut? Back home isn't any sweeter.
Soon, all green turned to grey -literally. The soil of the land was grey. Palm trees everywhere. Yellow taxi cabs and white private pickups. Colorful lamps hung on the streets from pole to pole. Bridges intertwined like a spider's web, organized, well engineered and magically set in the midst of chaos. There was a certain dichotomy, a kind of smooth schizophrenia that lay itself into the eyes of the beholder. Bagh-Dad deployed itself to me as the classic Black & White.
My thoughts were everywhere. In my head, everything smelled fuzzy, seemed hypnotic and felt unsure.
My first month was about over. I was kept confined in a box of gold. During the day, I danced in mud and at night i was back in my luxurious cage.
No comments:
Post a Comment