We’re left refreshed and a bit tired: should we break into a restaurant for food?
No, we’re not that desperate. We’ll cook something and eat on Georgios’s porch. He lives in a ground-floor apartment.
We open a bottle of Arak and grill some steaks.
Where did we find the steaks?
We just found them!
At this point, reality interrupts my imagination. I see a nice get-together: calm happiness, friends, food, drinks, smoke, and more. This scene is a reality I’ve experienced many times, and it’s one I love. It puts me at ease. I love many things that make up my reality; even if I were given the opportunity to imagine another life, I would choose reality. In reality I’m a doer and have always made of my life what I want it—with the goal of having fun.
I relax on the couch.
I think to myself, what would I change now that the city’s asleep?
I imagine walls without portraits of leaders, without political or religious slogans. Not because I’m a lover of peace, but because I’m a lover of sight. I imagine a change in the prices of clothes and food and everything else—it all becomes cheaper.
The owner of a store called Milki off Hamra complained to me once that people have changed. He used to sell buttons. Ladies would go to the tailor to sew their clothes and come to him to pick out their buttons. He used to go all the way to Italy to buy buttons, and to France and London too. I was a child back then and didn’t have the privilege of picking out my own clothes. Although that past is not as remote as the time of the Pharaohs, it now seems just as impossible because the era of specializing in buttons is over. I wish I could intervene and change that reality now that everyone’s asleep. They would all wake up and find themselves passionate about buttons, and choice would not be dead.
Also, sleeping on the street is unacceptable. Society should not be okay with having people live on the streets. It’s every person’s right to sleep in a bed when tired, be treated when sick, eat when hungry, get an education if wanted, privacy if desired, and clothes to wear if cold or simply wanting to look decent.
Now that I’m dreaming, I also imagine a society where people don’t insult domestic workers but take them into their lives as they do into their homes. And I imagine homosexuals living a full life, both its sweet and bitter days, with no one having power over their lives but themselves, and nobody daring to insult or control them, or to physically hurt them to feel better about themselves or to shield themselves from their own thoughts.
In the society that I’m imagining, people would have to agree to set limits on everything. There would be limits on hatred and its results, on authority and its oppressive power, on claims of total knowledge, on ignorance that can have so much control, on physical desires, on—
Ugh, when did I start complaining? I was walking peacefully down the street, unnoticed by anyone, undisturbed by any car honks or expensive prices. I’m the one to blame; even at the height of my happiness I find a way to bring myself down. I intentionally bring unhappiness onto myself.
I should leave the house.
But I have no energy to get off my couch.
I start texting my friends looking for a reason to go out.
And I find it:
BOOM.
An explosion.
A car bomb?
Who is it? Who’s the target? Who?
Panic.
Cell phone. I dial.
“Allo, Mom? I’m fine, what happened? What do you mean nothing! There was an explosion in the Bain Militaire area! Watch the news. But you guys are okay? Yeah, me too.”
I hang up then dial and dial again.
Nothing goes through. It disconnects the moment I dial.
The network is completely helpless now that I need it the most.
Where was the explosion exactly?
In my heart, perhaps?
Do they want to assassinate me? Not likely.
I’m rushing off. . . . Where am I rushing off to?
The television.
Nothing.
They mention an explosion in the Rawshe area.
No kidding, I heard it. I want more information. Should I leave?
And go where?
My window is blocked by a garage, and the door . . . the door, okay, I’ll open the door.
I slowly open the front door and see broken glass in the hallway of the building and people. My neighbors.
I fit in with them. I commiserate with them and comfort them even though I don’t know how to comfort anyone.
How can people protect themselves from an explosion that has already gone off, and the possibility of another that might follow?
Who died?
Who got assassinated?
How many casualties?
They’re saying that a minister in the Lebanese Parliament was targeted.
I go down to the street and see Zumurrud, Zeezee, Shwikar, and many other friends.
They came from all over.
All over? They were all here when it happened.
Zeezee was at an outdoor café next to where the explosion went off.
Zumurrud ran from her house toward the source of the sound like many others did. She came down from the top of the hill where she lives to the bottom where I live.
And Shwikar was getting money from the ATM at the entrance of the Bain Militaire beach, close to where the explosion happened.
They’re saying the minister was assassinated.
They’re saying his son was with him.
They’re also saying that some players from Nejmeh, the professional soccer team, were killed during practice.
Their soccer field is next to the café.
It’s also across from the theme park.
Fire trucks, EMTs, police cars, army jeeps, news vans (some taping and others broadcasting) and civilians amid it all.
Attaaack!
The crowd surrounds the site of the explosion, separating us from it.
Why would we get any closer anyway? To see the dead. To see what a human body looks like torn to pieces. To see the destruction. To see what, exactly?
We wouldn’t see anything that will make waking up tomorrow easier.
They say
