Letter 5: A Letter with No Aspirations of Reaching Anyone
Letters From The Ground 5: A Letter with No Aspirations of Reaching Anyone
From: Hashem Hashem (Translated by Joelle Hatem)To: Junaid Sarieddeen
My friend Junaid,
As I said when we last met, I don’t want this letter to reach anyone, particularly foreigners. It’s not despair or a way of taking a stand. I really don’t have anything more to say to them other than my ready-made answer that I’ve been copying and pasting lately: “I’m okay, safe and sound. Thank you.”
What does the ant say to the giraffe?
The sound does not go through in the first place.
If I have a minute to write, I’d rather write to you, to Sahar or to my cats even – I might write to the neighborhood cat, Poussy, whose absence has been a concern of mine. It’s been months since I’ve seen her. This cat is naughty. She hooked up with every single male in the neighborhood. Every time I saw her, she was either pregnant or had just had a litter. I adopted one of her kittens a while ago and I called her “Laymouneh” (Orange). It wasn’t that creative. She is indeed orange-colored. She’s a rascal, just like her mother. But she probably doesn’t like males, as she avoids the oldest cat in my house, “June”, who doesn’t seem to like her either.
My balcony has bloomed over the past two months, after this beautiful woman came to me with her plants, not to mention clothes, makeup kit, perfumes, hair and skin care products that she spread like pollen dust around the house. Exciting scents swift through the house as I move from one room to the next, the sweetest of which is the smell of her light sleep on the silk pillow next to me. Such a beauty. I used to make fun of the clichés about how the feminine presence in the house changes the way it looks, and enlivens, sweetens, and softens it. I must admit I had been foolish and vain. The truth is I love to make her breakfast and coffee, just as much as she loves to make them for me. The house is spacious. We speak in voice or written notes sometimes. She often wakes up before I do and tends to the plans and the cats. Since she’s come to the house, “June” has been less tense. He developed a friendship with her based on a cautious familiarity and started coming out more. In her voice and movement what calms all of us: me, the plants, and the cats. A few weeks ago, I caught my heart swearing that it would never tire of this life with her.
Anyway, this is not a love letter. Nor is it a hate letter. But rather a letter with no purpose other than being, well, just a letter.
*****
Dear Junaid,
I think the first time I heard of war was during the “Grapes of Wrath” war in 1996. I was seven and a half years old. I don’t remember how it started. And I don’t remember the sound of the first strike. But I remember my mother jumping away from the balcony, where she was airing the laundry, into the living room where my brother and I were watching TV. I don’t remember what exactly we were watching or whether my father was at home. But I remember that my mother – with her hands shaking – insisted on finishing airing the laundry before we fled. This was the morning of 11 April 1996. Our house was in Mouawad, in the heart of Dahieh (Southern Suburb of Beirut). So we fled to my aunt’s house in Chiyah, which flaunted this slogan at the time: “Chiyah will not budge.” My aunt would repeat this slogan, laughing, as she moved from one room to the next with her scrawny body and hardened face. During the day, my cousins and I would watch the thermal balloons in the sky produced by Israeli warplanes. At night, we would watch the grownups smoke voraciously in front of the news screens. The day of the Qana massacre, I stood there watching a paramedic pulling out a beheaded baby, as he sobbed and screamed to the camera words I didn’t hear. Women wept so hard that day, while I saw the blood boiling on men’s faces. My mother hugged me and I felt her tears streaming down my head, the bottom of my neck, and my back. That night, everybody turned to me and they wept.
The living room became a river of tears that drowned me for a long time.
And for a long time, I didn’t like babies.
Childhood pain piles up outside our little hearts because they cannot contain it. It builds up into a lump in some corner that keeps growing and expanding until it explodes. And we end up spending years picking up the pieces of our pain and sorrow, not knowing what to do with them.
And then, why does this beautiful woman refuse to take a Panadol pill when she has a headache? I know she’s a strong and independent woman, which is why I fell in love with her in the first place – but what does love have to do with Panadol?
Anyway, logically, I must have heard of war before the “Grapes of Wrath”. In history or theology class, for example, there are many wars, which makes the idea of war impossible to avoid or ignore, no matter how hard the world tried to protect our childhood – which it never tried to, honestly.
There’s, for example, the Battle of the Masts. I love the name of this battle. So poetic. It invokes the sea and ships. And I love ships. I watch videos and films about building ships and stories about their intriguing disappearances. I usually think of a lot of things, but I keep coming back to the Ship of Theseus and its philosophical paradox: Does the ship remain the same if all its original parts were replaced?
The point is: Do we remain the same if our internal and external parts were to change? Like when we change our nose, replace our heart arteries, or lose an arm, or when our house or childhood photo album burns down…
Of course, the only answer I could come up with was that we are human and cannot be compared to ships in the first place. The ship has no memory, no emotion, no personality, which are all characteristics and functions that help us preserve our human selves… But does this mean that should a woman lose her memory she becomes another woman? Should someone have Alzheimer or dementia, are they no longer themselves? Should someone with dissociative personality disorder (popularly known as multiple personality disorder), stop being who they are? Maybe, but those around them, and those who love them, still know their names, their stories, and their memories, and make sure to repeat them to them and remind them of them…
You see, dear Junaid? Our self – should we lose it – lives on in those others who love and remember us. Maybe this phrase isn’t one of those deadly clichés, or maybe it’s a cliché for a good reason.
Ships, on the other hand, don’t have anyone who loves them.
Well, actually, they do. I lied. There are many stories about captains and pirates who preferred to die with their sinking ships, out of devotion or inability to imagine a life outside of them. Or maybe they got stuck in their cabins and couldn’t escape. In any case, the poetic image is more alluring: On 5 June 1940, the US Navy attacked the Japanese fleet, the most powerful in the world at the time, in the Pacific Ocean. On one of these targeted ships, Captain Yanagimoto ordered his crew to evacuate the ship before it was devoured by flames. After they got out, the crew members realized that their captain never left the ship. One of them went back to get him out. His name was Abe. He found the captain standing on the flight deck, his sword drawn, his face exuding awe and determination, humming the Japanese national anthem quietly and steadily. Awed by this sight of grace and heroism, Abe retreated and left his captain to the demise of his own choosing, in pursuit of honor and glory.
What an image oozing masculinity, patriotism, majesty, and pride. Where are the men today who are like Captain Yanagimoto? Woe onto us. Men have gone extinct… except on the front lines, where epics and heroics are drawn, occupation is defeated, and countries are built…
Pffft! I have a headache. I’m going to take two Panadols.
It’s the act of narration, it transforms a catastrophe into a poem, abatement into survival, hollowness of death into a party of sublime meanings.
But really, ships have people who love them. Let’s keep that idea in mind; it’s more beautiful than the voice of Yanagimoto singing the Japanese national anthem.
Yesterday Rima told me that since the beginning of the war she hadn’t heard any of the Israeli raids, but she heard the bombs struck by warships stationed at Beirut’s coastline. It’s a poetic idea, but it doesn’t tempt me at all.
In the Battle of the Masts in 655 AD, on the other hand, Muslims triumphed over the Byzantines. Maybe that’s why the Lebanese Forces fear the flows and waves of refugees, and have thus strawed thousands of flags on the masts of Achrafieh - here is a mere voluntary urination with a clear message: No matter the conditions and circumstances, there is always a big budget for buying partisan flags.
*****
Dear Junaid,
There’s a thought experiment I keep coming back to since we studied it in the Arab philosophy class in the Baccalaureate. It’s Avicenna’s “Flying Man or Floating Man” experiment, which argues for the existence of the soul. The point of the argument is that even if you were to be born floating in the sky, blindfolded, limbs apart, not touching each other or anything around you, you would still know deep down that you exist. The truth, dear Junaid, is that I don’t know how Avicenna came to this conclusion, unless he was born flying or floating, which is highly unlikely, or at least, we have no proof of.
I sometimes think that a big part of philosophy and logic, natural sciences even, would not have been so legendary or logical, had their great men realized that their feelings and experiments don’t represent the feelings of all human beings, and that they cannot deduce proofs based on imagined experiments, no matter how great their minds are.
To be honest, dear Junaid, I prefer myths. Myths that don’t pretend to be sacred, nor great nor all knowing – just like this letter doesn’t aspire to be embraced by anyone. We can take what we want out of it, and leave what we don’t want. We reinterpret, rewrite and retell it through the ages, without it feeling offended or undervalued. It goes on with everchanging parts, but doesn’t lose its value or beauty. What I like in myths is the humility and depth, a depth that they don’t even pretend to have. How beautiful is the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice – this love which leads us to hell on foot in search of the person we love? Or the myth of Icarus who fell to his death from the sky after he flew too close to the sun, causing his beeswax wings to melt?
Ah! How amazing these myths are, dear Junaid! But the most fascinating of all, no doubt, is the myth of triumph over misery: triumph over the enemy, triumph over fear, triumph over destiny, triumph over desire, triumph over death… Whichever way you turn it, there’s a human need to turn defeat into victory over something. Of course, I’m not telling you something you don’t know. We are indeed fascinating and pitiful creatures. We prefer the hollows of victory over the peaks of vulnerability. And to avoid loss, weakness, fear, and self-criticism, we hide behind the illusion. What would we do without illusion, dear Junaid? With what hearts would we live? How do we find joy without Santa Claus who will definitely come at the end of each year? Illusion shades our frail wings, protecting them from sunlight. Let illusion be our master, if it’s going to prevent us from falling from the sky and waking up to a reality that we may not like or it may not like us.
*****
Dear Junaid,
Since I set out to write this letter, I’ve decided not to go into the boring details of the battle, which everybody knows, nor my general position towards this war, and what’s before and after it. These are huge and important issues, which are bigger than me and you. Let’s leave them to the great leaders, the living and the dead. As for us, let’s take care of our little earthly concerns, such as shelter, food, water, and cats. Nawras meows because she wants to eat. Narjes meows because she wants to cuddle. And I want both things, but I don’t know how to meow yet.
All this death – be it intentional or indiscriminate – is saddening.
No. Truth be told, dear Junaid, I won’t lie to you or myself. I’m not saddened by death. This has always been something in me that scares me. Death triggers many thoughts and imaginations in me, but sadness isn’t one of them. Sadness comes to me at weird moments, like when I pass by an old stone wall, or when I see small flowers and plants braving the first storm, or when I see a child wearing shoes that are bigger than their little feet, or when I can’t tell my childhood home and school apart in Dahieh, after they were turned into a pile of rubble molded with rats, fire, and gunpowder, or when I see houses turned into glass and ash. I couldn’t cry during the July 2006 war until the day I returned to Dahieh and didn’t recognize it. I couldn’t cry on August 4 until 40 days later, when I got myself to walk through Beirut’s splintered streets. The death of places pains me more than the death of people.
I’m still trying to understand the impact of death on me. Maybe it dates back to my witnessing death for the first time when I was 11 months old, the day my grandmother died in the room next to mine in the hospital. Death must have seemed so ordinary that day, like my mother’s milk – even if she stopped breastfeeding afterwards, as her milk turned to poison out of grief. Does any of this make sense to you? Have we all become accustomed to death?
“We are not numbers.” Definitely. “Look at their faces.” Definitely. “Say their names.” Definitely. Absolutely. Unquestionably.
But this doesn’t change the triteness and banality of death. And there’s no hopelessness or despair in this, dear Junaid. Frankly, death makes me want to live.
I’ll tell you something else too: I don’t feel guilty for surviving. This is another truth. I won’t lie to you. Guilt is an alien feeling for me. I have no illusions that my position, opinion, or feeling will change the fate of a single wheat ear in the South, or in Gaza, or in the Beqaa, or in Beirut. Nobody asked or will ask for my opinion neither at the beginning of this war, nor at its end. I will only have my story in the face of history and death.
And in the face of death, I brandish life, much like Yanagimoto brandished his sword, to recite poetry, and play with “Laymouneh”, and help as much as I can, and make love, and plan for next year. Guilt is an alien feeling to me. Luckily perhaps.
*****
Dear Junaid,
I may not return to my village next year, or the one after. Even though I haven’t been to my village in a long time, I knew its location very well, and I knew that it would be waiting for me whenever I would come back. My village that all maps forget, except the Occupation’s. I saw my village for the first time when South Lebanon was liberated in May 2000. I don’t remember the exact date we headed back, but when we got to the village, it was pitch black. Electricity hadn’t reached our village yet. My uncle parked his car in a small dirt street and we all got out. “This is your grandfather’s house,” he said in disbelief. I tried to make out the shape of the house, but it was too dark. I sat on the tiny stairs in front of the house’s rusty gate and started digging in the soil with my fingers, waiting for the sun to rise. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to fuse with my land no matter how. This is my land then. This is where my father, my aunts, and my uncles were born – with their scrawny bodies and hardened faces. This is my land then, the land my grandmother used to dream of every night with her blind eyes. We used to talk about it every day and she would insist on reaping her olives and oil every year in spite of the Occupation. This is my land then. This is the smell of its air. This is the shape of its darkness. This is the taste of its soil. I tasted a fistful. It was a poetic idea. But the taste wasn’t that tempting.
Our village is right on the border with the villages of the occupied Galilee. Our Lebaneseness was a pure coincidence. No sooner had the sun come out the next day that my cousins and I went on the roof of my grandfather’s house. The first thing I saw on the other side was Palestine. This is my land then. This is the shape of its sun.
*****
Dear Junaid,
After the Liberation, we didn’t move back to the village, like thousands did. My parents stayed in Dahieh, but they were displaced twice: the first time during the July 2006 war, and the second time during this war for which they haven’t agreed on a name yet. We would just go to the village every summer. But two days ago, my mother told me that my father and she wanted to leave Dahieh and move to our village after this war ends. Her idea seemed to me like a way to rule out any possibility of a prolonged invasion, or a new no-return that would eat up our coming years. It seemed like a preemptive plan that she and my father have concocted against the possibility of them being denied the land of the South.
“We cannot go back to Dahieh before four or five years,” my mother said. “That’s right,” I replied.
“We will go back to the village, then. We will fix the broken glass and build a new winter bathroom,” she said confidently. “Great idea,” I replied.
I never understood patriotic feelings, but I fully understand the meaning of returning to the land, and hanging on to it. This is my land then. And this is the dream of returning to it.
*****
Dear Junaid,
I have a childhood friend whom I have never seen cry. He went to Dahieh a few days ago to inspect his family home in Rweiss. He told me that he couldn’t even find the road that leads to it. But he came across many hungry and thirsty cats. So, he gave them some food and water, then he left. This is our Dahieh then. And these are her cats.
*****
Dear Junaid, my letter must have given you a headache. Take two Panadols and try to get some sleep.
Good night,
Hashem
