Onward.

Hello friends. I and my blog both have found new homes. The latter, along with links to most of my published work can be found here. 

this just in ... sort of

This post will lack the usual little nuggets of truths I try to unearth as an American in Beirut, as the first article I wrote for Executive magazine is now available free online here. I will post the rest as they become available, but in the meantime, read this story and then start saving the $200,000 so that we can all go into space together. It should also be noted that I wrote the post entitled "Oh Academia" just after I turned this story in.

enjoy!

on the street where I live

Beirut has cooled down a bit. The sun still rises high and bright each day but the mornings and nights have calmed to a liveable degree. I no longer turn on my air conditioner at night, for the window offers enough of a breeze for the room to stay cool. And with the window open, I can hear the people that the many shades and shutters covering any opening to our apartment hide.

My apartement is on the top floor of a very old building at the center of several other old buildings full of old people and surrounded by old cars. And if I go up to our roof to take in the chilled night air, I never stay longer than a moment for fear that I have an audience.

But with my bedroom window open and the curtain drawn, I am safe. I am free from the eyes that pry and yet still a part of the scene in which I find myself. I have learned to identify the sounds of my neighborhood at night. And in some ways, I feel more a part of it.

My apartment is at the end of a very long block just wide enough for one car. And though I walk up and down this block sometimes three or four times a day, until the air cooled I never noticed it. I never took note of its characters and eccentricities when I was distracted by the oppressive heat of summer. But now I see. And my block has character damnit.

Just before turning right onto my street, there is an old old building with cracks and discolorations galore. And though the old building is not to blame, there is a smell. From 100 feet away, the smell of fishiness surges at me as I walk home from the store, from a night out or from work. The smell comes from a man who sits on the side walk in front of that old old building. He sits lazily next to a plank of wood on top of a crate and on that plank he sells the smallest oysters and sea urchin I have ever seen. And though the seafood itself does not look terribly appealing, it is accompanied by a pile of fresh lemons and everytime I pass, I want to try just one bite. But every time, the anticipation of the gastronomical fireworks that will inevitably ensue stops me. Someday, when I have no weekend plans nor lingering colds to hinder my immune system I will try one. And even if that familiar feeling of being wrung like a rag from the inside out finds me, it will come with the pride of trying something new.

Yet unconquered fears behind me, ten feet after I pass the oyster man, the smell magically disappears and I turn the corner onto my block with faint anxiety. For this block has a population, a standing group of inhabitants who probably know my comings and goings better than I do.

On my right I pass two identical supermarkets (I only go to the first one though I have no idea why) and then the fruit stand. Though originally excited about the existence of such an establishment just outside my apartment, I must admit that seeing the cauliflower delivered on Monday mold and rot and still be offered up for sale on Friday, does not encourage me to stray from grocery store produce.

After the fruit stand and its contingent of three teenagers sitting on plastic chairs accross the street, I pass a pile of rubble. Not a completely uncommon site in the land of unfinished construction projects, this particlar mass of cement and twisted metal is close to my heart because it was made during my tenure on the block it calls home. One morning I went to a coffee shop for a cappuccino and a sandwich and when I came back, the building had been clawed to ground as if Clifford the Big Red Dog had playfully pounced on it, not knowing that it had been built before the first World War. When I saw it I felt strange. Moving to a new country is hard enough without changes of seemingly stationary scenery. If change is that quick, I may one day have trouble finding my apartment.

After the pile of rubble comes the peanut gallery: my theatre in the round. I know I am approaching this, the end of my block because of the sharp slapping sound of plastic on wood.

The slapping comes from the center of a circle of six old men all quietly observing a violent game of backgammon in their white tanks tops and dress pants: a uniform that is apparently acceptable and appropriate for a myriad of occasions.

If the game is tense enough, they may not even turn. But most days they do as i curse the soles of my shoes for announcing my coming with their clacking. Most days they turn and grumble to each other about what I am carrying or the time of my return if it is unusual. Neither them nor I seems willing to make the first address so they grumble and I fix my gaze on a point in front of me just waiting to be rid of this sudden bout of attention.

At the end of the block, I hike up the four flights of stairs to my apartment and I am safely anonymous once again. I comfortably consider myself forgotten.

When I lay down to sleep at night, the slapping of the backgammon pieces has stopped and the teenagers sitting in their plastic chairs have gone inside. But with the faintly soaring melodies of Arabic music videos and slamming car doors of late night party-ers all around me, I realize that for the men in the white tank tops, I am as much a part of their day as they are of mine. It still gets me almost every time . . . but, I live here too.

a woman's worth

There is something inherently romantic about traveling alone. Discovering the world while promulgating an uninterrupted internal monologue can lead to revelation and self discovery. And though every bone in my body wants to insist that traveling alone while also being a young woman has no effect on this type of reflection, it does.

Fear is an attitude. And I truly believe that fear is a choice. But, on a recent trip to Damascus I was confronted by intermittant reminders of the perils of my sex; and I found myself frequently asking moment by moment, should I be afraid?

The trip began smoothly. I arrived at the bus station and purchased a ticket to Damascus explaining to the driver that I would have to leave the bus at the border. Syria, as I already knew, is very skeptical of American travelers and arriving on any land border without a visa means a 4 to 6 hour wait.

I chatted pleasantly with a French backpacker on the bus and, after taking a one-hour detour to an isolated garage to fix a problem with the bus, arrived happily at the Lebanese checkpoint at which passports must be verified in order to exit Lebanon and enter the 5 km stretch of nebulous territory before reaching the Syrian border. My Lebanese visa had expired and so I told the bus driver that I would have to withstand ten extra minutes of bureaucracy before we could leave. He politely agreed, apparently hiding great impatience, for he promptly left me there, taking my french friend with him and leaving me to fend for myself.

I quickly darted between three different offices in order to renew my Lebanese visa and ease my trip back upon return. In each office I was met by smiling faces and wandering eyes. Each immigration officer or shop-owner scanned me up and down, endlessly entertained by my broken arabic and toothy smile.

I hadn't felt this way in some time. In Lebanon, men stared at me, but it was different. I didn't feel like an oddity there, for the Lebanese girl walking just behind me was probably wearing fewer clothes, and they would stare at her too. But, Syria is less cosmopolitan and much more conservative. And a familiar combination of self-confidence and strange slightly sexual power came over me as it had two years prior when I was living in Jordan, a similarly conservative society.

So with my visa issues resolved, I exited the stuffy and smelly, fly-infested immigration office into the hot hot sun. Realizing that my bus had left I panicked for a moment. My first instinct was to coyly ask the men standing outside the immigration office for help. I was ready to use my feminine influence on them to my advantage. So could I really blame them for looking? Does working within an existing system, even a repugnant one, validate it?

But a taxi soon stopped in front of me, saving me from having to make a decision.

Until this moment I had been completely lacking any insecurity about my dress or my sex. My sun dress was modest, and my backpack clearly advertized my status as Ajnabiyya or, foreigner: a label that usually warrants forgiveness of any seemingly odd behavior.

When I got in the car I found it stuffed full of what appeared to be Syrian migrant workers. The three men squeezed into the back seat had quite obviously worked all week without the best of accomodations, for they smelled as men do after days of work and minimal bathing and their clothes were covered in dirt and the white dust that wafts up from the limestone and cement that are ubiquitous on this side of the world.

They were very polite, but of course, very interested in finding out as much as they could about me before the driver returned. The four of us actually carried on a lovely conversation mostly in Arabic and I smiled and laughed as per my default in these situations but I also found myself tugging my dress up from the top and down from the bottom, desperate to cover up.

But when the driver returned and we set on our way, the conversation stopped as driving at 90 plus miles per hour with all of the windows open doesn't exactly warrant flowing interaction. And as we zoomed down those 5 km I reconsidered my behavior. Though my instinct is to nod and smile and laugh in all the right places, perhaps it is wiser to go cold.

When I reached the Syrian immigration office, I turned in my passport and began to wait the 4 to 6 hours I had dreaded all day. But, to my surprise after 3 1/2 hours and a whole day without food (as it was Ramadan and there was none to be bought) I was surprised when I was called back to the window and told that my visa would be ready soon.

I waited at the window as the 5 or so men behind it stared and whispered, presumably about me for another hour. One of the immigration officers, Abu Ahmed, had been chatting with me about where I had learned my Arabic and what I was doing in Lebanon - the standard questions for which my answers were so rehearsed that they came out almost subconsciously. After I had stood at the window for an hour and a half, I mustered the gumption to ask if everything was all right with my visa. Abu Ahmed said yes and that it would be five more minutes.

As I had been watching the workings of the office for over an hour, I started to learn the game and when the phone rang and Abu Ahmed finally stamped my passport, which he had been clutching in his hands this whole time, the tightness in my shoulders started to ease. I looked at him and said "khallas?" with the sweetest smile I could muster. Is it finished? He told me I had to wait five more minutes.

But when he then came from behind the partition to casually chat some more, I became suspicious. Though there was nothing I could do, out of fear of angering the man that could make this whole trip for naught, I said nothing. But after another 45 minutes of waiting and looking as tired and pathetic as I could, he finally handed me my passport with a fresh Syrian visa and a slip of paper containing his name and phone number. The victory of obtaining my visa was almost overshadowed by my anger in discovering that the last hour of waiting had been spent not waiting for my visa to be approved, but for Abu Ahmed to summon the courage to give me his phone number.

For some of this time, I had been commiserating with an American-Palestinian man who was waiting as well. And we decided to find a taxi to Damascus together. But, it seems that trusting the familiar does not always pay. We walked to the road block where Syrain soldiers inspected what was being brought into their country and after giving me a once-over they began inspecting the boxes of gifts my new friend had brought for his family, as he was planning on traveling on the West Bank by land.

In my exhausted haze, I overheard them asking him about me, and he repeatedly referred to me as "jowzati"- my wife. The rage came back, especially since before we got to the road block, he had insisted that he do all of the talking. When we got through the inspection point and finally got in a taxi I confronted him about this, but he claimed that he had not said it. But, I know what I heard, and I sat in the taxi fuming until I finally got to my hotel and dissolved in to my bed.

The rest of the trip lacked the drama that journey itself had entailed. I met up with a college professor and his wife and had a lovely time that I will not soon forget. But the frustrations of my sex stung all weekend and still do now.

I never was afraid, not when the bus left without me, not when the Palestinian man told the Syrian border guards that I was his wife, not once. I was bothered, annoyed, but when you've traveled enough, you learn that unless you've done something truly evil or worse yet, stupid, it's going to be ok. This notion may be naive, but it seems to keep me from living in fear. So I'll take it.

But I can't help but think, that everything about my journey to Damascus - virtually everything - would have been different if I weren't a woman.

last minute subsitution

The following is not actually about Beirut. But as I start my new job and try to finish a post about my trip to Damascus, I offer this. My sister has recently gotten a job as well and our schedules combined with a seven-hour time difference is going to make us much less available to each other. So, in temporary lieu of a topical diatribe. please enjoy.

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Twin-speak

My family has friend who, after knowing us for over ten years, has never been able to tell my identical twin sister and I apart. She is not alone.

I, of course, have our physical differences memorized. In fact, though I rarely know of either of our exact weights or heights over the years, I know that she has for some time been two inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter. Her face is slightly longer and thinner and her feet are one size smaller. She has two more freckles than I on her face and her hair has always had a slightly more reddish tinge than mine. In fact, we have catalogued our differences in order to make them non-threatening and non-competitive; I am the pretty and she is the skinny one.

But the truth is that my identity has largely been formed by the fact that I look and often think exactly like someone else. We have shared almost all of the same experiences in the same settings with the same people.

Being born a full minute before Lindsey, my parents say that I immediately took on the traits of the firstborn. I was the leader, the decider, the protector and the fighter of the pair. My mother says that Lindsey was the peacemaker, happy to follow and concede the best toys to keep everyone happy. At two years old and one week, I told my mother “Leave me alone and put Lindsey’s shoes on.” That statement would describe the next fifteen years. I always wanted to protect Lindsey and have my own life at the same time. And these goals were often hard to reconcile.

Now we’re both finishing college. We stumbled on our different schools with little discussion about the possibility of going together. It just didn’t seem natural to us to stay together, much to the relief of my parents, who wanted us to have our own, independent experiences. Lindsey chose a picturesque small school in Virginia and I a large urban one in Washington, DC. But I think the differences between our schools allowed us to experience both worlds.

When I walked on to my sister’s college campus for the first time, for some reason I was surprised at the confused, staring faces all around me. Coming from a large school where I could easily remain anonymous, it was strange for me to be in an environment where everybody knew everybody. And everybody knew me. Or thought they did, because one of Lindsey’s professors asked me why I wasn’t dressed to perform.

When the concert began, I suddenly became nervous. Lindsey was alone. In the past neither of us had ever performed without the other waiting in the wings or on the stage as well. I never simply sat and watched my sister perform.

Some kids have a security blanket that they bring with them everywhere. The first day of school, trips to the dentist or potentially scary situations are made easier by the presence of one item. My security blanket walks, talks and has opinions. And, unlike the inanimate objects others use, I don’t have the option of outgrowing it and tossing it away. And, not to belabor the metaphor, but my security blanket depends on me just as I depend on her, sometimes more so.

The lights dimmed and the 17-piece big band walked out onto the stage. Lindsey was wearing a new black dress and new shoes, which turned out to be a mistake because she tripped on her way to her chair. She laughed it off. I sat in my chair, dwelling on the slip, as I always did. Why was I embarrassed for her?

1992. 4 years old. Snack time. Lindsey and I, both with identical brown curls and the same outfit in different colors, sat next to each other on plastic chairs around a circular children’s table waiting for our preschool afternoon snack.

My parents had never been fond of dressing us alike because they wanted us to feel like individuals. But, as most first time parents do, they heavily relied on gifts from friends and family, who ranked adorability over individuality. So for the first few years, we matched. At age three, I began to search out my own identity. I insisted upon different clothes than my sister.

That day I was excited because someone’s mom had made the snack, which was always better than goldfish crackers or apple slices. Filled with anticipation, but not fidgeting, I was never one to fidget, the teacher placed a rice krispie treat with colored specks of pastel-dyed cereal throughout. It was spring and Easter was coming. I immediately began dissecting my treat, feeling the now inexplicable need to play with my food before I ate it. And as I did, I noticed that Lindsey wasn’t eating hers. She was just staring at it with a worried look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she asked me in a whisper what those “things” were in her snack. I told her that they tasted the same and that she should just eat it but, being an extremely picky eater and resister of all things new, she just stared.

According to my parents, my bossiness was well known in the family. I, being four and believing that I knew best, thought that I was a delight, but apparently I was wrong. Lindsey, however, being the passive and agreeable half of the package usually complied: but not when it came to food. Everyday the teacher would pin notes to our backpacks listing the things that we had eaten that day, which usually read: Emma ate carrots raisins and peanut butter crackers. Lindsey ate nothing.

Then I got angry. For some reason I was sure that she would get in trouble for refusing to eat her snack. We were both undeniable goody-two-shoes’ and getting in trouble was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I pleaded with her to just try it using all of my 4-year-old powers of persuasion, but she refused.

Even at age four, I expected other people to treat us as a unit. And I dreaded the strange embarrassment that came from my teacher’s frustration with Lindsey’s quirky eating habits.

The teacher came over and asked her why she wouldn’t eat the treat. She ordered my sister to try one bite but Lindsey just shook her head. “Fine!” the teacher said with a huff of exasperation and Lindsey began to cry. And then I began to cry.

The crying always happened that way. Until perhaps age 11 neither of us could cry without the other one starting. It was the first “twin thing” we did and the first I wished would stop. It was embarrassing, even as a toddler, to always be crying at the same time. I remember consciously realizing how ridiculous it was that when my sister fell and scraped her knee and I would be blubbering until she felt better.

The first number in the concert was a fast, Latin tune. The program said that Lindsey had a solo on tenor saxophone and I nervously awaited her turn to play. She stood up and played a tentative but impressive 16 bars of soulful improvisation ending with an errant squeak. A woman sitting behind me made a noise, annoyed by the accident. I clenched my jaw and furrowed my brow in an instantaneous rage.

1998. 10 years old. Recess. Lindsey and I were on the basketball court rather unsuccessfully trying to shoot baskets with our girlfriends. Her hair was chin length with bangs that formed a straight line just above her eyebrows. Mine was shoulder length and most likely a mess as I refused to brush it in the morning. We had unfortunately outgrown our precious curls. Our clothes by now were completely different, having grown out of our matching outfits, Lindsey’s personal style was heading into the adidas striped swish pants tomboy direction and mine was heading in the more jeans and tweety bird t-shirt direction.

I monitored our dress like a drill sergeant inspecting a uniform. Nothing could be the same color or style or one of us, usually Lindsey at my strong suggestion, would have to change. If braids were in vogue, there would be a fight. Who got to wear braids? I would never allow it to be both of us (or Lindsey).

Back on the court, the basketball strayed onto the other side of the court where the boys considered as cool as 10-year-old boys could be, were playing a game. When my sister went to retrieve the ball one of the boys, a particularly short one who had the curls I so desperately wanted back, said something mean to my sister. I don’t know what it was. It didn’t matter. My mind went blank. My thoughts were replaced by blinding anger. My face became hot and the next thing I knew I was swinging the boy around in circles by the neck of his t-shirt until he landed on the side of the court. I awoke from my rage embarrassed and ashamed. And I walked away from the court hearing refrains of “what the heck?” from the boys behind me.

Walking away, I was confused and ashamed at my impulsive behavior.

I let the woman live. The next number was a classic Ellington swing tune. And then came the big one. For everyone else, the vocal number represented a break for the band. It was musically easy and usually a crowd pleaser. Lindsey had waited months to tell the director she could sing: hesitant to start self-promoting so early in her college career. But once she sang in front of the band one time, she became a regular.

The song was “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good.” It started out low and slow. But even in the first few seconds she already sounded better than I remembered. I am ashamed to say, she sounded better than I expected. When the song really got going and Lindsey started belting it out I could feel the crowd reacting. My dad grabbed my arm and looked up at the stage with a big toothy. During the applause, he leaned in and said, “ I just don’t know where you girls got those pipes.” I knew.

2000. 12 years old. Home alone. In seventh grade, Lindsey and I sat on a bench in front of a large bay window doing homework at the kitchen table. Both of our parents worked late on Tuesdays so we were left alone until around 6 p.m. As I sat angelically doing my homework, Lindsey asked me for a pen.

Most adolescent girls are fighting with themselves. Growing, preteen girls are angry at their skin and their body’s inability or over-ability to develop certain body parts. They try to carve out their identity through social maneuvering and flirting.

I was grappling with my identity too, but the part of me that I found most frustrating, was my sister. I was tired of being a novelty. I was tired of being cute. The little girls with crazy brown curls and matching dresses smiling at me from the photos around our house had left the building. I didn’t want to stop being a twin. I needed that trick in my pocket to pull out when advantageous. I just wanted to be an individual too.

But at the wise age of 12, I asserted my individuality in the smallest, most trivial ways. I demanded that my mother buy me my own bottle of shampoo. I wouldn’t let my sister borrow anything. We played different instruments in the school band and we read different books at home. In fact, I wouldn’t even take book recommendations from her until years later. And while I was carving out my own identity, we fought.

I honestly can’t recall what most of our fights were about. But they were loud. I remember going to bed with my voice nearly gone from all of the screaming.

She asked for the pen, and I was furious from a mix of selfishness and desire for her to stop depending on me. As usual, things escalated in a routine of shouting and girlish slapping that my mother had grown tired of long ago. We yelled as loud as possible while finding new and clever ways to tear down each other’s confidence. Years later, my neighbors would tell me that, as our house was on quite a steep hill, our fights could be heard for at least 100 yards.

As I had superior capabilities for verbal cruelty, Lindsey was the first to resort to violence and, in an act of extremely poor spatial judgment, pushed me into the bay window.

Once I realized that I was not lying limp on the ground below I was grateful that my parents had bought a house with double-paned windows. I was fine. The window was shattered.

As I walked around the auditorium searching for my sister after the show, the same stares that had unnerved me before made me proud. In this room full of my sister’s friends, classmates and professors, my face was a badge of honor. I was proud to have an automatic association with her.

We still fight sometimes, but not in the savage, cruel way we used to. We talk on the phone four or five times a day. The same proximity and sharing that used to make me so angry is now a necessity. Sometimes, I will have been walking for blocks without realizing that we have both been silently on the line.

And now that our lives are more separate than they have ever been, I find myself appreciating our similarities. I’m even trying to lose those 10 pounds.

Oh Academia

If I have learned anything in this experience, it is that taking comfort in the familiar is nothing of which to be ashamed. There is a difference between making the easy choice, taking the safe road, and seeking comfort when needed in familiar faces, books and feelings. 

Little did I know, this solace is all the more satisfying when it is unexpected. I recently finished my first freelance piece for a Lebanese magazine. I had about a week to write 1400 words and though I managed to do all of the necessary reporting on a respectable timeline, I left most of the writing until the weekend before deadline. Silly, but not surprising. 

But as I sat on Sunday night futilely trying to concentrate and frantically trying to write articulately and efficiently about a topic of which I have a cursory knowledge at best, I had a flash. 

I felt a familiar pang of procrastination shame and I was immediately transported back to any number of dorm rooms, coffee shops and library desks where I had felt this feeling hundreds of times before. 

I sip cups and cups of coffee waiting. Waiting for that surge of creative energy brought on by shear necessity which inevitably comes. I have learned not to doubt my friend the surge, but in this case I wavered. Perhaps it would not come in this time zone. Perhaps the concept of professional writing would change my subconscious's sense for when it is time to panic.

I doubted, I admit. And with good reason, for the surge did not come until the morning of deadline. I woke up at 7 am and finished the story to satisfactory reviews from my editor. 

And after the euphoria of clearing the article off of my plate subsided I realized that the stress and the release were both equally familiar. And both brought me satisfaction in their own way.

In journalism, the subject is always new. But the process, and perhaps especially my process, is familiar. And when one can find comfort in the familiarity of even negative emotions, then maybe deadlines will be my friends. Maybe I have chosen the right career. 

life as a tile floor

The skills required to properly clean a tile floor do not come naturally to everyone.  The first act of simply throwing a bucket of water mixed with a green pine-scented cleanser into the corners of the room is shocking to eyes that have only ever imagined the options of mop or vacuum. Then  the giant squeegee comes out and the whole room must be swiped dry before the water reaches anything it should not touch. And then you do it all again.

The first time I witnessed the act, my roommate Ingie glided around the room in one fluid motion. Like Fred Astaire with a broom she quickly and effortlessly guided the water away from anything it would harm and out to the balcony to wash down the side of the building. Seeing the confidence and ease with which she had completed round one, I had no apprehension about round two and began the process again. But as soon as I playfully emptied the bucket of soapy green-tinted water onto the floor, it did not seem to obey me as it had her. The water ran in all directions and I could not seem to shepherd it as Ingie had. 

Despite my disastrous time of trying to control water on a flat surface, the casualties of my inexperience were low. A beloved blanket would have to be washed and a notepad thrown away. All bearable losses.

Cleaning the floor wasn't the first thing that had tripped me up in my quest to learn how to live in Lebanon. And it certainly wasn't the last. But as I stood on my balcony pushing the last of the water away with a curious amount of rage, dripping with sweat from the labor of the task, my back sore and eyes stinging from the sweat invading them, I realized that this is supposed to be hard. 

In the weeks before cleaning day, I had been ashamed to struggle. Ashamed to be lonely, to be scared, to be unsure. But now I am able to find comfort in the fact that this may well be the hardest thing I ever do. 

Each day is exhausting. Simply going to the post office requires planning, asking for directions, the rehearsing of requests in Arabic and then walking in intense heat to an unknown location. The challenge of each new task seems magnified far beyond the norm. But I know I will settle. Eventually  the traffic in my mind will slow down. 

For each day, when I lay down to go to sleep, exhausted from a day of what seems like simple tasks, my mind slows quicker and quicker. And eventually, all I hear is the traffic in the streets.