Normalcy In The Coffee Of War
- Morning.
The first thought that arrives is the need of coffee. The need of a cup of coffee, set upon the stove; the powered beans sifting into the rising vapours as the coffee burns. The light brown descending into dark brown; the blue sky turning into a dull grey as bombs devour the plainest skies. I wish to sit down on a chair, inhaling the rich fumes of the burning liquid (as if waters burn, but they are); and listen to the radio and the newspaper screaming at my face (but all that’s left of the news are the airplanes and the bombs). In the burning coffee, I want to find the essence of myself; the meaning of this life in the baritones of war tearing apart this city of mine.
‘The aroma of coffee so that I can hold myself together, stand on my feet, and be transformed into something that crawls, into a human being.”
I watch this war in the coffee cup; and see the sky’s colour in it. I see the war of Beirut in the cup, I see the rising Beirut. I see the people living, I see the people dying. War makes me the third person in my own city: I watch the legs of ammunition bury the residents alive under its wake, and then watch it snap my soul into half. I see the apocalypse in my coffee cup. I see the humanity within me in the cup. I see the war, the life, and me in that coffee cup. I see my soul escape into the coffee, and I drink it again and again. Twice, to restore my humanity once more.
(‘coffee is the public reading of the open book of the soul.’)
2. When the hands cradle noon.
This is the city of my youth: a city that is consumed by flames.
My neighbour, a beautiful lady, spoke of me not belonging to Beirut. I would’ve given her simple words a look of astonishment; because Beirut is my youth. Its noisy markets; the smell of coffee hanging its tongue from every window; the friends I’ve found in the stray cats that lingered on; the sea that never seemed to burst into flames, but always sneezed ash on my face as my feet sunk into the sands (I think it burned a lot when I slept, for it hated the airplanes’ constant buzzing of the skies.). Beirut is my home city; a found family and a chosen place that I could call mine after years of being a nomad: because no matter where I went, life turned into a circle and left me here, always.
‘A homeland, or a manifestation of its spirit, defends its dignity or its lead against the Other, without disturbing the internal arrangement of forces.’
She talked of a land distant, of a land being my home and at the same time being my stranger. Palestine is where I come from; but I belong to Beirut. I searched the expanses of lands just to find one which does not consider me mine. The Lady holds my hand as she caresses my heart and shuns my skin in the same minute. She doesn’t understand this soul and yet shelters this foreigner under her tree; placing my youth next to her bosom like a mother. Palestine is my birth, but Beirut is my confusion, where I found myself and turned myself whole (‘And Palestine? Peace had swallowed her.’). And the world denies me the love of the Lady of Beirut; telling me my soul has no place to belong. Perhaps, my homeland lies dormant; longing for her lost child.
(‘Because Palestine has been transformed from a homeland into a slogan.’)
3. Evenings.
The sea forms the slow descent to dusk. Just like the sun sets into the waters, my memory becomes all the more foggy. What is me? Who am I? I feel memories and dreams mixing with one another; and the mind drowns into the ocean of confusion. Are my friends that walk together with me alive? Or did the war consume them alive, burning their flesh with the stench of bodies and coffee? I’m slowly becoming madness; the confusion between the afterlife and the dawning reality is blurring my eyes as I fasten my footsteps across the ocean. I smell the war taking the memories of a youthful Beirut from my mind and transforming them into the one that has descended into chaos and noise.
‘Nothing is left for us except the weapon of madness. To be, or not to be. To be, or to be. Not to be, or not to be.’
I see the poet who died in front of me. He’s mingling with the image of a man chasing the Dove. He looks at the ocean like an old friend, an entity not to be feared or revered; but to be embraced and let it embrace you. He waits for the Dove, and I hear him talk to me about his poetry and his life. He observes Beirut from the after-life, and I spot his eyes darting at the horizon of the volcanic sea, lit up by the ammunition and the blazing sunset. I feel madness arise in me; and for a moment this homeland of mine is reduced to the volcano forced to become enraged and explode on to the kind citizens that gave it a place. War does that; it converts a loved place into the one from where you want to escape the most.
(‘Each would kill the other outside the window.’)
4. Nights.
‘Sleep is a dream born out of a dream.’
Psychology says the night is the time where creativity arises and flourishes. It’s the time where words and colours and songs come alive: where the mind is without the disturbance of daily life and the noise of outsiders. But Beirut, my homeland is the most different: there’s noise everywhere in the night. It is in the dusky skies that war favours; it pulls the strings of a silent, starry sky and twists it into the fabric of Ares’ dress. It turns the silence into multiple explosions, and in those blasts of fiery ammunition, people find art. Those bombs, it may seem, enclose words that sear themselves into the flesh of poets and transform the blisters on their skin into the inked letters on the blank pages.
‘We pay attention to literature’s weaponry, which is powerful enough to hide treason under the cover of ‘disgust with politics’- that is, with having to struggle- and also claim sanctity and joy in dreaming.’
I dont’t know how war entices words out of poet’s mouths. It results in the deafening silence of my mind: war doesn’t not give me the leisure of dreaming because my mind holds its silence and forces me to watch devastation. And these same eyes that see destruction see their home rise in power and protest against the Other; bringing the people together, but refusing to let this poet in. I can’t seem to dream, to write in the silence that threatens to consume my writing self; even if people tell me to be inspired by war. I simply cannot be roused to poetry because of destruction. I can’t.
Perhaps the silence of my mind reflects the oceanic silence lit up by fire; because this is my homeland, and I refuse to see it burst itself into proud flames of violent doom.
{‘What is poetry? Poetry is to write this cosmic silence, final and total.’)
Quotes by Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Memory of Forgetfullness’.
