Mountain and Sea, Pt. 3

A picture of an old picture of me. Once, I was little. Once, I was limitless. I knew no boundaries to the world, to reality. Once, who I was and what I could do was infinite and free.



This is Basem. He is my best friend and twin spirit.
Any attempt to describe our adventures and history would be terribly mundane to you, but would fill books were I allowed to reminisce unchecked.
Passa is now engaged to another great friend of mine. May they live long and happily.



The eldest of my brothers, in front of some bar. We had some good times this summer. For the first time, we are old enough to enjoy each others' company as equals and friends. I can't wait for the years to come, as we mature and our brothers join us in companionship.



The house Gibran Khalil Gibran grew up in. This was the only room in the house. Seeing this brought home with unprecedented force how blessed we are, how spoiled, in these modern days; how greedy and demanding. How in foolishness, sloth, and vanity, we have complicated life for ourselves and harnessed our lives to that which is material and base. How ungrateful we are for what we have, how clueless of how much we take for granted.



The top picture is of the view looking out from Gibran's tomb, which is in the lower levels of this memorial built to him, shown on the bottom. His tomb is placed in a small cave in the mountain behind the buildings. Our trip here was phenomenal, and one that was, for me, in any case, an intensely spiritual one. My very own pilgrimage. For of all moral codes that I know of, that we humans have been exhorted to follow, his is the most true and pure in my heart and mind. He is verily my inspiration, and I cannot describe what I felt when I stood before his burial place, and there, where I had expected none, was his epitaph. It is the only piece of Arabic poetry that I ever learned by heart with just one reading.

ana 7ayyon mithlak, wa 2aqifo ila janbak
aghmid 3aynayka waltafit, fa tarani amamak

I am as alive as you, and I stand with you
Close your eyes and turn, and you will see me in front of you

I will not say I felt his presence, but I will say that the way I felt coming out of that cave was something I had never experienced before. It felt like I had been hailed from across space and time. I felt like I had been succoured from my aloneness, and had been joined on the abandoned paths I have chosen for myself.

My admiration and self-definition grow, as I contemplate the grace and forethought of those few words, that offer hope and support even in death. Such gifts are precious; so few and far between, for those seeking peace and goodness. So it has ever been, and so it always will be.


Random aside:
I read a quote once, in my aunt's house, that has stuck with me ever since.

Home - Where each lives for the other, and all live for God.

Even if you do not believe in God; read God as truth, energy, goodness, purity of thought and spirit, or read the individualized collective projection and personification of our ideal evolution as moral and social self-aware creatures. Read it as you may, but read the thought behind the words. Do that, and generalize it to the whole world, and you will have in a nutshell my moral philosophy. And maybe you will see why it so resonates in me, in its spirit, its simplicity, its rightness.



The mountainside in the evening. This is not a particularly good photo, but in my defense, there is no camera in the world that can capture in one picture the way those lights sparkled. How they glimmered upon the mountain between the pines, glamorous and yet humble, bowing before the light of the stars, and seeming to reflect them in worship upon the Earth. How they shimmered and twinkled, like some fabulous necklace of the gods, gold laid there in homage to the beauty of the land of the mountain and sea.



Thus the sun sets on the land of mountain and sea.
Thus the grey rain-curtain of this world sets in,
and thus dissolves the silver glass, into mists and memories.

For now

Mountain and Sea, Pt. 2

Sunset from my roof... You can see the Mediterranean
if you look for the Sun's reflection on the horizon.

One of the things that has not changed, indeed that might even have gotten worse while I've been away (or I've become more aware), is the Lebanese knack for ignoring order and authority. This was particularly blatant, but things are the same in much subtler ways as well, and much more vital ways to the progress of the nation and its people.

This summer, I went to the little village that the Bou Zeineddine family is originally from (not where I live now), called L'Hlaliyeh. Tiny little farming village at the bottom of a valley isolated for the most part from the rest of the world, that is where I had to go to vote, for the very first time, for my representatives in parliament. Rationally, I thought of the whole process as frustrating and futile, as even my candidates were not of my liking to begin with (old guard political elite, backwards in thinking and action), and because I vote in a district where the process is quite unnecessary. As it stands, Hezbollah took and will continue to take all 7 of my MPs. To make matters worse, if you ever need an example of Lebanese disobedience and disorder, try getting them to stand in line. Which is, of course, what we had to do to vote. The line, if it ever forms, quickly degenerates back into a mob at the center door... Curiously, howerver, in my experience the Lebanese tend to be model citizens when they are away from the country. I can find no satisfying explanation.

My mother and father, at a restaurant they took us to in a little village called Ihdin, which translates literally and metaphorically as Eden. It is every bit its namesake, or at the very least, the area within which it lies does. The restaurant is quite spectacular; I think we were at the lunch table for more than 2 hours, and when we got up there was nothing left for the staff to clean. Mama and Baba, as we call them, are the perfect example of the constant in flux... They are my foundations, the rock upon which I build my life and my self, unshakeable and positively noble in their commitment to us and in their determination to provide us with the best they can. Their love is unwavering and the one element of my life about which I am totally and utterly secure. However, time leaves its marks on them too. To an outsider, those things that do change may seem small, insignificant. To me, who have studied their every move and thought insofar as it were available, such differences are profound.

My uncle Akram is in the background. He lives and works in Kuwait with his family.

Normally, I hate group photos, but I absolutely adore this one, perhaps because it is more natural than your usual portrait. This picture is of me and my brothers in our kitchen, having dinner. Dinner is not an occasion, nor even a proper sit-down meal, most of the time. We usually just have sandwiches or something very light like that. My brother Firas is sitting next to me, and the youngest brother, Fidaa, is sitting on the other side of Faisal. In addition to my brothers, the little one on the eldest of my brothers' (Faisal, 18) lap is my cousin, Maher. We call him Meemo. He is the joy of the family when my Uncle Akram and his wife and children come back from Kuwait for the summer. his brother, Mazen, is in the corner. Their sister, Mona, goes to American University of Beirut, and had exams at the time, I believe. The girls on the left are also my cousins, my Uncle Ray's daughters, Shadia (Shadow) and Rania (Rinno). They normally live in Arizona, and come every few years for a few weeks in the summer. The summer in general does not really start until the end of June/beginning of July, seeing as how that's when schools and universities give out, and when most employees can take time off. This was somewhat frustrating, as I left right at that time when summer was really starting, and you could feel it in the air. The tourists come flocking, the restaurants and cafe's open, concerts and festivals abound... There is a different sense to the atmosphere of the country when summer really starts. Though you wouldn't be able to tell by the weather, which is absolutely gorgeous from May up till September. Rain or cloud during that period are quite rare.

Now, to explain how it is I have so many cousins around... My house is actually three houses on top of one another, each for each brother in my dad's family. They each built their own floor over years and years, putting in another segment every time they saved up a bit. Uncle Ray's floor is STILL not complete. To my knowledge, they never had a mortgage. Simpler days, maybe, but logic says there is no need for any different today.

Well, here we are, my nuclear family. By now, I am the shortest of my brothers. Which is strange, because I was ahead of two of them when I last saw them in 07. Oh well. In the meantime also they have become athletes, playing basketball and table tennis. Faisal, the eldest of them, plays in college these days, and won a tournament with his team in Egypt. I am holding my lute there, but expectedly, I had lost everything I knew about playing since I laid it aside to come to college freshman year. My dad and I busted it out because the family decided we were going to have a music night.


Usually, we all sit together after dinner (or any other meal), and talk; politics, the garden, travels (for Dad and I), food, village gossip, and more politics. However, occasionally, we have entire nights where everything anyone says turns out to be hilarious, and whenever that happens, it practically becomes a live comedy night. And sometimes, my brother Firas (who is an excellent pianist) will give us an impromptu concert, and my other brothers follow suit, Faisal on the guitar, and Fidaa and Dad and Uncle Akram singing folk songs and the adults include songs from their childhood days in Kuwait. Mazen breaks out his electric guitar, and Rania sings Broadway tunes. Meemo acts out everyone's silly moves, until we get into charades. This music/entertainment night is entirely new to me, since when I left none of my brothers could play that well, Fidaa's voice was still changing and quite terrible, Mazen, Rania, and Meemo were too young, and the adults kept their night to themselves, but rarely had a good time with it either. Well, either way, we had never in my experience been so connected as a family as we were at the end of one particular night this summer, when we stayed up till 2 (astounding record for the adults) having a good time together, enjoying music, laughter, food, and reveling in our belonging. So I guess some things do change for the better, though I find that no change is good or bad, for with every change there is both a bright and a dark side.


So, this is as close as we're probably ever going to get to a family photo; my family, Uncle Akram and his family, Uncle Ray's family, and my Aunt Samar ('Amto)... minus Mona, Uncle Ray, and Grandma (Te'ta). It is almost impossible to have everyone together at the same time anymore. Though it IS impossible to get Te'ta to be in ANY picture, so I guess the point is moot anyway.

Well, thank you for following this series, I believe there are one or two more parts still, but then we can begin analyzing the shenanigans happening Stateside since I got over here, and the random thoughts, ideas, and imaginings I get which started this whole thing. Until then, peace!