Godot

It's been a while since I'd enjoyed a Black Label, long glass, full ice over a crowded bar top while unfamiliar jazzy music accompanied the hubbub of beautiful people.

17 days of bombing and death.

I hate counting the days.
Partly because it somehow brings acceptance, as if I expect more days to come.
And secondly because the counter on the right has been running for 530 days and we still didn't put the murderers in jail.

I'd passed through the once bustling street of Gemmayzeh a few days ago and found that most of the pubs were still open. So I found myself tonight at Godot, a cozy pub with a name supposed to invoke the famous tale of waiting. Yes, the irony.

The bartenders were decorated with "No War" stickers and handed them out to the patrons. A group of foreign expats walked in halfway through the evening. This would have been normal 2 weeks ago, but now everyone turned around and stared. TV crew? Relief workers? 10 minutes later they were already in conversation with a group of Lebanese singles, and you hardly noticed they were there anymore.

My friend and I debated love, destiny and astrology signs. Anything would do other than what was currently happening. I was tired of saying the same things over and over again, and she didn't really care for politics anyway.

How long did that bubble last? Not long.
On the street, an army checkpoint. Good job boys, this is where the action is.

I got home, the power was out and the street was dark. Ah yes, the war.
Half an hour later the power came back and the candles were extinguished.

Turned on the TV. Every single news channel was covering Lebanon. How flattering.

Jordanian and Dubai TV had telethons to raise money to aid the Lebanese civilians. One man was reading out a poem about Lebanon by Nizar Kabbani that my father would always recite to me.

I'm not sure if it was that poem, everything I mentioned above, or the 17 days of violence that finally made my tears run.

I cried. But then quickly checked myself. I still had a home, loved ones and a future. Many Lebanese sleep tonight without any of these.

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all." - Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett