Dear anyone,
I have yet to take a shower.
However, I look well put together.
At least, that’s what my brother told me this morning as I visited his shop in the opposite building.
I vomited all night, and couldn’t care less about the bombs, nor the patriotic songs pouring from different apartments in the small neighborhood I live in with my siblings and their families.
It was a relatively calm evening.
Not the usual hell that only subsides in the early morning hours.
When I told my therapist about my inability to eat nor sustain food in my body, even though I proudly hold the title: “GOURMANDE” in our family, she laughed and quietly said:
“You are simply purging your old life”.
Do you blame me, dear anyone?
I believe I made some major orthographic errors in my previous letter.
I needed to clean my soul from all the scenes I am witnessing.
Remember, please, that I am purging my old life.
My friend Paullina lost her mother a few days ago, and she does not know how to start her mourning midst all that is happening.
“Who do I mourn?”, she asks me. “my mother, or all the life I thought I had built, only to see it vanish in front of my eyes?”.
I am eerily calm.
So is the capital.
My sister asked me this morning if I wanted to accompany her to deliver the upcoming week’s meals for my aging aunt and her husband.
“But am warning you, Hanadi, if bombs start pouring on us and you do your screaming act, I will throw you out of the car”, she sweetly said.
“Do not worry, I am drained from all of last night’s vomiting”, I answered quietly. Serenely?
The streets were frightening, dear anyone.
So many shops have declared bankruptcy .
We hardly saw people.
My sister asked if I had the courage to see the annihilated neighborhoods.
“I need a few days. To restore my energy. To accept the fact that everything has changed”, I answered.
I do not think the displaced are waiting for anyone to save them.
They are scattered in different neighborhoods, parks, night clubs, restaurants.
Yet, thousands of volunteers are working 24/7 to insure proper meals, warm blankets, few smiles. Trying to lure any glimpse of hope out of their dejected faces.
“I do not want rice or a can of beans”, screamed an elderly man who has been refusing to eat since Thursday.
“I want my dignity back”.
In one of the Parks in Central Beirut, a man brought with him his caged birds.
Another, his pets.
You can tell by the expression on the faces, that those people who have fled their homes, their lives, are not waiting for anyone to save them.
Something has happened.
And it is big.
A young rebellious man asked a reporter not to show their faces:
“Allow us what little dignity we have left”.
I thought of my father, in his last days.
He flew out of the window as a result of the massive explosion THAT YEAR(2020).
The emperor became an ordinary man.
His speech became basic. Naive. Childish.
“I am leaving”, he would say around bedtime instead of “Goodnight”.
Had I not been exhausted today, from all of last night’s vomiting, I would have screamed:
“Don’t leave me, Dad”.
“You did not vomit”, my therapist insists.
“You simply purged your old life”.
In one of the food stations offering soup for the displaced, a young man kept his eyes on the floor as the volunteer added some bread to the small container he held in his hand.
Those who have lost everything, Dear Anyone, What do their love stories look like?
Until Tomorrow,
Hanadi
October 5th 2024
EN 
AR