La Mie Dorée, Dunes

Je suis choqué!

Paranoia

I should really stop listening to the news... Everything is driven by FEAR.

I refuse to be part of it...

Governments scaring people into submission... pushing them towards violence, and hate...

Americans fearing Muslims... Muslims fearing the Pope/Christians... and don't get me started on Israel & the Arabs.

I'm so sick & tired of Israelis (and their allies) starting every argument with the assumption that all Arabs want to destroy Israel! They use this to justify killing the innocent...

It is as preposterous as the perception on the Arab side that Israel’s aim is to take over the entire Middleast and fulfill the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel!!! OFFFFFFTTT... Arab leaders have been feeding us this BS for years so that they can stay in power... Each one claiming that he will protect the people from the big bad enemy Israel, while doing the exact opposite. These dictatorships are the reason Israel is this strong.

Each paranoid perception will just lead to more violence...

On top of it all, every now and then you get a Sheikh quoting the Qura'an saying that it's only "natural" to endlessly fight "Jews" since they are Gods forsaken people... lek 3aiiiiibbbbbb... 3aib 3alaikon... There are MANY Arab Jews that have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism... not to mention many European or even American Jews... Walaw? Where do they find these Sheikhs???

(What's funny is that these are the same guys that SCREAM when someone says the words Muslim & terrorist in the same sentence... They are the ones that say DON'T generalize and put us all in one basket... lol)

Anyway... The point is: The violence will not stop, until the fear stops...

A note to Syrians:

RELAX, Israel is very happy with the Asad regime... Israel has no interest in helping the U.S. change the regime to a democracy, cause "Elekhwaan" will be elected... and Israel would be screwed (just like they got screwed when the Palestinians elected Hamas) So don't worry... you are NOT the next Iraq. The U.S. is not gonna take out your dictator (atleast not now)... you kind of have to do that on your own if you wanna ride the democracy wave...

Mythography...

Cheers!

Now that i'm back to Beirut... i realized there are things i really missed, and didn't know it until i got here...
I’m soooo happy I finally:
-Slept in my bed
-Used my computer
-Drove my car listening to my favorite radio stations ♫ (while cursing at other drivers… now that I think about it, I haven't used any words starting with “kis…” the whole time I was in Saudi! Then again, I wasn't driving over there either)
-Went to my supermarket and bought my favorite foods :)
-Had a home cooked meal (not cooked by me of course, which makes it even better) lol I was eating at restaurants the entire time I was in Saudi…
-Hung out with my 2 favorite people in Lebanon and had a few drinks with them (finally... I got some “Munkar” in my system!) Of course, this is one of the things i KNEW i missed :)

What should we toast to? Peace? Love? Health? Happy returns?
maybe all of the above... (the cynical me: maybe we should drink to forget all about the above for the next 100 years!)

Cheers everyone!

ارجعنا!

Beirut,

2:30 P.M.

We returned to Lebanon on Wednesday JJJ

I was happy to see that the airport was packed J

There are many that returned like us, and are still returning just in time for the new school year...

On the flight, my husband and I didn’t really verbalize our feelings regarding our return, but Nassimo (my 5 year old son) pretty much summed it up… As we were landing, he looked outside the window and said (and I quote): "Hiiii Lebanon, I’m sorry I went away; I promise I won't leave you again…"

I ♥ NY

I never forgot... I love NY

9/11/2006

Blaming the "Snake"... again

Today was not about “Evil”... Today, like always, was just about us... Us humans...
Yes, human beings just like us committed these acts in 2001. It wasn't the DEVIL OR GOD…
Blaming "Evil" is as absurd as celebrating & thanking God for "punishing" the “infidels”.

There is NO MYSTICAL BEING responsible for all this… It’s just us.
Once you accept this, you will suddenly have all the answers.

You who speak in the name of God, and you who talk about fighting “Evil” as if it’s some kind of outside force that can’t be controlled… Both of you need to rewrite your speeches and rethink your words.

Name things as they are…
Don't thank God, thank your apathy, due to the void in your brain & your lack of civility… Thank your obsession with death & an afterlife that made you cold enough to commit suicide & mass homicide… (And don’t forget to thank the aeronautical technology that made all this possible… The technology of the “infidels” you hypocrite)

The rest of you: It’s NOT “Evil” you need to fight, its spiritual deformity… If you want to be angry at something, be angry at thousands of years of organized brainwash & imposed convictions... Free yourself of the guilt of rejecting prehistoric and outdated philosophies... Speak against the unconditional surrender of our brain to the ancient written word.

You can burn candles & pray for miracles (as a form of therapy) but that will not erase that day, or prevent it from happening again… I assure you.

“I endured the hardships of labor to give you life… Such a hard gift to give, yet so easily & carelessly it was returned”- Leafless Eve on 9/11

"Could you, would you with a goat?"

No, I'm not referring to a line in Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs & Ham", i'm actually asking a question?!

I just read an article on BBC news... Apparently, Sudanese villagers forced a man to marry a goat after he was found having sex with it; the man also was required to pay the goat's owner 15,000 Sudanese dinars as dowry!!!

Here's the article:

BBC NEWS Africa Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

I love the last sentence: "let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife" ?!?! LOL

Maybe the Sudanese "council of elders" do have a sense of humor, and they wanted to "punish" this guy by making him pay...

If not, then they must be really open minded... I mean they must have thought: Let's not try to judge the mans sexual preference... instead, let's accept it... live and let live......

So Bestiality is OK if you pay a dowry and get married...???

What? did you say Gays & Lesbians? WHAT? Homosexuality!??! NOW YOUR GOING TO FAR! Homosexuals are HEATHENS & SINNERS and not only are they not allowed to get married, but also must be PUNISHED!!! IT'S JUST NOT NATURAL!!!

And we all lived idiotically ever after...

Desert Time...

Riyadh,
4:30 A.M.

There is nothing new with me... i'm just sleeping a lot during the day, and not sleeping at night... It's the bad habit that i picked up growing up in this country... It changed a little when i was away (for those who know me, u know it didn't change MUCH...lol)
So now that i'm here, it's back! and it's worst then ever (there are days when i don't sleep till 9 or 10 AM!)
Anyway, people here don't do anything before 3 p.m. cause it's so freekin hot so they are used to life after dark. They also don't sleep early... So the malls are open till 12am... The rush hour here is at 10pm!The other day we were driving back from a restaurant at 12am and the traffic was more then it was in the morning...
Growing up here, i'm able to adjust to this... But what i don't think i can adjust to (or maybe what i don't want to adjust to) is PRAYER TIMES...
I remember this when i lived here, but i never really went out shopping or did anything other then indoors stuff cause i was young... So i didn't feel it...I also haven't visited since 1997 (up until now... Thanks to Hizballa & Israel) Anyway, being here as a grown up...... Oh my God, i don't know how they function or run there businesses...???
The other day i left the compound and i wanted to make all my stops the same day... I figured the driver will stop, i will go down to each place and i will be done quickly... i stopped at the mall and as soon as i got in, it was prayer time... So i was looking around wondering what the best thing to do is (wearing my black veil & 3abayeh, looking absurd in a mall i don't know)... i realized no one left the mall, they all either: actually went to pray... Or sat in the coffee shop, or just walked around... but since i ain't PRAYING, and i'm not gonna sit in a coffee shop by myself, without being able to purchase a drink, i had to walk around for 1/2 hour, LOOKING at the windows, and WATCHING what i want to buy without being able to actually PURCHASE it!
A huge mall that costs God knows how much has to be stopped from sales 5 times a day! (4 times actually cause they are not open at Fajer) What a waist of time! there is no value for time here! The concept of time is money means nothing here...
I spent like an hour in the mall... when i was done i wanted to stop by the pharmacy, and guess what? it was PRAYER TIME AGAIN! i had to run in before they closed it, chose quickly and run back out.
I needed to stop one more time at the toy store cause i promised to get Nassim something, but i couldn't... it was already night time, and i had to head home for the kids...
So i told the driver to pick me up the next day at 12 noon, so i can go get what i need... and he says: but madam, it's prayer time at 12:30
aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'm just gonna leave it at this... i'm not gonna go into the social/religious complaints that i have towards this (or anything else)... atleast not today :)

"If you're going to San Franciscooooo...

....be sure to wear some flowers in your hair... If you're going to San Francisco, You're gonna meet some gentle people there..."

I miss this songggg :(

It's been stuck in my head all dayyy...

i guess i miss dancing to it :(

i miss loud, crowded, and smoke filled spaces... I guess i miss Beirut...lol

Love u allllll

mwa

The future of Romance...???

In one of my favorite movies "The end of the Affair" the main character is a writer... He said something that made me think: "Pain is easy to write. In pain, we're all drably individuals. But what can one write about happiness? "So it's easy to write about pain, because it inspires writers and makes them more "poetic".
It's not the state of bliss that writers talk about when telling us about a love story... It's rather the struggle and the pain BEFORE you reach the "Happily Ever After"... Love stories are rarely a description of how "happy" couples are.

So i started to think about love stories that I’ve read... and love songs that i grew up with... I noticed that they all had one thing in common: The sense of longing... the anxiousness of wanting to be with the person while you're apart...etc...
This NEED is i guess what inspired these writers, and they in turn shaped what we know about Romance...
In Arabic, the word i'm looking for is "Herman"... which kind of means deprivation...
(Herman is especially what inspired most of the Arabic love stories & poems I’ve read...) anyway....

Stories like Romeo & Juliet shaped the way we view "Romantic Love"...
Cinderellas Prince was so desperate to find her, that he resorted to her foot size as his guide!!!
"Romantic Love" is largely based on this struggle... it focuses on the suffering u endure when you're apart............ So i started to think about what technology changed when it comes to Love.
In the old days, you couldn't email each other or talk on the cell when you miss each other...
If lovers were apart, they would have to send letters with couriers, or with pigeons! and that took forever! so they were forever in pain and forever thinking and longing, until one of them dies! (and one of them always died cause no disease had a cure in the old days...lol)

So all that brought me to thinking about the future of relationships... and the future of Romance...

What's interesting is that we (our generation) lived in that world (to a certain extent)
Ok, we weren't using pigeons to communicate, but i remember having to wait by the HOUSE PHONE while my parents are asleep so i can have a private conversation with a boy! The process of getting to know the other person took forever cause you couldn't reach them all the time... Especially if you have conservative parents, or if you were living in a gossipy my-big-fat-greek-wedding style environment...
In those days, there was much more distance, so there was more time spent on missing the person then actually being in touch with them.... so every "crush" and every relationship had a slow pace... Not being so reachable kept that "spark" and made relationships last longer.

We don't live in that world anymore!

Our children will never experience this... they will always be a touch of a button away from those they want to reach...
Relationships have become very quick... they start and they end in a glimpse!
Sometimes i observe my single friends and i think: "Going fast is probably a good thing cause who has time to waist... no one is getting any younger...etc..."
but then again: Are couples becoming so close so fast, that there is no where else for the relationship to go but downhill?

Fast food, fast lives, and fast Romances...

And when you have just started dating, why wait for Saturday night to show off your new hair style, when u can email your boyfriend your new look as soon as you leave the hairdresser?
Why does he have to wait till he sleeps over to see you in your nightgown when u have a webcam in yourbedroom... right in front of your bed......... u can see where i'm going with this......

So how much room is there for desire???
Longing to hear the persons voice, for example, no longer exists... cause even if u don't call each other, u can always leave voice messages!
How much can u really miss a person if u have there picture on your MSN and your mobile and your desktop???
There is no waiting for scented letters to arrive in your mailbox... Instead, there are emails, most of them short...... You might never know what your boyfriends/girlfriends handwriting ever looks like?!? lol
Even flowers & chocolates have become virtual...

I was thinking about what my kids will say when i tell them that i grew up without a computer!? (and without the Internet! and without Satellite TV?!)
Definitely when considering the educational & informative aspects, they would feel bad for me and my generation, cause they have and advantage that we never had when we needed to do research, or when we wanted to know more about the world...etc........... but when it comes to Romance, i wonder if they would pity us, or envy us?