November 2024: Diary of Jane

Breaking Benjamin Netanyahu

Nov 05, 2024

Phoenician crossing outside Beirut National Museum, Nov 2024

When people would refer to “the war,” they meant the civil war of the 1970s but now it’s used in the present tense. When it comes out of my mouth, I don’t believe it. We are living through a war? We are living through a war.

We have entered the next phase where we do that thing us Lebanese are too good at: we shake it off and function within another new normal. A little over a month ago, I stayed up all night watching the Israelis bring down buildings. Now I don’t even get out of bed when I hear the airstrikes in the hours before sunrise.

Since my last “diary entry,” I’ve been thinking about what ceasefire +1 will look like. This will eventually end but what will that look like? What does that new horizon mean for all of us?

I’m mad at myself for allowing the thought of leaving Lebanon to sit on the cushy recliner inside my mind. It’s there, knitting silently, waiting for me to lock eyes. I know what you’re going to say, me thinks, and I don’t want to hear it. I’d rather stuff a ball of yarn in its mouth.

This summer, before Israel began its Stone Age group project, I was gathering enough twigs and leaves so that my nest could last through the winter. I had publications and publishers reaching out to me. I was planning wine events with teams who were in alignment with how I wanted to bring others together. I was making videos that felt honest and raw. I had been publishing here consistently for 9 months and growth was steady. I had found a part-time gig with a local news source that seemed like a good complement to everything else. Basically, even though it had been a year and a half since moving back to Beirut, a year and a half of loose offers and faulty promises, things were falling into place and I was on track. I didn’t know where that track was headed but all the opportunities I was saying yes to felt like fruitful partnerships. It felt like creativity could be my north star and I wouldn’t have to compromise on that. My commitment was paying off.

But then the war we had been ignoring broke the door down. Every flower wilted and it seems as if those that were planted before are also shrinking. I have friends who have brought beautiful projects to life that they’re only whispering about because they feel guilty celebrating a birth while surrounded by death. A cookbook, a compilation of photography, a research paper that took years. We have dulled our wins in the face of so much loss. To achieve is to be too alive right now.

My nephew is 5 months old. Because we all live together now, he and I spend the mornings playing or reading Where the Wild Things Are. I’ve taught him how to stick his tongue out whenever he sees me. Much to the chagrin of his mother, this is how he greeted every new face at the hospital and U.S. embassy over the last two weeks.

Thanks to the “security situation” that its government’s funding has caused, the embassy has been expediting immigration applications and my nephew (and his mom and mine) will be leaving Lebanon soon. In “On befriending kids”,

Lisa Sibbett

wrote, “the younger the child, the longer any interval of absence must seem to them: for a one year old, three months is a full quarter of their life.” This wasn’t their original plan but the timeline has been moved up. I’ll be missing quarters of his life as he spends early childhood in American suburbia. This is another unforeseen thing they have stolen from us.

Living with your parents as an adult makes you revert back to your teenage self, making old triggers and childish behaviors resurface. The added headfuck is the external environment catapults me to 2006. The other day, I reflexively searched for this song when I wanted to tune out my parents’ debate about Kamala Harris’ qualifications. When I looked up the song, I saw that it was released in the summer of 2006. It’s like the CD skipped and the track restarted but when I look in the mirror, I’m 36. How am I here again?

My mom, who’s been preoccupied with her new role as grandma, let some emotion escape her after she returned from a drive through Beirut. She said parts of the life she had are disappearing, things like her favorite branch of an American outlet store or the Starbucks she liked to get coffee from. I snapped. I snapped because she seems more torn up about the disappearance of American retail here than our impending separation. She says, “you’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that you don’t want to go anywhere.” Once again, because of my choice to stay, any fire I may have about the situation or my place in it is extinguished. I am just a paper cut-out placed on a 2-D picture of the pigeon rocks.

Later, my youngest sister asked me why I want to stay and all I felt was defeat.

And yet, when another bickering match erupts thanks to the tension of this transatlantic split, I’m defending their move even though I feel exactly like my dad does: invisible and wounded. Now I’m selfishly pushing for a sooner exit so I don’t have to pretend that I’m unbothered by this any longer. This discontent will hang in the air until their departure date.

I went to Beirut yesterday for the first time since September 23rd. My phone is usually set to vibrate with all social media notifications off but before I left, I followed and turned on push notifications for the Twitter account of the Israeli Arabic spokesperson who deigns to (sometimes) tweet when and where his army is about to murder us. This particular Zionist’s power over my visit to my own city - and the absurdity of me succumbing to it in this way - is sickening.

I listened to a podcast episode on urbicide and the history of Dahiyeh (above) during my drive. As Mona Harb’s voice narrated my state of mind, it became clear how much I missed being in Beirut. I’ve been afraid to leave my “safe” cocoon but I’ve also been avoiding the despair that comes with facing what has happened to my beloved and her people.

I stopped by my apartment. A neighboring public school is full of displaced folks and, a few days ago, a building nearby was hit by a strike during a thunderstorm. Walking in through my front door was disorienting at first. Is this how I left it? Did it always look like this? I couldn’t remember.

“I hate that I’m nervous in my own house,” I said via voicenote to my friend who had sent his daily check-in text as I walked through the door. His timing meant he was going to keep me company on this mission. Two sonic booms roared and my dad sent a video of a southern village being blown up over WhatsApp. I wanted to stay in my sanctuary but my nerves only lasted an hour. Another friend, the same one who coached me through my frantic packing the last time I stood in my living room, also texted as I was leaving. “OK ignore me,” she responded. This song came on my car radio as I turned the key.

The more I remove things from my house, the more it feels like I’m permanently vacating it. Even if I know that’s not what’s happening, it’s not not happening? Every day of this feels like a personal regression.

As someone from a border town, each day I search Twitter to see the latest video the Israeli media has shared and if I can see my teta's house in it. On Halloween, they released a video of their army detonating a row of homes framed by the window they were filming from. After watching it enough times, we realized they were doing this from inside her house.

Over the last year, the words scorched earth were used to describe Israel’s method of depopulating the South. Even though I know what the words mean, they were still abstract. It’s different when you see them applied so literally. Now, the words I hear are damar shemil or damar ha’el, meaning complete and massive destruction, respectively. Still, there is a suspended wedge of distance, like I’m watching a horror flick produced on a studio lot. I’m removed but I’m inside the house looking out that same window.

My uncle, who usually resides in the South but has been displaced since last October, recently asked me what I think. “I’m sure you have a read on the situation,” he said. He’s right; I have my own projections but I’m rarely consulted like this. “I don’t think we’ll be returning to the South for a long time,” was all I could muster as I avoided eye contact. He has lost his home, how could I tell him that I think we’ve lost our whole village?

He has a daughter, my cousin, who was born a week into the 2006 war. I remember because we were all displaced and together in Jounieh at that time. I think about her a lot because she’s now 18, the same age I was then. She’s also experiencing the same loss but the difference is that she was displaced throughout her senior year of high school too. She started university yesterday.

Google Maps screenshot (top) of the targeted area indicated in the bottom image, posted by Israeli Comms on Twitter

On October 30, a death notice was posted on that Twitter account that reminded me of my insignificance. This “evacuation warning” was for the entirety of Baalbeck. It was a day after they had killed almost 70 people there.

This warning also came after they bombed other ancient cities: Sarafand, Saida, and Sour (Tyre). The worst part is, all you can do is watch. An avatar on a screen tells you, in your own language, that his evil army is going to kill more of your people and erase more of your heritage but all you can do is repost a map.

I kept scrolling Instagram, coming to terms with my own futility. Post after post of some of the world’s best preserved Roman ruins including a temple dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine. The silence is deafening, some typed over their photos of Hotel Palmyra. It seems that our screams don’t count, even amongst our own. Then, a carousel of an interior design account pops up. Photos of whitewashed walls, warm wood beams across the ceiling, and furniture that looked inherited. This is how we should do the interior of the house when we rebuild teta’s I thought, I hit the save icon, and then the sadness hit me. I had accepted that her house in the South will not be a survivor. I should’ve known that the reason Anthony Shadid’s memoir resonated with me last summer was because it was a premonition. That vibration had nothing to do with olives.

It’s always darkest before the dawn in that the Israelis turn up the madness just before a negotiation, a Blinken/Hochstein visit, or a rumored ceasefire agreement (that isn’t reached). It’s either to force submission or squeeze in some more damage when no one’s looking. Things turn extra bloody before big American distractions so I’m worried about today, Election Day. What darkness will surprise Lebanon and Gaza overnight as the cameras are focused on swing state results?

I can feel attitudes shifting internally, the longer this goes on. I’m observing two extremes: those who have a preference for Western interference in our reemergence from the ashes and others who have utter allegiance to another divine victory they can already see. Both are rejecting truths and operating on faith I cannot find.

Caught between the dissociation and devotion, I can’t believe in either ignis fatuus. Instead, I sit here typing out entries that strangers will read. Instead, I have to wait until I can see what needs to be rebuilt all over again.

November 2024: Diary of Jane

Breaking Benjamin Netanyahu

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