The Distance Between Eastern Coasts - Letter Five
A letter exchange with Kara Daly that unpacks how our two homes are undergoing linked crises
This is part 5 in a 6-part correspondence between American wine writer,
, and me, Farrah Berrou. I’ll be writing parts 1, 3, and 5 here and Kara will respond in parts 2, 4, and 6 on her Substack, Wine is Confusing.Links will be added as the letters get published: letter 1, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4, letter 5, and letter 6. A final recap post will be shared late-November.
Hey Kara,
I’m going to follow your lead and log some of what’s happened since your last letter (and mine).
I managed to go down to Beirut twice. Each visit, both on Saturdays, had a very different outcome. On the first one, we received word that my grandparents’ house in the South is no more. On the following one, I spent the afternoon with a friend and ran into more including some university professors I hadn’t seen in over a decade. Each Saturday was a reminder of what has been taken and what remains.
It’s been another week (weeks?) of incessant airstrikes and daily massacres. And that’s just here in Lebanon as I’ve lost sight of Gaza, the West Bank, and anywhere else for that matter. War makes your periphery shrink. The news channels now set up their cameras outside the buildings that are marked in red by our modern-day Hexxus. The other day, we watched live-feeds as a shopping center went down with a 3-minute lag between the surround sound and its respective broadcast.
By far, the weirdest thing I’ve used my wine knowledge for is to identify bottles in a photo of Israeli soldiers drinking in an ambiguous room so that we could decipher if it was my grandparents’ house. We concluded that it wasn’t but, after spending a couple hours on this forensic analysis where I matched all 6 bottles with about 85% certainty, I realized it didn’t matter. The house is still going to be a pile of rubble whether they drank wine inside of it or not.
Last night was Lebanon’s first snow of the season and today, the Israeli Knesset are voting on whether or not they’ll stop bombing the shit out of us. We don’t know the details of this arrangement yet and I know it’s strange to say it but I’m not happy. Of course I’m relieved that the killing will stop but now what? How do we go back to our lives? Where do all the homeless folks go? The Israelis are still decimating buildings but the people are already hanging hopeful plans on Christmas trees. How do we welcome the diaspora - those who have been waiting to book their tickets - home for the holidays? When will we be able to go to the South? There is a part of me that doesn’t want to go. I have no room for all these unknowns.
In 2006, after a truce was called, all I remember are two days in its aftermath: when we went back to Dahiyeh to see our squashed building and my first day at AUB when I had an argument about the war at the Main Gate McDonald’s. This war has been different and so have I. This time, if the deal goes through, I want to hole up at my quiet Beirut apartment and sleep for a week.
My belief that it will be safe to do so is shaky. If a ceasefire is indeed this close to fruition, it means these next final hours here will be rough. Just now, 6 more buildings have been marked for obliteration. Are we supposed to believe that it will all stop in less than 24 hours?
In your last letter, you asked, “will we contend with colonialism in an impactful way?” and I have to wonder in parallel, what would be considered impactful. I agree, we are so far gone when it comes to course correcting that I’ve gravitated away from the existing systems that aren’t built for us. I feel that participating in smaller community efforts might be the way to rebuild our worlds. Perhaps this is another phase of the earth’s rebirth rather than regrowth. Our story is to feed the soil, we’re just connective tissue.
At this point, the only thing I want Harris voters to know is that the fight is not over and it is not separate. As we’ve shown in this brief exchange, we have to think collectively.
A lot of this does feel like 2020, mainly in its isolation and tragedy. Because I’m living with my family right now, I crave the solitude I had. At the same time, I need the periodic boost from my city and its people. Exploring, or running into familiar faces like I did last Saturday, was my favorite pastime but now it takes me hours to psyche myself up just to go buy pads from a market nearby. My introverted half, the one that COVID pushed to an odd extreme, is back in full. I’ve lost my trust in the external world again. Have you had trouble readjusting as the dust settles there?
Once again, following your lead in sharing a list of things I do to stay regulated, one that sounds eerily similar to yours: get lost in books (after finishing The Great Gatsby, I’m reading Trust by Hernan Diaz, I’m 100 pages in and I still can’t tell if I like it) or films (I’m about to watch The Story of a Village and a War), go for walks, write, send long voicenotes to friends, cuddle my cat, scroll on Pinterest, play with my nephew, take a hot shower, click through gift guides, eat treats, do (not enough) yoga, have arak and mezza with the right company. Not gonna lie though, the cat is doing a lot of the heavy lifting right now.
(By the way, Wednesday is such a good name for a black cat 🐈⬛)
This is my last installment of our exchange so by the time I recap this, things may be very different than they are now for both of us. Tell me, how did North Carolina feel when you first read this and how does it feel as you write your last response?
Waiting for the day when you can visit Beirut.
Love & olives,
Farrah
Can't imagine the feeling of peering in at bottles of wine in instagram posts to work out if the house belonged to your family. Devastating to think of soldiers violating people's houses like this, let alone flattening them.
Love the idea of feeding the soil as being a way of seeking solace. Thank you for these letters.