I wrote this at a gay club in Beirut called ghost.

As terrifying as embodiment may be, the only response to those who wish that we did not exist and by means of either politics or violence try to suppress us and erase our memories, our histories, and our individual and collective efforts to come into being is by becoming more vibrant, not by speaking LOUDER but by communicating BETTER, and by resisting the complacency of textual or digital projections of our surfaces-minds-dreambodies that keeps us safe but in perpetual states of partial-embodiment. Don’t just increase your pixel rate, resolution, or audio fidelity —live multidimensionally. In the words of Le Tigre: “Get off the internet! I’ll meet you in the street.” ♥

Lebanon.

So far one if the things that makes me feel uncomfortable is that whenever i pass through some place that is run down or poor or dirty someone tells me that this is where the Muslims live. If someone is ugly or has a physical flaw the way someone interacts with them is based on their outward presentation of beauty. Ignore the trash and lack of proper receptacles for recycling on the side of the road, let me show you something designer, something grand and beautiful. This used to bother me when I interacted with my Lebanese family in the us because they are evangelical Christians and would try to correlate physical beauty or disease and health as a sign of approval or disapproval from G-d. I see so many people who are addicted to glamour here.  Not to say that is bad in itself, I’ve known plenty of models and classically beautiful people who are some of the least shallow individuals i know but perhaps have internalized caustic media message about who who they should be…it doesn’t have to be this grim though either. This reminds me of how I perceive American consumer culture to have emerged in the 1950s post WWI and II as  a means to conceal the atrocities of war. Perhaps it’s the parents who want their children to experience a joy that wasn’t possible in their era.

I  remember being told throughout my life how I shouldn’t feel poor having grown up in the US because comparatively i have so much more. In Lebanon, driving to my one of my cousins million dollar flats in the hills above Beirut, I am reminded of the times my family had to heat hot water on a stove to take baths during the winter because my mother couldn’t afford the bill for hot water and it was shut off and how I always had second hand clothes and how my mother would get free food from the church mission because she couldn’t afford to buy groceries. I was once told there’s a difference between being poor and not having any money and I think to a large extent this is true and have tried to live my life in the premise that material wealth is not a good indication of who someone is. I do wonder though what are the lifestyle choices that have made visible such dramatic economic disparities, how long this process took, and whether further exploration of the country will show me that there are poor christian districts and wealthy Muslim areas too.

I’ve always tried to understand what people viewed as abject, undesirable, dirty, or even what people label wrong or evil. I guess I’ve been labeled these things  by people who are preoccupied what is physically beautiful as these terms far too often in my life to look away when someone starts talking this way. One of the things I feel overwhelmed by here is the beauty of people here and how that confronts me with some of my own emotional ugliness. I’m not talking about physical beauty, although there is that too, but I’m talking about being overwhelmed with kindness, hospitality, and being witness to very intimate forms of non-Eros love. I am privy to this because I am capable of waving around the signifier of “family” which has powerful currency here, unlike the us, even amongst my Leb family in America. To date, an uncle that I haven’t met in analog yet is the only person to tell me that is proud of me. He told me this through an IM chat conversation where it was just he and i talking, mind-to-mind interaction facilitated trough the web and even though we are on completely different continents and I’ve not physically met him, I could still feel his affection towards me.

Whenever I would go to see my Leb family in the US, the announcement of their love and affection towards me always felt like a performance that was intended more for the third party viewers to this spectacle rather than a heart felt expression of affinity towards me.  Their expressions of love towards me has always felt empty. Maybe I’m romanticizing the people here too much and giving people too much credit. I’m in a totally different environment and perhaps people here are just fulfilling their cultural expectations of warmth towards those who return from the diaspora. The other day I was approached by no less than six people who looked as me with excited gleams in their eyes and said “::gasp:: Ibn Hanna?!!!” and then proceeded to kiss me incessantly. None of them could tell me their relationship to my dad and I was reminded of his funeral where I saw people who I knew he hadn’t contact with for over ten years and had essentially abandoned him during some fucked up shit that happened between my parents, the truth of which I will never really know, who were all in their performative role of grief/relief that they could close a chapter of awkwardness in their life. The one person who I saw in what I perceived to be a true state of grief was the woman who had managed the assisted living home he lived at and who helped me arrange to meet him.

Returning to being confronted with my own emotional ugliness, this statement stems from the coldness I feel towards most of the members of my immediate family, particularly my mother and my mothers family. We have histories that have led to this coldness and recently my mother has tried to reinsert herself into my life, but I am not sure if she is genuine or if she needs information about my life so she perform being a good mother to her social network. Why then if I’ve been so quick to reject the idea that sharing DNA with someone does not make them your family seem to apply to the people I am related to in the United States? When I first was informed of the hazy existence of my Leb family in Lebanon my desire to find them was based out of selfishness and that too was perhaps what motivated me to connect with my Leb family in the US also. I feel like I fucked those relationships up a bit about not being honest above who I am from the beginning but I also know that I’ve kept certain aspects of myself discreet out of fear of rejection, misunderstandings, or more violence and hatred.

I also wanted to more generally understand this part of the world. Living in the US  is a media bubble, where war is total simulacra and form of entertainment where I can just change the channel and forgot about it. I live every day not experiencing the consequences of war or being able to look it directly in the face.

طرابلس‎

Listless boys in the middle of the road selling gum. Army guys wearing purple berets and rifles. Women in designer hijabs. Women in shabby hijabs. Guys with flashy shoes and tshirts. Jeans. Me being the Whitest person on the beach. going out for sweets and having my znoud il sit experience tainted by receiving messages from people who are not a part of my life and think they they’re privy to my personal life here. Hearing the call to prayer. Heat at 8pm. No rules to traffic everywhere cars are honking not because they’re mad but because it serves as a guide for traffic. Lebanese red cross vehicle. Knowing I’m missing a lot by writing this. Beat up cars and BMWs . Part of the road closed for a wedding. Trash. Hibiscus trees. no rules for traffic. Foxy guy sucking his teeth. Lots and lots of banks. Hot dog billboard. People on mopeds weaving through traffic. No rules to traffic. Army vehicle with men in black berets. Ten story apt complexes. Palm trees and the sea to my left. Produce stand on the side of the road. More Apts. signs in Arabic and English and French. Buildings clustered together like crystal habits. The smell of cars oil an rubber and petrol. Arabic music. Tripoli.

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