we're moving!

So I've had a great run on Blogger but it's time for me to move on... you can now follow Beirut Rhapsodies on beirutrhapsodies.com


If you follow this blog by email, you might want to subscribe again on the new page so you keep receiving the posts!

And just to wrap this up, here are some of the best comments you guys had to say about my posts!

your thoughts

“I love every one of your posts!! Seriously you make each post so relatable, and even when I can’t relate, you do such a good job of explaining how you feel it makes me feel like I understand. I almost cried in your posts about the anniversary of your mother’s death and the one about your parents’ relationship. Love your blog, I could read your posts for hours you seem like a great person who is strong despite going through so much. Love love love” On there is no merit in loving if everything is easy

“Merci, tu donnes beaucoup d’espoir. Tes chroniques quotidiennes me parlent énormément alors, s’il te plait ne t’arrête pas de nous faire sourire, et rêver avec toi.” On The next best thing

“I feel so touched by this piece. I love your writing and could not stop crying when I read this! stay strong xoxo” On Dear mom,

“You make me laugh and think as always! Awesome work. Here’s to the 200th post” On So, I called in sick

“Me ha encantado el texto. Lo he leído en una mañana un poco fría. Tienes mucha razón… a veces los domingos fueron duros. Gracias por encontrar la buena chispa de la vida. Go ahead Yasmina! Un saludo desde la otra parte del mediterraneo!” On Sundays and oranges

feeding the status quo

I've been writing on this blog for over a year and a half, and sometimes I get terrified by the fact that I have nothing to say anymore. The truth is, when I began, I wanted to find a way to push my writing and get me to write a novel, which is basically my dream.

And I thought, "Beirut Rhapsodies," well that should be fun. I had a bunch of single friends who always had some kind of story about that girl or about that guy, I thought Beirut was this endless source of fun stories that I would always be able to incorporate in my blogs. I was wrong though. After a while, stories run dry.

The problem with this city is that we live in a box. As a person of a certain social class, it is very unlikely that you ever find yourself with people from different social backgrounds. It's not like in other big cities where anyone and everyone find each other uncomfortably close on a subway ride.

In the Beirut I live in, there are clear boundaries and there are walls closing in on us. Everywhere you go, you see the same faces, week after week, month after month, year after year. Someone told me the other day they went to White and "it was the exact same people sitting at the exact same tables" as last year, and that is a scary thought. But it's true. You go to any bar or night-club or rooftop bar --because frankly, there is not much else to do-- and you know exactly who to expect. And then you have the same conversations over and over again. And when you overhear someone else's conversation, you realize that they are talking about the same thing too.

As a writer, you get inspired by other people, by places and encounters. You feed off other people's conversations, you meet someone who will tell you a story, you see something that gives you an idea. Sometimes you just need to take a walk and look at things happening around you to get creative. Other times you just want to sit under a tree in a park and read a book to get your mind flowing. But here we have no parks. And if you take a walk in the street you spend half your time ignoring the idiotic sexual purrs of every other guy passing you by and the other half trying not to get run over. And although some people try, very hard to bring some culture to this country, by opening an art center or by throwing a film festival, it is very unlikely that it will get as much attention as a new fashionista clothing store, another Lebanese designs jewelry shop, or the latest bar in town.

This is what we do here: We take the status quo and we feed it, so that it becomes more snob and more blase, more induced in that heartbreaking comfort zone and more lazy, until we do nothing but try to make enough money to keep a lifestyle we're not sure we enjoy. Our lives revolve around relationships and jobs, and for many girls, about appearance and body image. It is what makes for most of our conversations, except on Sunday when we have a family lunch and someone has the grand idea to talk about politics.

And then we say we have the greatest country in the world. We can infamously "swim and ski" in the same day and the sun is out 9 months a year. But what's the point? We're so beyond closed up there are still people who decide to cross the street when the light turns green. And it's our own fault really. We find excuses for everything: We had 25 years of war goddammit. We need people of action in government in stead of a bunch of grumpy old men who want to settle their own personal scores but we're the ones who can't let go of them and keep them in office. We don't want to learn how to recycle or wear our seat-belts before more important things in the country are taken care of, because what's the point? And it's never, never our own fault.

The bigger problem is, we act the same way with our own lives. We drown in our own comfort zone, we stay safe, we get lazy. We complain but don't do anything about it, hoping someone else will. And secretly also hoping they wont, because change scares us and we're not sure we can handle it.

nothing was different, everything had changed

I know I know I know. Bloggers aren't supposed to disappear for weeks at a time but I swear I have a great excuse...

I went on a trip in the last three weeks that took me a long way back.

It's funny how our past only exists in our memories. I mean we know we lived through all this stuff, we remember it, we have pictures to prove it, but otherwise, it's non-existent. And I realized that by going back to New York after almost four years. I was nervous to go back in a way, even though I was mostly very excited. When I was 16 and I went there for the first time, I remember standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, looking down towards the skyscrapers I was seeing for the very first time, I thought to myself: "How can anyone live anywhere else in the world?" And I ended up by moving there and living there for two years. It was the first place I went to build a life of my own, getting my first apartment, getting by without asking money from my dad, learning to be an adult. And I got to do it in one of the greatest cities in the world. And here I was, going back to my city and it turns out, nothing had changed. My favorite Barnes and Noble was still at the same spot, my Bikram Yoga Studio still had the same schedule, the 1 train is still just as disgusting as it always was and Artichoke pizza is still heavenly. I hadn't forgotten my streets and avenues and still knew how to take the subway and buy a metrocard without holding on to a map like a tourist and it felt like I had never left the city at all. Except that I had.

And although nothing was different, everything had changed.

I am not the same 22 year-old roaming the streets of Manhattan listening to "Suddenly I see" on my i-pod. My memory of New York hadn't changed but in the present, it did not feel the same. Suddenly I saw the streets of Manhattan as too busy, too noisy, too crowded. The buildings were too big and the lines were too long. The very things that used to give me energy drained it out of me completely. I'm the one who was different. The last four years of my life changed me.

Then I went to Paris for the first time in 18 years and that was a pretty big leap into the past as well. I lived in Paris from 4 to 8 years old and I really only remember bits and pieces, but I know it feels like another lifetime. It was a time when everyone I loved was still alive, we went to Disneyland for christmas, I was carefree and spoke with a Parisian accent. Again, all I keep from those days are pictures my mother carefully put together. But I went back to our old address and the building was just as I remembered it. I actually recognized it from far as we walked towards it. The gate was still there, the little path leading to the main door just like in mind, and the smell of the wooden stairs which for some reason stayed with me all these years. And the neighbor I used to play with on the 5th floor? Still there too... Except now she has a 2 months old baby.

But Paris was also something new. It was inspiring, with its pink skies and its brasseries. I liked the creek of the wooden stairs even when it was a 6th floor walk-up. I enjoyed sitting on a green bench and watching people go by, going to the Opera for the very first time and having real discussions with people. It made me want to write in Cafe de Flore like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It made me want to walk under the rain (and I hate the rain) and kiss my Parisian in the middle of the street, just because.

It made me realize that the past is in my memories and the future something I dream of. The present, however, that's where I'm living.

My favorite Pizza in Manhattan

My first real apartment in New York

Where I lived 18 years ago in Paris