13 broken pencils

Thursday, 6 July 2023

Birthday Letter 2023

Hi Baba, hi Mama.

Happy birthday baba, you would have been 73 this year.

I wonder sometimes what you would look like. In my minds eye, you are still 56.

Never aged a day after that.

Funny thing that is, about death.

Freezes you while we all march forward, carrying you with us in this still state.

Facebook showed me a photo at my graduation a few days ago. Me and mama.

16 years ago now.

Also the number of years you’ve been gone.

So much more that I can see in that photo. I can see that you are not there. Saadi took that photo. You were in hospital. It was only a few weeks before you left us.

You couldn’t come to my final year presentation. I remember I was working on it in your hospital room, on my laptop. You told me you would try your best, and you couldn’t. And I remember feeling sad, but thinking at least you will be out in time for my graduation. That also came and went. Saadi filmed it on the camera for you to see. I remember feeling sad you weren’t there, but thinking, at least you will be out of hospital soon, and at least you could watch the video.

And then you weren’t.

You never did see that video, and neither did I. It didn’t really matter anymore.

The other thing I see is Mama.

My real, pre-losing you, Mama. Her face still pink with life, full of life, beaming with life.

Still unbroken.

As I looked at that photo, it was like being reintroduced to you, Mama.

How I’ve missed you.

The closest you came to beaming life like that was 2018, when you set eyes on Laith.

It’s been hard Baba, Mama. not going to lie, not going to sugar coat.

I’ve felt more alone than I ever have I think.

Quite odd for someone who barely is physically alone these days… can’t find a moment to myself with the two boys. But it’s true.

I feel stuck in a world that speaks a different language than me now. Like I have seen things and felt things and gone through things that have woven through me and become a part of me that makes me now so different than so many in my life. It’s alienating.

I feel alien among my own.

And it’s a weird alienation that even when spoken about in efforts to shrink the divide, just expands it.

I am now someone speaking of ghosts and depths to those who cannot see ghosts, and have not fallen.

And the cruel irony is, when I feel at my lowest, the first thing I do is think about calling you. And I remember you’re not there.

A phantom limb? No. Feels more like a phantom heart.

That is where the pain pulses from afterall.

And I find myself being angry at you. Leaving me after time and time again in the past I told you “Mama you know you need to live at least a decade more right? I need help with the kids”, "Mama if you want me to have a second, you need to stick around, yalla, start taking care of yourself" and you replying “inshallah ya 3omri. La ekhir nafas”… - to my last breath -…

But then I see you in that hospital bed. Defeated physically, but never morally, never spiritually.

But the body houses the spirit… and a body with 12 tubes and wires attached to it, unable to take a breath on its own, a nafas, can only hold such a spirit for so long before it has to let go. So how can I blame you. How can I be angry?

So I’m not angry. I meant it when I told you I don’t want you to suffer. I said it to you while you were conscious, and many times when you weren’t. Hoping you would hear me, and hoping you would believe me and not sense the part of me that I was trying to silence, the part that was screaming that I wanted you to stay and please don’t leave me alone.

It hasn’t been two years yet without you and I find myself unable to visualise a tomorrow where I cannot speak to you or hold you or confide in you or argue with you.

I can only try and imagine you and baba together. And carry you both with my like sea glass in my pocket so I can hold it in silence and in secret. Smooth, softened by time and sea water that caresses and caresses. Letting light through, diffused and illuminating, ridding it of its blinding harshness.

I find myself needing to reach out to you both more than ever these days.

As someone dealing with what my therapist so aptly referred to as the “immigrant struggle”.

Who knew that was something I was dealing with. God knows I didn’t.

I find myself thinking of you all those years ago, doing the same as I am now with my family. Leaving for something better. Starting from the ground up. And in doing so, facing all the challenges and fears and anxieties that come with it. All these “struggles” and no reference to learn from, no refuge to draw comfort from.

With you gone, all your experiences, you knowledge, your accumulated wisdom, gone with you.

I’m always in doubt of myself, of my ability, and without my greatest supporters, my greatest believers. I try hard to pull together your words into sentences that will help. It can be tiring.

I stop myself from thinking too much about how you always said you wanted to write to me, mama. Write things you wanted me to know.

Because you never did, and if I linger too much on it, it will break my heart.

All that time ahead of you that we took for granted. All that time that was within our grasp, that just fell away in an instant.

So many things I wanted to ask, needed to ask. So many things I didn’t know that I need to know.

And probably so many more things I will find out I needed to know about too, as time moves forward.

I want you to soothe my fears of history repeating itself. I need to do better for Laith and Zayn. I need to not find myself wondering if my struggles will parallel yours, and in doing so bind myself in knots of uncertainty and anxiety and self pity.

Is it that history repeats itself, or do we make the same mistakes?

So many questions to yell into the void with nothing but photos of life, frozen at points in time to stare back at me. Warm, loving, but fixed and unchanging, unresponsive.

I miss you both so much.

Words fail me, stuck and choked in my chest. Sometimes escaping as a tear or two here or there.

I live two lives now. The one here, in the present, with all its moving parts and its life. And the other with you, stuck in a place where time has stopped, and life has left.

And the dichotomy could not be more harsh. I feel stuck and paralysed at times, living a life on the outside, but inside struggling to sync up.

Please stay with me, wherever you are.

I will keep writing, I will keep speaking. I will keep feeling, even if a lot of it is pain.

Maybe one day you will speak back, maybe one day I will feel the embrace again.

But till then, I can only say happy birthday baba. And I love you mama.

Celebrate together. I wish I could make you a cake. I know that mama would recommend the lemon poppyseed loaf. It's her favourite.

Sorry this letter has been all over the place.

I will strive to find firmer footing by next year.

I love you. I love you. Bhibkon bhibkon bhibkon la ekhir nafas.

Bintkon Karma

P.s. Laith and Zayn… what can I say. Wish you could see them. I can only believe that you do.

Birthday Letter 2022

Birthday Letter 2021

Birthday Letter 2020
Birthday Letter 2019

Birthday Letter 2018

Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Birthday Letter 2022

Hi Baba.

What can I say?
Last year I said this year's birthday letter will be better. That it had to be.

How could I have known all that would happen in a year... All that could happen?
If there ever was a year so surreal, it was this one.

But I don't need to tell you myself do I?
She's already told you herself, Mama.

She's with you now. And she's told you so many things, I can imagine.

About Laith, about Zayn, about me. About my life since you've been gone...
I don't imagine she told you how she suddenly got sick.
How in a blink of two months, she went from her usual self, spinning like a top, to unconcious in an ICU bed, hooked to 11 different tubes and machines.
I know they're 11, because I counted them. Over and over.

I don't imagine she's told you, because it probably would have hurt you to know. And hurt her to recall and recount. Just like it hurts me so much right now, nearly 7 months later.

I didn't know how I was going to write this letter this year.
Part of my wanted to skip it, the other was wondering whether or not I should start addressing it to you both.

I have gone through so much in this year, so many different events. From Zayn's birth, to Mama's death, and everything that could happen between birth and death.

Hardships I never imagined I'd experience. I know, I sound like I'm wallowing. Perhaps to a degree I am.

It feels so empty without both of you now.

I know I have my own little family, I am grateful oh so grateful, they are my raison d'etre.
But I don't have you and Mama anymore. And that is so incredibly heavy and sad. An invisible weight that hangs above me, and like a cloud can intensify or lift in a blink of an eye, or a sudden nostalgic moment.

I had the arduous and heart-wrenching chore of having to go and clear out our home, the home you've known since the 70's, the one I've known since the 90's, and the one Mama left at the end of 2021, without a clue that it would be the last time she saw it. I flew in from Cyprus, where we now are starting our lives over, after the disaster that was life in Lebanon for the past few years.

I was grateful to have friends who helped, and perhaps lightened the load. But I had moments of mourning, where I felt my whole life swirl and circle around me in that house, as I sat and cried. Images of us all, moments in the house, soundbites of "Ya hayati", "Shou ya Ghandoura?", "Hi Karina!", flooding all my senses. Perhaps this is what it is to have your life flash before your eyes. After all, this is a death of sorts. The death of my life with you both. A chapter closing, a full stop. The house started to feel more like a mausoleum. Not warm or welcoming. Just stuck in time, and full of sadness, and loss.

I found so many things that Mama kept. Notes you left her, written hurriedly on scrap card. A message to tell her you went ahead of her to the medical lab, and a message telling her you love her. Mama kept everything. You kept everything Mama...

And then I found the writings to you... What a love you had from Mama.. What a deep devotion. So much anguish and sadness at your loss. We all had it, but seeing and reading those words... I understood so much more the depth of her sadness. Almost endless. Perhaps it was until Laith came along.. Oh Laith. Laith and his Teta Tata. The invincible duo. The forever friends. Laith, Laith, Laith....

And she got to see Zayn. As she told me before things got bad, sitting at Sift in Badaro, a day before her PET Scan: "If this turns out to be the thing we don't want it to be, I'm content, I saw you become a mother and met my grandchildren. Not everyone gets to do so before they go." And she flashed a sad smile, one choked with emotion, but a smile nonetheless...

When it turned out to be the worse case scenario, all our fears confirmed, all I could think of was I didn't want her to suffer. I was not ready to lose her, but I didn't want her to suffer.
She told me "Mohamad used to say, (about health) everything but your breath! Everything but that!" And it was her breath that was slowly but surely going.

The days at the hospital were hard. I don't really want to talk about them any more than just say I sat with her all I could, whether she was awake, or sedated. I held her hand, kissed her brow, told her all the things I wanted her to know. I apologised for all the hurt I caused her over the years. And in all her grace she would wave it away, like the arguments and fights between us didn't matter at all. Perhaps because they really didn't... All that mattered was the love we had. The spoken and unspoken.

I loved her more than she could've imagined. I loved you Mama, more than you could've imagined. I love you Mama. I love you, I love you, I love you.

But the book of you both does not finish, does it? Just the chapter. And I carry you both with me now all the time, just as Mama kept you with her so fervently, in every detail in that house.
Across the new pages I turn, I keep you alive in my mind, and in my heart, and with my words to Laith and Zayn.

Zayn, poor Zayn hasn't gotten much time in this letter... All I can say is Mama you were right. He is Angelic, and he is truly a gift to me, given at just the right time. Two-fold now, I owe my life to my boys.

Mama, you were such a force. You both were. What a human being you were, you are.
Your loss has echoed and rippled through every person who knew you, whether they be old childhood friends, or young neighbours you spent time with the last few years.
(I hope you could hear Fairuz and Ziad when I asked them to play them for you...I felt so helpless)

There is no point in regretting now. It hurts for no reason, and you would not want me to.
But I understand more now, I see you more now.

And I will keep you with me. Both of you. The best way I can, in all its lacking. I will hold on to your coat, as I did as a child. To your celestial trails.

I could write so much more, and a lot more about the pain and the loneliness. About the loss, the great great loss. I could write on, and on, and on. But I don't want to. The pain is too great, and there is no reason to dredge it up for myself. I am so fragile at times already, and I can't afford to break. I bend, but I can't break.

Watch over us, the kids, Saadi (he needs you too, you know)

I love you both.
Happy birthday Baba, a little less lonely for you this year...

Mama. 3omri. Teta Tata. We'll be ok. I have you in my mind...

B7ibkon,

اد البحر و موجاتو، العصافير و غنياتا، السما وغيماتا

Bintkon,

Karina, Mishmosh, Ghandoura, Im Laith,

Karma.

Birthday Letter 2021

Birthday Letter 2020
Birthday Letter 2019

Birthday Letter 2018

Tuesday, 6 July 2021

Birthday Letter 2021

Hi Baba,

This year, your birthday letter will be heavy. It will be sad. It will be angry.

But it will be relieved that you are not here.

This is the second year in a row that I say that. I say I’m happy you’re not here.

That thought hurts in itself

Take from that what you will, when someone prefers the fate of the dead than those who are living.

Where to start? You already know the beginning.. I started it last year, and although there are some good things to mention, it seems we were cursed to continue with an unfolding like no other we could have imagined.

Less than a month after I wrote you, 28 days to be exact, I had just gotten home from work, excited to show Laith a fishing game toy I bought him earlier. You know the old school one with fish that bop in and out of a rotating lake, opening and closing their magnetised mouths while you attempt to catch one with a little tiny rod.

As I kneeled at the coffee table, with him excited to see, chirping and squeaking, a loud noise shook the glass of the nearby balcony doors. I stood up, and Mama who was there looked at me saying “earthquake??” I grabbed my phone to check for the news, moving away from the coffee table, and told her “No, no. That’s a bomb. They’ve blown someone up.”
What happened next was a mix of quick thinking on Mama’s part, fate, and pure luck.

Thinking it could be Israeli war planes, Mama grabbed Laith from next to the coffee table in the middle of the living room, and started towards the inner hallway of the house, calling out to me and Louis to run to the hallway, incase “more bombs hit closer to us”.

She was no more than three steps away from where we were sitting, when all the glass in the living room shattered and flew furiously inwards. Where Laith had just been.

Seconds passed that felt like minutes of trying to comprehend and realise what happened and picturing what could have happened. Where Laith had been sitting were large sharp shards of menacing glass, over the table, the carpet, embedded into books and board game boxes that were in the book case. (6 months after this, we were still finding bits and pieces of glass behind books and in corners…)

Laith crying out at our panic and shock shook me out of a daze, and I grabbed him and ran into the inner bedrooms, pausing on the way to see a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky. It was towering above, in soft pinks and oranges that were almost beautiful if it weren’t a sign of something so much more sinister.

The port had blown up Baba.

And with it, blown up half the city, its people, its walls, windows, and peace of mind.

Outside, car alarms were blaring, glass was everywhere, ambulance sirens and people shouting.

And we were no where as near to the port as other areas.

Then the images started to filter through the TV. The phone calls to check on everyone, the phone calls checking on us. “Are you ok?? Are you hurt??”

My Whatsapp exploded with messages after an eerie quiet. “Is everyone ok?? What was that!?”

"Are you ok?? Are you hurt? Where are you??"

It’s been nearly a year, and it still feels like today. And all the “what ifs” haunt me still, and I push them back and bury them and they manage to crawl out into hypothetical scenarios that keep me up at night and make my heart beat faster, and make my eyes water. Thoughts I dare not even put into words because breathing life into them will give them volume and space that will break parts of me that I already have to hold together tightly.

And we were the “lucky ones”.

The government had sat on 2,750 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, stored in a metal warehouse, in the middle of Beirut. For 7 years.

A ticking time bomb.

And it had blown up and taken the homes of 300,000 people, the lives of over 200, and everyone’s memories before that day.

Everyone lost something or someone, somewhere that day.

The days and months that followed brought with it lots of agony, anger, sadness, uncertainty, and in small ways hope, as the Lebanese did the thing they had gotten so used to doing over all these years with irresponsible leaders: they started to take care of themselves and others around them.

We swept streets, and boarded up broken windows, and checked on elderly, and distributed food and medicine. The country united under a mushroom cloud of terror, leaning on one another to stand up to face another day.

In all this, I’m glad you were not here. One less heart to break over the ghost of a city.

And the snowball kept rolling, and gathering more and more dirty snow, as months went by with no help, no support, a falling currency that lost over 90% of its value, power cuts that now last most of the day, lack of basic medicine and formula for babies, food costs that are eye-watering high, poverty increasing at alarming rates, and petrol shortages driven by want of profit that lead to days upon days upon days of lines and lines of people in their cars snaked all around the city waiting to fill up what they can so they can get to where they need to be the next day.

The view from here is dark Baba. I’m telling you all this, but I don’t want you to hear it.

It will only hurt you. It will only break you.

It broke us.

The anxiety, the stress, the worry. It becomes numbing after a while.

You see so much around you that makes you want to implode, that you become catatonic. You have to, to survive. You walk in and out of days, hoping the passing of time will bring with it some sort of relief. You blow a bubble around you to drown out all the words people utter, the pain they express.
It's been so hard. So very hard. Worrying about everyone, about myself, about what will happen. Where to go from here.
Things were never clear before, but at least there was a path outlined that made sense, felt safe. Now it truly just does feel like a dark tunnel, and we're just feeling our way through day by day waiting to see that distant light at the end to guide us through.

Thank goodness for Laith. I don’t know where I would be without Laith.

What a force for survival he endowed upon us, despite it all.

I must remember to thank him when we are out of this all.

And on the way, another grandson for you (see, I did say there was some good news!)

A brother for a little lion, although I won’t lie and say I didn’t desperately wish for a girl, perhaps to relive my childhood, the happiest of my years.

But two boys it will be, and two boys I will raise and love and nurture to the best of my ability… Two boys for you to be proud of.

So survive we must, and to do that, an exit plan from a country that despite our love for it, our hopes for it, our attachment to it, has become a tar pit that is dragging us down, and I can’t let that happen. Not with a family. Not with my family.

So come bouncing boy number two, we are moving to Cyprus. To start from scratch.

I’m terrified but excited. Anxious but hopeful. Scared but determined.

And although I’ve said it time and time again this year that I’m happy you’re not here to see all this, and worry alongside us, and suffer alongside us.. a big part of me really needs you. If only to tell me it will be ok. Nothing else.

But I’ll have to make do with the you I have within me.

I’ll stop here, there’s no need for more. This is heavy enough.

Baba, next year, the letter will be better. It will be happier. It will be worthier.

It has to be. It just has to.

Love you always, love you forever.

Bintak, Im il subyein,

Karma

Birthday Letter 2020
Birthday Letter 2019

Birthday Letter 2018

Monday, 6 July 2020

Birthday Letter 2020

Hi Baba,

To be honest, I don't think I've ever dreaded writing you your birthday letter before.
I get sad when I do it, sometimes I wonder what I need to write, whether or not I'll be repetitive, or just not have much to say.

But I've never dreaded it.

Today, I dread it. So much.
I sit writing you, out my window, most of the city is black with night, plunged into darkness with very few lights to break it up. I'm lucky enough to hear a droning hum of a generator which keeps our building powered, our air conditioning on in this muggy weather, our fridge cold, our internet running.
Not many people are that lucky these days.

I'm dreading telling you the sorry state we're in, as a country, as a world, as a family trying to survive what seems to be one of the worse periods I've ever experienced.
All the mess and dirt and corruption that hasn't really changed since we moved back to Beirut has finally caught up, and the country is crumbling. The currency is 5 times less valuable than it used to be (and falling), half the country is under the poverty line, people are angry, sad, depressed, people are dying by suicide in broad daylight, making their last breath on earth a statement against the reality the country has been forced into... And to add a surrealistic macabre twist to it all, there's a global pandemic that is paralysing most of the world, putting lockdowns in place, causing fear and anxiety, dangling the threat of death in front of our eyes, making things so much harder on so many levels that it is suffocating.

But the country Baba, the country... What can I say about the country?
I don't know if there are enough words, or any words to describe the feelings, emotions, realities we find ourselves in. We wake up every day feeling we've hit rock bottom, only to realise it's a false ceiling and we crash into a further depth, and it's on repeat. A sadistic Ground Hog Day that just won't give. The lies, the stealing, the hypocrisy, the depravity, the constant insult to our intelligence, to our pride, to our humanity... It's all too much!

And we had a glimmer of hope. Between last year's letter, and this one, I saw a spark leap from the embers on October the 17th. My countrymen and women seemed to wake up, to realise the tragicomedy that had become our state, and they shouted ENOUGH! كلكن يعني كلكن! We wanted them all out, all gone, we were fed up and we united under the flag, and for the first time in a long time I felt so proud! I felt empowered, invigorated, justified! But always cautiously.. I remember telling mama "this is the last shot. I can't continue like this. It has to be now or it won't be at all. It's now or never." So many felt this way.

It seems like never baba.

Part of me is relieved you're not here to see it all crumbling. I'm relieved many of you aren't. Did you and Teta Zaza cross paths somehow? And if you did I hope she told you how we are...

I don't know when it will be better, when it will be the Lebanon you and Mama hoped for when we moved back, the Lebanon we deserve, that is deserving of us. I hold on to that hope deep, deep inside. For me, for Laith, for Mama, for Saadi, for you.

That small spark that managed to free itself from the embers under the ashes, we lost it, we can't see it in all the darkness anymore. I hope it's still there. I hope that if it's not, another one will liberate itself and ignite an explosion of fireworks that will make us all stand in awe, mouths agape, laughing at the colours and lights and sounds. That our hearts will skip a beat but in excitement and wonder. Unlike these days where our hearts skip beats at yet another piece of news that spells more disaster, more hopelessness.

There doesn't seem to be an end to the tunnel, it's so dark that I can no longer tell if there is no light at the end of it, or just that the light is so infinitely far that I can't see it for now. I'm holding on to the hope that it's the latter.

I don't know if I can bear the dark while I wait for it anymore.

I'm so sad these days Baba. I wish you were here to comfort me, to reassure me. I think of you a lot. But the fear that even if you were here you would not be able to, adds to the relief that you're not witnessing this. One less person to agonise.

I'm worried for Mama, who even with all her stubbornness and determination is losing sight of the light at the end of Lebanon's gaping hole of a reality. I worry about her, and with her.

The only joy, that I thank the universe for every single minute, every single second, is Laith. Laith! The lion who is but a cub right now, roaring his presence and laughter and soul at us, giving us so much purpose and life and light! When I delve into the dark of our present reality, he is the torch that reminds me there must be a way, even if it isn't what we wanted.

And with that I know it's time to leave this sinking ship I call home. I tried to scoop the pooling water out, we all did. The whole country was cupping hands and scooping and scooping and scooping. But the water is faster, and we're watching as it's reaching our ankles, and shins, and thighs... And as much as I love the ship, I have a family, I won't sacrifice it. I can't. I refuse to let the water reach a lick of a flame of my torch.
Some things you do not compromise.
I have a solid suspicion if you were here, you wouldn't question this difficult decision... Perhaps you would have reached it before, who knows...

So we have to leave. I like to think it's not forever. I like to think we'll be back, when the light is flooding all the homes, coming through the windows and the open doors, instead of water.

We'll be close by, always close by.

I read somewhere that grief is merely love with no place to go. And now I think I'm grieving a life I wanted to have here. I'm grieving a homeland that should be loved, and not mourned.

But it pales in comparison to the overwhelming grief at your loss...

I think I have to admit that your leaving has traumatised me in some way.

All these letters over the years with an underlying feeling that there was a missing link between you and me. One that made me doubt what I remembered, and how our relationship used to be. I always saw myself in motion, and you still.

There was always this passiveness in my memory so far. Photos I talk to that don't talk back.

And then one day, before all the shit hit the fan here, I accidentally went down a rabbit hole, cleaning out my email.

I typed in “Karma Computer” (what you named yourself on outgoing emails...) into the search bar.

And suddenly you had a voice again. I could see the words talking back to me, I could hear the voice, feel the warmth even in black pixels arranged on a screen.

I heard it, and I fell apart.

I could only read a few, before I decided the love that had no place to go was overwhelming. And I stopped.

But I heard you. And I'm glad I did.

And I'll hear you again. You aren't just a photo, you're in binary, and in my heart.

And I can take you wherever I want. You're coming with me, my home comes with me.

You, and mama, and Louis, and Saadi, and most importantly Laith. You are my home now. You are all the driftwood that I'd choose over a million, a billion, an infinite fleet of ships.

You're the home washed in light, and warmth, and joy.

I hope next year's letter will make a joke out of this one.

Happy Birthday to you. My home.

B7ibbak.
Bintak, bint il balad

Karma Im Laith

Birthday Letter 2019

Birthday Letter 2018