Beirut, August 3rd
Absurd ….
Kinda came to the office today. It’s one of the rare places where I can take her nowadays. My mom is taking care of her. She tries to take her in walk in the neighborhood at least once a day.
My mom takes her to the Corniche sometimes when it’s calm. Sometimes she plays in front of the building where we live with my neighbor’s daughter.
But ever since this started, Kinda likes to stay home. I think she’s completely depressed: she sleeps a lot, laughs when we’re not expecting her to, wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, and resists going out as much as she can. Kinda is living her first war. She’s much younger than I was when I lived my first war, I was seven.
This summer, in June I mean, I really envied her. I’d leave the office early every day, at around three, pick her up from day-care and take her out : to the beach , to a park , to her cousins, to the mountains. I took her everywhere. It’s good that this war broke, because I was running out of ideas.
One new refugee joined the other three staying with us.
At the beginning of this, I’d go home and get some kind of a “cultural chock”: somehow, my home was too clean, too neat, too white, and too different from everything else happening around it. There even flowers in the vases.
Now, my house belongs to the rest of the country: I have men shirts hanging on the chairs in the living room, suitcases in the dinning room, veils hanging from my balcony with the rest of the laundry, and no more flowers in the vases. I’ll spare you the description of my kitchen….
I had to tell you about my kitchen before I give today’s figures , because if I give you the figures first , they’ll get all your attention and you won’t read about my kitchen.
So here’s the latest , and I quoting from Reuters :
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Thursday that 900 people were killed, 3,000 wounded and a third of the
casualties in the 23-day-old conflict were children under 12 ( ie 300) .
He said a million Lebanese, one quarter of the population, had been displaced and the country's infrastructure devastated.
H..
Absurd ….
Kinda came to the office today. It’s one of the rare places where I can take her nowadays. My mom is taking care of her. She tries to take her in walk in the neighborhood at least once a day.
My mom takes her to the Corniche sometimes when it’s calm. Sometimes she plays in front of the building where we live with my neighbor’s daughter.
But ever since this started, Kinda likes to stay home. I think she’s completely depressed: she sleeps a lot, laughs when we’re not expecting her to, wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, and resists going out as much as she can. Kinda is living her first war. She’s much younger than I was when I lived my first war, I was seven.
This summer, in June I mean, I really envied her. I’d leave the office early every day, at around three, pick her up from day-care and take her out : to the beach , to a park , to her cousins, to the mountains. I took her everywhere. It’s good that this war broke, because I was running out of ideas.
One new refugee joined the other three staying with us.
At the beginning of this, I’d go home and get some kind of a “cultural chock”: somehow, my home was too clean, too neat, too white, and too different from everything else happening around it. There even flowers in the vases.
Now, my house belongs to the rest of the country: I have men shirts hanging on the chairs in the living room, suitcases in the dinning room, veils hanging from my balcony with the rest of the laundry, and no more flowers in the vases. I’ll spare you the description of my kitchen….
I had to tell you about my kitchen before I give today’s figures , because if I give you the figures first , they’ll get all your attention and you won’t read about my kitchen.
So here’s the latest , and I quoting from Reuters :
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Thursday that 900 people were killed, 3,000 wounded and a third of the
casualties in the 23-day-old conflict were children under 12 ( ie 300) .
He said a million Lebanese, one quarter of the population, had been displaced and the country's infrastructure devastated.
H..
posted by Beirut at 5:47 PM
1 Comments:
I pray for all the people of Lebanon.
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