NOTHING seemed to have changed under Kissproof’s red lights. The music, the people, the bartenders, the conversations were all so familiar. When I returned to Beirut, six months after leaving for New York, my friends and I went for drinks at Kissproof. They hadn’t changed a bit, with their same old habits of being an hour late wherever we went, their loud contagious laughter, and their struggles of twenty-something artists trying to make it in Beirut. Nothing had changed, except me. Like a foreigner in a new city, I felt almost removed from what used to be my home. Six months away from Beirut couldn’t change me that much, could they?

*

I REMEMBER a time when our breakfast table consisted of two coffee cups, one for my dad, the other for my mom, and two cereal bowls for my brother and me. After my dad died the two cereal bowls remained, but a coffee cup left the table. By the time my brother traveled abroad to study, the breakfast table consisted of one coffee cup and one cereal bowl. When I moved to New York I took my cereal bowl with me. It’s midnight in New York, and almost breakfast time in Beirut. My mom’s coffee cup now sits alone on the kitchen table.

*

MY dad’s footsteps were heavy and slow. My mom’s were fast, almost high pitched. Slowly waking up, I could hear them walking around the house. After preparing their coffee, they would each sit on their respective side of the couch, reading the newspaper, bathing in the warm winter sun. Some sounds, smells, pictures, we can’t forget. The smell of dried coffee and wet cigarettes rotting under the burning sun on Beirut’s waterfronts. The incessantly loud honks. The oppressive skyscrapers. Look at me, Beirut screamed. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. For ten years I kept looking at Beirut. I kept looking at the city that craved to be heard, seen, felt, only to avoid looking at the void my father left when he died.

*

MY Moscow Mule hasn’t lost its sweet and sour aftertaste. Still full, the ice cubes floating in it keep it fresh and make my cup cold. With its metal outdoor furniture, its red lights, and plants on the sidewalk, Kissproof is one of those millennial-friendly hotspots. It was a Tuesday evening when I met the crew for catch-up drinks. I was an expat now. I had left Beirut in July. Like many before me, I had to see for myself what the outside felt like. Lebanon engulfs its children only to vomit them across the world when they reach the age of eighteen. Each break, Lebanon receives around seven hundred thousand expats, visitors, and tourists. Before July I wasn’t one of those. I stayed in Lebanon, I fought to keep going, and I worked to get accepted by my country, by Beirut specifically. On that chilly December night at Kissproof I was one amongst the many who came back. “Where are you now? What are you up to? Are you happy? Yeah, it’s better to be out of Lebanon.” The same small talk at every corner of every street. Was I happy?

*

NEW YORK’s Hudson River Park was one of the first places where I felt a small connection to home. The salty smell reminded me of the sea. But no waves crushing, no honks like my Beirut waterfront. For a city that never sleeps, New York was awfully quiet to me. The city was supposed to keep me busy. Yet, it made me the stranger I was. New York was supposed to keep my mind away from home. But New York didn’t beg me to look at her. This city couldn’t care less about my attention, it had enough eyes on her. No, on the contrary, New York asked me to clear some space in my head, in my mind, and in my heart. For the first time, almost ten years after my dad’s death, I made space to hear the song my dad used to play. I let the notes of Fur de Elise the song that he so often played on the piano, fill me. I remember being five, six, or seven years old, watching him play the piano. For the first time, I could let those piano notes linger for as long as much as they needed to.

*

MY suitcase was packed, my passport in my backpack, and my phone fully charged for the long trip. Finally, time to come home. JFK’s white fluorescent light flickered above my head. I waited in line to pay for my seven-dollar small Nutella snack, the smell of fried eggs lingered around. What a depressing airport JFK is. 

*

WE grew up like sisters, but years later, Laura made place for a new sister in her life. “Beirut feels like a sister to me,” she explained. “Beirut and I are partners in crime. It’s a goldmine you can tap into. It’s always interesting.” This city is interesting to those who show interest in her, those who accept the challenge Beirut imposed on them. When Laura left at eighteen, little did we know she would come back four years later, only to embrace what was left behind. “It feels good sometimes to know that the chaos in the city is the same chaos within us.”

*

WHEN my brother left for Montreal my mom and I both traveled with him. At the airport departure in Beirut, his two best friends and my cousin accompanied him until the security check. I cried. This was the first of many times I cried in an airport. I cried when he was the one leaving, and I cried when we left Montreal. I cried each time he left after a break back home. When I left for New York, I cried on the way to the airport. I cried at the airport, and during the flight to Paris. I cried during our layover in Paris, and I cried on the flight from Paris to New York. My first impression of New York was a gloomy, heavy, humid day in Midtown. No streets to make me feel brand new, no big lights to inspire me. Little did I know that I would have to tame the city and be tamed by it, for it to inspire me. For three days after my arrival in New York, I spent every waking minute crying. But now on my way home, I didn’t cry at JFK and would not cry during the long layover in Paris. I landed in Beirut knowing my mother would be waiting for me at the arrivals gate, anticipating any early arrivals. I didn’t cry at the airport. But I cried myself to sleep that night. Of exhaustion, of guilt, of fear. Beirut hadn’t changed one bit. But I’d changed.

*

“THERE’s a strange sense of belonging, because it’s home,” said Maya. For the past four years, Maya has been the friend with whom I shared a passion for the sea, but a discomfort in the city. “But there is nostalgia, and the people carry it all the time. It’s so heavy. There’s also this feeling of hopelessness.” Oh Maya, if only you knew how much grief I carried around the city, slowly scattering bits and memories in the corners of Beirut. I know you did, too. “It makes sense to me somehow. There’s a part of me that identifies to its flaws. It’s also a challenge living here. Maybe that’s why I want to stay here. It consumes you. It eats you up.”

*

AS the ice started melting in my Moscow Mule, I felt slightly lightheaded. The sweet elixir of vodka, ginger beer, and lemonade started hitting me. Our number of drinks increased, our conversation grew louder. I could only hear us in the bar. Kissproof is an awfully silent place without us.

*

A SUNDAY afternoon after a heavy lunch. My brother and I, slipping in and out of sleep in the back of the car. We were eight or nine years old at that time. Dad was driving, with Mom in the passenger seat next to him. We drove between the tree alleys of the Bekaa, the highway never ending in front of us. How do adults know where to go, I remember thinking while watching my dad drive. How do they know what decisions to make, what route to take. Maybe he heard my thoughts, but I remember him looking at his rearview mirror and smiling at me.

*

GEORGIA was one of the first of my best friends to leave the country. At seventeen, a suitcase and a guitar in hand, she took a leap of faith. “Beirut is very abusive,” she said. “Whenever you’re not there you miss it, but when you’re there you want to leave.” But how do you know when it’s time to leave? How do you know it’s time to let go? “You can’t ever be satisfied, because you come back and you see all that’s wrong here. There’s no perfect mix.”

*

RED, pink, yellow, some indigo, and a hint of orange. Sunsets in Beirut can compare to watercolor worthy of the greatest painters. Look at me, look at me, look at me, screamed Beirut. So I did. I wouldn’t stop looking until the sun plunged behind that dark sea, somewhere far in the horizon. For ten years I chased Beirut’s sunsets. I would dedicate hours to watch the sun perform its show. I mourned the sun each night, but I never mourned my father. It was easier to mourn the sun; it would always rise the next day.

*

IT was a sunny Friday, one of the last few days of summer before school started again a week later. My mom and my brother were already out of the house, I was on the computer, and Dad was getting ready for his trip. He was going on a four-day trip to Egypt, with one of his closest friends, to visit another friend of theirs. I remember the sound of the doorknob, rushing out of the computer room, but stopping at the edge of the door. Dad was leaving, with his backpack, his familiar khaki hat, and a suitcase. He looked at me before closing the door, and said “Bye papa, see you in four days. And take care of your mother and brother, yeah?” With his wide smile he waved at me, and I waved back. We have the same smile. When I look at pictures of him today, I can recognize my smile. To this day, I still wonder why I didn’t hang onto him, why I didn’t run to him for one last hug, one last kiss. He closed the door behind him, one last time. Later on that night, it was my uncle who told us. They had landed in Egypt, and on their way to their host’s house, there was accident. A car accident. The driver was injured, but survived. My father and his friend didn’t. It was on that old, brown, dusty couch where my dad used to lie down to watch television that we learned he died. Some sounds we can’t forget, and to this day I can’t forget my mom bursting into tears.

*

MY glass is empty, my cheeks are red, and I can feel my head starting to spin. I almost forgot I had just arrived from New York the night before. “Let’s play a game,” I proposed. “Each of us has to give one rose and one thorn. A rose being a highlight of the past few months, and a thorn being a hardship.” To my surprise, they took the game quite seriously. My rose was that I was able to finally express myself as a journalist. My thorn was that I felt lonely in New York, lonely in Beirut. And I later on realized, lonely with myself.

*

UNLIKE other Beirutis, Camille has a particular connection to the city. She is one of the few who has never left. And for a reason. “Even though I’m aware that professionally there are more opportunities outside of Lebanon, I want to stay for as long as I feel that I can grow and learn here.” But Camille has a sensitivity that few, if any, have. She will keep growing and learning from the country, even if the country itself stops. But when will the country give back to her? “Lebanon is a sponge. I don’t want to leave until I’ve taken out all of the water and absorbed it completely. I do want to leave eventually, but I’m not in a hurry anymore.” There’s no hurry, there’s no rush. But the whole world is waiting for her.

*

SLALOMING in between dog poop, I used to walk all around in Beirut. The cars parked on the sidewalk didn’t make it easy to navigate by foot, neither did Beirut’s mountainous topography. But nonetheless, I walked. It was by walking that I learned about the civil war in Lebanon, since no history book mentions it. Beirut’s architecture reflects its thousand layers of history: from the traditional houses with their red-tiled roofs, the buildings nibbled by bullets of the war, and the skyscrapers mushrooming like wild plants. What a circus Beirut was. I would walk on Sunday afternoons in the small, residential neighborhoods of the city. Like vultures stalking their prey, old ladies would stand on their balconies, spying on their neighbors for new gossip to pass around the next morning. They were spectators to the street show, and actors on Beirut’s stage. I could walk for hours in Beirut, in this tiny city of twenty square kilometers, and nothing would look the same. I could take the same route each day; it would always be different. The city inspired my photography and my writing, becoming both my muse and my canvas. It’s not easy to love this city. It has no future, between a failed government, an economy barely standing on one foot, and a looming environmental crisis. No wonder everyone’s leaving. But it’s not easy to hate it as well. Beirut became a drug to me, an addiction. I would get high on its constantly moving, noisy, stinky, addictive energy. Since the end of the war, Beirut has remained static, stuck. And I was always comfortable when I was younger, safe. Then, all of a sudden, I lost one of the pillars of my life. I started walking around Beirut after my dad’s death. When I needed an anchor, Beirut welcomed me with arms wide open. When I needed a distraction, Beirut screamed Look at me, and I obeyed. But I looked at Beirut for too long. When I left it, I didn’t know where to look anymore. The only choice I had left, was to look at myself.

*

FROM my airplane window, I could see the outline of the mountains and the coast. This uniform mass of blue that became green, brown and then gray. Finally, I could see Lebanon. As the plane was descending towards the airport, the passengers were all glued to the window facing Beirut, the plane almost tipping by their weight as they snapped photos of Lebanon coming to life. I could hear the “oohs” and “aahs” as the buildings grew closer to us. I was now an expat and so I took a picture, too.