Dispatches from the Threshold

“Why Did You Stop Writing?” I’ve been asked that question several times lately. I picked up my phone and asked Michel: “How do you write when you’re numb?” “One letter at a time,” he replied. And so the letters began to scatter across my imagination. I watched them come into being, only to refuse to become words. They gathered before me, never quite finding their place. Do you know how many words are born, one letter at a time? These very words are being written and read at this very moment. You and I bring the same words into existence. Time alone separates us. They are born and they die within the same breath. Between the one who writes and the one who reads, there may be nothing except that fleeting moment when they meet in a single word. But how do you write what does not die? What remains engraved in someone’s memory, in an age where words crowd one another until they can scarcely breathe? Every day, hundreds of them pass before our eyes, just as smiling faces pass across our screens, only to fade away. Very few remain: those that touched us with sincerity, awakened our senses, stirred our conscience, or made us pause, if only for a moment. Then comes the drought. The kind no one sees. People sometimes imagine that a writer stops writing because the desire has disappeared. The truth is often simpler: sometimes the writer has merely lost the path back to the imagination. They sit before the blank page as one stands before a door whose key has been lost. Writing is a gift. Work is what refines it. And that work demands daily discipline: returning to the page even on the days when no idea comes to visit, even when we doubt every sentence we write. Inspiration, however much we may celebrate it, is never enough on its own. Only discipline brings the writer back to the desk, day after day. But how can anyone remain faithful to such discipline in a country where no day resembles the one before it? In a country that wakes each morning to a new crisis, a new fear, a new uncertainty; where attention has become a rare currency; where gathering oneself before gathering one’s thoughts is already an achievement. We let ourselves be consumed, or perhaps we are consumed despite ourselves, by everything that drains us. Our days swallow us whole. We chase details, obligations, urgencies. We try simply to make it through the day with as few wounds as possible. Reaching the imagination becomes a journey longer than writing itself. Not because imagination has abandoned us, but because the road leading to it has become crowded with everything that keeps us from ourselves. Perhaps we do not fear silence as much as we fear growing accustomed to it. That busyness might become our natural state, and writing nothing more than a promise forever postponed, waiting for a stillness that never comes. If only words knew how to find their way back to us whenever we lose our way to them. And yet, whenever I think words have deserted me, I discover they were never far away. They were simply waiting for the noise to subside. Waiting for me, too, to become still enough to hear the voice of the first letter. Perhaps I never stopped writing. Perhaps I was only searching for that first letter worthy of being followed by another.

Between Furn al-Chebbak and Monot, I managed to see two theatrical performances in the space of a single week. I will not analyze here, nor discuss what I watched. I am not a critic, and what I lived through during those performances is far too personal. But something awoke inside me. A fierce desire to speak, not to judge, but to bear witness. Theater. Light. The direct encounter with the other. The other who reveals himself before me in his body and his voice, in his sweat and his living breath. And I, I go alone, as if between me and the theater there is a romantic appointment. I ready myself for that encounter, I choose my clothes with care, I walk toward it with a lightness that resembles longing, and I sit in the darkness and wait. I the actress, the spectator, I was them between the summer of 2024 and the winter of 2025, when the city trembled, I ran toward the theater, not away from it. During that period, theater became a personal act of resistance, a way of saying that my life had not ended yet, and that fear would not declare its victory over my passion. That day, we were not even certain whether the opening would happen at all. The performance had been postponed to the rhythm of shells that kept falling, and each day carried within it the possibility of another delay, a cancellation, or something worse. And still, I longed for that day. I longed for people to come and sit where dust lay on the black leather seats, for the theater to fill with the breath of bodies rather than silence, for applause to return louder than whatever was happening outside. But I also would not have grieved had that day never come. I told my partner, more than once: “I’d sooner die in rehearsal than die watching the news on the sofa.” And he would always answer, with an unwavering calm: “Yes, go ; that is your place.” Yes, it was “my place.” I preferred to live and to die there, in the warmth of a projector eaten by rust, beneath the ceiling of an old cinema in Bourj Hammoud, rather than let them steal my life while I was still breathing. That stage was my salvation. Had it not existed, neither would I. When some grew afraid, and others grew exhausted and found their salvation in other countries, I found mine there, among the damp wings and the smell of dust, and a curtain hanging that neither closes nor opens, and beneath a chandelier whose light illuminates the universe. There was my breathing space, there we would postpone the collapse… our collapse. We would write texts while the city was being erased, and rearrange scenes while everything outside was falling apart. We would stop at every sudden sound, listen for a few seconds, then return to rehearsal as if repairing the world sentence by sentence. What I gave in that performance had waited twenty years, twenty years of accumulated memory, of words I had hidden inside my texts, of faces that had passed through me and never left, and of a fear I did not know where to place except on that stage, with all the courage I had. Between truth and performance was my game, to speak without quite confessing, to hide behind the character while stripping myself completely bare. I would steal words from my own life, from my disappointments a body language, from my solitude a tone of voice. And the closer the scene came to me, the more the audience applauded, and that applause was… my pulse. Theater was not a luxury. It was neither a hobby nor a space for escape or psychotherapy, but a declaration of existence. A declaration that our bodies had not yet been turned into numbers, and that our voices… still reached. And today, when I sit alone in the darkness and watch an actor come into himself under the light, I feel that someone is surviving again. And I feel that I am meeting myself too, that woman who once ran toward an old theater to survive the world upon a stage.

On the seventh day, do we rest? No. We wait. We live forever on the threshold of anticipation. We scroll through the minutes of the twenty-four hours, an article here, a statement or a tweet there, trying to sketch our day from the debris. There is no roadmap here, save for the one charted by those who do not speak our tongue. And we simply... endure. We endure... and we dismantle. We read the void between the lines more than the lines themselves. We dissect the silence, and we distrust everything that seems natural. For the natural is natural no longer. And the quiet, in our lands, is not peace... but the breathing space of those who did not choose to fight. On the seventh day, A few shops part their doors with a certain shyness. A shutter half-raised, a decision half-made. Chairs return to the pavements, The coffee is fired up again, And the talk circles small things: Prices, electricity, water, and deferred plans. Everyone watches and waits. The same faces... but with features drawn tight, their fear not yet spent. And behind every sentence, The shadow of another: “If it starts again…” If it starts again? But it hasn’t ended yet, to start again. A few kilometers away, The earth is being blasted, Blood flowing above and beneath it. The stillness here is not an absence... it is a distance. In this restless quiet, Another noise rises. A noise that isn't heard... but thought. We scrutinize everything: The faces of politicians, Their raised fingers, The tone of voice, The timing of the release. We watch the sky, Not for its clarity, But for the depth of its silence. A distant plane, A passing bike, A door slammed shut, All are possibilities. We count the days. The seventh day. The stillness here is not peace. It is the gap between two strikes. And in this gap, We try to live. Briefly. We laugh... without trust. We plan... without certainty. We sleep... half-awake. A part of us stays vigilant, Like a guard we cannot see. We wake to the alarm, not the shelling, and we are surprised. We make coffee slowly, as if relearning a ritual. We open the news before the windows. We write: “How are you?” And the answer comes: “Good... for now.” We go out into the street. We look at each other, Searching for a lost reassurance. Even the greetings have become fast, Abrupt, Unable to linger. We do not only fear war, But the habit of it. That it becomes part of our day, Our talk, Our jokes. We laugh sometimes... Then suddenly fall silent. As if the laugh itself has recoiled. On the seventh day, A question slips in quietly: What do we do with all this exhaustion? The shells might stop, But their echo does not. An exhaustion in the body, In the eye, In the heart that has learned to jump at any sound. We don’t trust the quiet enough to relax. We live on the edge of rest. A rest deferred, Conditional, Liable to be cancelled. We arrange our things differently. We charge our phones more than we use them. We track time... for every eventuality. And inside us, A longing so simple: Quiet... just quiet. A quiet that needs no explanation, No monitoring, No fear. But we don’t know how to believe it. So we go back to waiting. We watch, We analyze, We read, Then we read again. We build our day on possibilities, Not on certainties. We say: “We’ll see!” As if our whole life Were a suspended sentence. And on the seventh day, We declare no victory, We mourn no loss. We stand in the middle. Between war and peace, Between dread and calm, Between sound and silence. This middle ground... Has become our place. Our anxiety in this quiet Is not weakness, But memory. A memory that has learned That silence Can be a warning. And yet... We go on. We make our coffee, We open our windows, We watch the sky, We reply to messages, We laugh when we can, And stay silent when we cannot. We buy our bread, We stop at the gas station, We postpone our plans, And we hide our unease. And we try, despite everything, To live an ordinary day... Even if this “ordinary” Is poised On the threshold of waiting.

Nothing new in the phrase. But this time its weight is different — the speed of its rhythm tears through me. We all call each other to make sure. The replies come in like a daily ritual: We're fine, you? Fine! As if the word were a spell we shelter behind. My mother. Fine. My older brother and his family. Fine. My younger brother, at his Gulf posting. Fine. My sister and her family, here. Fine. Those my heart holds and those I love. Fine. Fine! We write it, we repeat it until it goes numb. My relatives who came from France to spend a week in the land of Cedars — among them some we were meeting for the first time, the children especially — are going back in a few hours. The suitcases are at the door. Two children ask: Aren't we going to the airport? A mother trying to smile so her panic doesn't cross onto the faces of the little ones. Fathers pretending to hold. The three o'clock flight — cancelled. The door to a direct return — shut. I saw in their eyes that worry we, the children of this earth, have learned: a worry that doesn't scream. That calculates. We gather, we decide fast — because time in crises does not grant the luxury of hesitation. After cascading calls and a search through whatever options remain, seats are found out of Beirut at nine-thirty at night to Istanbul, then Belgium, then Lille. Ten hours of travel and transit through several airports seemed better than staying in a city whose shores and sky the flames of the region were closing in on. Beirut, which I had been walking only days ago like a tourist, searching its stones for some trace of the past, now seemed to be standing on tiptoe. The city that knows how to fall and rise was steadying its breath, once more. I understood: safety is not something you own. Only something you borrow. Their plane took off. They landed in Istanbul. A short message: we're fine. A photo — they're on the floor, or in airport lounge chairs. The children are smiling despite the exhaustion. Then the road to Lille. I breathe. Not for long. The breaking news keeps coming. I read, I don't believe it, I read again: the region is burning. Arab capitals are being bombed. My people are there — my mother, my brothers, half my family. I pick up my phone. I hesitate. I don't want to pass on what's shaking inside me. And I return to the same question, the family ritual: Are you fine? But what kind of fine is measured by the number of airports crossed in peace? And what kind of reassurance needs confirming every few hours? Fine — because the plane took off and landed. Fine — because the sky stayed open before the shells came and the ground shook. Fine — because the danger stayed a possibility. For a few more minutes. I think of that moment in the square, hearing myself explain Beirut to my relatives. I didn't know that a few days later I'd be living a new lesson in how fragile geography is. The city whose history I told in my French laced with English comes back to remind me: its chapters are written as we walk through them. Are we really fine? Fine how? What country is this? What region? What peace? What life? We are a generation that tracks flight patterns and the maps of zones about to be bombed and the trajectories of missiles — the way others track the weather. We have mastered the art of backup plans before daring to dream of a plan. We live on chronic exhaustion. We carry a strange, wordless capacity for waiting. We love, we shake, and we try to survive each day — from everything. That evening the region began to burn… And at the dawn of Monday, Lebanon burned. And I — I am still holding on to a small phrase: Let me see your faces. Fine.

I stepped into Nejmeh Square as a daughter returned to trace the features of a face long hidden behind rusted locks, barbed wire, and decisions that weighed upon the hearts of the people. I visit it for the second time since it had been closed in my face — closed in our faces, for years, those of us who once believed that squares were created to belong to us, and that cities only lock themselves in old books when historians write of sieges and wars. For long years, Nejmeh Square remained a name we pronounced with caution, gesturing toward it the way one gestures toward a wound that has not healed. It was shut by those who believed they possessed its keys, and the keys of those within it; our steps were confiscated, and our reunion with its corners — which know the sound of our footsteps better than the "guards" ever could — was indefinitely postponed. I visit it as a tourist — I, daughter of this land who had chosen to stay when leaving was easier than explaining why one stays. I chose to remain, not out of heroism or defiance, but because my roots ran too deep to be torn out by a breaking news alert or a prolonged power cut. I walk today among its elegant buildings alongside relatives whose father exile carried into the arms of "the benevolent mother," where they were born. The letter ghain dominates their accent. They never pronounced the language of the dâd as we do, and their memory was not shaped to the rhythm of generators or the calls of street vendors. They looked around with a tourist's wonder, while I looked with the wonder of someone seeing her own city from the outside. We wander together, step by step, and a landmark, a few stones that remained witnesses to ages and civilizations that passed over this land, will sometimes stop us. I explain how names succeeded one another upon the city as seasons succeed one another, how Beirut was once a port of books, once an arena of cannons, once a stage for dreams larger than its modest dimensions. In my French laced with a few words of English, I try to find the words that might compress a history that resists compression. I search my memory for neutral sentences, for a narrative that wounds no one and betrays no one, and I find myself stumbling between nostalgia and rage. Beirut was empty in a way that unsettles the heart. Not empty of people, but empty of the noise that used to fill it with meaning. Its alleyways that once hummed with voices seemed to be holding their breath, and the gleaming facades reflected a grey sky with no bottom. It is empty, except for what remains in my memory: from our repeated uprisings, with which we filled the streets with chanting and hope, to the August 4th explosion whose blast lingers still in the buildings, in the stained glass of churches, in the shops belted by iron doors half-closed. Every corner here carries an invisible trace: a small crack in a wall, or the shadow of a window whose glass will never again be what it was. I walked and saw, simultaneously, two superimposed images: the image of the city as it stands before me, and its image as it lived within me. In my memory, it was crowned with laughter that defied the weariness of days. The voice of music used to slip through narrow balconies, mingling sometimes with live gunfire, and we could not tell whether it was celebration or warning. Tear gas was part of our vocabulary, just as love was part of our small courage. I witnessed on its steps fleeting encounters, whispered confessions, and partings made in haste for fear of a breaking news alert. How do I describe to them what Beirut means to its children? How do I explain an obvious duality: a heavy exile and a restless longing? Those of us who live in it and yet sometimes feel like strangers to it, as though it were a city administered from behind thick glass we cannot reach. And at the same time, we cannot bear the thought of leaving it, because it inhabits us like the salt of the sea. I tell them that Beirut is not merely elegant buildings and a paved square, but a living memory and an open wound. In those moments, I felt that I was the real tourist. I was discovering my city as if meeting it again for the first time. Every corner pushed me toward the question: is this the city I knew, or a quieter version, less noisy, more tired? I searched the faces for a trace of what had been, for a gleam resembling the gleam I had known when we believed that tomorrow was possible. I remembered a distant day when I had believed we were as close as we would ever come to possessing this place. Then came the years when doors shut and the square became a distant image. Today, crossing it without barriers, I understood that a place is not possessed — it is lived. And that cities do not return as they were. I felt that this city, despite all it had been through, had not lost its capacity for waiting. I did not explain all of this to them. I contented myself with walking among them as a tourist seeing a city not without beauty, a city waiting to live again. I smiled when they took photographs, and pointed to the small details that the passing stranger might overlook. And within me, I hoped to return a third time — not as a tourist, but as a woman reconciled with her city, however long the waiting. We left the square. I turned back toward it the way one turns back toward an old house in which one has lived for a long time. I did not bid it farewell, because farewell implies an ending — and I understood that Beirut is a beginning that repeats itself, that has mastered the art of falling and rising, and that leaves to its children the task of loving it or of leaving it behind.