post 187/365
The Dabke is an Arabic folk dance that started in the mountainous regions above the Mediterranean coastline and the Tigriss River. It is of possible Canaanite or Phoenician origin. According to some sources the Phoenicians were the first teachers of the dance in the world, and the Dabke is a representative descendant of the Phoenician dances.
post 186/365
On the way to Tripoli, as you drive pass by Chekka, the feel of the country changes and you will directly notice that modernity has not laid its extending hands from this point forward. The road to Tripoli feels like life’s long journey, where one leaves life’s excesses and moves to a less hectic and chaotic state of being. The highway is calmer and the sky opens up to a horizon of a forgotten shoreline.
post 185/365
Today is a special post as I celebrate reaching half way through my blog. If someone had told me 8 months ago that I would start a blog and would have the discipline to sit down everyday for a couple of hours to research and write, I would have laughed and said ‘yeah right.” This blog has taught me so much and I have to admit, awakened something in me that I thought was long gone. Back when I was at AUB, I took a course in creative writing, my professor had told me to keep writing since I seem to love it so much, but in all honesty I never had the confidence, thinking that no one would want to read me. It’s really incredible how things happen in ones life and change you in ways you never thought possible.
post 184/365
Winter and spring long since passed, as cold wind, rain and frost now belong in the past, Lebanon’s starts brewing for a season of festivals taking place all over the country. Darkness thankfully no longer descends, as fast as long hot summer days arrive at long last. All around the country there is a festive atmosphere. This land becomes all flickers of light in warm weather and we know that music will fill its air from north to south, enchanting the spectators from one performance to the other.
post 182/365
On a high hill overlooking the Mediterranean some 30 miles south of Beirut lies the pilgrimage town of Maghdoucheh, famous for its 30-meter bronze shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was here in Maghdoucheh that the Virgin Mary is said to have waited in a cave for her son Jesus to return with his disciples after preaching in nearby in Sidon. The statue, which depicts Mary holding Jesus in her arms, weighs a hefty six tons and was built in 1963 above the cave in which Mary was believed to have waited.
post 181/365
The modern art of glass blowing may use modernized equipment, but the essence of working with glass remains an ancient art. Molding red-hot liquid glass to create a lasting glass artifact is an act that requires a creative mind, dexterous handwork, and stamina, a very physically draining work.
post 176/365
As you drive past Tyre and its crowded streets, the scenery becomes more rural and the sky flat above you welcomes you to a clear view of a lonely road leading to Palestine with nothing but open blue skies. There is something quiet enchanting about a road by the sea that hasn’t been tampered by civilization. Although this whole region has been occupied by Israeli forces not long ago and has seen some atrocities, today it lies calmly drifting on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
post 172/365
Beirut Madinati candidacy is not solely for the Beirut municipality elections. Beirut Madinati is a movement. While imagination flowed through every vein of every dreamer, of every person who is seeking change on Sunday the 8th of May, there was a mass awakening of a generation that felt that the oligarchs were drowning their voices out. Oligarchs who have been sworn enemies for years and yet created alliances against a group with no political power whatsoever, because they feared not only their power but ours too.
post 171/365
Beirut is a city of baffling contradictions whose character blends the sophisticated and cosmopolitan with the provincial and parochial. Our city sits atop two hills, Al-Ashrafīyeh (East Beirut) and Al-Muṣayṭibeh (West Beirut), which protrude into the sea as a roughly triangular peninsula. In the immediate hinterland lies a narrow coastal plain (Al-Sāḥil) that extends from the mouth of the Nahr Al-Kalb (Dog River) in the north to that of the Nahr Al-Dāmūr (Damur River) in the south.
post 170/365
Generosity consists not of the sum given, but the manner in which it is bestowed.
Mahatma Gandhi
365 Days of Lebanon 