We were at his place. We’ve been staying here for a while, since he hasn’t been feeling well. Mom rushed over to the balcony to see what was going on, and saw a bunch of people gathered in the street, next to the apartment next door. She tried to go downstairs, and came back a few minutes later, coughing, saying she couldn’t get below the second floor because there was so much smoke. The problem was that Pop-Pop is using a chair with wheels on it to get around. If there was a fire, she’d have to get him and me and Pop-Pop’s dog Luna downstairs. This, clearly, would not be possible.

So she leaned out of the balcony and yelled. Very loudly.

Thirty people looked up.

She yelled at the building manager to call Pop-Pop. The manager’s jaw dropped and he whipped out his phone.

The next day, while we were on our walk, she confronted the other building manager off for not having installed smoke detectors in the building. He tried to protest that “this is not Canada”. She told him off further.

I barely recognize her these days.

My mom was not exactly what you’d call a quiet person before we moved to Lebanon. But she tried to be “kind”. To make people feel comfortable, often at the expense of her own comfort. To give people the benefit of the doubt.

Here, if you give someone the benefit of the doubt, there’s a decent chance they’ll put it in their back pocket, walk in the other direction and sell it for a profit. Especially if they are a man.

When we first arrived and would go for walks, sometimes I’d pee in front of an apartment building or shop, and a man would emerge and yell. Mom was shocked. Why, she’d mutter, in a country where 70% of people smoke and the air quality is “total shit”, would they care about some organic dog pee? Then, one day, she yelled back. She didn’t try to, it just sort of happened.

“WHERE IS HE SUPPOSED TO PEE?” she shouted. “EVERYONE SAYS HE CAN’T PEE HERE OR THERE! HE’S A DOG, FOR GODSAKES!”

The man smiled. Mom smiled back. They shouted a bit back and forth and off we went. I noticed Mom was standing a little taller.

Men talk over women here all the time. They talk at women without asking them any questions. They will explain a thing back to a woman that she has just explained. Mom once sat in a lecture given by a woman with a PhD. After it was over, a man in the audience raised his hand and summarized the entire lecture in his own words. Then he crossed his arms and looked smug.

The lecture was about gender.

Mom has gotten even louder since Pop-Pop started feeling bad.

She’s raised her voice in the hospital when people were not doing what they should be to care for him. She bugs doctors to call her back. She shoots dirty looks to people who won’t get out of elevators and walk one floor so that a person in a wheelchair can get in.

Even Pop-Pop, who has commanded a room or two in his day, sometimes gets embarrassed.

“You don’t have to get so angry,” he says.

And by the way, he’s stopped saying not to call him Pop-Pop. He even lets me sleep next to him in his bed sometimes. I don’t like going on long walks anymore, because I want to keep an eye on him. Sometimes, my mom has to sing and dance just to get me to go outside to pee.

This is a situation of which I take full advantage.

In Lebanon, Mom has found people to yell with.

Together, they scream about what Israel is doing. They talk over men who try to mansplain. They make time to sit and talk and listen in the middle of a busy day. Before she started driving (during which she is also, often, very loud), her friends drove her places so she could help Pop-Pop. They sent her resources and names of people she wouldn’t have known to find herself. They pulled strings and made calls and got his medical records to cousins and brothers-in-law on different continents to get him taken care of by the right doctors. All the while, they continued to make food and get medicine to the people Israel has displaced.

This is not a place to be small and quiet.

It’s a place where people yell together, which makes space for even more people to yell.

They are starting to learn what I have known all along: when you are loud for the right reasons, you are not shouting over each other.

You are becoming a pack.

buy us a coffee

Reluctantly.

Not about the ancient souk part. You all know (or will soon learn) that I love that stuff. Reluctantly because going on dates is exhausting. Especially first dates. I’ve had a few in the last few months, and all they’ve yielded is better boundaries and deep regret.

A normal person in my situation might use my favourite Arabic word, “khallas” (enough), and call it a day. But I am not normal. Also, these are not normal times. I suspect there’s something primordial about the feeling of waking up solo in bed when the ground shakes or the skies boom. About coming home from chopping onions for hours, or making 2000 sandwiches, or spending time with people who have been sent out from their homes and then have had watch as they are destroyed.

About wanting to share it all with someone who gets it.

Again, I acknowledge my privilege. I have not been sent out of my home, or lost any of family. I am one of the lucky ones.

But also, and this is really hard to admit: I’m tired of taking care of myself all the time.

My date has not come to pick me up because his car has broken down. Or so he says. He offered to take public transport to meet me near my dad’s, where I stayed last night, but I really want to see that ancient souk.

So my dad is driving me. Like I was 17, and he used to drop me off, ominously say “be careful”, then come pick me up three hours later and pretend I didn’t reek of Eternity by Calvin Klein.

“Why isn’t he coming to get you?” Dad asks, for the second time, as I’m putting on my shoes.

“He’s having car trouble,” I say, desperately hoping this is true.

“Where are you meeting?”

I show him the location.

“That’s right next to the highway.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I just drop you off in the old town?”

“Because this is where he suggested, Dad, and he said it’s a 5-minute walk into the old town, and can you just please trust the situation?”

“Give me his number.”

“What? Why?”

“For safety.”

“If he kills me, his phone number isn’t going to help very much.”

“Yes,” Dad says. “It will.”

My dad’s and my roles in each other’s lives are starting to bend.

He’s been having back pain. I started walking his very large labrador, Luna, and doing more cooking and cleaning when I come over. Then I managed, successfully, to get him to get some help for when I’m not there.

He still stays keenly on top of my whereabouts (part of the deal we made when the war started—he has my location on his phone), and makes it known when I’m stepping into “making Dad worry” territory. Once, when I was south of Beirut, he called me in a panic because my phone showed that I was at the Amman Airport. (Yes, our neighbours even f***k with our GPS.)

“I’m not,” I said, triumphant that at least he’d be less pissed off.

“Why are you in the middle of nowhere? Who with? You know this isn’t a real ceasefire, don’t you?”

Since his back has gotten worse, he’s started letting me drive his car. Since driving here more of a competitive sport than a way to get around, this is no small thing. In Lebanon, lanes are a suggestion. People honk at you if you stop for red lights. One-way streets are just streets with one-way signs on them.

When I first started, he’d sit next to me, helpfully repeating the exact same thing the Google Maps lady just said, or, “Stay to the left because you have to exit in 1km.”

Just like he did when I learned to drive the first time around.

I’m in the basement of our volunteer-run kitchen. It’s a sunny day, and a friend and I are laughing as we fold donated clothes and sort them in boxes. The non-ceasefire is continuing. The streets of central Beirut feel as normal as they get. It’s like a pause, a deep breath before more unknown.

I check my phone and see a text from my dad. “Call me.”

I race upstairs to the terrace to get reception.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says, “but my back is really bad. I can’t walk on my right leg.”

The thing I always think when I’m hit with a logistical challenge in life, especially in Lebanon, is: “I need to ask my dad what to do.”

I actually open my mouth to say this.

I close it.

My brain goes over the impossibility loop again.

Everything around me is very bright.

I say, quietly, “What should I do?”

We decide that I should come to his place right away, and that if he’s not better the next day, he’ll go to the hospital. In slow motion, I return downstairs, tell everyone what’s happened, and cry on my friend’s shoulder for 30 seconds.

Another volunteer drives me home to get my clothes and Django and then for more than an hour through rush hour traffic.

In Lebanon, as a woman, you are identified as the closest man in your life. On many of my documents here, my name is my first name, then my dad’s first name, then my last name.

And now, I am helping him put on his socks. Taking him to medical appointments. Getting groceries while he sits in the car, instructing me on how to choose good pomegranates.

Hearing him say, for the first time in my life, what a good driver I am.

On the date with Ancient Souk Guy, we sat for two hours talking in an amphitheatre, surrounded by crumbling ruins. We stood between Roman columns and discussed philosophy. He was handsome and political and vehemently pro-animal rights. He asked when he could see me again before we said goodbye.

I caught myself wondering if this was really happening.

On our second date, he fat-shamed one of my friends, shared that he did not believe that the patriarchy exists, and added that he does not really see the point of boundaries, or, for that matter, consent.

I have spent the last decades running decisions about banking, cars, and insurance policies past the man who raised me. Who is far from being a feminist, but who told me repeatedly, as soon as I could understand it, that I could do anything a boy could do.

Who encouraged me to travel. Who taught me how to drive stick.

And also, how to shoot a gun.

Khallas.

A month has passed since that date.

I’m driving myself to the same city, although not to the ancient part. I’m headed to the less beautiful new area, which has a hospital where I need to go to make a deposit on a scan for my dad. He can’t even walk now, let alone drive.

He is as happy about the situation as you can imagine.

I spent a lifetime refusing to believe that I would ever be in this role. Had you told me how heavy it would feel to see my father suffer, I would have assured you this was a weight I could not bear.

It’s been almost impossible to focus, let alone write this post.

We’re still waiting for more tests to get a proper prognosis, but whatever they are, it’s not going to be an easy road. I think we’re both wavering between denial, hope, and bone-deep fear.

The fake cease fire continues.

So do daily bombings and invasions of people’s homes. Journalists are still being assassinated. Hundreds of thousands of families have no home to return to. And western media is barely saying a word.

Truth Be Told, the organization where I’ve been volunteering and which many of you have generously supported over the last two months, is looking for a new home, possibly one where we can open our doors to the community and build something more lasting, more interactive, and more sustainable. Your donations are continuing to support what I can say with certainty is one of the most hardworking NGOs ever to exist—and one of the few spaces that’s keeping this particular human afloat.

I shared my latest news with a friend on the phone the other day.

She said something that stuck with me: “The love with which we run to help… that’s where the hope lies.”

If you want to support the work Truth Be Told is doing, please contact me to donate by Wise/direct deposit, or donate directly through Truth Be Told (all their info is on their Instagram page, if you don’t have Instagram message me and I’ll send it to you!)

If you want to donate with a credit card via this substack, please click the donate button below.

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You try to eat enough to have energy for the day, which you keep not doing.

You apologize to your dog, Django, for leaving him at home.

You get a taxi.

The driver turns out to be one of your favourites, a guy who’s picked you up a few times before. He always looks in the rearview and checks to see if you’re ready to go, and says “yalla” as he takes off, as if you are both headed off on a long and perilous journey, rather than the 12-minute trip to Mar Mikhaël.

As the taxi sails along the highway, you think, for the thousandth time, how Beirut, is your city. How after all that searching for home, you’re finally here, on the land of your father, and of your grandmother. How despite the absolute shitshow that it is right now, there is nowhere else you’d rather be.

You pass seas of tents by the port. Displaced kids playing football. Women hanging clothes in the sun.

You arrive at the restaurant. Here, a makeshift kitchen has been set up downstairs, where you have been helping to cook and package food for the 1.5 million displaced people in your country. You’ve been doing this for the past three weeks. Or four? You don’t remember. Time has gone weird.

You and the taxi driver exchange warm goodbyes.

You go downstairs.

You greet some volunteers you’ve never met before, put on your hairnet and get to work, chopping onions and cabbage.

After an hour or so, the food is ready to be cooked, so there’s a break. You go back upstairs and do some work on your laptop. You worry about your dad, who has been having back issues. You worry, a little bit, about your love life.

Some volunteers you know arrive, so you sit with them in the sun, talking about the latest updates on the latest bombings; the latest politicians’ latest promises. The chef comes up to say the food is ready, and you all head back downstairs to package it. There is barely any cell reception downstairs, so it’s not until someone’s phone accidentally gets service that you all realize what is going on.

Everyone races upstairs, calling their families. People start calling out neighbourhoods that were struck. The one you live next to. The one where you walked the other day. One near where friends of yours live.

Beirut neighbourhoods are tiny, sometimes two or three blocks.

You quickly text your dad.

“Stay away from glass,” he orders.

You look around the restaurant, which is walled on two sides by floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Okay,” you text back.

Traffic backs up to a standstill. Sirens everywhere. You sit down at a bar table, at a loss for what to do.

“Nowhere is safe,” one of the volunteers says, staring at Instagram. “We’re fucked.”

A song about breakups comes on the stereo. You had listened to on repeat a few weeks back, before this all started, after a bad end to a bad situationship. You stare outside at the traffic, thinking about how you felt back then.

It seems, from here, like a 2D cartoon.

The volunteer who said that nowhere is safe asks if you are okay. They ask it so gently, you almost start crying. You text your housemate for the 40th time and ask how Django is doing. You know that the sound of the bombs terrify him.

“They’re calling it Operation Eternal Darkness,” another volunteer says, looking up from her phone. “If I used that in a book, people would laugh at me.”

At a loss for what else to do, you all head back downstairs and package the food.

After you’re finished, it’s time to face facts: you need to get home. Eventually. Probably. It’s going to get dark soon. Your housemate suggests walking, and together, you come up with the safest route. You text your dad with this plan.

“Are you insane?” he writes back.

But traffic is still barely moving, and if something is to happen, being in open air somehow seems preferable to being stuck in a taxi, especially one surrounded by other cars. And Israel likes to do their dirty work after dark.

“Go now,” your dad relents. “Call me every 20 minutes.”

You take off.

You pass a woman getting her highlights done.

An old man sitting on the sidewalk, selling flowers.

Two separate men jogging with headphones in.

Empty cafes, still open, employees hunched over their phones.

Even though it is sunny and bright, it starts to rain.

Beauty. So much beauty. So much history, like all the rah-rah-Beirut instagram posts say, but it is. It really fucking is. There is nowhere on earth so beautiful and so real.

You realize there’s no cell reception.

You shove your sunglasses on.

You pass through Martyr’s Square, the main square of the city, home to a huge church and a huge mosque. It’s empty, save for a few displaced families, huddled together, staring at the sky.

You pass a Lebanese Armed Forces guy standing on the street. You smile at him. He stares at you suspiciously.

The traffic has cleared up. You could hail a taxi now, but you don’t. It’s as if you need to be here. This walk has become a mantra. An honouring. A prayer.

Also, you’re more or less levitating with adrenaline.

“I’m following your location,” your dad texts, which means cell reception must be working again. You realize that this might be as close as you’ve ever been to the James Bond movies you two used to watch together when you were little, and still do at Christmas time, which always felt so far from reality.

You realize you have no cash. You don’t want to stop, but what if you need cash tomorrow? Because who knows what’s going to happen? This would never happen to James Bond. Very quickly, you get cash from an ATM, and walk on.

“What’s happening?” your dad texts.

“I’m passing the Rolex store,” you say. “I’m definitely safe.” Winky emoji.

You’re almost running.

Around the curve. Across the main road. Up the street you walk most mornings with Django. Around the corner to your street.

Inside.

You text your dad.

“Home,” you say.

“Thank god,” he says.

Django goes insane, barking and hopping up and down on his hind legs. You sit on the floor, covered in sweat, hugging him and kissing him, whispering to him what a good boy he is. You get up to take a shower.

Another boom.

And one more.

You and your housemate move away from the windows, Django in your arms.

Eventually you just fucking shower. Then you sit on your bed and eat the Cadbury Cream Egg you buy every Easter and save for a special occasion, because god almighty.

You scroll, through names and photos of the dead.

A man who worked at the nearby Thai place you always go to.

A man who worked for a beloved local nut company.

A 2-year old boy. A famous poet. Entire families.

A building 1km away has come down. People are still trapped inside.

The number of martyrs from this one day will be over 300.

You post on Instagram, again and again, news stories and statistics and videos of smoke and destruction.

And it occurs to you. For the first time, clearly, why you do this. Why you have been doing this for so long.

It is a plea for people to care.

It’s the same plea people have made to you from the wars and genocides they were living in, as you sat in the safety of your life.

A plea for people to look up from their jobs and daily stresses and see us.

To see us, and to do something, even if that something is collective care in their own communities.

But also, to remind them that there is so much more they could do.

What’s it going to take?

That’s what people asked you, and now you are asking others, from your bed in your safe apartment as the sun goes down over the land you choose and millions did not choose to call home.

As rescue workers dig up bodies, as families reel with shock, as people’s lives end.

You never thought you would live a day like this.

If you hadn’t lived through it—I mean, not all the way through it—some people from the west might care more.

But you did.

So what’s it going to take? Does this have to happen to everyone?

Because if we all start doing something before that, we might stand a fucking chance.

If you want to support the life-saving work Truth Be Told is doing, please contact me to donate by Wise/direct deposit, or donate directly through Truth Be Told (all their info is on their Instagram page, if you don’t have Instagram message me and I’ll send it to you!)

If you want to donate with a credit card via this substack, please click the donate button below.

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Behind them you’ll see a woman with curly brown hair, hunched over a laptop. Around her will be boxes of packaged meals, bags of clothes, diapers and menstrual pads.

Behind all that, you’ll see the gates of the park itself. Covering 0.3 km², Horsh, which could be called Beirut’s Central Park, is filled with grass and tree-lined paths. It’s an ideal place, if you could ever use that term, where displaced people could camp during a war, which is what happened in 2024.

This year, it’s empty.

Until the time of this writing, the mayor of Beirut won’t allow displaced people to camp inside the park, citing “safety issues”. Which is why you’ll see an endless row of tents on the sidewalk around its perimeter, with tarps over them to protect from the torrential rain. Horsh is within reach from the rest of the city, and for some people who live day to day and still need to commute to their daily jobs, it’s the only option. The sidewalk tent city currently houses about 1000 people.

Although last week, in many cases, there weren’t even tents. Just mattresses, on concrete. And rain.

The curly-haired woman with the laptop is Yara Sayegh. During the 2024 war, Yara saw that neither the Lebanese government nor any political party were helping the displaced people camping inside Horsh Beirut, so Truth Be Told, the organization she founded, stepped in.

“They weren’t even allowing people to use the park’s bathrooms,” Yara explains. “So I paid for the water to be turned on. Thankfully the bathrooms are open this year, but there are no showers in them, just toilets and sinks. People shower only once a week or once every two weeks, some of them only when they take the risk to return to their homes in Dahiye.”

Yara knows all of this because she is at Horsh every single day. After gathering cooking supplies, she drives to Riwaq Cafe, Truth Be Told’s current unofficial headquarters, where she joins volunteers preparing, cooking, and packaging food and supplies. Then she loads everything into her car (sometimes taking two or three trips to get it all) and transports it over to the park. There, she spends at least three hours making sure every family—whom she knows by name, age of children, and often medical needs—gets diapers, clothing in the right size, and medication (if there are funds for it), as well as the hot meals. She records it all in her database on the laptop, drives back to Riwaq, tracks everything, makes invoices for every single donation, and prepares what’s needed for the next day, sometimes until 3 or 4am. Then she wakes up and does it all over again, with no breaks or weekends, and for no pay.

“I have this belief in life,” she tells me. “I want every person I look at to know that I see them. If I was ever in such a condition, I would hope somebody would look at me. We don’t see each other anymore. We don’t acknowledge that we’re all the same. We’re all humans.”

On Monday, I join Yara and some other volunteers in Horsh Beirut. We pack up two cars with bags of clothes, menstrual pads, and diapers that had been labelled for each family by number, along with the close to 400 meals we cooked that day.

We pull up at the front of the park, and the guard grins and waves us in.

Yara gets out of her car and is immediately mobbed.

We distributed the food first, which, for some, is the only meal they will get today. Then, Yara begins to call out names. A gentleman in a beige shirt echoes each name across the crowd, and then others re-echo it further in case the person in question didn’t hear. People mill around with red-rimmed eyes and tired faces. One man, holding a crying child, is clearly just back from his construction job. Another volunteer, Rindala, and I chat with some people waiting to pick up supplies, Rindala translating everything.

“We are not street dogs,” one woman tells us, quietly. “We’re like you. I have a degree. My husband has a master’s degree. My children are in university abroad. We want to be treated with respect.” She pauses and gazes at the group. “We are so grateful for Yara.”

A petite woman with a ponytail sidles up to us and grins. Rindala explains to her that I’m writing a story about life at Horsh and Yara’s work, and asks if she’d like to chat with us.

“Come,” she says, motioning, and steers us down the street.

We follow her across a busy 4-lane road, then along a sidewalk lined with tents and tarps, passing a wheelchair, a man in prayer on a rug, a makeshift vegetable shop. It takes a few minutes of walking to reach a small, navy blue tent, from which a tiny woman draped in black emerges.

“My mother,” our host explains.

The woman in black grasps both our hands, her smile a mirror of her daughter’s.

“Habibti, habibti,” she says to us. “May God bless you.”

The daughter tells us they’re originally from Jbeil, but live in Dahiye. They were evacuated in the last war, too. In her normal life, the daughter says, she’s a teacher.

“Biology, physics, chemistry, math,” she says in English, proudly. “If the schools stay closed, I will teach the kids here for free.”

She explains that they try to fill their days, playing soccer with the kids, meeting people and making new friends.

“We can’t keep crying,” she tells us. “We have to stay strong until it’s over.”

She insists we take some date cookies (maamoul) from a box in their tent. Two preteen girls and a little boy crowd around us, asking our names in Arabic and English.

“This tent,” our host tells us, “is from Yara. She gave us blankets and medication, too. She’s helped every single person here. When we have more than we need, we share it.”

One of the girls shows me a bottle of nail polish. I think she wants me to paint her nails, but after miming and hand gestures, I realize she wants to paint mine. I shake my head apologetically, explaining that they will get ruined as I work.

The woman explains that her aunt is in the US, and would have brought her over, but she didn’t want to leave Lebanon.

“This is my country,” she says. “There’s still a lot of love between people here.”

The ladies ask where I’m from, and when Rindala explains that I’m half Lebanese, all of them, including the kids, break into a cheer.

Something else Yara said, when I asked her what motives her: “This is what I hope to build in this country. We belong to Lebanon.”

It starts to drizzle again.

I ask Rindala to tell the woman that it was her smile that caught our attention. She lights up, and says she felt the same about us. We hug, and one of the young girls exclaims something and points upwards. We turn to look.

Hanging low in the sky, a sliver of a crescent moon.

Our host tells Rindala and I, who both tower over her by more than a foot, that she’ll walk us back to the park gates, “So you’re safe”.

As we leave, one of the girls shouts after us. I’m not sure what she’s trying to express, but what she says is,

“I am love! I am love!”

We wave back at her until she’s out of sight.

Below are two videos about Horsh Beirut’s current situation and the work Yara and Truth Be Told are doing. Please, if you haven’t already and are able to support, contact me to donate by Wise/direct deposit, or donate directly through Truth Be Told (all their info is on their Instagram page, if you don’t have Instagram message me and I’ll send it to you!) If you want to donate with a credit card via this substack, please click the donate button below.

donate

Now, this area is full of tents and families. Since last count, there are 1.5 million displaced people in Lebanon.

I haven’t been there since the war began. Nina has. Like in the last war (a term thrown around so casually here you’d think we were talking about “last winter”—oh wait, we are), she drove down there, brought her dog and some boxes of snacks, and went to see how she could help out. A couple of kids ran over and asked for dog cuddles. Nina met their parents, and their grandmother and older brother. She asked them if there was anything they needed.

What they needed, they said, was a shower.

A few of days ago, they came over to our place to have one. I ran out to the store to get some cookies and juice, and as I was coming back, I saw them all standing at the end of our street with Nina. I went over to see what was going on.

Nina explained that the security guard wanted the family’s IDs. Which is standard practice now, because people are afraid that if you bring the “wrong” people into your home, the assholes who are currently holding the world hostage might blow up your building.

This is how you divide a population.

The family didn’t have their IDs with them. The mom was on the phone with the dad (who hadn’t come) to see if he could send a photo of the IDs, so we could show it to the guard, so that two women and three children could come into our home and bathe. Because of a fake country that steals people’s land and shoots kids for sport—and the elites who profit off of all that.

As Nina debated, in her friendly way, with the guard, and he debated back, this family stood there with their bags of towels and clean clothes, holding the situation with the kind of dignity I could not have mustered in a million years.

I grinned at the girl. She grinned back. I introduced myself. The grandma shook my hand. Nina told me their names, which I will not, for obvious reasons, share here.

Finally, the guard gave us the go-ahead.

Have you ever sat with five people who have been ejected from their house because two countries have decided they are sub-human?

What would you chat about?

The weather, which they are sleeping in?

The food that’s being brought to them in plastic containers?

Whether their house is still standing?

Fortunately, kids are amazing.

We hit a ball around with paddle rackets and the dogs chased after it. They told us how about their cats, which they left behind, because in the last war they brought their one cat when they evacuated, but he ran away. A neighbour is feeding the cats, they told us. This neighbour doesn’t have kids, and doesn’t want to leave.

Every time I heard a noise outside, I prayed that a bomb wouldn’t fall within earshot. Like that would somehow make the whole situation better.

We made tea. I gave the kids dog treats and showed them how to hold them out for Django. They told me what grades they were in.

“I want to be a chef when I grow up,” the girl said, her eyes sparkling. Her mom nodded, proudly.

I gave air fist pumps and asked what kinds of things she liked to make.

“Pasta! And jello.”

Not once did anyone complain about the situation. They just got their things and went into the shower and came out and packed them away, one by one. The grandma kept speaking to me in Arabic. I kept trying to understand, and then the boys would interject and translate. Finally, she said something to me, and her eyes filled with tears.

The older boy said, quietly, “She just wants to go to home.”

After everyone took their showers, they quickly packed up and left.

The grandma made Nina promise to bring me to the waterfront next time.

I promised I would come.

And Nina walked them downstairs, past the guard, and back out into the night.

It’s my birthday on Monday. If you’d like to “celebrate” (…) with me, I’m continuing to raise money for the orgs staffed by volunteers who are making food, gathering blankets, tents, medication, and clothes for the displaced people here, and delivering them.

If you’d like to contribute, please click the “donate” button below, or email me and we can figure out a way to transfer, or donate directly to Truth Be Told, Nation Station, or Barzakh.

To give you an idea of the cost of things right now:

— a medium-quality tent is roughly $55 USD

— a medium-quality blanket is roughly $12 USD

— it costs approximately $200 USD to feed one person for a month

No amount is too small.

Canadians (or anyone!), you can listen to a CBC interview with the Truth Be Told Founder here.

donate

I searched and searched, but couldn’t find a single thing to send her.

How do you tell someone who’s living under a hailstorm of bombs that “The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom”?

How do you advise someone whose people are actively being genocided while the world watches that “The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle”?

It had never fully occurred to me how meditation, this practice I find so important and helpful and want so many people to know about to the point that I actually teach it, is limited, at least in the west, to apply only to the lives of privileged white people.

And now, here I am.

Three days after the war began*, I went to visit my dad.

He lives away from the city, in an area that’s usually not affected by any of that pesky war stuff. Case in point: I went to meet a friend for coffee in a neighbourhood nearby. The street was closed to traffic that day, and it felt like we were in a festival. Kids paraded around blowing bubbles and riding bikes. Families sat on patios sharing plates of nachos and $9 glasses of kombucha. You’d never know that there was a war happening just down the road. That hundreds of thousands of people had just been threatened by the genociders to leave their homes or die, and were now living in the streets, in shelters, in their cars, and in tents on the beach.*

You certainly wouldn’t see a single one of them here.

I have a friend who grew up in Dahiyeh. His home has been hit by airstrikes. His mother is currently displaced, as are many members of his family.

He told me once that this country is made up of “Lebanese, and lesser Lebanese”.

There are a whole bunch of people in my life I suddenly find myself unable to talk to.

Some are old friends. Some are more recent friends. Some are from recovery circles. One was my sponsor, two are (or were) my sponsees.

This is not a judgement on anybody. It’s what has felt most right and kind. The majority of people I know are in the west, and are dealing with things that right now, I can’t wrap my head around—family dynamics, dating, overeating, court cases with ex-spouses. And I’m going through something that they, understandably, can’t imagine, and struggle to respond to. Some of them don’t even know about it, because Western media is not talking about it very much, which is a tangent and I’ll spare you from right at this moment.

The thing is, I myself only crossed this line two weeks ago. There, I was spending an awful lot of time worrying about my finances and researching attachment wounds. Now, I’m chopping tomatoes in a community kitchen and (as I type this) closing our windows because the air smells like white phosphorus. Two weeks ago, I was trying to recover from being love-bombed.

Now… well.

And it can’t be overstated: I am in an extremely privileged position. Millions of people in this region stand much further across that line than I do. They have lost their homes. Their friends. Their children. Their livelihoods.

Their limbs. Their lives.

My dad and I often disagree on why things are happening in this country.

We argue about how it’s being run. What should be done about it. The motivations of certain persons in power (not Trump or Satanyahoo, thankfully). And we both think each other is way too stubborn.

Lately, we’ve learned to mostly avoid these topics.

I didn’t know it yet, but half an hour before I got in the taxi to go see him, US-ra-hell had ordered all of Dahiyeh to evacuate. People were trying to flee with no place to go; trying to find accommodations when many refuse to accept them. Cars were backed up for miles.

When I got to my dad’s, I disappeared into my phone, trying to learn more. This made no sense to my father. What could I possibly do from here? he asked. I got annoyed that he didn’t get it. He (probably) got annoyed that I didn’t get it. Finally, he poured me a glass of wine and made a half-hearted joke about how maybe that would help me relax. I laughed a little bit and so did he.

A couple of days later, I mention something about “When I go back to Beirut”.

My dad’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“What do you mean?” I say.

Turns out he thought I was staying with him until things “got better”, and that returning to a city in the middle of a war wasn’t the greatest plan.

You might agree with him. I respect that.

But one of the things I’ve learned in the last couple of years that action is the antidote to despair.

Right now, helping in those kitchens and teaching meditation are the only times I feel even remotely useful. Also, all the (very patient) meditation teachers who put up with trained me over the last decade have been adamant about one thing: we do this to help cease suffering. We are there for people when things fall apart.

Or, as one of my teachers wrote me over the weekend: Revolutions are tough. Sacrifices are necessary.

One does not, however, successfully argue this point with one’s not-so-young-anymore Lebanese father, who has just dropped the line, “if you go back to Beirut, I won’t be able to function”.

I take a deep breath. He takes advantage of my momentary silence.

“When you drive in a car,” he tells me, “you wear your seatbelt. The seatbelt doesn’t control whether you have an accident, but it helps you stay safe. This is like that. You do what’s within what’s in your control.”

“I haven’t worn a seatbelt for the last 6 months,” I snap.

It’s such a dumb, teenager-like thing to say, but I can’t help it. The whole conversation is reminiscent of my teenage years. Except without the war part.

His eyebrows go higher.

I say, “Taxis here don’t have seatbelts.”

As if that nails it.

Eventually, after we’ve taken a few hours to cool off, we reach a compromise: I will return to Beirut, but stay only in certain neighbourhoods at certain hours and tell him of my whereabouts.

To my surprise, he doesn’t give me any more grief about it for the rest of my visit.

Later that night, I call my Dahiyeh friend. He lives in Montreal now, but he’s the most streetwise Beiruti I know. There’s one neighbourhood my dad wants me to avoid, and I’ve just started teaching there. I’m sure my friend is going to agree with me that my father is overreacting.

To my surprise, he says the opposite.

“I’d stay away for now,” he advises.

The next morning, Isr@el strikes a building two or three blocks from where I teach.

I started writing this three days ago, and already feel like a different person than I was then. With every sonic boom, every evacuation warning, every explosion, every massacre, that divide grows bigger. So does, apparently, the line between the sects of this country.

And yet, people keep coming together. They meet in community kitchens and arts centres; in hair salons and empty shops. They stuff pillows and find baby formula, to feed animals and call for blood donations, to find mattresses and blankets. They trade information on apartments that will accept people from the south. They jump to answer questions like, “Did anyone in X neighbourhood hear that blast?”

When I leave my dad’s to return to Beirut, he walks down to get my taxi with me. He explains to the driver where to take me, and then hugs me for a split-second longer than usual.

“Text me when you get home,” he says, and I nod. “And when you go out, and when you get home again.”

I promise that I will. To my surprise, the back seat of the taxi has a seatbelt.

I put it on.

We wave goodbye, and I head back to the street he grew up on.

To the city that, despite our differences, we and millions of people love. Fiercely, deeply, and forever.

Since the last post, you have helped raised almost $900 USD for Nation Station and Barzakh Space, both of whom are making meals for displaced people, staffed entirely by volunteers.

THANK YOU!

Here’s a video about the work they’re doing:

They continue to need our support. If you have trouble with the links or the international money/transfer stuff, you can do it through me—just respond to this email and I’ll help you do it, or send me a message and you can do through the “make a 1-time donation” button below.

Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, that teacher I mentioned is giving a retreat that you can attend online (or in person) in late March. It’s called “Meditation in Times of Conflict”. I guarantee it will change your life. If you want to talk to me about it, you can also reply to this email.

make a 1-time donation

*if you don’t count the 15,000 times the genocidal entity breached the ceasefire since 2025.

** As of this writing, that number is estimated at over 815,000, or 14% of the country’s population.

Since moving here, I have continuously confused thunder with bombs and fireworks with gunfire. But this morning, it’s abundantly clear. I’ve never heard a sound like that before. You hear it in your stomach. You feel it with your lungs.

And we are 5 km away.

What was less clear, especially when half asleep, was what to do.

Vaguely recalling a story of how my grandma would hide in the bathtub during the civil war, I leave my bedroom. I spot one of my housemates sitting on the living room couch.

“It’s a good idea to get away from the windows,” she says, comforting her dog.

Stunned, I sit down next to her.

I’m holding Django, who’s shivering with fear. Our other housemate appears.

“What are you doing?” she asks, foggily.

I’m already glued to my phone. The repeated banging sounds seem to have stopped.

“Try not to worry,” she says, and shuffles off back to bed.

Later in the day, my Arabic teacher and someone I meet for the first time will both ask if I’ve lived through a war here before. I say no, and they shake their heads, knowingly.

“You’ll get used to it,” they say.

The first person I text that morning is my dad, of course.

He lives north of me, between a 25 and a 1.5 hour drive away, depending on traffic. He’s often up at this time for what he calls his “awake nap”.

“Dad”, I write. Then, “Airstrikes in Dahiye”.

My texts stay on unread.

At a loss, I go back to bed, as far away from my window as possible, and scroll through half of the internet. Django burrows into my side. I text my meditation teacher, who is also my mentor in all things political. He updates me on Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar. Rising gas prices. Geopolitical analyses.

I check my messages again. My dad has now read my texts, but still hasn’t replied. My heart beating faster, I call. He doesn’t answer. What the actual fuck? He will hate me for publishing this, but he is no longer a spring chicken. I moved here partly to be near him. And— according to the internet—the highways are now full of people evacuating from the south. I could’t get to him quickly if I needed to.

Because people are leaving their homes to go to shelters, or parks, or places unknown. For most of them, this is the second time in less than two years. They have lost homes. Olive groves. Livelihoods. Futures.

Parents, siblings, friends, children.

I text my brother, who’s in Montreal and still awake. He says he hasn’t heard from Dad either, but “don’t worry”. This is the same father, I joke, who is constantly lecturing me for turning my phone on airplane when I go to bed, to the point that I now put it on sleep mode so that only his number can get through. Since I moved here, if he texts me and doesn’t hear back for a couple of hours, he calls me. If I don’t answer that, he calls my housemate.

I scroll some more and worry some more and finally, at 6:30, he calls.

“Did you not see what I wrote?” I snap.

“Yeah,” he says, sleepily. “I just didn’t realize you wanted me to answer.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Anyone Lebanese who’s reading this of that generation, or with parents of that generation, is probably nodding their head knowingly. They’ve watched this country fall apart, again and again. They’ve hid in their bathtubs. They’ve worried from afar and from near.

So did anyone who lived through 2006. Or, of course, 2024 to 2025.

Later that morning, check-ins from friends in similar time zones start to come in. In the afternoon, they come from Canada and the States.

“Natalie. I need another update from you.”

“This might be a stupid question, but are you okay?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Some people go on to tell me they’re worrying about me. Or they ask when I can leave. How I might leave? They give me advice. They tell me how this war is affecting them.

I know these messages come from a place love. If you sent me anything like this, I love and appreciate you.

But please don’t.

(Please read the full post above if you can.)

I have sent those kinds of messages in the past to friends who were in crisis.

I’ve also done the thing of, “Oh, I’m not going to check in on them or ask how they’re doing because they’re probably overwhelmed and don’t want to hear from me.”

I now know to never do this again.

And lastly, I’ve done that thing (hey, just last week) when I was in such an emotionally dark place that checking up on a friend seemed like too much. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in recovery, it’s that emotional spirals lose strength when you share them. Same with that thing of not following the news because “there’s nothing I can do about other people’s suffering”. There is. I promise.

Call your friends. Text them. Send them a DM. It can be three words. Two. Don’t expect a response, but know that it will mean something. And if you don’t say anything… trust me. It will mean something, too.

The next day, I head to a neighbourhood kitchen that’s making food for displaced people. As someone who speaks almost zero Arabic, it’s one of the only ways I feel like I can do something.

As I get ready to leave, I ask my housemate if I can borrow some socks. I’m completely out, because I’d thought I’d be going to my dad’s this week, which is where I do my laundry. (Before you judge: he has a dryer. We do not.)

“But then I couldn’t,” I conclude, “because there was a war.”

“See?” she says. “Now you’re getting the hang of living here.”

At the kitchen, we prepare 500 meals. It takes fifteen of us several hours. There are, by official count, 60,000 displaced people by the end of the second day. Which means we’ve fed less than 1% of them one meal.

(Since I started to write this post, it has been stated that Israel plans to evacuate 200,000 residents from Lebanon. That’s 15% of the population.)

There are similar kitchens popping up around the city. One of them is in one of my favourite cafes, which is also a second-hand bookstore and event space. I was supposed to facilitate a gathering there tonight, but’s been cancelled, like most things happening in the city this week.

I speak to the owner, who says that they’ve got more than enough volunteers. (I’ve never seen this many people jump to help this quickly in a crisis .) But what they do need, he says, are funds to buy food.

If you’d like to contribute to either of these kitchens, which I vouch for 100%, the details are below. (By the way, if you’re a paying subscriber to this newsletter, your payments are still turned off—now, more than ever, I don’t know how much I’ll be posting over the coming weeks. )

If you don’t have Western Union or don’t want to use it, please contact me directly. I have Wise (and direct deposit in Canada) and will send receipts/proof of payment for anything that goes through me.

If you want to donate via Stripe, please click the button below. All funds will go towards these two projects.

Donate

Please don’t turn off the news. Please check in on your friends, no matter what they’re going through, and what you’re going through.

There are no “other people”. The longer we think this way, the worse it’s gonna get.

love,

Natalie

I lean against the sink, look at my face in the mirror, and take a deep breath.

“Fuck,” I say, quietly.

Then, louder: “FUCK.”

Then: “FUUUUCCKK.”

I mostly swiped right because of the quote he put in his bio.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal. I heard this quote from my first dharma teacher, and it has never fully left my mind.

We texted for days before meeting. In contrast to the, “Hey, how’s your day going?” I get from most guys here, he was endlessly curious about my life. He shared pieces of his story in voice notes sent in stolen moments at his busy job: how he lost everything in the economic collapse in 2019, and how that led him to question everything. We have the same politics; the same collectivist beliefs. We both love nature and dogs and struggle with city life and rage against the system. We both love this land.

He’s named after the patron saint of Lebanon. That’s not giving anything away—it’s one of the most common Christian names here. There’s a mountain named for this saint. You can make a pilgrimage to his grave. He was said to perform miraculous healings.

Now, we’ve been in this restaurant for hours, talking. We’ve gone on rants about religious intolerance, laughed, finished each other’s sentences. We've brought up the same movies, the same books, the same philosophers.

We have the same birthday.

The date is 7 hours long.

The day before Christmas—a few days after the texting began and a couple before we’d actually met—I take a taxi to my dad’s place. The taxi driver is younger than most, energetic and chatty. When I tell him I was born in Canada, he lights up.

“My best friend lives in Canada.” he says. “He tells me that everyone there is so honest! He says that in Canada, they tell the truth 90% of the time. Here in Lebanon, we tell the truth 10% of the time.”

He’s smiling, and his tone is light, but this statement makes my heart turn cold.

“Really?” I say, more quietly than I mean to.

“Just be careful. Especially when it comes to business deals.”

I can’t help myself. “What about… um, dating?”

He laughs again. He tells me he has been married for a long time.

“I only lie to my wife so that she worries about me less,” he says. “But when she finds out I’ve lied, she lies too. See?” he adds, triumphantly. “90%.”

I nod. He catches my eye in the rearview mirror and his smile fades.

“Just be careful,” he says, again.

The texts from the saint slow down, almost imperceptibly. There are fewer good mornings and goodnights, and less voice notes. Or is it just me, interpreting everything through the lens of all my trauma and my baggage? After all, I’m on holidays in my comfortable life while he’s working two jobs and supporting his parents. And he’s still making plans for us: movies we’re going to see, places we’re going to go.

Our second date is three days after the first. We watch a film about revolution (you know the one.) We take turns pausing it so we can leap onto tangents. He tells me he wants to be in a relationship with me.

We go through a bottle of wine, and he asks if there is more.

I don’t like how I’m starting to feel, this jitteryness, this butterfly-ey-ness. I’ve lost my appetite. I’m finding it hard to sleep. This shouldn’t be happening—I teach meditation, for fucksakes! I’m coming up on 10 years in recovery.

I meditate extra and do my own kind of prayers, not towards any saints, to help me see clearly.

I talk to my friends, who advise me to be patient. I (ugh) talk to ChatGPT, who assures me that there are no red flags yet. I realize that I’m letting this dude take the lead, and just mirroring him. When I started dating again, I promised myself that I’d never be anything less than fully myself, even if it scared people away. I remembered how the late poet Andrea Gibson said that if you want love, be love.

I send a warm voice note, and immediately receive an even warmer reply, suggesting we see each other that night.

My anxiety calms. I mean, we’re still exchanging messages multiple times a day.

“You need to feel comfortable sharing anything,” he told me, before we even met.

One of my recovery friends tells me, “You can’t learn from mistakes you don’t make.”

The saint lives close to the area where my dad is. The “Christian bubble”, he calls it. He hates the religious divisions in this country.

“Imagine,” he tells me. “Some people here are happy when Israel strikes the south.”

All around the Christian bubble there are images to and shrines of the Virgin Mary. They are in street corners, in parks, in tiny grottos on the side of the road (does it count as a grotto if a person can’t get inside it?) They are in front of apartment buildings, and on the sides of apartment buildings.

I have a soft spot for Mary. Aside from being the only female representation in Christianity, she’s said to be adapted from the Artemis, goddess of wild animals and nature, personification of the moon. Artemis protected young girls. And she was self-wed, which meant she did not need a male deity to be complete. It was the Christians who turned that into a “virgin”. God (literally) knew we couldn’t have a woman walking around who was doing just fine without a dude in her life.

The texts from the saint become shorter and sparser, but he invites me to the mountain village where he’s from. That night, we hang out with some of his friends, who he refers to as “my favourite people to get drunk with”. He says and does some less than stellar things that night, which I write off as cultural differences. The next day, he lights the gas stove, and as it thunders and pelts rain and hail outside, we wrap around each other on the couch watch his favourite documentary, which is also the favourite documentary of one of my best friends in the world. We have dinner at the cosy restaurant of a family he knows. As he drives us back to the city, he holds my hand.

The following morning, he sends me a video a friend of his took us from outside of a rain-spattered window. Someone (him?) has slowed the video down and put it to music. We are sharing a pizza, totally absorbed in each other, hands touching, talking, laughing. Django is nestled in my lap.

I’m speechless.

I respond, asking about a film he wanted to see together.

I hear nothing for two days.

It’s still the holidays, so I spend some more time at my dad’s up in the Christian bubble.

I walk Django around in the sun, communing with the Marys.

How did this happen? I ask them. After all these years and recovery and therapy and goddamn meditation, how is it possible that I fell for this? And why is it making me feel so terrible?

I ask her to hold my shame.

She looks at me, her hands open, her posture of surrender.

Then Django pees at the foot of the statue.

I spend these two days sitting with young girls—the ones I once was. The younger one, still so desperately wanting to be seen and loved; still believing, somewhere in her little heart, that that a man could do that for her. The 16-year old, longing for someone strong and beautiful to fight alongside.

Yes, they assure me: this was a mistake. And one I needed to make it. So I could be reminded that my intuition is never wrong. To remember to protect myself better, especially around men. That intensity does not equal intimacy. And, for the love of god and Artemis and anyone else, to stop lowering my standards—to stop playing small and quiet in order to seem cool and breezy to anyone, regardless of how revolutionary he might appear to be.

Late at night on the third day, he sends me a message.

“Natalie Karneef and Django,” it says, “I miss you.”

My body floods with relief.

Two days isn’t a big deal, right? We hardly knew each other.

“I miss you, too,” I want to say. In other words, “GIVE ME MORE OF YOUR DRUG.”

I think of the young girls. Of Mary. Of the miraculous healing that comes of choosing ourselves.

I turn off my phone and go to bed.

The next day, I respond that it’s good to hear from him, but that I liked him and trusted him, and disappearing like that felt hurtful.

I know that if I send it, I will never hear from him again.

I send it anyway.

Buy Me a Coffee

Greetings from back in Beirut, before the holidays, with trees and lights lit up everywhere, while pundits discuss whether or not our neighbours to the south will further their “war” with us sooner rather than later.

So all in all, a good time to start dating again.

In case you’re wise enough to not be on them and are not aware of this, dating apps now often have prompts so that people with no imagination can come up with one word (sometimes less) to give some information about themselves.

Here is a festive sampler of some of the glittering delights that have found their way to me over the last few weeks:

In greeting: “Hey, Momma.”

~~~

Prompt: The key to my heart is:

His answer: BMW.

~~~

Prompt: We’ll instantly hit it off if:

His answer: your beautiful.

(Yes, spelled like that.)

~~~

It makes me wistful, in a strange, illogical way, for the first time I ever used a dating app, 9 years ago. I was visiting my dad in Turkiye. It was well before Covid, and of course before the current iteration of the genocide in Palestine. It was early in my own recovery. It was also the reign of Django’s predecessor, Ruble (RIP).

It all feels, now, like so much more of an innocent time. Probably I was just way more naive.

I was doing another “30 days of…” blogging project during that period, hence the brevity of this (re-edited) post.

New stories to come soon.

love,

Natalie

I have never been on an Internet date before.

There. I said it.

I got married while the idea was still in its infancy, and now, at the age of *muffled coughing sounds*, everyone’s doing it.

The thing about Internet dating that freaks me out is the loadedness of it all. When you meet someone “the old-fashioned way” (can’t believe I am writing those words,) you have a reasonable idea whether you want to spend any more time with them, and whether that time might lead to other kinds of time. When you meet someone after considering their photograph and profile with less focus than you would a pair of shoes, you’ve already kind of declared that that might lead to other kinds of time. But what if it doesn’t? What if they want the other kind of time but you don’t? The whole idea doesn’t sit well with an introvert like me.

However, I am also one to grab a challenge by the balls (wrong choice of words,) and so, after a few weeks in Turkey, I start chatting with a man on Tinder who seems like a decent dude. He has nice eyes, and does humanitarian work. He is polite and friendly and does not sound like a serial killer. He is in town for one evening with colleagues. I agree to meet him at the restaurant down the street.

However, I have run out of conditioner. My hair in its current state would scare off a wild animal much less a potential suitor, so before the date, I nip off to the corner store to buy some.

Except that this is Turkey.

The small selection of shampoo-like bottles at the shop are all labeled in (surprise) Turkish. I start entering words into my translator app, and learn that every single bottle is, in fact, shampoo, aside from one which contains, according to the translator, “feeding shit.” Panicked, I search until I find a tiny bottle that apparently is “nourish cream.” I say a quick prayer, grab it and a cheap razor blade (they all work the same, right?), and dash home, fingers crossed.

It is conditioner! My hair is smooth(ish) and untangled. The razor, however, doubles as a tiny machete. I cut my legs in no less than 6 places, and then realize that none of my clean washing has dried. I have no bandaids, either, and so I find myself sat on the closed toilet, hanging my bleeding legs over the shower while blowdrying a pair of underwear. My phone buzzes: it’s my date, telling you me is at the restaurant, even though he was supposed to text before he left. I put the phone down on the toilet lid, and then realize that the toilet lid is home to a shallow pool of water. I leap up to dry it, spraying blood all over the bathroom tiles.

And they say glamour is dead.

I get dressed in my one date-worthy outfit, which in my head seemed like a casual chic “I just rolled out of bed looking like this” ensemble, but actually looks, well, weird. My phone rings, and I leap to answer it. It’s the car rental guy, phoning about tomorrow’s rental. I realize my heart is hammering. This is ridiculous. I would so much rather spend tonight on the couch with Game of Thrones and cheesecake.

As I’m leaving, I text my dad – like high school, except with internet dating and cell phones.

“Leaving now,” I say. “Probably won’t be late.”

“Have fun, Sweetie,” he replies. “Take the pepper spray.”

As I walk to the bar, my phone buzzes again. It’s my date, this time, checking to see if I got lost. (He doesn’t realize that I have chosen this bar specifically because it is 3 minutes away by foot.) He adds that he hopes it’s okay that a couple of his colleagues showed up. They were keen for a night out and he had told him where we’d be meeting.

It is more than okay. I breathe a giant sigh of relief. This is not a date anymore. It’s a hangout.

I join them at their table, and the four of us spend the next couple of hours drinking wine, laughing, trading travel stories and talking about Turkish politics. I learn new things. My heart rate remains steady. I end the evening having made at least one new friend.

Still, I walk home alone, feeling proud. I am no longer a Tinder virgin.

And the rest will come. Maybe. With time.

Buy Me a Coffee

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They allowed us on the first flight. Barely.

They asked Mum to fill out a form she had completely forgotten about, but pretended never to have heard of.

It asked whether:

a) my new carrier bag is netted on all sides (it is not)

b) I can stand up in it and turn around (barely) and,

c) it fits regulation dimensions. (No.)

Having now lived in Lebanon for three months, Mum lied through her teeth. The crew, all being Lebanese, did not check if any of her statements were true.

And off we went.

The airline we flew with claims to be #1 for traveling with pets. Mum had to wedge me under the seat in front of her such that she had one leg hovering over me and the other stuck behind me, with her purse in her lap. She would have stayed that way for 6 hours had the staff not been kind enough to move the guy who was next to us so we could have extra space.

We are now rattling through the universe. The carpet smells of chemicals. I am not allowed to eat any of the food they are serving, nor do I wish to.

But at least we are together.

Further notes to follow,

Django

Dear Diary,

We have arrived in the Frankfurt airport.

The people here do not smile or pat me. Why? Aside from one lady, but she worked in security and actually felt me all over to see if I was stashing anything. Me!

As such, I have peed in two separate places.

love,

Django

Dear Diary,

We have arrived in France. Mum keeps beaming and gushing that “it’s all still here, right where we left it”.

Honestly. Where does she get her ideas?

On our first Saturday morning, we woke up and made our way to the farmers’ market.

Mum kept gasping and saying, “Remember that place? Ooh, remember this cafe?”, as if I wouldn’t. Then, amidst all the cheese and croissants and wine she’s fantasized about for the past 11 months, she makes a beeline towards a stall selling Syrian and Lebanese food.

“Marhaba”, she says, which made the staff smile. We waited 10 minutes in the drizzle for a falafel, whilst I tremble visibly from the chill. This despite having had a falafel 48 hours ago in Beirut, and usually twice in a normal week while we’re there.

Curious behaviour indeed. I shall note further observations.

Django

Dear Diary,

We have now been in France for two weeks.

We are even back in the room we had last time we were here, with the bathtub that Mummy gazes lovingly at every day, and which I studiously avoid.

I’m back on my favourite French dog food. We walk along my beloved the foresty path by the river, where there are endless of sticks for chasing after. The people at the house are mostly different than the ones who were here last year, but they still give me treats and scratch me. I know Mum is happy, but I can see that something is different this time.

Last weekend, we took a day trip to Bordeaux. We went with Tash, who is one of the people living at the house, and who is delightful. It was Tash’s first visit to Bordeaux, and she was so filled with wonder at the beauty and architecture that it reminded Mum to look up and around more often, instead of looking down and worrying about me, or other things that are not happening in this moment, which she does far too frequently.

We chose a funny old touristy restaurant for lunch so we could sit out in the sun. Mum and Tash talked about a lot of things. In fact, they did not shut up. I slept on the fancy bench to restore my energy.

After lunch, we walked along the streets. Tash kept gasping and taking photos, while Mum grinned away. Then we ambled to the public gardens, where men were playing football topless, and couples were lying around on blankets being all romantically French. We were in heaven.

But we had to leave, to get to the real reason we’d come to Bordeaux.

There have been few or no protests for Palestine in any of the places Mum has been in the last few years. This one wasn’t very big, maybe about 50 people, but it was mighty. We learned it happened every single Saturday. A lady even gave us a sign to carry.

The chanting was mostly in French. Mom had to strain her ears to catch the words, and Tash hummed along and belted out “Palestine!” when everyone else did. There was some loud drumming and a few very loud megaphones. I started shaking from the noise, so Mum carried me. A police van drove behind us at a polite distance. Some of the chants were about Lebanon, which the IDF has been bombing daily.

The French are really very good at making their point.

We turned a corner, and realized that a new person was calling out the chants—and that she was about 10 years old. Her mother stood next to her, proudly. Then, many of the women in the march started ululating. Mum started crying quietly behind her sunglasses. What she didn’t realize was that Tash was also crying behind her sunglasses. Of course, I noticed immediately.

At that point, we had to leave so we didn’t miss our train.

I am starting to suspect that despite the comforts and ease of life in here France, and the insanity and ridiculousness of life in Lebanon, it is our home now.

We passed the falafel stand again this morning. Mum went straight over and bought a manouche, which she can get on any street in Beirut any day of the week. She was so excited that she said not just “marhaba” but “how are you” in Arabic to the guy working there. He then started speaking to her in Lebanese Arabic, which she had to explain that she didn’t understand—yet.

I rolled my eyes, and said nothing.

I will continue my reports.

With love,

Django

Buy Me a Coffee

It was a last minute decision, and one for which I was woefully unprepared. I have never directed anything other than low budget television, and now was calling the shots (literally) with a crew of four, plus three “actors” in their late 70s/80 (one of whom is my father), plus my younger brother. In Lebanon, where “quiet on set” is a fantasy, and where being on time means being at least 45 minutes late, if there isn’t traffic, which there always is.

Exactly a week after that, Django and I flew to France. Well, we flew to Frankfurt, then to Paris, then took the metro, then took two trains, which was as sweaty and hectic and unglamorous a journey as you can imagine. We’ve returned to the “hippie commune” (as my dad calls it). More on that soon.

Between filming, packing, dog-preparing, my brother visiting, Is-not-real b*mbing Lebanon on a daily basis, and the pretend ceasefire in Gaza, my brain has been on overdrive. I haven’t slept much. I’ve forgotten entire conversations I had with people a day previously.

Before all of that started, I began to consider the idea of possibly maybe thinking about contemplating the idea of perhaps dating.

I have such a different approach to this now. Having spent the past year consciously celibate, my life feels full and rich these days. I have so much more energy to put into my friendships, my work, activism, service. I know what you’re going to say: that in a healthy relationship, I wouldn’t have to give any of that up.

But I believe that exists about as much as I believe in the tooth fairy, and less than I believe in unicorns.

I signed up for one dating app. I always found the idea of texting with a stranger to decide you like them enough to actually meet, and then meeting them with all these expectations, to be insane. Now, with much more awareness about the toxic masculinity that pervades almost everything in life, I find it even more insane. Apparently, I’m not alone in this. I can’t stop thinking about this piece, which was linked in this piece in British Vogue (“Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”)

But since nothing is black and white in this life, I’ve also gotten teary seeing people I really admire who seem to have found love, or hearing folx in 12-step meetings sharing about being really content with their long-term partners (after having come a long way in their own recovery).

AND. I cringe to admit it, there’s still that mean little asshole voice hissing in my ear, telling me that I am, in Bridget Jones’ words, “past my sell-by date”. There is a marked difference between the interest I’m getting now and what I got 8 or even 3 years ago. This voice likes to butt in when I’m watching TV, or am among younger people, and tell me how I really should be doing more pilates and drinking 14L water per day and using more products and doing face yoga every day instead of once every 5 weeks when I remember to and probably microneedling and at least considering a lower face lift, or getting some work done on my eyes, because “no one will know, and you’ll feel better about yourself”.

Thankfully, I’m (mostly) aware that this is a voice and not the truth. I know that if I never “find love again”, a statement that is faulty anyway as it implies that love is something we have to search for rather than being everywhere, all the time, and… where was I?

Oh yeah.

That I’ll be okay.

I know that now. I know that I would rather be uncoupled and at peace than drowning in dysfunction that requires constant negotiation, sacrifice and endless emotional labour, and/or trying to make myself look younger so a man will find me acceptable.

Anyway. My point really was that the trip down dating app lane brought back some memories. I thought I’d share one with you all now, until I can bring you new stories from the land of cheese, baguettes, and life in a house full of new friends.

Sending you wishes of peace, safety and connection.

Love,

Natalie and Django

Bumbling

(Day 16 from the series “30 Days in Istanbul”)

It’s past midnight here. I sat down to write hours ago, and was staring at a blank screen, about to type, “I think I got stood up.”

I decided to dip a baby toe back into the online dating pool. It was daunting, but I soldiered forth, remembering the words of my friend Heather’s mom: you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a good toad. By Sunday night, I was chatting with two dudes. Both were Turkish. Both seemed polite and kind. One had a dog. They both asked questions about me (this is significant, sadly), and made noises about wanting to meet.

One, though, was a little pushy. When I didn’t respond to a question he asked right away, and he wrote, “Busy?” He did that a couple more times, so it wasn’t a fluke.

The other one said he was cooking dinner (nice) and asked if we could talk later in the evening. It was already 10:30pm, and after two hours of reading the news and googling “what will happen if there is a nuclear war”, I was a little tired. I told him so, and went to bed.

The next morning, he’d sent a voice note. He explained that I needed to “not feel sad” because “bad things are happening all the time”. He said that I just did like him and didn’t watch the news, I would be fine. But, he went on to share, because of what I’d said he had watched the news, and now he felt blue, too. He related this in a tone that implied that it had more to do with me than it did with Putin.

Uh huh.

Later in the afternoon, I got a notification from a guy named Aaron, who was from the States, made films, and had the kind of smart-assy sense of humour I love.

Huh.

I said hi to Aaron. Aaron responded. He asked me what part of town I lived in. It was not far at all from the part of town he lived in. He asked if I wanted to go for a drink, tonight. And for some reason, despite having thoroughly vetted every other man I have ever met up with from an online interaction, I agreed. I even mentioned we could have dinner together. It came out before I could stop myself.

An hour later, I hadn’t heard back from Aaron. An hour and a half later, still nothing. Still irritated by the two blokes from last night, I actually felt relieved. I put on my sweatpants and ordered dinner. I chatted with Jasmine. I did some work. As an afterthought I checked my phone.

And there were a whole bunch of messages from Aaron.

“I’ll text you when I’m close. Here’s my number…”

“I’m walking towards Cihangir from Taksim.”

A voice note (that I can’t open).

A missed call.

“Okay, um, I’m done with my first drink at [the restaurant where I’d suggested we meet], so I guess I’m going to leave and go home?”

I wrote him in a panic, apologizing profusely. He suggested we meet. I told him I was in sweatpants, then thought fuck it, cancelled my food order, threw on some clothes, and brought Django with me. Sometimes, you just have to trust your gut.

Aaron could have been written by Woody Allen, when Woody Allen was good. From LA and about my age, he admitted that he’d only ever gone out with women in their twenties, and had even married one. We ate and drank and talked for hours, and while we live throughly different existences, I felt comfortable and amused, and—having been married to a filmmaker myself—very much at home. In fact, by the time we’d finished dinner I kind of loved him, the way you love someone who’s just walked into your life out of a film script. He is a member of the Soho House here, which is as posh and expat as it sounds, and somehow I agreed to go there with him.

At this point, he became befuddled that I didn’t want to sleep with him.

“I don’t understand,” he said, as we walked out into the night.

“I want to be your friend,” I said. “That’s more valuable to me than sleeping with you. What is there to not understand?”

“But… I’ve never had a woman friend.”

“Humans were made to try new things.”

“Is it like some Nora Ephron movie thing?”

“No.”

“Like you’re just building it up for later?”

“No.”

“I’ve never been rejected like this.”

“Maybe because you only go out with 23-year olds.”

“Do you want to come over and bring Bruce (this was his immediate nickname for Django) and sleep on opposite sides of my bed in pyjamas?”

I stared at him. “Why would I want to do that?”

I caught a cab and went home, alone, to my own bed, in my own pyjamas. And here I am, eating cherry gummy bears at 1 in the morning. I know that when I read this tomorrow, there will be a hundred errors I’ll want to correct. But at least sleeping with Aaron won’t be one of them.

Buy Me a Coffee

My first thought, having spent much of my life in Canada, and being half asleep, is, “Someone’s mowing their lawn.”

Except I’m several floors off the ground.

Also, I’m in Beirut. There are no lawns here, and you could count the number of parks on one hand.

The sound is coming from an Israeli drone.

Maybe the weirdest thing about this is that it’s not weird at all. Drones buzz over the city all the time. Last time I was in Beirut, my friend Nina, who was then my neighbour and is now my housemate, would text me:

Did you hear it this morning?

I hadn’t yet learned to differentiate between “it” and the orchestra of construction noises and traffic in constant battle with each other. Now, it’s unmistakable.

Nina texts from her bedroom:

Can one of us go outside and shoot that thing down?

I’d been having the same fantasy. Or, at least, of running out on the balcony naked and giving it both my middle fingers.

But I am not that brave.

In the kind of turn of events you can’t make up, living with Nina means I now live almost across the street from the apartment my father grew up in. (And the set of the film I’m writing.)

The idea of him and his buddies running through this neighbourhood with their guitars and Beatles-style suits still lights me up. So does thinking about my grandma, drinking her morning pot of coffee on that balcony, looking out over her city. Or when my housemates and I joke about what we should do tonight, having to chose between at least two documentary screenings happening, a festival, 600 live music options, several art exhibits, and, naturally, our favourite Chinese restaurant.

Some days I feel so at home here, it’s as if I was planted and grew out of this ground.

Other days, I want to stick forks in my eyes.

Why did I think living here would be a good idea? Why would anyone in their semi-right mind choose this loud, park-less, construction-ridden, polluted city run by politicians who have been friends with actual dinosaurs, with Zionist drones flying overhead? Am I really so nature-starved that I’m hugging a sapling growing out of a pot outside of an apartment building at 10pm? Dreaming of diving into the sea that no one swims in because it’s so filthy? Sleeping at night amidst generator smog that’s so strong I can sometimes taste it?

Where I can watch someone root through overflowing trash bins for food while less than a block away you can buy a handbag for several thousand American dollars?

When I contemplate that I live in a place where American dollars are used as currency, period?

I’ll stop there, ‘cause I could go all night.

Nina and I pulling up at a traffic light in her car, when a teenage girl spots us and shouts to a man in a wheelchair. He comes straight over, grinning. Nina rolls down the window so they can chat, which I understand the gist of enough to reach down for the bag of chocolate bars that are always on the passenger-side floor. I pass them to Nina. She hands him two. He sings a little song and wheels off.

This happens all around the city.

During the 2024 war, she would also bring bags of snacks and toys down to the waterfront for the families who were camped there, escaping the bombing of the south.

A Shia family from the south rented the apartment next door. There were about twenty people living there, and Nina started to see one of them, a young woman, going down to the lobby with her phone, presumably for some peace (as it were). Eventually, she offered her place up for the woman to chill out and get away from the chaos. The woman accepted, and, after some time, started bringing her mom along. They’d all hang out together and have tea.

Nina has EU citizenship. She could have left anytime. Many people did.

“But it felt more right for me to stay,” she told me.

I think about that a lot.

Months after the ceasefire, she opened her front door to find the woman and her mom standing there, presenting her with a trio of candles as a thank you gift.

The candles sit on our coffee table now.

I smile every time I see them.

Last week, I heard of a gathering for Palestine happening in Martyr’s Square. They were accepting clothes for people from Gaza who have relocated here, and would be giving a talk about boycotting. Some of them were doing rolling hunger strikes.

I walked there, ending up on a street that’s obviously supposed a main street in a European capital—wide and without trash bins, and home a Hermes and a Louis Vuitton, among other such establishments.

Armed soldiers in fatigues stand along both sides.

The gathering was tiny. Maybe twenty people silently waved Lebanese and Palestinian flags as cars passed. Nina had given me a boy’s bathrobe to donate, and I sat and listened to the speech, even though it was in Arabic and I only understood “Starbucks” and “McDonald’s”.

As the sky darkened, motorcycles and cars started speeding past with Hezbollah flags, some of them honking. The anniversary of Nasrallah’s death would be the next day. There would be a huge gathering around the seafront, where they would project his face, and that of his successor, onto the rocks that symbolize this country.

After the speech ended, I walked back along the ritzy street. There was almost no one around, except the soldiers. People don’t walk much here, and especially in those kinds of areas. The other day I saw a woman step out of a black Mercedes to go into a shop. Her driver just stayed out front, waiting for her buy things and come back whenever she wanted to.

What’s it like to live that kind of life, I always wonder.

On the Sunday morning with the drone, I give up on sleep, get dressed, and take Django for a walk.

The streets are almost empty again, which I suppose is the one redeeming quality of being woken up by the IDF. Django and I amble along, him sniffing away, me pondering all the ways people secretly want to respond to drones flying overhead.

Here.

In Gaza, I can’t remotely begin to imagine.

With the lack of traffic, I’m able to stop and take in things I haven’t noticed before.

I’m delighted to spot this near a parking lot:

I stop at a little bakery and order a zaatar manouche. I’ve only been there once before, but the baker remembers me and how I refused his change last time. He offers me a fatayer, a little triangular pastry with spinach inside, as I wait.

I thank him, and he rolls his eyes towards the sound overhead, and we grin at each other. And that’s all it takes.

I hold my paper-wrapped half-moon of bread still hot from the oven, and Django and I crawl back home.

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Bonus: Things of This Week

Shapes of Normal Human Beings follows three Lebanese filmmakers on an unplanned, 8-day journey across Lebanon. It’s one of the most touching documentaries I’ve seen in a long time.

Want to learn about how breathing the air in Beirut is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day? I thought so! Check out this short film for UNDP Lebanon:

FreePalestine TV is an amazing independent English news resource about the Arab world. Watch the report about the gathering mentioned above here:

I have moved back to Lebanon. Like, maybe… for good.

We’ll get into that later.

I only had 12 days to prepare for this move, not for any exciting reason, just owing to ticket prices and logistics. Which is why things have been quiet around here. Also, it’s crunch time for the phase of the film script I’m in. (It’s really, really nice to be writing it in Beirut, though, where it all happened.)

Also, I still feel it’s hard to say anything in the I-have-run-out-of-words-for-incomprehensibly-batshit-times facing this and every other part of the world.

I’ve been trying to focus on the beauty of everyday life, and as part of that, have been trying to take one deliberate photo a day. (It goes without saying I take many photos, sometimes daily, of Django, which are obviously very deliberate, too). So many parts of this city that seem like they haven’t changed in 60+ years. So many moments, too.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of the “Accidentally Wes Anderson” phenomenon, but I feel that Wes would or does feel quite delighted and at home in some parts of Beirut. (Probably not the parts devastated by the effects of western colonialism and the American-Zionist military complex, but that is for a different conversation.)

I learned recently that Wes’s partner, Juman Malouf, is Lebanese. His last film, The Phoenician Scheme, was named as an ode to her late father.

So for today, until I can do a proper post, I give you:

Accidentally Wes Anderson in Beirut: Edition I of Probably Many.

More words coming soon.

love,

Natalie (+ Django) (+ Mao)

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Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. I’m working on a film script, which is a really awesome thing to be doing with my time, but doesn’t leave a lot of creative juice left to write here. I am fuelling this with a combination of:

• watching films about I think I should be watching

• watching films I actually want to watch

• watching films I have seen 117 times and want to see again

• substack posts that make me laugh and are not (usually) about politics

• substack posts and podcasts that are entirely about politics (especially in the Arab world)

• many ACA meetings

• trashy period dramas

• caffeine

• cheese.

When I first started seriously studying the dharma, I asked a teacher if I was wasting my time and energy being a writer. Wasn’t art a luxury? I asked him. Didn’t we need more people out there actually doing things to make the world better?

He said, “Who do you think comes up with the ideas that those people use?”

My current teachers, plus all this watching/reading I’m doing, remind me that in these times, art, story and creativity are crucial in keeping us connected, informed, and, well, sane. (They make no mention of trashy period dramas, but hey. Rules are meant to be broken.)

And then I found this quote by by Turkish author Elif Shafak:

Stories bring us together, untold stories keep us apart.

So I thought I’d come back and ask you what you most feel like reading around here these days. Do you want to be distracted? Engaged? Entertained? Inspired? De-spired? Do you want cold hard facts? Personal stories? All of thee above?

I don’t know if you can select more than one item on the poll below. I hate technology. If you want to select more than one, or “other”, please just respond to this post and send me an email. I will not take anything personally. Writers will often say it feels like we’re shouting into a void. Knowing what you want to read is very motivating.

If you’re like, “advice column stuff? what?”, this is a new idea that has not been done before but I’ve always wanted to and I’m now perimenopausal so I give much less of a f*** about putting new ideas out into the world and having them fall flat.

I’m not writing much about being single this time around, as you may have noticed. That’s because there aren’t many stories about being single when you’re not dating. I’m not dating because have you dated lately? If yes, you get me.

On that note, I leave you with a film, and a post from when I was dating. Here is small sampling from that post, in case you need to be reminded why you’re not dating, or don’t want to feel alone if you are dating:

I decided to dip a baby toe back into the online dating pool. It was daunting, but I soldiered forth, remembering the words of my friend Heather’s mom: you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a good toad. By Sunday night, I was chatting with two dudes. Both were Turkish. Both seemed polite and kind. One had a dog. They both asked questions about me (this is significant, sadly), and made noises about wanting to meet.

One, though, was a little pushy. When I didn’t respond to a question he asked right away, and he wrote, “Busy?” He did that a couple more times, so it wasn’t a fluke.

The other one said he was cooking dinner (nice) and asked if we could talk later in the evening. It was already 10:30pm, and after two hours of reading the news and googling “what will happen if there is a nuclear war”, I was a little tired. I told him so, and went to bed.

The next morning, he’d sent a voice note. He explained that I needed to “not feel sad” because “bad things are happening all the time”. He said that I just did like him and didn’t watch the news, I would be fine. But, he went on to share, because of what I’d said he had watched the news, and now he felt blue, too. He related this in a tone that implied that it had more to do with me than it did with Putin.

Here’s the full piece:

The film is The Time that Remains, by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, is based on his own life, and takes place over several generations in Palestine. If you’re interested in the history of Palestine before October 7th (please be interested), and also, if you are a fan of Wes Anderson, this one’s for you. I haven’t seen any of Suleiman’s other films yet, but I wonder if he is one of WA’s inspirations. If you know the answer to this question, please write me and tell me.

(Full version of the movie below/on Youtube).

love,

Natalie + Django

I was 20 or 21 years old. (That does not make it excusable.)

I was zooming along in my car, when I got stuck behind another car, of a model and colour a lot of elderly people drove at the time.

The car was moving very slowly. I, naturally, lived at the centre of the universe and had important places to be.

“Come on, Grandma!” I yelled. (My car windows were closed.) (That does not make it excusable, either.)

I veered out and passed the car.

Once it was behind me, I looked in my rearview mirror, and my heart dropped into my feet.

It was a grandma.

It was my grandma.

*

I’ve had two people I considered friends cancel me by text in the last four months.

This is not easy to admit. Fortunately, because I’m part of a program where we do things like admit un-admittable stuff, I know that I’m not alone. People are cancelling each other all over the place, and I’m not talking about institutions or corporations here: I’m talking about people with a history together—people with shared values and beliefs. We are writing each other off like it’s going out of style. Instead of asking questions or having a conversation, we are assuming the worst of each other, especially via text or on social media. We are punching sideways instead of up.

It’s not a huge surprise. We are, collectively, very, very scared and stressed. Most things don’t even approach normal anymore, whatever that was. It’s a lot easier to lash out at someone you can’t see than feel helpless or angry or sad.

I am trying to remind myself that just because someone is driving a different way than I am, it doesn’t mean they don’t want to end up at the same destination. We don’t need to be best friends, but I can give them the benefit of the doubt. I can ask clarifying questions. Being shamed or having someone assume the worst about you rarely, if ever, gets a person to change.

Especially because this is what the powers that be want: for us to be divided. Because together, we are stronger than they are.

So today, I give you a story from some years ago, right around the beginning of my obsession with all this collectivist, community stuff.

It starts with me selling drugs.

It is New Year’s Eve, 2013, and I’m standing on a sidewalk outside the party.

It’s really cold. It is, in fact, snowing. As it’s New Year’s Eve, I’m also wearing a skirt, which means I would be even colder, except for the fact that I am slightly stoned.

The windows of the apartment I’m standing outside of are glowing festively. The walls are humming with the music from a no doubt vintage record, played on a hi fi, non-vintage record player. I’ve known most of the people inside for years. They work with my husband, who is also inside, and who has been texting me for the last hour, asking what’s taking me so long to get here. Like him, they are filmmakers: directors, producers, sound technicians. Like me, they are journalists and writers. They are the people I spent my twenties wanting to be among. Now, at 36, I would rather stand outside on a sidewalk freezing my tits off than join them.

I would rather be at work.

To be clear: I like all of these people. They’re kind and good-hearted. They’re trying their best. They are totally overwhelmed, like I was until very recently. When every second of your waking day is spent scraping together resources and storylines and money, angling for the best talent, applying for the best festival to premiere at, or trying to win the eye the hot-shit publisher of the moment, that takes everything you’ve got. It leaves little room for helping a neighbour, or sitting in a field and staring at the sky, or doing much about the fact that the world is going down the shitter. [Edit: how I long for the 2013 version of the shitter I thought the world was going down.]

I worked very hard to curate my life. I found a man I loved. We filled a house with barnwood fixtures and antique dinner dishes, paid for by a filmmaking career and writing career which are finally pulling in an almost-decent living. And soon, I’ll be leaving all of it behind.

In the meantime, I am working for one third of my usual pay.

My husband knows I’m leaving, although right now, he hopes it’s temporary. Maybe I do, too. But the people at this party know nothing.

And with that thought, I force my face into a smile, and go inside.

It’s early January, and I’m at work, freezing.

You may be sensing a theme here. That’s because Montreal is one of the coldest places in the known universe. [Edit: at least it was in 2013.] It’s also the artistic mecca of Canada—a liberal/activist/bohemian stronghold, and the kind of place you’d find a semi-legal medical cannabis dispensary in a drafty stone building with bad insulation. Which is where I am currently employed.

Before I started working here, I had, aside from your average recreational experimentation, zero experience with cannabis. But sometime in the past year, around the time I started to pivot away from my life, I became fascinated with marijuana, and its cousin, hemp. I spent months researching the endless abilities these plants hold for helping to save our planet. From building houses to feeding communities to recalibrating immune systems, there seems to be nothing they can’t do.

I’d read about this clinic, too. I’d thought about writing them, but what would I say? And then, one night last fall, shortly after the soul-shattering day I told my husband I was leaving our shared life, I bowed my head in prayer and asked for direction. Minutes later, I got a message from a friend saying that one of the clinic’s owners was looking to hire a part-time administrator.

It should be noted: I also had no medical administrative experience. I knew that taking the job would mean I’d have to spend the rest of my week days (and a lot of weekends) frantically writing to compensate for the time I would be spending answering phones and earning one third of my usual salary. But I was keen, and I guess my now-boss, Adam, knew it. He hired me on the spot.

He also rolled a joint during the interview, which is the kind of thing you want to experience at least once in your working life.

I work here three days a week now. Today wasn’t supposed to be one of them, but Adam called this morning.

“Do you have any serious plans for today?” he asked.

I was sitting under a blanket fort, making notes in Crayola marker for the book I’m working on. Normally you wouldn’t admit this kind of thing to your boss, but my boss sells weed for a living.

“Oh, god,” he said, once I’d told him. “Well now I feel really bad asking, but could you come into work today? We need some extra help.”

The thing is, I love my job. I love being here (aside from needing to wear my coat indoors). I love my colleagues. And I love Adam. At the ripe old age of 29, he’s part of the movement that’s changing my country’s legal and constitutional history one gram at a time.

Also, he has a dog called Maybe.

So here I am, at my little desk in our frigid office, my legs draped over the space heater. I’m chatting with our dispenser, Theo, a psychedelic-loving raver (yes, raves still are a thing; no, I didn’t know, either.) We’re having one of our usual discussions, maybe about his most recent heartbreak, or maybe about how lucky I am—according to him—to be married (he doesn’t know of my plans either) when my phone rings.

Theo lights up his desktop vaporizer. I answer. It’s my husband, Tony.

Since I decided to leave my marriage, despite the blanket of sadness draped over us, Tony and I have become kinder to each other than ever before. It’s heartbreaking, and also, in its own way, a relief. The power struggles are over. The expectations are gone. And still we support each other as much as we can.

“The mail came,” Tony says, gently.

My chest contracts.

I’ve been waiting for an answer for the grant I applied for, to write a YA novel—the one I was working on under the fort. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written before. If I get it, I could focus on just this project for a while, maybe do a writer’s residency somewhere, and not worry about money for a few months.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You didn’t get it.”

“Fuck,” I say, quietly.

“Try not to take it personally. It’s almost always ‘no’ the first few times. You’ll get one eventually.”

I thank him, hang up, and sprint to the bathroom so Theo won’t see my tears.

Of course Tony’s right. Rejection is part of our lives, especially when it comes to funding. I didn’t expect this money, but hoped… with the trip I have coming up… that whole thing about taking a leap and the net will appear…

And now I’m back to scraping money together and hoping I can make enough in the next few months for plane tickets, accommodation, life.

I contemplate all of this, sniffling, sitting on the closed toilet seat.

Why did I take this job again? What was I thinking?

“PHONE!” Theo yells, and I shoot back out into the office.

The man on the end of the line takes up most of the rest of my afternoon. His name is Felix. He has just been diagnosed with colon cancer.

He’s trying to get a doctor to write him a prescription for cannabis oil, which has been more and more in demand as it becomes hailed as a miracle tumour-shrinker, anti-inflammatory, general cancer Deathstar. Many of our clients have cancer. Some have MS. Some, like the man I met yesterday, have HIV. They come to us for marijuana in different forms, to help survive chemo, soothe chronic pain, have an appetite.

“Be careful,” Adam once cautioned, gently. “You’ll spend all your time on the phone if you don’t cut them off.”

But I can’t cut them off. Because I can tell from their voices that no one else has been listening. One woman told me she was in so much pain she hadn’t gotten out of bed for months. The 21-year old HIV-positive university student who came in yesterday hadn’t been able to keep food down for five days. One of our clients is a young man with MS has started a foundation to support other young adults living with MS. Another, who has scleroderma, wrote about my colleagues and me on his blog, referring to us as “heroes.” These people have been tossed from doctor to doctor, prescribed enough drugs to kill a family of rhinos, and are often just desperate to be heard. When someone like Felix is trying to avoid having part of his body cut out and his doctor refuses to sign a piece of paper allowing him to ingest something natural and (as of January 1st of this very year) legal, I can’t rush him off the phone.

I coach him on how to find a new doctor. We talk about how we can help him in the meantime. I explain how the oil works, cautioning that it hasn’t actually been scientifically proven to cure cancer, but promising we’ll do what we can to help him obtain it.

Finally, it’s closing time.

I step outside into the icy darkness, head to towards the metro station and realize that since Tony called, I haven’t once thought about the grant.

Up until now, any kind of rejection of my work left me wallowing in self-pity for the rest of the day week. Tony once came home to find me crying, fully clothed, in the empty bathtub, because I didn’t get a job I didn’t actually want.

Today, I didn’t get a grant. Felix might die. As might any one of the people I’ve spoken to this week.

The wind howls. I pull my hat down over my ears and pick up my pace. This is the kind of life I want to be living – not selling weed, but being useful. I want a reason to get out of bed in the morning that isn’t Me, Myself and I and the gods of Capitalism and Creative Acclaim.

My days hold so much sadness, and so much more light.

*

I’d been wanting to volunteer abroad, but, like with cannabis, I had no clue where to start or what I could bring to the table.

A few weeks ago, a friend suggested I look into an organization we both know that works with AIDS orphans and their grandmothers. It’s in Uganda, the last place on earth I ever thought I’d go, but as soon as she says it, I know it’s the right choice. I meet with the founder, and he says the magic words: “These people want to tell their stories. You can help them do that.”

I give the folks at the dispensary my notice. They support me 100%. On my last day at work, the woman who couldn’t get out of bed walks into our waiting room, thanks to her new vaporizer and high-CBD strain. She hands me a bag of stickers, pencils and colouring books she’d bought for the students in Uganda, which I’d told her about in one of our phone calls.

I hug her. We both cry.

In another month, my soon-to-be-ex-husband will drive me to the airport. He’ll wave goodbye from the other side of security. I will board a flight to Entebbe, sobbing the entire way there.

I will spend two months in a small village in rural Uganda. It will humble me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I will see suffering and sickness and poverty so vast I will not be able to compute it.

I will also see near-unbearable amounts of joy.

The people I will meet there look out for each other, and for anyone else in their midst. No one gets left behind. And no one ever misses the opportunity for a midday dance-off, or to burst into song or to crack a joke.

It couldn’t be further away from the little cannabis dispensary in Montreal, but it’s my next class in the same school: that happiness is not found in the absence of sadness or loss, or in the presence of achievement. It’s found through stepping beyond the borders of ourselves.

And once we let go of our idea that our individual pots of gold are going to save us, there’s a whole bunch more space for each other.

To find out more about the organization in Uganda I volunteered with, who continue to do incredible work, check out Nyaka.

If you want to punch up and not sideways, check out:

• The BDS Movement

• Labour 4 Palestine

• Practical Ways to Stop the Genocide (Canadians, I really urge you to watch this one)

As part of punching up against capitalism, I don’t paywall this newsletter.

If you’d like to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber by typing your email in below. Or you can give a 1-time donation by "buying me a coffee” :)

Buy Me a Coffee

Grown men cross to the other side of the street to avoid me. Children shriek and hide behind their mothers. One lady sent us away from a nail salon. I’m not even allowed inside the park near us, which is the only green space for miles around.

It’s Django here, by the way.

You may think I’m exaggerating. I wish that were true. Mom explained to me that many people here don’t spend much time with dogs. Also, she said, in some of their belief systems, dogs keep the angels away. To be fair, lots of people in Beirut also love me. Grown men crouch down and scratch my head while making high-pitched noises. At our favourite cafe, the servers bring me water as soon as we arrive, and other patrons strike up conversations with us based solely on my allure.

One Friday morning, on our second week in Beirut, Mom decides we’re going on an excursion outside the neighbourhood where we’re staying.

“It’s time to broaden our horizons,” she announces, which sounds suspiciously like, “It’s time to go for a long walk on some hot pavement”.

She straps me into my harness, and gathers all the things she brings with us to work in coffee shops (laptop, reading glasses, sunglasses, water bottle, water dish, notebook, I could go on). We march down a street that is indeed very hot, passing the kinds of shops they have their own security guards. Finally, we arrive at her intended destination: a cafe which, according to google, is dog-friendly.

The customers turn and stare at us as if we’ve just fallen off a garbage truck.

Mom is taken aback. I should add that she’s dressed quite casually. Nothing is ripped or stained, but her look is definitely loose and flowy as opposed to tight or trendy. She forgot that this cafe is in a part of Beirut where everyone is likely wearing head-to-toe designer, and most have, shall we say, cosmetic embellishments. Mom finds this kind of crowd intimidating, although she wishes she didn’t.

We hover on the sidewalk for a minute.

People physically back away from us.

We watch as a lady and two kids go over to someone who looks like an influencer Mom once saw on TikTok.

“We love watching you,” the lady gushes.

“Thank you soooo much,” the influencer says.

They all glare pointedly at us.

Mom sighs. I can tell she feels like she’s messed up, which I do not encourage, but when has that stopped her? Neither of us wants to go back the way we came, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else around where they’d welcome me (or possibly even her). So we turn and walk towards our neighbourhood, to a cafe we’ve been to before. It has loud music and no personality, but also tile floors where I can cool my belly and people who don’t run away from me.

The next day, back in our room, Mom goes into one of her head-stories. What if the only people we meet while we’re here don’t like us? she wonders. Why is the world such a sad and terrible place? I try tell her that better things are to come, and also gently remind her that we’ve only been here two weeks and have met lots of great people. But she still does not understand the subtleties of my language.

Also, she’s extremely hormonal.

Again.

I cuddle her as she has a cry. She rewards my empathy by leaving me alone for four hours while she goes to a “meeting”.

She returns all relaxed and happy, like the whole thing never happened.

That afternoon, we get in a car with a complete stranger. She and Mom met on the internet when Mom booked us into a retreat centre outside the city for this weekend. Her name is Aya, and she invited us along to a forest gathering somewhere called Chouf. Mom, who is arguably far too trusting, said yes.

But Aya is totally lovely. She’s a sound healer and speaks to me in French. I feel very seen. We drive through the traffic and out into the green, lush mountains, arriving at a campsite with a burbling river. They people who are already there smile and introduce themselves, and then play guitars or spin records or swim. Many are wearing keffiyehs. As the sun sets, we sit around a campfire, eating homemade pizza and playing music. Mom is so happy. She can’t stop beaming and going on about how beautiful it is.

At Aya’s that night, Mom and I sleep on a big bed in a little A-frame hut. When we wake up in the morning, we’re surrounded by birdsong. That day, we just take naps and go for walks and revel in not having to worry about getting run over. At night, a bunch of people arrive at the centre for another gathering. They are just as warm and kind as the people in Chouf.

One lady shows up with a dog even smaller than me. I know that it is my job to protect Aya’s turf. He clearly believes that that’s his job, so as people settle into the big room and pick up guitars and drums, we chase each other around like maniacs until we are both exhausted and call a truce.

His name is Mao.

The humans start singing. It’s not in English or even in Arabic so we don’t understand what they’re saying, but it’s stunningly beautiful. There’s drumming, too. It’s so hypnotic I eventually fall asleep. And after it ends, we get to chatting with some of the folks who are here. They are so curious and kind. Mao’s mom asks where we are staying in Beirut and we realize they live just around the corner—which is also on the same street as where my mom’s dad grew up, and where her film script is set.

A few days later, Mao’s mom invites Aya and Mom and me over for tea.

Mom goes straight out onto the balcony and sure enough, she can see her dad’s old apartment balcony from here. Also, there’s a whole collection of guitars in Mao’s apartment. Turns out Mao’s mom plays in a band, while my mom’s movie is about her dad playing guitar in a band, as a teenager, in that apartment across the street. It is admittedly quite magical. Mao and I watch it all come together side by side on the couch, chatting away in our language. He’s actually a pretty nice guy.

Later, Aya and Mao’s mom get out the guitars and start singing. Mom is too shy to join. She used to take singing lessons, but is still very self-conscious. She hums along quietly until they start playing Hallelujah, then she raises her voice just a little bit. We get home past midnight that night, but she calls a friend and relates the story.

“Hallelujah is the first song I ever learned to sing,” she says, on the phone. “And I got to sing it across the street from where my father first learned to play the guitar.”

She’s crying again, but this time in a happy way.

We see Mao and his mom almost every other day after that. We go for sidewalk table dinners and for walks, and even to a restaurant we’re both allowed inside of. I make a point of protecting him from all potential threats, growling ferociously at several passers by who come near him. We even get invited to a picnic amongst some ancient ruins with the nicest, most interesting people and, believe it or not, five other dogs.

No one is afraid of talking about Palestine. Mao and his mom and her flatmate even join us for a screening of The Encampments at our favourite cafe. Afterwards, there is a big discussion about Lebanon and Palestine and activism.

Meanwhile, we start to be more focused about the places we frequent in Beirut.

Mom buys breakfast sandwiches from this sandwich shop down the road. Zico introduces us to the owner, who starts cracking jokes about getting us to smuggle cigarettes back to his son Canada. His other son, who works at the shop, starts waving his hands, yelling, “Say no! Say no!”, while mom laughs.

By the way, a pita bread wrap with three eggs, parsley and olives costs $1.60 at that shop. One street away, at a coffee place I am not allowed inside, a cappuccino and a slice of banana bread costs $10.50.

There’s also the place around the corner where they make mom’s favourite breakfast on earth: man’ouche with zaatar and olive oil, served fresh and hot out of the oven. The baker remembers her order every time.

All of this is strewn amongst tailors, barber shops, carpentry shops and fruit and vegetable stores that look like they haven’t changed since 1967.

We still have to keep our eyes peeled when we walk so as not to get run over, and the pollution levels are something else. But Beirut starts to feel better, especially with our neighbour-friends, and the fact that we all go up to Aya’s whenever we can. Also, mom never misses her 12-step meeting. They go for very long coffees afterwards and she’s gone for, like, 400 hours, but I tolerate it because it makes her so happy.

We spend our last week in Lebanon at Aya’s. Mao’s mom and our other new friends stop by often to share food, sit on the veranda and talk, or jam together. We are on that veranda when the IDF bombs South Beirut again. We can’t hear it, but there are fireworks going off at the same time for the holiday of Bayram, and it’s all quite overwhelming. I shake with fear and Mom holds me as the humans talk in low voices. It’s scary and really sad, but Mom says she’d rather be here than anywhere else.

The day we leave Lebanon, one of our new friends drives us to the airport, even though it takes an hour to get there and our flight is very early.

“I love you, Django,” he tells me.

I look him in the eyes and say it right back.

“How have we only been here for 5 weeks?” Mom asks, after we’ve gone through security where they did not check any of my travel papers (but did scratch me on the head).

I know what she means. Mao and I obviously knew each other in a previous life, but it’s still strange that this place felt like home so quickly.

Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe, when people live in a country that has seen so much strife, they either shut down and focus on little green pieces of paper and designer clothes (which I do not judge them for), or live fully, share open-heartedly, and go beyond their perceived borders.

Maybe they invite strangers into the mountains and for tea.

Maybe it’s easier, that way, to choose love.

Buy Us a Man'ouche

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I speed-walk along, following google map’s directions, dodging honking taxis and scooters racing in both directions, (and sometimes on the sidewalk). I remind myself of my dad’s advice on how to cross the street here: look the driver in the eyes and make sure they see you.

I find myself at a doorway.

Not some kind of beautiful old stone archway, or a French-style wrought iron elevator in one of the neighbourhood’s famous early modern buildings. This doorway goes into a mall. The mall connects two different streets on different levels. I head inside, hopping on the escalator and hoping the google lady’s instructions are right. It’s air-conditioned in here, with elevator music is pumping and people drinking things through straws at chain coffee shops. The walls and floor are glossy black tile. After only three days in Lebanon, it feels wrong.

Since arriving here, I’ve started to get to know the streets in this neighbourhood. On missions to find dog food, buy a SIM card, or stock up on mosquito repellant, I’ve been amazed to see that everywhere is just… shops. Very few chain stores. No one-stop-shopping type places. Instead, there are little corner joints that only sell barber shop products, or household items, or (my favourite) one kind of food. Want fries with your falafel? Better find the fry shop. The person behind the counter will say this while cracking a smile, and even though they’re usually speaking Arabic, you’ll get the gist.

I’m here working on a film based on my dad’s teenager years in this place. I’m lucky enough to be an artist-in-residence at a creative hub, which happens to be next to the park where my grandparents met, and a 5-minute walk from the apartment where my dad grew up.

Somehow, I’ve landed inside the set of my own movie.

I’ve lingered in the doorway of the church where my father was baptized, watching as a lady in a pew murmurs to herself, hunched over a bible.

I’ve stared up at the balcony where my grandmother, who died when I was 4, used to drink coffee on in the mornings.

I think of how few of us get to connect in this way with our past.

One of my aunts, my father’s cousin, invites me and another aunt for a “simple lunch” (hummus, fattoush, sambousek, tiny pickled aubergines stuffed with walnuts, cheese rolls, kibbeh…). I pepper them both with questions about my grandmother and my dad’s uncle, who are both characters in this film. They tell me stories so precious I want to eat them. About the sandwiches my grandma used to make my dad for lunch. How one of them once painted her toenails for her. They interrupt themselves in mid-sentence.

“Have some more humous!”

“Try this, it’s delicious. Guess what’s inside?”

From the balcony of my aunt’s apartment, you can see out to the sea, and to the airport. She points towards the port, where the silos exploded in 2020, and towards south of the city, telling me how the earth shook when the IDF attacked.

We are just down the road from the apartment building where my parents hid out during the civil war.

“Your dad would climb onto the roof at night,” my aunt tells me, filling my plate again, “and take photos of the bombs falling.”

Here are me and Django trying to cross a street. (We spend about a quarter of our days here trying to cross streets.) It’s so loud, and stinky and exhaust-full, and Django is yanking me towards the new smells and putting his life in peril, so I just scoop him up and carry him between cars. On the other side we turn a corner, and I am stopped dead in my tracks. It’s a waft of shisha, or it might be fresh zaatar, or roasting coffee. Suddenly, I’m back in my own childhood, so far away from here, in a place of air-conditioned malls and chain coffee shops, but also a time of going to the “Lebanese store” to buy our tahini and amardeen, and making baked pita bread with majdoul, and waking up to the scent of my dad’s morning stovetop brew.

I recently read “A Woman is a School” by Lebanese writer Celine Samaan. In it, she describes herself as Indigenous to this land.

This stunned me.

I would never have thought of using such a word to describe myself. Of course I am not full Lebanese—technically, by blood, I’m a quarter. But still, among the endless noise and honking and fumes and power cuts; these smells and these memories that are not even mine; I feel more connected in this place than anywhere else I’ve ever set foot.

Back to the meeting I was late for.

I am welcomed, of course, with open arms. There are a handful of us, all women.

At the end, as we’re saying the serenity prayer, the electricity cuts out.

In the pitch black, everyone finishes the prayer and starts hugging each other, as if nothing has happened at all.

If you’d like to make a one-time donation, please click the button below.

Buy Me a Falafel

Just a note to apologize for the silence, and say there should be some exciting stories on the horizon. In less than a week, I’m meant to head to Beirut to do a writer’s residency for my film.

My dad was born and raised in Beirut. I have only been there once before. Being able to go now, to work on a project which was born on that last visit (18 years ago!), with everything that is happening in the world (and in bordering lands) feels surreal and like an incredible blessing. Obviously, I’m compensating by under-sleeping and over-planning.

Yes, Django is coming too. No, he is not impressed.

In the meantime, I caught up with one of you today in person, and I had a thought I wanted to share.

So often, when I meet or speak to a reader of this substack, they share how they’ve reacted to some of my posts—thoughts they’ve had, ideas, conversations. I’m not sure I can convey how much that means to me. Writing is lonely work that sometimes feels like shouting into a void. To know that any of these stories have struck a chord, even if it’s a minor chord (or a diminished one… major 7th… any music nerds out there? no?), feeds me more than you could imagine.

So if anything you’ve read here strikes you, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment, or respond to the email (it’ll come straight to me). Send me a song, a DM, an instagram post, a poem, an interpretive dance, a photo of your dessert. I’d absolutely love to hear from you.

Last but not least: to those who have been able to renew paid subscriptions, thank you so very, very much.

To those who have sent a“coffee” donation, thank you so very, very much.

To those who aren’t able to financially support and are just here: really—thank you, thank you.

No platform is perfect, but I’m grateful to have this little piece of the internet where I can share these stories, and where people are able to support that sharing in whatever way they can.

With love,

Natalie (& Django)

If you’d like to “buy me a coffee” (in Beirut! sexy, right?) with a 1-time donation, please click the button below.

buy me a coffee

We found a row of four seats on the ferry. Selen brought coffee. I brought salty cookies, a Turkish tradition. We were joined by Saskia and Nichole, two Americans who also live here.

We sat, waiting to leave, chatting about all the things we were going to do on Rhodes, a Greek island a 90-minute boat ride away. All the food we were going to eat. How we were going to go to a beach further down the island, and maybe a gay club.

“I can’t wait to have non-Turkish wine,” somebody said, probably every 5 minutes.

We were supposed to be on Rhodes two nights, but because of the weather forecast, we had to take the ferry back the following day. So we had 28 hours away, and dammit, we were going to make the most of them.

The ferry berthed. We drank coffee. We showed each other things on our phones. We talked about other Greek islands we’d visited and wanted to. The boat rocked a little bit. Nichole asked if that was normal. She was the only one of us who’d never taken this trip before.

I waved her concerns away. “We’ll be there almost before you realize we’ve left.”

The ferry picked up speed. We dipped and bobbed some more.

“What’s happening?” Nichole asked, gripping her armrests.

“Nothing!” Saskia said. “It’ll pass.”

“Why is he going so fast?” Nichole hissed. “Can someone talk to him?”

“If he goes any slower,” I said, confidently, “it’ll be worse.”

We dipped higher and bobbed lower. Some eople at the front started shrieking, in a “this is fun but also scary” way. Nichole clutched Saskia’s hand. Saskia shot me a raised eyebrow look that said, “What am I supposed to do with her?”

“It’s like we’re all surfing!” I exclaimed. “Together! We are surfing… collectively.”

Nichole searched for her safety belt.

“Do you get seasick?” Saskia whispered, to me.

“No,” I said. “Well… I’ve started to a little bit in the past few years. But I’ll be fine.”

The waves really started coming. It felt like we were on a roller coaster, except one belonging to Mother Nature. The ferry staff started cheerfully passing out motion sickness bags, which were really just regular plastic bags.

Nicole was now pale yellow.

Saskia kept talking to me, and I kept nodded, trying to ignore the fact that I was starting to feel less surfey. I have never done sick well—I mean, the seasick kind of sick. I’m not sure if you’d call it a phobia, but I would rather run naked up and down the aisles of this ferry singing ABBA songs than… you know.

I can’t even type it.

“Maybe I should get her a bag,” Saskia said.

I looked around to try to wave down one of the people who worked on the ferry.

At which point I realized that turning my head was a bad idea.

I closed my eyes and gripped the back of the chair in front of me.

“Maybe I should get you one too?” Saskia added.

“Hmph,” I said.

Selen took Nichole to the back of the boat. I fixed my eyes on a point on the horizon like they tell you to. The ferry was becoming a zombie horror movie, with people stumbling all over the place, clutching each other and making horrible sounds. A woman near the front got so panicked she stopped breathing. Some people stood up to see if she was okay. I didn’t. I couldn’t. All my energy was going towards not being sick. I stuffed in my earbuds and blasted “calming frequency” music. I kept my laser focus on the horizon. I said mantras. Nothing was really making a difference, so I resorted the one thing I left: the very loud voice in my brain.

I will not be sick.

Rainbows. Unicorns. Puppy dogs. Purifying rain showers. God, please don’t let me be sick. God of the sea, maybe? Is that Poseidon? Are you there? I can’t remember if you’re supposed to be causing waves or stopping them. You’re a man and you have power so you probably do whatever you feel like. Or you disapprove of boats since were are fucking up the earth with all this oil and oh god this is not helping.

Saskia came back from the back of the boat, where she’d been helping Selen and Nichole. She rubbed me on the shoulder, which made me feel worse, but I felt too awful to tell her that.

“It’s a lot better in the back,” she said. “Why don’t you come?”

I made a feeble waving motion with my hand.

We crossed the invisible line where the Turkish cell signal stops and the Greek cell signal doesn’t work yet. My music cut out. I kept my earbuds in anyway, praying to Hera, Jesus, Allah, whoever was listening, clutching my motion sickness bag like a life preserver I would rather die than use. Each minute lasted a year.

Then the miracle happened. I spotted land.

Or maybe it was low hanging clouds.

I laser focused harder. The boat did not get any steadier. Dontbesick donotbesick. Ifeelgreat Ifeelgreat. Iamnotafraid Iammnotafraid oh fuck I am so afraid.

Saskia reappeared. “We’re almost there,” she said, gently. “If you can make it to the back, we’ll be able to get off the boat faster.”

She might as well have suggested I jump on top of my seat and start pirouetting.

“No,” I hissed.

She stood patiently for a moment.

“I promise you’ll feel so much better.”

I listened to the sounds for a minute. I thought about being on this godforsaken boat for a second longer than necessary.

She held out her hand. I took it.

Selen reappeared and took my backpack. Somehow, I made it to the back of the boat with them. The crew had (wisely) opened the doors to let in the fresh air, and there were a few people staggering around in various shades of green. Nichole was on the floor next to the luggage, looking a lot better, probably because she’d, you know, done the thing you’re supposed to do when you’re seasick.

There was a guy lying on the floor on the other side of the pile of luggage. He looked like he might be dead.

I went out onto the deck with some of the green people. I gripped a metal pipe thing that was sticking out of the wall and watched the horizon and prayed some more. Someone had the nerve to light a cigarette, but inhaling smoke out here was better than being in there. And then finally, finally, several millennia later, despite everything I knew to be true, we docked in Rhodes.

We were almost the first off the boat, and on dry land.

I tried not to cry.

We walked to our hotel, which thankfully was only a few minutes away. We rested for a bit, but I was so ecstatic that the whole ordeal was over that I insisted we head out for breakfast, even though my stomach felt like it was still out at sea. (If I’m honest, as I write this several days later, it still feels that way.) Nichole kept talking about the sick people on the boat ride. I kept hissing at her to stop.

It started to rain.

Later in the day, I made an audio recording on my phone to get everyone’s take on how the journey thus far had gone down.

“Okay,” I call out. “So then what happened?”

[Sound of munching chips in the background.]

Saskia: “Why is there no top sheet on the bed?”

Me: “Here. It’s folded up.”

Saskia: “Why don’t they put the sheet on for you?”

Me: “Guys, work with me here. First we found breakfast, then it started raining. Right?”

“Then we found the church,” Selen calls out.

We all laugh. At the church, a giant, gilded orthodox thing near the port, I had tried to give one of my favourite history lessons: on how the Greeks built churches dedicated to Mary on top of ancient goddess sites.

But I talk fast, and Selen’s first language is Turkish.

“Yes!” she had said, enthusiastically, as we dripped all over the floor. “People do get married here!”

We'd erupted into hysterics. The guy working at the church did seem pleased about four soaking women laughing at the foot of Jesus.

We dashed outside. It started to pour.

The stone streets of Rhodes are beautiful, but in heavy rain, they become rivers. We ran through the gushing water, only to discover the local eavestroughing/defense system, which collects water at the top of buildings and spouts it out into the streets to attack pedestrians. We spotted a few of its victims, huddled together under umbrellas, some of them in shorts and flip flops.

Recollecting this during the audio recording, we start shrieking with laughter.

“And we’re HAVING FUN!” Saskia roars.

It rained almost non-stop for the rest of the day. We wandered amidst the ancient castle walls, and down in the now-empty moat, littered with cannon balls.

We took shelter in a cavernous wine shop, where, when we asked for a wine recommendation, the owner launched into an oenological treatise about two kinds of grapes from two different parts of the country and then went back to the dawn of time.

We stood there, four human puddles, staring at him uncomprehendingly.

“I don’t think he’s had a customer in ten years,” Selen whispered.

On our way back to the hotel to change, we stopped at a corner store to get some snacks to go with the wine. And gingerale, because they do not have gingerale in Türkiye, for reasons I will never understand.

“The gingerale is warm,” Saskia called from the back of the shop.

“I don’t care,” I called back.

I felt a tap on the back of my arm. I turned. A very bald man silently motioned for me to follow him. He led me outside to a row of fridges, and pointed at some cold cans of gingerale.

We thanked him and paid for our things. He never spoke a word.

It kept raining. Most restaurants were still closed for the season, but we found a touristy one and ordered chips and taramasalata. We watched the downpour, which was so ferocious in moments that it looked like it was raining upwards from the ground. They drank beer served in glasses shaped like boots. I had sparkling water.

I was still just so happy to be on solid land.

We ran back to the hotel to change again, but no one had packed for biblical times, so we left for dinner looking like we were going to yoga class in our pyjamas.

Finally, the rain let up.

In the tiny, ancient alleyways of the old town, everything glistened.

At a family-owned taverna Selen had been to before, we had tiny Simi shrimps and horta (steamed dandelions) and fava bean dip and home baked bread and little deep-fried fish and lokma. It was all so good. I had a quarter of a glass of the house wine. We went over the day’s events and laughed some more. It barely rained on our way home.

Selen and I were sharing a room, and as we climbed into our beds, we talked in the darkness about the protests that have been happening around Türkiye. She, like many, is very angry about what’s been going on with the government. In fact, part of the reason we took this trip is because she was at the end of her EU visa and was scared she’d never get another one.

On my birthday the weekend before, I’d said I wanted to go to a protest. Selen made me a sign, which half of the city took photos of and with.

I woke up at 4am to a crack of thunder.

I checked the weather for the millionth time—not the normal app, but one that tells you wind speeds for each hour of the day. It hadn’t changed since last time I checked. It was worse than it had been on our way here. I’d bought motion sickness pills at a pharmacy after breakfast, only to realize in the later that they were not actually drugs but basically powdered ginger. (They were also named, reassuringly, “Platinum Range Travel Joy”.)

I thought about getting back on that ferry My heart started to pound.

I’m just going to have to stay here alone. At least until the sea calms. I’ll just stay inside and write. I’ll be productive. I’ll go to museums! We paid for two nights at this hotel anyway. It could be fun. I’ll eat at that taverna every night. I’ll befriend the locals. Maybe I could just move here.

A roll of thunder exploded outside.

Oh my god. What if the ferry CAPSIZES???

I was sweating. I checked the weather app again. I went through my whole still-existing Greek vocabulary. I looked at some photos of the protests in Istanbul; of people chanting and fighting for justice and standing up for one another.

I thought about how I’d been on the ferry ride over.

Not the laser focus part, but how unhelpful I’d been to anyone. How I had thought only of myself the entire time. My suffering had eclipsed everyone else’s.

It would be very easy for someone to judge me for this.

I know I could have, and, lately, would have.

“That person isn’t doing anything for the cause.”

“He isn’t shouting and screaming.”

“They don’t care about anyone else but themselves.”

“For godsakes, Karneef,” my friends could have said. “Get your shit together. It’s only seasickness.”

But they didn’t.

How many people feel much more scared every day than I had on that boat?

How could I be impatient with others for not fulfilling my idea of how they should be behaving, when I had no idea what was going on inside their minds?

The next morning was sunny and clear.

We tried to find pharmaceutical-grade motion sickness pills, but all the pharmacies were closed.

We went to a nearby beach and lay like lizards on the sun loungers. We had gelato for breakfast. The wind speed dropped slightly (I only checked 40 more times).

Finally, we got our bags from the hotel and reluctantly made our way to the ferry, passing the corner shop again. There was a a sign on the wall for cannabis, which is (very) illegal in Türkiye.

“What do you think?” Selen asked. “Maybe it will help?”

I pondered this, and decided that being stoned and possibly paranoid on a boat full of zombies was not the best solution at this moment.

As we left, the silent bald man waved at us, like old friends.

Everyone who had been on the ferry the day before looked terrified. I was relieved to see the guy I’d thought was dead, but also felt very badly for him.

I boarded while the girls were still in the duty free. I took the row of seats closest to the back, and swallowed three motion sickness pills. I would still have paid an obscene amount of money to be teleported back home.

The engine started up, they blasted early 90s music on the loudspeakers, and we left. We kept looking at each other with wide eyes.

The entire ride home was smooth as butter.

Nichole fell asleep.

I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, just in case.

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After all, I live in a country where, as my friend says, “Being two minutes late is early.” No one expects you to be on time here ever, but I still try.

I recalled the story below, of a gyno visit past, which was also a harsh reminder if what life is like for many people in this country—a reminder that is coming to the forefront across Turkiye these days.

My gyno here in Fethiye is a man. He is quite a lovely man, with tattoos on his arms and a gentle way about him, so different from many gynos I’ve had, most memorably the one in Montreal who swooped into the room as I waited, strapped into that awful chair with my legs in that awful position, and snapped,

“What are you here to complain about today?”

It’s been ominously, appropriately windy here. I rode an electric scooter most of the way to my appointment, so my hair was pointing in 13 directions when I arrived. I was fumbling with my headphones as I raced up the stairs, and somehow, video called someone. I couldn’t see the name on the screen, I could just see my face and that it was ringing, and then I suddenly realized I was calling my ex partner, with whom I am no longer in contact even though I love him a lot, because it’s too painful, and I start hissing “fuck” loudly and stabbing at my phone screen.

The gynaecologist’s receptionist opens the office door.

“Hello!” she says, smiling, as if I am behaving like a normal human being.

The call ends. I go inside, completely flustered, but luckily my doctor is also his usual kind self. He leads me into the examination room and makes sure I’m comfortable (ha) before he does his thing.

I lie there, looking at the ceiling, my heart pounding, telling myself that it’ll be over soon.

I’ve been reading and learning of late about how we store trauma in our bodies. I want to be able to work with trauma survivors as a meditation teacher, and with (most) survivors of war and genocide, there is obviously a language barrier. There is also not the luxury of time to spend sitting in meditation. But working somatically with people bypasses a lot of those issues. Working with the nervous system can help people process trauma without understanding it or reliving it through conversations.

So many of us have become wired to live in our heads, with little or no connection to what’s happening in our bodies.

One therapist I’ve been following said that it is necessary for most people to “leave” their bodies in order to survive trauma. As controversial as this view may be, drinking, drugging, compulsive sex, self-harm, self-judgement, social media scrolling, worrying, gambling, obsessing over a person or persons, jumping out of planes or other adrenaline-charged activities, overeating, or purposefully underrating: these are not choices. These are what people do to deal with the state their nervous system is in. This is how they—we—stay alive.

So it makes sense that working with the nervous system is how these harmful coping mechanisms can be processed and transformed into healthier coping mechanisms.

As I lie on the examination table, I realize that right now, I don’t want to be in my body. In fact I want to be as far away from my body as possible, preferably in an underground bunker with a highly alcoholic beverage.

And if that’s how I feel, imagine how tens of thousands of people feel. People who, who as we speak, are being forced into horrifically painful situations—women, involving their women parts—and how they must equally want to flee their physical beings and possibly never return.

This is the world created by the people currently in charge.

They are marching in the streets of Turkiye today. Protests have been banned, and yet they protest. They unite over the way they have been treated, he rights they are repeatedly denied, the system that keeps them chained to jobs 6 (sometimes 7) days a week, barely scraping an existence together, allowing them no time for thought, contemplation, or reflection on the system itself.

Much like another country we’re talking about a lot these days.

In the meantime, I leave you with the OG gynaecologist story. And a request. It’s my birthday today. If you feel called to, here is a list of links of ways to help Palestinians, researched and vetted by a trusted source. $5 to just one of these places from all the readers of this substack would make a huge difference.

Thank you.

I am late for the gynecologist.

Not late like, “I should have had a yearly check-up by now”, although there is that.

Late because my appointment is at 2 o’clock, but I’d convinced myself it was at 4, and it’s now 1:49 and I’m racing through the streets of Istanbul.

This gynecologist was rated by someone on Facebook as “the best gynecologist I’ve ever seen in my life”. I call to let her office know I’m late, while simultaneously trying to hail a taxi.

“Where are you going?” the driver calls out.

“Fulya,” I pant, which is about a 20 minute drive away.

“Call an Uber,” he says, and drives off.

The more people I speak to, the more I understand how difficult life is right now for anyone earning the Turkish lira.

The working week, whether a labourer or a lawyer, is at least 6 days, and for far more than 8 hours a day. Having your boss call a meeting late at night or on a Sunday afternoon is part of life. Meanwhile, inflation rose over 50% in May, with energy bills soaring by 121% and food at 92%. The majority of while collar workers in this country can’t afford to take a week’s holiday.

My friend Emily shared that she’s losing friendships she’s had for decades because the general mental health is so impacted here. I see the effects of this in the poet, too, who works for a startup. When he puts his phone down for an hour, he’s greeted by a waterfall of messages that would make me weep. A taxi driver we met last weekend told us that he works about 18 hours a day, and brings home roughly $25 Canadian for it. Because of this, his wife has just left him.

I jump on the metro, and by the time I get back up onto street level, I’m pouring sweat. It should be a 20-minute walk to the clinic, but Google maps has decided to stop working. I come from a culture where being late for a medical appointment is ethically akin to punching a small animal, so I huff up and down the steepest of hills, trying to situate the blue dot skidding all over my phone, swearing at the taxis passing me in the streets.

By a miracle, I find the gynecologist’s building.

I head into the elevator, which stops on the way up. A woman walks in in a head scarf, sunglasses, and an almost completely bandaged face. The economy here might be batshit here for locals, but Turkey still holds its own as a medical tourism hotspot for people from wealthier countries. It’s not uncommon to see noses in splints in the street, or shaved heads covered in the tiny dots of a hair transplant. This woman seems highly anxious, and bolts back out of the elevator again before the doors close. I look at my reflection in the mirror: my halo of hair frizz, mascara-ringed eyes, my shirt soaked, and wonder if I’ve scared her. I was told recently that my decision not to have botox at the age of 45 is “charming”.

The elevator doors open, and I step into a plush, carpeted hallway, nicer than something you’d see at most hotels. The waiting room of the gynaecologists office has floor-to-ceiling windows and furniture too modern to sit on. The receptionist beams at me, waves off my apologies for being late, and hands me a form to fill out.

“Marital status”, it asks.

I hate this question, especially in this country. Why does “divorced” get its own box? Maybe because it also assumes “has had children?” Am I going to be judged for not having done my womanly duties? Cringing, I tick “single” and hand the form back. Less than a minute later, the receptionist beckons me to the doctor’s office.

She is, in fact, the best gynecologist I’ve ever seen in my life.

She’s polite and funny, and doesn’t show a smidge of judgement about the state of my womb or the reasons I’m here. I’m sent to a sparkling white bathroom, and given a pair of soft hotel slippers in a plastic package and a disposable towel to wrap around me. I return to the examination room. The receptionist uses sign language to tell me how to sit and puts a gentle hand on my foot to guide me. It’s the most compassionate experience of this variety you could ask for. I have to hold myself back from hugging them all goodbye.

Also, if I were earning minimum wage in this country, it would cost the equivalent of half a month’s salary.

Back out in the street again, I notice a woman in a ripped dress sitting on the ground next to a dumpster. She’s picking stale bread buns out of a plastic bag. I wonder which box she would tick on the medical form, if she ever, in her life, could be privileged enough to visit a gynecologist. Will she die young because of this? Will anyone care? Has she had children? Was it because she never learned how not to? Where are they now and what are they doing? What chance do they stand if things in this country don’t change?

As I pass her, an arm reaches out from inside of the dumpster. It hands her a carton of juice, and disappears again back into the darkness.

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