It’s Okay I’m Here

Almost a year ago I wrote:

Last Saturday afternoon I accompanied my daughter to a book sale in Montreal. The sale was organized by the Friends of the Library. The place was not very far from our home and easy to locate. Inside the arena where the sale was taking place there was already a significant crowd by the time we reached. And rows and rows of books, in both French and English. My French unfortunately being poor, I walked over to the English section. Books were arranged on tables sideways, so it made it easy to read the title and the author’s name. They had books from the old masters as well as the latest bestsellers. Hence I indulged myself in the process of choosing what I thought were good books for me to read. I put the books written by authors I liked into empty cardboard boxes placed underneath the tables. Books written by authors whose names I hadn’t even heard of I had to check first to see if their story was to my liking.

After only a short time I noticed that people were, like me, scanning the jackets and only afterwards either returning the book back to the table or placing it in their boxes. It dawned on me there and then that people only chose what books to read based on the stories.

Yesterday I set out on the same trip again. And once more I went with my daughter to the sale. The book sale was held at the exact same location as last year, but unlike last year the trip was a sad one to undertake. Since we went there without my husband. Throughout the drive I remembered all the things we had done and all the things we had said on our way in the car. And yesterday when I parked the car in front of the arena my daughter said, “This is exactly where dad parked the car last year mom.”

As I entered the place a terrible sense of loss overcame me. See, my husband was passionate about books in the same way I am. He never missed a book sale. And no matter where we were, whether in Lebanon, Dubai, Rome, Venice, Paris, Hong Kong, Australia, New York, Memphis, Los Angeles, or Montreal, we never missed going to bookstores and book sales. And at book sales, we each took a basket and filled it with whatever books we liked. My kids used to joke and say, “How come dad always ends up with the best books in his basket?”

And on days like yesterday I miss him more than ever. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote:

“Death is but a transition from this life to another existence where there is no more pain or anguish.”

That knowledge helps me. To know that he is no longer in pain and is not suffering. Yesterday while browsing through the books I felt him beside me. I heard his voice in my ears. It was as if he was pointing out to me the books that he knew I would love to have and read, since yesterday was the only time that I put the books in my basket without reading the jackets to find out more about the stories. And when we came home and my daughter went through them, she said, “Mom, you got some nice books here.”

I said, “I know,” and I smiled. The same way I know that the only thing that really lasts forever is love. I will miss so much the love I had, the life I had with him. I will always love him and forever miss him. But I also believe that he is with me, laughing with me and smiling at me as I hear him say, “It’s okay, I’m here.”

ChK

Did I Write It

As always before I begin writing I leaf through my notebook just to get started. Sometimes I come across quotes that I think would be appropriate for the ideas I have at that moment. Other times I come across some paragraphs and thoughts that I have jotted down. This morning I came across the following words.

World. Cruel. Mad. Death. So terrifyingly finite. Not fair. A silence so loud that it’s driving me crazy. Pure Madness.

Words that I put down in my notebook. Did I write them in a moment of madness? Or:

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?” Elie Wiesel

Two nights ago my mom arrived from Beirut to stay with me for a while. I hadn’t seen her since November of 2011 after my dad passed away. And now she has come to be with me after my husband passed away. Our roles have sort of been reversed. As I look at my words, my mom’s fragile figure here to comfort me, I cannot but quote Elie Wiesel:

“Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.” 

What is the meaning of all of this? Of all the suffering that people go through. Of all the pain inflicted on us by circumstances that are out of our control, when all we expect throughout our life is to live and make our dreams come true. We study, we work, we love, we dream and above all we try to be in control of at least our own lives. And when tragedy comes knocking at our door, we are hit so hard. It’s as if to remind us that none of us is in control. That there is a greater power- fate, destiny, God, whatever name we call it- that we cannot just ignore. And that these tragedies are lessons we should learn from. As I sit and listen to my mom’s stories I remember Elie Wiesel’s words:

“I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”

Hope. I add the word to my list of words. Something my mother and her stories give me. Hope, courage and love. I have to learn to have courage again, the courage to live and face life as it comes. At a time when I thought I had lost all interest in life, I have to learn to live day by day and take one step at a time.

Elie Wiesel writes:

“There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.” 

ChK

Why Is It Always The Ones Who Love Life

In the living room of my home in Montreal, in the dining room cabinet, on a shelf behind the glass is a picture of our family. It is an old photo taken in Dubai when my kids were still very young. It was taken on the same day we were photographed individually for our Canadian visa application. There’s an aura of happiness on all our faces.

Now we have lived in Dubai for almost a quarter of a century. We went there in the mid 1980s, escaping the Lebanese civil war. First it was only for one year. But then when the war continued we never went back. Living in Dubai was so much fun. But it always felt like we were on a long holiday. It felt like we were in the transit lounge of an airport, always waiting for our next plane out of there. So eventually when the time came for us to leave we decided to leave the Middle East and settle somewhere away from trouble. Somewhere we and my kids could finally call home.

In my previous post I mentioned the hardship that my grandparents (and later my parents) went through when they lost everything and left their homes and started a new life as refugees in Lebanon, where they didn’t even speak the language. They arrived in this new land with nothing but the clothes they wore. And out of this nothing they were able to stand on their feet and build a new home, raise a good family.

Thomas H. Cook writes:
“The course of every life followed a strange and unknowable direction. We might work to probe the mystery, but it would always elude us. For we were lost, like sheep in a deep valley, wandering in the darkness, without guidance or direction, driven here and there by mere circumstance, undone by pure chance. The darkness was impenetrable, and so we groped and stumbled, fell into traps and snares. We had been brought here to suffer, to be broken into submission, wounded again and again, so that we might find within those wounds the force and grace of love.”

Life was not so simple and sweet for either of my parents. They had it real hard. They had both started working early on in life, perhaps when they were twelve or thirteen. And since then they have never stopped. From them I learned the greatest lessons of life. I learned to look around at the less fortunate and count my blessings. I learned to work hard, as I learned that in order to succeed I had to have patience and perseverance. And due to the sacrifices they made we (my two brothers and I) were able to have a happy childhood even when theirs was taken away from them.

Despite all my parents had been through, they still believed the world to be made of good and coming from such a family I grew up with no fear of life. And then it was our (my husband and I) turn to make that sacrifice. And oh what a sacrifice it turned out to be. At last when we had a place to call home my husband was taken from us. There have been times lately when I have been submerged deep in sorrow and a fear of life and the future has taken hold of me. A life without my significant other beside me. And on such days, on days that I feel let down, I long to hear their voices, the voices of the people dearest to me but long gone.

“Why is it always the ones who love life, Cal? Your mother. Now William. Why is it always the ones who love life that are taken? The ones who want so much from it, give so much to it?”
“They aren’t taken any more than others. Dad it just seems that way.”
He nodded slowly. “Seems that way, yes. Because they’re the ones we miss.” Thomas H. Cook

ChK

Since Then We Never Stopped

When I was a little girl growing up in Lebanon, the stories I was told by my elders were not of Cinderella and Prince Charming. Rather they were stories of survival told by my parents and grandparents. I did not fully comprehend them at the time. All I knew was that my grandparents had fought the Turks and eventually left their homes in Musa Dagh, and upon reaching Lebanon as refugees (when both my parents were very young, aged 7 and 10), had lived in unbearable conditions under tents in a place where no one had lived before. Through much suffering and hard work, they turned it into the paradise it is today, Ainjar. Chris Bohjalian writes:

“If anyone knows bits and pieces of this story, it is likely through German writer Franz Werfel’s magisterial 1933 novel, “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” The novel was an international bestseller when it was published, though it was loathed early on by the Nazis. When the Germans were mercilessly putting down the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1944, the soldiers were surprised by how many copies of the novel they found among the dead Jewish fighters.”

Musa Dagh is where my parents and grandparents come from. Their story is one of survival and that’s why I am a survivor too.

However, I did not understand then as I still don’t how an entire nation can be annihilated. I always thought that maybe, just maybe, we the Armenians could have done something to prevent the genocide. Was I missing something? What had we done? I could not understand the cruelty, the hatred aimed at us. I did not totally comprehend why until I read about the Jews and how they suffered and what they went through under the Nazis and what Hitler did to them. To quote Robert Fisk;

“Encouraged by their victory over the Allies, the Turks fell upon the Armenians with the same fury as the Nazis were to turn upon the Jews of Europe two decades later.”

So my childhood was anything but normal as I grew up on these survival stories. I grew up attending vigils alongside my parents and grandparents in memory of all those Armenians who perished at the hands of the enemy. I grew up remembering our dead. Because:

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”  Elie Wiesel

I grew up marching and protesting against injustice. On the 24th of April we still march peacefully on the streets of the cities we live in, all around the world. Unfortunately genocides are still a part of history and atrocities against people and nations still continue. Not much has changed in the world since April of 1915, since the first genocide of the 20th century. And since then we never stopped marching. We march in protest because in the words of Elie Wiesel:

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

ChK

You Left Us Too Soon

Exactly five months have passed since we put you to rest. Not a moment has passed since then that I haven’t missed you. Not a night has gone by that I haven’t cried myself to sleep. May you rest in peace my darling. You left us too soon.

That was my status on Facebook yesterday. I wanted to say more. But when I am in pain I cannot write. I can only write about things that touch my soul and right now I carry this sadness in my soul, it’s deep within. I would like very much to get somewhere with that emotion. But there is nothing I can say. There is nothing I can write. Tears, pain, crying, despair that cannot be stopped nor reasoned with. And on days like this I can only put words on my page. Words expressing my emotions. Words that once written could immediately help leave the feelings behind… or so I wish.

Losing someone you love and you have shared most of your life and dreams with is hard. I don’t know. And I’m not saying that I’m unhappy all the time. I have fun, I adore my kids. I am passionate about my writing and my books. Yet now and then, I feel like this deep sadness, occasionally mingled with feelings of regret, of guilt and of fear. The feeling goes away, but always comes back later on, and then drifts off again. It’s like I live in an on and off state.

I feel sorry for him for having his life cut short without having realized his dreams. I remember once during one of his doctor’s appointment, when we were waiting in the reception he told me, “Wouldn’t it be nice to accompany each other to the clinic even at an old age?” And I told him, “You wish for us to get old together to visit the doctor only?” We laughed and I got scared that day in the reception. I wondered what was going on in his mind. But then what goes on in the minds of cancer patients? Who can tell?

And now as I face the future alone, even though from the outside everything seems normal with my life, beneath the surface lies this unknown, this darkness, this feeling of loneliness. I realize that I am utterly alone. The feeling that the person who meant the world to me and to whom I meant the world is not there anymore to share thoughts and dreams with the way I used to is so cruel and depressing.

What makes it even harder to get through these moments is the realization that no one cares whether I exist or not. That no one is interested in what I have to say. And that the world can continue turning without my awkward presence, because when I am alone it’s as if I am no longer part of the human race. For you only really matter to the ones you love.

As Paolo Coelho writes:

“People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

ChK

I Only Want To Stand Aside

Throughout all the conversations I have had, whether on the phone or in person with people close to me, I keep hearing the same phrase over and over again: “You should go out, go back to work and do something about your life.”

I know very well that I have to keep moving. I have to keep going no matter what. Many are the days when I feel frozen and strained inside. Many are the mornings when I try to hide from this world by just sitting in my room and reading. And every time my body stops moving, looking or thinking tears well up inside of me and I am sad and angry. And on those days it is impossible to anticipate anything, to imagine anything. And on those days I just want to give up and think that it is better not to try to do anything with my life in order to preserve the void that I am living in right now.

When I think of all the conversations I have had so far with my friends, I only heard one of them ask the other day: “Are you ready to face the world?”

Am I ready? I ask myself over and over again. Am I ready for what? I want to think that I am up for it again, but I feel reluctant and afraid. I do not wish to live emotionally anymore for I am still too tired. I am afraid to take that one step, that one move that I very much fear would be false and I would have to bear the consequences.

Elizabeth Berg writes:

“You can only have true vision when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.”

If only I did not have this strange feeling that life is somehow or other going to blow up again for me. I know I will never have that sense of happiness that we feel as children. Do I then choose to sit and look back? Or do I resurrect myself knowing very well that for me as well as for some people the choice is taken out of their hands?

Life is beautiful but the world outside is horrible with all the hunger, the poverty, the killings of innocent people, the madness. I have had my share of war and misfortunes. God knows I have more than enough to remember and write about. I can’t chase away all my memories. And I am tired of running away from them. No I don’t want to go out. I only want to stand aside from life and write.

ChK

Forget All The Rules

If you are in any way following my blog or have stumbled upon my latest post you are aware of the fact that I recently decided instead of wasting my time and going back to teaching full time, I would sit at my desk in my room and write. In other words I would try and become a full time writer. It seemed the best thing to do then. But now that two days have passed I am kind of having second thoughts. The first and main reason is how am I going to make a living out of full time writing? Even though in the words of Jules Renard:

“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”

Yet I have bills to pay and so far I haven’t been able to make any money from my writing. Now my book The Lost I was first published and printed in Dubai in April 2004 in accordance with the rules and regulations set by the Ministry of Education. And as such the publisher didn’t have the right to distribute the book outside of United Arab Emirates.

In 2006 when we moved to Canada I very much wanted to publish the book here in North America. So when I was approached by Raider Publishing International, I signed a contract with them. It was the worst experience of my writing life. Even after my contract is over with them, the paperback version of my book is still being sold, illegally. And of late the internet is full of testimonies of authors just like me suffering from breached contracts and broken promises by Adam Salviani, owner of Raider/Purehaven publishing. Some have youtube videos reciting their experience with Raider while another group of angry authors have launched a class action suit against the owner.

The funny thing is that at first I was upset with Raider but now I don’t even care. All that is behind me now and all I want to do is write and hope that maybe I can have better luck this time with another publisher. Because in the words of John Fowles:

“There are many reasons why novelists write – but they all have one thing in common: a need to create an alternative world.”

To me writing is a need from deep within. It is the only thing that calms me down and boy how I need to be calmed down at this time and phase of my life. I need to create a different and better world where I could be happy again. And that is why for the time being I have to:

“Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.” Melinda Haynes

I need to get back on my feet, as I desperately need to regain my faith in humanity and the world around me. And right now only writing can bring that back to me. In the words of Stephen King:

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

I know I can never be happy like I used to before. I will always carry the pain of losing him deep in my heart as I will forever miss him. But all I want is just to get up, get well, and get over. All I want is to simply to write!

ChK