Princes in Kinship

Hassan, Hassan, Majed, Jihad, Elham, Jihad… are some of the forty classmates with whom I was brought together by the school benches. Most of them were displaced from southern Lebanon to a suburb that slept on the shores of Beirut, which was unlike any suburb, perhaps in the world, in its diversity and ability to consider the other, who differs in religion and identity…, as flesh of my flesh! The crazy war that was called “the war of the two years” dispersed us. Some of my friends disappeared in the cities and villages of Lebanon, while some of the others got scattered all over the earth. Hassan, mentioned here first, was not defeated by the war. Although today he is living abroad, he remained a prince in kinship. Of his promises, he told me, in a phone call, that he will reunite me with our friends. Then, not long ago, some other comrades broke the silence of absence. Those to whom I spoke also seemed to me stronger than the war, the years, and every distance that wants to delude us into thinking that history, our history, is incapable of being renewed. Is the promise soon to be fulfilled?