The Adequate Beauty

The question, which I have heard here many times, is: “how do you see life here?” Life is beautiful. There is no way to compare this city from the distant world to any other city I have ever known in my life. Yesterday, I told some of my friends: “if we decide in Lebanon, to look after the harmony of cities, we must demolish all our cities and rebuild them again”. However, cities are not just their architecture. Cities are something only lovers understand. I am echoing an ache that a friend of mine had told me. He said: “I have lived here for twenty-seven years without getting to know who lives next door to me!” You live here. Hardly anyone talks to you. You know that the houses are inhabited. Yet, you see no one. Houses are both inhabited and desolate at the same time! Everything you see outside is beautiful. However, my country, despite its conflicts and flaws and everything that angers me in it, consists of faces, some of which have left us for good, and some others which we are unable to leave behind. The beloved faces are a fragrance of the new city which is the adequate beauty.