“What’s for dinner?”

You hear it in many languages around the globe every day. ‘What’s for dinner?’ A simple phrase we take for granted. We walk into our home, to our hotel, to a restaurant, and we either voice it or think it. “What’s for dinner?”

Chances are, you do it too.

You never even assume that the answer could be “nothing”.

Or that the answer could be a loud silence.

A silence so deafening, it drowns the sound of your shrieking stomach.

Nothing.

No home. No roof. No door. No family. No chatter about the day. No table. No chairs. No light. No food. No dinner.  

Welcome to modern day Somalia.

‘What’s for dinner?’

As the World that takes dinner for granted clears the dinner table, throws a good chunk of the leftover food in the trash, loosens its pants, belches from over-indulging, then slowly chews itself to obesity and an early grave, the other World of billions who hear the loud nothing every day silently ache for a chance to ask “What’s for dinner?”

Will we ever learn?

I wonder.

cockadoodledooooo, time for my makeup.

I have a little munchkin that often wakes me up at ungodly hours to complain about one of her disturbing dreams. Once she dreamt that our dog told her to relax and she freaked out because he could talk. This morning was one such case, or so I thought.

“MOM!!! WAKE UP!!”

“Even the roosters are not awake yet, darling.” Not that there are any roosters in our Dubai neighborhood. Or that we could hear them if there were from our high rise apartment. With air conditioning and windows shut tight. But I used it for effect to get her to go back to sleep, the sun was still somewhere over Asia.

“It’s the dream”. She said, squinting her sleepy eyes at me.

“It’s okay, baby. You will forget the bad dream in the morning. And it will be morning after we sleep for a looong time still”.

“No mommy, I want the dream. It just stopped. I want it to go on”.

“Hmpff?” Confused, it was my turn to squint.

“Aston was going to marry me.” She said, almost crying.

“What the…”. “What?”

“Aston, the boy from my class, he was going to marry me and we were together and I was smiling, and then I WOKE UP. OH NO”.

I checked her fever. Nothing.

Has she fallen on her head?

I stroked her hair, trying to coax her back to sleep. She looked at me desperately. “I don’t want my dream to finish. I want Aston to be there, marrying me. He gave me flowers.”

“It’s okay. Back to sleep now.”

“I can’t. My heart is going boom boom boom,…” slapping her tiny hand on her chest to demonstrate the boom boom rythm.

At this point, I put the covers over my head.

Of all the issues I imagined I would have to deal with raising a five year old, a broken dream needing a rewind to recapture a magic moment with another five year old would not have been on my list.

This evening I came home after a long work day, threw my bag on my bed and went to wash my hands. I was accosted by a scene of utter chaos in front of my bathroom mirror. The little Juliette had been trying on my makeup all afternoon. It was as if a family of monkeys on a sugar high had gone through my things. Brushes, compacts, mascara, lisptick everywhere.

I glared at her (the her in question had a red princess dress on, looking all majestic). She twirled and went off mumbling: “I have to look beautiful, I am wearing make up to school from now on. Or else he will start liking Bethany.”

Panadol. I need Panadol.

And chocolate.

Home, the Lebanon we adore

I know what it tastes like. Tabouleh
I know what it smells like. Mediterranean Jasmin
I know what it looks like. It hides behind my eyelids.
I know what it feels like. A grandmother’s gentle embrace.

But what it sounds like. Now that.

I don’t even hesitate. With every bomb that fell, we heard her. Growing up with her. Waking up to her crystal voice. Good Friday was never that without her singing in a church pinning us to the TV set to glimpse her veiled face. She sang for causes. She sang pleading for the demented war to stop. She sang in celebration when it did. Or when they lied to us that it did. She sang again and again.

We mouth her songs like we breathe. She sings me. My people. My land. My history. She is us. We are her.

To someone like me who has lived in and out of my homeland, her voice brings me back, makes me cry, makes me long, makes me regret leaving, makes me hate those who are still hurting the tiny spec of geography we call home. But she is there, eternal like those ageless trees that define us. Stubborn, unyielding. Like the good ones among us.

She stays, we go, we come back, we have new generations who listen to her, and she weathers it all, solid like our beaches, the rocks wildly embracing the surf in explosions of passion. The land, and her. Forever more.

This is my absolute favorite song by Fairouz. Written by the wonderful Talal Haidar, music by Ziad Rahbani. Enjoy.

(As promised, below is a translation to the best of my ability, but it doesn’t do the Arabic words justice at all, it only conveys the beautiful images of the great Lebanese poet, Talal Haidar)

Alone they remain

Like Elder flowers

Alone

They pick the leaves of time

They lock up the forest

They remain

Like the rain

Knocking at my doors, at my doors

O’ Time

As the grass wildly roaming all over these walls

I lit the night roses on my book

The tower of the pigeons is high and gated

The pigeons fled

And I stayed alone. Alone.

O’ you who are waiting for the snow

You are no longer coming back

Call on them in the rain, O’ Deeb

Maybe they will hear you

Alone they remain

Like these old clouds

Alone

Their faces dark like the night road

They are crossing the forest

In their hands, like the rain, knocking

The weeping at my doors

O’ Time

As ageless as the shade of grass on the walls

Since before the trees grew tall

I light lanterns and wait for my friends

They passed, they went away

I stayed at my door

Alone

O’ you who are going

And there is snow

You are no longer coming back

Call on them in the rain, O’ Deeb

Maybe they will hear you

O’ you who are going

And there is snow

You are no longer coming back

Call on them in the rain, O’ Deeb

Maybe they will hear you

Prayer beads

My five year old is learning how to pray.

She is using prayer beads I just gave her (they were offered to me in a box of dates from Rotana Hotel). She asked me what they were and I told her that they were beads to help you space your prayers. “What are prayers?”. “Praying is when you ask God for things, and you thank him for what he has done to you, prayers are silent wishes.”

“Can I pray not silently so you can tell me if I am doing it right?”.

“Sure.”

She was fascinated by the thought that she could actually have direct access to the giver of all things. She started speaking out loud while slowly moving the beads. These were her words (verbatim):

“Please God, give all the people in Somalia some food or else they will all starve and that won’t be good, and don’t forget Japan, please help them to build their houses. And God, please tell the tooth fairy to not forget to come to us every time we loose a tooth, And please tell Santa it’s okay to give us presents in the summer, like right now. That’s it, God, you can go now”.

World Humanitarian Day 2011

Flashing images in the news, suffering humans, children wasting away, we see our fellow brothers and sisters in humanity in destitution beyond belief and we either change the channel or we wonder at the impotence of a World not being able to solve the most basic of its problems, the readily preventable humanitarian disasters. If you think about it, every humanitarian crisis is man made on some level and can be mitigated if we all cared enough.

At the same time as the International community scrambles to pour hundreds of billions of dollars to save a bank or two, to spend countless billions developing a space programme, trillions for arms and machines of war, or hundreds of billions on the care of pets, or in fighting obesity that is the new epidemic of the modern times where we pig out AND waste one third of our food supply, there are humans like you and I who have lost everything and are dying of hunger, aching for a break, for a speck of a future we all take for granted. They are that way either due to a disaster, a conflict, drought, uneven development where their countries don’t stand a chance to compete economically, or simply due to the fact that the collectivity of nations are constantly failing them.

While the World looks away and forgets crises like the one in the Horn of Africa that the UN has been warning about for years, there are those who never leave, who stay the course, whose mission it is to help those in need of a chance at life, a shot at a livelihood and a semblance of dignity.

An organization I belong to, called the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation (sergiovdmfoundation.org) , was behind drafting the resolution sent to the UN General Assembly to demarcate August 19th as World Humanitarian Day. Sergio, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Head of Mission in Iraq at the time, was the star casualty in a terrorist bombing in Baghdad on August 19th 2003 that targeted the UN and other humanitarians doing their job in dangerous circumstances trying to help Iraqis rebuild their lives.

That is what Humanitarian workers do. They stare misery, hunger, hopelessness and despair in the face and transmit a can do attitude of care, empathy, respect and dedication that gives the victims of humanitarian disasters the all too necessary ingredient to keep living, the all too crucial sense of hope.

To the colleagues who are risking their lives in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Sudan, and everywhere around the Globe where people are in dire need of help, we say we are with you, we value what you are doing for those who need your help the most, for the mother who has lost two of her precious children on her long walk from Somalia to the refugee camp of Dadaab, and still has to somehow go on to raise her remaining children and to make a life somewhere, somehow. We thank you for giving work to the refugee father who loses some of his dignity everyday that passes without providing for his family, we value what you give young victims of crises in whom you instil a sense of positivity, helping them dream of a better future, a future where the World can attest to what they can give, where they are no longer living on handouts because their circumstances plucked them from their land at gunpoint and they lost everything, even their tears.

Today we recognize the work of someone like the UAE Red Crescent worker in Mogadishu I spoke to yesterday, who is braving insecurity, heat, lack of infrastructure to deliver aid to those who need it the most and who could die before his very eyes if he falters. To our UN and NGO colleagues who are at the border of Libya, who receive refugees coming to Ethiopia, too tired to walk, who have to stare human misery in the face and keep going, doing a job that is the most noble of all, we say we are forever in your debt as a humanity.
But that is what Humanitarian work is.
On August 19th we commemorate your work, those who are still on the frontlines and those who already made the ultimate sacrifice of paying with their lives to help others. We at UNHCR and in the UN system remember and honor your sacrifices every day, because you are there with the victims of humanitarian disasters every single day of the year.
For that, our colleagues, we are forever grateful.

http://www.sergiovdmfoundation.org/wcms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137&Itemid=204&lang=en

http://www.worldhumanitarianday.info

Somali children, what future do they have?

So much can change in 26 years. In the summer of 1985, London inspired the World when Live Aid, one of the largest music events was organized by a small group of dedicated people, Midge Ure, Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith to help the African victims of famine in Ethiopia. Planning to raise a million pounds, they ended up with over 280 million dollars to benefit people with the kind of hunger that makes your ears ache from the deafening sounds of your stomach. Those were unforgettable scenes of solidarity of a throbbing mass of young people at Wembley Stadium, people sharing their concern about fellow humans suffering from circumstances beyond their control. That was a snapshot of the World as we would like to see it, a collective effort by people who care, who have empathy, who made it happen that day, with good organization, good leadership, they showed everyone what not giving up felt like.

Cut to, London in the summer of 2011. A famine is killing people wasting away in Somalia and surrounding countries. The World is even more connected, so much can be done this year, the possibilities are endless. We even have twitter and facebook, we have massive tools at our disposal. So people in London decide to burn and trash and loot..their own city. Almost no one cares about what is happening in underprivileged Africa, about those saddest of people burying their kids who are dying in their arms in a cold world bent on self-destruction.

What happened to us in the past two and a half decades? Is it only London or everywhere else? Where are you Bod Geldof? Any artists still out there? Do something!

The secret with kids is their attitude. They face the world like a puppy does with a trusted master. The key to children’s attitude is trust. They approach situations with an unrealistic conviction that things will turn out right in the end. They are often disappointed, but hardly ever lose hope, they still believe Tom will actually win over annoying Jerry in the next episode, which never really happens. Or maybe that was just me as a child. I always hated Jerry and kept hoping Tom will win one day.

One thing my teenage daughter said today that made me realize she was adorably still a kid, was a casual remark. She was planning with me a weekend outing that she believed was happening tomorrow, I said it was only Tuesday, and she remarked “I love the summer vacation because you never know what day it is”. In the car going to an iftar (the evening meal breaking the fast during Ramadan), she dreamily remarked “I used to love it as a small child when my feet didn’t reach the floor in the car”. Vivid memories of childhood never really leave us. I remember lying face up in the space behind the back seats in my dad’s car, right under the back windshield, counting the electric polls overhead, and falling asleep with the lights flicking by, one hundred and twelve, two thousand, where was I? Back then, Lebanon had electricity all the time, street lights were still intact before they became target practice in the war, and life was too slow for seat belts, I don’t remember ever wearing them growing up. One conversation I heard my parents have while on my back perch watching the street lights flick idly overhead will never leave my memory. “Why can’t I have a car?” “You don’t need one, I am driving you everywhere.” “But I want my own car. When will I get a car, when all the women fly around in their own planes?” Gasp! Oh My God. I wished so hard that that would happen, that my dad will then have to buy my mom a small plane an we would ride in it, and then I would become a woman and also have my own plane. Flick, flick, went the lights. I must have slept and dreamt of a white flying car. I still have this dream.

My littlest one was having a conversation in the back of the car with her friend while I was driving them home tonight. “I think this boy Ghadi loves me.” My daughter answered “Really? Are you going to marry him? Ewwwww”. “Of course I will have to marry him, that’s the way it is”. “Where will you live?” “We will live in a house and I will not marry another boy, and he will not marry another girl, because we are not allowed and because the house will be too full of people, where will they sleep?” “And Santa and the tooth fairy are watching” “Of course they are, and God and the angels, they are all watching us and we need to be good and marry only one boy”. “Okay, but are you sure that Santa doesn’t die?” “No, and even if he does, they will get another Santa”. “Phew”. “I like cow and chicken”. “Haha, remember when cow married the man, but it was a dream.” “Very funny”. “I think so too.”
If I can only borrow their carefree attitudes for one day, that would be just great.

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

We have an abundance of starry nights here.

Consider what came out of this region. Three religions, truck loads of philosophers, astronomy, poetry that is so stunningly beautiful and rich you want to cry, a thousand and one nights, epics, literature, the alphabet, all in the era of no electricity, and starry nights. Great accomplishments credited to our Arab and Mediterranean region. Let’s trace it, Greece, Egypt, the Levant, Italy, Spain, Jerusalem (I singled it out on purpose so as not to go into the abyss of the endless debate), Lebanon (it has to be in a category on its own, because I’m biased and I have poetic license).

Here’s my theory. Long ago, before there was electricity (for Lebanon it is still a modern day thing) and before the proliferation of those back-lit screens we all carry, and the dumb box we call TV, in this region where on over 300 days a year one is faced with a clear night sky, people tended to look up, they star gazed, and they thought, and they dreamt, and they became creative.

The problem of the present day lack of creativity and the severe shortage of talent in this part of the World is brought about by our inability to connect with the stars, to blast open our horizon. We have become prisoners of light. Humorless, colorless, flightless, tasteless, hypnotized androids in front of a screen, forgetting who we are, failing to notice what a speck we all are compared to what is out there, to the huge limitless possibilities that are and will always be.

We are the Dodo birds of our modern times, racing to be extinct, obese, unimaginative, greedy, violent, gluttonous, slow, limited. Where are we from where we were hundreds of years back, when we thought so much, when we dreamt so much, when we loved so much, when we wrote so much, and when we enjoyed our simpler lives so much? Who are we now? To what do we aspire? Where is the edge of our collective imagination? Should we even have an edge, a limit?
Go out, away from the bulbs wasting electricity we can’t sustain, drive to a deserted place, light a candle, lie on your back, look up at the stars, let yourself drift, see where your thoughts take you. Go again, and again. See what happens. Reconnect with what is so much bigger than the mundane, what is larger than all of us, the majestic, the vast, the wonderful, the creative, the most powerful of all, our own mind.
Try it.

Dreams on a beach

It was a long afternoon.

So anyway, we are driving back, and she is starting a conversation that I half expected after seeing her keen interest in an ugly Chihuahua owned by a group of perpetually stunned Indian teenagers who were trying to pretend she wasn’t there asking her gajillion questions about the rat-like creature. Oh, didn’t I mention that I loathe chihuahuas? Well, pay attention!
So, it went like this:
“I want a pup more than anything else in the world”
“We have a dog, he’s sitting right next to you”
“He’s not a puppy”
“He looks like a puppy, especially after this new haircut”
“I KNOW he is not a puppy, he is 9″
“Yeah well, we will not be having another dog”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to get me a puppy, I will look at a star and wish for a Chihuahua”
“Go ahead”
“I can’t find a star”
“Keep trying”
“Dubai doesn’t have stars. I tried to find one yesterday. I wanted to wish being invisible to kick the boys”
“Hmm, keep looking”
“You know, you can have anything you want if you wish for it. I know I will have a puppy. All I need is a star”
“Good luck, baby”

Don’t you wish we all had more of this confident conviction of a 5 year-old? Her blind belief in magic, in the intrinsic possibilities inherent in wishes and dreams?
If you dream, you are, you will be, you become. If you dream, you own the future. Yesterday I overheard someone saying “As long as we have dreams, we don’t really grow old”. Whoever dreams and continues to dream, to hope, to believe in the impossible, the unseen, the why not, will eventually stumble into the unbelievable, the stunning, the wow of this world.

I love my conversations with my little dreamer. I keep hoping it rubs on her pragmatic mother. Then we can both kick all the boys once we have figured out how to be invisible. Watch out, people!

World Refugee Day poster

As we commemorated World Refugee Day all around the Globe on June 20th, I was reflecting on what would make that day really and meaningfully celebratory. My answer is simple and unwavering. Going out of business. I work for the UN Refugee Agency, and as long as we are working with all of our 6600 employees around the world and two Nobel Peace prizes under our belt for what we do for refugees, our mission is far from being accomplished. Our work will be done when the World starts spending more on improving lives of people who inhabit the round rock we call home and less on metal and fire that kill these people and displaces them (the UN spends less than 100 billion yearly compared with around 3 trillion spent on arms by its member states). When will we as a group of enlightened human beings start having a common vision about our future, about having a fair playing ground for all, where no child is born on the run, in a refugee camp, without papers, without sustenance, without hope, with no chance of a future in sight, stillborn for all intents and purposes?

We will truly celebrate World Refugee Day when we can manage to care about those unfortunate destitute ‘others’ as much as we care about the person staring at us in the mirror as we prepare to start our day every morning. And yes, it has to be us who would be able to change things as we own a mirror, hanging on a wall. We often take that for granted. Care to guess how many millions of fellow humans don’t have the simple luxury of looking in the mirror on a solid wall every morning? I won’t even mention running water. You do the homework and find out how many millions don’t have clean drinking water while you waste yours as it runs freely while you brush your teeth.

What will you do about that? Do one thing. Visit www.unhcr.org. It feels good to get involved, if only by learning a bit more. I promise.

http://www.unhcr.org/do1thing/index.php