nihal

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers." -Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926), The Happy Life, 1896.................................. "Baladna" a poem:We are who we are, and home is home to keep the seasons dreaming to remind us of ahweh, zaatar, khoubiz, kaak— the common things...I am no longer sure what I see: a field of wheat or a field of olive trees, a herd of sheep or a burning mountain, not sure if it matters now that I stand alone at the corner of a small road somewhere between my grandfather and what seems to be my present… Am I as old, as young, as sad, as torn, as strange, as sorry as those I have lost? I try to remember all that has been offered to me: winkled bed sheets, library passes, old passports, ports we stopped at for an hour… we are who we are; are we who we are? ...We write a ballad to celebrate ourselves, baladna and wonder, is that what it’s like to dance in Arabic…by Nathalie Handal