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You’re looking at a very old photo of Gaza’s Khan al-Zait (source MOG). Those born in the 1960s would not know it.

It is a mad moment. The lunatics, therefore, would have to own it.

But do they?

You’re looking at a section of Tel Aviv as it burns from an Iranian missile. The photo comes courtesy of AP’s Tomer Neuberg.

Let’s dispense with the barebones facts first. Israel, a state with a keen sense of its military prowess and impunity, attacked Iran, a state with a keen sense of its isolation and vulnerability.

The World After Gaza!

Cunning title! It implies a sea change in the way of the universe before the Hamas attacks of October 7 and after Israel’s genocidal campaign in that tiny space where apocalypse dwells. But much of what the reader actually encounters on the page, with such wonder and somberness, are the historical continuities between now and then.

You’re looking at a 1963 photo of the poets Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qassem listen to the novelist Tawfik Fayyad, pipe in mouth, read from his novel, The Deformed.

You’re looking at a well camouflaged Lebanese girl during the 2019 protests write on one of Beirut’s columns: dawlet ‘arsat: a state of crooks. I am using a euphemism here. A more accurate translation would be degenerates, pimps even.

You’re looking at Beirut’s sea as I captured it last Sunday on my early morning walk. The laps I could have had in those waters had we had the sense to keep them pristine.

I’ve noticed it across the years. A desperate moment, a rupture, a new patch-up, half-written, half-agreed, a new president and cabinet, a loud sigh of relief.

In the very early days of peace after the 15-year Lebanese civil war–– the Haririan era, we call it –– you couldn’t really tell: was all the pomp and ceremony meant to trumpet the magnificent achievements or cover for their absence? It didn’t take very long to have our answer, whichever side of the Haririan fence we stood. The argument was (and remains) only about who’s to blame.

You’re looking at the beachfront of Zeitouneh in the 1950s. Alas, unrecognizable to those of us who never lived it?

Every once in a while, I revisit old writings, much like I do old friends. I revisit in search of memories. But more. I revisit in search of answers to questions that seem eternal to me: do I recognize myself on the page? Who was I then? In prose, have I aged well? In wisdom, have I become wiser? It’s like peering in the mirror every ten years or so to trace time’s stories on one’s face.

You’re looking at the view down the road from my mother’s house. In Lebanon, only the seas are calm.

Is it not something that, as the world is making mind-bending technological and scientific leaps, both life-saving and threatening, this very world is throwing to the wind practically all the legal and moral guardrails of the past century?

It’s a dizzying prospect, frankly, experiencing human effort at its most creative and destructive. A mighty troop of what ifs, once inhabiting only our dreams and nightmares, are coming into actual shape, titillating and horrifying our senses as the case may be.

You’re looking at Beirut’s Burj in 1952. I cannot lie. I would have very much liked to walk those streets and live that life.

In the 1920s, France, the mandatory power in control of Syria, spent the better part of its ill-conceived mandate by turns slicing up and restitching Greater Syria. Its first attempt in 1920-1921 produced five statelets: the state of Aleppo, the state of the Druze, the state of the Alawites, the state of Damascus, and Greater Lebanon. Mount Lebanon attained its “greater” status courtesy of the coastal cities, the Bekaa valley, and the south, which France saw fit to add to it.