I am in the mountains above Beirut. I am standing at a landing, a foyer, on the second floor of a stone-built house. Stone tiles and four doors keep watch over this deserted space, silent and cold. Here I spent my summers as a child. And here, now, 40 years later, on this same tiled landing, I am overwhelmed: in this deserted space, among the silence of the tiles, I see myself: a past and a present, intertwined, interrupted, torn, inseparable.<\/p>\n

I remember: I am child and I am running. Through woods, among dark thin trees, scattered pine cones; I am climbing, picking berries from oversize berry shrubs, clearing pathways of thorns, riding bikes on dirt, over hills, into rocks. I am running, always running.<\/p>\n

I am running on pavement now with my best friend at my heels \u2014 we have fled school at lunch and are running downtown to find our favorite comic books; we are running past gardens with worn fences, strewn garbage, chaos of cars, past the street hawkers, shoe salesmen, nail salons, men in neat suits and women in purple hats, past cinemas, restaurants; we are running, breathless and oblivious to the violence brewing all around us about to engulf the city.<\/p>\n

Now we are running as a family, in a taxi, speeding: my father tells us to get on the floor, we hear gunshots; we are careening down a deserted highway at ungodly speeds towards the airport.<\/p>\n

I have returned to Beirut to look for what? A beginning? An end? What possible narrative? I peer down an abyss of time deepened by war, I bring with me the ruins of a family, a gulf within the self. The civil war has created a new city yet it seems nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

I see: narrow chaotic neighborhoods falling apart, crippled by generations of violence, external and internal; the rush of life, stench of kebab and trash, noise, dirt, wafting music and laughter. I see men, women, children, ghosts at once familiar and utterly foreign; a community, breathing and vibrant, defiant; a place, an incessant undying past.<\/p>\n

I see: a community still absorbing cascading wars, economic collapse and disasters, still connected to their far-off homelands of Western Armenia.<\/p>\n

I hear: a melodious resonant language\u2014my own Western Armenian, a language on its death bed, trying to reach across an even greater abyss to its beginning; and an invisible subterranean violence that can rise like a typhoon at any moment.<\/p>\n

I see myself.<\/p>\n

I try to articulate a response to this space, my space and community through which I move, talk, eat, curse its history and marvel at its resilience and life, lived as if there is no tomorrow. I try to find a narrative. Or perhaps an end.<\/p>\n