My friend Joudi is into meditation. One day, about a year ago, I decided I was going to send her some quotes about the subject, since I’m into it, too. Also, because Joudi lives in Gaza, and I thought I could try to be helpful.
I searched and searched, but couldn’t find a single thing to send her.
How do you tell someone who’s living under a hailstorm of bombs that “The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom”?
How do you advise someone whose people are actively being genocided while the world watches that “The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle”?
It had never fully occurred to me how meditation, this practice I find so important and helpful and want so many people to know about to the point that I actually teach it, is limited, at least in the west, to apply only to the lives of privileged white people.
And now, here I am.
Three days after the war began*, I went to visit my dad.
He lives away from the city, in an area that’s usually not affected by any of that pesky war stuff. Case in point: I went to meet a friend for coffee in a neighbourhood nearby. The street was closed to traffic that day, and it felt like we were in a festival. Kids paraded around blowing bubbles and riding bikes. Families sat on patios sharing plates of nachos and $9 glasses of kombucha. You’d never know that there was a war happening just down the road. That hundreds of thousands of people had just been threatened by the genociders to leave their homes or die, and were now living in the streets, in shelters, in their cars, and in tents on the beach.*
You certainly wouldn’t see a single one of them here.
I have a friend who grew up in Dahiyeh. His home has been hit by airstrikes. His mother is currently displaced, as are many members of his family.
He told me once that this country is made up of “Lebanese, and lesser Lebanese”.
There are a whole bunch of people in my life I suddenly find myself unable to talk to.
Some are old friends. Some are more recent friends. Some are from recovery circles. One was my sponsor, two are (or were) my sponsees.
This is not a judgement on anybody. It’s what has felt most right and kind. The majority of people I know are in the west, and are dealing with things that right now, I can’t wrap my head around—family dynamics, dating, overeating, court cases with ex-spouses. And I’m going through something that they, understandably, can’t imagine, and struggle to respond to. Some of them don’t even know about it, because Western media is not talking about it very much, which is a tangent and I’ll spare you from right at this moment.
The thing is, I myself only crossed this line two weeks ago. There, I was spending an awful lot of time worrying about my finances and researching attachment wounds. Now, I’m chopping tomatoes in a community kitchen and (as I type this) closing our windows because the air smells like white phosphorus. Two weeks ago, I was trying to recover from being love-bombed.
Now… well.
And it can’t be overstated: I am in an extremely privileged position. Millions of people in this region stand much further across that line than I do. They have lost their homes. Their friends. Their children. Their livelihoods.
Their limbs. Their lives.
My dad and I often disagree on why things are happening in this country.
We argue about how it’s being run. What should be done about it. The motivations of certain persons in power (not Trump or Satanyahoo, thankfully). And we both think each other is way too stubborn.
Lately, we’ve learned to mostly avoid these topics.
I didn’t know it yet, but half an hour before I got in the taxi to go see him, US-ra-hell had ordered all of Dahiyeh to evacuate. People were trying to flee with no place to go; trying to find accommodations when many refuse to accept them. Cars were backed up for miles.
When I got to my dad’s, I disappeared into my phone, trying to learn more. This made no sense to my father. What could I possibly do from here? he asked. I got annoyed that he didn’t get it. He (probably) got annoyed that I didn’t get it. Finally, he poured me a glass of wine and made a half-hearted joke about how maybe that would help me relax. I laughed a little bit and so did he.
A couple of days later, I mention something about “When I go back to Beirut”.
My dad’s eyebrows shoot up.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“What do you mean?” I say.
Turns out he thought I was staying with him until things “got better”, and that returning to a city in the middle of a war wasn’t the greatest plan.
You might agree with him. I respect that.
But one of the things I’ve learned in the last couple of years that action is the antidote to despair.
Right now, helping in those kitchens and teaching meditation are the only times I feel even remotely useful. Also, all the (very patient) meditation teachers who put up with trained me over the last decade have been adamant about one thing: we do this to help cease suffering. We are there for people when things fall apart.
Or, as one of my teachers wrote me over the weekend: Revolutions are tough. Sacrifices are necessary.
One does not, however, successfully argue this point with one’s not-so-young-anymore Lebanese father, who has just dropped the line, “if you go back to Beirut, I won’t be able to function”.
I take a deep breath. He takes advantage of my momentary silence.
“When you drive in a car,” he tells me, “you wear your seatbelt. The seatbelt doesn’t control whether you have an accident, but it helps you stay safe. This is like that. You do what’s within what’s in your control.”
“I haven’t worn a seatbelt for the last 6 months,” I snap.
It’s such a dumb, teenager-like thing to say, but I can’t help it. The whole conversation is reminiscent of my teenage years. Except without the war part.
His eyebrows go higher.
I say, “Taxis here don’t have seatbelts.”
As if that nails it.
Eventually, after we’ve taken a few hours to cool off, we reach a compromise: I will return to Beirut, but stay only in certain neighbourhoods at certain hours and tell him of my whereabouts.
To my surprise, he doesn’t give me any more grief about it for the rest of my visit.
Later that night, I call my Dahiyeh friend. He lives in Montreal now, but he’s the most streetwise Beiruti I know. There’s one neighbourhood my dad wants me to avoid, and I’ve just started teaching there. I’m sure my friend is going to agree with me that my father is overreacting.
To my surprise, he says the opposite.
“I’d stay away for now,” he advises.
The next morning, Isr@el strikes a building two or three blocks from where I teach.
I started writing this three days ago, and already feel like a different person than I was then. With every sonic boom, every evacuation warning, every explosion, every massacre, that divide grows bigger. So does, apparently, the line between the sects of this country.
And yet, people keep coming together. They meet in community kitchens and arts centres; in hair salons and empty shops. They stuff pillows and find baby formula, to feed animals and call for blood donations, to find mattresses and blankets. They trade information on apartments that will accept people from the south. They jump to answer questions like, “Did anyone in X neighbourhood hear that blast?”
When I leave my dad’s to return to Beirut, he walks down to get my taxi with me. He explains to the driver where to take me, and then hugs me for a split-second longer than usual.
“Text me when you get home,” he says, and I nod. “And when you go out, and when you get home again.”
I promise that I will. To my surprise, the back seat of the taxi has a seatbelt.
I put it on.
We wave goodbye, and I head back to the street he grew up on.
To the city that, despite our differences, we and millions of people love. Fiercely, deeply, and forever.
Since the last post, you have helped raised almost $900 USD for Nation Station and Barzakh Space, both of whom are making meals for displaced people, staffed entirely by volunteers.
THANK YOU!
Here’s a video about the work they’re doing:
They continue to need our support. If you have trouble with the links or the international money/transfer stuff, you can do it through me—just respond to this email and I’ll help you do it, or send me a message and you can do through the “make a 1-time donation” button below.
Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Finally, that teacher I mentioned is giving a retreat that you can attend online (or in person) in late March. It’s called “Meditation in Times of Conflict”. I guarantee it will change your life. If you want to talk to me about it, you can also reply to this email.
*if you don’t count the 15,000 times the genocidal entity breached the ceasefire since 2025.
** As of this writing, that number is estimated at over 815,000, or 14% of the country’s population.
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