Written a couple of days ago, but I've been too busy to post until now.
I have been thinking about "L'Auberge Espagnole" for the past couple of days. In one of the early scenes, as Romain Duris' character arrives in Barcelona, he describes those peculiar first moments when places and names sound so alien, before becoming a part of the familiar.
(When arriving in a city, we see streets in perspective. Sequences of buildings empty of meaning. Everything is unknown, virgin territory. Later we'll have walked these streets. We'll have been to the end of the perspectives, we'll know these buildings. We'll have lived things with people. Once we'll have lived in this city, we'll have walked down this street ten, twenty, a thousand times.
Quand on arrive dans une ville, on voit des rues en perspective. Des suites de bâtiments vides de sens. Tout est inconnu, vierge. Voilà, plus tard on aura marché dans ces rues, on aura été au bout des perspectives, on aura connu ces bâtiments, on aura vécu des histoires avec des gens. Quand on aura vécu dans cette ville, cette rue on l’aura prise dix, vingt, mille fois.
Urquinaona, Passeig de Gràcia, Laietana. Au bout d’un moment tout ça vous appartient, parce qu’on y a vécu. C’est ce qui allait m’arriver, et je ne le savais pas encore.
(When arriving in a city, we see streets in perspective. Sequences of buildings empty of meaning. Everything is unknown, virgin territory. Later we'll have walked these streets. We'll have been to the end of the perspectives, we'll know these buildings. We'll have lived things with people. Once we'll have lived in this city, we'll have walked down this street ten, twenty, a thousand times.
Urquinaona, Passeig de Gracia, Laietana. After a while, they all become yours because you've lived there. This was going to happen to me, but I didn't know it yet.)
Beirut, with its harmonies of car horns and prayer calls, its omnipresent construction, a language so infuriatingly out of my reach... Beirut is intimidating. Part of me wants to stay inside when I am alone because I can't help but feel that I don't belong yet; and I wish that I could skip this part and go straight to mastering the place with assurance, to making it mine.
But that's not how things work. And in order to reach that level of intimacy with the city, I have no choice but to go outside and act like I belong here until I finally do.
So I have been thinking about "L'Auberge Espagnole"—about that fine line between the unknown and the familiar, about that short time span before one becomes the other—and I have been walking. All day. Until the muscles of my calves scream.
I don't have an itinerary or a specific destination in mind. I just walk aimlessly down big avenues and residential areas, past buildings that look like they could be of importance but might not be. I tiptoe on the boundary between being lost and knowing where I am (relative to certain landmarks—see, I am learning already). I whisper to myself the names of the neighborhoods I walk through. Ras Maroon. Gemmayzeh. Furn Al-Hayek. Achrafiye. Manara. Some could become everyday names. Others might be places I will have no incentive to go to ever again. I might have an idea on which of these categories some neighborhoods could fall into, but for the moment being, all hold the same promise—I could mean something to you.
Meandering also means I am taking the time to reacquaint myself with Arabic. Alone, I take the time to read signs, political posters, graffiti. Some words are slowly coming back to me.
Pharmacy. صيدلية .
Parking Forbidden. ممنوع وقوف . Of course.
It's not much, but so reassuring when compared to my tongue tiedness since my arrival.
Pretty soon, classes will start and I won't have the luxury of wasting hours down small streets anymore. After a while, I will stop looking at things with silly wide-eyed wonder, and that will be a good thing. But in the meantime, I'll cherish these moments of discovery because I know they soon will pass.
This is too thoughtful for me to say something snarky in reply :(
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