Beirut, Beirut.

Now down here in Luchon, the central Pyrenees, the only “good” thing about world events is that I can escape their US media versions — watching what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon on French TV is as revolting than watching it on CNN, but without the added insult to one’s intelligence via the built-in ideological prejudice in favor of Israel, and the transparent claims for “objective” reporting.

What I would like to do this morning — but can’t as I don’t have my books with me — is reread & quote here from Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory of Forgetfulness, the Palestinian poet’s prose memoir of the 1982 Israeli shelling of Beirut, one of the starkest recollections of what it means for someone to have to live under continuous threat of death. I published extracts from the book in volume 2 of Poems for the Millennium.

The drawing above comes from Kerblog, the blog of a Beiruti artist, Mazen Kerbaj, which is a useful place to check in on what’s happening right now.

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