A Swedish Summer

A Swedish summer

Love

Sunday 14th of June 2009 12:50

Sitting in the back seat of a Taxi on the way to Arlanda Airport, I cried. It has been a long time since I cried saying goodbye to someone or to a city. I remembered 1990, first time I left Beirut to Paraguay, I cried back then when I kissed my mum goodbye. On that occasion, I carried her smell with me, a smell that held me tight through the lonely nights between different cities and cold hotel beds.

The same black taxi arrived in front of Morington Hotel, Stockholm at 12:50. I was standing outside the hotel main entrance smoking a cigarette; I smiled to the driver and asked if he’d come to pick Wissam Tarif. He said “Yes, but I am early, so take your time”.

Amahl Khouri, Rami Abed Al Rahman and Diala Chehade were standing in the lobby while I went inside to pick up my luggage. They walked me outside. Rami was chatting with Diala – he missed seeing a tear coming out of a betraying eye.

Amahl, who does not miss a thing, had her eyes full of tears. She bent over, and the taxi driver opened the back window as I felt a cold breeze coming in while I said “Good bye”.

Almost nineteen years had passed since I’d last cried saying goodbye.

I unwrapped the Swedish Institute gift, a book about “Consensus”, a photo book about Sweden in the eyes of young photographers and a wooden Trojan horse. Three items, which prompted me to start this blog, a yard where I can freely bleed. No restrictions, a lung that might save me from the repetitive political analysis and human rights violations reports I had stuck to for the last seven years.

A silent driver behind the wheel, and a half hour trip to the Arlanda airport gave me time to send thank you text messages to a few Swedish friends. I took a last deep breath of Swedish oxygen heading inside the airport to a Barcelona’s Span Air flight. Stepping inside the plane made it clear and definitive, my Swedish Summer had ended.

Bipolar Manic Depressive Disordered state

Before coming to Sweden I was on a work trip to my homeland Lebanon. I’d been on an Election monitoring consultancy job for a European organization. My point of focus was west Bekaa, an area famous for relatively peace during the fifteen years of the last Lebanese civil war. During three weeks I and some diplomats met Lebanese politicians, election campaigners and experts trying to have a sense of what was going on in the country.

Iranians, Saudis, Americans, Europeans, Syrians and the whole planet seemed interested in the Lebanese elections. Lebanese politicians know exactly what every regional and International player want. What they fail to know deliberately is what the Lebanese and Lebanon itself want.

Our hosts quickly answered questions regarding human rights, the new legislation that was needed, and infrastructure as though to tell us that we should get to the point. In Lebanon, a parliamentarian will happily talk about the Israeli –Arab conflict, and regional and international intersections of power. They all like to appear smart, talk smart and fill the gaps in the picture of Lebanon as an arena for international and regional conflicts.

Health services, education, poverty, development, public transportation, jobs (the real concerns of Lebanese citizens) are not even used as campaigning slogans. For Lebanese politicians those are unreasonable and untimely demands. According to them, it is the strategic issues, the face of Lebanon, the identity of Lebanon which figure.

It has always been the case. Though I think we do have a face, not a perfect one but still, it is our face our identity.

Historically Lebanese aristocrats (for which read: “thieves”) , Lebanese political party leaders (read: “war lords”), and religious sect leaders (“hypocrites and vampires”) played always the role of the Savior, the mother, the compassionate land lord who took care of the less fortunate. They do not want health care so they themselves could provide it and earn money from it. No good State services so they could service us and replace the state. No strong economy so they could feed us and no stable real peace so they could constantly tell us how essential they are for our existence.

Now, once again, our politicians continue to play the same old game – but they’re getting smarter in performance.

I felt disgusted, irritated and ashamed. Our main exportation is “US” the young people of the country. We export our youth to the rest of the world. We work outside, send money home, and we keep financing the misery we find when we come back on vacation or work trips. Most parliamentarians and candidates we met bragged about the long history of Lebanese emigration and some hallucinated about US, as Phoenicians, still exploring the big wide world.

I remembered my grandmother saying “Damn the land that does not hold its sons and daughters.” We are damned indeed.

On the night of the 22nd I finished polishing my report about the Lebanese elections. I failed to say what I wanted and wrote what I saw, heard and found to be facts. Being objective does not mean you are saying the truth: sometimes it means you just quote huge amount of rubbish in the most logical way possible.

In so doing, I have here summarized my objectivity.

In the first hours of the 23rd of May, Abou Walid my loyal Taxi driver, who always picks me up or drops me off at Rafik Hariri airport, arrived with his old 1982 white Mercedes, a car that should have been thrown away years ago. He does not keep it as a classic, as most taxi drivers in the country. He just cannot afford a better one. On our way to the airport he asked “Where to this time?”

I said “Sweden”

He said: “I’ve been to Norway, I lived there for three years, and my sister lives there. She married a Norwegian man who was serving in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. I think she’s happy. You should go there. It’s a nice country. Do the Swedish participate in the Peace keeping force in Lebanon?”

I replied,”I don’t know, I’m not sure, I don’t think so.”

Abou Walid assumes that I know everything! He told me a lot about Norway, and plenty about his several months stay in Stockholm. He talked about Stockholm as a passionate lover, he told me about a Swedish girl whom he fell in love with, and places he visited, but mostly about his affair.

He told me how he eventually came back to his wife and 4 kids, who grew up, and live abroad now. He’s got two more kids since he came back, a boy and a girl. He wants the small girl to become a successful doctor, and the boy’s destiny is to join his brothers in Latin America to make money.

Realizing that we were approaching the airport, he immediately changed the topic to elections. He wanted me to tell him who would win. I said “The one who people will vote more for.” He looked at me suspiciously, perhaps thinking that I knew but preferred not to tell him, or maybe just could not for some reason. Lots of people (including the majority of the Arab population and so-called ‘brilliant’ politicians and some analysts) are still fascinated by conspiracy theories, and Abou Walid ranks high on the top of the list.

He talks and complains a lot, but he always briefs me upon arrival and departure of all the small rumors he’s heard from passengers, his wife, neighbors, kids, and of what he’s heard on the radio. He throws the whole country all at once in my face every time I sit in his cab.

Shaking his hand goodbye, I was still questioning my decision of being away from the city on such another “historic” election; I hesitated while taking my bag from the car, and remembered that each election we’ve ever had in the country, someone always labeled it “historic”. I shook his hand again, went inside the airport and headed to Sweden.

Orgasms

Since EU directives started to regulate European affairs, airports started to look more alike. Except, of course, Madrid airport, where smokers can still enjoy small filthy rooms (Gas Chambers) where they are entitled to kill themselves pleasurably. I had a connecting flight at the country struggling to join the EU – in other words, at Istanbul airport. There I was destined to wait for several hours. And I was miserably surprised: no smoking areas! Viva Madrid!

In Arlanda airport I met other participants joining the Young Leaders Visitors Program, which was hosted and organized by the Swedish Institute. The taxis were waiting for us; and by the time we arrived at the Non Smoking Morington Hotel in Stockholm it was early afternoon. I checked in, dropped the luggage off and went outside for the first cigarette and real cup of coffee for some time. With the first puff of the cigarette I reached plateau phase, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure and satisfaction.

The real orgasm took place at the lunch table: salmon as appetizer and butter fish in Swedish herbs as the main dish. The wine was almost as good as the Lebanese Chardonnay Ksara, and the company of Amahl Khouri was the beginning of a hope, love and admiration journey.

The Palestinian participants from Gaza and Ramallah started to arrive while we were having lunch. The presence of Palestinian participants after the Gaza massacres, in addition to the inevitable difficulties they would have had in both crossing the border, and the Egyptian detention areas for Palestinian transit passengers, and all that this signified for us as Arabs in terms of the Palestinian cultural heritage, made their arrival an exceptional event.

After lunch we went for a walk: tulips in the park, lots of tulips, too many tulips, too much love, too many mothers and babies in that park. A wedding, two guys kissing on the seat in front of me , a girl is hugging her lover, a man sitting there reading a book, children playing everywhere, black , Asian, blond, Caucasian and tulips too many tulips , all in that same park.

Back to my hotel room, smoking is “not allowed”. That is an intrusion of my privacy. If I want to smoke in my private space I should be allowed to. I am not causing harm to others; I am killing only myself with my cigarettes. This hotel management does not have the right to prevent me.
However, I found the solution to this dilemma: it was in Chapter two, Fundamental Rights and Freedom, Articles 22 and 23 of the Swedish Constitution. The room is considered my private residence. I printed out a copy of the Constitution, highlighted the relevant articles, gave it to the receptionist and informed her that their order of not smoking in my private space is unconstitutional. I emphasized that, based on this, I would be more than happy to argue that in a court of law. I smoked in my room 601 and later on in 617 at Morington Hotel, Stockholm. Neither the receptionist nor anyone else complained.