As I called my parents to tell them to get out of Tibnene (where my grandparents lived) I saw the constant bombardment of our hometown Tyr on TV. When I finally reached my father on his cell phone, he had already left and just arrived in Tyr. They hitch-hiked and walked and rode any vehicle heading north. His brothers and sisters and family and my parents' passports were in Tyr. I begged them to leave, to keep going, to find a way to Beirut, to seek help from the embassy to evacuate with other U.S. citizens. The onslaught continued. The phone was cut off. The TV reported a car with four people trying to leave Tyr was hit by a targeted airstrike. I missdailed several times before my frantic fingures connected. They were ok, but could not leave. My aunt sat in her house defiant telling me she would never leave, "they will not force me out again." My parents could not leave. No word from the embassy, no roads to drive, no bridges to cross, no shelter to seek. My parents usually laugh about things and tell me not to worry "what you've heard is far from us" Today my father said "Everything you've heard is true, but where do we go? Should we beg a cab driver and pay him $800 only for him to leave us stranded by the blown out bridge? Or should we try to drive ourselves out and get attacked like the last family?" I had no answers, only prayers.
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Why is you so relentingly hard spoken about the days to come? YOu should be one of static nature, frozen aimlessly in the moments that are to begin now!!!! I offer similicity except for the seemingly Contradictory ideas about the future. AFter all, if the moments are to begin now then we are speaking in the future, becuase they actually have not become. Then, what is to be of the future if we cannot agree which is the futrue? You ponder, go on and ponder like no other perplexed element of this universe, and I'll have gained insight from the focal point of smeared blood dead ahead on the wall, but then again, you may be as I am and join in.
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