We need to go through Paris

This is a digest of the plague year; of its derangements; of a person and a society deranged. It is a digest of their implications, their repetitions. I begin with this indulgence of autobiography because I am trying to understand the repetitions which I find myself indulging, far from willfully. I begin with Lebanon because that is where I am, the place I call home; the place I wrestle with calling home, the place to which I hold no claim but nonetheless somehow claims me, that lays claim to so many who do and do not belong here, but nonetheless find themselves here, heir to the histories of those many generations of exiles and refugees that, at one time or another, found themselves quarantined on the shores of this land, the banks of this sea. I begin with Lebanon because here there is some unspoken pain we are all trying to master, some loss that cannot be born. This is the chronicle of the dreamwork that is the marrow of this fragile structure, this congruence of fluidities that none of us are particularly disposed to celebrate despite the love that sutures people to place and to one another, but that is, in this instance, is wholly unsterile, bacteria-ridden, toxic. But to get to Lebanon, we need to go through Paris. Let us not delay. It was the delays that got me into this mess in the first place. At the end of August, I found myself in Paris, en route from Beirut to Minneapolis, to Omaha, and Iowa. An uncommon journey, it included layovers in Amsterdam and Chicago, and still miles to go upon arrival. Twice before, in that year, I had been barred from flights because of Covid procedures that were improperly met, once because my paperwork was insufficient, once because–deep in the summer–I arrived at the airport drenched in sweat. This, I was told, was a symptom, and though my tests were all negative and my shots up to date, for the well being of all involved, for the airline, it seemed best if I kept my feet on the ground. When, weeks later, I finally succeeded in escaping Hamra, I found myself flagged for extra security at every checkpoint along the way. Before being allowed to leave Beirut, I had to pay a fine of one and a half million lira because I had overstayed my visa by one day. Or, if you want to get really specific about it, I had overstayed my residency permit by about eight hours. Because of the long-term devaluation of the Lebanese pound that began as punishment for the 2019 revolution of the people, the sadistic counter-revolutionary design of the gangster capitalists, at the time, the street value of one and a half million lira was approximately fifty US dollars. As I write this, at the end of October, it hovers nearer to thirty-five. Bank holdups are now an everyday feature of life in Lebanon. Depositors arm themselves so they might collect that which they have stowed in their savings, that which, by administrative fiat, they are now routinely denied. Many of the people who have pulled off these heists are now hailed as heroes; the media has stopped printing their names, whether to preserve the anonymity of those accused or to forestall the glory and the adulation, it is hard to know. Much about my leaving Beirut felt like an abandonment, the unhappy divorce of codependent partners, a separation between people who were not yet ready to be apart. I had left my home, my friends, my bank account, my stuff, my cat. I had given away my books. The tapestry from Djemila was gone. At the time of my leaving, the chandelier I had bought in Cairo still hung from the ceiling of my forlorn apartment, but the space of my life had been otherwise robbed of all pretense of ambiance. Still I was loath for it to stay behind, lost in the cavernous maw of my home, feckless and alone. A hulking piece of perforated tin, I had once wielded this chandelier as a weapon during a police riot near the 6 October Bridge in Cairo at a spot just beyond the Egyptian Museum. Once faithful friends, these relics are now my forsaken children. These desertions, moreover, were compounded the desolation of my work, my abandonment by the institutions through which I had made my life, the places that, long after the abuse had begun, I could not help but think of as home. In the year before I left, I had begun to collapse, to pass out, in public and at home. Sometimes there were paramedics, sometimes I was found by a delivery boy. Occasionally, there were stitches. By the time I got to Paris I had long since abandoned myself, and that is when the seizures began. Over two days wandering the airport, I had five seizures that I can remember, each one more grave than the one before; during at least one of these I was physically assaulted and my belongings–my wallet, my passport, my computer, sheaves of notes I had taken while researching my next project–were stolen. After, I entered into a fugue, enclosed in a density of misapprehensions. Passed out in a pool of piss and blood, all but naked, I was picked up by the police. They took me into custody. Coming from Beirut, bound for Amsterdam, completely absent from the world, they likely thought I was high, that I had gotten bored while muling captagon and had dipped into my stash. If nothing else, I presented a danger to myself and to others. Fully, legitimately psychotic, absolutely convinced that I had become part of some elaborate psy-ops experiment, I was certain that I had been mistaken for somebody who knew things. While I was being questioned, I was bound and beaten. I was dosed with morphine. This could not really be France, I reasoned, because nobody in France could possibly wear such dismally shabby uniforms as my tormentors; and certainly, no one in France could have been as fat as the one who liked to punch me in the face. After some time, and the intervention of someone higher up the chain of command, I was taken, eventually, in an ambulance, on a wild joyride through the streets of Paris. I was delivered to a hospital, where I was held in the emergency ward, again bound, for another thirty-six hours. At some point, my mother arrived after an emergency flight from the United States. After convening with security at the airport, she was able to find the hospital in which I was held. The attending physician announced her before she came into the room. My first words upon seeing her were: “You look like my mother but you are not her.” Let me try this again.