Lebanon, I write this love letter to you —

They have battered you, but they will never break you. 

To the villages along the South, who have long faced bombardment, you will never fall. To those forced to flee in the earliest hours of the night, there is no disgrace in your survival. You will return to the land of love, and we will always find our way. This is the story of resilience that has damned our history for almost a hundred years. 

Lebanon, how must it feel to watch smoke dance across your once-clear sky? 

Flower of the unfortunate, they have mistaken the bloom of the mushroom cloud for beauty, the stammer of soldiers’ boots for music. How do they tune out the children’s screams? Do the hollowed-out ruins make for good acoustics? What a cruel staccato.

They say they will level Dahiyeh like they did Khan Younis. They’ve bombed a girls’ school, highways, hospitals. My grandparents drove hours to Beirut to hide in a hotel, and they’ve bombed hotels too. 

And when we raise the flag, what do you think it is that they see? Is it the grimace of the man who hoists it, the wind that drags upon it like........

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