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observe how they sounded and the contexts in which they were used, so that I could understand a little at least, but it was impossible for me to follow the logic.
    I tried to use a map as the street names and the recognizable landmarks began to change hour by hour, even minute by minute.
    The world is trembling, breaking apart, turning upside down, and the people are being transformed. Instead of my friend’s beautiful face, I see a sheep looking through the iron railings of her balcony. Refugees have come to Beirut, which used to be a dream city, their sentiments have exploded into music and song, and they have put up speakers in the heart of the residential and commercial areas. I walk as if I’m in a big soap bubble, rolling along, not touching anything around me until I meet up with other bubbles and my friends emerge from them. How can I recognize a city which tolerates fanaticswho search for blond hair and light eyes to kidnap as if they inhabit a crude fairy-tale world, or allows a date palm which has been there for a hundred years and grown close to the sky to be uprooted to make way for a rocket which can even dissolve dental fillings?
    How can I recognize a city which only lets me hear a faint echo of what it thinks as it dances and fights, fights and dances? I hear the sound of its breathing mingled with Arabic and Western music from the clubs and television screens, with explosions, sirens, and the smell of death. Like your friend, I’ve grown used to the dark and I no longer see shadows or reflections. They blindfold him every time they take him from one place to another, even from his cell to the bathroom. I’ve made friends with the darkness since there’s no escaping it. Sometimes I light candles and sometimes I delude myself that I can draw light from the darkness, which has begun to hide faint wrinkles on my face and some little gray hairs which have found their way onto my head.
    My daily routine is uncomfortable like theirs: do a few exercises, wash my face, brush my teeth, analyze my situation in whispers, eat a little food. The hostages have stopped enjoying food, and my appetite has gone too. Eating requires hands adaptable to the morsels of food, teeth for chewing, a tongue that can taste. I must be suffering from anemia. Whenever I reach out my hand, my wrist muscles go limp. Do I think about taking up a sport? It seems remote. Something that goes with mountains, wide safe roads, and rooms where the sun comes in.
    Part of the daily routine as well as exercises, washingyour face, brushing your teeth, analyzing, whispering, is the sensation that time has stood still. A minute passes slowly, stretching itself out for as long as it can before it gives way to the next. This makes me stop believing that I’ll escape from my abductors, and my resolve fails, for I find myself adapting to them, starting to resemble them as a last resort, hoping that perhaps they’ll take it upon themselves to release me, and my city will be restored to me. However, like the hostages, I don’t resemble those around me, nor do I come to depend on my abductor, as kidnap victims usually do after a while. In fact, my relationship with them is based entirely on increasing hatred and revulsion and the conviction that my guards are shoddy, immature characters, who have suddenly found themselves in positions of strength thanks to their wild hair, thick mustaches, and beards, which cover large expanses of their faces, gold chains wound around their necks with spent bullets dangling from them, and unnecessarily loud voices. I recognize the voice of a young lad from a local shop, who used to sell watermelons before the war and spray the sidewalk in front of the shop on hot dusty afternoons. The owner played backgammon with his friends while the boy bobbed between them, obeying orders, adding more embers to their hookahs, and making their coffee.
    Like the hostages, I can’t find any excuses for my jailers, even if some of them are