I Have A Seat

Acrylic On Canvas Painting By : 

Yasmeen Abdullah -

I have a seat in the abandoned theater in Beirut. I may forget, and I may remember the final act without nostalgia... not for any reason, but because the play was not written skillfully...

Chaos, like the diaries of a war of the desperate, and an autobiography of the spectators' instincts. Actors tearing up their scripts and searching for the author among us, we the witnesses sitting in our seats.

I say to my neighbor, the artist: Don't brandish your weapon, and wait, unless you are the author!

And he asks me: And are you the author? And we sit, afraid. I say: Be a neutral hero to escape a clear fate. He says: No hero dies revered in the second scene. I will wait for the rest. Perhaps I made an edit to one of the acts. And perhaps I repaired what iron has done to my brothers. So I say: You then?

He replies: You and I are masked authors and masked witnesses.

I say: What's it to me? I am a spectator.

He says: There is no spectator at the mouth of an abyss... and no one is neutral here. You must choose your role in the end.

So I say: I lack the beginning. What is the beginning?

Mahmoud Darwish