Syrian love

That Sunday, cold December Sunday, we were kept warm by joy. It’s the first time I see your eyes sparkle with anticipation: the return, the reunion, the touch. Our disbelief punctured by scenes of prisoners running in the streets of Damascus: What happened? What day is it? Where is the jasmine? 

I wish you so much joy that it can gush out in the shape of songs; streams of words that were hidden in the forgotten aisles of the heart, and now breaking free. 

I wish you so much freedom, that for a second you forget you have legs that need to walk, not wings. You are so light right now. 

I wish you so much relief, shoulders surrendering to gravity, opening up to a more spacious meadow of the mind. 

I wish you so much strength to lift the debris, and move the boxes, and re-arrange a whole territory built on wretchedness.

I wish you so much justice, each street carved with the names of those who paved it with their own claws, losing their lives in the process. Mazen will be happy. 

I wish you so much patience to go through setting up the scaffolding, waiting for people to gather in the agora, their shadow aligned with the sun. 

I wish you so much light, so powerful that it can lift the darkness on my skies in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. The light levant, we would call it.