This year my birthday happily coincided with the end of
Ramadan and the coming of the Fitr. Otherwise, it’s Hiroshima as usual, one
more time, like a burden. I will miss Ramadan, which, like Christmas, has
something secular into it. That it shifts two weeks backwards every year makes
it even better, as it desperately associates itself with the four seasons. In
Beirut, a lousy city in every respect, streets are quiet by 7:00 in the
evening, which is one of Ramadan’s blessings for a city filled with noise, extra
noise, more noise for nothing, noise like garbage. I’ve developed so much
hatred to this place that I’m beginning to think that my liking it in the last
few years must be related to teaching: I hate teaching more than I hate Beirut,
therefore I tolerate this damned city. On the positive side, I need castration
to work, hence the toleration. The real pleasure is at the beach, with a nearly
empty swimming pool all for myself in Ramadan. What would happen to me when in
few years Ramadan shifts back to winter? But the real blessing is this deep
blue Mediterranean, and all those young women tanning themselves endlessly, who
seem “possessed” for life by men who are notoriously absent, as if they’re
having their moment of “fun” elsewhere.
(Freud would say there’s no “sexual liberation,” because it’s all in that
damned oedipal unconscious; hence we repeat ourselves indefinitely; we score
well or poorly; at best there’s pleasure, if we can find it, but no jouissance.) It’s those couple of hours
every afternoon at the beach that I’ll miss once in Chicago—moments of
relaxation and serenity which have no equivalent elsewhere—certainly not on “Lake
Eerie”—or its cozy apartment. I can forget myself and my failures: something uncanny
in the heat of a Mediterranean sun that would urge such forgetting. I am by temperament
not much of a social animal, hence the solitude of loneliness is all what it
takes to get hold of that elusive “self.” At least it gives me the energy to
write few hours a day, with that feeling of accumulation and achievement, in
spite of all failures. Writing about
the eastern Mediterranean, this world where I grew up, is a frustrating
experience, as there is so little that “comes together” through the symbolisms
of language. As I read Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, with his
elaborate genealogies that connect socio-historical layers of discourses and
practices, I realize that all my life I’ve been struggling precisely with that
desire of continuity, of things and phenomena connecting together through their
most obscure layers. I then decided to drop every “about” I could think of: not
to write about an about is a great blessing; not to write with a thesis in mind
and proofs for that damned thesis; hence all writing and teaching became more
confusing, for the better. Difficult not to think of Fernand Braudel’s
Mediterranean “world” and its three archeological cultural layers: the
Greco-Roman and Latin Christianity, the Islamicate, and the Greek-Orthodox, in
relation to their temporalities. There is a layer, says Braudel, that never
moves, completely immobile, like those mountains on the Mediterranean; on the
top of it sits the layer of institutions, which are slow moving; still on the
top is what we are instinctively attracted to: the events on the surface which
give us that wonderful illusion that so much is happening, so much is going on,
to the point that change is all over the place. Yet, we remain the same, no
matter what. Had you known me at twenty, you would have realized that “I” was
back then exactly as “I” am now, at fifty-seven, but with less gray hair. Time
and age only bring forth that element of consciousness that was not present
before: I know now why I made such a
decision at twenty. Only time brings that satisfaction: I haven’t changed
because that’s how I always wanted to be in the first place; but I only
understand it now. Freud used to compare the unconscious to archeological
layers, deep down into our consciousness, which we know nothing about (that is,
“it” cannot be formulated in the symbolisms of language; hence the “violence”
“it” inevitably holds from within our libidinal impulses) until a contingent
event accidentally hits on one of those layers. The event which looks like an
innocuous accident would be perceived through the lens of analysis and therapy
as situated within a broader traumatic structure, which could be discovered by
connecting what seems at face value disconnected events. For Freud Rome was the
quintessential metaphor of the unconscious, sitting as it has been for
thousands of years on archeological layers, some of which are visible all at once at its center—the Forum. The
Mediterranean is just like that—unconscious archeological layers which are open
to be associated with one another into infinite temporalities. Like any
unconscious, it is neither egalitarian, nor democratic, nor ready to be
reeducated. That’s my fate and destiny. That’s why I find myself useless as a
teacher—and lover. Needless to say, I’ve got no urge for icy Chicago!
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