The World According to Abufares of Tartous

Dreams do come true...Happy Eid

Dear Doctor Wooton Finding then reading your email late last night brought me such an immense pleasure. It must be nearly impossible for you to remember me after all this time. In fact, it's been twenty eight years since I sat in the back of your class. As my teacher, I must let you know how you influenced at least this one student of yours. I was a City Planning major at USL. American Literature was a required course and I approached the prospect with predictable trepidation. English was not in fact my second language but my third after Arabic and French. I was a twenty-year-old Syrian student who came from a small city by the sea and who dreamed of going to college in America. I was also an ordinary reader of modern Arabic poetry and translated mystery novels when I took your class. Within weeks, and thanks to you, I was transported to an exquisite world of words, one which I never willed to leave since. I had my true revelation when you introduced us to " The Love Son

I bought my first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982. It had a membrane keyboard, Black & White NTSC output, a whopping 2 KB of RAM and weighed in at hefty 12 oz. Since then, I have never been caught alone without a computer. If I am not mistaken, the laptop I'm caressing with my fingers right now is the 9th I've had in the ensuing 27 years and she is the first girl in the bunch. At my age one would assume that I should be making more sense than to genderize machines but I have always looked at them as personal friends. I have started my blog on a Toshiba Satellite laptop. We became very close over the last few years and I have entrusted him with all of my secrets, big and small. Yes, he's a boy and he has a name too but as of late he's been sick and started showing his age. I knew that he's not going to last forever but it was so hard for me to think of, simply, putting him to sleep. Recently he made two visits to Damascus and Aleppo for maintenance. W

My mother told me that on the night I was born a storm of freakish magnitude hit Tartous putting the fear of god in the hearts of her people. The little town was ravaged by torrential rains and strong gales. The power went down and all hell broke loose. Psychotic lightening raped the sky with lunatic vehemence, quavered then climaxed in deafening rolls of thunder. Tormented shutters flapped on hinges in agony and moaned. The wind howled in between the alleys chasing genies deep into their holes. Rain drummed on tin roofs in a sadistic crescendo. Thunder bellowed threatening to disgorge the earth beneath. The sea pounded the beach a hundred meters from the room with a view to the sea, spitting its froth on the window. It roared above them all with deafening anger: “Be quiet!”, then I cried. As a toddler I sat all day in my playpen on the balcony facing the sea. That was the only way to keep me content, my mother's bedtime story went on. Browsing old black and white photographs,