The World According to Abufares of Tartous

In January of 2000 I went on my first trip to Italy. Three days after a job interview in Tartous with a visiting delegation I received a call asking me to attend a meeting in Treviso. The company had applied for an expedited visa on my behalf and one week later I was there, at headquarters. We sat in a very large and Italian meeting room with glass all around instead of walls. The ceiling and the floor were mostly made of transparent panels too. It was fantastic architecture by all means and although I'm no great fan of cutting edge modern design I was impressed nevertheless. The same 3 men who interviewed me in Tartous walked into the room with an amicable disposition. They inquired about the flight, if my room in the hotel was comfortable enough and whether breakfast was to my liking. Then we sat down to business. I neglected to tell them that I didn't have time for a proper breakfast but instead only had a cupcake. Most importantly there was no coffee in the breakfast a

It hurts not to write, to wean my imagination by damming the river within or to trickle updates and comments on a bedlamite Facebook. With premeditated arrogance I pronounce that I’m too good for politics, but even a lofty leopard is distracted by buzzing flies. I should be writing about the beauty in and around me. Whether they are about the woman perched on a throne of clouds or the city I see in my childish eyes, I miss the echo of my own words. The music they make when they meander around in my head then dance to the drumming of my racing heartbeats. Leave the grease and the exposed hairy cracks to the mechanics, I tell myself then zoom past the desperate crowds in a dream powered Ferrari. I have the heart of Gawain and the ardor of Adonis, the Syrian God not the grovelling poet. I am the Tartoussi, Ibn al-Balad, who’s known the before and after, standing by and waiting for the end of this long day and a new beginning. I'm coming back.