7elim (Dream)

My time with Zeina, whose name means "beautiful," was fleeting, short-lived. At least the most significant part of our friendship, or the beginning of it, was short-lived. We became sisters when we met. In her words, we were more than sisters; she told me, "you are my soul." She was beautiful in every way, and if I never see her again, I will be content just to have met her, lived with her a little, have been shaped by her presence and instruction, and to recall her to mind, because she is forever an example. She is my Beatrice of Dante, who will lead me to heaven. I visited her country, her land, and it too was other-worldly like her, and my time there was also fleeting. I am cured forever from the arrows of Amor and its sorrows, and never again will I experience the despair of perceiving one's inferiority. She was perfect. Yet, I, could not help being different from who I was except if I had come from Lebanon, too, and been born there, and raised among its nearly otherworldly people. Zeina of Zahle. These two words, which begin with Z, for me, are motherly. Zeina was my mother above all things for the one year and 10 months we were together. Carved and etched into my memory until I die, and vivid, will be the first moments our meeting in September of 2011, and the events leading up to it. During that time, I was praying to St. Raphael, the patron of happy meetings, to St. Therese of Lisieux, and to St. Joseph. It felt like a miraculous time of my life, yet its sweetness was not without a taste of bitterness. Lebanon! Lebanon! Why can't I forget you? Love and beauty I have passionately longed for and found above all in Zeina the beautiful. Akh! Akh!!...O land of love and beauty. Yet, God seems to have chosen that I will have no part of it. Oh, the human being, how pitiful! I will remain at its outskirts. O God, God who is Love and who is Beauty, hear my cry. O God, to no one else can I turn but to you. Yet, I do not trust you! Shame on me, but also shame on you. Your demand that we accept imperfection is too great and difficult. YaALLAH. YaaaaaaaALLLLLLLAAAAHHHH...