I would like to be part of a life-changing moment that takes me back thirty years, when my grandfather told mother that she should leave. I would like to go back to when mother told me to stay away from three specific things: boys, tattoos, and this country. I would again like to hear my twelve-year-old self say: I love this city too much to ever leave. I want to go back to when I had no future plans to stand in between my Beirut and I. I want to go back to 3 a.m. on a school night in ninth grade when I wrote about how I would love to run through the streets of my city during dawn just to witness the purity of its damage: the war-ruined buildings and the garbage flooded streets that never changed. The ever-changing sea. I want to return to when my father first gave me a copy of Beirut, I Love You and told me to eat up the words because his smart little daughter needed a proper book to educate her. I want to tell my mother that after I had gotten involved with so many boys, it nearly drove me to pieces to deal with them anymore. I wanted to tell her that after I had my skin permanently inked because I could not take the loss of a cousin (I had to have a reminder of her right there on my skin), I would want to stay in a city that has corrupted me into becoming a dreamer.
Lynn Sheikh Moussa
Lynn Sheikh Moussa is an 18-year-old Media major at AUB. She discovered an inner need to be poetic within her at the age of 13, and has since then written numerous poems, but she has never felt an urge to show them to more than just friends or strangers she will never hear or see of again. Lynn has been in a continuous struggle of self-discovery, always switching interests and seeking more with eager spirits. To this day, she has no idea who she really is, but a poet in a sense of loss.
