Project: Stencil

Sophie used to take pictures of graffiti. Her screensaver cycled through digital shots of Berlin building surfaces and San Francisco walls. I never asked though, Why don't you graffiti? And I certainly never expected to find myself knifing a semi-circle in cardstock to make stencils for a night of wall art.

The storage room in the garage has been transformed into a creative work space, and we climbed into this crimson-walled aquarium, flipping through vintage AUB yearbooks from 1952 and Aishti catalogues with models in Gucci and Cavalli on the top of the old lighthouse and in Luna Park, home of the now frozen ferris wheel. We had sketchbooks on our laps; those of us on the beanbags were working away with calligraphy pens, coming up with graffiti tags from our names in Arabic.

Halo knew how to write my name. I've never witnessed any one--aside from my family--who knew how to write my name in Arabic. In fact, I don't think anyone has ever wanted or needed to write my name in Arabic in front of me. Her pen just glided, as if she were addressing a letter to Mr. John Williams, Dan Mitchell, or Dr. Rebecca Smith. I didn't have to carve out the "D as in dog."

Anna brought in a demo: silver spray paint on black, and it rocked. In hyper-pixellated, retro-digital font (System might be the font name?): tick tick tick BOOM... The face of a car with a flame and explosion rays on top. Superimposed on the image, a circle with a line cutting straight through at a 45 degree angle. "No parking" into "No car-bombing."

Just before we headed out, I noted to Sally, "Surrna masna'a joints."

It was shortly past midnight. The streets were essentially deserted (echoing East Jerusalem), and soldiers were patrolling everywhere. The number of barricades on the roads had quadrupled. It was a slalom course. The veins and arteries of the cities were clogged, almost suffocated. We made around four to five stops and were promptly greeted by military surveillance--in black SUV, in Jeep Cherokee, and on motorcycle--at three of our stops. Whoever was spraying would slide back into the car and toss the cans under the front seats. And go.

Anna got some bubbles, and I got some sugar free Cherry Vitamin C drops from the compulsively-organized TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN CANDY SHOP at Talet Druze. I thought they were hard candy, but when I crunched them the insides had the texture of a red pepper. Soldiers searched our cars outside of the shop. We pulled out our IDs, he nodded, and that was that.

From Hamra to Gemayzeh to somewhere else to I don't know where and back to Hamra, we went to Rima's apartment for a bit. A soldier on a bike came up to us as we got out of the car--asked us what we were doing, where we were coming from. We hung out downstairs for a bit. I guess the soldier heard our voices, and his engine growled and growled, urging us to get the fuck upstairs.

The horizon is clear from the Corniche at night. The chasing lights of the airport runways trace the barrier between sea and land, and the towers on the coast-line seem endless. We were shocked and bewildered by how smoothly the ride on the Corniche was. Barricades and military surveillance had become the norm, so the Corniche felt like a giant water slide.