{"id":12909,"date":"2025-07-30T20:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/the-close-friend-of-my-father\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T22:33:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T22:33:38","slug":"the-close-friend-of-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/the-close-friend-of-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"The close friend of my father"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A relative calm unlike the storm that\u2019s sweeping through all of us, I woke up on the morning of Saturday, July 26, 2025, to the news of the passing of Ziad Rahbani, my father\u2019s close friend. My father had never met Ziad in person, yet they were friends who shared jokes, melodies, and the same sadness. They often had long conversations about God, the country, and sometimes about Fairuz. <\/p>\n\n

These discussions were a fundamental part of my childhood and the shaping of my rebellious identity, especially since society always pointed fingers at me and labeled me as a “revolutionary.” My father raised us to embrace difference\u2014not as a reason for conflict, but to speak about reality as it is, without sugarcoating it. To live life with all its beautiful and ugly contradictions. And to respond with sarcasm to the reality of our societies, to the unique \u201cLebanese temperament,\u201d and to the syndrome of loving and hating the homeland at the same time. <\/p>\n\n

My father lived a life different from the society he felt he didn\u2019t belong to\u2014a society he always saw as filled with resentment, hypocrisy, and exaggeration. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that my father passed away a few months before Ziad. A father who had always lived in sadness over the loss of his close friends before him. Surely, he wouldn\u2019t have been able to bear Ziad\u2019s departure\u2014the friend closest to his heart, the one who never left my father\u2019s mornings or ours. <\/p>\n\n

I grew up surrounded by my father\u2019s gatherings with his friends at the Cultural Movement Center in Tyre. I was raised amid conversations about women, politics, music, and lively debates\u2014most of which were filled with sarcasm and loud, continuous laughter. I feel like I lost my memories today, which already seemed orphaned with Ziad\u2019s absence and departure. I lost a vital part of a crucial period that shaped my personality and who I am now. I lost Fairuz\u2019s voice, Ziad\u2019s songs in our mornings, and my father. <\/p>\n\n

Fairuz\u2019s songs have now become tied to the pain of losing those beautiful moments shared between me, my father, and Ziad. Escaping from them has become my way to distance myself from that whole past, as if it has nothing to do with me. <\/p>\n\n

In fleeting, random moments amid the chaos of my daily work, I remember him sitting on the house balcony where he spent most of his time\u2014finishing Fairuz\u2019s songs and drifting into another world. A world where he met with his friends, mourned them, imagined another life\u2014the Rahbani world and the Lebanon of dreams. A Lebanon that even Ziad couldn\u2019t erase from my father\u2019s imagination, because for him it was his way to escape to a better life amid the chaos\u2014or the true face of Lebanon, as Ziad described it in his plays and artistic works. <\/p>\n\n

This contradiction was also my father\u2019s nature. In his imagination, at a caf\u00e9 on the crossroads where he waited many times, yet his state was much like Ziad\u2019s when he said, \u201cWhenever you ask me how I am, I remember that I\u2019m not okay,\u201d in the show Al-Aql Zeina. <\/p>\n\n

What I know is that close friends unite\u2014they agree on many ideas, sometimes disagree, and go through human struggles. They drift apart at times, but then come back stronger than before.   <\/pre>\n\n
My father, who always said he had no problem with death\u2014\u201cthose who die find peace\u201d\u2014I don\u2019t know if that impression was planted by Ziad when he talked about death and said, \u201cI used to have a problem with death, but not anymore. After everything we’ve been through, I\u2019ve come close to death several times.\u201d     <\/p>\n\n
My father disagreed with Ziad politically at one point, but their door for discussion was always open. This was because neither of them ever placed themselves on a pedestal nor allowed anyone to be idolized. So, their disagreements never spoiled their friendship or diminished Ziad\u2019s creative stature that had won hearts and minds. Because, above all, whether you agreed or disagreed with him, he forced us\u2014whether we liked it or not\u2014to face reality, pushed us to dive into our existential and life struggles, to ask deep questions, and to strip away all the falsehoods society had boxed us into.              <\/p>\n\n
What I do know is that close friends come together\u2014they share many ideas, sometimes disagree, and go through human struggles. They drift apart at times, but then return stronger than ever before.    <\/p>\n\n
This is not a pessimistic call to see death as a hopeless state in our lives, but rather an invitation to make peace with it, as Ziad described it in an interview\u2014calling death an “instinct” and referencing the scientist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. <\/p>\n\n
But parting remains that empty space\u2014full of everything at once\u2014the absence that even Ziad expressed when he wrote:\u201cI\u2019m afraid even the line won\u2019t reach you,I feel it must find you…So you reply and talk to me, my love.\u201dThis fear has haunted me since you left, my father. And, Ziad, I feel it must find you too, as Fairuz\u2019s voice hums along with me:\u201cSo you reply and talk to me, my love.\u201d          <\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A relative calm unlike the storm that\u2019s sweeping through all of us, I woke up on the morning of Saturday, July 26, 2025, to the news of the passing of Ziad Rahbani, my father\u2019s close friend. My father had never met Ziad in person, yet they were friends who shared jokes, melodies, and the same sadness. They often had long conversations about God, the country, and sometimes about Fairuz. These discussions were a fundamental part of my childhood and the shaping of my rebellious identity, especially since society always pointed fingers at me and labeled me as a “revolutionary.” My father raised us to embrace difference\u2014not as a reason for conflict, but to speak about reality as it is, without sugarcoating it. To live life with all its beautiful and ugly contradictions. And to respond with sarcasm to the reality of our societies, to the unique \u201cLebanese temperament,\u201d and to the syndrome of loving and hating the homeland at the same time. My father lived a life different from the society he felt he didn\u2019t belong to\u2014a society he always saw as filled with resentment, hypocrisy, and exaggeration. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that my father passed away a few months before Ziad. A father who had always lived in sadness over the loss of his close friends before him. Surely, he wouldn\u2019t have been able to bear Ziad\u2019s departure\u2014the friend closest to his heart, the one who never left my father\u2019s mornings or ours. I grew up surrounded by my father\u2019s gatherings with his friends at the Cultural Movement Center in Tyre. I was raised amid conversations about women, politics, music, and lively debates\u2014most of which were filled with sarcasm and loud, continuous laughter. I feel like I lost my memories today, which already seemed orphaned with Ziad\u2019s absence and departure. I lost a vital part of a crucial period that shaped my personality and who I am now. I lost Fairuz\u2019s voice, Ziad\u2019s songs in our mornings, and my father. Fairuz\u2019s songs have now become tied to the pain of losing those beautiful moments shared between me, my father, and Ziad. Escaping from them has become my way to distance myself from that whole past, as if it has nothing to do with me. In fleeting, random moments amid the chaos of my daily work, I remember him sitting on the house balcony where he spent most of his time\u2014finishing Fairuz\u2019s songs and drifting into another world. A world where he met with his friends, mourned them, imagined another life\u2014the Rahbani world and the Lebanon of dreams. A Lebanon that even Ziad couldn\u2019t erase from my father\u2019s imagination, because for him it was his way to escape to a better life amid the chaos\u2014or the true face of Lebanon, as Ziad described it in his plays and artistic works. This contradiction was also my father\u2019s nature. In his imagination, at a caf\u00e9 on the crossroads where he waited many times, yet his state was much like Ziad\u2019s when he said, \u201cWhenever you ask me how I am, I remember that I\u2019m not okay,\u201d in the show Al-Aql Zeina. What I know is that close friends unite\u2014they agree on many ideas, sometimes disagree, and go through human struggles. They drift apart at times, but then come back stronger than before. My father, who always said he had no problem with death\u2014\u201cthose who die find peace\u201d\u2014I don\u2019t know if that impression was planted by Ziad when he talked about death and said, \u201cI used to have a problem with death, but not anymore. After everything we’ve been through, I\u2019ve come close to death several times.\u201d My father disagreed with Ziad politically at one point, but their door for discussion was always open. This was because neither of them ever placed themselves on a pedestal nor allowed anyone to be idolized. So, their disagreements never spoiled their friendship or diminished Ziad\u2019s creative stature that had won hearts and minds. Because, above all, whether you agreed or disagreed with him, he forced us\u2014whether we liked it or not\u2014to face reality, pushed us to dive into our existential and life struggles, to ask deep questions, and to strip away all the falsehoods society had boxed us into. What I do know is that close friends come together\u2014they share many ideas, sometimes disagree, and go through human struggles. They drift apart at times, but then return stronger than ever before. This is not a pessimistic call to see death as a hopeless state in our lives, but rather an invitation to make peace with it, as Ziad described it in an interview\u2014calling death an “instinct” and referencing the scientist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. But parting remains that empty space\u2014full of everything at once\u2014the absence that even Ziad expressed when he wrote:\u201cI\u2019m afraid even the line won\u2019t reach you,I feel it must find you…So you reply and talk to me, my love.\u201dThis fear has haunted me since you left, my father. And, Ziad, I feel it must find you too, as Fairuz\u2019s voice hums along with me:\u201cSo you reply and talk to me, my love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,339],"tags":[348,347,349],"class_list":["post-12909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-opinion","tag-fairuz","tag-lebanon-en","tag-ziad_rahbani"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a-300x167.webp",300,167,true],"large":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\u0635\u062f\u064a\u0642-\u0627\u0628\u064a.webp",900,500,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"\u0641\u0627\u0644\u0646\u062a\u064a\u0646 \u0646\u0633\u0631","author_link":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/author\/valentine-naser\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Blog<\/a> Opinion<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"A relative calm unlike the storm that\u2019s sweeping through all of us, I woke up on the morning of Saturday, July 26, 2025, to the news of the passing of Ziad Rahbani, my father\u2019s close friend. My father had never met Ziad in person, yet they were friends who shared jokes, melodies, and the same…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silatwassel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}