Invisible

  I've never thought of myself as a transplant or even a refugee. Girl from the Bay Area spending her single years in Beirut right after the war. I rented a basement flat in the nicer part of town where the buildings were still functional, though missing a few walls--maybe a roof--compared to the rough side of town where the piles of rubble were inhabited by opium addicts and feral dogs.
  I could pass for Lebanese with my dark hair and eyes, as long as I didn't open my mouth to speak. Men on the street would smile at me with a smug type of satisfaction, pleased that my eyes were the only things visible through my veil. I was invisible like every other female in the city, but at least I could leave my flat without a male warden--I mean, escort--like my suffering sisters in Kabul.
  Inside my unfurnished home, I wrote feverishly, trying to capture the essence of Beirut in my novel, trying to see inside the minds of the middle-aged women who had been small girls when the bombs fell. I often took my binoculars and stared out my only window at the sides of half-standing buildings, electrical wires like giant black spiderwebs woven between the crumbling walls. The electricity brought a sense of normalcy to the Lebanese people. Too poor to rebuild, but not too poor to give up their color TVs.
  What would it be like to find happiness in these ruins? I wrote, trying to imagine my main character as complacent, yet resourceful. Like me, I suppose, only fluent in Lebanese.
  I headed out to the street market, wordlessly exchanging coins for bread and vegetables, smiling, nodding, and pretending to be invisible like my characters.
(Photo credit: Beirut, before and after restoration.)