Dina

I wanted to change my mind and tell her I wasn’t coming when my aunt proudly announced that another family, a high level diplomat and his wife and son would also be joining them for the trip, the boy two years older than me. The only reason I wanted to join my aunt’s family, with the twins, for a beach vacation north of Beirut was so I could get some me time after two years of living with three other girls in my dorm, without ever having a space just for myself. When she sees the hesitation in my eyes, she says, as she cleans up the table after Stéphane and Sophie are done eating and have left to their room.

“What? Since you start working, you haven’t been going out. Maybe he is a nice guy and you can have fun together. Enjoy these years, every boy desires you, Dina.”

I chew on the cucumber I picked from the basket. It’s fresh and crunchy. I love my aunt Julie, but I don’t want her preaching right now. Especially after my last dating experience that left me empty, without any desire to have love and intimacy in my life. She doesn’t know what it takes to go through what I am going through.

She has been a big support since my mom passed and after I moved back from Paris to Lebanon. Although I knew the civil war was not going to end soon, and there was no hope the country go back to my childhood years when Beirut was considered the jewel of the Middle East, I needed to be with my mom’s…