Stories begin at the start, mine begins at a very important question. Coincidentally, the same title as my favourite Lebanese film. I must have watched Nadine Labaki’s film at least a dozen times, and each time I found myself repeating the film’s title. Let me explain: the arts were my entire life. Music, writing, film, these were my life long companions. Any social activity would always involve some kind of performance, followed by a life- altering conversation about what that particular piece of art meant for life itself. It helped my younger, shyer self-understand people, and even when I couldn’t understand the twists and turns of life’s little games, the arts helped me accept them.

These magical moments often brought about clarity. The pandemic for instance, had brought my music career to a complete standstill. I couldn’t engage online, except for teaching and even then, I needed to engage with people, in real life. That wasn’t possible, we all knew that. So, I turned to music. It was the first time I felt absolutely stuck, sitting at my piano, my fingers nervously tapping the keys secretly manifesting some kind of divine intervention. The fact that I couldn’t create the way I knew how unsettled me to my very core.

Like everyone in the world, I decided to go for a walk to clear my head. Notebook in hand, I sat down in the park and took out my pen. This will work, I thought. I started to write in my usual fashion, an ever –long stream of consciousness. Why am I here, back in Athens? I asked my non-judgmental notebook. Should I be elsewhere? Why can’t I sing? Am I suddenly not inspired? How the hell am I supposed to survive this lockdown? What am I supposed to sing about? And why on earth would I sing and compose; for whom exactly?

I went back home. Enter, DVD escape and Nadine Labaki. The actresses’ face peered up at me from a tarnished DVD cover. “ Wou Halla, La wein ?” . “ Where do we go now?” in English. I put it in. I’m not in a war, I thought, much like the film’s story around the Lebanese civil war. Yet here I was, looking for answers through a fictional story about a very real war.

Where do I go now?