belle journée 
carole ecuer

I sometimes think that I learned more from studying him than I did from studying philosophy. His exquisite balance of irony and tenderness would have put him among the saints had he been a religious man. He was by divine choice only a poet and often unhappy but with him one had the feeling that he was catching every minute as it flew and turning it upside down to expose its happy side. He was really using himself up, his inner self, in living. Most people lie and let life play upon them like the tepid discharges of a douche-bag. To the Cartesian proposition: ‘I think therefore I am’ he opposed his own, which must have gone something like this: ‘I imagine, therefore I belong and am free'.
The Alexandria quartet
Lawrence Durrell

Beirut by Ibrahim Maalouf