Our Smiles in the Ruins

On a September evening last year, I was sitting on my couch (the same couch I’m sitting on right now while typing on my laptop) with my brown acoustic guitar (the Yamaha one), strumming some chords, when suddenly I came up with something that I thought was so pleasant and beautiful.

I immediately opened my voice notes to record that thing (yup, with the bombardment of useful/useless—mostly useless—“overdose” of daily information; I can’t seem to remember anything nowadays) and while recording, I started humming the melody and vocal line, “we smile in the ruins,” over and over on top of the guitar thing. 


Fifteen minutes later, I came up with the chords of what would later become the chorus of the song “Our Smiles in the Ruins.” Again I opened up my voice notes to record and, while doing so, I sang the line, “our hugs so tight…our light shines bright” over and over on top of the chords.

Just like that, the song, or at least the structure of it, was written.

As I mentioned earlier, I barely remember anything nowadays. However, I remember where I was sitting, what I was wearing (shorts and a t-shirt), what I was drinking (green tea as usual), and what guitar I was playing when I wrote that song. I remember everything from that day so vividly because it was the day a very important and polarizing Lebanese political figure was killed amidst last year's September war on Lebanon.

I was in Dubai during that war, but I was talking daily to my family in Lebanon. When you're abroad and constantly bombarded by news (again some useful but mainly useless news and information) about what’s going on, you tend to worry.


There was 24/7 coverage of the war, and everyone became either a geopolitical expert vehemently stating their opinions on what was going to happen, or a reporter covering the war and showcasing atrocious imagery and destruction everywhere. All the negativity heard and seen tends to freak you out and make you worried about your loved ones back home. Most of the airlines canceled their flights to Lebanon and, from where I was sitting, it was doomsday for my home country.

To my surprise, when I talked to my family and friends back there, they seemed to be doing okay. In fact, more than okay. They were living their lives normally complaining about their daily general problems like traffic, electricity outages, and so on. Children were going to school and going to swimming classes and birthday parties. Life somehow seemed normal to them and again, from where I was sitting, I was way more worried about what was going on than they were.

I tried to analyze how and why that survival mechanism was built, but I couldn’t find a satisfying answer. And honestly, that answer didn’t matter, as long as they were okay.

Now, back to how I wrote the song...

The second day after that politician's death was a weekend, and my nieces were home at my parents’ house. You can just imagine the chaos and havoc that was going on during that time, and how the media outlets were all preaching the apocalypse and doomsday, but I remember when I was on a video call with my nieces, they were just telling me about their activities and plans for the day, and they were really smiling—smiling from the bottom of their innocent, beautiful, unworrying little hearts; “Our Smiles in the Ruins.”

I opened up my voice notes, used the same lines that I hummed on top of the music I wrote the day before as the basis for the lyrics, and finished writing “Our Smiles in the Ruins.”

In previous blogs, I talked about how some songs write themselves and how sometimes, I feel that I’m just a vessel for these songs; not their creator. I don’t know why I sang the lines “we smile in the ruins” and “our hugs so tight…our light shines bright” while recording the music on my phone. I genuinely don’t know why. But that song of resilience, hope, and survival “despite the scorching flames” of war and carnage was meant to be born.

“Our smiles in the ruins will never fade away.”