Houses of the Beautiful Era possess undying memories. They summon our laughter, our play, our childhood, and family gatherings on a holiday around a morning spread on a table, evoking the scent of pantry staples and thyme, and the fragrance of the aromatic plant in a jug beside the house, calling forth the morning and the chirping of birds heralding the scent of local wheat bread coming from the neighborhood oven or from markook bread on a well-used saj in the garden, the scent of greens, and thistles and Gundelia pastries summoning joy. Houses of the Beautiful Era summon the festivity of Eid, the Eid outfits, the joy of Eid, the Eid clothes, Eid cookies, and gatherings of joy with carved patterns, the scent of baking evoking the wooden coffee grinder and either an Aladdin stove or a radiant heater sending us warmth on a cold day, and summoning the smell of roasted oaks or chestnuts, and the scent of a cake in an aluminum mold spreading its aroma around, summoning our notebooks and our pens that we solved math problems in and wrote essays in, and they summon our national songs like Uncle Mansour the carpenter, The Little Spider, O Schools, O Schools, and Two Birds in Hijaz that sat on our homes calling up beautiful memories that don’t dim. They might be forgotten amidst the hustle and fatigue of the present but they come back and float to the surface of our hearts and our beautiful era floats with songs like the house of honor, our house with a grapevine at your door, O night of Eid, you delight us, how lovely the home and the village, and the gushing spring. It comes like a family member who went abroad whom we missed for a long time, and then he passes by to greet us, chat with us, and reminds us of our homes with folded and collapsed, with a lemon tree that blooms in April, a rose that whispers to the daisy, a Beirut fish dish, Silvana chocolate pieces, and old kak cookies. Our old homes remain in memory and stay and do not pass in our minds as strangers would. They stay and we are glad they sit among us and wish they would visit us to give us joy, kindness, and satisfaction that we once possessed. For he who owns an old house keeps it and does not sell it. It holds the sound of clearing throats and knocking, and the sound of your mother's sewing machine and your grandmother's coffee grinder, O my eyes, what a beauty to sit with the grandmother and to feel... you feel like a poet and you inhale the fragrance of your grandfather's cigarette smoke.
So the aroma of the past envelops me..
With it, I hear the echo of childhood memories..
I sit reclined on those armchairs..
I listen to my grandmother's or mother's tales and her question... "What are you guys in the mood to eat?"..
And you hear the sound of pestle striking and wedding songs, memories of old photos hanging on the walls, a black and white photo album, and the echo of an old radio tuning to here Amman and the voice of Fairuz emerging from between the folds of the radio singing Where are they?.. Where are they?
Where are their voices and faces?
Where are they?
There is now a valley between me and them
Where are they?
They rode the chariots of time and escaped into oblivion
And left forgotten children's laughter on the walls
They left me the keys.. they left the sound of the wind
And they went and left no address. Houses of the Beautiful Era take you back to a time known as the beautiful era, like a cinematic film.
