There is a ghost editor that stands behind me, looking over my shoulder, whenever I sit down to write. This ghost editor, one that I eventually internalized, is a hardcore journalist—the best, and the worst kind. While an amalgam of most of the editors I met during my 12+ years working as a journalist in different newsrooms, my ghost editor often asks the two questions that my favorite editor at L'Orient-Le Jour, the newspaper I worked for the longest, used to ask.
I loved working on the same nights as him. After submitting my article, I would wait for him to call me into his office. He always had a glass of whiskey on his right, and a bowl of microwave popcorn that he invited me to share with him. I would pull one of the two chairs from in front of his desk and place it behind the desk, next to his, so we could read the article on the screen together.
The minute he stumbled upon a certain observation or a subtle statement that wasn't sandwiched between quotation marks, he would ask, knowing the answer very well: "Who said that?" and I would answer: "Umm, me…" And he would say: "And who are you to say that?" I would laugh. Then he would laugh, and say: "Either go find someone to tell you the exact thing and attribute it to them, or erase it altogether". Often, we'd erase it altogether.
Often, I didn't get to say what I wanted to say.
And nobody else got to say what I wanted to say.
What I wanted to say remained unsaid.
Years later, the ghost editor standing behind me in my apartment asks: "Who said that?" Then they wait for me to say: "Me, I said that", an answer they anticipated, the question being rhetorical. They only ask the first question so they could ask the second follow-up question that happens to be the most important: "And who are you to say that?"
Sometimes, I dare to talk back and I say: "I am a writer. I say what I want to say." Then, like a child caught in mischief, I add: "But, hey, thanks for the humbling lesson and the disciplined ego."
***
The first newspaper I worked for full-time, As-Safir, had one of the most beautiful taglines: "The voice of the voiceless". I was 17 years old when I started writing for the newspaper as a freelance writer and 18 when I landed my first job there. At such a young age, needless to say I was highly impressionable. I was walking in the same halls as the writers I admired and sometimes, we would even share the same pages. Our articles would sit side-by-side on the layout and, in a way, it felt like I sat on a bench with my favorite writer in a park. Obviously, it would be autumn. There is nothing about rust or dust or dying leaves that writers do not love.
"The voice of the voiceless" was a powerful tagline that I saw on a plaque at the entrance of the building. Below the newspaper's logo in the upper center of the front page. Some of the journalists would repeat it ironically when they felt that the editorial line was not reflecting the core ethos of the institution. It was everywhere.
Now, years later, I find myself asking: What happens to a voice that has been trained to be the voice of others? Does it become voiceless?
***
Does anyone ever think to ask the microphone if it wants to say something?
***
In hindsight, journalism was the kind of writing one did standing up. You are on your feet when you grab the news or jot down the field notes, then with the same feet, you run. And you never stop running until your article is sitting somewhere in the newspaper's layout. What's wrong with that, you ask? Nothing. Nothing is intrinsically wrong with that... except I have always been so fond of sitting down.
***
A friend, who happens to be a journalist and writer himself, was reading a draft of this text when he thought to share something he had heard another journalist say: "A journalist's most valuable asset is their knees".
***
In 2015, I did an internship at a publishing house in Beirut that published one or two books a year. The work tempo felt different from newsrooms—slower, more deliberate. When I published a short personal essay in one of the newspapers I was writing for, the head of the publishing house read it and said: "This is good, but it could also be better. This isn't journalism, you know, and it's not urgent. You can sit with the text longer."
I remember not giving her words much thought. It is only recently that the question keeps surfacing: How do you sit with a text?
***
So:
How do you sit with a text?
A manual.
Sit next to the text, not across the table from it.
Look in the same direction, not at each other.
Avoid eye contact at all costs.
Do not furnish the silence; this is a rental.
Let awkward be awkward.
Silence and awkwardness are now guests sitting with you and your text; scootch.
Guests will eventually leave on their own. Do not rush them, it's impolite.
When you are alone again with your text, look it in the eye and smile.
Ask yourself: "What do I want this text to be?"
Ask the text: "What do you want to be?"
***
Months ago, my husband and I were having a conversation in our apartment. I was sitting at my desk and he was walking all the way (it's a one-bedroom, one-bathroom) from the kitchen to the living room when I told him, plaintively, that there were very few things I wanted to do with my life:
To sit and think,
Or sit and read,
Or sit and write,
Or sit and converse.
If I were to draw this scene from our life for The New Yorker's daily cartoon, the caption would read: "Someone give that woman a chair."
I'm currently sitting with a text. Been working with it since February. It's a struggle, it's a darling, it's veered drastically to the right and to the left and is so stuibborn. I loved this text of yours. (and yes, I envy the life I could have had, starting years ago, however this is not the place to discuss it.)
Love love love love this!!!
I wonder if you ever sit on the floor or is it always a chair?