when did the music stop?

at the wedding where amto afaf and i spotted a sarsour scampering up a woman’s back, everyone was dancing when the lights went out and the music stopped but the singing only got louder, and is that a metaphor for being Palestinian in Lebanon? my cousin told me if i lived there i’d want to leave and never come back, and maybe that’s true, but the fact is, i don’t, so i’m still sitting here romanticizing power outages and the sting of the sea on my skin. meanwhile, in Nahr al Bared, boys lit trash bins and tires on fire today like they could ride the thick plumes of smoke up up and away from those crowded camps and corrupted politicians forever.