When the heart knocks, you must open the door.

How tender are the hearts of lovers, and I am one of them! So what if the one who is knocking on the door is Zeina?

And Zeina is not the title of a novel as much as she is a recount of the chapters of my life, my life’s pulse that I took many of its days away, and what remains is in the hands of the Most Merciful, stored in time and days, and one day the moment of departure will come.

And to make sure that this life is not spent in vain, I would love to add some beauty to it with a story, and what a beautiful story it is when you write while you see on the computer the apparitions of people you loved who have passed away, and now you are waiting for the moment to meet again.

Perhaps it is more than a novel because it is formulated with ink like no other. When a father writes about his daughter, the words have another divulgence that is more like the divulgence of jasmines, and from that, the words infiltrate to tell the story of the birth, upbringing, the extreme pain from scoliosis and the journey of searching for a cure until the moment of undergoing the risky surgery.

As for Zeina’s journey with the world of art, it is another story, and it not only tells the story of an artist’s career, but also tells the pain of a father when facing the moments of separation.

And from the movie Habbet Loulou, which was Zeina’s first artistic work, the journey of investigation of this artistic journey begins from the point of view of a father. She did not only monitor the abstract artistic side until her latest work, Shatti Ya Beirut and Zeina’s famous cry: “Baba”, which opened the windows of the father’s heart to a similar cry that will one day be real.

And from the cry: “Baba”, the faucet of the memories from childhood until today through snippets from Zeina’s life, her academic excellence and medals that adorn her neck, to her bed in the family home whining about absence, to the teddy bear hidden in one of the drawers of the house’s closets.

With Zeina, I formed my letters with my father’s poems and my mother’s dough.. How delicate poetry is when it is wisdom, and how delicious is bread when its leaven is passion!

Zeina… A Girl Made of Iron and Silk. It didn’t become a novel by accident, it was only hidden in the heart of a father until the right time came.. It was a poem in which she is the heroine, and I am the narrator.