Only Now It Dawns

The world literally is going to end, and SAMMIE, a Lebanese convenience store owner, is exactly where he wants to be when it happens – alone in his store. Until fate decides to surprise him with an unexpected visitor – JOHANNA, his Jewish ex that left him for another man several years ago. Even until this very day, he has still never gotten over that. What’s worse, it’s after all these years that only now it dawns on Johanna that she truly wants to be with Sammie before the end arrives. This is incredibly upsetting for him, especially after what she put him through and what he was already going through back then.

Sammie’s parents never approved of Johanna, even though he truly loved and wanted to be with her. Unfortunately, his parents and two younger siblings were killed on a family trip to Lebanon in the summer of 2006 during the Israeli bombing campaign. Sammie still feels survivor’s guilt because he feels he should have gone with them, instead of convincing his parents that he should stay back and take care of the family business. Truth be told, however, it was at that time that Johanna was having the affair and Sammie was trying to work things out with her.

Now, Sammie feels that all he has left is only his store and nothing else. Where as Johanna has nothing whatsoever. Not only has she just left the man she originally left Sammie for, but she ended up finding her family already dead when she went to say good-bye to them one last time. Johanna truly has nowhere else to go and no one else to go to. And as it seems like he doesn’t let the unforgiving past go, Sammie doesn’t turn his back on Johanna either.

Sharing a bottle of a potent Arab liquor called Araq, Sammie and Johanna open up to one another. Sammie reveals his own world would’ve probably ended regardless if the world wasn’t going to, leaving Johanna both grief-stricken and speechless. It’s then that Sammie asks Johanna why she left him all those years ago. When Johanna finally tells Sammie, only now it dawns on him that he may have had it coming. That he feels he did it to himself and has only himself to blame. Johanna, on the other hand, feels otherwise though and, rather, shares the blame. However, after everything said and done, none of it matters anymore, as the pain that they’ve felt all this time is now overpowered by their love for each other resurging once again, once and for all, as they embrace one last time into the end.