Category Archives: Life

The Story Of Owning a Pet in Lebanon

The journey of a thousand miles starts with the inception of the idea… with your mother. “I’m getting a cat” was what I said. A stern look that breathed of “no” was how she replied. Message received. My dad automatically referred me back to my mother. No luck on that front. I had my work cut out for me.

Soon enough, I got the pet. My mom will cave in under the pressure, I figured. I entered the house with that white ball of fur in my arms. I had already decided to name her “Katniss.” And I probably hadn’t seen something cuter in my life. Katniss, however, was absolutely terrified. So the first thing she did when I stepped over the threshold was to go and hide beneath the sofa. No amount of food or trickery could get her out of there. It could have been that the house was brimming with people wanting to see what this creature was.

An hour or so later, once strangers and distant relatives in this little town got bored and left, Katniss decided to venture out into her new territory. She didn’t like me at that point but I was the only familiar face so she stuck around. Despite being minuscule, she managed to jump on the couch. The spot looked absolutely perfect for her. So she nested her head beneath her paw and slept.

“Don’t tell your mom,” my dad said as he watched TV and gently ran his hand over her white mane.

The following days were all about learning. I asked my friends who already had pets what kind of food and litter they bought. I had trouble potty-training her but she got the hang of it… eventually. And I found out she loves to eat and play in the garden outside my house even though she came back with little twigs stuck on her every time.

She started following me around the house wherever I went: to my room, to the bathroom, to the car. She used to look at me sadly as I pulled out of the drive to go to class and I couldn’t help but smile as I saw her growingly fat behind go back disappointingly inside when she found out she won’t be going anywhere with me.

Her first visit to the vet was strange to me but downright terrifying for her. As I held her in my arms while the vet readied the table where he was going to examine her, I could feel her getting more anxious. Once he gave her the vaccine and those deworming pills and that frontline for flees, she was downright shaking as I tried to comfort her that all will be okay.

Needless to say, her future visits to the vet were far less smooth as she started refusing to take the pills no matter what he does. “You have a feisty cat,” he said. I just nodded. There was nothing I could do. She was so feisty in fact that she had managed to hunt down a mouse, which she brought back home only to brag about in front of my mom. She wasn’t going to eat that, obviously.

The first hurdle came around when my mom was diagnosed with cancer and some people told her she can’t be around the cat. We started worrying about what we’d do with Katniss. No one we knew was equipped to take care of her. We tried to move her to my grandparents’ house but she kept coming back despite our efforts. It was a relieving moment when the oncologist told her mother to worry.

Once December rolled around and cats around the neighborhood started getting ready to get busy, it was time for Katniss to hit early menopause. So I took her to the vet again and several hours later, I got her back in her cage sleeping. Back home, she was so drowsy because of anesthesia and in obvious pain that my mom’s heart was almost torn out of her chest. She got all better a few days later and went back to her regular routines of eating, sleeping, playing and chasing away the cats off our porch.

On a Saturday night in April, as we had dinner with a few guests who gushed over a shaven-Katniss as she circled their feet, which she normally does, while they ate, Katniss decided to go outside, which was normal. Slightly past midnight, I decided to call it quits and went to bed. The following day, I found out from my little brother that Katniss hadn’t slept in. I wasn’t worried as she had done that before and our maid had seen her around the house early that morning.

The day starting passing, however, and Katniss didn’t come back. As we sat down for lunch, nothing was startling my aunt by bumping into her foot. There was nothing looking at my mom with pleading eyes for some human food. “She’s just around,” they all said. “She’ll come back in a bit.”

But Katniss didn’t. Not that Sunday. Not the following Monday. Not the Tuesday after that. Two scenarios were plausible: either someone stole her or one of the hunters around my town decided to test his chops by aiming at a cat who was obviously owned by someone, which is entirely possible given how hunters in this country think: it doesn’t matter what they shoot at as long as it’s an animal moving and they get to brag about it to their friends later on.

 

As the days passed, I realized this tiny creature that started as even tinier white ball of fur had taken up a huge place in our house. We had gotten so used to her collar’s bell ringing whenever she moved that the silence in the house felt eerie. We had gotten so used to her just being around that not stumbling by her everywhere we went made our home feel less welcoming.

“I never thought I’d love her as much,” was what my mom said as she held her food basket and called around for her name around the neighborhood, shaking the basket to draw her attention. There was a tear in her eye. “Don’t tell your little brother,” she then said. “He’ll be devastated if he knew I’m this upset.”

We were all upset. Katniss had spent slightly more than a year in our midst but we had all grown to absolutely love her, even the family members who complained about her walking around them when they ate. Now, two weeks later, I’m not hopeful that I’ll find Katniss anymore. My little cat is gone.

I don’t think I’d get another pet. This isn’t the town nor the country to own a pet and be relieved that your neighbors won’t poison it or the hunters around your town won’t be shooting it or even someone stealing it for a few quick dollars or because they don’t want to get their own.

All I have are the memories of when Katniss was mine and around, the memories of when she slept next to me in bed and looked annoyed because I changed sleeping positions and woke her up, the memories of her running after me because I was heading to the kitchen which she normally associated with eating, the memories of her chasing away the neighborhood’s cats off her turf because this was, after all, her home.

I hope it’s nice wherever you are, little one.

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Remembering The Little Children Terrorists of Qana

Because not remembering the woes and wounds of this nation is part of why we are where are today, I present to you a guest post by my good friend Hala Hassan.

Qana Lebanon Massacre 1996

It was April of 1996. I was a 6 year old girl, growing increasingly scared of a month where I’d wake up to rockets getting fired every single day from the neighboring tanks over the hill and warplanes constantly raping the sky above my house.

Operation Grapes of Wrath was getting scarier, deadlier, more ominous by the minute. Just another regular day of a Southerner back then.

Random memory #1: Zaven, who currently runs a TV show on Future TV, was a news anchor then who, along with his co-anchor short haired Zahira Harb (I don’t know where she is now or what she does), were distinctive figures in my 6 year old memory.

Random memory #2: a man sitting on a plastic chair, head dangling to one side, blood and broken glass everywhere.

My memory of that spring is as vivid as if it were happening now. I can still remember all details of Thursday April 18th and the crystal clear images showing death and horror at every turn.

I remember the faces of UNIFIL soldiers crying and shouting, overwhelmed with the shock, ramble and fire.

The news was shocking. An Israeli raid targeted without any hesitation whatsoever a compound of UNIFIL forces in the Sourthern village of Qana where families had sought refuge, most of which were elderly, kids and women.

Yes it was a massacre, a crime against humanity: flesh and blood melting into the steel, splashed body tissues and fluids on the walls, dismantled and disfigured corpses, beheaded babies, pools of flesh merging into impossibly differentiated individuals.

The Cruelty was caught on tape and registered in minds, reinforced by the sorrow of those who survived and shock.

The whole country was in shock. No excuse could have been given, no excuse would have been accepted and will ever be.

I haven’t seen bigger funerals than the one carrying the victims of Qana to their final resting place. A sea of black, of arms swaying in sorrow under coffins each of which held entire families, their bodies burned together. More than a hundred souls were taken in fraction of seconds. Dreams were blown into little pieces lying together in common graves.

It took me 9 years to make peace with newspapers. My older sister used the idea of Qana newspaper pictures as a way to scare me for years. That’s how childhood in South Lebanon went. I envy the kids who grew up scared of boogeyman.

I know that massacres take place every day around the world, today more than ever, neighboring countries more than distant ones. Civil wars or terrorist attacks, respect goes to every innocent soul in this world that is lost intentionally or as collateral damage in conflicts they may not want to be part of.

Everything feels more intense and more important when it’s personal, which Qana – to me – undoubtedly is, but the point behind all of this is that terrorism has no nationality, no color and no ethnicity.

Recognize the terrorists. It is never too late to be fair.

Here’s To Good Friends

Here’s to those few people that force you put your guard down to let them in. They don’t ask anything in return except some time well spent: having impromptu lunches to laugh your heart out, candid sessions over some weird combinations of tea leaves you never thought existed or in-depth discussion of politics during which you almost go at each other’s throats one second only to high-five the next.

Here’s to those few people whose idea of you exists only in what they know about you, not of what people think they know or what people say or what people want others to think.

Here’s to those few people with whom you are not worried about going slightly crazy sometimes. And they still want to be seen in public with you.

Here’s to those few people who might be very different from you on all the things that you thought counted and still end up finding more common ground than divergence.

Here’s to your harshest critics, the ones who bash your work the most when its level falls off, who let you know exactly where you slipped and how to fix it.

Here’s to your best supporters, the ones who can trump your family sometimes – those people who let you know when you excel and who support you even when you don’t feel like supporting yourself.

Here’s to the people with whom you can eat an entire box of sweets and absolutely not give a damn about how you look like 5 year olds who found their holy grail of chocolate.

Here’s to those people you don’t see in months but still manage to pick up where you left off as if no time had passed.

Here’s to those who know exactly when you’re blowing smoke and are not afraid to tell you off.

Here’s to the people who help you find the silver linings of your woes whenever you feel overwhelmed.

Here’s to those people who have no problem driving to your place late at night because you need someone to talk to. Even if it means trying to find a place to park in Beirut.

Here’s to those people you have no problem putting your feet up on the tables of their homes.

Here’s to the people who know all your inside jokes.

Here’s to those who are crazy enough to fathom liking you without being on some form of antipsychotic.

I wouldn’t be who I am without all the awesome friends I’ve had. This blog wouldn’t be what it is without them too.  Here’s to good friends and good times and maybe some good wine or scotch too.

The Greatest Woman I Know

I didn’t want to write for Mother’s Day this year. But then it dawned on me that the only tangible thing that I can give my mother – at least on her day – is my words, however silly they may be.

I am a university student who can’t save up money if his life depended on it. There’s nothing else I could give. There’s nothing she would want other than me being there as much as I can, despite me being a nuisance quite often. And I could go on and on about how I’m glad my dad chose her but I think I’d say that if my dad had chosen any other woman to be my mother. What I’m sure of, though, is that I wouldn’t have turned out the way I did hadn’t my mother been named Jinane and hadn’t she loved me and protected me and been there for me as much as she did.

I was watching a documentary the other day that aired on MTV about Lebanese women. As I stood in front of the TV borderline gasping at all that our women have to go through, I started wondering: why was all of this in the realms of theory for me?

As she walked through the door, her wool post-chemotherapy hat on, the answer dawned on me: it’s because my mother was never a victim. She was never weak. She was always strong – even through her illness.

This past year had been especially tough on her. I remember when her hair started falling and I knew that with every follicle leaving her head, she was feeling less and less like a woman. There was nothing I could do. I’m not the type to show pity or even much emotion. I couldn’t do anything.

Once the hair grew slightly back on and she decided to dye it, the process went horribly wrong. It was then that I saw her cry, for the first time since she started the horrible path of chemotherapy. There was this one thing making her hopeful and she was sad she botched it. I wouldn’t take it so I managed to get her to dye her hair again.

This time, though, the dye worked. As she struggled to put earrings on for the first time in four months and then applied some form of makeup on her beautiful face, her eyes were radiant. I asked her what’s the point of all of this? She said she hadn’t felt this way since they removed her tumor and with it most of her breast… a woman.

The feminists might be outraged. They will say you don’t need make up to feel like a woman and you sure as hell don’t need your son inquiring about it. But my mom is not a feminist, she’s a humanist. She gives whenever she can give and whenever she cannot. She works whenever she can work and whenever she cannot. She loves the people whose love only bring her woes and she can’t help it.

She may infuriate me sometimes and I may snap at her more than I would like. I can’t help it. But my mom, this 40-something woman who comes from this little town in the North, who had to stop her nursing studies when she got married and who is an ordinary woman by the accounts of all those over-achievers around, is to me not just extraordinary, she is fantastic and brave and gorgeous and humble and brilliant and beautiful.

This 40-something woman got the best Mother’s Day present by finishing the last session of the cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs yesterday. She’ll probably be on cloud nine in a few days when the nausea wears off. She will be even happier when her eyelashes grow back and her eyebrows grow thicker.

But that woman, with all her weaknesses and her imperfections, is the most perfect and greatest woman I know.

Photo 343

The Lebanese Women Who Hate Women

She goes to her friend’s house with a thick layer of makeup on her face. She fakes a smile and laughs through her pain. She pushes away the tears. No one knows and no one will ever know.

Her mother had given her that advice a long time ago. It doesn’t matter how you feel. It doesn’t matter what he does. You fix your hair, you bite your lip and get a grip and save a little face of the one that was torn to pieces. It’s just a beat up. This isn’t her mother’s broken jaw and bruised eye. But it might as well be.

——————————————————————–

“I’ll vote the way my brother wants.

I’ll vote the way my husband wants.

I’ll vote the way my son wants.

I’ll vote the way my grandson wants.”

But no one will know how you vote behind that separator.

“How will I live with myself if I don’t do what they want of me?”

Why would you vote the way anyone else wants?

“Because there are circumstances. I can’t.”

——————————————————————–

It had been only a few weeks since her father passed away. As she sat contemplating and saddened for the anchor she had lost, she feels a tap on her shoulder. She looks up, her brother looks down at her with a grim look. She understood. She walks over to the kitchen, the paperwork was ready to be signed.
“When you sign this paper, you will be relinquishing your half of the inheritance to your brother. Are you sure you want to do this?”
She looks up and nods. “Anything for him.”

She signs her name.

——————————————————————–

“I love him. But I can’t love him.”
“Why?”
“It will never work.”
“He can give you the best future you could possibly have.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I know I do.”
“No, no, no. We don’t pray the same way.”

The following day, she conformed.

——————————————————————–

She held a banner at her go-to feminist rally. Empower the women. Fight for the women. Do anything for those women. A few minutes after the rally was done and she got her regular fix, she went back home and logged on to her favorite social network. Someone had mentioned women in a joke. She looked at their picture. It’s a he. The joke became sexist. And she couldn’t allow it. Sexism, sexism, sexism everywhere.
Her fingers started frantically typing on the keyboard. It didn’t matter that he could be an even feistier supporter of gender equality.

——————————————————————–

They gather for their regular morning coffee. They cross their legs, pucker their lips. The blood starts pumping through their veins. This is all so exciting.
“Have you heard?”
“Uh-hum.”
“She slept with him! I can’t believe it. Always knew she was a slut.”
“It always showed, darling. Don’t you see the way she usually dresses? Skirts should not be that short.”
She unconsciously pulls at her own skirt in the process.
“And have you heard about that other one? Poor thing. She has you know what in you know where.”
“I know… So sad. And her poor husband! You think he’ll stay with her now that she can’t… You know…”
“I don’t know! Didn’t even think of that. You think they’ll divorce?”
“Nah. He’s not that cruel!”

——————————————————————–

The above stories are real life observances over the past few weeks.

The Perks of Being Lebanese

Back in December, I hosted a photographer who wanted to visit Lebanon in order to experience our on-the-edge diverse lifestyle. I showed him around as much as I could given the short time I had, taking myself to Tyre for the first time in my life. I had never been that far South before. I left him there in order for him to see life in that Southern city firsthand. A couple of days later, we met up in Beirut and somehow he started contrasting and comparing my country with his. He comes from one of the world’s biggest superpowers so it’s understandable that my country is lacking in comparison.

But I couldn’t take it. Snarkiness started to ooze out of every word I uttered like the sharp blade of a knife. Jabs here and there about how his country could never – ever – have the history that my country has started flowing. I even surprised myself when it comes to political declarations which would probably get any Lebanese who knows me turn his head in disbelief. Imagine me proclaiming support for Hezbollah and you’ll get the drift.

I felt it was necessary. It’s not about being politically correct. It’s this built in sensor inside my brain to defend Lebanon whenever I can to whoever I can. And it goes off at random times, despite the logical part of me telling me that I should probably stop. I can’t help it. My relationship with my country is that of some serious love-hate. And I can’t escape it.

Bref, I nag too much sometimes and I know it. I know some of you hate it – but living in Lebanon leaves you constantly angry, constantly furious, constantly edgy. We all deal with it with the best way we can and considering what we’re dealt with every day, I daresay we handle it really well. Most of the time at least.

To those who thought I’m being quite negative, you’re probably right. This one’s for you. Now smile and take it in because such articles will only come rarely. Let it sink in because you won’t hear me saying this very often – not that it matters since it’s now online for everyone to see – but here it goes: I probably wouldn’t trade growing up in Lebanon for anything else in the whole world.

It’s not about the copious amount of money I could have had. It’s not about super kickass passports I often wish I possessed. I think growing up here, witnessing the struggles of here, dealing with the hardships that here represents have gotten me to grow as a person in ways that any other place probably wouldn’t have provided.

In a way, growing up here has made me a person who is capable of standing on his feet wherever you throw him. It might sound cliche – positive vibes always go around clicheville – but it’s something that the past year has truly reinforced in me.

When I was in France, the French were shocked I could juggle three languages fluently without a hitch, something that was completely normal to me but seemed very odd to them. It is there that I came to appreciate exactly how thankful I am for the decent education I got here. The fact that I was able to keep up with more knowledgeable physicians at the hospital where I did my clerkship doesn’t only reflect on my mental capacities but on the way education in Lebanon shapes you up without you even knowing it. It is no wonder that with all the preparation we subtly get in school and later on in higher education institutes, we are able to excel when given room and opportunity.

That month I spent in France opened up my eyes to something else that I hadn’t really thought of: life in Lebanon does not go on in a protective bubble that separates you from everything else happening around you.
The aforementioned idea started to get formulated in my mind back in 2011 when I wrote a small article about 9/11 and some members of American family stopped talking to me as a result. I still don’t see anything wrong with my article. If anything, I stand by it more than before. But it’s the perception of the article which differentiates my American kin from yours truly. For them, I am being harsh and insensitive because I haven’t lived it and I am not American. To me, they are being very concentric and limited. But it’s no one’s fault really: my perception as a Lebanese of the world is and will always be of people whose fate isn’t in their hand, of a country which is always a part in a chessgame of bigger fish.
And while we nag about that as is our right, I think the premise of the life this sets is healthy: to know that there’s always another story taking place somewhere, to know that there is another side to us, to know that there is life form outside of the bubble that we love to live inside and to know that everything has a reference point to put things in perspective.

The photographer who came here back in December was more than interested in something that I not only took for granted but thought was beyond normal. My hometown coexists quite peacefully with a neighboring Shiite town. My best friends happen to be either Shiite or atheists or Sunni or Maronites. We differ politically, we argue more often than not. We come from severely different backgrounds in our own country. But we still find ourselves at one table having dinner as often as we argue about the backgrounds from which we come. The experience itself is one that we ignore because it’s never in the forefront of our thoughts. But to an outsider, the interactions we have and the friendships we strike are things that are beyond interesting. When that photographer pointed out how odd to him that dinner table setting was, I started to think about it more and I realized that I am what I am today because of those people that have come into my life from all those different backgrounds. And despite some eccentric bearded men from all sides wanting to tell us that our friendships are abnormal, our relationships still exist and they keep flourishing. The majority of us as Lebanese have friends who come from backgrounds that had, until quite recently in historical terms, been fighting against each other. Yet that’s never an issue. It’s not even something we think about. But imagine how bland our lives would be if the only people we knew shared our thoughts, our views and barely differed from us in the things that count.

And as I go back home every day from class or from those dinners with friends, another thing I take for granted is my family. The fact that the family unit is still very cohesive in this country is a treasure in itself. Child psychology tells you how important a tightly-knit family is for the development of a human being. But this isn’t about psychological theories. How often do we think about the warm meal awaiting us back home which our grandmother or mother more than willingly cooked for us, along with a warm hug because even though they had last seen us a few hours prior they miss us terribly?
And I don’t meant this in a sexist manner for those feminists gearing up for international women’s day. How often do we think about that awesome person we call grandpa who, as he grows up, becomes more kind hearted than a five year old boy? Or how about those siblings of ours that we love to hate but can’t imagine living without? Or those cousins we keep bickering with and the aunts and uncles who raised them? How about our fathers who, despite their strong facade, love us to the moon and back?
The family unit in Lebanon is not restricted to the parents and siblings. It transcends them to anyone who shares your family name. And we pretend that it aggravates us off when families gather in certain occasions. But the truth is that our family, including those extended members we don’t like to think about, act as a firm ground for us to stand in troubled times. And they do that without us asking for it.

Life in Lebanon sets you up to be a great individual when given the framework to allow such greatness to unfold. It makes you more aware of the world. It gives you a rich cultural experience to start from. It gives you a strong educational package to build a life upon and gives you a sense of belonging that makes you prone to find anchor wherever you’re thrown. It saddens me to say that I will probably leave this place someday because the future might be bleak. And I lose hope in it sometimes and I rekindle it at other times despite my better judgement. But it remains that being Lebanese is something that makes me proud. It is something that I believe has offered me the essential that makes human beings shine and make a life for themselves. That life probably won’t happen here. But that life will forever owe itself to here.

Cheers to all those Lebanese perks we keep taking for granted.

The Death of the Lebanese Dekkéné

Rue Aabrine Beirut Lebanon

Aabrine Street was, until recently, one of the last remaining Achrafieh streets that still contained a flair of an old Lebanese life that you wouldn’t believe still existed in Beirut, especially Achrafieh: one where a family lived in the same building which had a dekkéné that they ran. Their house harbored them for decades – all through the civil war.

Their house’s entrance is very inconspicuous. The cats roaming around the place hid in the space of those traditional windows. The family took care of them. I went to their place a few times: high ceilings, old chandeliers and armchairs… what you’d expect to find in old Lebanese houses in the village was there. Except this was the heart of Beirut.

Their house was also the witness to the Civil War story I wrote on this blog in 2011. You can read it in its three parts here.

Their home is no longer theirs as some investors took over the entire stretch of buildings on their block, all of which are old buildings. But this isn’t Amin Maalouf’s house for it to cause a ruckus.

Beirut Aabrine Street Old Bldg Beirut Aabrine Street old building 2

As I walked by the house yesterday, I was saddened to see all the dark, empty windows. What used to be lit apartments and the voices that emanated from inside is now nothing but emptiness awaiting for it to become non-existent.

The family that lived in that apartment lived off a small dekkéné at the other side of the building which stretches down the street by being connected to lesser maintained parts. This dekkéné allowed their father to send many of his children to the United States where they got naturalized shortly after the civil war ended. He ran the small place for 50 years. He played cards with my grandpa and other Aabrine men as customers came in and out – Tarnib Koubba in case you’re wondering. Backgammon tables were there as well.

Dekkane Beirut Aabrine Street Lebanon

Today, the door of Sassine’s dekkéné holds a paper which he signed to announce that he had relocated. Another small office a few meters away, in that same building, announced the same thing. This dekkéné, which by the looks of it could fit anywhere but in Achrafieh, is gone for good. It still stands. But not for long.

The building that contained the dekkéné and all the nearby buildings connected to it will soon be demolished to allow another colorless high rise in their place. The history of the place will be gone for good. The place where my grandpa played cards with his friends, where small children would run to get their mother something she urgently needed for the tabkha she was cooking will be gone and with it another chapter in the life of a city that will soon not recognize itself anymore.

This isn’t about the worth of the dekkéné or its efficiency – it’s about what the dekkéné signifies: how easily we tear down what is old to bring in what is newer but never better.

This is the other side of the building in question, less maintained than the section where the family lived:

Aabrine Street Old Building

Beirut Rue Aabrine old bldg

And this is what the dekkéné and its building will be replaced with. Beautiful.

beirut achrafieh high rise

My Article for Annahar: بلاد الضحايا الدائمة

Annahar A Separate State of Mind blog interview article

I was approached recently to be interviewed for renowned Lebanese newspaper Annahar regarding my blog. I obviously agreed and was also asked to write an article – in Arabic. After a brief moment of panic because I hadn’t written in Arabic since 2008, I gathered my thoughts and came up with the following, which I believe is decent:

نتباهى كلبنانيين، بصلابتنا التي نعتبرها مصدر فخر لنا في بلدٍ أقل ما يُقال فيه إنه يصعِّب كل نواحي الحياة علينا. الشعب
اللبناني دائماً ضحيّة… ضحيّة الغبن، الإهمال، النسيان، التناسي، المزايدة المستمرة،النفاق الدائم، والموت.

اللبنانيون ضحيّة المراحل. يكثُر الحديث عن تحضير جارنا الجنوبي لحرب كونيّة جديدة، فيما شعبنا المغلوب على أمره لا ملاجئ عنده ولا يشعربطمأنينة ولا بأمان.

اللبنانيّون ضحيّة الكلام الفارغ الذي يكثر ويعلو كل أربع سنوات ليشحن آمالهم بمستقبل افضل، لكن الدهر يعود بهم إلى واقع فقير، مرير لا خروج منه. ويتساءل البعض، من ضحايا القوقعة المناطقيّة، كيف يعلو التطرف في تلك المناطق التي لن يزوروها حتماً. فهم لا يعلمون أن الوجه الآخر للمركزية الإنفتاحيّة هو التناسي المكرّر، المحتّم والممنهج، نتيجته الأساسية زيادة الشرخ في كل مكوّنات هذه الأمّة المنقسمة على ذاتها، دائماً وأبداً. الشعب اللبناني هو ضحيّة خوف مستمر هدفه الأساسي سياسي، ويصوّرونه له بأنه للحماية. الخوف على الوجود، الخوف على أشباه الحقوق، الخوف على الذات، على الهواجس والخصوصيّات. كل هذه الأمور تؤدي إلى اقتناع راسخ في صلب الكيان الفردي، بصحة هذا الطرح السياسي أو ذاك. والحقيقة الواضحة أن أصحاب تلك الطروحات هدفهم واحد: جمع أكبر عدد من اللبنانيين ووضعهم في صناديق الاقتراع.

الشعب اللبناني ضحيّة التخويف التكفيري الذي يجعله يعتقد بأنه يحمي معتقده الديني كلما تشبّث بروحانيّته أكثر، لكن الواقع هو لحماية جيوب رجال الدين من خطر حرية الإختيار.

الجيش اللبناني ضحية المزايدة السياسية والعاطفية المتبلورة في السؤال اللّا متناهي: من يحب الجيش أكثر؟
فيعدد البعض أسماء شهداء جيشنا، متناسين أسماء أخرى لا تخدمهم، فيما تنقلب معادلة الأسماء عند آخرين ويبقى جيشنا رهن المتغيّرات العائليّة، الطائفيّة والسياسيّة التي تحمي الجميع، إلاّ أفراده. فلتسترح أنفس شهداء الجيش أجمعين، من أبطال نهر البارد مروراً بسامر حنا، فرانسوا الحج، وصولاً إلى بيار بشعلاني وإبرهيم زهرمان برحمة الله والسلام.

يكثر الكلام عن صعوبات اللبننة الحياتيّة ولا يكفّ. في استطاعتي أن أسترسل في الحديث الى أبد الآبدين، ولن يكفيّ!
الحق يقال، إن شعبي يلتقي في كونه ضحية معاناة مشتركة ويتشرذم إلى قطع صغيرة متى ذكرت له تلك المعاناة الّتي لا يراها كفيلة برفعه من حدود الإنتماء المناطقي والطائفي، ليتلاقى باللبناني الآخر المُفترق عنه قسرا
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You can read the Annahar article about my blog here (click) and find the above article also on Annahar here (click).

The Bravest Person I Know

As she ran her fingers through her hair on that cold December night and was sad to see that the chemicals had started to sink in, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would have to make a decision she never thought she’d have to make.

To let the hair go on its own? Or to take it all off?

We told her what the right decision should be. But it’s always easier to preach when you’re not the one cringing as you look at yourself in the mirror.

She decided that she wanted to cling to it more. It kept her warm, she said. She felt safer with it, she said.

So the hair kept falling. And she kept trying to hide it.

I remember the day well. I got back home from class to see her wearing a wig. I smiled. I knew she had taken the plunge. I was proud of her. I was strengthened by her courage. I was happy by her resilience.

As she took the razor to what was left of the hair on her head, she also took the decision to strengthen her fighting of those few cells that threatened to take her life away. Today, as I see her smile, I smile as well. And I see her radiating despite something being missing.

We keep her feeling good about it. But I realized we don’t need to. We joke about how my brothers and I are sure to lose our hair now that both our parents are bald. She’d smile and give us the “I’m not impressed” face. For the first time since she started chemotherapy, I can see her really happy. I can see her relieved.

My mother was beautiful before. My mother is gorgeous today. And I want to show you how brave she is. Because hair doesn’t matter.

Mother Cancer Chemotherapy

My Bout With Homophobia at AUB

A couple of days ago, two friends and I decided to participate in a trivia night serving as a fundraiser for the Achrafieh blast victims. 27 teams participated, each made up of three people. A first round brought those teams down to ten and my team qualified. A second round brought those teams down to five and my team qualified again.

When it came to the last round, the questions were – to me at least – rather silly.The categories, in a jeopardy-like system, were: who made this (Macbook Pro, vPro processors, etc…), colors (black market, red lines, etc…), TV shows by cast (Michael C. Hall, Jim Parsons, etc…), 21st century hitmakers (who sings “Call Me Maybe?” Who sings “Teenage Dream?” etc…) and last but not least Glee Songs where they asked about some of songs sung on the show such as R.E.M’s Losing my Religion and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, among others.

My team knew the answers since last time I checked we don’t live under a rock. But it seems knowing the answer to who sings Teenage Dream and the title of the Journey song that has the lyric “Just a small town girl” is “gay” to some of the other participants who had their asses handed to them by us knowing basically everything.

So as we answered one question of useless pop culture after the other, the other team kept spitting derogatory terms at us. They guessed a Bruno Mars song so I looked at them sarcastically and asked: now how do you know that? Turns out that Bruno Mars song was a “straight” song.

Even songs have sexual orientations now. And they wouldn’t stop until one of my teammates threatened them to shut up. As we won the top prize and everyone congratulated us, they were not happy. “Law kenna 3erfin hal2ad lawtane ma kenna shtarakna” (If we had known it would be this gay, we wouldn’t have participated.)

The thing is though they would have known the answer if they actually had been fast enough to get a turn. After all, if someone didn’t know the character “Cosette” is found in “Les Miserables,” then that person is – at least to me – absolutely ignorant. The purpose of the whole night being a fundraiser seemed to have eluded them as well. But I know a few people who were shocked that such a thing would actually come out of AUB students, with the illusion of them being slightly more open minded than your average Lebanese.

As a former AUB student, I know how these students see themselves as the best of the best – being accepted at Lebanon’s version of “ivy league” makes them automatically better than anyone else. Now add the fact that these students are future physicians on top of that and you have an extra twist to the sense of elitism that they have – we are surely better than anyone else. Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone.

It’s not like if they wouldn’t have known the answer to all the questions if they had put on Radio One for a few minutes this past summer. But I have to ask what would these obviously beyond mature future medical doctors do if they ever got a homosexual person to their practice? Would they shut them out just because they don’t agree with their lifestyle?

And this a specimen of Lebanon’s future doctors: homophobic people with an obvious lack of sportsmanship. So as they call my friends and I derogatory terms for beating them, we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Assholes will forever be assholes. And this was the first time I’ve had homophobic slurs thrown at my face all my life which has gotten me thinking: what do gay people go through – at least in the medical field – just because they’re gay?

Then I remembered when an acquaintance who happens to be involved in the medical field said to me once: if I ever had a homosexual patient, I’d stop treating them. I asked: what if they die? The acquaintance replied: it would be for the better. That acquaintance was a nurse.