Category Archives: Life

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.

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22.

As my friends sat around me singing happy birthday to you on that cold Saturday night which wasn’t even technically my birthday, I felt happy. The rain glistened off the window in front of me, it was cold outside but I felt the warmth of the party that was celebrating me turning 22.

I wish I knew in that moment that some of those friends were not there to stay. I wish I knew in that moment what year awaited me as I blew off those candles and people applauded.

/Trust.

I was standing alone in a crowded room on a cold February night and I was just realizing I knew absolutely no one there even those people whom I thought I knew all too well. And they’re not speaking to me, pretending like they didn’t know me. The fake smiles, the fake truths, the fake nods, the contest of who’s acting like they could care less… I had gotten tired of them all. The amount of insecurity that people had was way too unacceptable for me to handle anymore. And as everyone smiled and hugged each other, I started wondering: what did I do wrong not to be the one being welcomed like this?

It took some time for me to realize that I had done nothing wrong at all. It took some time for me to realize that keeping your guard up is a necessity. Trusting people easily should never be a possibility because the amount of assholes in this world is way too high. I realized I shouldn’t be surprised to have been let down because your expectations out of others towards you are very rarely met. So you do your best because you hope that this would somehow return good upon you. But you expect nothing.

Even people whom you thought would never ever disappoint you end up doing so. And they throw around lame excuses to justify doing so but you would have reached a point where you couldn’t care less anymore.

The theory is easy. The practical aspect of it is still a work in progress.

The saddest part though is that for a while after that I had to fight the urge to pick up the phone and call.

Foreign Home.

Your home away from home where you are foreigner and yet you fit like a glove to your hand. The lack of complexity with people. The lack of the need to be two-faced in order to get ahead. I remember the great people I met all too well. I remember the good times I shared with them. I remember the places I went through. I remember standing in front of that Royal Palace and feeling infinitely happy. I remember sitting under the Eiffel Tower on a warm Paris night. I remember walking through a cemetery where people I could only dream of approaching were laid to rest. I remember being at the place where the world’s major decisions are taken. I remember Porte des Postes. I remember Cormontaigne. I remember the grey August clouds overcast on the city as I saw it from the ICU of the hospital where I had spent most of my time being treated like a colleague. I remember those walks I took just to be alone amid the greatness of the place whose air I breathed. And I remember her with her blond hair and red lips and that rainy night in the streets of Lille.

So Small.

It’s easy to get lost inside your own problems which always seem so big at the time they’re happening. It’s very easy to make them seem like they are the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. It’s very easy to over dramatize them: why me?

But on a Monday, in a waiting room at a hospital in France, I realized how pitiful it is of me to dwell on the friends that were no longer there, on the grades that weren’t that good, on the things that I could’ve done. I saw people trying to convince that twenty year old boy of the need to cling to life as much as possible as his body rejected the heart transplant he had spent the previous year undergoing. And I realized then, as I tried to get him to feel better, that my problems are just so small.

Diagnosed.

She’s not invincible. She’s not going to be here forever. She’s weak. Her own body is killing her. As you look upon the worried face of the woman who gave birth to you, it can’t but kill you inside to see her hurting and to know her thoughts are about the potentiality of her not being there for you anymore. And you go in with her to her surgery because you know that being there for her will make all the difference. And it almost kills you to see her there, a shell of the person that she is, because of the drugs they injected into her veins. But you know it’s all for the best. And your senses perk up when the surgeon is stunned to find the procedure he had thought would be fairly straightforward was not. And your worry increases when you find out that the cancer was not as localized as they thought it was. Then when she wakes up from the anesthesia and the first faint word upon her lips when she sees your face is “habibi,” and despite the severity of it all, your worries in the world subside for just one minute.

Even thought she might lose her hair. And even though she might lose her weight. You’d still do anything for her to be there for you. And it may be selfish but it’s really not because you know that there’s nothing more she’d want as well.

Life/

Despite your guard being up, some people roll Into your life who end up surprising you. And you feel happy about them being there. things end up getting better for you and you remember the good times you spent and you realize that you regret nothing at all. You find the family which you had taken for granted will always be there for you. You meet new family members who were taken away from you by life and and time space and you find more in common with them than you’ve thought possible. You grow, you become more critical, you stand up for what you believe in. You take things in and hope that your life isn’t going to waste.

At least now you know where the 13 in State of Mind comes from. And right now, I’m felling 22 one last time, one last day. And thank God for that. Hello November 13th. Hello year 23.

A Pink October Diagnosis

She was sitting in the doctor’s clinic waiting. Who knew it’d take that long… and who knew anyone could be that nervous. She was transfixed by the tiles in front of her. She never thought she’d be in this situation. It had been three years.

The doctor called her name and she slowly walked the few steps to the door where she knew her life might change in a heartbeat. She sat down with her husband by her side. She grabbed his hand. She had never been this afraid. Not when her brother was killed. Not when she got the news that her father had died, back when she was a new nineteen year old bride.

She remembered that day two weeks prior when her sons nagged her head off to go to a hospital and do a test she was putting off for three years now. She remembered how she nervously received the results that said further examinations need to take place. She remembered how she had booked a biopsy appointment and how afraid she was when she went inside those surgery halls and waited for something she never thought she’d do.

The doctor approached her then and administered an anesthetic. He asked her to look away. But it was too late. She had seen that gun and that needle and they were going to go in there and she was going to suffer like she never did before. The pain was tolerable. The idea of it was horrible. But she survived. What she didn’t know however was that the ten days she was going to go through in order to get the results were going to be worse.

She didn’t eat. She didn’t drink. She didn’t sleep. She’d wake up early on some days and sit in the living room to cry. She didn’t think anyone would know. But her son did because he’s as light a sleeper as she is. She wasn’t convinced that the reassuring words the doctor had given her were genuine. She wasn’t convinced by the pep talks her family was giving her. The only thing that would give her a peaceful state of mind was a piece of paper which held that sentence she longed for: Negative. And she was never happier about the prospect of hearing the word no.

The doctor spoke and she was unwillingly tuning him out. She had known it wasn’t good news when her husband called a couple of hours earlier and shouted at the secretary in order to get through to him after he had seen his wife go to hell and back waiting for the results that they both knew were available, only to see the look upon his face change for a fraction of a second before he regained composure and tell her that they need to go see the doctor. Why would the doctor want to see them if it weren’t bad?

And she cried without wanting to. Tears streamed down her face and she couldn’t stop them. The doctor uttered those two words. “Breast cancer.” And she felt her whole world tumbling around her. Her husband, her three boys, her mother, her sister…. They would all lose her. But then the doctor asked her to regain composure because it wasn’t all bad. The cancer was still in a very early stage and perfectly treatable. The few cells that threatened her life had a treatment course to them that could be easily planned out. She needed to stay strong in order to beat them.

So she decided that being afraid and weak wouldn’t get her anywhere. She decided she wasn’t going anywhere and she was sure as hell not letting a capsule containing a few malignant cells stand in her way.

I’m not sure where my mother would have been if I hadn’t convinced her to do a mammography this year. I’m not sure what would have happened if she had waited one more year. Odds are I wouldn’t have had a mother that wanted to hug me whenever she saw me, despite my efforts not to let her, if that had happened. Odds are I wouldn’t have had a mother constantly worrying about anything and everything every single waking moment of every day. Odds are I wouldn’t have had a mother who loved me unconditionally and never saw anything wrong in me. Odds are I wouldn’t have one of the few people in this world that mean more to me than this world itself.

I will not bore you with science that you will never care about. Knowing that women over the age of 30 have an increased risk of breast cancer especially if they had never had children is irrelevant. People fall through statistical cracks all the time and they’re gone before you know it. You never think that something like this would happen to you until it does. You hear those stories about other families having family members getting these cancer diagnoses but you always have the idea that you live behind a protective capsule that will never be broken by those deadly cells. Until it does. And that’s what I’m sure my mother thought long before she was diagnosed.

The only thing I ask of you is to get your mother and loved ones to see a doctor this time of year. Getting a mammography is an examination which would be uncomfortable for only a few minutes but it may save their lives.

Here’s to our mothers being there and staying next to us – despite their ungodly stubbornness and their resiliency to never take care of themselves the way they’d do of us. But we love them anyway because there’s no one else in the whole world who will love you like your mother does.

Bullying in Lebanese Schools

When I was in my early teens, I was constantly bullied at school. It used to bother me at first. Those words hit a spot at first. And then that spot hardened.

And I just didn’t care anymore. The insults kept coming as I grew older. And I didn’t care even more. They eventually stopped when those “friends” decided they had better things to do. But I was lucky because some people never decide they have better things to do.

That’s what’s happening to someone I really care about now in his last year of school. The words keep coming and those classmates, with their better than thou attitude, keep going unpunished. And it has been going on for a few years now.

How long should we tolerate until our schools step their foot down in the face of bullying? Why is it that the person I care about has to consider changing schools to escape the toxic environment spread by two assholes while the easiest thing would be to expel those two bastards?

Why is it that the victim of bullying in Lebanon has to be turned into submission even by the school? Why is it that our schools, with their “we are such a good environment for you kid” attitude, don’t actually care about being a good environment for the kid and turn a blind eye to what’s happening in the heart of classrooms with their beyond docile measures if faced by the kid’s parents?

The thing people tell a bullying victim is that it gets better. You tell them that those kids will always be kids. You tell them they’ll soon change. You’ll tell them that they will find people who will see them for what they are: awesome people. And they won’t believe you. And they’ll think you’re just lying to make things better.

But it really does.

My uncle was a victim of bullying. He’s now a top shot doctor in the United States, making more money than his entire class combined.

I was a victim of bullying and I now write one of the most read blogs in Lebanon in between my studies at medical school. I can’t say the same for most of those “friends.”

My late uncle was bullied because an accident when he was younger led to him losing an eye. And despite him being a brilliant student at school – they even got him to skip one class – he had to drop out because he couldn’t take it anymore. And still he managed to do well with the little time he had by making a family and starting a business that is booming today.

I have a friend who faced the same bullying because of a medical condition during middle school. And things didn’t let down until he found a bunch of friends mature enough to understand what he was going through. He’s now a top notch architect.

And the person I care about? He’ll soon go to a university that those assholes would never dream of entering and he’ll become a success in the field that he chooses.

And we’ll all go back to our school reunions and tell those suckers: Fuck you. With emphasis on every single letter. Because, well, fuck them and their demented brainless heads.

And fuck those schools that never empower the victim for fear of losing the tuition of other students. Because that’s how you build a country: by letting the weak ones be weak forever and letting the “strong” ones feel strong. Always.

Congratulations Lebanese education, you teach people three languages and a shitload of math they won’t need. But you don’t teach them compassion or tolerance or anything that they would benefit from later on. I salute you and your teachers.

Sticks and stones can break my bones but names never hurt? Yes, it’s always easy to preach. But my advice to those being bullied is the following: don’t always turn a blind eye and deaf ear as you hurt inside.

Happy Palm Sunday

My very first Palm Sunday. Had a death in the family so my parents couldn't take me.

I remember when I was a little boy and my parents used to take me, along with my brothers, to go buy new clothes for Palm Sunday. I used to hate it. My parents used to love it. Any opportunity to have their kids compare to others, right?

My dad loved to dress my brothers and I in some funky stuff. I remember them taking us to church wearing unmatched socks once – one red and the other yellow along with sticky things that they glued on our ears. Needless to say, many people in my hometown were not particularly happy. But my dad has always been the “eccentric” one. You should hear the stories I’m told about him in his younger days.

And don’t get me started on the candle. Every single year, we buy a new candle to carry and every single year it turns out to be the most useless thing. You try to lit it, the wind blows it off immediately. You try to walk with it but it’s heavy. And more often than not, twenty minutes into the proceedings, it breaks in half.

But you know what, as my 22 year old self types this and misses out on the proceedings, I cannot help but feel notsalgic to the times when I really was excited about Palm Sunday rolling around. I’ve recently noticed as well that most of our photographed memories are taken on Palm Sunday. As you go through albums, you can see as your whole generation grew up year after year. Until you all stopped going bit by bit and a newer generation took over.

Easter in Lebanon is apparently among the best in the world. Palm Sunday is just the beginning.

Here’s to us becoming parents in the future and spoiling our kids on Palm Sunday. Have a blessed day everyone.

 

 

Earth Hour in Lebanon

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Observing Earth Hour in Lebanon begs the question: what’s the point?
And if you think about it, there isn’t any. How so?

Well for starters, half of the country will forcibly go dark at Earth Hour. Yes, electricity shortages will hit. It defeats the purpose of voluntarily switching off your lights for an hour when you’re involuntarily going through the process every day. And not just for one hour.

We also have a gas prices crisis so you know people aren’t going around like they used to. It’s just so expensive to go that kilometer by car nowadays. So we walk instead. It’s greener, healthier and we get to enjoy the beauty of our urbanized mountains.

Moreover, we’ve had the rotten meat fiasco lately. So many people have drastically decreased their intake of the substance, thereby going greener – literally. And you know “green” food is more eco-friendly than cows and goats.

So for all matters and purposes, our carbon footprint has been rendered so meaningless that it would register as a statistical error in studies. Everyday in Lebanon is Earth Day. We should receive a medal for it.
I, for one, am not turning off my lights for the hour of grid-connection I get. I have them turned off for the other 23.

A New “Fatwa”: Women Can Masturbate!

Insane religious zealots – the gift that keeps giving and giving. Hilarious stuff that is. My friend Agnès shared this with me yesterday:

All the way from Morocco, sheikh Abdel Bary Al Zamzami has allowed women to masturbate using carrots, bottles & sexual objects (dildos). The sheikh in question is also premissive towards nechrophilia.

The reasoning behind his latest declaration? Apparently scientists back in the days allowed women who were late for marriage to masturbate using carrots and bottles to satisfy their need without damaging their honor, making their sexual need akin to hunger.

Crazy people are crazy. Al Zamzami is the head of the Moroccan committee for the study of religious text. Who put him in charge, I have no clue.

But yes, women should be overly happy that they can now shove a carrot up their vagina. That should keep their “honor” intact.

AUB Students Flashmob for Syria

Leave it to AUB students to support something creatively.

A group of students calling themselves Students for a Free Syria (SFS) gathered in front of West Hall and held slogans while they enacted some of the atrocities the Syrian regime is committing.

The most poignant slogan, in my opinion, is a quote by Elias Khoury.

“Beirut knows that being silent to a crime is being partner to that crime. And in spite of that, it is silent. People are getting killed by bullets and faces are getting stomped by shoes in the Sham where an entire people is standing up for its pride, freedom and right for life. Sham isn’t far from Beirut. But Beirut is getting farther from itself.”

On a relevant note, you might want to check out this post that a Syrian friend of mine anonymously sent me on the anniversary of the uprising, two weeks ago. “Syria – that painting that had dust settle on its stones, so meticulously built one top of the other, for years is now dusting it off… finally.”

Meet Katniss – No, Not From The Hunger Games

Katniss is my cat. Yes, I got a pet.

A few months back, I was taking a break from the morbidity of an anatomy lab session and a friend and I were discussing pets. He told me he had two persian cats with the female being pregnant. He offered to give me one of the kittens in due time. I gladly accepted.

So until I actually got the kitten, I had to mentally prepare my mother to the idea that we will be having a cat wandering around the house and sleeping in. You see, the major reason why we didn’t have a pet growing up is because my mom, like many other Lebanese moms out there, is a germaphobe. And for years, that reflected on me. I wouldn’t get anywhere near animals.

However, when I went to AUB and got inundated with a torrent of cats everywhere I went, I started to get used to the idea of animals being around. Then my little brother found a white blue-eyed Turkish angora cat, which we named Minet. Minet was deaf. It did nothing but sleep and eat all day. Around february 2008, however, Minet disappears. It transpires that someone had poisoned her. A sad day, indeed.

This is Minet. RIP.

This time, however, I cached in the “little brother abroad” card with my mom to let me keep Katniss, the cat my friend gave me, inside. I actually went for the first time ever to buy cat food and litter. The little fur ball didn’t like tuna and sardines. Even the cat is worried about rotten food, apparently.

I’ve spent the last few days training Katniss to use the litter box and get acquainted with her food.  It’s a work in progress. But Katniss is now following me wherever I go, so that must mean I’m doing something right. Right?

And over the course of these past 4 days, guess who’s the person that has gotten the most entertained by Katniss? Yes, you guessed it. My mom. She called me the other day to let me know Katniss used the litter box all by herself. A proud moment, apparently.

So since I don’t want to keep you waiting any longer, here’s Katniss.

My brother chose the name and I found it appropriate. Sorry to disappoint you Hunger Games fans.

 

 

Lebanon 3rd on Best Places to Celebrate Easter List

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A recent list published by Reuters features Lebanon as the third best place in the world to celebrate Easter. The list was compiled by “Cheapflights” and says Lebanese streets, shops and restaurants are decorated for Easter with chocolate eggs and bunnies. Selling chicks in many shops is common.
Good Friday celebrations where the Stations of the Cross enactment is spoken about. Easter Sunday is described as a big celebration and the “maamoul” sweets are also highlighted.

Easter is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the spirit of it and I’m glad that Easter in my country is apparently distinctive enough. Way to go Lebanon!

The full rankings are as follows:
1 – Argentina
2 – Greece
3 – Lebanon
4 – Scotland
5 – Spain
6 – Sweden
7 – France
8 – Germany
9 – United States
10 – Canada