Author Archives: eliefares

Tripoli Recovers: This Is What’s Happening in Tripoli on February 23rd

Tripoli Recovers

Something is happening in Tripoli on February 23rd. And it will be quite good.

Forget the new government, skiing scandals and other “it” news for a moment. Out of the places you’d least expect comes a bunch of young men and women, like you and I, who have decided to take things into their own hands in order to maybe get the city they call home to start recovering like they hope it does.

In order to do so, they’ve come with the idea for an event that their city hasn’t seen before. On February 23rd, Tripoli Recovers will bring together specialists in pediatrics, cardiology, ophthalmology, ENT, family medicine, OBGYN and surgery, as well as residents, interns, pharmacists, nutritionists and psychologists in order to offer medical help to the entire population of Tripoli. 

The medical help will, of course, be for free. Awareness events for breast cancer, smoking and reckless driving, among others will also be taking place. The Lebanese Red Cross is helping in organizational purposes. The city’s scout movements are also setting up behavioral games for the youth and children who attend to raise awareness about the dangers of drugs.

The event at hand has several purposes that aim at getting Tripoli to recover.

  1. These doctors and doctors-to-be want to help the people of their city the best way they know how: with their medical knowledge and expertise.
  2. These people also believe that the people of their hometown have been segregated on imaginary fault-lines for far too long, so they hope that by bringing them together through this medical event they’d be able to contribute to the integration that their city is lacking nowadays: across religious and economical lines.
  3. By organizing the “Tripoli Recovers” event, these people want to show that their city is not the Lebanese Kandahar that many have assumed it is and that it has people who want to work to make their home a better place.

The lab with which the organizers are dealing will make sure that all lab results will be available within the same day in order to screen as much as possible for any possible diseases.

Tripoli Recovers is an event that hasn’t been funded by any politically affiliated sides. In fact, part of the funding for the event came out of the organizers’ own resources due to some sponsors backing out at the last moment.

You can check out the Facebook event here.

The following is a video by the person who came up with the idea, Dr. Khairallah Awkar, giving more information about Tripoli Recovers:

The event will take place at St. Elias School – Zahrieh, from 8AM till 4PM on February 23rd. That’s this coming Sunday. Everyone is welcome to attend. Spread the word and be many.

Kudos to these young men and women for the mighty effort they’ve put into their own version of recovery.

The Lebanese MPs Who Haven’t Signed On The Domestic Abuse Law

Update: According to the NGO Kafa, who just issued the following clarification, the Domestic Abuse law has not been put up to a vote in parliament yet and is still stuck at its respective committee. The list of MPs circulating online is of those who approve to ratify the domestic abuse law in a way to make it more protective. The list gathered below is of the MPs who have not signed such a document yet due to parliament shutting down and is apparently not reflective of whether they have approved the law or not as such a vote has yet to take place. 

A list of Lebanese MPs who tried to pass the domestic abuse law is being circulated around the internet. While those MPs should be applauded for their enthusiasm and – sadly in this country – courage for taking a stance regarding this matter, the fact that three Lebanese women – two in the past month – have fallen victim to domestic abuse is making this particular matter a top priority.

Domestic abuse is not a joke. We all know it. It’s sad that we have to say it. Looking at who’s in parliament at the moment and at the list of MPs who supported the bill, here’s a list of the MPs who did not sign on the bill ratification in question.

The list you’re about to read encompasses MPs from different religious, different political parties and – interestingly – also features a woman.

  1. Nayla Tueini – Future Movement
  2. Michel Pharaon – Independent In M14
  3. Hani Kobeissi – Amal Movement
  4. Nohad el Machnouk – Future Movement
  5. Saad Hariri – Future Movement
  6. Ammar Houry – Future Movement
  7. Imad el Hout – Future Movement
  8. Ghazi Aridi – PSP
  9. Khaled Zahraman – Future Movement
  10. Khaled El Daher – Future Movement
  11. Mouiine El Merhebi – Future Movement
  12. Khodr Habib – Future Movement
  13. Hachem Alameddine – Future Movement
  14. Kassem Abdulaziz – Safadi Bloc
  15. Mohammad Safadi – Safadi Bloc
  16. Najib Mikati – Tripoli MP
  17. Ahmad Karami – Tripoli MP
  18. Samir El Jisr – Future Movement
  19. Mohammad Kabbara – Independent Within M14
  20. Badr Wannous – Future Movement
  21. Robert  Fadel – Independent Within M14
  22. Farid Makari – Future Movement
  23. Nicolas Ghosn – Future Movement
  24. Abbas Hachem – FPM
  25. Michel Aoun – FPM
  26. Nabil Nicolas – FPM
  27. Ghassan Moukheiber – FPM
  28. Michel Murr – Independent
  29. Alain Aoun – FPM
  30. Ali Ammar – Hezbollah
  31. Bilal Farhat – Hezbollah
  32. Fady el Aawar – Aley MP
  33. Talal Arslan – Aley MP
  34. Akram Chehayeb – PSP
  35. Walid Jumblatt – PSP
  36. Elie Aoun – PSP
  37. Nehme Tohme – PSP
  38. Alaeddine Terro – PSP
  39. Ibrahim Najjar – Future Movement
  40. Fouad Siniora – Future Movement
  41. Nabih Berri – Amal Movement
  42. Ali Osseiran – Amal Movement
  43. Michel Moussa – Amal Movement
  44. Ali Khreis – Amal Movement
  45. Mohammad Fneish – Hezbollah
  46. Nawwaf Moussawi – Hezbollah
  47. Ali Ahmad Bazzi – Amal Movement
  48. Ayoub Hmayed – Amal Movement
  49. Hassan Fadlallah – Hezbollah
  50. Abdellatif Zein – Amal Movement
  51. Yassine Jaber – Amal Movement
  52. Mohammad Raad – Hezbollah
  53. Ali Hassan Khalil – Amal Movement
  54. Ali Fayyad – Hezbollah
  55. Anwar Khalil – Amal Movement
  56. Kassem Hachem – Ba’ath Party
  57. Assaad Hardan – SSNP
  58. Jamal Jarrah – Future Movement
  59. Ziad el Kadiri – Future Movement
  60. Wael Abou Faour – PSP
  61. Robert Ghanem – Independent Within M14
  62. Nicolas Fattouche – Zahle MP
  63. Assem Araji – Zahle MP
  64. Okab Sakr – Zahle MP
  65. Hussein Moussawi – Hezbollah
  66. Hussein El Hage Hassan – Hezbollah
  67. Nawwar el Sahili – Hezbollah
  68. Ali Mekdad – Hezbollah
  69. Ghazi Zaiter – Amal Movement
  70. Assem Qanso – Ba’ath Party
  71. Elwalid Succariyeh – Hezbollah
  72. Kamel Rifaii – Islamic Action Front

This is an updated version of this post to reflect the fact that the vote has not been put up to a vote and as such any assumption as to what these MPs, who haven’t signed the law’s ratification petition, would have voted is factually incorrect. 

#StripForJackie: Why Jackie Chamoun Matters

In certain ways, Faysal Karami is an interesting man. He’s the minister of sports and youth in our defunct government. He’s a parliament member representing the city of Tripoli. He’s also offended by the possible impact of Jackie Chamoun’s breasts on the reputation of his country and has asked the Olympic committee to launch an investigation into the incident, which has taken place about three years prior to current events.

Can Mr. Karami be outraged? Well, it’s his right I give him that. But Mr. Karami, don’t you have other things that require you to be infinitely more outraged about?

Lebanon’s sports have always been our pride and joy. We’re a small country with not much to give the world in many of the sectors that count but we did deliver, to the best of our financial capacities, in sports. But let’s forget about sports, of which Mr. Karami is technically in charge. Let’s not talk about how we’ve always had a little basketball team that was quite good and which is not allowed to play on an international scale for a while because he let the basketball league get so upheld in politics that it felt like parliament was in session every time two teams met for a game. Let’s not talk about how our football team, which beat South Korea, ended up in a mess of scandals that left us out of a World Cup dream.

Let’s talk instead about Tripoli, Mr. Karami’s hometown. Has Mr. Karami been offended by the notion that his hometown is being viewed by a lot of Lebanese as a hub for terrorism, a second iteration of Kandahar? Is he affected by the notion that the city of which he is partially in charge is next to dead on every conceivable scale? Is he affected by the idea that the streets he called home have become infested with bearded men whose only purpose in life is to wreck havoc to the people of a city who only want to live? Is Mr. Karami aware that today’s Tripoli is also his fault? 

Tripoli is a place I used to visit frequently. In all of the times I spent there, stray bullets and sporadic explosions included, I’ve never heard of Faysal Karami getting upset about the reputation of his hometown and how he got his hometown to end up is reflecting on the precious country whose reputation he holds dear.

A few years down the road, Faisal Karame’s legacy will be that of a man who was more offended by a pair of tits than by the suicidal beards overflowing his town. He’ll be known as the man who got an entire country to basically strip its clothes off to defend a woman. Isn’t that quite the achievement of a lifetime?

Cyril Raidy started a trend on Twitter yesterday which he called #StripForJackie. Soon enough, people of all forms and genders were bracing the harshness of social media platforms, full of guts, stripping their bodies for everyone to see in order to make a point. Some were enthusiastic about it. Others were not. Some were accepting everyone who had the courage to show themselves while others immediately became a form of body police, missing the point entirely.

But why is Lebanon stripping for Jackie?

A recently launched page on Facebook aptly titled “I Am Not Naked” features, well, naked people who are out there to make several points.

In the past month, Lebanon has lost two women to our patriarchally unjust system, to the ruthless hands of husbands who know no morals. Manale Assi’s husband, who beat her to death, turned himself in recently. He did not do so because he felt guilty about him killing his wife. He did so because his lawyer advised him that it would get him to evade a death sentence and eventually get a softer sentence by the judge. There was no outrage by any of our politicians, such as Mr. Karami, about the death of those women. Those women, after all, were not naked when they were killed like animals at a slaughterhouse by creatures that are lesser than animals in nature. 

By taking off their clothes, those courageous people are sticking it to our tabloid-like media, who can’t wait to chase scandals. They are giving those media not one scandal but countless little scandals for them to write about. They won’t do so, of course. They are telling those media that the bodies they turn into scandals are not a representation of the people they like to persecute. We are more than our skin, our hair and our private parts.

With one picture and a video, Jackie Chamoun did more to the cause of the Lebanese woman than the past years. With her picture, the discussion about the injustice that befell on Manale Assi and Roula Yaacoub is back to the forefront. People are not only stripping for Jackie. They are stripping for Manale and Roula – for women who lost their lives because they had no one, including their families, to stand up to them.

With her picture, Jackie Chamoun is getting people to talk about the unfairness of our nationality law, of our family laws, of our rape laws, of every single law that we have pertaining to our women.

With her picture, Jackie Chamoun has caused a sexual ripple across Lebanon the likes of which this country hasn’t seen before. Perhaps its effects won’t be everlasting. But who ever thought that this country will one day have people defying the entire establishment through a part of our lives that has always been a taboo? Down with insecurities. There hasn’t been such national fervor about an issue since the days when Khouloud and Nidale Sukkariyeh defied our entire system and got a civil marriage.

People are taking off their clothes for Jackie because they’re sick of seeing weak people with whom they identify go to jail at the hands of the politicians who are protecting the real criminals that should infest those jails. With Faisal Karami probing into her, Jackie Chamoun risks jail time as well as exuberant fines. But will Faisal Karami and the likes of him be able to defy a country that has risen in the defense of a young woman whose fault was to be innocent enough to believe that her picture will not get turned into a national existentialist issue?

People are stripping for Jackie because for once there’s something in this country that we are actually capable of directing, of not having it dictated upon us like every single thing. I long for a day when such upheaval could happen to celebrate our army which dismantled two bombs that would have killed many innocent people today. I hope there will come a day when such an upheaval will happen to tackle the religious establishment’s constant interference with politics. I hope for a day when such an upheaval will happen against the bearded extremists of all religions and all parties, godly or not. I hope for a day when such an upheaval will happen for all the innocent lives lost in all the explosions that have plagued our country over the previous years.

But who would have thought a couple of days ago that such an upheaval about women would take place today? Jackie Chamoun’s issue is not only about an Alpine Olympic skier who took a picture for a calendar. It’s about the Manale Assi’s still at home, getting beaten everyday, and not able to talk about it. It’s about my cousin who can’t pass her nationality to her children later on because her husband is American. It’s about the women who don’t know they can say no. It’s about the women who can’t marry whoever they want because that person prays differently.

Today, Jackie Chamoun matters. I hope you see that too.

How Jackie Chamoun’s Breasts “Ruined” Lebanon’s Flawless Reputation

We are a country with a body image. Literally.

The Lebanese candidate to the skiing segment of the Olympics, Jackie Chamoun, is making the rounds lately due to a nude photo shoot that she underwent last year. The reason her pictures are making the round this year is simply due to her becoming known subsequently to her moderate national exposure post Olympics fever.

Naturally, in pure Lebanese fashion, what Jackie Chamoun did is being turned into a national scandal, of her disgracing our country by baring her breasts to the ice cold of Faraya and the lens of a foreign photographer.

This is the video in question:

Are breasts only scandalous when they’re Lebanese?

Jackie Chamoun isn’t the first nor will she be the last Lebanese woman to take off her clothes for a camera lens. A few months ago, a reputable website in the country turned pictures of a woman named Rasha Kahil, taken back in 2008, into a matter of national importance. How dare she reveal her private parts to the entire world? Does she have no shame? Doesn’t she have in the perfect reputation of her country in mind while doing such heinous acts?

When it comes to sex, we have a long way to go. Perhaps things are slowly changing. But there’s more to Lebanon than Beirut and its surroundings.

Why is it that Lebanese T&A is highly susceptible of immediately becoming a scandal, of being extrapolated to a figurative matter of national identity, of becoming a national crisis? Aren’t they just breasts?

Is it because there’s a fear that such behavior would somehow diffuse off of a computer screen? Is it because of a fear that what those women do will somehow ruin the minds of those who don’t do similarly? Or is it because what those women do does not fit with some people’s moral code of choice?

Why is this country so in love with gossip that things are very rarely seen as they are? Why do we over-sensationalize meaningless things when we have so many other things that have inborn sensationalism?

I can think of so many things that warrant are true scandals about this country, that warrant a discussion much, much more than Jackie Chamou’s breasts. At the top of my head, I can think of the several explosions that have taken place within the past couple of months alone and the fact that they’ve become second nature to life in this place. I can think of a TV station that figured instagramming the body parts of a suicide bomber was a good idea. I can think of the fact that we haven’t had a decently functioning government for the past year and nor will we have one for the next year, it seems. I can think of the fact that presidential elections are literally in 3 months but we’re still waiting for the savior president’s name to be “inspired” by neighboring countries. I can think of the fact that going to a mall requires you to go through more checkpoint than an airport’s border control. I can even think of the graffiti artist that was arrested only two days ago by some unknown party’s henchmen because of him being at the “wrong” place. I can even think of the many pictures of the living conditions of some Lebanese in the North that should be scandalous.

I just need to take a look around and open my eyes to the realization that I am living in a disintegrating country to ask myself the following question: what spotless reputation is Jackie Chamoun “ruining” and why is there outrage that the Lebanese Olympic committee should have known of her past behavior?

I’m not saying that what Jackie or Racha or any other unknown Lebanese woman whose pictures have yet to surface did is something that all women should do. I’m not saying that women whose choice of attire or of lifestyle is more conservative are backward thinking and detrimental to the cause of their gender. It’s far from the case. This isn’t about the cliche debate that naturally finds its way to pop up in such settings: veils versus nudity. How about neither?

What this is actually about is the importance and privacy of personal beliefs and how this country views your private beliefs as entirely up for grabs. It’s about how those personal beliefs, whether they fit with yours or not, are not a matter of national importance nor are they something that should be sensationalized into a scandal when there are so many other things for us to get angry about. What this is about is, perhaps, about the importance of not being insecure in your choices – whatever those choices may be, assuming they’re within a legal context obviously – and not be ashamed of them in any way whatsoever.

Jackie Chamoun is a beautiful and sexy woman who did absolutely nothing wrong. It’s sad that she will end up being named and shamed for something as silly as what she did. It’s sad that a few simple and sexy photographs will overshadow her professional skiing skills. It’s sad that some people’s well-rooted insecurities will overshadow and overcomplicate her choice.

What’s even sadder is that a country in as deep a shithole as Lebanon gets up in a fit about all the wrong things when there are so many things to get up in a fit about while no one simply does. But I guess living in a lala land where we have the prerogative of turning some pictures into a scandal is better than waking up to this reality. It’s much easier to believe, it seems, that Jackie Chamoun’s breasts are singlehandedly ruining Lebanon’s spotless and flawless reputation.

Lebanese Propaganda 101: Sa7eb Mabda2

Lebanese highways change a lot in the space of a week. Not the roads, obviously, but all those billboards overflowing on their sides sure do.

While going back home North yesterday, one particular billboard caught my attention: sa7eb mabda2, with Samir Geagea looking pensively at his shoe.

You’ll notice the first of those in Dbayyeh with others sprinkled from there onwards to Batroun, each bigger than the one before it. I haven’t gone past Batroun but I’m assuming they should, theoretically, round up the Lebanese geographical bible belt.

Here’s the billboard in question:

Sa7eb Mabda2

The businessman in question, Ibrahim El Saker, is obviously vying for some political power through his politician of choice. Forming our new government is in progress, as I last heard, and many cabinets are up for grabs. Why not him?

In case you don’t recall, he’s the same businessman who also flooded the highways pre-theoretical parliamentary elections last year with billboards declaring that same politician as the savior of Lebanese Christian. I always thought that guy was Jesus.

Of course, with everything that’s happening in Lebanon lately (can you imagine they’re banning alcohol-mixed energy drinks?), such posters are very low on the importance scale. But it’s the concept behind them that’s sad: the fact that some people have a need to show their undying devotion to their politician by spending a ton of money on flashy billboards; the fact that such billboards are actually allowed to grace our highways; the fact that the entirety of the situation we’re in hasn’t deterred people from actually viewing our politicians as men of principles.

It’s silly, I guess, to assume that we could have regulations to counter such propaganda, especially given that such regulations would be put in forth by those who are served by this propaganda. It’s even sillier to assume that those with money and decent enough means won’t do such things to try and get positions of power. It’s their country, we just live in it. They don’t even care about the unnecessary provocation that such campaigns entail at a time when such provocation is the last thing we need. Of course, the people behind such billboards and messages probably couldn’t care less since they are immune to whatever might happen subsequently to their schmoozing.

In another world, I’d have liked to believe our politicians are beyond such petty, silly and immature tactics. But our experience with them over the past few years has proven that they are not beyond such childish games. It’ll only be a matter of time before the next one comes up with flashier and bigger slogans while we observe and watch as they play their little “mine is more popular than yours” game as the country burns.

This isn’t about Samir Geagea and his poster. It’s not about him being a man of principle or not. Any Lebanese politician could have such propaganda take place any time, any day. I’m not venturing out around Beirut and the country much but I would assume each specific region’s politician of choice has his own set of billboards proclaiming him as the next coming of the Messiah, proclaiming their turf and making you feel like an outsider in the process.

Of course, our politicians and their posters are getting increasingly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Their supposed “principles” – whether in action or on billboards – aren’t translating to our political and social realities in any way whatsoever, leaving the country in limbo, on the precipice of collapse and the people in it on guard all the time, at the ready to latch at each other’s throats when the green light is given. What principles are we talking about here? I guess the first one that comes to mind is “all flashiness and no substance.” Now how about you print that on a billboard with all their smiling faces?