Category Archives: Lebanon

The Killing of NewTV (Al Jadeed) Cameraman Ali Shaaban: Can We Talk about Syria’s Transgressions in Lebanon Now?

Assad’s army fired into Lebanon yesterday, killing NewTV cameraman Ali Shaaban. And even though similar transgressions happened many times before, this is the first time that the public has grasped how bad Syria is breaching Lebanon’s sovereignty by it killing our people without us doing anything.

It happened back in January when the Syrian navy kidnapped three fishermen from Lebanese waters in the North and killing one of them. But we didn’t do anything then. Will our government act now? I don’t think so.

What’s sad is that the death of Ali Shaaban was preceded by many warning signs from the Syrian side via the many transgressions they committed. But we didn’t act. The death of this young reporter could have been averted had our government adopted a stance to begin with regarding the killing of Lebanese people by Assad’s forces. Will they speak out now? I don’t think.

Ali Shaaban's sister, weeping him

And here, I stop to ask the same question I asked when those fishermen were kidnaped: What if it had been Israel?

Can we talk about Syria’s insults to our land, water and people now or is it still a taboo topic? Can we consider the Assad regime as an enemy for killing our people or does Lebanon only have one enemy?

When NewTV is speaking out against Assad’s army, you know it has hit the fan. Rest in peace Ali Shaaban, rest in peace every single Lebanese who was killed by the Assad regime. Here’s hoping there will come a day where that regime answers to killing you.

Stories of Lebanese on the Titanic – Part 1: Daher Abi Chedid from Ebrine

I’ve had these stories in mind for a while now, waiting for the week of the centennial anniversary of the Titanic sinking to post them. And I figured the best way to start is with the story from my very own hometown, Ebrine in North Lebanon.

Daher Abi Chedid happens to be the uncle of my cousins’ grandfather. My neighbor, the former mekhtar of my hometown, was eight year old at the time of the story’s events. Both of these men, now deceased, told anyone who’d hear the story of the man they knew, like no news service can now tell you.

Daher was a young man, very well-built and extremely tall. He was one of the people strong enough in my hometown to be called for building duties. This was 1912 – everything being built at the time required manpower. Daher Abi Chedid had it.

On one day in late March 1912, students of my hometown’s school heard a single gunshot and ran out of class, panicking. The sound had emanated from the basement of the Nakad family house, fairly close to the school and my hometown’s church – St. John the Baptist.

The Nakad basement

What had happened was the following: Daher Abi Chedid was in love with a girl named Marroun Sejaan. As the two were sitting together in the basement, Daher took a Martini rifle and pointed it as Marroun, asking her jokingly if she was in love with a guy named Maroun. She replied: I swear on the Virgin Mary that it’s not true. So he jokingly asked: “Do I shoot you?” Both had thought the rifle wasn’t loaded. Its tip was also corroded. Marroun replied with a yes. Daher pulled the trigger and the rifle fired, hitting Marroun in the neck and killing her immediately.

Once the people from nearby premises got to the location of the shooting and found Marroun dead, blood pouring out of her neck, no one dared to approach her as they waited for the Ottoman police officers to arrive. News of the shooting spread like wildfire around the area and Marroun’s cousin came from Batroun with a vengeful attitude towards Daher Abi Chedid who couldn’t but seek a hiding place at a relative’s place until he could sort out his affairs. At one point, the Ottoman policemen were close to rounding him up so he sought hiding in what we call the “Meghre2” today – a vast piece of land that fills with water during the winter, turning it into a big lake.

The meghre2 in late spring.

So Daher’s uncle, working with Daher’s mother in the United States, and through his connections with the Ottoman authorities, managed to get a boat for Daher readied at the port in Selaata, which then took Daher to Cyprus then to Cherbourg in France then to the Titanic.

Daher Abi Chedid was not shot dead by the security personnel on the Titanic. He jumped off the ship and swam for more than an hour, trying to save himself, before he got to an ice mass and froze to death on it.

His body was recovered by the boat Mackay–Bennett. It was sent to Halifax in Nova Scotia first then to Mount Carmel in Pennsylvania where Abi Chedid was laid to rest on May 4th 1912. The following description was given for the body:

 

As the poets and singers of traditional Lebanese zajal competed to describe the heroics of the Lebanese aboard the Titanic, the poetic rhyme was as follows:

غرق تنعشر شب من حردين

وزينتهم ضاهر شديد من عبرين

Twelve young men from Hardin drowned

But their crème de la crème was Daher Chedid from Ebrine.

 

Stay tuned for another Lebanese story tomorrow.

Beirut Featured on CNN: Beirutopia – A Garden City?

How the rooftops would look like

One of the things I dislike the most about Beirut is the drastic lack of green spaces and parks. In fact, we tend to see parks as a waste of space, vying to destroy them to build new high-rises in their place. Yes, I think the destruction of the Sursok gardens is a Beiruti disaster.

However, a new project being planned for Beirut has caught the attention of CNN and they decided to talk about it. Beirutopia: Could Lebanon’s capital become a garden city? 

Architect Wissam Melki has a plan for Beirut – and it’s to turn the roofs of the city’s dense buildings into gardens, as a way to help ameliorate the poor air quality, limit the inland heat affect and make the quality of life in the city better. The plan doesn’t involve complex drainage systems, simply small to medium-size trees in large pots, all over our roofs.

Beirut's current "green" situation

How Beirut would look like after the project

The overall aim is to have 60,000 trees planted around Beirut, which would create a canopy above the city to help it cool down in the scorching summer and to decrease the levels of CO2. And get this, the cost for the project is very little: about  $3.5 – 4 million. That’s way less than any of the new high-rises being built in Beirut and it would span the whole city.
Melki says, however, that even if the government funds the project, the residents of the city need to feel involved. In a country like Lebanon where “green” is so low on the list of priorities, are we, as Lebanese, willing to care for the trees on our rooftops?
One of the main problems I see facing this is the status of Beirut’s buildings. Most of them are old, with shabby structure. Could they support the extra weight of the trees?
Regardless, I, for one, support such a project. Beirut is in dire need of some green – the city is dying from pollution and it’s high time we do something about it. Watering a tree every few days wouldn’t put a dent in our lifestyle, now would it?
It also requires less involvment from us than fighting for the city’s heritage. Either way, let’s honor our capital and get behind this much-needed project. Even CNN thinks it’s interesting enough.
The gardens look great and would make Beirut an even more gorgeous city than it is today. “Just imagine: The world’s first rooftop garden city,” Melki said. I can imagine it. Can you?

Lebanese iPhone Users: How To Get AT&T To Unlock It

This works for any iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and original iPhone purchased for full-retail price from the US and it’s locked to AT&T, using hacks to make it work in Lebanon.

I currently have the iPhone 4S, which I got factory unlocked. However, I went through every iPhone update except the 3G so the first one I got, the original iPhone, was locked to AT&T and I managed to get an unlock process opened for it today going through the following route.

1 – Write down the phone’s IMEI number.

2 – Download the application “Vonage” on any smartphone that has it. This is an app that will allow you to call US numbers for free. You can get the iOS version here.

3 – Call the following AT&T number using Vonage: +18003310500 – wait for the operator to finish talking then press 1. When it starts talking again, press 0 immediately so you don’t go through the whole list and it will connect you to a customer care representative. Your waiting time shouldn’t be long. For me, it was less than a minute.

4 – The first thing the representative will ask of you is for your AT&T number. Tell them you don’t have have an AT&T contract and that you heard about the iPhone unlocks and would like to unlock your contract-free iPhone, which you bought for full retail price.

5 – At that point, they will take your name, last name, email address and ask you for a phone number. Let them know that you are currently outside of the United States so you prefer to be contacted via email, and make sure they spell out the email for you. However, they’re going to require a phone number to open a case for you so give them your Lebanese phone number in the following format: 961xxxxxxx .

6 – Then they will ask you for the IMEI number. Make sure you have it on you and read it to them. They will repeat it for you. Make sure they have it correctly. A one digit difference can mess things up.

7 – Soon after, they will put you on hold for a few minutes as they check the information you gave them. If all checks out, which it should, they will give you a case number. Make sure you have a paper and pen at your disposal to write it down. Then read it back to them to make sure you have it correctly.

8 – You’re done. Once you’re given a case number, it means your request has to go through the motions of reaching Apple and them sending you the unlock code. I was given a delay till April 17th but I expect to have my original iPhone unlocked sooner.

The whole process took about 20 minutes to finish. It’s pretty streamlined and straightforward. Don’t panic about your English – the customer care representative I spoke to was not American and my English was better than him. Make sure you have all the info you need prepped and you’re good to go.

Just an extra hint, American customer service is actually quite awesome. They care about their customers’ well-being, unlike many Lebanese companies. So be truthful, meaning don’t go all Lebanese-7arboo2 on them, and they’ll be more than glad to help you.

Hope this was of help.

Titanic 3D Released in Lebanon For ALL Audiences: Fail!

Yes, I went to watch Titanic 3D (my review) – Sue me!

The fact that the movie has become engrained in pop culture until it became nausea-inducing doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie in itself. But I don’t need to explain myself.

When I went to a screening of the movie with a friend, I never thought I’d be sitting next to two ten year old boys, in front of three twelve year old girls and behind a new mom with her two year old toddler.

Perhaps the crowd waiting at the door should have been enough to warn me of what awaited. The average age of those entering the theatre was nowhere near an acceptable range for a movie like Titanic. Since when is it acceptable to admit eight year olds to a movie with nudity, a sex scene and people dying in the dozens?

So here’s the story – the two boys next to us behaved exactly as you’d expect two prepubertal boys to behave: wolf-whistling at Kate Winslet’s breasts (we did that when we watched the movie fifteen years ago, the main difference being we were not allowed to watch it at the cinema) and as it is, they were also all over their BlackBerry and iPhone, answering phone calls, BBMing, Whatsapping – you name it. Telling them more than once to shut it wasn’t enough for them to get the hint until they decided, with about fifteen minutes to go, that they’ve wasted their day watching the movie since they obviously know the ending. Duh!

The toddler, on the other hand, decided that a three hour movie, half of which consists of flashing lights and people drowning, was more than she could handle. So she broke into a crying frenzy. Terrible twos redefined. Were the cinema personnel anywhere to be found? Absolutely not.

The girls behind us behaved as you’d expect preteen girls to act – except they were more than a decade late in fan-girling over Leo Dicaprio. But of course, the level of annoyance didn’t stop there – it had to go further when they decided that talking about their private lives was highly appropriate. One of them decided that cinema chairs are appropriate to catch up on sleep, down to the kicks we got in the back as a result.

So naturally, being so careless about social etiquette, I told them to shut up or leave. They gladly obliged.

Upon leaving Grand Cinemas, I demanded to speak with the manager  and apparently Lebanon’s General Security saw nothing in the movie that warrants limiting it to certain ages. He understood the nuisance I had to go through but he couldn’t do anything. He would be sued if he implemented an age limit. The movie was ruined, big deal. Apparently, I should have spent the entire screening going back and forth to the worker at the theatre door to ask him to come talk to the kids, despite him knowing that the screening was having such problems to begin with: some people had been asked to leave at one point for being a nuisance. So after promising my friend, who had never seen the movie, to take her to watch it, we had to spend three hours trying to act as supervisors to a bunch of kids in a movie they shouldn’t have been present in.

I really don’t get how American Reunion is 18+ and Titanic is for general audiences. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have found this many kids in Beauty and the Beast. I actually thought we had mixed movies for a second there. Get a hint, right?

And what’s worse – what parents in their right minds would send their children alone to a movie like Titanic fully knowing what the movie contained? Oh wait, silly me – generations have changed. They must have thought their kids were mentally ready for such a movie, after all owning a smartphone the day you turn 5 is growth-inducing these days. Sorry to break it to them though, their children have the emotional range that ten year olds should have – that of a mustard seed. And their parenting skills are atrocious if they think it’s absolutely fine to send their children to such a movie unattended.

All in all, big fail on Grand Cinemas’ part, big fail on General Security’s part and an even bigger fail on some parents’ reckless neo-parenting. Welcome to Lebanon!