Category Archives: Life

Lebanese Civil War Stories – Part 3

Continued from Part 2.

Saint George’s Hospital was packed. Simon’s mom looked at the multitude of strangers in front of her. They were all in agony. The mothers that had lost sons, the wives that had lost husbands…

She was asked to come down to the hospital. She didn’t know why but she felt it was odd that her sons hadn’t come back home yet. But for all she knew, they were hiding out at some relative’s house.

On her way there, she had heard how her brother-in-law’s son, my uncle John, was hit and taken to the Geitawi hospital. She knew his condition wasn’t severe. But why was she in Saint George’s hospital?

She looked around. Strangers. There wasn’t any face she recognized. And somehow, she couldn’t even connect to their pain. So she sat there, in the waiting room, waiting for God knows what.

But then she noticed the whispers. Why were the people there looking at her through sad eyes, breathing out worried words she couldn’t comprehend with their tired mouths.

And suddenly she felt there was something she didn’t know. And she started to get worried. Her sons hadn’t gotten home. Her oldest son, George, had gone to get his sister from school. Her son Simon had supposedly also gone to do the same thing.

Why weren’t they back yet? They should have been back when she left the house. Something must have happened to them…

And like every concerned mother, her train of thought took her from being in a relatively comfortable state to a mental wreck.

One of the doctors ran in front of her. She stood up and shouted “take me to your morgue”.

The doctor stopped in his tracks. He turned around and looked at her. “My sons are in your morgue. I need to see my sons”.

Continue reading →

Lebanese Civil War Stories – Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

If Geitawi was being bombed on that April 2nd afternoon, the deeper parts of Achrafieh were being hammered. My dad’s cousin was sheltered in their friends’ house on Ebrine Street, named after my hometown, adjacent to Mar Metr Street, made famous by the Orthodox church and its fancy cemetery.

The house Simon, my dad’s cousin, was seeking refuge in was few hundred meters away from the Maronite Sisters of the Holy Family convent (Sainte Famille) present on that street as well. That convent was also the school his little sister Mary attended. He was supposed to take her back home but the bombing had gotten too intense.

Simon looked around at the terrified faces around him. There were two younger girls: Rosalie and Marie-Madeleine, sitting next to their mother, who was hugging them tenderly, not allowing them to see the frightened tears frozen on her face. Her husband and his brother were sitting next to them as well.

As the rockets that were falling increased in intensity and frequency, the smell of burning cement, wood and flesh started to fill their nostrils. The mother looked at Simon. He was terrified. He was worried something had happened to his sister’s school. The mother told him he needed to take his mind off his sister for the time being. There was an underground shelter two buildings away. They had to make a run for it.

The woman felt the bombing subside a little. And soon enough, the sounds of explosions had ceased – at least for a few minutes. But it was enough for them to make a run for it.

Continue reading →

Lebanese Civil War Stories – Part 1

Disclaimer: Leading up to April 13th, I’m going to post a few stories that I was told, about what people I know went through during the Lebanese Civil War. These posts will not have a political aspect nor will they be advocating for any party. They’re just that – stories.

It was April 2nd, 1986. My family’s neighborhood in Achrafieh, in the East Beirut at the time, was being heavily bombed. Our house lies between two hospitals and naturally, it was that area that was being bombed the most.

My grandpa was traveling, working in Saudi Arabia. My grandma was left alone with their kids. As it is with Lebanese people, they all cherish and brag about their resilience in the face of hardship. So naturally, those kids were sent to school.

As the bombing increased in intensity, my uncles started coming back home one by one. Soon enough, the only two people left outside were my youngest aunt, Lidia, and my father. Lidia was still in school, while my dad was busy doing what he excels at – being mischevious.

Soon enough, my grandma got worried. She was hiding in with whoever got home in a part of the house where bombs and missiles couldn’t reach. So when the intensity of the bombs subsided a little, my uncle John went out to get his sister from school. Continue reading →

Razan Moghrabi… Sex Talk?

A friend linked me today to a YouTube video that hasn’t gone viral in the Middle East yet, featuring Lebanese TV presenter Razan Moghrabi in an intimate session with friends, discussing sex.

I normally wouldn’t care about such a thing. Sex is a natural thing that we discuss. However, Razan takes this “discussion” to a whole new level with lewd behavior that includes putting her hand up the guy’s shorts.

Lebanese people in general, and women in particular, are already being stereotyped as being overly promiscuous, which, in a region as conservative as the one we live in, isn’t a positive association. We try to tell everyone how this is not true and that those spreading such lies are Saudi men whose only purpose of coming to Lebanon in summer is to get laid.

Continue reading →

Internet Speed At Google

Just to make things worse for us Lebanese who want to get our average speeds up from the ridiculous 256Kbps at which they are today, Google’s internet speed has been revealed.

To put things into perspective, these are 1000 times faster than the 512Kbps speed some of us in Lebanon brag about. And another thing hampering our Lebanese internet connection is an unbelievably slow ping time (depending on ISP, the fastest you can get is 100 ms). With Google, it’s 3 ms.

And since Lebanon is not the benchmark when it comes to internet speeds, the average internet speed in Europe is around 12 Mb/s and that in the US is around 10 Mb/s.

Finally, just to show you how strong a connection this is, look at a download of a 8GB game:

And I was happy about the 1 hour it takes for my 350MB episodes to finish. Let the mourning over our pathetic situation start.