Category Archives: Life

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.