Destroying Beirut’s Culture: Achrafieh’s Mar Mitr Construction Site

It’s sad to see Beirut losing its culture with all these new buildings replacing better looking older ones daily. It hurts to see your capital slowly turn from a city with architectural taste to a concrete mess. But I never thought I’d see a construction site in the middle of a cemetery – let alone one of the most famous cemeteries of Achrafieh: Mar Mitr.

As I walked back from ABC with a friend yesterday, that friend (being the staunch Orthodox that he is) wanted to visit Mar Mitr for a few minutes. So I wandered around the mausoleums, which I find breathtaking, only to find a horrific site. Next to where people like Gebran Tueini are buried is what appears to be an extension of the church next to the cemeteries. And since space is sort of limited, what did those in charge think as the next best thing? Build on top of the mausoleums of course.

So instead of Mar Mitr being a collection of these:

It now has this to add to its “flavor”:

You’d think the block of concrete forming the Spinneys parking lot next to the cemetery would be enough. Apparently not. You know, sometimes a church is just good the way it is. I’m pretty sure extending the Mar Mitr church isn’t of a vital necessity.

Blackout Beirut: The Recent Electricity Crisis in Lebanon

I felt like I was in a war zone this past weekend when the power in Beirut kept circulating between three hours of grid connection and three hours of grid disconnection. Perhaps the “highlight” of my day was trying to shower using a lit candle as your only source of light.

I am used to electricity outages. I am from a village in Northern Lebanon where more than 12 hours of coverage per day is seen by many as some form of the second coming of Christ. But in my village in North Lebanon, I have a “moteur” subscription which fills in the many blanks left by the electricity we should get from our dear state. In my Achrafieh neighborhood, however, you don’t have “moteur” providers because you never needed them before. Add to that grandparents who have been through weeks and weeks of no-electricity during the civil war and it makes the three hours tolerable for a power-needing person like me.

But no matter, as Beirut cycled between Beirut-on and Beirut-off in three hour turns, even the iPhone app to track the outages didn’t work anymore. And I had no idea what was happening until I watched the news and saw that workers from South Lebanon had apparently decided to strike at the Zahrani Power Plant. A little delving into this and a political nature of the strike is also revealed. Nearby municipalities supported the decision of the plant’s “workers” for strike. The “apparent” cause? Electricite du Liban (EDL) decided to move a 40 MVA transformer from the Plant to the nearby city of Saida.

Part of the news report I watched has Southerners complain about them being “left out,” about them being “targeted” by the Lebanese state with only few hours of coverage per day. My initial reaction was: are they [insert obscene word] kidding me?

Let’s get  a few things straight.

1) The Southerners are not the only people who have suffered in Lebanon. It’s 2011. The Israelis left 11 years ago. The July 2006 war happened, well, in 2006. We all stood by them through all of their Israel-related misery. We harbored them in our schools, gave them food from our homes and did what any proper citizen would do. They can stop accusing the whole country of targeting them whenever something doesn’t go their way.

2) I get as much coverage as they do in my village in North Lebanon and yet you don’t find me storming power plants and cutting power for those who have it. This is NOT the way you solve things.

3) Apparently our beloved minister Gebran Bassil (whom we, in my caza, voted against a bunch of times and yet always found in power) couldn’t even get the political parties behind the “workers” to get them to stop their “strike.” This begs the question: if the minister of energy, who’s also a proud ally of those political parties, can’t reign them in, then who can? This also raises doubt on exactly how far Aoun can control Hezbollah. Mr. Aoun was always proud of being Hezbollah’s main ally in the country, believing that Hezbollah did whatever Aoun wanted. Well, not always, is it?

4) Now that our prime minister Miqati has apparently sorted things out, the question asks itself: what if Hezbollah decides to act out again? what’s there to stop them? If their own allies can’t do anything against them then who can? What’s to stop this whole “I can do whatever I want and you can’t do anything about it” mentality that they have?

As I came back to my Achrafieh neighborhood at 6 pm today, I was struck by how dark it was. Few were the buildings that had lights in them. The streets were dark. The people were gloomy. I couldn’t wait to go back home to North Lebanon where there was actually light and mind you, my house in Achrafieh is exactly halfway between St. George’s and Geitawi hospitals – you’d think an area where two hospitals were located would get some preferential treatment. But no matter. A friend in Jal El Dib had 8 minutes of electricity all day today. A friend in Mansourieh a little more than 8 minutes but also a dismal amount. And yet, you don’t find us storming roads, burning tires, calling for strikes in power plants in our regions. It’s not that we couldn’t do that. The easiest thing to do is spur violence. What’s not easy, however, is to suck it up and work on fixing the electricity situation, which has been coexistent with our life as far as I can remember, with a radical solution, not ruin whatever few megawatts other people get.

And this is one of the reasons, dear Hezbollah, I can never – ever – support you.

But you know what’s interesting? Out of all the governments that have been ruling the country since 2005, this is probably the most dysfunctional one. What’s sad? It’s one-sided and made up mostly of those who want to change and reform. Well, here’s how it goes: over promise, under-give, the system blows up, blame others.

The iPhone is Banned in Syria

It looks like one of the new threats to burden the “lovely” Syrian regime is Apple’s iPhone. As if killing 4000 people, torturing countless more and terrorizing their whole country (and a neighboring country too) wasn’t enough.

But yes, according to this memo from the Syrian General Directorate of Customs, the iPhone has been banned because of its many features. I fail to see how a phone can threaten a political regime but I guess when you’re that insecure, anything goes. Or perhaps the iPhone has some hidden: Topple Regime app.

Check out the memo for yourself.

Nancy Afiouny: My Meow – Lebanon’s Lady Gaga/Britney Spears/Other Pop Trash Wannabe

It seems the concept of beauty queen wannabes, models, actresses, etc… wanting to become singers is still selling to some overly wealthy producer like hotcakes.

How about having a former beauty queen contestent, an actress and a model all together in one package? I’m sure the producer who paid for Nancy Afiouny’s foray into the singing world must have thought he hit a gold mine. And what’s more, this actress/beauty queen/model was willing to take it off in her music video in a region where the word conservative would be considered a gross understatement for its sociological description.

In all honesty, I have no problem in watching a video like this, as long as the music behind the video is actually decent enough. Who would mind something like this actually. Don’t start the whole feminist “women stereotyping, sexual image using, etc…” talk. If the women don’t want it, it doesn’t happen. But with horrible pronunciation, obvious Lady Gaga antiques and an atrocious song to top it all off, Nancy Afiouny is just horrid.

I’m not criticizing the overly suggestive music video. In fact, I think this uptight region needs more liberal arts to let it loose a little. After all, the Salafis and the Ikhwans are scoring major wins in Egypt’s recent elections. The Islamists have already won in Tunisia and Morocco. God knows they need to let loose a bit.

But when it comes to Lady Gaga, her music videos have always had – whether you like the song or not – something to back them up musically. Her music videos and music are definitely over the board but they work for her. Lady Gaga however doesn’t work as a costume for Nancy Afiouny – not even Britney Spears or any other pop star/trash for that matter.

Perhaps miss Afiouny is giving the world a gift for St. Barbra’s day this weekend. That kitty costume would sure get lots of horny Islamist men to go meow before they start shouting: “BLASPHEMY.”

As for my ears, they’re still bleeding. The stray cat outside is still meowing in pain.

Proceed at your own risk:

Lebanese Law on Rape & Virginity: The Hymen Criteria

As many of you know, I am currently pursuing a medical degree. And as part of our medical education, we get numerous anatomy lectures that cover every human body part in its dull details.

On Tuesday, we were being given a lecture about the female pelvis and perineum. Being a morning lecture, most of the class was asleep – that is until the discussion about hymens started.

For those of you who don’t know, the hymen is a thin epithelial perforated layer that serves as a “curtain” to the vagina. For many, it is considered as a sign of “virginity” although it isn’t a highly credible criteria: the hymen being as thin as it is can be broken off in many ways that do not include intercourse and can also be repaired through a procedure called hymenoplasty.

But in our parts of the world, this 2 cm layer of skin is the honor of a man, not knowing that true honor comes by not caring about such minute details in the first place. After all, men in our region are considered as “men” if they have had premarital sex and those same men condemn the women who do as if they’d be having sex alone.

But I digress. This is not a post to discuss our region’s sociological ways.

During that same lecture, the doctor giving the lecture opened up a discussion about one criteria of rape in Lebanese law. I know our law when it comes to rape is overly messed up. There’s nothing that works in it. But this part of it, which most people are often clueless about, is simply mind-blowlingly stupid.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of that law where if someone commits suicide and they happen to fall on your car then it’s automatically your fault? Well this its vagina-equivalence.

What’s the law? If a girl said she were raped but her hymen had not been torn off to the walls of the vagina, then it’s not considered rape.

Meaning, if it’s obvious the girl had intercourse but the intercourse had not caused her hymen to be torn off completely, then the examining physician cannot say she was raped.

In a part of our laws that is so absurd, this often goes unnoticed that even the doctor giving us the lecture was outraged at the number of times he had to dismiss women who were obviously violated just because Lebanese law does not allow him to say so.