The Church Explosion Derivation

On Sunday morning, an explosion rocked the Syriac church of Saydit Al Najat (Our Lady of Salvation) in Zahle. Every Lebanese official denounced the explosion, naturally, as a barbaric act, against the “example” of coexistence that is Lebanon, bla bla bla.

Now let us start our derivation of who is responsible for this attack.

Naturally, it can’t be a non-Lebanese because most Lebanese barely know of the existence of the targeted sect, let alone those who are foreigners and don’t know Lebanon has Maronites or any other major Christian sect to begin with.

Now that the non-Lebanese people have been taken out of the equation, this leaves us with those who hold the beloved and cherished citizenship. Of those, say 50% are Muslims and 50% are Christians. Now since we’d like to be optimistic, let us assume that our fellow Muslims would not do such a thing because it would break this example of coexistence.

Of the remaining 50% of Christians, no one would act except upon an act issued by their correspondent political leader. You have a bunch of irrelevant leaders who can’t get their followers to hurt a fly and then you have the big quartet.

Michel Aoun was probably still sleeping, long dreaming about him being Lebanon’s president, a dream that doesn’t seem to let him go. Add to that the fact that his supporters don’t know what a bomb is and you rule him out of the equation as well.

Sleiman Frangieh’s followers know very well what a bomb is. But Zahle is just too far away from his radar that you can’t make him a serious contender for the top prize. Add to it him being clueless most of the time and you definitely take his name off the list.

Amin Gemayel was still probably mourning his son. Or in the midst of the conversation that started on Friday evening. Either way, I don’t see him as someone who would issue the bombing as well.

Samir Geagea, however, *evil smile*, this man can definitely blow up a church. I mean, out of the whole bunch of politicians today, he is the only criminal, right? And he has blown up a church before. Granted, he was exonerated, but he did blow it up, no? His party is also made up of a bunch of high school dropouts who don’t know how to write their names, so naturally, they know how to handle bombs. Also, as a wise person from Bsharri would say: If Geagea thinks a church needs to be blown up, then the church needs to be blown up.

Meanwhile, the seven Estonians are still missing. Telecom minister Charbel Nahas is still in his cat-fight with Ogero CEO, Abdel Menhem, and the country is more prosperous than ever. Some Lebanese stupidheads took the headlines with their pro-Syria protests… why would anyone care about a silly Church getting blown up?

PS: In case you didn’t notice, let me hashtag it for you: #sarcasm.

Remember, Remember The 26th Of March…

I’ve been breathing for 21 years and a few months. This totals to more than 7700 days of me being alive. Out of those 7700 days, the one that’s imprinted in my mind the most is a cold, grey and dark day in March, 12 years ago.

March 26th, 1999.

I remember it was a rainy day. One of those days that start off wrong for a nine year old because his favorite TV station was not showing his favorite TV show that night. They were showing an award show for ads, instead. So I was discussing how horrible that was with a friend as we were going back to class after a recess.

So I came back home on a Friday and I postpone doing my homework because, well, it is Friday. An hour later, around 6 pm, my mom comes into the house in a near state of hysteria. She was crying while shouting: “They’re lying to me…. Something happened to my brother, they’re lying to me”

I looked at my mom with a sense of disbelief. What was going on?

My grandma gets my mom to sit down and she hands her a glass of water. My mom was still shaking. Then, my dad comes inside. He sits next to my mom and hugs her.

She asks “Is Hanna dead?”

Hanna and my uncle had gone hunting.

My dad nods and says “but I’m not sure about Elias (my uncle)”.

My mom starts crying even more. It got to a point that a nine year old like me can’t handle so I went to my room and cried. When I came out, my mother had left with my dad. They had gone to tell my uncle’s wife about what happened.

So I go outside, still crying. My aunt (his sister) comes to our place and she sees us all distressed. She shouts from the top of the stairs: “Elie, what’s going on?”

I couldn’t answer her. I had no idea what was going on in the first place, let alone what to say to her. So my aunt left immediately.

That was the last I saw of my mom, aunt and dad for the next two days.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept hearing gunfire and I knew it had something to do with my uncle. I remember looking out from my room’s window and seeing people on our balcony. I asked them: “what’s going on? Is my uncle okay?”

They replied “Yes, Elie, don’t worry. Go back to sleep”.

Naturally, nothing was okay. The following day, the whole village was dead quiet. My cousins were brought over and we all had no idea what was going on. We were told my uncle had died but not the reason. So my cousin Perla, his daughter, started drawing on a board how her dad was now in heaven.

That night, there was a full blown report on the news about the events in my town. Toni Rouhana, a fifty year old man, had opened fire on my uncle and another man when they were hunting outside his property. The army was held in a crossfire with him all night. They had received orders from the president Emile Lahoud to keep him alive at all costs. They fired grenades at him, he fired grenades back. They fired smoke bombs, he was well prepared against them. He was trained in the civil war with Marada (Sleiman Frangieh’s party). Meanwhile, while the army fought him to attempt to capture him alive, my uncle bled to death because the man did not allow anyone to pick his body up, even the Red Cross. Later on that night, when the army realized it’s near impossible to capture a man so well-prepared alive, they blew open his house with an RPG missile and shot him down. They discovered a human skull inside his house and a book about devil worshiping. They also discovered the food my uncle had given him earlier that day, because he did not have enough money to buy it.

That Sunday was Palm Sunday. I woke up and saw my mother looking at the coffee she was supposed to drink. I went over and hugged her. She started crying and asked if I knew what happened. I nodded. She said my uncle was turned into a pincushion. She said he had pleaded for his life when the man opened fire and killed his hunting buddy. And I kept on hugging her.

Then they dressed us up in our Palm Sunday clothes and took us to my grandma’s house. My aunt was sitting in a corner alone, rocking her head back and forth. My uncle’s wife was sitting next to my grandma crying for her kids. My grandma was crying, telling everyone how “Elias from under the dirt wants them to go to church for Palm Sunday”.

So we were taken to church. Mass had already started. We opened the door and entered. The church fell quiet.

My grandma had worn black for twelve years till 1999. She started to move towards brighter shades of color early in January and April. I have not seen my grandma not wearing black since that day in March, 1999.

Bahrain… Stop Being A Drama Queen

Hassan Nasrallah came on TV a few days ago and, as usual, he started preaching (or the more accurate Lebanese term: ynazzer). During this much “awaited” sermon, he naturally commented on the Bahraini revolution, wondering whether the Bahraini events not getting enough attention is related to the protesters being Shiites. He also said Hezbollah would help the protesters.

As a result to that, Bahrain saw it fit to suspend its flights to Lebanon and ask its people to leave the country and refrain from visiting, citing potential threats to their safety.

Now I wonder, does the Bahraini government really think we care about where tourists are coming from? Does it really think we – even Hezbollah – have checkpoints to check foreign passports and then, if those passports are Bahraini, abduct them?

Does it even make sense for Hezbollah to do anything to harm the Shiite-majority community?

Sure, Nasrallah is a hypocrite. In his speech, he spoke about the importance of the revolutions going on everywhere… except Syria, simply because a revolution in Syria doesn’t work to his advantage. And yes, he is a man of big words and little action. But for the Kingdom of Bahrain to have the reaction it had to a few words he spoke about the events in their country is blowing things way out of proportions.

If anything, the Lebanese government should warn and ask us to refrain from visiting a troubled country like Bahrain, not the other way around.

Dear Bahrain, stop being such a drama queen… for your sake and ours.

 

The Libyan Situation: Morally Baffling…



It is without understatement that I can say Colonel Gaddafi is a monster. That is as clear and true as the sun shining every morning in countries where the climate allows that.

He is a man who has been ruling his country with an iron fist for over forty years and he doesn’t look satisfied yet. He has done almost every single thing imaginable to stay in office, except eradicating the whole population of his country. Don’t worry, he is hell-bent on doing so as well. Just today, more than forty people were killed in a Libyan city, including children, while trying to stand in the way of armed forces opening fire on innocent people.

Even more so, Colonel Gaddafi set fire to the Libyan oil fields. If he can’t have them, why should anyone else, right?

Apparently no one.

After weeks of him murdering his people, it looks like NATO forces and Western countries “finally” took notice. I mean, they kept turning their blind eye on the dictatorships in the region. Why so? well, those dictatorships were providing them with oil and they were keeping their parts of a burning region at “peace”. What more could those countries ask?

But now Gaddafi was burning those oil fields. And oil prices had begun skyrocketing again. What were the NATO forces and armies of other Western countries (notably the US) supposed to do?

Oh yes, they intervene militarily. What’s the premise of this intervention? “humanitarian” reasons.

And here goes our moral dilemma… Gaddafi or NATO forces intervening in his country?

Sure Gaddafi does not have an reason to burn the oil fields. They are not his. They are his country’s riches. He also does not have any right to even order any of his armed forces to lay a hand on any of his people. But to say Gaddafi is sane is as credible as saying the Earth is the center of the universe. The man is a mad case. But that also does not even remotely justify what he’s been doing, which can be categorized as a genocide.

On the other hand, what gives foreign forces the right to barge into Libya and start bombarding the country left and right? They’re only there to secure their economical advantages with the oil, so to say they are there for “humanitarian” reasons is a big lie to anyone with common sense.

And there is it… our moral puzzle. Who is at more fault? the man single-handedly destroying his country? or the foreign armed forces trying to take the country by force?

 

The Adjustement Bureau – Movie Review

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, is a movie that tackles mainly the theme of free will and fate. Do we have them both or are we simply adjusted to believe we do?

Matt Damon stars as David Norris, a young politician with dreams of becoming a senator, the youngest senator, in fact, that New York has known. On the night of the elections, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt) and sparks fly. Time goes on (and you are going to have many time jumps in this) and David encounters Elise serendipitously while going on the bus to work. However, it is revealed that he shouldn’t have gotten on the bus. He shouldn’t have met Elise again. He should have spilled coffee on his shirt while going through the park on his way to take the bus and gone back up to his apartment to change it. And so, it is revealed to David Norris the existence of an adjustment bureau that makes sure things go according to the plan set forth by the “Chairman” and according to his plan, David should not be with Elise.

Damon and Blunt have remarkable onscreen chemistry. I was surprised to see their characters blend so well together and on top of the “philosophical” aspect of this sci-fi movie, present us with a credible portrayal of a romantic relationship that transcends the obstacles thrown at it.

I appreciated The Adjustment Bureau. But I thought it lacked in punch. The issue discussed by the movie, free-will, is at the heart of many studies that are taking place today. Therefore, the premise upon which this movie is built is highly interesting, however I thought the execution rendered it meaningless and corny. The movie jumps around a lot, especially in time. You’d expect a movie to have one time jump. This movie has a bunch of them: 3 months here, 3 years there… so in this one hour and a half movie, you are taken almost through 4 years of events, all centered around the attempt to build this relationship between David and Elise, ultimately becoming a little tired of them trying to make it work.

What hurts the movie as well is a definite lack of mystery. Almost everything is revealed in the first twenty minutes and the rest of the time the characters are simply reacting to those twenty minutes. It is revealed that David’s family all died and in many instances of the movie, it is inferred that the bureau might have had a hand in their deaths. Why wasn’t the issue pressed further? There are a lot of points in The Adjustment Bureau that feel underdeveloped. Even the bureau itself loses this element of mystery because you know almost everything about it early on.

The Orwellian issue has been often discussed in cinema. And while I think it is a highly interesting topic that needs to be discussed even more and in other fields, I feel that The Adjustment Bureau doesn’t add anything new to the discussion, making it an enjoyable movie that comes off at times as kind of preachy. It does have interesting visual effects though. I mean, a door opening in your bathroom that takes you to central park is neat, no?