Tag Archives: Beirut

A Rape Attempt in Hamra

A 20 year old girl recently suffered through a rape attempt while going back to her apartment in Hamra. The man followed her to her apartment where he attacked her and ordered her not to scream. But she did scream. So he beat her up and she kept on screaming until the neighbors and people on the street ran towards her.

The man was given to authorities. The man was a married man with children and who worked with our army, an entity theoretically tasked with making sure our women and children are protected from the travesties that living in Lebanon entail.

I salute that woman’s courage. Not only for standing up to her rapist and shouting her lungs out despite him threatening her life, but for having the courage to stand up to him when he was taken into custody and tell her story for the world to hear.

A friend of mine was sexually assaulted in Gemmayze almost a year ago (her story). It wasn’t as physical as the story in question but what my friend and that woman are is lucky Lebanese women.

How many more stories that are similar or worse than this should we propagate and hear before we get a law that makes sure that, if the worst case scenario were to happen, the rapist in question wouldn’t roam the streets with the least repercussions possible?

How many more times should I hear the phrase “you’re lucky you’re a guy” from friends who happen to be girls and who are afraid to walk certain streets alone at night? Till when are our women supposed to live in legal and protective dark ages while the country boasts liberalism that is truly anything but?

And till when should the violation of our women be a matter of taboo that should rarely be discussed through public means?

Lebanese Blogger Gets Assaulted In Beirut’s Downtown… For Taking A Picture

Habib Batah, a professor at LAU and blogger at The Beirut Report, got physically assaulted today by a bunch of henchmen at Downtown’s soon-to-be-constructed District S… because he dared take a picture of the ancient ruin inside the property which they were busy dismantling.

After being forced to delete the pictures off his phone, Habib tried to complain to Lebanon’s police who dismissed him with their typical “nothing to see here.” Again, we’re only paying our police so they can have Malek el Tawou2 for lunch or dinner. Protecting us or trying to keep our rights, the simplest of which is us being able to take a damn picture at a construction site of our heritage, is just too mainstream to be included under their umbrella of duties.

You can read the full story here (link).

In this occasion, I believe a series of thank yous are in order.

  • Thank you Solidere for your beautiful work in Downtown Beirut. It’s perfectly understandable that ancient ruins aren’t business-centric. The Khalijis sure don’t like them. 
  • Thank you Lebanon’s Ministry of Culture. Your continuous efforts in making sure there’s nothing about this country’s history that  isn’t history are much appreciated.
  • Thank you Lebanon’s Ministry of Interior. You’re just too busy not looking at those self-enforced anti-Syrian curfews and not working on elections for you to get your police to do their job.
  • Thank you Lebanon’s police. I feel safer every single day you tell me to “forget it.”
  • Thank you to every single entity in this God-forsaken country that makes me hopeful and happy and content into what I’m being offered every single freaking day.

How much more shit are we supposed to take before someone out there decides to do their bloody job? How many more people need to be assaulted because they tried to stand up to their constitutionally-given rights? How many more of our rights are we supposed to forsake because of well-connected people everywhere? How many people need to become victims before someone out there wakes up and realizes that this – all of it – is downright unacceptable?

 

When Haifa Wehbe Went To The SMAs

I watch Lebanese award shows occasionally when they air on some television channel. I laugh at the amount of plastic in them, the people kissing up to each other only because social class dictates as such, the winners who are so shocked it’s obviously fake, etc…. The thing about those Lebanese award shows is that no one is taken aback and starstruck by some megastar, effectively making the entire show about that person. I never thought I’d attend a Lebanese award show, let alone be nominated in one. But the Social Media Awards were a Lebanese award show by excellence.

The worst part about the SMAs wasn’t performers such as Poly singing to empty chairs or as a friend said having a “Paris Hilton winning best neurosurgeon award” with Lebanese Memes beating out Donner Sang Compter in a category for NGOs, something I had predicted 11 days ago (link) or how Anis Tabet’s blog somehow lost. The worst part wasn’t the fact that trying to get food at the food court could have resulted in some form of asphyxia because of how many people were there. It wasn’t the dress code that was resoundingly disassociated with social media.

Haifa Wehbe came around 10:30. No pun. She was obviously three hours late because someone as busy as her cannot mingle with the commoners who had been sitting there for three hours prior listening to one category after the other and who are not used to flashy award shows. She came to accept the award she hadn’t won yet for best celebrity on social media.

So in case it wasn’t obvious she was going to win, you should have taken a hint. Elissa was definitely rolling in her bed at that point. It wasn’t as if Haifa Wehbe winning wasn’t expected. But she sure knows how to make an entrance. The entire award ceremony was stopped so she can have her photoshoot and her poses and people scrambling to take pictures with her. Even the category being announced at that moment was put on hold for her. How respectful is that to the winner? Well, what do I know I guess.

Many minutes later, someone came back to their senses. And because Haifa is a very busy woman who doesn’t have time to wait for the rest of the categories in the evening’s planned proceedings, her category was brought forward. And surprise surprise! She won. She went on stage and accepted her prize. Was it deserved? I don’t follow her but “Twitter is my bodyguard,” she said in a speech that she wanted to say in “Arabic.”

And the same mania repeated itself, this time ten times over. The cameras, the flashing lights, the poses, the air kisses. Again, who cares about the other categories of the people who were waiting almost four hours for their turn to come up? Those people – like yours truly – are obviously irrelevant.

I wasn’t sure at that point if I was attending the Social Media Awards or the Haifa Wehbe Show. The award show that was supposed to be about 200 nominees, most of which had worked really hard  for a year to get nominated, became about this woman’s ability to make men drool and preteens go gaga. And they love it.

Note to self: must visit Nader Saab to improve my assets in preparation for next year. The Elie Fares show sure has a nice ring to it.

Haifa Wehbe showing up put things into perspective. The SMAs weren’t about really honoring the year’s best blog with those 50 people in the room at the time of the announcement. It wasn’t about the irrelevant categories sprinkled here and there to which we campaigned and had fun doing so even if we knew we weren’t going win. It was about getting the flashiest result possible. A few days from now, few will remember who won what. But they’ll only remember that Haifa Wehbe attended. Everyone & everything else is simply besides the main point.

Note 2.0:

Thank you to every single one of you people who took the time to vote for A Separate State of Mind. You people are beyond brilliantly awesome. 

Comparing Beirut To Dubai

An American writer for the Huffington Post wrote an article today titled: “Thank you, Beirut. Your Friend, Dubai” in which she basically paralleled the rise of Dubai to the gradual decline and possible near-demise (never ever?) of Beirut.

The writer’s opinion of the Lebanese capital was favorable – even favorable of the go-to Lebanese scarecrow for Americans Hezbollah, trying to explain its popularity among many Lebanese and the reason for its increasing political strength.

In typical fashion, Lebanese across the internet have been sharing the article fervently. It’s about Lebanon. It’s about Beirut. It’s by a very prominent publication. Click, click away.

However, the question I want to ask is the following: is comparing and contrasting Beirut to Dubai warranted?

I, for one, think drawing similarities between the two cities is comparing apples to oranges for the following reasons:

1) Beirut was never made out of money. When you talk about Beirut, you don’t talk about an economical hub for a region or a city made entirely because they discovered oil beneath its soils. You talk about a city which made itself by itself and who, when the factors leading to its prosperity are affected, undoes itself by itself.

2) Beirut has never had poured into it the same amount of money going into Dubai daily. The Lebanese economy – even in its heyday – has never been as strong as the Emirati economy is (or was if we’re accounting for the recession). Up until a few years ago, we didn’t have oil. We won’t see any benefits from that oil until 2018 at the most optimistic expectations (link) and I’m sure the economy driving Beirut won’t be nowhere near comparable to that of Dubai anytime soon.

3) Beirut and Dubai have two entirely different experiences to give their visitors. The joke goes “I’ve never been to Dubai but I’ve been to Zaytounay Bay.” Many moguls are sure trying to turn Beirut into a new Dubai. But I believe their attempts will end up futile. They can build as much malls as they want and spend copious amounts of money into flashy projects that pale in comparison to any developments in more developed countries. They can build the fanciest hotels and the most hedonic of night clubs. But the fact of the matter remains, and it shows in the point the article’s author tried to make: Dubai is for show and Beirut is for heart, however tacky that might be. Can you compare both?

4) By comparing Beirut to Dubai, the comparison can be extended to the countries holding the two cities. Is the “Lebanon” experience of tourism compared to the “UAE” experience? I highly doubt it.

5) The governing bodies behind Beirut and Dubai are highly different. On one hand, you have an iron-first ruling with a twist of enough liberalism not to step on bigger political toes. On the other hand, you have a state barely keeping it politically together as everyone fights for a piece of the Lebanese cake.

Beirut is a city with woes. There’s political instability at every turn. Civil strife can erupt at any moment. The city is that of 18 sects trying to live together while working for their communitarian benefits, some of which are mutually exclusive with those of others. But don’t you think that for a city as chaotic, with a serious lack of infrastructure and urban design, to be compared to Dubai at every point is poignant enough to tell which city has more promise? And If Dubai’s oil reserves ran out tomorrow and its economy started going down the drain and the expats in it decided their futures better be spent elsewhere, would it still be the mega-brilliant city everyone makes it out to be today?

Disfiguring AUB with Zaha Hadid’s Building

Zaha Hadid AUB

Towards the end of my AUB days, someone decided to close down the area that held an infirmary in order for some new construction to take place.

I am not unfamiliar with construction projects at AUB which filled my time when I was there: both the Olayan School of Business and the Hostler student center opened when I was a student. I’m no expert nor do I know anything about architecture but they never struck me as disembodied elements of AUB’s campus.

The building depicted in the above picture is what’s standing in place of the infirmary today. Is it hideous? You bet. Is it an atrocity? Definitely. Does it take away from the charm of AUB’s upper campus? Well, it is a concrete block with holes in it. Again, unprofessional opinion here.

Why is such an ugly building overshadowing Nicely Hall? Because it has Zaha Hadid affixed to it, the world’s most famous architect, who “won” the competition to build this. As if the pull of her name alone isn’t enough to sway the competition.

I have to ask – and it’s obviously too late now for such a question – but didn’t anyone from AUB’s administration get a tinge of nausea as they passed by this growing structure and saw it disfiguring the campus many of them call home? And isn’t the mere presence of such a building disrespectful to the architecture faculty at AUB which is more than capable of coming up with better and more campus-relevant buildings?

But I guess this is how things roll around the country: go with the flashiest, most expensive, most prominent names because that’s sure to be better. Issam Fares- no relation-, after whom this building is named, should probably sue them for libel.