Tag Archives: Lebanon

The Age of Fortunetellers

Last time I checked, fortunetelling was reserved for New Year’s Eve when people with some form of “sight” grace our airwaves to tell us what to expect over the coming year – although they give themselves a few years as a range to make sure what they say eventually happens.
It got to a point where all our TV stations would host anyone. Those who pay the most get prodigy Michel Hayek. Those who can’t get Michel Hayek but are high profile enough get Layla Abdul Latif. And if you’re miserable like NewTV, you get an Australian card reader and give her pictures of our political leaders for her to look at.

However, it seems that the dark times the region is witnessing have gotten Layla Abdul Latif to get her “sight” together and inundate the world with predictions that will eventually happen. It might be in a year, or two, or ten. One could never know. It seems she’s also hell-bent on overthrowing Michel Hayek as Lebanon’s most celebrated neo-prophet.

Did you know we are having elections next year? Did you also know it’s going to be based on the 2009 law which everyone “theoretically” hates but no one is willing to change? Did you know the Sunnis and the Shia of Lebanon will NOT kill each other more than they already are?
Did you also know that Lebanon will soon become an oil exporter? Yes, because the massive amounts of national gas and petrol we’re sitting on are not meant to stay there apparently. You can check out the rest of the “predictions” here.

So people tune in to LBC which gets all the audience numbers of a Sunday night and even though they ridicule Layla Abdul Latif for the “visions” she gets, they still listen. And even though what she says is an absolutely logical reading of what might happen, somehow the clout she has thrown around herself as someone with a “gift” makes people feel more secure somehow.

It is the age of fortunetellers. And since fortunetelling seems to be in lately, I’ve decided to try my hand at it. *clears throat* these are my predictions for an unnamed period in time:

– People will continue dying in Syria until the revolution ends. Some people will die after that too.
– The Future movement will keep on hating Hezbollah. And vice versa.
– The animosity between the FPM and the LF will not decrease.
– Wi2am Wahhab will witness a markedly decreased spoken words per minute rate.
– Michel Aoun will become more paranoid.
– Samir Geagea’s word-repeats will extend to new items in the vocabulary.
– Saad Hariri is enjoying his vacation in France. But he will return eventually.
– Hassan Nasrallah has a thing for underground bunkers and will not leave his anytime soon.
– The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has no near ending in sight.
– The Lebanese people will vote for the same people in 2013 and they will then nag about the same people reaching power again.
– The 2013 elections will witness below the belt accusations thrown by the different camps at each other.
– The 2013 elections will feature an increased role for social media. Bloggers will be paid to support one candidate over another.
– Saudi Arabia will suppress its women even further.
– The Islamic revolution in Iran will come up with new interesting ridiculous fatwas.
– The Middle East’s Christians will remain panicky about their future.
– The United States will remain divided between Obama lovers and Obama haters.
– The United States will be hit by new hurricanes… Eventually.
– Sh*t will keep hitting the fan in Greece.
– Big quantities of rotten and expired food will be discovered somewhere within the 10452km2 of Lebanon.
– People will keep violating the smoking ban without any repercussions whatsoever.
– Lebanon will not see an improvement in abiding by traffic laws in the near future.
– There will be new anti-Islam material which cause outrage across the Muslim world.
– Lebanon’s Maronite patriarch will vote for the pope that will succeed Benedict XVI.
– Apple will release a new iPhone that keeps the iPhone 5’s form factor. And people will nag. Droids will hate. Everyone will buy anyway.
– Samsung will lose yet another lawsuit and be made to pay another billion.
– World peace will not happen.

I personally do not have the gift of “sight” and I came up with these while a physician was lecturing me about anemias. But if Michel Hayek and Layla Abdul Latif do it, why not me? Enno shou we2fet 3layon?
Now who wants to pay me thousands of dollars to host me on some TV show? I have stuff to buy and vacations to plan and people to fool.

Jennifer Lopez, The Lebanese Flag and Silly National Pride

It took Jennifer Lopez holding the Lebanese flag at her Dubai concert for some Lebanese to feel proud about their country’s independence day. They thought it was her way of wishing our country a happy independence day. And they ate it up.

Soon enough, everyone was talking about exactly how genuine a person Jennifer Lopez is and how honorable it was of her and how proud they are as Lebanese that their – our – country was recognized this way. Well, they thought wrong.

A friend of mine who went to the concert in Dubai told me that when she grabbed the Lebanese flag, Jennifer Lopez shouted “Dubai!” which meant that she thought our flag was that of the United Arab Emirates. I’m surprised no one bothered bringing that up till now actually.

It is always customary of artists going for concerts abroad to hold the flag of their hosting country. Jennifer Lopez didn’t bother with the UAE flag. Isn’t that an insult to the country that actually paid enough to bring her to sing on its grounds? And what makes Lebanon so important that she’d rather hold our flag at a concert not even held on our land?

Our sense of fake chauvinism knows no limit it seems.

Lebanon has its flaws. It’s a hopeless place to live in sometimes. It has a lot of shortcomings and I’ll be the first to point them out as I’ve done many times (here’s a sample). But I don’t need Jennifer Lopez holding my country’s flag for me to feel overwhelmingly happy about the country I live in. And frankly I find it sad that some Lebanese need this “validation” coming from a pop star of their country for them to feel some ounce of national pride which so ironically happened to be on a national day that they are too willing to dismiss as absolutely useless.

Jennifer Lopez doesn’t know what Lebanon’s flag looks like. She probably doesn’t even know we exist. The whole flag debacle is all mere irony. Now how’s that treating your silly national pride?

Lebanese Restaurants Violating The Smoking Ban: 3enab, Gemmayze

I went to 3enab yesterday for the first time and I thought it was a very cool restaurant. I really liked the old-fashioned Lebanese architectural aspect of it. The food was good as well – after all, you can’t go terribly wrong with Lebanese food, which is the absolute best, and that is a fact.

As my friends and I settled down, a waiter came to us and asked if we wanted an arguile. I promptly asked him: isn’t smoking banned? He then replied: we’ll open this window:

Never mind that the window was tiny but apparently that’s enough to consider the room an “open space” – whatever that means. Soon enough, a couple coming for dinner ordered an arguile. The man was also smoking cigar.

As we finished having dinner and turned around to leave, we were surprised to find the entire restaurant filled with arguiles, even in sections of the restaurant without windows to open. A friend noted as we exited the door: it felt like shisha cafe for a moment there.

 

Ironically, this is the sign they had at their main door:

As soon as I left, I called 1735 and reported the place. They took my contact info and said they’ll look into it. But as I was made to realize: infringing the law this obviously in an area where tourism police is constantly on the prowl, seeing it was a Friday night, means 3enab probably has some under the table dealings with those making sure the law is carried out. Anything for that extra arguile revenue.

I’m pretty sure those against the smoking ban are elated right now.

My Bout With Homophobia at AUB

A couple of days ago, two friends and I decided to participate in a trivia night serving as a fundraiser for the Achrafieh blast victims. 27 teams participated, each made up of three people. A first round brought those teams down to ten and my team qualified. A second round brought those teams down to five and my team qualified again.

When it came to the last round, the questions were – to me at least – rather silly.The categories, in a jeopardy-like system, were: who made this (Macbook Pro, vPro processors, etc…), colors (black market, red lines, etc…), TV shows by cast (Michael C. Hall, Jim Parsons, etc…), 21st century hitmakers (who sings “Call Me Maybe?” Who sings “Teenage Dream?” etc…) and last but not least Glee Songs where they asked about some of songs sung on the show such as R.E.M’s Losing my Religion and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, among others.

My team knew the answers since last time I checked we don’t live under a rock. But it seems knowing the answer to who sings Teenage Dream and the title of the Journey song that has the lyric “Just a small town girl” is “gay” to some of the other participants who had their asses handed to them by us knowing basically everything.

So as we answered one question of useless pop culture after the other, the other team kept spitting derogatory terms at us. They guessed a Bruno Mars song so I looked at them sarcastically and asked: now how do you know that? Turns out that Bruno Mars song was a “straight” song.

Even songs have sexual orientations now. And they wouldn’t stop until one of my teammates threatened them to shut up. As we won the top prize and everyone congratulated us, they were not happy. “Law kenna 3erfin hal2ad lawtane ma kenna shtarakna” (If we had known it would be this gay, we wouldn’t have participated.)

The thing is though they would have known the answer if they actually had been fast enough to get a turn. After all, if someone didn’t know the character “Cosette” is found in “Les Miserables,” then that person is – at least to me – absolutely ignorant. The purpose of the whole night being a fundraiser seemed to have eluded them as well. But I know a few people who were shocked that such a thing would actually come out of AUB students, with the illusion of them being slightly more open minded than your average Lebanese.

As a former AUB student, I know how these students see themselves as the best of the best – being accepted at Lebanon’s version of “ivy league” makes them automatically better than anyone else. Now add the fact that these students are future physicians on top of that and you have an extra twist to the sense of elitism that they have – we are surely better than anyone else. Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone.

It’s not like if they wouldn’t have known the answer to all the questions if they had put on Radio One for a few minutes this past summer. But I have to ask what would these obviously beyond mature future medical doctors do if they ever got a homosexual person to their practice? Would they shut them out just because they don’t agree with their lifestyle?

And this a specimen of Lebanon’s future doctors: homophobic people with an obvious lack of sportsmanship. So as they call my friends and I derogatory terms for beating them, we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Assholes will forever be assholes. And this was the first time I’ve had homophobic slurs thrown at my face all my life which has gotten me thinking: what do gay people go through – at least in the medical field – just because they’re gay?

Then I remembered when an acquaintance who happens to be involved in the medical field said to me once: if I ever had a homosexual patient, I’d stop treating them. I asked: what if they die? The acquaintance replied: it would be for the better. That acquaintance was a nurse.

Pierre Hachach (El Ma2da7) Arrested

For those who don’t know Pierre Hachach, he’s the man from Batroun behind the “ma2da7” posters in the 2005 parliamentary elections: neyeb l akhdar wel yebes. He has since ventured into many other domains, such as singing.

Pierre Hachach was battered by rifles on his head and taken to the police with no legal warrant yesterday where he was refused medical care. His sister was also attacked and thrown on the streets as she demanded he be administered medical help. He has been held in prison since.

The charge? He insulted the head of the army on his Facebook profile. So as our army general heads the festivities of today’s independence day, Pierre Hachach bleeds on the floor of the HQ of Lebanon’s military police to which he was transferred today.

Last time I checked, it was the army’s duty to protect us not drag us to military court for stuff we post on our Facebook profiles. What harm did Kahwaji receive from Hachach’s supposed insult? What’s next? Round up anyone who dares speak up about any shortcomings in this nation, particularly when it comes to the army, and throw them in jail?

Besides, since when is it the job of the army to check people’s Facebook profiles for offenses against army general Jean Kahwaji? Don’t they have better things to do than stalk people’s profiles all day searching for things that could be held against them in court? And since when should we tolerate these laws that put some figures in power on a pedestal from any form of criticism, be it positive or negative?

Army general Jean Kahwaji may not know about what’s happening to Pierre Hachach and odds are he will ask for Hachach’s release when he knows. But the problem is with the arrest in the first place – we have resources to arrest people randomly but not the resources to enforce security on the entirety of the country.

So let’s focus on Facebook and those on Facebook who stray from the correct path and forget about every other thing taking place in this country. Allah ye7mik ya watan w allah yse3dna kamein. 

Update: It seems that Hachach was arrested not because he insulted the army commander but because he got into a personal feud with someone that led to the army arresting him. Hachach then innundated the army with a slur of swear words. 

Either way, I am against the arrest and especially against dragging him to military court.