This video, titled Shit Lebanese Racists Say, couldn’t have come at a better time. When the country is slowly forgetting about Alem Dechassa, the Ethiopian Maid that committed suicide after being publicly abused, the Anti-Racism Movement has come up with this video that is highly poignant to say the least.
Without further ado, here it is:
In case you didn’t know, current Ministry of Culture has allowed for construction to take place at the location of the Roman Hippodrome in Beirut. For full details, check out this link.
Before Beirut’s hippodrome made news, however, another heritage site of ours was in danger. A Phoenician Port, over 2500 years old, in the Minet el Hosn region in Downtown Beirut, just behind Monroe Hotel. Venus Real Estate intends to build three towers instead of the port. The location, protected by former Minister of Culture Salim Warde, was compromised when Venus Real Estate used the transitory period between governments and convinced current Minister of Culture Gaby Layoun that the port was dispensable.
Details aside, Association for the Protection of Lebanese Heritage (APHL) is marching for these monuments this Saturday, March 24th. Check out this Facebook event for the details.
I’m glad to see Lebanese people becoming proactive when it comes to things like these. Will you be marching with them?
First we had the Beirut River turning red.
Now it’s the Litani’s time to turn white. It seems Lebanese rivers are drawing Lebanon’s flag. We still need one to turn green and it’s a go. I wonder, what substances can we pour into our water to achieve that color?
While the incident with the Litani did not affect the whole river, the cause has been said to be either the flow of calcified water into the river or some nearby factory throwing in its waste.
Either way, it’s highly likely that we’ll never know what caused this. One thing is certain – Lebanon now has another reason, apart from our snowy mountains, for its name.
Over the course of this past weekend, I thought I was living – at least for a fleeting moment – in Ireland. The weather was sunny, albeit chilly. It was very green outside, ironically fitting for the occasion to be celebrated, and everyone was excited about St. Patrick’s Day. But then I realized that, contrary to the input I was getting from my senses, I was in fact thousands of kilometers away from Ireland, in a Middle Eastern country called Lebanon.
But this drift in my sensory perception had happened once before. Back in November, many of the Lebanese I knew were excited about Thanksgiving. What do they know about Thanksgiving? Not much, obviously. It was featured in some Hollywood movie and that was sufficient to make it important enough to be imported into their celebratory calendar. “Come join us for our Thanksgiving dinner! We sure got a lot to be thankful for.” The pilgrims and the natives of Lebanon would be very proud, I bet.
If God forbid you asked someone about their plans for Drunk Thursday, you get ridiculed. “You still celebrate that day! Man, it’s so passé!” Or if you ask someone about their plans for “A7ad el Marfa3” [Mardi Gras applies], the same answer follows. The Lebanese “version” of Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s day has become beneath us, apparently.
Of the many things I do not understand about Lebanese society perhaps the following is the most puzzling. Why is it that we disregard the customs and traditions of our own culture and are so vehemently adopting the traditions of others?
I heard there’s a tomato festival in Spain that happens every year. Why does Madrid get to have all the fun? Beirut could use some non-clubbing entertainment as well!
There’s also this awesome Samba festival in Rio. Why not bring it here? Lebanese women can definitely shake their hips.
It seems that our fascination with Lebanon being the crossroads of many cultures has reached the next level. Instead of embracing the fact that years of our country being a fusion of cultures has led to one that is inherently our own, we’ve started to go on a collection frenzy of anything “hip” that we may find in other cultures and importing it. We’ve got a reputation to keep, after all. What good is a Lebanese “identity” without many non-Lebanese toppings added to it?
We, as a country, suffer from a case of identityphobia. We are so afraid of who we are that we search for anything that could fleetingly satisfy our need for firmness. And then our feet lose ground again before we find something else to cling to. We’re so afraid of our identity that we can rationalize the destruction of ancient monuments that have created who we are as Lebanese.
We are so afraid of our own identity that we also feel the need to become part of a grander scheme: are you Arab or non-Arab? No I’m Phoenician. No I’m Roman. No I’m Canaanite. No, I’m everything but simply Lebanese.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Who knows what celebration from which country will become in soon.
There’s nothing wrong with going out for drinks on a Saturday. There’s nothing wrong with having dinner with your family on a Thursday.
What’s wrong is going for drinks on a Saturday because it is St. Patrick’s day. What’s wrong is having dinner with your family on a Thursday because it’s Thanksgiving day.
What’s wrong is us being Ireland one day, the US another, then France, followed by Italy, maybe even Egypt sometimes. Perhaps the sign welcoming tourists to Lebanon outside Beirut’s airport shouldn’t read: Welcome to Lebanon. Maybe the appropriate description should have been: Welcome to the Fragmented Colors of Lebanon – we can offer you anything you want because we have no clue who we are.
Or this can be simply considered a melodramatic rant and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations took place because the clover was mistaken for a cedar. It happens you know.
MTV has recently unveiled their latest contribution to the current legislative efforts for a law to protect women from all forms of abuse, notably marital rape, soon after International Women’s Day.
To help them advocate for such a cause, they’ve enlisted the help of the female MP who has probably worked the most for such a law to see the light: Sethrida Geagea.
Geagea’s role in the music video is perhaps minimal but it’s a reflection of her commitment to the cause at hand, which brings me back to a point I had mentioned previously: the only way for the women of Lebanon to have true influence is to assert political power, which can only be achieved by voting in more women to parliament, who need to be as energetic and feisty about their rights as MP Geagea is and not a corresponding puppet to the political block they’re part of.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 