Tag Archives: Lebanon

Lebanese Civil War Stories – Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

If Geitawi was being bombed on that April 2nd afternoon, the deeper parts of Achrafieh were being hammered. My dad’s cousin was sheltered in their friends’ house on Ebrine Street, named after my hometown, adjacent to Mar Metr Street, made famous by the Orthodox church and its fancy cemetery.

The house Simon, my dad’s cousin, was seeking refuge in was few hundred meters away from the Maronite Sisters of the Holy Family convent (Sainte Famille) present on that street as well. That convent was also the school his little sister Mary attended. He was supposed to take her back home but the bombing had gotten too intense.

Simon looked around at the terrified faces around him. There were two younger girls: Rosalie and Marie-Madeleine, sitting next to their mother, who was hugging them tenderly, not allowing them to see the frightened tears frozen on her face. Her husband and his brother were sitting next to them as well.

As the rockets that were falling increased in intensity and frequency, the smell of burning cement, wood and flesh started to fill their nostrils. The mother looked at Simon. He was terrified. He was worried something had happened to his sister’s school. The mother told him he needed to take his mind off his sister for the time being. There was an underground shelter two buildings away. They had to make a run for it.

The woman felt the bombing subside a little. And soon enough, the sounds of explosions had ceased – at least for a few minutes. But it was enough for them to make a run for it.

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Razan Moghrabi… Sex Talk?

A friend linked me today to a YouTube video that hasn’t gone viral in the Middle East yet, featuring Lebanese TV presenter Razan Moghrabi in an intimate session with friends, discussing sex.

I normally wouldn’t care about such a thing. Sex is a natural thing that we discuss. However, Razan takes this “discussion” to a whole new level with lewd behavior that includes putting her hand up the guy’s shorts.

Lebanese people in general, and women in particular, are already being stereotyped as being overly promiscuous, which, in a region as conservative as the one we live in, isn’t a positive association. We try to tell everyone how this is not true and that those spreading such lies are Saudi men whose only purpose of coming to Lebanon in summer is to get laid.

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Governmentless in Lebanon

The words Lebanon and No Government have become sort of synonyms. We haven’t set the standards yet in time without government but I believe we’re very close, if not yet over the threshold, to being without government the most often.

The long stretches of us not having a government for the past two years has been understandable. In a country like Lebanon where each politician and party want to secure a piece of the pie, power struggle was the key reason why the country remained functioning on the bare necessities for long periods of time.

However, this time around, there is no power struggle when it comes to government formation. The majority at the time is now a minority in parliament and, unlike the minority at the time, have decided not to participate and be a true opposition.

So the key hurdle is within the former opposition, current majority.

Let us rewind a little.

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The Lebanese Forces Pioneering

On April 2nd, the Lebanese Forces commemorated the party’s disbanding.

As part of the proceedings, many people spoke about the importance of this party in the lives of many Lebanese and its vital role in the many years that it has been active. I will not go into those speeches, but they were very engaging. At one point a priest told a story about a woman who asked to go into a solitary cell at a convent. Three days later, she came out and told this priest how horrible those three days were and she wondered how the Lebanese Forces leader, Samir Geagea, could handle staying in worse conditions for more than seven years at the time. Geagea ended up being imprisoned in solitary confinement for over 11 years.

The Lebanese Forces have always been a highly organized party, as evident by their many events and the acclaim they get based on their level of organization.

However, that’s not where they’re pioneering. After all, many other parties in Lebanon are highly organized, albeit in a different way.

The Lebanese Forces are set to become the first party in Lebanon where the base elects the party’s leader. And that to me, is pioneering.

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Internet Speed At Google

Just to make things worse for us Lebanese who want to get our average speeds up from the ridiculous 256Kbps at which they are today, Google’s internet speed has been revealed.

To put things into perspective, these are 1000 times faster than the 512Kbps speed some of us in Lebanon brag about. And another thing hampering our Lebanese internet connection is an unbelievably slow ping time (depending on ISP, the fastest you can get is 100 ms). With Google, it’s 3 ms.

And since Lebanon is not the benchmark when it comes to internet speeds, the average internet speed in Europe is around 12 Mb/s and that in the US is around 10 Mb/s.

Finally, just to show you how strong a connection this is, look at a download of a 8GB game:

And I was happy about the 1 hour it takes for my 350MB episodes to finish. Let the mourning over our pathetic situation start.