Happy Hanukkah from Beirut!

If you're preparing for the next Hanukkah in Beirut and are wondering where to find a Menorah (a seven-branched jewish chandelier), all you have to do is go to the popular Sunday flee market just East of Beirut. © El Periodista

Pavlov's dog

During the past few days, I have been waking up in a natural way, gently tickled by dim sunrays. The commotion in the school courtyard across the street had magically disappeared. So for the past few days, the first moments of my mornings have been blissfully serene. Of course, it’s only seconds before I, then, realized the reason for the unusual quietness.
Here is what typically happened on one of these past mornings, chosen randomly. A series of mental links are established, a light bulb flashes in my head, a release of chemicals generates feelings of bitterness and melancholy. Another assassination had happened few days ago, a jumble of fuzzy images of ambulances, police, blood, metallic pieces sweeps through my mind, this leads into that official decision to close down schools.
Melting down, invaded by thousands of question marks hammering on my poor skull, I drag myself into the toilet. For a second, I hesitate between grapping a comic book, a light traveler’s diary or the Economist so as to enhance my daily experience of bonding with human nature. I am suddenly alarmed by the beeping of my mobile phone in my bedroom, announcing the landing of an sms. My heart starts pounding. The hammering of question marks intensifies. I rush back into the room. Iran has displayed its new far-ranging missile in a military parade, reads the sms. Sometimes, it’s another car bomb in Iraq. Adrenaline drops sharply. I am kind of relieved. It didn’t happen “chez-nous”! I can slip back into my morning routine.
This physical reaction engendered by an sms makes me poise for a while. Have I developed a sort of conditioning to sms? In a simplified scheme of one mental circuit, this could be something like: beeping (a typical alert of a received sms), an URGENT message sent by a mobile news service (I had subscribed to one for professional reasons) announcing some kind of “catastrophe”, heart pounding, weakness in my knees, stomach spasms…
I can’t help imagining myself as a dog in a Pavlov-type of experiments run by evil state-representatives all conspiring against me. Each one of them has the name of his country embroidered on his white lab coat, and they are all laughing maniacally. They could have been paid by mobile phone moguls to generate world disorder that could then drive people to use these news service sms.
Oh Well, conspiracy theories can have many many forms when one reaches a stage of such absurdity! © El Periodista

Die another day

I climbed up the stairs of the damaged building feeling bits and pieces of glass cracking up under my feet. Armed with a notebook and a pen, I marched hesitantly in search for the eyewitnesses, the ones who can display raw emotions. I talked to an old man in the hallway who burst in tears the minute he recalled the feelings of horror generated by the blast. To escape the crowd of journalists who smothered the shocked old man with attention instantly after noticing his tears, I went up to another floor. A partly wrecked door attracted my attention, so I knocked. An elderly woman opened in her pajamas, her wounded arm wrapped in a bandage. Two quaint dogs swirled around her, oblivious to the mass of glass pieces covering the floor. A relative of hers pulled me towards the balcony to show me “the miracle.” He pointed at a figurine of Saint Rita –the woman was also called Rita- still erect, despite the carnage, below a lit red light bulb.
Below, a hodgepodge of policemen, soldiers, ordinary people, rescuers, filled spaces between burned twisted cars, ambulances and army jeeps.
Rita, not the Saint, was looking absent-mindedly around her. She was restless moving around her house; unable to believe the state of mess it was in. Suddenly, her son burst into the room through the door, kept close by a water gallon and a piece of wood. The two embraced for few seconds. The son could not hold his tears. I looked at his frenetic expressions to figure out whether he was happy to see his mother in one piece or infuriated by what his dear mother had to go through.
The scene has become way too familiar, I thought. I knew exactly the steps I was to follow to produce an article where I am supposed to squeeze all these confused emotions in.
Despite the chaos, there is a frightening sense of déjà vu about every car bomb I have covered. And every time, I can’t help feeling I am an alien trying to pierce into people’s minds and hearts.
I returned home exhausted with a multitude of sounds buzzing in my head. I called a friend who lived in the area of the car bomb. He was fine. He was going to check a book for learning Spanish, that I had recommended, at a bookshop right next to the blast. Fortunately, he changed his mind at the last moment. Another miracle?
A memory from my childhood is still vividly present on my mind. It was summer and I was playing cards with my sister. My mother was insisting I go and buy some groceries but I kept on telling her that I wanted to finish the game. Seconds later a bomb ripped through the walls of the living room. I was saved by a "divine intervention". A bomb had just exploded near that grocery store I was supposed to go to.
It's strange how this memory has been haunting me much more often in the past few years. When my mother used to urge me with a worried look to take care everytime I left home, my reaction was always to say with the nonchalance of youth: "Mum, I can die anywhere, even here at home, if that huge chandelier fell on my head!"
But now I am constantly driven into the mental paths of the "what ifs?".
"I guess I’ll die another day, it’s not my time to go…", Madonna would have said! © El Periodista

What's cooking?

In the middle of the current political hodgepodge, I (a calculated sigh) was worrying about what to cook for dinner yesterday.
In the bus on my way to Beirut, I listened to the news. The presenter was warning of an “orgy” of divisions, partitioning, dissections and bisections (which all more or less mean the same thing); The whole jumble was said in a fluctuating somber tone inspiring anxiety over a nearby black future i.e. the upcoming presidential elections.
Meanwhile, I was exchanging SMSs with my long-awaited date about food.
Once at home, I browsed through the Yahoo Lebanon News articles stumbling upon another series of split, chaos, tension and other related terms as I prepared a list of groceries to buy and looked for enticing recipes.
In the kitchen, tears flooded in my eyes as I chopped onions trying to picture what will come after dinner. In the next room, the background noise of the holly 8 o’clock news bulletin roared with meaningless news.
I was suddenly struck by the thought that I might have become totally indifferent to the fate of “my” country.
I decided to boycott Berri’s interview on LBC.
Have I actually lost any sense of responsibility because I don’t feel concerned about our politicians’ daily warnings?
Maybe! But around me that day, I sensed complicity with the whole community. Everybody was preparing for his first Iftar. (Of course, I was buying wine instead of Amar-Eddine juice, but that’s not the point.) Nobody really cared about the positions of a one so-called man-of-state or another politician announcing his “presidential program”. (We should really learn to use more humble terms especially when all of us have access to channels around the world and can watch a presidential debate in France.)
We have simply become politically numb, I guess. The people of this country, all grouped under the generic word Lebanese, do not really care about “freedom, independence and sovereignty,” simply because our dear politicians have used them in all possible combinations and declinations to the point of revealing their true intentions: engaging in a Zajal competition. Our political class has mastered the art of the hollow rhetoric and we can’t but clap for such an achievement.
Lately, I liked to point out that my biggest fear these days was not being blown-up by a bomb but getting stuck in an elevator because of an unexpected electricity cut. Maybe I am exaggerating. Security is an issue not to be taken lightly. But so is electricity!
Everyday, I dig for any decent coverage of the recurrent electricity cuts. All I find instead is detailed accountings of the blabbering of X and Y. We are honestly fed-up.
Or let me speak for myself. I think this country is much less divided than they want us to believe. I freely move from North to South and East to West. I rarely feel threatened.
It’s time to tackle the real day-to-day issues and problems… Because everyone has at some point an important dinner to prepare for! © El Periodista

the story of a Green Line and a Yellow Building (adult version)

Near the once-called green line, which severed Beirut during the long-drawn-out civil war, lies a pale, deeply stricken yellow building.
For almost seventeen years, the Lebanese, who entered a tedious phase of convalescence since the end of violence in 1990, were faced with the memory of their war every time they passed by this building.
The traces of shrapnel and bullets covering its walls mirrored the atrocity of the past conflict. The faded elegance of its columns and structures talked of the lost glory of the entire city.
Epitomizing that sharp contrast between beauty and horror so representative of Beirut’s metamorphosis, the building in its worn state was an ideal memorial of the Lebanese civil war.
Recently, the yellow building was suddenly concealed from view. It was not condemned to demolition like most traditional houses sadly are in this country. It is actually still standing in its wrecked state albeit completely hidden behind a gigantic poster with the drawing of its soon-to-be-revamped version.
On a first impression, the idea that the edifice will be restored and thus saved from the dejecting fate of destruction is heartwarming. A closer examination of the poster brings to light the destiny of the yellow building. Below the drawing, one can read in big letters: “A Museum for the Memory of Beirut,” a project initiated by the municipality of Beirut.
So after all, Beirut -which bolsters one of the most complex modern histories in the world- will be endowed with a museum documenting and exhibiting the various stages of its past!
My mind kept buzzing with questions for a moment. The visitors of the to be museum will see models of the city’s old tramway? They will have the chance to marvel at a sample of objects sold in its old downtown Souks in the 40s and 50s? They will listen to the accounts of an ex-sniper? They will be able to hear the voice of an ordinary mother telling how she breast fed her baby in a shelter as the city was being shelled?
It was actually naïf to even hint at questions like these. Rabih Mroue, one of Lebanon’s most outstanding artists, was recently banned from showing his latest play in Beirut. His “crime” was tackling the still-too-sensitive topic of the war –a phase that we have officially and supposedly put behind us seventeen years ago.
So, it comes as no surprise to learn that Beirut’s “Memory Museum” will eventually contain only a bunch of potteries and coins unearthed by archeological digs. Of course archeological findings are not to be undermined but it’s rather insulting to reduce the “memory” of Beirut to its ancient history.
In what looks like a practice common to authoritarian regimes, Lebanese officials have decided that Beirut’s citizens do not possess the maturity needed to reflect on the history of their city beyond Antiquity. Beirut under the Roman Empire was deemed the most recent phase that is benign enough to be exposed without jeopardizing “coexistence and national unity.”
Since the assassination of Premier Rafik Hariri, the past, specifically that pertaining to the civil war, has been constantly evoked in a selective and amputated manner. Remembrance has been appropriated by the country’s political class and merely used as a tool to gain influence. Parcels of the country’s history have been carefully trimmed and packaged to fit a certain narrow political paradigm.
However, bold attempts to shed light on the past through its various phases and convolutions are never really allowed to spill into the public sphere.
Actually, the “ritual” of covering the ravaged yellow building with a thin intact trompe l’oeil appearance reveals the official policy of dealing with the past, which merely consists in refurbishing the surface while keeping the core rotten and unhealed.
The state rationale is that remembering is dangerous when it is performed by the populace. Judging by a supposedly imminent risk of Lebanon falling again into the precipices of internal fighting, any productive debate on the past is silenced.
We’re told that the quest for understanding preceding events generates conflicts; therefore, any kind of even minimal reflection on the past should be shunned.
But why can’t we simply revive all versions of the past and place them side-by-side in a museum or another form of public space? By accepting that Beirut had divergent and multifaceted realities, we would be truly honoring the numerous and conflicting memories of the city.
Until the day we’re deemed capable of processing our collective memories, let’s simply leave the yellow building speak for itself. © El Periodista

The Story of a Green Line and a Yellow Building (fairy tale version)

Once upon a time, there was a lavish green line formed of interweaving wild plants, separating two quaint villages known as West and East Beirut. The line fostered balance and harmony between the inhabitants of the two towns. A pale yellow building bearing smooth curved lines and elegant columns looked over the line, reflecting light and profusion unto its vegetation. Symbiosis was prevalent, until one day an army of microscopic beasts spread out of the line eating away, painfully and slowly, all the elements of the two towns.
The yellow building moaned resisting erosion as it witnessed the crumbling of everything around. The elements’ spirits forced to escape decaying matter found refuge on the walls of the building where they carved small niches.
Time led to a total erosion of life and non-life. Only the yellow building was left, preserving in its small cavities the souls and memories of the two towns and their green line’s infinite components.
Spreading all over, the army of tiny scavengers finally grew into new forms of life around the yellow building. The memories of the old times were left undeterred. They went on resting in peace for years, mirroring from time to time parcels of the past to passersby.
But the occasional escape of rebellious past memories was seen as a poisonous threat to the modern town’s bare atmosphere.
The wise descendants of the scavengers unanimously decided then to asphyxiate all the spirit particles of the past. The refuge holes should all be filled forever; they said. The past’s parasitic interference would be defeated for good; they triumphed.
They decided to baptize the new yellow building finally ridded of its infinite minute pasts as: the Museum of the Memory of Beirut (the name of one ancient Atlantic city mentioned in some weary manuscripts.)
Having one clean polished Memory was regarded as a safe foundation base for a glorious future. By that same principle, the citizens of the new modern town were subjected to regular meticulous sessions for cleaning their internal organs. It was suspected that some undisciplined past particles might have escaped into the souls and minds of the good citizens.
Soon, the heavy past would be lost forever prompting an uncontested air of unity in the modern town of Beirut.
The people and the structures of the city would be beautiful and glittering on the outside with an inside so pure that it’s absolutely empty. © El Periodista

Heigh Ho Nation

Since that battle started in the North of the country, a magical change occurred in our society. We all became “better” people. We engaged as a nation in the mother of all battles; the epic struggle between Good and Evil. 
The camp where the so-called tragic events are taking place might be far from where we live. Well at least not close enough for the steady sound of bombings or the sight of billows of smoke to pester us. Yet, every one of us feels that battle fermenting inside his own guts. 
We are constantly compelled to turn on the TV and get infiltrated with a brief “update” on Nahr Al Bared. Every now and then, we sense an urge to see more smoke rising from building skeletons, the frame shaking from repetitive shelling and a reporter pointing fingers and telling bedtime fairy tales, all very well researched and sourced. And then, we recline in our sofa to ingurgitate that new dose of righteousness. 
We have no need to see more; that Manichean battle is as ancient as time. We start feeling the forces of Good inside us fighting heroically against the forces of evil. It’s like a mix of pride and power. God with all his might will guide us into safety. 
The mere idea of the camp comforts us about the virtues of our values and our morality. There is not a single slot for doubts. Angels and demons have never made such a clearer appearance. 
May our blessed army smash those terrorists! Long lives our Nation! © El Periodista