decaf

As my short stay in Lebanon has come to an end the strongest feeling that remains in me is emptiness, or being surrounded by emptiness more precisely. All my friends, those with whom I usually set the flame of the daily life alive in Lebanon are not here. The boys and girls are scattered, let me count, Sweden, Germany, UK, France, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Oman. Well it’s been fun, I’ve roamed around Lebanon day and night, enjoyed the semi-winter semi-spring weather but I guess the timing was not perfect in particular, except for being able to see a cousin that I haven’t seen in a very long time, she’s here for a short period before going back for her PHD studies in New York; anyway it’s sad how this place is deprived from its young blood, those who are able to make a difference and to make it a better place….. But no one really cares, so why should I? Everyone is so proud of being Lebanese and satisfied with it. I’ve always wondered where does this national pride that exists in all sects come from, everyone says proud to be lebanese; but where does it go when the Lebanese deal with each other? I mean if they’re all proud to be lebanese why they are backstabbing sons of bitches when they deal with each other? And more, where does this pride come from? What did the lebanese nation achieve so that they feel all this immeasurable pride? I really don’t know, but I think it’s nothing but racism, they feel superior when they compare themselves to the surrounding countries, and add to that the fact that they convert every single silly stuff to be a miracle; an example is how the Lebanese look at the fact that their financial sector didn’t fall with the latest crisis, we are extremely smart people no one in the whole world has seen it coming except for us and they forget that we buy the cheapest candy bar in HUNDREDS of our local currency and that our financial system has sustained major blows one after the other because we were idiots enough to kill each other and to destroy our country when others were building and developing, and that its through a lot of trial and error that our system has learned to avoid even the minimally risky investments over the past years, because even the minimally risky would be fatal. And honestly I think that the crisis not reaching Lebanon is a bad sign, a sign that the Lebanese economy is so underdeveloped, we didn’t catch the crisis because we have no foreign investments and no strong foreign economic relations, so there’s nothing to link us to this economic heat ball that suffered the crisis, we’re on the margin of the world; the Lebanese economic mass is smaller than that of a single medium Japanese car manufacturer, and its living on charity from the east and the west……….. Ok, I’ve nagged a lot but seriously that’s how things are in Lebanon, a protracted growing sociopolitical crisis and no one cares, all they care about is politics, the Lebanese style of politics. The question I’ve been asked the most during my stay was: you will not be here during the elections? And I say no and I don’t want to vote… Why? We need your vote plus even if you don’t want you should put a white paper that’s your civil right… Well I’m not going to be fooled by the civil right’s white paper, as a Lebanese citizen I don’t have any civil rights, I’m not worth anything and I can’t do anything unless I belong to a party and I have strong connections by selling my soul to my sect’s leader; well I will not do that and I will not vote because it’s my way to say that I refuse the whole electoral and political system and it would be a hypocrite thing in this case to vote. And I won’t be fooled by the civil rights white paper, keep it where it is it’s better for the environment that way.

Enough nagging I guess, I was hoping for a livelier couple of weeks but I can’t complain it’s been really nice with some moments to remember, and a good relief after several months of continuous pressure and overworking, it gave me the time to look for a capacity of self criticism in me and to see where I actually stand from some stuff.