Nostalgia

In cities suffering from acute chauvinism, tourists and foreigners feel such a compassion to every other stranger in the city. Locals kind of become the enemy who knows where everything is, where to go, which taxi not to take, and which to take, which coffee not to drink, and which places give you food poisoning, they know road shortcuts, when the sales season begins, cheap bookstores... and you miss that place you used to own like no one. 

Is talent overrated?

Which is worst: a wasted talent that you fail to nurture or a wasted effort on a talent that you don't even have? Here are some answers I got to this question. A "talented" Lebanese musician once told me: "there can't be a wasted talent for talent doesn't make you sleep at night until you do something about it".  But this seemingly famous violinist Pablo Sarasate had said "for 37 years I have practiced 14 hours a day and now they call me a genius?". Who do I believe?

The dust is in the system

I was asked today by the head of cleaners at the office where I work, to give my feedback about the cleaners, or the one cleaner to be  precise. To be honest, the cleaner is a nice guy who throws the same joke at me everyday that smoking is unhealthy. But objectively, he is the worst cleaner I have seen. Not that I care much, and I don't. My theory is that the more work you have, the cleaner your desk would be. It is the absence of work that would make it dusty. But then, you would have plenty of time to clean it yourself. Common sense. Other colleagues have been complaining a lot about the cleaner but I was to give the feedback because I am the only Arabic speaker. I thought about it for a moment, though lousy as he is, I don't want the guy to lose his job, the other colleagues won't understand Arabic so I can say whatever I want. I also thought that I would report bad managers who are not doing their job but why wouldn't I report a cleaner? Am I letting any sense of pity cloud my judgment? I hate that feeling. But wouldn't the bad boss deserve to be kicked out more because he makes much more undeserved money? Then the thought that the system has strong safeguards protecting lousy managers but loose ends at the bottom of the chain made me frown, give a serious look of anger, and say in Arabic: he is great. Everyone loves him here.

Amman: City of dust

(A Lebanese in Jordan) 
It has been almost a month since I arrived to Amman for my 6-month assignment. I haven't been out much, haven't been to the Dead Sea or Al-'aqaba or Jarash or Wadi Rum or Petra or any of the must-see places in Jordan. My movement was restricted to this cement city called Amman and my encounters did not go beyond Iraqi, Syrian, and Jordanian taxi drivers and Medhat, the Egyptian concierge. It is hard not to notice though the embryonic connection between cities and your mood, and Amman is a city without a soul. A city of dust. I did notice however the full moon projection on my balcony. I seldom look at the sky, I said, to myself, and I don't know if it was the loneliness inside or the ugliness outside that made me turn my head upward. But, I thought that a full moon is unnecessary in places where no full moon dance would follow. Yesterday was the first day I saw people smiling, and I smiled too. I have been to pubs and restaurants, and there too, smiles are a rare commodity. Though I have always despised the fake Lebanese so called "joie de vivre", I have looked around for some fake smiles. Faking a smile I believe can delude you into thinking you are happy. You could be but you fail to notice. The first lesson I learned here is not to mention that I am Lebanese. Now I am a Syrian here. Hell with those who would now accuse me of not having any sense of patriotism, because yes I don't; I don't feel any less Syrian than a Lebanese anyway. But to those same people, I say, that's what being a Lebanese here is like: a marriage proposal from a taxi driver (as a second younger, sexier, cuter wife, using the words of the taxi driver himself, and that was after he learned my nationality), a comment from another taxi driver that the Lebanese got the best accent because it is soft, sexy, and flirty (and yes, those were the exact words), and an offensive compliment that unlike the Lebanese, Jordanian women are fat and ugly. Of course, by no means I blame Lebanese women for this, and none of it justifies the comments of these men. But you would understand that saying that I am Syrian comes as a protection measure. Well my safety is my first concern here, and educating these men is my least. The word Lebanese seems to have become equivalent with prostitution here. But you Lebanese, are no better, come to think of it, you have the same connotation for Ukrainian, Russian, and Eastern European women. As for Medhat, he needs a post on its own.

That's how I let go of my conscience

I issued my judicial record the other day and it had a stamp that said: no criminal charges. Requesting a criminal record is just a normal procedure that you do in Lebanon for every single official document you need to issue, including, a driving licence (so a former prisoner is not allowed to drive!) and now the genius Lebanese minister of information (a ministry that should not exist in the first place) also wants to ban ex-prisoners from blogging or owning websites.  I looked at my honorary document that certified that I am a good citizen and I suddenly envied every resident of Roumieh.

This piece of paper was a kind of wake up call. A good citizen in a perfectly corrupt state is rather a certificate of cowardliness, of surrender, of submission. More, it felt like the state is hereby pronouncing me officially stupid. Congratulations, you win the prize of the perfect stupid citizen, here's your paper, my criminal record said.

My friends say that my problem is that I have a conscience. Having a conscience can torment you at night and prevent you from sleep. That you know. But having a conscience can also sometimes leave you with a feeling of guilt, a feeling I have every time I look in the eyes of my sister for whom I was unable to make a Wasta that could have changed her life, and I could, but I didn't.

Then my clean record came and I suddenly understood what my friends meant to tell me. This conscience is something hereditary. I know where it comes from. My parents had it, this disease. So I realized, that's why my parents have been working for more than forty years and are still poor?. "We haven't been praying enough," I heard my dad say the other day as he contemplated his condition. Praying is letting go of the one bird in your hand for the sake of the 10 on the tree, I thought. It just hushes that call for justice and that burst of anger burning inside your chest. We need to stop putting down those volcanoes inside us. We need to ban all those stress management centers, close down those therapeutic clinics, and ban praying if we could. We need less sane individuals, less waiting, less patience, less praying. We need all our anger, all our madness, and all our fury. We need to awaken the beast inside us.

But I have a clean record. Who am I to judge my dad for praying? I am no different than him after all. He prays, I keep my conscience clean, and we both let go of the one bird in our hand: what's to be done here now. I have been a good citizen, what has that brought me? All is wrong around me and all I say: this is a product of others' ignorance. Only if people were wiser! But wisdom is a disease. It only weighs you down with that feeling called responsibility, and you feel you no longer can go on ignoring all the wrong around you. But instead all you do is put the blame on those others who are guided by their ignorance. Wisdom is a disease that is hardly contagious, so you end up quarantining yourself voluntarily for you no longer belong. You, the wise, cannot join them in their ignorance. Hold on, why not? I thought. Yes, I can.

Then this idea came to me. What if I join others in the festivities of ignorance. What if I I no longer wait in queues. What if I throw garbage out my my car window. What if I drive on green, yellow, and red lights. What if I honk my car horn every time another enlightened fellow tried to overpass me. What if I park on handicapped spots which I have not paid for. What if I cross speed limit and smile to speed monitoring cameras. What if I threaten to use my phone every time I am stopped by the police. But again, what if I do all that and nothing happens. What if the police is intimidated by my call and let me go. What if I say, arrest me, take me to prison, I broke the law, and he says he won't but that I shouldn't do it again. What if I begged him to take me to Roumieh where I am no longer pronounced the perfect stupid citizen.

Then I thought, what if those I call ignorant were just like me. What if they too used to have a conscience one day and I just happen to arrive late to the realm of real wisdom. What if I am the ignorant one here. My friends were right after all. They tried to warn me. I was sticking to my conscience like one sticks to virginity, keeping it for the right government, for the right time, for that day when... but I lost my virginity. I was raped by the system. I am a just another victim of the system. That's why my criminal record is clean.

Now I am stuck. I have to do something that stains my criminal record. I refuse to be the perfect stupid citizen, but the system fucks you even with that. It doesn't matter if you follow the law or if you don't. You could still have a clean record. Cleaning your record is easy anyway. The paper you have in your hand is an illusion of a paper and the system that fucks you everyday is an illusion of a system. So let go of your conscience. It is of no use to you. That's how I let go of mine.

Dear Mr. Daouk

If your draft law passes, and it won't, I will abide by it only after 1) you learn the alphabets, 2) you learn how to utter three full words in Arabic consecutively, 3) you make one full sentence that makes sense, and 4) stutter no more than once per word. When you manage to do that, maybe then we can start considering to discuss whether I want to provide my contact information, let alone, my name. Until then, I will do my best to violate every single article in your draft law especially article one. I will make it my purpose to look for your definition of what constitutes a breach of public morals and I will write about it. Do you know that Montaigne in the 16th century wrote in his book "Essais" that he had a small penis? did I already violate your law, Mr. Daouk? and do you know that Montaigne is considered to be the first blogger? If Montaigne lived among us today, he would be blogging, and you, Mr Daouk, would have banned him. I tell you what Mr Daouk, take this draft law, print some copies of it, squeeze them into a big paper ball, and go play with it in front of your house.

P.S. I forgot to tell you that after you finish making the ball, soak it in some water, then go play with it in front of your house.

P.P.S. Why do I feel I am still not done with you Mr Daouk? Have you ever thought how stupid you are, let's say on a scale of zero to 10, zero being legally stupid and 10 being Marwan Charbil stupid?

Ugliness

I like this blog. As if Beirut is not already ugly enough; It is littered by ugly sexist billboards. And, talk about creativity!

For once...

Okay I have to say something on women's day. A lot has been written today about the fight for our rights, the patriarchal system, and the long road that still stretches ahead of us. That's all good. But I want to add this: in the meantime, and as you go back tomorrow to starving yourself, taking daily measurements of your curves, and enduring painful lazer sessions, why don't you start training your muscles, a little bit more everyday, and when the time comes strike back as hard as you can, literally.

Why buy when you can print

Get Fairuz out of the list. That's first. Then omit maybe one or two more names, print out the rest and use as a toilet paper roll.

On women's day

So it is women's day and I have to say something about women, except that I don't want to say anything about women right now, this only reminds me of school days when you are asked to write an essay about freedom while all you feel writing about and all the ideas that come to your head are about friendship for example, so after one or two sentences about freedom, you start talking about friendship and from there on all you write are arguments trying to convince the teacher that the two topics are actually connected and that the teacher should keep reading because here it comes, here it comes, and two more pages on friendship then time ends up and before they snatch the exam paper from you, you manage to scribble: In conclusion, unless you appreciate friendship, you will never know what freedom tastes like. Happy women's day.

Never?

How often do you hear someone say: I am just an ordinary man, there is really nothing special about me.

Define awkward

There are moments when you say hi to someone and intend to keep walking but then they hi you back and keep staring at you with nothing to say... You want to tell them: okay, now you can go back to staring at whatever else you were staring at.

Maybe I am just a bad listner

Am I just a bad listener or am I surrounded by people who have nothing interesting to say?

Post-Modern God

The idea of God, as created by whoever prehistoric man who thought about it first, needs to be recreated to make sense to the post-modern man. Tell us for example that on judgment day, he will distribute iPads and show us our life on Youtube or that in paradise we will have non stop high speed free Wifi and that at least we will have the choice between Gin, Vodka, Arak, Whiskey, or Beer. It is highly possible after all that some Irish, Scottish, or Russian people, will also end up up there.

Don't fight it...

One without enemies is one without character.

Mondays

No, it's not one of those days! It's just another Monday.

The Dictator: Intellectual Crisis

"The Dictator" is a play currently being performed in Beirut, Al-Madina theater. I really am not an expert of any kind of this performing art, not even close to being one, and this is not a critique, but if you care to hear the opinion of someone who happened to watch it, someone who by no means represents anyone else who happened to be there, and someone who left the theater hearing the masses parroting: wow, beautiful, genius, the best play ever, and other words that only bounced back as they touched my ear, and despite that remained someone who left the theater with the feeling that if a torture ritual can heal you and wash away your sins, then I am definitely a re-born person now, and if that was the purpose then the play is indeed a great success, but I have to say this: I found the acting to be good, but between us, this is not the most difficult genre of acting, and the set to be okay, because there wasn't any, I mean it could have been performed in my living room and it wouldn't have made a difference, but the most annoying part was the script, which is by Issam Mahfouz, the guy this play is intended to honor. I am not going to say more especially that I respect the Director Lina Abyad and I have watched and liked some of her other plays, but I advise you to go and watch it and maybe you could tell me if it is the play itself or maybe just me being in a cranky mood. It could be. But before you judge me tell me if this particular genre of drama is an elite art that is addressed to an elite audience then no need to sell tickets widely and next time perform it in a smaller theater and if it is something beyond the grasp of the layman then spare us the torture of feeling intellectually inferior because not everyone is going to cheer what they find hard to appreciate. But if this is a play addressed to us, the masses, then allow me to say that I just don't like it, and that it is most probably not my problem.

P.S. Most people in the theater did like the play, so do go and watch it. I told you others did find it stunning. Here is the trailer, and here are some photos.

Brainwashed

Sometimes my mind becomes numb from constant exposure to conflicting brainwashing ideas. Can you please brainwash me one at a time?

Luck

If you apply the concept of probability to luck you will find that it simply does not apply. Luck is not random; it always falls on the wrong person. Luck is not a fair game. It is a game that only gives you the illusion that the likeliness that luck will happen to you is the same as everyone else. The longer you live, the more you could prove to yourself that if you are an unlucky person, the likeliness is that you will never become any luckier. You can hope, but hope is the weapon of the unlucky. Lucky people don't hope, they just wait. Albert Einstein should not be famous for his theory on relativity but for saying this: at any rate, I am convinced that God does not play dice.

Shame

I watched this movie "Shame", a kind of controversial film if you ask me. People either hated it or loved it. I am not going  to judge the movie myself or tell you what I think of it, but I am just going to say this: the movie is about a sex addict and here is the full synopsis: there was once a sex addict. The End.

Beirut Hotel: Waste of time

I watched Beirut Hotel. Again, I think we started to see some Lebanese production with a good script, good acting (especially Fadi Abi Samra and definitely not Rodni Haddad) and good shooting techniques, but does that alone make a good movie? I mean come on, where is the story? The movie claims to be a spy movie or a thriller; I wasn't thrilled at all, not even for a second, throughout the whole movie. I didn't laugh, I didn't cry, I didn't feel anything, I didn't think about anything, it just wasted two hours of my time. When is someone going to come up with a Lebanese movie without all those cliches about Lebanon and without all those "this is Beirut", and "this is how we live", and "I am Lebanese, if you lie to me, I kill you"? what does that have to do with you being Lebanese? The main idea of the movie which was bluntly and explicitly mentioned is this: "if you think you understand Lebanon, that means it wasn't well explained to you". So here is another Lebanese movie that reinforces all those cliches about Lebanon, the complex country that is beyond explanation, beyond the grasp of humankind, the unique (in a bad way this time but still unique), the exotic, confused, complicated, different, etc. well, you know what? Lebanon is not so complicated and if you find it hard to explain it maybe that's because you don't understand it yourself so how about you don't make a movie about something you do not understand, because to me it is simple. Complications in Lebanon are no less than in any other country, you just think your country is special, and complicated in a special way. The problem is square and simple: Lebanon is a racist, sectarian, selfish, hypocrite, fake, and pretentious country with people who whine all day about miseries they brought upon themselves, who misread their history and keep recreating it, who victimize themselves to shy away from facing what they really are: racist, sectarian, selfish, hypocrite, fake, and pretentious people. What are you trying to tell people here Danielle Arbid? You want to make a spy movie with unnecessary sex scenes, go ahead, but I still don't get the point. So now instead of the virgin woman living in the village, you bring the sexy liberal woman who lives in the city? how creative! Now the movie should never have been censored. But again, was it really censored or did Arbid sign an agreement with the censorship committee (funny there is such a thing) which she later violated? The censorship committee gave her permission to shoot the film on condition she doesn't mention the Hariri Assassination to which she allegedly agreed. Arbid should have made her case against censorship back then and refuse to sign but instead she produced the original script ignoring the condition and later made her case against censorship. It was stupid to impose such a condition by the committee in the first place but it wouldn't have made any difference if Hariri was not mentioned. But forget about all of that, say you are not Lebanese and you are watching the movie without any background about Lebanon, say you are a Vietnamese watching it, assuming you get through the first few minutes and you don't switch to something else, unless you are just waiting to see some boobs as someone mentioned to me, you would be watching a movie that tells you from the start that there is a conspiracy going on, and so you wait till the end of the movie to see how all of this is going to end (is the French lawyer a spy? is Abbas an Israeli agent? does he know too much? or was he just a victim of a bigger conspiracy?) only to realize after two hours that the conspiracy, the riddle you want to see solved, will never be solved, and you will never understand anything, why? because this is Lebanon, one of the characters tells you in case you didn't realize that two hours had already passed and there is no more time to give you answers. You would end the movie with one thought: Thank God I am Vietnamese.

The Debt

I watched this movie "The Debt", a Zionist propaganda film that intends to show how humanitarian, good-hearted, and well-intentioned the Mossad is! Now the movie is bad in all respects so they get a very good cast, but even with that the movie is unbelievably boring. What is funny though is that despite all the propaganda, you could still see how incompetent, stupid, deceiving, and hypocrite the Mossad agents are. That at least is true.

I can't help it

Two persons make me laugh, real hard, and I am one of them.

He wasn't good at Math

The weather forecast has been announcing for days now that the storm will hit Lebanon today. I wake up this morning and put on all my clothes. Everyone in Beirut had done the same: people have emptied their closets only the storm did not arrive. Someone must have made a small mistake while calculating wind speed in relation to distance. It happens, here, only all the time.

P.S. Someone commented on this saying that someone just wanted to sell some umbrellas. It happens too.

Typical

The Lebanese people take pride in reading and sharing anything that is said in the West about them, even if it were something mocking them. They think that simply because they are mentioned in Western media, that means they have some importance or that they are unique somehow. Show them this video for example, and they will tell you it is cute or funny, they will laugh themselves, and instead of changing a certain behavior, they will adopt it even more and make it part of their identity and uniqueness. In short, tell a Lebanese you are a donkey and they will start making donkey sounds.

De Niro's Game

I just finished Rawi Hage's "De Niro's Game", a must read novel about the Lebanon civil war in the context of East Beirut. If you have seen the movie "West Beirut", then you would certainly wish to see this book turned into an "East Beirut" film. Rawi Hage is an excellent novelist and storyteller and you will appreciate the bald use of Arabic style in his English prose underneath every sentence, very elegantly crafted to the smallest detail. His images are so vivid, modern, and creative. The book will hook you from the start and will keep you holding your breaths until you have finished it. Then you will rush to open the second book he wrote "The cockroach" also breathtakingly beautiful. I liked "The cockroach" more but that's maybe because I read it first and was impressed by this very perceptive novelist. You will also not miss the influence of Albert Camus' "the stranger" on both novels and the similarities between Rawi Hage's main character and narrator and the protagonist of the "the stranger" which he refers to in "De Niro's Game". What also made me appreciate Rawi Hage even more is that although he writes in English, you will not get the impression that he is writing to a Western audience. Both novels can be described as universal by all means, but you will enjoy reading them more if you are an Arab, particularly Lebanese, and especially if you know and appreciate Arabic literature.

Basic

You are not smart enough until you know how to be stupid a little.

I am a boy

I always feel sorry for young boys who call Radio Stations and are addressed as girls, sometimes as grown up women. The host would say: hello Madam, and they would suddenly stutter and say: my name is Hassan. See? it is not easy to be a kid.

Hesitation

When I hesitate I remind myself of this: better regret something you did than regret something you did not do... That usually ends with: crap!

I will never drink again! ever... ever...

Among the very common phrases you hear and say on the morning following New Year's eve are: "Oh... my head", and "what happened last night?" (usually while your hand is still on your head), and "where do all these bruises come from?", and you could say "where am I?" and "who are you?" but the winner of all time is "I will never drink again".