Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Just wondering...
I see why men fast: they get each between 70 and 100 women, hour al -ayn, virgins, in Paradise. But what do women, straight women, get? (Homosexuals go straight to hell) I assume they get to drink from the rivers of wine. Fair enough. Or do they all go to hell too? So women fast, and go to Paradise to get drunk and watch an orgy of drunk men? I don't want to imagine how paradise toilets smell like. Oh, maybe they get to clean the toilets! Such a promising afterlife, what better paradise can there be after hell of a life on earth!
Sunday, July 22, 2012
At the end of a long exhausting day...
If we could breath under the waters, we wouldn't bother to learn to swim.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
If Kafka was here...
Have you been to a police station in Lebanon? If you haven't, you should. You don't need to go steal or kill somebody to live the experience, it's enough to kiss your girlfriend or boyfriend in public, or just look gay. But you can also claim you lost your ID. I on the other hand did lose my ID, but you don't have to, because, as you will discover in a bit, you can just claim you did, and get as many IDs as you wish. You might say, why do I need more than one ID? sure, but you say this either because you don't lose your ID easily or as often as I do and you haven't yet felt the need for spare IDs or you just don't have a criminal mind. In either case, this post is for you: if you are a good citizen, find out the truth about what you proudly call the 'state' of Lebanon, and if you have a twisted mind, I am probably not breaking the secret here, so no need to arrest me.
My experience at the police station in Lebanon has always been enjoyable, not that it usually is. What you get there is more than "one cup of coffee going and one cup of tea coming" as we say in Arabic, you get to see for yourself why the hell nothing works in this so called 'state' and you wonder why you are still paying your bills. But make sure you free a whole day for the experience. Take a leave from work if you should.
What is the occasion for this post? there is usually no occasion for anything I write on this blog, but this time there is. This month was declared "security month" in Lebanon. Ironically, or maybe not so much, two banks were robbed, maybe three, I stopped following, protests roamed all streets from north to south, east to west, you probably have heard of the new burning tires fashion, and a bull even raided a supermarket in the middle of the city (I am serious, check it here).
So, I lost my wallet some time ago, outside the country (and this is no small detail as you will find out) and I had to issue a new ID (not that you really need it unless you lost your driving licence too!). I go to the police station, the guy there, makes me comfortable, brings a chair, some tea, some coffee, offers pepsi, takes out some blank papers, adjusts his seat, gives me a serious look and asks me: where are you from? You would be expecting something like: how can I help you. What does it matter, you think? but he probably needs it for his papers, you wonder (now this started to sound like Kafka's). Of course, he is interested to know my religion. As I was beginning to explain that I am here because I lost my ID, a woman comes in. She had just been robbed (a few meters near the police station). With the same calm he received me, he offers her a chair, some tea, some coffee, and asks her to relax. He explains to her that it is not the first time someone is robbed, and that she needs to file a lawsuit against an anonymous. The woman goes mad and starts shouting: so you are not going to do anything? the guy is probably still down, I know how he looks like, many people saw him take my bag and run away, I want to file a suit against the state not against an anonymous!!. Very composed, he answers not without sarcasm: do you see anyone else here? You expect me to leave this place and go after him? sit down. He starts with me, writing very slowly, manually of course, on his piece of paper, that I lost my ID, how, when, where, asking me from time to time, about some grammatical rules. He then asks me to take the paper and make copies of it outside the station. To make a long story short, and such stories are never short, I lost a whole day, from one official office to another, waiting in long queues, making fun of our so called state with other people waiting in queues and public officers joining us in mocking the 'state' from time to time, cursing their life.
The guy at the police station had the solution to the problem though. He had this brilliant theory that goes as such: put those thieves under my control and I will see that theft never happens again, I can teach them a lesson, they go too soft on them, see in Saudi Arabia, no one dares to steal, why? because they know their hands will be cut off, we need to cut off their hands. Only if you let me run this country!! His pearls of wisdom go beyond his post modern human rights theories. He explains: see? the robber has an advantage over the police, we are in uniform, he can easily identify us, but he is like any other person in the street. This is a hard job.
It sure is.
At another office, I had to run from one guy to the other asking where I should go to get again one more stamp on that piece of paper. Now, don't ask me what all those stamps are for. The guy at the station did not even make sure I lost my ID, how could he anyway, he just wrote that I did, but all the guys who stamped the paper thereafter and none of whom read a word of it, had to certify that I had indeed lost my ID. They were told they need to put a stamp on my paper and that's what they did, sitting behind a table that had only a stamp device on it and holding that very serious look on their face. This is a government institution after all, and government officials have to look very serious. Ignore the woman plucking her eyebrows there or the man who comes out of nowhere to place your paper on top of a thousand others because I am a woman. I asked them why do I need all those stamps? but they too didn't know why. Now you have to respect the order of the stamps, you cannot just go to all the people who need to stamp your paper randomly. Of course there is a logic to that. Oh, and before you go, do not trust whoever tells you what other papers you need to bring with you, because it will always be missing something, so just get every official document you might think of before you go, and get them all stamped by the Mokhtar, otherwise you will have to come back the next day and the day after and in between go and find that you got the opening hours wrong. When you go to get all the official stamps, expect that the stamping people do not all sit in the same office or building. Do some stretching before you venture irresponsibly, because you will have to run from one building to the other. I did say to one of the guys there, I do understand that you all need to stamp my paper, but at least sit next to each other. He said: why?, with this philosophical look on his face. See this can never be short, but I will try.
So, I get all the "necessary" stamps and a sense of victory overwhelms me, only I still don't have my ID!!
There is one more building to go to and off I go. Last step, I tell myself. I enter this gloomy underground room and I find shelves full of IDs, Lebanese IDs with cedars all over. They were stuffed in old brown boxes. My mother's drawer of "things we don't know where to put or if we will ever gonna need" looks more organized. Cockroaches roaming among them, half of them eaten away by mice and termites. As the guy was about to take my fingerprints (fingerprints, ha ha ha ha), he asks me: where did you lose your ID. From there on, it is another Kafkaesque hell. Outside Lebanon, I say. Ohhhh... I can't issue you an ID, he breaks the good news; The police station paper is not enough, you need to get the stamp of the ambassador at the country where you lost it! Another stamp!! and how easy!! You can imagine the look on my face. But he had an alternative: This is what you should do, he says, go to the nearest police station and say you lost your ID today in Hamra street, this is lying, I know, I shouldn't be saying this, but this is the only way unless you want to travel again and get the ambassador's stamp, then get all the stamps again, and come back here. It won't show anywhere that you had filed a contradictory claim!!! This was supported by his supervisor and his supervisor's supervisor. There is no other way, he said, this is your state, what can we do, this is how things work here. So, out of all things going wrong, issuing my ID cannot go wrong, it should follow stamp rules. And to get it right, I should lie! I wasn't surprised to tell you the truth. Nothing surprises me anymore.
But come to think of it, this is smart; what kind of criminal is willing to go through all those stamps to issue another ID or an ID with another name (a genuine one still)? in a way, this is a deterring technique. This is actually genius! Do not underestimate your state; it has your fingerprints too. How dare you commit any crime? The forensic experts of your state will bust you only they have never found any fingerprint in the history of the state. And if they ever did, can you imagine how the matching exercise would go? "We found the fingerprints!!! cheers!", "so who's the culprit?", "euhhhhhhhhhhh"....
P.S. On my way out of this last building, someone told me: don't worry, I know someone, he goes by the name of "el-X" he can get you a new ID in one phone call.
P.P.S I am told the Lebanese Forensic Team (LFT) was able to match the fingerprints at a crime scene once. They found 5 persons matching the same fingerprints. The forensic team knelt down for God is glorious.
My experience at the police station in Lebanon has always been enjoyable, not that it usually is. What you get there is more than "one cup of coffee going and one cup of tea coming" as we say in Arabic, you get to see for yourself why the hell nothing works in this so called 'state' and you wonder why you are still paying your bills. But make sure you free a whole day for the experience. Take a leave from work if you should.
What is the occasion for this post? there is usually no occasion for anything I write on this blog, but this time there is. This month was declared "security month" in Lebanon. Ironically, or maybe not so much, two banks were robbed, maybe three, I stopped following, protests roamed all streets from north to south, east to west, you probably have heard of the new burning tires fashion, and a bull even raided a supermarket in the middle of the city (I am serious, check it here).
So, I lost my wallet some time ago, outside the country (and this is no small detail as you will find out) and I had to issue a new ID (not that you really need it unless you lost your driving licence too!). I go to the police station, the guy there, makes me comfortable, brings a chair, some tea, some coffee, offers pepsi, takes out some blank papers, adjusts his seat, gives me a serious look and asks me: where are you from? You would be expecting something like: how can I help you. What does it matter, you think? but he probably needs it for his papers, you wonder (now this started to sound like Kafka's). Of course, he is interested to know my religion. As I was beginning to explain that I am here because I lost my ID, a woman comes in. She had just been robbed (a few meters near the police station). With the same calm he received me, he offers her a chair, some tea, some coffee, and asks her to relax. He explains to her that it is not the first time someone is robbed, and that she needs to file a lawsuit against an anonymous. The woman goes mad and starts shouting: so you are not going to do anything? the guy is probably still down, I know how he looks like, many people saw him take my bag and run away, I want to file a suit against the state not against an anonymous!!. Very composed, he answers not without sarcasm: do you see anyone else here? You expect me to leave this place and go after him? sit down. He starts with me, writing very slowly, manually of course, on his piece of paper, that I lost my ID, how, when, where, asking me from time to time, about some grammatical rules. He then asks me to take the paper and make copies of it outside the station. To make a long story short, and such stories are never short, I lost a whole day, from one official office to another, waiting in long queues, making fun of our so called state with other people waiting in queues and public officers joining us in mocking the 'state' from time to time, cursing their life.
The guy at the police station had the solution to the problem though. He had this brilliant theory that goes as such: put those thieves under my control and I will see that theft never happens again, I can teach them a lesson, they go too soft on them, see in Saudi Arabia, no one dares to steal, why? because they know their hands will be cut off, we need to cut off their hands. Only if you let me run this country!! His pearls of wisdom go beyond his post modern human rights theories. He explains: see? the robber has an advantage over the police, we are in uniform, he can easily identify us, but he is like any other person in the street. This is a hard job.
It sure is.
At another office, I had to run from one guy to the other asking where I should go to get again one more stamp on that piece of paper. Now, don't ask me what all those stamps are for. The guy at the station did not even make sure I lost my ID, how could he anyway, he just wrote that I did, but all the guys who stamped the paper thereafter and none of whom read a word of it, had to certify that I had indeed lost my ID. They were told they need to put a stamp on my paper and that's what they did, sitting behind a table that had only a stamp device on it and holding that very serious look on their face. This is a government institution after all, and government officials have to look very serious. Ignore the woman plucking her eyebrows there or the man who comes out of nowhere to place your paper on top of a thousand others because I am a woman. I asked them why do I need all those stamps? but they too didn't know why. Now you have to respect the order of the stamps, you cannot just go to all the people who need to stamp your paper randomly. Of course there is a logic to that. Oh, and before you go, do not trust whoever tells you what other papers you need to bring with you, because it will always be missing something, so just get every official document you might think of before you go, and get them all stamped by the Mokhtar, otherwise you will have to come back the next day and the day after and in between go and find that you got the opening hours wrong. When you go to get all the official stamps, expect that the stamping people do not all sit in the same office or building. Do some stretching before you venture irresponsibly, because you will have to run from one building to the other. I did say to one of the guys there, I do understand that you all need to stamp my paper, but at least sit next to each other. He said: why?, with this philosophical look on his face. See this can never be short, but I will try.
So, I get all the "necessary" stamps and a sense of victory overwhelms me, only I still don't have my ID!!
There is one more building to go to and off I go. Last step, I tell myself. I enter this gloomy underground room and I find shelves full of IDs, Lebanese IDs with cedars all over. They were stuffed in old brown boxes. My mother's drawer of "things we don't know where to put or if we will ever gonna need" looks more organized. Cockroaches roaming among them, half of them eaten away by mice and termites. As the guy was about to take my fingerprints (fingerprints, ha ha ha ha), he asks me: where did you lose your ID. From there on, it is another Kafkaesque hell. Outside Lebanon, I say. Ohhhh... I can't issue you an ID, he breaks the good news; The police station paper is not enough, you need to get the stamp of the ambassador at the country where you lost it! Another stamp!! and how easy!! You can imagine the look on my face. But he had an alternative: This is what you should do, he says, go to the nearest police station and say you lost your ID today in Hamra street, this is lying, I know, I shouldn't be saying this, but this is the only way unless you want to travel again and get the ambassador's stamp, then get all the stamps again, and come back here. It won't show anywhere that you had filed a contradictory claim!!! This was supported by his supervisor and his supervisor's supervisor. There is no other way, he said, this is your state, what can we do, this is how things work here. So, out of all things going wrong, issuing my ID cannot go wrong, it should follow stamp rules. And to get it right, I should lie! I wasn't surprised to tell you the truth. Nothing surprises me anymore.
But come to think of it, this is smart; what kind of criminal is willing to go through all those stamps to issue another ID or an ID with another name (a genuine one still)? in a way, this is a deterring technique. This is actually genius! Do not underestimate your state; it has your fingerprints too. How dare you commit any crime? The forensic experts of your state will bust you only they have never found any fingerprint in the history of the state. And if they ever did, can you imagine how the matching exercise would go? "We found the fingerprints!!! cheers!", "so who's the culprit?", "euhhhhhhhhhhh"....
P.S. On my way out of this last building, someone told me: don't worry, I know someone, he goes by the name of "el-X" he can get you a new ID in one phone call.
P.P.S I am told the Lebanese Forensic Team (LFT) was able to match the fingerprints at a crime scene once. They found 5 persons matching the same fingerprints. The forensic team knelt down for God is glorious.
Friday, July 20, 2012
All humans are animals but some humans are more animals than others
In the animal kingdom, there is nothing called 'stranger'. I have never thought of it before, but I doubt that if a frog comes across another frog, it hasn't met before, it will 'think' of it as a 'stranger'. They might even start jumping together (what frogs do, I think, not sure if they enjoy any other activities at first encounter) without introductions. What I am trying to say here is that, the concept of what we call a "stranger" exists only in the human kingdom. Now, the frog might not stop to introduce itself to the other frog (before they go jumping together), but we animals of the human kingdom, would have to (if we are to jump together that is). Frogs know frogs right away, the way we do too. But when we come across a stranger, we wonder, in fact, if he isn't actually an animal, an asshole, a dickhead, or a human. Many times we just assume, or have to assume, the stranger is actually the former rather than the latter, as a survival technique. Wait. Let me explain, if you have been working on growing your muscles, and you have trained your brain to become fearless of fellow men, strangers, good for you, you are not concerned with what comes next, this is for those who still haven't.
I have always admired Athens but was always jealous of Sparta.
It is said that humans are the only animals who have morality or can make a moral judgment. That is only partially true because only some humans can. It is more correct to say that humans are the only animals who can fear, and sometimes live in fear of, their own genre, or other humans. I haven't seen a cow look suspiciously at another cow, or a donkey, or a bee, or even a cockroach. Those are some of the animals I have seen with my bare eyes. Lest I sound like my father, let me explain to you that my knowledge about animals is, at best, poor, but my father made sure, against our obvious boredom, to lecture us about all sorts of facts and oddities from the animal kingdom, on one hand to show off his knowledge and on the other to explain to us that it is humans who are the animals not the other way around. This enlightened wisdom does not only come from having to grow up in a village but more from his passion for animal channels. He would watch any channel showing animals from animaux (his favorite) to the national geographic or chasse et peche, or any Arab TV channel in the wake of the death of an Arab leader. Of the 700 channels he could watch, from news to movies or music, he would stare for hours at a tiger lurking for a deer. One day, I watched with him. Usually, everyone would leave the room. But I stayed. So the tiger was waiting for the right moment to jump on the deer, or was it a zebra? This took more than I had planned. As usual, in the meantime, my dad would be the narrator -and from time to time even a translator probably assuming I am deaf- commenting on what is (not) happening on the screen. "Wild life teaches you a lot, he would say, see the patience?". A lot of time passes before anything happens, giving my father plenty of time to tell me about other episodes he had watched. Back to the tiger, who made a slight move, he would start telling me what will happen next, and next is not run, hit, catch, eat. You wish. He watches with such an anticipation for what he knows will come and surprisingly he is equally moved by the ending. Then I learn, this he had watched ten times already. My father went on telling stories from the book of animals of Al Jahiz; I was thinking: the deer ran as fast as it could but when it was caught fiercely by the tiger, it knew this was the end. It didn't fight back.
Athenians worried about the nature of things; Spartans knew better.
I heard this joke a while ago: what is the difference between a church and a casino? In the casino, you pray from the bottom of your heart. I remembered it recently, when I was in a taxi in Amman. The good thing about the Amman taxi system is that you have a counter, but the bad news is you cannot hop into one of those taxis that already have other female passengers, under an undeclared universal female taxi pact. If you want to bring someone, a woman, back to religion, send them to Amman without a car, and let them take a taxi. In a taxi too, you pray from the bottom of your heart.
Athenians pursued knowledge, Spartans were busy.
Some seek to understand, others take action. Both are guided by fear, baseless or not, it leads to the same conclusion. I was reading Amin Maalouf's "In the name of identity" recently, where he says "fear might make anyone take to crime". The book is very insightful and an easy read but if things go wrong in taxi -or anywhere else, I doubt I will recite excerpts from Maalouf's book. While Maalouf seeks to understand why the world is so violent, I have decided to take self defense classes. I am not a tiger, that's why, but I refuse to be a deer.
I have always admired Athens but was always jealous of Sparta.
It is said that humans are the only animals who have morality or can make a moral judgment. That is only partially true because only some humans can. It is more correct to say that humans are the only animals who can fear, and sometimes live in fear of, their own genre, or other humans. I haven't seen a cow look suspiciously at another cow, or a donkey, or a bee, or even a cockroach. Those are some of the animals I have seen with my bare eyes. Lest I sound like my father, let me explain to you that my knowledge about animals is, at best, poor, but my father made sure, against our obvious boredom, to lecture us about all sorts of facts and oddities from the animal kingdom, on one hand to show off his knowledge and on the other to explain to us that it is humans who are the animals not the other way around. This enlightened wisdom does not only come from having to grow up in a village but more from his passion for animal channels. He would watch any channel showing animals from animaux (his favorite) to the national geographic or chasse et peche, or any Arab TV channel in the wake of the death of an Arab leader. Of the 700 channels he could watch, from news to movies or music, he would stare for hours at a tiger lurking for a deer. One day, I watched with him. Usually, everyone would leave the room. But I stayed. So the tiger was waiting for the right moment to jump on the deer, or was it a zebra? This took more than I had planned. As usual, in the meantime, my dad would be the narrator -and from time to time even a translator probably assuming I am deaf- commenting on what is (not) happening on the screen. "Wild life teaches you a lot, he would say, see the patience?". A lot of time passes before anything happens, giving my father plenty of time to tell me about other episodes he had watched. Back to the tiger, who made a slight move, he would start telling me what will happen next, and next is not run, hit, catch, eat. You wish. He watches with such an anticipation for what he knows will come and surprisingly he is equally moved by the ending. Then I learn, this he had watched ten times already. My father went on telling stories from the book of animals of Al Jahiz; I was thinking: the deer ran as fast as it could but when it was caught fiercely by the tiger, it knew this was the end. It didn't fight back.
Athenians worried about the nature of things; Spartans knew better.
I heard this joke a while ago: what is the difference between a church and a casino? In the casino, you pray from the bottom of your heart. I remembered it recently, when I was in a taxi in Amman. The good thing about the Amman taxi system is that you have a counter, but the bad news is you cannot hop into one of those taxis that already have other female passengers, under an undeclared universal female taxi pact. If you want to bring someone, a woman, back to religion, send them to Amman without a car, and let them take a taxi. In a taxi too, you pray from the bottom of your heart.
Athenians pursued knowledge, Spartans were busy.
Some seek to understand, others take action. Both are guided by fear, baseless or not, it leads to the same conclusion. I was reading Amin Maalouf's "In the name of identity" recently, where he says "fear might make anyone take to crime". The book is very insightful and an easy read but if things go wrong in taxi -or anywhere else, I doubt I will recite excerpts from Maalouf's book. While Maalouf seeks to understand why the world is so violent, I have decided to take self defense classes. I am not a tiger, that's why, but I refuse to be a deer.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
had to tell you...
I don't miss many things about living with my parents but this feeling has been haunting me here in Amman, of all people there I miss, I have an overwhelming longing for being around my mom and dad and I realized that living with them was not as bad as I had always thought because I always took for granted the energy of love they had filled every room of the house with, every wall and everything their hands touched. But of all people I miss there, and maybe with a slight feeling of guilt I can say even a bit more than my dear 3 year old nephew, I miss them. I miss those Sunday mornings when I walk half asleep to the balcony where my dad, already dressed up and shaved although going nowhere, is helping my mother prepare lunch while having their first sips of coffee, I could see them stuffing zucchini, cabbages, vine leaves, chicken, or anything that can be pierced, with lots of rice and love. I would walk past them without any goodmornings, I would barely lift my hand in Salam and they would smile at my nonchalance before they would mess up their calm morning to serve me like a queen who must be attended to, and I would take advantage, sometimes ignoring and belittling their over care with that arrogant 'leave me alone' look. They would but I could feel their eyes roaming around me for the slightest sign of 'she might need something' and before I reached for my lighter they would bring me the ashtray. I don't tell them how much I love them as often as I want to and I probably won't so here: I love you maybe slightly more than you know.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
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.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
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?
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, March 9, 2012
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?
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!
Thursday, March 8, 2012
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.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, January 23, 2012
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.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Beirut Hotel: Waste of time
Monday, January 16, 2012
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.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
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.
P.S. Someone commented on this saying that someone just wanted to sell some umbrellas. It happens too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)