A Fleeting Glimpse of Strangeness
Lebanon is a tad bit stranger than usual these days. Nothing too alarming suggesting anything imminent. But over the past few months, the tussle between the seriousness and frivolity of the country has acquired a sharper appearance. I say appearance because many of our Lebanese melees are both distraction and consequence.
It’s spring, so the mood in Beirut is giddy, bar those sections, of course, where the human condition has little time for giddy. The restaurants, including the 300 new ones that opened recently, are full, the bars and clubs are rocking, the swimmers are lapping, the dilettantes are splashing. The economy is where it has been for the past four years, in a very deep ditch, but the cash economy, for all sorts of licit and illicit reasons, is thriving. Which perhaps is one explanation for the huge investments in the culinary experience, much of it not surprisingly tasteless–pardon the pun.
The state, as a whole, is withering; in parts, though, it still exhibits clear signs of vigor. The security and police apparatuses, for example. Over the past month, they’ve run mobile checkpoints around the city to catch unregistered vehicles of every type. Which would be many, because our traffic department up in Naf’ah was out of commission for the better part of two years, leaving scores of drivers and/or cars without a valid license. The loot must be hefty, the bulk of it from the poor.
For the south, where the tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah is akin to a war, all this is a spectacle in what feels like another country. For the other regions of Lebanon, the war itself so far is also a sideshow in what feels like another country. A measure of Hezbollah’s skills in containing it.
On our side, around 100,000 southerners have moved further up from the borders. We can call them evacuees for now, although they might earn a different label if their villages become part of a prohibitive buffer zone or are not soon revived. Their livelihood is as insecure as their location, their losses life-changing, their trauma equally so.
On the Israeli side, there are anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 northern evacuees to the center of Israel. They don’t have any reason to be more optimistic about going back to the north any sooner than their Lebanese counterparts. We can with relative certainty assume that their wounds, material and psychological, are triggering their own severe anxieties.
I don’t know to what degree the rest of Israel, or more specifically the café and beach-bound society in Tel Aviv, is feeling the pain of the northerners. But I can say that the rest of us Lebanese, or more specifically the café and beach-bound society in Beirut, are no less varied in our sentiments about the south than we are about nearly everything else that divides us.
Some of us, and I would include myself in this category, are able to trudge through the routine of our days, all while being entirely fixated on Gaza and the south. Whatever we do for Gaza, we do it individually or in small groups. In our setting, this kind of action goes somewhere, we learned a long time ago; whereas symbolic public displays of fury go nowhere.
And we have, generally speaking, lost interest in other matters Lebanese, not because they don’t matter, but because, in the general scheme of things, they barely register–like us. Unless, of course, events offer a bit of farce for a bit of fun, a favorite pastime.
Among these, I name the hysteria, whipped up again in certain circles, over the presence of Syrian refugees in our midst. They are a threat to our national identity, our independence, our territorial integrity, they protest. Apparently, all that makes us well and whole and distinctly who were are, whatever that is. But then, for a country of 5.4 million, there is also that tricky question of demography. The Syrians are just too many–2.4 million by one official count–and too many of them are Sunnis, which would make for much fewer of us Shiites and Christians. We all understand what that means.
EU President Ursula von der Leyen’s recent visit to Lebanon, €1 billion in hand, to “help” our state keep the Syrians from heading for the European continent only added to the angst. It produced one of those rare moments of genuine confusion for our elites: how to pocket the money while experiencing convulsions at the purpose of it.
Truthfully, the €1 billion is a bit miserly, almost insulting. As Hezbollah’s Hassan Nassrallah cheekily advised, Lebanon should do the honorable thing and open up the Mediterranean for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees who want to relocate to Europe. Open up the seas, he declared, and the skies would open with them, raining down euros on us, €20 or €30 billion even, because the EU is just that keen to guard the wellbeing of the Syrians exactly where they are: in our midst. Imagine the miracles our financial wizards would perform with such a windfall.
It gets even funnier, or sorrier–I am not sure which. Lebanese “patriots” are calling for demonstrations in France and Brussels to protest “the conspiracy against the sovereignty and unity of Lebanon through the call for a vote in the European Parliament to sanction Lebanon for alleged racism against its Arab guests, the fleeing Syrian children of the dear Syrian Arab Republic.” My friend’s whatsapp message relaying the Arabic news item didn’t mention under what umbrella these patriots fall.
Meanwhile, we are done officially mourning the passing of Ebrahim Raisi, President of Iran, which we do, by the way, for every expired head of a country that means something special to at least one our sects.
And Design Week has finally kicked off in Beirut. The heart of the city is now a showcase of our designers’ creations. Why not? We have great designers and theirs are wonderful creations.
The truth is that we are all artists in this country, each of us ever conjuring a world infinitely more livable than the real one.
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On Another Note
Antisemitism, all good people agree, is a vile idea with a vile history. Regrettably, in recent decades, it has lost all meaning. Weaponized by Israel as a shield from every criticism over its rapacious behavior towards the Palestinians, antisemitism today, to embellish from an Israeli scholar’s laments, means nothing because it is forced to mean everything.
Over the past month, David Runciman has devoted his Past Present Future podcast to conversations about “bad ideas,” antisemitism, no doubt, being among the worst of them. In a recent episode, he and historian Christopher Clark embarked on a deeply informed and sensitive discussion that touches on the religious, economic, political and social forces that have defined and steered antisemitism’s pernicious trajectory in European history.
Have a listen!