ARAB S“T”ING

“You suck!”
“No, you suck!”
“No no, no, You suck!”
“No, it’s you who sucks! And your family, and neighborhood, and whole damn town!”

This was a political debate between two Arabs in the know, brought to you courtesy of Arab Spring TV.

Now, here are the options:
1- Either one of the two sucks, and that’s 50% of the population.
2- Both suck, and that’s 100% of the population.

In either case, we’re screwed.

We are a race driven by pure emotions. This renders us inapt to judge, be objective, and consequently, speak about politics. We either do what we’re told, or act upon our own emotional judgement. And both scenarios are scary. Yet, we proudly claim how patriotic we are.

PRIDE
Or is it? It’s amazing how branding can create a revolution. It is amazing how much momentum an embryonic idea can gather when it gets a face and a voice.

Ask the Soviets!

Revolutions are the brainchild of basic emotions. No “real” revolution was erected upon a rational idea. Although rooted in rational beliefs, “revolutional” triggers are ignited by an emotional fuse, one that rallies the deprived, the oppressed, the change-makers, and of course the mentally blind followers, around a basic “feeling”.

Indeed, ask the Soviets. Their legacy of propaganda is still praised today as more art than politics. Yet, how rational was it?

I ask: Whether you live life, or love it in colors, what have you done about it?

A message remains embryonic until, just like in a fetus’ cells, it starts multiplying itself, creating clones of its own DNA, until an entity is born. And that’s what happened all over the Arab world. Having said that, not all newborns are healthy… or alive…

I love the coined term “Arab Spring”. Another branding slash media tour de force.

No, really, spring? What spring? Let alone “Arab”…

Poland had a spring. Arabs have nothing. They never will, and for a simple reason; they can’t agree on a real unified brand positioning for their “Arab” or “Spring”, let alone the 2 combined words.

We’re Arabs when need be, and we’re not when need be. Egypt’s spring shifted from bringing down a corrupt regime to a Christian-Muslim conflict. How cheesy is it to get married in Tahrir square among your “brothers” from the opposite religion at noon, and go get a mosque or a church burned down to rubble at sunset?

It is indeed about priorities. The question is “who’s” priorities.

I’m not defending those regimes, as a matter of fact I’m quite thrilled they vanished, but I am starting to get the feeling that they represent more our inner fears and psychological complexities, than they do the physical nation’s situation.

Why did the Syrians have to wait for 3 revolutions to trigger theirs? Oh yeah, they where learning the ropes… Did it take Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to wake them up? Or was it another case of everyone’s partying, let’s party too?

Spring? What Spring? It really sounds more like Fall…

Everyone is jubilant, but let me tell you this, we Arabs, were never, and still are not ready, to rule ourselves. Comes to me? We never will! We’re still just novices, mediocre apprentices. We’re like that tail of the class student that loves to brag about his or achievements only because mom and dad said so… A pure exemplification of a famous Arab proverb (A monkey is a deer in his mother’s eyes)

We call for help, we wait for it, and when it comes, we shoot everywhere, mostly in the air to express joy, and end up performing the weird ritual of walking on or burning leaders’ effigies and posters.

Oh come on! How childish is that?! Please.

- If the intelligentsia runs revolutions, intelligentsia does not stampede posters.

- If the illiterate mass is running the revolution, what revolution would it be?

- If the intelligentsia runs the revolution using the illiterate mass, they’re not intelligentsia anymore, they’re freakin’ Machiavellian dictators in the making.

Do you have any other scenario for Arab Springs?

You want a real Arab Spring? I’ll give you one:

Nations are made of humans. Not educated, poor, illiterate, rich, Christians, Muslims, blue, red, green, or yellow…. Humans; full stop. Classification is the first ingredient of division, and division will never make a revolution… Look at Lebanon…

Get the humans to revolt. Get the emotions to speak. Be subjective, be real, be you. Only then, Mr. PhD will accept to mingle with Mr. delivery boy, Peter and Mohammed will meet, not for a photo-op, but meet, really meet.

Tyrants and dictator are afraid of unity, nothing else. Divide and conquer was not a ballad title. It works. And we’re so idiotically stupid to listen to politicians manipulating us like Kermits and Miss Piggys.

THE PEOPLE:

 

 

 

THE POLITICIAN

 

 

You tell me…

Arab S”T”ing by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at ilahoud.wordpress.com.
© 2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

Give Me a Reason to Believe

Sunday morning. Coffee, a cigarette. Time to think.

I am almost 52 years old. I was 15 when the civil war started.

War stole my adolescence. It raped my youth and everything I believed in.

Since then, I live submerged, surrounded, overwhelmed by messages of patriotism, giving oneself, defending one’s honor… But also of betrayal, hypocrisy, decadence and corruption. I spent years trying to put both together. I didn’t work. It still doesn’t.

I wasted my precious years – more precious than any other cause on earth and heavens -  stupidly trying to philosophize the basic atom of life, the one that makes us who we are, the universal truth. It was simple, but as everything else in Lebanon, we turned it into an ambiguous complexity. This atom is us, humans. We are life, not the country.

Countries never make people. People make countries!

How hard is that to grasp? It is the answer that makes you think twice. It is actually not hard at all, yet, those who claim building the country are the same who answer this question with “very hard”. They are those who stole my adolescence and raped  my  youth and everything I believed in…

We defeated the purpose of existence, turned ourselves into the slaves of what we originally enslaved to protect our very own existence. We got lost in our own game, fell victims of our own lies and thought, just thought that by creating this big scheme called nation, we become safe, we become someone, we become One…

To top it all, we made it in the name of God!

We had the guts to build lies, tell lies in the name of what we call, when needed, our creator.

God did not create countries, we did.
God never asked to fight for land, we did.
God never asked to establish parties in his name, we did.
God never asked to use His name or teachings as creed, we did.

God never had borders, money or politics. He never used deception or diplomacy. He never lied or asked us to lie. God never had border patrols. He never had a country. God never asked for a visa to let you through. God never said “this is yours, and that is not”. We did.

I lost the best years of my life staring at those fighting in the name of their “own” God. I wasted those years listening to idiots preaching to idiots about fighting for land, honor and dignity…

They can’t possibly have honor, nor dignity when they impudently claim fight a war in the name of God. Who are they to defend God, let alone His land, His word our His cause?How can they then claim a land?

Give me one reason to believe.

I am not a patriot. I will never be. I don’t “live” anywhere. I “stay” where the money I have allows me to. The same money that we created in the name of God, the money that we pay to buy weapons in the name of God, and kill in the name of God. The money that we use to “defend” the prison we created with our own hands, and in total denial, called a “country”.

I don’t belong to any country. I don’t own one. It’s rental!

Today, at 51, I sit and stare at the years go by, watch the same people, or their heirs, blabber the same words, make the same mistakes, claim the same freedom their parents never had, the one they will never earn. All in the name of God.

Is that all these prehistoric idiots learned from God?
How many of those go to church on Sunday?
How many pray 5 times a day or visit a mosque on Friday?
Where are the teachings of God now?
Oh! I forgot, they are to busy defending the country… In the name of God

Give me a reason to believe.

As a brander, I tell them:
You created the dirtiest brand for yourselves and your so-called country. You rebranded God and religion to your liking.

As a non patriot, I tell them:
You spent your lives (and mine) fighting for a small piece of land when you all had an entire planet to enjoy.

As a 51 years old man, I tell them:
Fuck you. Trying to claim to protect it, or claim to make it better, or so arrogantly claim to gift it, you ruined the most precious thing God ever gifted us, life.

As for the son of a bitch they turned me into I tell them:
Fuck you again. Protect, gift anyone’s life you wish. Just get the fuck out of mine and let me live the rest of it in my “own” peace.

I hate you for getting me stuck in the endless unreachable dream of wanting to be 25 again..

My reason to believe is this: God asked us to respect life first, and not waste it to respect countries. If a country can be created without wasting a single life, then be it. If not, it is not, and will never be a country. It is tainted, smeared, disgraced by the killing of those who fought building it… Or just happened to pass by at the wrong time.

We simply defeated the purpose of a country. Trying to create a haven for humans, we ended up creating a zoo, a killing field where the innocent die every day, where the guilty blame it on others… And where the 50 years old, like me, spend the first half of their lives watching it slip away and are spending the rest wondering why…

Sunday is over, so is coffee and the cigarette. Now back to war.

Give Me a Reason to Believe by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at ilahoud.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at htt://ilahoud.wordpress.com/.

© 2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

I don’t think, therefore I am!

Since I came back to Lebanon from the Gulf back in 1999, everyone is puzzled over how I do not belong to any political party, movement, current or any form of political belief, and how I despise them all. They keep telling me that it is physically impossible to live here and not be some kind of a follower.

And my answer is simple: I don’t “live” here, I “stay” here!

I have lost all sense of patriotism, at least the notion of patriotism as described over here, not the real, the pure form of patriotism. Unfortunately, that form of patriotism is not practiced anymore. Hate me if you wish, I don’t give a flip!

I lost my patriotism when I left Lebanon back in 1986. Before that, I used to get very tempting offers to leave and go work in the Gulf. I always said no. I always believed there was a hope and that the country, my Mother Land will prevail. What a fool I was!

I lost my patriotism because patriotism came to mean only one thing n Lebanon: Follower. If you follow some single-minded, under-educated, over-rated and totally spineless politician, then you’re a patriot; but if you don’t you must an agent of some super power!

I refuse to take part in a pavlovian experiment. I refuse to be told what to do, feel or think. I refuse to be conditioned. I refuse to be taught about the love of a country. I refuse to be categorized. I refuse to be assimilated by some collective consciousness guided by brainless individuals.

Am I rebel? Hell yes!

But then again, name me one rebel among our politicians… And please, for a change, think before you answer!

The dictionary describes a rebel as “a person who resists authority, control, or convention.”

I live on another planet, where there are no politicians, no politics, no causes, no parties, no movements, no resistance, no governments, no speeches, and no dogs drooling over the ring of a bell!

I had this dream: Two towns far, far away in some remote area, where no vehicle could drive and no human could walk. One of the towns is called “Aïn-Wazir” and the other is called “Kfar-Nouweb”. The former will house all of the ministers and the latter all the deputies. They will live their middle ages at leisure, fight, insult each other, do whatever they wish, but out of sight! And those who love the scene can follow!

I don’t think anymore. Instead, I dream. Thinking does not help. Dreaming gets me in a trance where politicians and politics are gone, and the country is doing great and I’m a patriot again.

John Lennon may have been high all the time, but he sure was right!

This is Lebanon. To be, you have to stop thinking. Your president must be a Maronite, your prime minister a Sunni and your head of parliament a Shia… Same applies to all public positions within the government. They don’t have to be educated, they don’t have to be experienced, they don’t have to be knowledgeable. All they have to be is from the right religion at the right time!

And you want me to be a patriot?!

Sorry JFK, but I will have to swap the words in your famous statement. When it comes to Lebanon, and after over 30 years of pain and 350.000 “real” martyrs, it should read like that:

“Ask not what you have done for your country. Ask what your country has done for you!”