Storm Had Entered the War

Military moved across the city like over a giant chessboard. The deep grumble of rocket prepelled grenades hitting far away, invisible targets kept a constant reminder of the state of affairs. From time to time flares lit up the night.

The grumble had faded for several hours. The city lay calm, calmer than ever imagined. People glued to their television screens had deserted the streets. Suddenly the stilness was shattered to pieces by the powerful roar. This time it was different. The roar was deeper, more powerful and absorbing, yet strangely familiar.

The intensity of the noise increased and the time between its occurences got proogressively shorter. Now, the roars’ hidden arm seemed to hit and smash its mark.

We got up, went into the living room and stared at the sea. A natural spectacle of rage and violence envolded in front of our eyes - a storm had entered the war. Lighting bolts, a thousand times brighter than its human counterparts, exploded through the sky and hit the gloomy surface of the waters. A roar of thunder, concluding the distructive power of its creator, sped through the air.

Rain started to fall. First, it approached in a quiet whisper. Then, it drummed like driving on a throusand galleon slaves, carpet-bombing the ground with its drops. The sound wrapped us in the deepest depts of the night’s cloack. We felt relief. The strom had stepped in to break the spell of war and replace it with an ore of nature’s might.

If Desperate and Fighting for Survival

' If desperate and fighting for survival....' is what many people would answer if you pose them a question that asks for 'extreme' human beahaviour. Such could be canibalism, killing of another human being, engaging in torture or just grabbing a rifle to fight.

In our cosy western homes we rarely experience such circumstance and the only group of poeople that can answer such questions decisively are our grandparents. So what if 'extremety' is the very everyday of whole populations, and that for decades?

In recent weeks, whenever I look beyond the southern borders of my current home country I feel like staring into a bottomless abyss. On the surface I can make out a puppet theater of strike and retaliation, of mourning and celebration. yet looking further into it incoprehension and darkness invade. The rules of the drama seem facile, when you strike and kill you jubilate when you are stuck and killed you grieve. Each action is then echoed regionally and globally, heard as long as replaced by the noise of a counter attack. Absurd question pose themselves. Would we fight more humane wars if we'd mourn our enemies death? Is there something like a humane war? And if, would such inspire greatness or be mere schizophrenia?

I know I repeat myself and don't make much sense, but so does the world around me.

...to be continued

Who is an Arab? In Answer to Rafi Feghali

An answer to this question very much depends on what frameworks of inquiry we apply. Semantically speaking, in the Arabic language the three letters ‘عرب refer primarily to a waterless, deserted and barren land. For thousands of years they stood more specifically for the landmass naturally bordered by the Sinai, the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the Fertile Crescent. Following this the Arabs are then seen to be the nomadic people that have inhabited this land for millennia.

Traditionally these have been divided into three groups according to lineage. The first are the Perishing Arabs, like the Ad, Thamud, Emlaq, Jadis etc. of whose history is little known. The second are the Qhatanian Arabs who are descendants of Ya’rub bin Yashjub bin Qahtan. And thirdly the Adnanian Arabs who are seen as the son’s of Ishmael, son of Abraham. Some people have described the Qhatanian Arabs, who originating somewhere in Yemen as the ‘Pure Arabs’ and the Adnanian Arabs as ‘arabized’ people of another origin. Today, anybody who can claim to descent from any of these people is in genealogical terms an Arab.

It has to be noted that each connection of a people and a land, is no more than a snapshot in time, and at different times different peoples have claimed the very same territory. However an interesting question that arises from the general orthodoxy above is from what moment in time did Ya’rub bin Yashjub bin Qahtan call himself an Arab and what was he before that? Or from what point onwards were the Adnanian Arabs thought about as Arabs and what were indicators of their arabness?

Another classification of which genealogy forms one pillar is that of ethnicity. An ethnic group has been described to be biologically self-perpetuating, sharing cultural values and forms, makes up a field of interaction and communication and has a membership that identifies itself and is identified by others as constituting a category distinguishable from other categories of the same order. These definitions deserve greater consideration.

As much as we love to claim clear patrilines, biological coherency is difficult to claim for two reasons. Firstly, as shown above, Arabs are by definition not of one people. Secondly, if one considers the history of conquest of the area that the Arab people inhabit, it becomes clear that being Arab today, means to being a biological and cultural hybrid

Despite this great diversity, we do share some cultural commonalities. A most popularly invoked aspect of which is based on the third pillar of ethnicity, that of communication. Following this Arabs are seen to be those people who speak Arabic as their first language. This would however include many people that don’t consider themselves as Arabs, such as Copts and many Lebanese Maronite Christians, and exclude many second generation emigrants.

Be that as it may there are other cultural denominators that we share as a people, although these are not exclusive to us as Arabs. Hospitality as a value and custom is one, of such. Connected to this is food and drink. We do share some dishes throughout the Arab World, like Tabouhle and Houmous. Tea, or coffee drinking and smoking- or rather excuses to socialize and talk are other activities that can be observed from Baghdad to Nouakchott. To a degree an identity will always be a construct of differing and factors which overlap with other identities.If we look at the emergence of other regional identities in different parts of the globe we can see the relative construction of cultural coherence. For example when the European Union was created at the beginning of the 1990’s, the questioned was posed, “What does it mean to have a European identity?’ The discussions that followed generally focused on a common geography notion of ancient Greek political heritage, the conquest of the Romans and following this the spread of Christianity. These variables seem vague, and would allow the inclusion of some countries of the Levant and North Africa.

The fourth pillar of ethnicity seems somehow crucial and following it, Arabs are those people that define themselves as such and are also defined as such by others. Historically, especially Kurds, Persians and Amazigh have been known to cross ethnic boundaries and arabize, but technically everybody could do so.

Being an Arab is a non-essential identity. It exists beside the fact that one is of a certain family, tribe, city, region, country, religion or occupation. The point of religion has to be stressed as many western observers confuse the Arab with the Muslim world. Despite the great influence that Islam had on the Arab World, it has to be clear that an Arab can be a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Druze, Buddhist, Secular, Gnostic or whatever he or she likes to be. Thus to sum up, Arabs can be described, as a group of people that is loosely connected by culture, habits and customs, however doesn’t correspond to a particular religion, race or ethnicity.

Finally, but maybe most importantly, people who live in the area described as the Arab world face similar obstacles to the expansion of their full human potential. Although I’d like to refrain from uniting a region in the framing of problems, we have to recognize the common challenges that we face. Being an Arab today frequently also means to live under authoritarian rule, old or new forms of colonialism, distortion of history, endemic underdevelopment, lack of education, technological underdevelopment, intellectual and economic impoverishment, non-emancipation, informational isolation etc. More positively expressed it means that we have to join in the same battles, that we share the desire to take the future with our own hands and form from it what we wish.

Indicators for Human Dignity

Reading the news this morning, I am wondering what are meaningful parameters for human development. The most powerful country in the world, one that is supposed to fight for the equality and liberty of all human beings, is openly using methods that were employed by the Inquisition in 14th century Spain. The critical circumstances demanded Americas sidestepping of human dignity. Is dignity attached to each human being or does it come as a pool for the human species? Making one of us suffer to possibly save others reduces our lives to a mere calculation. Mathematics that, in the hands of a child that has not yet learned to count to three, have proven incredibly dangerous. Sadly, this infant's logic has become an inspiration for our constitutions.

When Saddam Hussein was hanged, as little sympathy as I had for the man, I wanted to cry. In the midst of killing and bloodshed, the most important official act and long hailed symbolic ‘new beginning’ of our country was built on the suffering of a human being. As we aspire to an angry child’s definition of human dignity, we create empty nursery rhymes in our constitutions. These keep us busy, but hinder our development. It is time to openly discuss what human dignity means to us in the Arab World and what we are prepared to do in order to protect it.

Respecting the State

…metal spikes and barbed wire on the Egyptian-Palestinian border have effectively murdered Gazans’ hope for manumission, and mine for a respectable government in the Arab World.

I positively disagree with Suleiman Awwad, spokesman of President Mubarak of Egypt, when he says: "Egypt is a respected state. Its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones". On the contrary Mr. Awwad, I’d say that the Egyptian state just missed the opportunity to become a state that deserves my respect. Let me remind you Mr. Awwad, that ‘respect’ is a feeling of deep admiration towards the achievements or abilities of a person or organization. And please excuse that in my eyes, locking inn 1.5 million people in their misery, if you are the only person with the key to their prison, doesn’t qualify as an action that deserves such admiration.

I would have admired a state and thus leader that stands for justice in the presence of cruelty, a leader that would accept the bombardment of his cities for having taken the right decisions, and a leader that would once again publicize the absurdity of the situation in Palestine, a leader that stands with the weak.

I am deeply sorry that this state doesn’t deserve my respect Mr. Awwad.

Hello My Sumerian Friend. This Is Your Phoenician Friend

Joking about issues that caused wars in the past is very prevalent among the educated new generation of Lebanon. A couple of the undying objects of our jokes at the office, for example, are identity and Arabism (or the Arab cause and what derives from it).
As much as the two terms are related in Lebanon, they are equally not related. Also, considering that I come from a family of a Maronite father and an Orthodox Armenian mother, I don’t think that my experience in Lebanese identity can be generalized. Add to it my mingling and close relationships with Druzes, Sunnis, Shiites and numerous non-Lebanese and you’ll get an extremely rare philosophy about identity. I like to think of myself as a “global citizen”. Maybe I am not and I just wish to be. The layered history of the different identities the area of land now known as Lebanon has had, makes the identity of current Lebanon already very complex. This may be one the very few things that make me proud to be Lebanese; it’s amazing to know that one of my grandfathers might have been Ottoman (also ironic considering my mother’s side), his great grandfather might have been a European Crusader, whose wife might have been Byzantine or Roman, who in turn fell in love with an Arab or a Persian before marrying. I should have added Phoenician somewhere between those, or probably at the end, but that idea is already over-suggested. It doesn’t need me to highlight it.
As if this debate and the comprehension of this complex structure needed any more intricate factors, modern media had to kick in. Satellite TV, internet, and open global economy made Lebanon a street in the “global village”. Being a citizen living on this “street”, I can’t but be a citizen of that “village” as well.
Of course, a very big component (or layer, so to speak) in the current Lebanese identity is Arab. Throughout history (being part of the empire back when it started to rise) and now as part of its geographical existence and its dominant (and official) language. But what Arab is exactly more than that is also debatable in itself. There are many who tried to define that and many who adopt different definitions. Among all those who claim to be Arabs, very few show commonalities among each other. A Saudi Arabian is an Arab (it would be very funny if he wasn’t), and a Moroccan is an Arab. Of course, there are other countries in between that also differ but not as much, but I think considering these two “Arab” countries makes my point. Lebanon adopts a certain definition of Arab as well (not considering those very few who don’t and are not very convincing with why not). All this makes me feel that I haven’t really made up my mind yet about what an Arab really is. I definitely know what I would like the Utopia of the Arab Union to be like, though.
By Raffi Feghali

Where “Us” meets “Them”

A Palestinian friend of mine told me that once he was stopped by a Jordanian officer when he arrived to Amman airport coming from Beirut. The officer asked him what he was carrying in his bag. My friend responded “Books, chocolate, and wine! What else can you bring from Beirut?”

I didn’t answer then, but Beirut can be very deceiving with its western outlook and that over whelming hospitality of its educated bi-lingual or even tri-lingual people. I didn’t answer because; I have always believed that the contradictions in this country are absurdly overwhelming that sometimes silence is the best option. Beirut was destroyed and rebuilt seven times in history. Under the city there are seven cities, and seven different personalities. In the Middle East, Beirut is regarded as a liberal place, where you have the freedom of expression, a partially working democratic system that insures a peaceful transition of power, diverse political parties and a strong civil society. Beirut in the collective Arab memory is a leftist city that nurtured the Palestinian revolution and one of the major leftist movements. It was a haven for Arab intellectuals who ran from the dictatorships of the totalitarian parties that ruled the Arab political scene for half a century. Foreigners who live here, wonder how can this city which looks essentially peaceful and life loving explode dramatically into fierce wars and revolutions?

The major fallacy in their thinking is the belief that Beirut is a city whereas Beirut is a meeting place between different ghettos! Thus to understand Beirut you have to enter its back streets and neighborhoods. Only then you understand the fearful reality, which is that everyone is connected in a complicated chain of loyalties and interests. Everyone is a member of a family and every family is a member of an over extended network of interests and loyalties. The innocent intellectual Lebanese are not as innocent as they look and after all are not so free and liberal as they would like to show!

Lebanon possesses a democratic system termed “confessional democracy”. This system which is basically a power sharing system, gives each sect a percentage of representation in the parliament and in all the official governmental body. This power sharing system generates and has generated conflicts periodically. The state is based on the consensus of the different constituents which are the religious and ethnic groups. Whenever there is a major conflict of interest between the different confessions that the system cannot internally absorb, the system crashes. A system crash means in reality the disintegration of the central state as we know it and the immergence of confessional entities that take considerable independence.

The conflict in Lebanon is not religious and shouldn’t be mistaken as conflict between different faiths. Religious groups act as ethno-political groups that have strong identities, social structure and a relative geographic distribution. Each confession is dominated by three or four ruling families, sometimes less. These huge networks of interests are all controlled by the Chief or the Don who insures the interests of the group in the political system. “Mafias” aren’t the exception in Lebanon, they are the norm. They rule the system that looks like a tight family enterprise. The politics is dominated by family politics and nepotism, and the political leaders are judged according to how much they develop the strength of the confession or the “Family” not of the state and the society as a whole.

The political system generates the social structure and strengthens the sectarian division and vise versa. This leads to separate ethno-political minorities with strong identities that possess a different perception to its history in relation to itself and to others. Everyone lives in a ghetto where the past is idealized and the present is lived with a paranoiac attitude of mistrust. It’s the “Us” versus the “Them”. Inside the separate geographical areas, the different confessions explode with the attitudes of mistrust and live the illusion of persecution. Everyone is persecuted in Lebanon to the extent that there are too many victims and very few oppressors. Everyone is fighting for the true Lebanon, and suffers for it. A traitor to this group is a hero to the other and everyone masturbates their own history in a massive hysteria of self-victimization. This is done secretly as if hibernating in the un-conscious of the collective Lebanese memory.

Beirut is a rare place, where a real interaction takes place between the Lebanese who are coming from their different ghetto-backgrounds. In the streets of Beirut, the different truths, myths and what all the grandmothers had spoken, hits the harsh reality! Then the “Us” meets the “Them”, and a clash of histories and perceptions occur. But having to live under one political system, the people have to remedy this real and discovered division so they end up living the duality: they become politically correct, only when they are speaking to the “others”.

Beirut is not the meeting place of Lebanese alone. In this small city, Arab thinkers running from the dictatorships of the Arab totalitarian regimes came to express their thoughts of change and progress. Also, the Palestinians who were searching for their lost home, found Beirut a welcoming place, where no one is judged, and everyone is invited to be what ever they want. In this unique meeting place, all the dreams, nightmares, persecutions and radical revolutions mixed together and formed this schizophrenic place that seems like a giant firecracker.

What next? –you might ask- I believe what the Lebanese need is a social and political change that pushes the country ahead another step towards a democratic, secular state, and abolishes sectarianism or what is termed confessional democracy. This means that a central powerful government must immerge and the power of the traditional political leaders minimized. This is why it’s very important to support civil society initiatives that breaks the sectarian boundaries and issues a dialogue between the Lebanese as individuals, not as members of confessions. Only then the process of healing might start.

Hezbullah for example cannot be understood as a political phenomenon except by understanding the history of the Shiet community in south Lebanon, the consecutive Israeli invasions, and the dynamics of power in the Lebanese system. A solution for Hezbullah’s “state inside the state” cannot be done through utilizing force. The solution should be abolishing the roots of the problem and that is the Lebanese confessional system that lacks a central powerful government and by sustaining a just peace in the region that would stabilize the fragile regimes and states in the area including Lebanon.

What can you bring from Beirut other than chocolate, books and wine? I asked myself while I was writing this article. It occurred to me that Beirut is like a mirror, it gives you back what you wish for. An Australian friend, living in Beirut, said that there is only one conclusion he can take with him back to Sydney and that is the Buddhist wisdom: “All is suffering” It struck me as being so true. My friend had captured some how the soul of the city. I always hear my western friends speaking about their love and fascination to Beirut. I smile because they haven’t understood it yet. But if they ever did, they will have to wear their mask and walk among the people in a big Halloween party and will consciously live the dualities, like me. They will learn to hate Beirut, and only then they would know that the place has already trapped them and that they can’t escape. Then they’ll have two options, either to become saint-dreamers or become Lebanese!!