 |
| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly - part of the collective memory as a bridge to national identity series |
I am sorry to burst the bubble, especially when everyone is hyping things up. When everyone seems to be suffering from "anemoia" - literally, a nostalgia for something that did not exist. First the fallacy: Lebanon was the Switzerland of the Middle East, or Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. Was it correct? Yes, but barely. We got unlucky as opposed to lucky.
Beirut began as a "ville-escale" - meaning the city where planes land for 48 hours before jetting back. Not as it is known today where the whole landing-take off happens in less than an hour. To our bad luck, we had the Phoenicia, the Palm Beach hotel, the Kit Kat nightclub, the Caves du Roy, the Venus high end cabaret and the rest of the paraphernalia of entertainment. That our weather allowed to "ski and swim in the same day" only made it worse.
To be clear, the "age d'or" (golden age) of Lebanon only lasted a very short while. That we had a very stylish president and first lady (namely Kamil and Zalfa Chamoun) did not arrange anything, but I digress. So, where' my gripe?
My problem is that we are reminiscent of a Lebanon that never existed. One that no even our parents benefited from. Why? Because what is known as the golden age only benefited a very small buffer elite which was able to enjoy the benefits, leaving a middle class which was being formed, and in the words of a former Communist party commander interviewed for a documentary "I did not want to participate in the whole thing, all I wanted was a cab fair to just look at it from a distance." This alone should tell you how many people were literally marginalized and forgotten.
Also, the Shiites in Lebanon are known as "المحرومين" (the deprived) because the state never looked their way, and their own politicians/lords did not even try to help their own. In a famous (and sad anecdote) it seems people gathered their elders and went to Ahmed Al-Assaad (father of former head of the parliament Kamel Al-Assaad) to ask him for schools in the region for their regions, and he answered with "Kamel is learning on your behalf".
I am saying this today, because the fallacy we face too deep, the nostalgia for something that never existed is too strong, and the idealized version of a fairy tale is simply not true, and never was.