Lessons learned from living in the Middle East.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

And here we are, never a dull moment in the Middle East. The image above was originally taken in the year 2000 by yours truly, today I switched it out a bit to become a bit more "artworkish". And voila, just to be clear, I have no clue what has happened in Syria will mean, either to Syrians or Lebanese or anyone else. If anyone has a crystal ball now is the time to say what they say - because comes a point where Leila Abdullatif comes in handy you know. But funnily was just speaking to a close friend saying that "if we learned anything in the Arab World it is that it is always from bad to worse", and he answered with "and there's little we can do about it anyhow" - to which I retorted "and this too we learned".

So basically, there are two lessons: The first is that things go from bad to worse, and the second is that there's little we can do about it. So at this point we back from the macro to the micro - to handling house chores and problems and being able to afford medicine, and putting food on the table, because honestly, when did geopolitics ever do that instead of us?

What's goin' on? There's a riot going on

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

When Marvin Gaye issued his seminal album "What's going on" in 1971, Sly and the Family Stone released their own "There's a riot goin' on" on that same year. Which brings us back to the Middle East. The cursed region which seems to know no respite.

I refer you to this passage from "Beyrouth Mayhem-ek" which you can find here:

… And the bombings over Beirut intensified, and I found myself…
Strange how some statements seem ageless and dateless, as if their only reference is simply their own being. The above could have taken place anytime between 1975 and 1990, then sporadically – yet recurrently – after that, although choosing 1996 and 2006 would give a better statistical opportunity of be dead on. Excuse the pun. It seemed the same as saying “the sun rises”, a benign statement with no implications whatsoever in the grand scheme of things, a mechanic, repetitive act – a little like sex when the initial impulse of the discovery of the other’s body has gone.

Replace Beirut with Gaza and you get the drift.