On playing - not just in a different field - but a totally different game.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly based on Georges Schehade's work

So obviously, as of late, I have not been at my utmost best mentally and psychologically. But rest assured, I am not imagining any of it, my problems are real and true. Still, I often go back to that one week on the fall semester of my graduating year at AUB, and yes that was October 1995, where things became clear for me. 

On Monday, sometime during the second or so week of the semester, our soil teacher came whistling a tune. it was "I don't like Mondays" and he sarcastically asked us what this had to do with soil science. I raised my hand - obviously he was annoyed. "Yes, Chemaly?" he asked exasperated. "The song is by the Boomtown Rats and their lead singer is Bob Geldof who, along with Midge Ure, wrote "Do they know it's Christmas time?" after seeing a documentary about famine in Sudan." "A documentary about soil erosion is Sudan, you are usually a pain in the butt Chemaly, but that was a good answer".

Then came Thursday and the statistics course, the teacher was explaining the importance of sampling and he gave the example of how a newspaper in the US predicted the results wrong due to a wrong sample of their readers but admitted he forgot what title it was. To which I said "It was the headline, Dewey Defeats Truman".

Christiane, who was with me in both courses and who was a habitual presence on the dean's honor list which I only saw once looked at me with her enormous eyes and said admiringly: "chou bek hal semester?" (What's with you this semester?). Interestingly, that week showed me something very important: I was not destined for the same things as the rest of my class was.

Yesterday, I went to Linkedin and started scrolling to see what people from my graduating class were doing: Poultry, food safety, landscape, irrigation, many recycled themselves in environment and so on and so forth. Do note that for some odd reason, none of them are connections of mine so I had to actually research where they were at. Sure, I know what you are thinking, me who left agriculture to go into communication must have a ting of regret especially that 2023 was a disastrous year work-wise.

Actually, the reverse happened. I kept thinking - wait, I saw the Monza Grand Prix from the starting grid, I slept in the medieval room on that monastery turned hotel in Sweden, I exhibited my artwork in too many countries, I published all those books, my film was screened on the opening night of the Beirut Film Festival, I lectured in so many universities and counseled too many students, I was quoted in innumerable number of newspapers and outlets, and the list goes on and on.

Well more interesting than food safety and irrigation for sure.

Yes, I know, this still does not fix my daily woes, but even now, with the deluge of problems on all sides, I can still walk with my head high knowing I have lived the most exciting of lives. Sure, I have not travelled in a long while due to a combination of logistic reasons, but do you know that nightclub which only opens at midnight in the historic fortress in Corfu? Or have you been invited to a lunch which turned out to be a banquet in your honor? Has your book made it to the frontpage of the biggest-selling newspaper in Denmark - on the Sunday edition no less? Do you still voice your opinions on the oldest still-running blog in Lebanon with thousands upon thousands of readers?

You know what? I have. 

Beat this.

To Dagny Carlsson, with respect.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Dagny Carlsson has passed away.

Who? The world's oldest blogger. She was 109 years old. Started blogging at the age of 100. Her blog centered around her own life in Sweden - having been to the country myself twice, I can tell that sometimes life there can be, well, bewildering (small case in point, I was once asked "what do you think of the city center?" - "what city center?" two weeks later as the snows melted the large empty space was, indeed, a city center!).

Still, in her last post, Mrs. Carlsson said “Like a cat, I have at least nine lives, but I do not know what I should use so much of life for.” Well, perhaps my own wish is that at some point I keep blogging until there would be no one interested to read. However, the further I blog, readers keep clinging to my posts it seems.

Go figure!

And RIP Mrs. Carlsoon.

The day we immigrated to Sweden

It was summer, which month I know not. But it was summer. Even the year is a blur, though 1983 is a good estimate. My father came back from work at about 2 in the afternoon, and he had a story to tell.

His colleague was immigrating to Sweden. The government there was offering free houses it seemed, something like guaranteed income or secure jobs. The whole family was in the package. Kids in free schools. The deal was a no-brainer. It was rare for my father to be so excited about anything but he spoke and spoke about his colleague and Sweden throughout lunch.

If a child needed any incentive to dream that would be it. And dreamed I did. Sweden! I went to the Larousse 1981 edition and looked up the country. Oh Stockholm! And indeed, there was effervescence in the air, with my mother even jumping on the bandwagon of stories. Really, there was a bubbling atmosphere all over the house.

And my father went for his daily afternoon nap. By the time he woke up, I needed more Sweden ideas.

There was none.

When he woke up, it was as if the whole thing never existed. He no longer spoke of it, not longer said anything. We were still in Beirut, on the 7th floor, with our balcony overlooking the port and the sea. But there was no Sweden.

If I am telling this story, it is because basically everyone in Lebanon wants to go. To quote that poetic title of the late Pierre Bachelet album - "quelque part, toujours ailleurs". "Somewhere, always somewhere else". Not that I blame them - far from it. When I got my first visa to the US, miraculously I was offered an R B2, that was in 1999 - I could have easily worked there. My brother - who was a resident medical doctor there - asked me if I wanted to stay, but I was a very stable government employee, my consulting career was through the roof, I was dealing with international newspapers as a journalist, making money and managing it exceptionally well. Why leave all this?

By 2001 - funnily after my first very long business trip to Sweden (which had a stamp saying I cannot remain in the country after the end of the visa) - I left all this and went from one day to the next to communication and advertising - which included another very long trip to Sweden. Again, my career took off once more, I was making money and managing it well. Why leave all this?

Which brings us to 2021. I can give you all the reasons to leave all this.

Except, now it is too late. No embassy in its right mind would give you a visa. Our money is basically just paper with all the devaluation. People oscillate between rage and despair. They look to insure the basics but even that is not always a given. 

I said it prior that, somewhere and somehow we will get through this, in what shape or form I know not. 

But I will never forget the day we immigrated to Sweden.

Toblerone: The Swedes were so lucky, we as Lebanese were not.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

I have been twice to Sweden on two long travels (41 days in 2001 and 23 days in 2008 - both on courses sponsored by the Swedish International Development Agency). At the end of the second course about "Democracy and Journalism in the Middle East", I was sitting with some of our Swedish trainers and someone said "you know Tarek, we've been lucky here in Sweden, for the last 30 years we really had some very honest politicians".

And in case you thought they were joking, you should hear about the "Toblerone gate", when in 1995, Mona Sahlin (who was the first candidate in line to replace the resigning prime minister Ingvar Carlsson) was discovered to have used her governmental credit card to buy chocolate with. All right, granted, it turns out she also did other things with the card - see here for the full list - but it was buying Toblerone that got the scales tipped.

Toblerone. Really.

Which is why I believe my Swedish colleagues about what they said.

We, in Lebanon, have not been so lucky.

And to be honest, not just the politicians. The average Joe is just a culprit as anyone else. Because, and I have said this many times prior, corruption is not a one sided affair. It implicates more than one person. We have been cursed by a combination of crooked politicians but also by people who follow them, and the slogan everyone spit out on October 17 2019, "kellon ya3ne kellon" (everyone means everyone) basically meant "except the guy I follow myself". But we are now so far removed from that time - with the economy in total free fall and the Dollar in major upswing state versus the Lebanese Pound.

I heard it from several analysts that we are on the brink of something "new", than an intervention right now could sway the odds and the scales. Well-meaning people, am sure, but also - truth be told - that whole "NGO" and foreign people participating in the "thawra" uprising left a very bitter taste for many (see here).

But still, where do we go from here? We have proved incapable of governing ourselves, and any outside intervention is seen as a "breach to our independence" (what independence? The one we earned in 1943 with one person dead? - his name is Saeed Fekhreddine). It is completely disheartening to write this, but Lebanon has not exactly proved to be a "state" - and please, can you all stop with the "golden age" thing? People seem to be reminiscent about a past that never was (again, see here). To be honest, people in Lebanon seem to be reminiscent about anything called "past", the other day I saw people giving praise to the days of the 1975-1990 war on a post on Instagram. And it infuriated me beyond measure as am sure no one wants to go back to days of fighting and damp shelters and greenline between two Beiruts and being refugees in their own land or outside of it.

Actually, I have recently been digging in old newspapers, and it seemed miraculous for me the war did not start earlier. Lebanon was on the brink of war as far back as 1958! And even then this did not come out of nowhere - once more any reading of newspaper headlines tells you it was not just going to happen, but was almost happening as is - while the fallacy of the supposed golden age stresses swanky hotels, and "Switzerland of the Middle East" and water skiing by the St. George bay, and locals used as props for international consumption in leaflets and promotional films and press materials.

But all of this is to tell you that we failed. As a state, and as people who have no concept on how to be citizens. 

Great, now I want Toblerone. I swear I will pay for it myself - not that I have any government card or anything anyhow.

What Coronavirus has to do with right-hand driving in Sweden

Lifebuoy ad during the Spanish flu

On September 3rd, 1967 Sweden changed from left lane driving to the right lane driving. Prior to the move the government did a massive campaign to warn people of the switch. Fun fact: That day was the breakthrough performance of one young singer, Anni-Frid Lyngstad who won a talent competition live on TV (people were discouraged to drive that day so everyone was home watching television). Lyngstad would later become one of the As in ABBA insuring her place in the pop pantheon.
The campaign was so successful the accident numbers dwindled during the first years, then about four years later people became lax forgot about the switch and accidents rose again steeply.
What does this have to do with the Coronavirus?
I assure you, when all this commotion subsides people will forget the basic hygiene rules such as - washing hands. Do I do this 20 times a day? Surely not, but then again, those who are doing it now are the ones who almost never did it before. Just to be clear, it was the second wave of the Spanish flu/H1N1/1918 pandemic that wiped 50 million people - not the first benign appearance of that disease. Meaning it is the aftermath of the pandemic that is worrying me.
Again, in order not to appear hypocrite, I am not obsessed with hygiene - but again to be clear, I studied enough biology to know what I am saying.
Washing your hands is not just for these dire times.