[NextGenderation]
written by Sara Abou Ghazal
(feminist from Beirut)
A scene of pedestrians walking quickly through out the
streets of
Beirut
to their preset destination is a warning sign. As if
the arriving
horizon
is covering the city with dark promises, bringing back
a nightmare that
lasted 35 years.
Their destinations are their homes of safe spaces, but
soon when the
flying bullets and the snipers deadly jokes performing
a symphony of
sporadic noise to the silent city outside, then these
homes will turn
into
graveyards, of living bodies waiting in despair.
This is the tension of uncertain memories. In a
present resembling
stories
told by a former militia soldier, once, while
finishing his fourth beer
bottle, in an epiphany of regret, that tragically
fades in the next
morning.
What Lebanon is currently undergoing is not limited
only to the
presidential elections; it would be foolish to pretend
that. An
existential and spatial crisis that generations of the
Lebanese people
have been going through cannot be limited and solved
only by finding a
suitable president.
Portraying the presidential election as the key knot
of all these
never-ending conflicts, means that we are
procrastinating again the
inevitable tasks of naming the factual reasons of
these conflicts as
they
truly are. Thus, we again are creating an imaginary
setting to hide the
real reasons that would explain the logic of this
steadfastness and
yearning to war.
If some Lebanese believe that the Syrian regime is the
foe, and some
others believe it is Israel. How would the
presidential election be a
step
towards bridging this difference? Could the president
determine who is
the
vital other for the Lebanese, and by identifying this
other the
Lebanese
would be able to understand the true meaning of
sovereignty. Such a
president must be an instant messenger from god and
with holy powers,
the
kind of leader that the Lebanese people fall for head
over heels.
The vacancy of the presidential seat fools no one;
this sort of vacancy
becomes an embarrassment in front of international
diplomatic presence.
A
president needed for a countrys prestige. As
unacceptable as this
idea
might be for some, it remains a popular perspective
that Lebanese share
among them selves. The Lebanese president has no say
in war, or in
peace,
the Lebanese president decides no allies or foes. A
candidate for the
presidency should be neutral; he must be objective to
the extent of
detachment. Who will be seated on the chair in Baabda
place? Who will
be
representing the dominatrix of the Lebanese inter
relationships?
Questions
that can be avoided at no cost if we would replace
them with different
questions, what should a Lebanese president stand for?
How close should
this position be to the actual Lebanese politics?
A magnet is pulling people to war. A magnet of
sectarian insecurities
and
international loyalties, a broken bridge with the past
keeps
manifesting
it self in the so-called arbitrary acts of violence.
If we have never
admitted that we have killed each other for reasons of
antagonism, then
we
cannot say we might repeat these killing. All records
have been
cleared,
and rewritten. A new Lebanese identity created in the
post Rafik Al
Hariri
Lebanon; pre-produced identities sold through Image
consumption.
If this war breaks through, we should not complain. We
should not run
around and blame people or increase our xenophobia by
enslaving more
Syrian workers, Africans, Asians and Palestinians.
This time if the war
breaks through we should accept that this is who we
are. A group of
lost
zealots with self-hatred issues committing crimes in
the name of
freedom,
resistance and enlightenment. We are our own fear.
If this war must break through, let it be out in the
area of Solidere
and
let be destroyed again. Let this war if it must break
through; erase
all
false visions of any future we fool our self to
embrace. If this war
must
break through then surely, the resistance true face
will fall down, and
the men of god could fight openly the men of
capitalism.
Sara Abou Ghazal
November 16th, 2007, Beirut
____________________________________________________________________________________
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