This Is My Country, Oh Hell! The Tomb The Only Service That Troubled Maps Can Offer
10 May 2018By
Ghassan Charbel
Whenever an Iraqi, Libyan or Lebanese told me that he had returned to his
country so as not to die in exile, I had strange feelings. Is the tomb the
only service that troubled maps can offer to those who once tried to avoid
engaging in their massacres?
Is it conceivable that the homeland becomes a mere grave project for the
returning expatriate and for the suffering resident? And does the map become a
large tomb when people are addicted to living under partisanship, militias and
failure, and away from the State of laws and institutions and its guarantees?
And who deserves to be cried over, those who have come back and saved some of
their lives while abroad, or the residents who completely squandered their
lives inside their country?
He was sitting alone in a coffee shop with a cup of coffee and his computer,
surfing websites and sometimes smiling sarcastically. He did not look around,
giving the impression that he was waiting for no one. His presence in that
place was strange. Today, he is expected to be in his village to assume his
duty. The parliamentary elections are a national wedding. The screens say so.
They also say that it is an opportunity for the citizen to speak. To choose.
And to decide. To participate in making his future and the future of the
country to which he belongs.
The journalist quickly spots a person who has a story to tell. This man wants
nothing from his country. His age does no longer entitle him to enter the race
for the search of a future. He neither wants a job nor a role. He wants to
spend the time that is left for him in a natural place. These are the basic
rights of a citizen when he has a homeland.
The man packed his bag and returned home. He has been spoiled in his readings
abroad. He was convinced that the Lebanese had learned from bitter
experiences… From the destructive internal battle and its consequences… from
foreign tutelage and its sorrows. He was almost certain that those who were
born during successive wars would not repeat the sins of their fathers; and
that they would not fall into the traps of sorcerers, charlatans and sellers
of fanaticism and hatred and the squandering of public money and the
confiscation of the state.
He said the new generation would inject new blood into the country's veins. He
believed that those coming from schools and universities would not hide the
daggers under their clothes, waiting for the moment of clash with their
colleagues and co-citizens.
The man returned and stayed. He had the illusion that his country was a warm
and welcoming place, and that the Lebanese have learned the lesson. He soon
discovered that the ordinary Lebanese people are despised every day… in the
streets, in public institutions, and on screens. He found out that his country
is losing its meaning, its spirit and its role. He discovered that the decline
is speeding up…
He discovered that his country has exhausted all its characteristics; that the
capital has not ceased to deteriorate for decades. The capital, which was a
window and an opportunity, has become a prisoner of past wars.
The country has grown old with its books, its members and groups. Its blood is
shed by the corrupt, the helpless and the adventurous. Even those who were
believed to be a promise
have swooped down on the feast with an old hunger. Disappointment with their
behavior will add to the deterioration of institutions and will root out the
remaining immunity of the country and the people.
He skims through newspapers and screens and becomes more anxious. Why is the
country so arid? You find no sparkle, no idea of progress. It is a country
that expels its children and continues its path towards defeat.
Others head towards development and progress, while the country follows the
swamps of failed ideas, while enjoying same faults committed by the same
people. It's a situation of awful aridity... Electoral lists that carry a fair
number of corrupt, shameless and perpetrators. The audience applauds. Old and
small wars in a turbulent region full of dead, interventions and waves of
refugees. As if the election season is the period of announcing national
bankruptcy. Here is Lebanon shrinking and waning.
Arrogant boys are lacking experience and moral and national immunity. Boys,
who ignore their history to an extent that they spoil their present and their
future. Their voracity knows no limits. They do not hesitate to open the
wounds and add salt out of their ambitions in a handful of votes and a seat in
Parliament, the corruption of which is well known to the Lebanese.
There is no use to grieve the old Lebanon because it wouldn't have gone with
the wind should it had the capacity to survive. But the alternative is really
awful. While others move towards building a state and consolidating security
and stability, the Lebanese people remain prisoners of those who have killed
their sons, their dignity and their state.
There is no dignity for a map without a state… A map that is nurtured by young
politicians' tricks and their ability to deceive people and seize what remains
of the looted resources without mercy.
The war has killed some of the spirit of Lebanon, and here is the fake peace
which assassinates the rest of it.
Truce, which is held in the absence of a state and over its ruins, is in fact
an assassination. Dignity, in the absence of a state, does not deserve to be
named as such.
The absence of the state means handing over the keys to the dark old caves.
The absence of the state means that groups will always have their daggers and
prepare new graves for their children.
How difficult are democratic elections when they stress the insistence on the
decline. When some politicians pounce the elections, like pirates attack a
ship carrying gold. One can see sharp fingernails, eyes full of greed and
consciences that were lost due to the excess of their wrongdoings.
These are criminal maps that punish the citizen once when he leaves, and once
he makes the mistake of surrendering to his nostalgia. However, he will not
return to France. He has run out of adventure and wasted years. He will spend
his seventies aboard the broken ship. This sick map will not spare him a
grave. He opens his hands, wondering: This is my country, but Oh Hell!
Ghassan Charbel is the editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper
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