At all hours of the day and night, everywhere in the streets of Beirut, capital of the “message country” dear to Pope John Paul II, men rummage through the garbage cans. What remains of the message?
Men looking in trash cans, I already saw them in 2014 but very sporadically. They then aroused my curiosity – what were they looking for – because the phenomenon was rare. Now it is no longer so and my curiosity has been blunted from having experienced this spectacle only too much; not my sensitivity, which was coupled with a heightened feeling of revolt.
Everywhere, even in the mountains, even in wealthy villages, garbage cans are dumped on the edges of the streets. They overflow, and no longer try to collect themselves; symbols of our land, also too open to anyone who comes along, so rendered that it no longer seeks to contain itself. And while the men are looking in the garbage cans, the European Parliament votes to keep the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, as if we too, like the dumpsters, no longer have our sovereign body. However, we were told that we were a sovereign State the times we sought support from an international community that did not wish to give it. Why then do we vote without even consulting us, on a question that primarily involves us? If European construction is the culmination of the democratic exercise par excellence, it certainly leaves something to be desired in its practice with regard to those who are not part of its perimeter. We did not consult the Lebanese, nor did we consult the Syrians on the issue. It is enough to see how numerous they are to apply for the humanitarian corridors from Lebanon to Europe, to guess their desire to leave. Just see how, like other Lebanese too, they are willing to brave soulless smugglers and makeshift boats to get away from the harsh Lebanese shores.
So why this vote? So that the Syrians also spend or continue to spend their days looking in the Lebanese trash cans? Europe, at least, sorts its waste. We don’t sort anything; we bury; we pile up; we throw, we pass, we never stop.
We should stop and look at the men who scavenge until it hurts human dignity.
To stop and look at the trembling elderly people who beg discreetly, almost shamefully – family solidarity itself being undermined by the crisis, a first in Lebanon – to the point of hurting human dignity.
We should stop and look at how vulnerable patients are treated in certain hospitals – private and said to be renowned – until their human dignity hurts.
Every time I go on the street, that is to say every day; every time I have to go to the hospital, that I take part in a demonstration – when there were still some and some still had the courage to rebel – that I talk to a senior civil servant in office, an elected official, a journalist, it is this same feeling of impotence, lethal, which seizes me. They are at the heart of responsibility, of care, of the event; at the heart of power; and only their inertia and their despair or their disgust show through. Their speeches and their blockages carry with them a bitter aftertaste, that of lost confidence, even if for some, they continue on their way.
Three years of impunity reigning after an explosion that ransacked and mourned the city, and shattered hundreds of lives; not only those of those who left but also those of those who survived, dazed by the sudden disappearance or the suffering of their loved ones; those of those who have been seriously injured and who are not healed and may never be…all of whom continue nonetheless. Three years that an entire population has been robbed of its assets – fruit for the most part of the labor of a lifetime – impoverished, humiliated and that no solution is envisaged and that the same usurpers are rampant. Three years of no justice or truth being done clearly, frankly. Three years – what am I saying, almost fifty – that we have been fed the same jargon, the same newspaper headlines, the same spiel on television, the same impunity, the same lamentations. But we are not a people of whiners, we prefer to live. “The wind is rising (…) we must try to live” wrote Paul Valéry. Even the owner of the Saint Georges (1), removed the banner «Stop Solidifying» who stood on his forehead for decades. Has he renounced his right, weary of war? Or would he have finally reached an agreement with the opponent of the day before?
On the eve of August 4, 2023, three years after the tragedy, it seems that the lava that flowed did not fertilize anything. Because evil passes when we don’t stick together; that’s why a friend told me that in Islam at prayer time, men stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Thus, this moment of fire which dug a crater in our history, and which could therefore have been pivotal – the fire being able to be purifying too – was not, since the shoulders relaxed and things would have seemingly resumed their course: “business as usual” as the Anglo-Saxons say – knowing that the word “business” has never borne its name so well. Or is it then that “it is always oblivion that has the last word” as the famous academician of Lebanese origin, Amin Maalouf, says?
No, oblivion does not always have the last word; not for the families of the victims, not for me. No, it is not possible to return to “business as usual” after such violence, without a fake balance being broken: that of indifference and arrogance. Everywhere, including in the private sector, the crooked establishment clings and the orders and bodies of governance dare not order anything. Denial, laxity and impunity lead to nothing but voluntary servitude. We pride ourselves on being a free people.
Three years after the Port explosion, I am ashamed and hurt at the same time to see where we are, of the inertia after such a crime, such a tragedy and such degradation. Evil of rupture consumed rather than welding, of possible redesign abandoned. I’m ashamed and sick of our streets and the dumped dumpsters, I’m ashamed and sick of my clothes piled up everywhere at my mother’s house, of my furniture and my books stored at a friend’s house – because my apartment was broken into two nights last. afterwards and that the police wouldn’t even take the statement – of having to water down the wine of some friendships because it turns out that they are bankers and that they had our only resources . I am especially ashamed and hurt by the absence of my father’s laughter carried away by negligence and mediocrity in the hospital in this climate of decay and contagious irresponsibility, and to have been the helpless witness of this murderous arrogance and the bankruptcy of dignity.
It pains me to see my loved ones and my elders disoriented by so much violence, and to be able to do nothing about it, or very little. I am sick of the absence of their smile. I am ashamed of the ransacked beauty of my city, of the infested air that one breathes there and of continuing to breathe it. Three years later, I have become an adult, terribly adult, and I don’t believe that the oblivion Amin Maalouf speaks of will affect me.
On August 4, 2023 men are looking in the trash cans… for crumbs of life; in all the trash cans, in East Beirut, in West Beirut (2), in all directions. Beirut is one and we still haven’t understood it; Beirut wants to live. Like sub-humans, rats… we search for crumbs of life. We have become the Fourth World, not even the Third World.
Three years later and in the midst of a crisis, I continue to experience the friendship of my poorest compatriots and their generosity, their capacity to welcome which fascinates me and puts balm on my heart… for a few hours. Three years later, I remain fascinated by the pines and cedars of my country under which I plant myself for hours for a respite, for their protective capacity; and admiration for the inexhaustible creative impulse of many women and men in my country.
Three years later like the heroines of Julie Mitsuko, Those who had never seen the sea, I also dream of going to sea, for a bit of security, to breathe, to be able to love and create… even if I know the bite of exile. Because “navigating is necessary, but it is not necessary to live […] ; what is needed is to create”. Pessoa’s words, described as daring by Pope Francis and echoed by him in his address to WYD yesterday, resonate. In a port and multicultural city like Lisbon, “the sea is much more than an element of the landscape”, “it is a call engraved in the soul of every Portuguese”. Couldn’t the words of the Holy Father about the Portuguese be repeated for us Lebanese? Will we hear the call of the sea and the Port of Beirut?
(1) The Saint Georges is a nautical club and a mythical hotel and a palace which enjoyed its heyday before the war. A dispute had existed for decades between the owner and the company Solidere, a real estate development company which rebuilt downtown Beirut after the war.
(2) During the war, East Beirut represented the Christian quarter and West Beirut, the Muslim quarter