The past 24 hours summed up everything about Lebanon and its daily complexities. If you look at it with enough attention to details, the rest of your life will feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
Yesterday, Morning:
Started my twitter, woke up, opened my eyes, and my twitter feed was just a stream of anger targeting Miss Lebanon (Now I know her name is Yara Khoury Mikhael). I suffered a sunrise panic attack! What did she do this time? Bombed a bus full of children? Burned the last-10-trees Cedars forest? Or maybe worse, criticized a political leader!
Calm down, its just about what she said in this interview:
Started my twitter, woke up, opened my eyes, and my twitter feed was just a stream of anger targeting Miss Lebanon (Now I know her name is Yara Khoury Mikhael). I suffered a sunrise panic attack! What did she do this time? Bombed a bus full of children? Burned the last-10-trees Cedars forest? Or maybe worse, criticized a political leader!
Calm down, its just about what she said in this interview:
To tell you the truth I am not a fan of beauty contests neither for women nor for men (which finally answers your question about why I've never applied to any!). So I cant say I followed Yara's daily diaries nor I can preach about what a Miss Country should or should not say. And maybe that's why, I didn't find anything in that interview that worth all this witch-hunt.
Beside, I learned by experience that you should never judge a quoted answer when you are not aware of the initial question and the context. She started talking about Congo- after a break in the video, so there was obviously a question, and based on it you can judge the answer.
Imagine the question was: "As a Lebanese, you are obviously attached to your country. Still, what did you like most about Congo?" (or something similar). Now listen to the answer again.
When I mentioned that on my twitter account, two answers were very telling: The first was:"She is very ugly and we dont like her!" and for the record that was a female's response. The other answer was that: "This is what people on the street can say, not Miss Lebanon who should represent the country better!"
If we don't get ride of this chronic obsession, we will move no steps forward. Its all about perfecting the image of the country to the rest of the world and starting to believe in it so much that we stop recognizing the work needed to actually reach there. We are the best. So where can we go from there?
Miss Lebanon should be stunningly beautiful from the outside as this is the main prerequisite of the perfected image we like to promote, right? Or else, how can we say we are all a community of George Clooney-s and Cheryl Cole-s if our Miss is just a Marie Nakhle. So we hate on her. I can understad not liking her - thats subjective as I think she looks natural in a very rare way these days, which is a good thing if you ask me.
Back to the interview, her problem was...hm...being honest? How dare she say Lebanon is noisy? That's not true - tongue in cheek!
Where I live -abroad, streets are cleaner than it is in Lebanon. Now I can see that driver ziggy zagging at high speed with his car's horn roaring endlessly, reading this post and getting so angry: "How dare you?! Our roads are clean!", he gets so angry that he nervously take the last cigarette in his pack and throw the pack out of the window.
Miss Lebanon was -supposedly- elected to satisfy our own ego, before anything else. We like to hear it - admit it. Lebanon is green, beautiful, and Lebanese are just so lovable and open minded. And we are all so damn smart, and that's how we expect our Miss to be, an Einstein dressed in a Halle Berry.
For us, Miss Lebanon is NOT a representative but a mirror. We look at her hoping to see ourselves the way we like to believe we are. Its a simple formula: She is Lebanese, I am Lebanese, she is me. Nah...I'm "better than that", so she is not good enough!
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Yesterday, at noon:
I made a post on facebook about the football National team's match against Korea, today. Asking people to go to the stadium and support (and they should!). I got a response complaining that:
We tend to give more attention to sports than education and social work.. anything that distracts people from the right path is always welcome by Lebanese people.The "right path". And let me tell you what is the right path in Lebanon: Its a life of nothing beside politics, political and politicians.
Right path is to wake up throwing the glass of water beside your bed on the TV where they are interviewing an opposition, then jump out of bed half-ass naked and run straight to the street to punch the first person passing by with a hope that he is from "The Others", before you reach your work an hour late where your boss warns you about it "just because he knows your opposing political views", then tweet politics till the end of working day.
On your way back home, buy some firework (or bullets) to celebrate a talk show where your political leader will share his (no her's) political wisdom, then fill a cup of water, put it beside your bed before you sleep so you throw it on the TV when you wake up the following morning.
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Yesterday, Afternoon:
Yesterday, Afternoon:
There is a serial killer in Lebanon! They say its the first documented serial killer case reported in the country. Here, I have one little correction: This is the first documented serial killer who is NOT a political leader. Just to keep the records straight.
And if you, Mr. serial, are reading this post, you are so dumb! A mysterious serial killer? Are you kidding me! Arent you aware that China is a rising power in the world? Aren't you aware that China is yet to have franchising agreement with any political movement in Lebanon? You stupid idiot, you are a serial killer already! That's the hard part! You passed! Now reveal your identity and start a political party! Long live china!
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Yesterday, Night:And of course, the best for last...
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Last time I was in Lebanon, there was a fight about to happen on each corner, shop, and pub. The words we heard were so offensive right? I mean we are not used to say or at least hear it twice every minute while making our way across the city. I wrote a post few days ago (in Arabic) where I prototyped the level of tension between people in this country, not only between 8March and 14March but even those who -theoretically- belongs to none of the mentioned. This is dangerous. This is something we need to talk about or else the whole community will turn to a mentally defected society.
Yet, I will tell you the reason why Lebanese were under a shock after that interview. We were caught off guard and forgot which side we belong to. Its usually a Lebanese thing to consider the politicians being different than the rest of the population. And here, we are talking about the kind of difference that label politicians as a bunch of Berlusconi-es while the massive majority of people are Mother Teresa-s. When the two politicians started their childish fight as public usually do when they clash on daily bases because of politics, we were stunned! Oh they are just like us! Or are we all like them -in disguise? Dear oh dear!
Watch that Shokor Vs Alloush interview again. Watch it really well. That's not a video, its a mirror. The true mirror that Yara Khoury Mikhael failed miserably to reflect.
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