On Suicide and Early Morning Walks

Ghazi Kanaan contemplates suicide at 7:30 A.M in the morning while we walk on the Corniche (the boardwalk in Beirut) on our way to school. Reminds of William Carlos’s ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’. On one side life stops, on the other side it continues as if nothing ever happened.

For those who are unaware of who Kanaan is, there is some very good stuff on Kanaan’s death on Across the Bay , and Joshua Landis in Damascus is very well informed as well. Although we doubt it is suicide.

His last words were “this is probably going to be my last speech”. Emphasis on probably. If you are going to commit suicide, you don’t have to say probably. You are either going to do it or not. Both Tony (Across the Bay) and Landis had mentioned before that Kanaan was a threat to Bashaar. He did not order the murder, as he had extensive business dealings with Hariri, and did not support the extension of Lahoud’s term. He may have known about it, but he did not order it. What was probable is that he knew they (Bashaar & Co) were after him, and that his days were numbered. Bashaar is going down.

Anyway, what do I do on the Corniche at 7:30 in the morning? Due to construction at AUB, and more construction near IC, both institutions have lost a great deal of their parking space, and ACS has recently lost its parking space due to bomb threats, and now no more parking is allowed around that school. So everyone is running for that one parking left on the Corniche. Needless to say, the parking attendant (a Syrian, if I am correct) has hiked the prices to a ridiculous 50,000 LBP, instead of the usual 30,000 LBP you’d pay. I – being Dutch and all that – am too cheap to pay him his extra 20,000 LBP (about 10 euros, yes, thank you). Consequence; no parking available in a radius of half a kilometer from my work. But the good side is that I get to walk on the Corniche every morning. This is where West-Beiruties do their exercises each morning.