Brace yourself for a cold spell

I was at a friend’s house, and saw a set of books in her book case on the Lebanese war. It was a set of about 14 books I think, all in Arabic, so I couldn’t read the titles, but on the spine they had little pictures of some of the major political figures involved in Lebanon’s history. It must have been Lebanon’s recent history, 1970 and up, because I could name all the historical figures. And what do you know?

All of them, and I mean absolutely all of them, are somehow linked to either political assassinations, atrocities committed during the civil war, were/are members of militias or political movements that made their hands dirty during the war and/or after the war, so-called terrorist, or otherwise involved in shady dealings, actions or behavior. There was absolutely not one single guy (yes, no women) that had a clean slate! Most of them have been in the government at one point in time, but what is even more worrying is that many still are actively involved in politics (unless they are dead, and quite a few of them were actually).
And that is the history of Lebanon. So how come everybody is so surprised that we are in such a deep pile of ‘horse manure’ these days? Did we expect otherwise?

And we sink deeper by the day. Tomorrow the opposition has called for a major strike. The term ‘opposition’ is a little confusing for me, because first the ‘opposition’ against the Syrians has now become the ruling elite, and have created their own ‘opposition’. So this is basically the opposition of the opposition. Anyway, they (the new opposition) want to bring the country to a halt, and have asked schools, business, universities and institutions to close their doors and called upon government workers to stay home. Rumor has it that they are going to close down all the roads, so you basically cannot even reach your work. Or maybe you can reach your work, but – and these are the words of Frangieh (a one time minister, former war-lord, leader of pro-Syrian christians in the mountains of Northern Lebanon and member of the opposition) ‘who knows, you might not be able to reach your house again in the afternoon’. A colleague of mine who lives in Chouifat, a town south of Beirut that sort of got stuck to Beirut due to the expanding southern suburbs, read that as a threat. “He is saying I better not try to go to work tomorrow.”

These are strange and unsettling times, but I think I have been saying this already since September, and nothing much new is happening. People are getting weary. The stories of friends and acquaintances that are slowly but surely seeing their businesses disappearing down the drain are getting more and more frequent.
Friends that work as ski-instructors in winter time just don’t have any customers. Some hotels have been dealing with an average occupancy rate of 15% since July. BHV (local warehouse) is all but empty these days. Neighbors of mine haven't earned a penny since July. And these things I don't read in the newspaper; this is what I see happening around me.
Also more frequent are friends that are looking for jobs elsewhere in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are all time favorites, but Jordan and Algeria are also countries where they look for a more secure future.

Brace Yourself for a Cold Spell

People around me are saying that this cannot go on any longer. But I doubt that. The Lebanese have managed to survive a miserable 16 years of civil war; I dare say they can handle another decade of this. Brace yourself for a cold spell.