I AM BEIRUT

2008-04-05T14:18:00.007-04:00

O for the sweet Hollywoodesque crap
That is coming out of everywhere

How can I say No to my Beirut
How can I be offended by Beirut

I just sat down and typed it
I did not even think about it

It came to me as it is

*

We've been living
In the Age of Fake
For too too long ...

It is time someone started
Telling a truth

Beirut did not deserve that violence
No one deserves any violence

But then again
Beirut did not deserve
To exist in the first place

***

I am Beirut

In my glory days
Of pink memories
Here is what I was.

*

I am a 6-year old child
who is barefoot,

Wears tattered clothes,
Does not go to school

Who is too dignified to beg
But has to sell
Chiclets chewing gum
5 piasters for two pieces
Under the pouring rain

Drenched to the bone standing
In the open rain sewer

Everywhere is an open rain sewer

Here

*

I am a farmer in the South
Working in the fields of my feudal lord
Who's also “my” Member of Parliament

I'm paying the debt of 10 former generations
And I cannot leave this land -- am not free to move out

I live in a mud hut with no electricity
There is no running water
Yet even this mud hut is deemed
as too much of a comfort

And is bombed to oblivion every other month

By the only “democratic state” in the Middle East
By the only “Western enlightened” folks
Who were victims of the worst crime

Yet they murder my children and my parents

I build my mud hut again and again

If anyone falls sick - they just die
Because I have to walk for three hours
To get to the nearest medical service

There are no roads where I live
I have to carry my sick child on my back
And bury them wherever I reach

I am a slave

Slaves are everywhere in my country

Here

*

I am a person with no country

I lived in Hermel for generations
I earn a living smuggling arms
And planting hashish in the North
Of the Bekaa Valley

I pay over two thirds of the proceeds
to the Speaker of Parliament
He owns the land here

Officially that crop doesn’t exist

Officially I do not exist
Neither does my family
Nor my children

We have no documents
We never had any for generations

No one can care for people who do not exist
Therefore we must care for ourselves

We do what we can
We teach our children
To smuggle
And plant hashish

They do not need to learn to read and write
Who needs to spend money to build schools
When there is “no one” to attend

We are invisible

Invisibles are all around us

Here

*

I am a porter

I may be also a construction worker

I come from the remote villages
I am illiterate sweaty dirty and wear a sharwal

Every day at the corner of Maaradh and Azarieh
We have a gathering spot
Where we rent out our muscle power
To the contractors

If they come

Then they pay us one lira for a day
And we carry cement bags
Bricks pieces of wood

There are no safety rules

We have no tools
We usually work barefooted

And some of us will die
Especially the ones older than fifty
Who have lost the strength of youth
And will slip and be crushed
At the construction site

No matter
More of us come from the villages

We huddle very close to the Parliament

They see us as they pass by
In their limousines

We “elected” them
For thirty pieces that were not even silver

Most of the time though
We just drink tea all day

Bitter tea with no sugar
And sleep on the sidewalk at night
For more tea the next morning

There are tea drinkers from the villages everywhere in Beirut

Here

*

I am a print journalist

I work at the Revue Du Liban
The biggest French language
Magazine in the country

French is the language of the rulers
Just as in England and Russia and Prussia
In the good old days of Empires

My French is impeccable

I report on the most important things
Like who got married to whom

In what hall in the Casino du Liban
Did the reception take place
Who was present there
Who got seen with whom

What they were wearing
Enquiring minds need to know

My country is full of enquiring minds

*

I am a film journalist

I make important news items footage
It is called Actualites Libanaises shown
Before every single main feature
In every movie theater

Even the ones attended
By the starving families

I shoot footage of “important personality” weddings
Receptions, engagements
I shoot footage of parties in Casinos
And Beachfront villas

We then show them in Cinemas
As important news items

Everyone needs to know
Everyone needs to see
How the “leaders” are living

Here

Everyone
Even the beggar children
The slaves
The invisibles
And the tea drinkers

My country is full of such “knowledge”
And I am its creator

*

I am Beirut

I often wake up from a dream
Which I mistake for reality

I wake up into a nightmarish orgy of violence

And I choose to go back to sleep
Never wanting to know the truth

Always believing that my dream is the real life
Always dreaming that my dream was the real life

Never wanting to grow up