So is the incessant banging of Lebanese politics, the numbing repetition of a poem-noir that has rocked and crumbled the country since the eighties, the sixties, or even (for the pedants amongst you) the forties. It peaked briefly last night with the murder of Walid Eido and his eldest son along with eight other members of the public on the seafront, around a mile from the site of the bomb that killed Rafik Hariri in March 2005 and sparked the last two years of unrest.
What is most noticeable to a western born and educated person at a time like this is the marked experience gap between the Lebanese and the people of most western countries. Where my childhood was lego and army men, that of Lebanese my age (at least those who stayed through the war) was more cinder blocks and armies. It is not to sensationalise the Lebanese experience to say that more of my generation in Lebanon could pick out the sound of a gunshot or a bomb explosion than their contemporaries in London.
But Beirut, as one journalist said to me recently, is not Mogadishu, whatever you see on the news or read on the foreign office website. It is fundamentally a safe place. There is, however, a risk of bombings as we have seen nine times in the last 24 days. But bombs go off in England, and America, even if it is not with the same frequency as in Lebanon. Westerners are not targeted, there is no violence in the streets, and student populations - often a sparking point for civil unrest in Lebanon - are busy with their finals. The vast majority here do not want violence.
However, the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani describes the insensitivity of the Arab people to their plight as follows:
But Beirut, as one journalist said to me recently, is not Mogadishu, whatever you see on the news or read on the foreign office website. It is fundamentally a safe place. There is, however, a risk of bombings as we have seen nine times in the last 24 days. But bombs go off in England, and America, even if it is not with the same frequency as in Lebanon. Westerners are not targeted, there is no violence in the streets, and student populations - often a sparking point for civil unrest in Lebanon - are busy with their finals. The vast majority here do not want violence.
However, the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani describes the insensitivity of the Arab people to their plight as follows:
جلودنا ميتة الأحساس
آرواحنا تشكو من الافلاس
أيامنا …تدور بين الزار , و الشطرنج , و النعاس
هل ( نحن خير أمة قد أخرجت للناس ) ؟
من القصيدة: هوامش على دفتر النكسة
Which can be poorly translated:
Our skin is dead flesh to feeling
Our souls complain of money
Our days... revolve around visits, chess and lethargy
Are we a great nation, when our people have fled?
He describes the futility and the anguish and displacement caused by fighting earlier in the poem:
كلفنا أرتجالنا
خمسين ألف خيمة جديده
The cost of our failureخمسين ألف خيمة جديده
but another fifty thousand tents.
Someone I interviewed for The Daily Star today said to me, "What is it when a bomb is just another one? When you are not impressed that it killed only ten?" It is what Qabbani means when he uses the word ميتة to describe "dead flesh" its meaning is literally 'a lump of lifeless meat,' or 'meat which has been killed by irreligious practice' (ie not halal and thus not fit for human consumption). It is a powerful and damning indictment on the state of a people.
Qabbani wrote his poem in the '60s. We are but six months from 2008 and still Baldrick's is a coarse but accurate definition of politics in the region and todays climate. Qabbani's is a delicate and thoughtful call to sense from a man who understood his people better than themselves. Bombs bang away in the background of the political and social stage, suffocating and clawing at the progress that surrounds them but always failing to realise their longterm goals.
Gaza is now in civil war, as is Iraq. Lebanon is at a gentle simmer and I found out while I was at home that the Cutty Sark caught fire. Where does childhood go from here?
Qabbani wrote his poem in the '60s. We are but six months from 2008 and still Baldrick's is a coarse but accurate definition of politics in the region and todays climate. Qabbani's is a delicate and thoughtful call to sense from a man who understood his people better than themselves. Bombs bang away in the background of the political and social stage, suffocating and clawing at the progress that surrounds them but always failing to realise their longterm goals.
Gaza is now in civil war, as is Iraq. Lebanon is at a gentle simmer and I found out while I was at home that the Cutty Sark caught fire. Where does childhood go from here?
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