Who Are You Fooling

64. Who Are You Fooling? (11 November 2024)

A side street in autumnal Beirut
(4 Nov. 2024 - Gemmayzeh)

We’ve been telling people, “We will only be gone for four months,” as we prepare for our mandated “home assignment.” We’re going to the U.S. to have meetings and travel around to talk about our work, as well as to have our term agreement renewed. This was all supposed to happen next summer, but as Lebanon’s stability and safety became more questionable, and as Israel spread more and more misery around, our supporting bodies moved that four-month excursion to a fairly immediate departure, just four days from now. When we say to our colleagues and friends, “We’ll be back in four months,” are we fooling anyone with this hopeful but uncertain declaration? Who knows what monstrosities are yet to be perpetrated on peoples indigenous to the region, with the bloody complicity of the government of “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? Who are we fooling except ourselves?

Even Lebanon's cargo holders are painfully
crying "Akh!" (20 Oct. 2024 - Yerevan)

            Genocide, or “ethnic cleansing”, or “ensuring our security”, or the legion of other names assigned to it is so commonplace that we are no longer repulsed by the word – except when you are the one promulgating this policy. Exterminating those in the way of your expansionist designs is acceptable practice around the world, whether by Israel or Azerbaijan or Turkey (the ones that most immediately impact me as an Armenian, also linked together by their cooperative genocidal efforts). Brutality obliterates morality, and all the hand-wringing in the world will not protect the rescuers and witnesses trying to bring a modicum of humanity to this misery. As Israel targets hospitals, ambulances and journalists, and laughingly destroys families and lands, and as Azerbaijan (with Israeli technology) and Turkey destroy Armenian architectural heritage, convert churches to mosques or lying about their origin, they prepare themselves to richly receive the wrath of God (see Romans 1).

Political parties marking out their
territory, just like it was... 50 years ago.
(11 Nov. 2024 - Geitawi)

            Also puzzling are the regular announcements of an imminent cease-fire, an imminent end to hostilities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Is the intent to fool a gullible public somewhere in the world? Or to raise hopes among those subjected to this sub-humanity, so as to shatter those hopes completely? Depending on who you talk to, this war will either be over in a couple of weeks, or will continue until Lebanon is also annexed and ceases to exist except on 20^th century maps.

            What causes me the most pain is seeing the long-term effects of this attack on Lebanon and the impotence or unwillingness to confront it, particularly as it relates to inter-communal relations. Apparently one of the aims of this war is to create internecine strife, pitting one community or demographic against another, trading blame, scapegoating, and so forth. It’s the “divide-and-conquer” approach of any occupying power throughout history.

Hopefully these children will be
just as enthusiastic about
actually reading.
(25 Oct. 2024 - Yerevan)

            Coming to an even more personal level, the wartime conditions further threaten and weaken the Armenian community of the country and region, and therefore the church, moreso than it already was last fall. Rather than us thinking ahead and building towards a more healthy and stable society, we are witnesses to the dismantling of what has been built for the last century. The saddest of all is the dismantling of families. Armenian parents actively encouraging their children to emigrate. Armenians with dual nationalities permanently, not temporarily, relocating. Skyrocketing numbers of divorces among Armenians. Rampant substance abuse, physical, sexual and mental abuse, wasting of income on legal and non-sanctioned gambling.

            Those of us in positions of responsibility must now focus on disasters at the expense of other non-urgent but important issues. Recalling the post-Genocide period, when the Armenian people were subject to similar stresses, the people in leadership intentionally looked at the community’s long-term needs and urgencies, not just immediate relief work, and built a legacy that endures till today. In this crisis if we must find a way not only to ameliorating people’s suffering from the war, but moreso to plan with faith for the future of what is the most important center of the Armenian Diaspora. Without visioning and planning we are only fooling ourselves into thinking that this community will continue its existence.

The faces and names of soldiers who fought
and died in the Artsakh war and
deportation, graffitied all over
the capital. (2 Nov. 2024 - Yerevan)

            One cannot help but feel a change in the capital, after the influx of a million internally displaced people on top of the three million residents of the metro area. Cars parked everywhere. Unfamiliar faces and dress. Arguments, fights and much worse over “squatters rights”. Generators catching fire from overloads while municipal electricity is scarcely supplied. The diffidence of what few police and army personnel are still visible. If Lebanon was a DIY country (see my previous post), then this is a DIY war, where the population is left alone to figure things out and survive by their own wits or connections, while bosses continue their decades old, self-serving political wrangling as usual.

            And when the war inevitably ends, what then? Will things magically return to their previous state, and people effortlessly drift back to their flattened villages? Will massacred families and clans magically reappear and reclaim their birthright? How much can one country fool itself? I say “one country”, although Lebanon is not really one country but an amalgam of tribes living within one political boundary. The building and rebuilding of society and the development of a healthy social contract where none are marginalized is one of the greatest challenges facing Lebanon in the coming decades, and is something that has been waiting to be addressed for its entire history.

LebCat 64: Intensely focused on birds
flying around... and certainly aware that
it is only a reflection? But they're so close!
(9 Nov. 2024 - Bourj Hammoud)

            Meanwhile, our friends’ faces bear fearful and questioning looks when we tell them about our change in plans. “You must know something, that’s why you’re going,” they say outright or imply non-verbally. Try as we may, we are unable to assure them that we have no insider knowledge about what is to come, something that contradicts their doubts concerning why we are leaving now instead of later. We cannot fool them into thinking otherwise, nor do we want to. And we hope we are not the fools, either. Only through hope in God can we look forward to their fears being disproved.

            So, without any self-deception, but with faith and hope we lovingly say that in four months we will be willing and able to return and continue our part in that work, “with God’s permission”, as the Arabic saying goes (“bi’izn Allah”).   [LNB]