65. Welcome Home (14 April 2025)
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"MLGA" - doesn't roll off the tongue very
nicely. I wonder how it would look on a cap?
(14 Apr. 2025 - Bourj Hammoud) |
It has been almost
four weeks since our return to Beirut from our “home assignment”, and we are
relieved to be back. Not because everything is rosy or easy, but because we
have a sense that we are where we are supposed to be, where we are called to
be. Yes, the electricity and water supply is still unstable. Yes, the Internet is
sometimes there, sometimes not, but always slow. Yes, the roads are full of
people who care even less than before about how they drive. Yes, they still
think that their car horns will magically cause the traffic in front of them to
disappear. Yes, buildings continue to ascend to serve those who do not feel the
pain of ordinary Lebanese. Yes, the economy is still in tatters, banks are continuing
to abuse depositors, and we have to carry around dollars for larger purchases (such
as groceries at the supermarket). Yes, the disparity between rich and poor is stark,
and people mostly don’t notice the poor around them. Yes, drones still ply the
skies overhead on behalf of “The Chosen”, to take note of and eliminate “The Rejected”
and crush and kill “The Unlucky”. And, yes, the attacks by our war-mongering
southern “neighbor” continues to be cheered on by the Machiavellian foreign
policy of our home country. After we shared the news of the first attack on
Beirut since our return, our son Sevag wrote to us: “Welcome home.” Sincere and
ironic at the same time.
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The end of another old building,
the beginning of another high-rise.
(25 Mar. 2025 - Ras Beirut) |
Sunday, April 13, marked a half-century
since the Lebanese Civil War. It was a war, for sure, but the “civil” moniker is
a debatable point. Wars are never polite, but more than that, it was not merely
the outcome of local, societal tensions, but rather a product of regional
conflicts, fueled by powers outside the region. In recent days we watched and
read some remembrances and news commentaries, with lots of archival footage
reminding us of that era in Lebanon. We lived through just a few – nine months’
worth – of the Civil War, when I was a theology student at NEST and Maria was a
nurse at the American University Hospital. Perhaps it was at that time when
Beirut started to occupy the quality of “home” in my thoughts and feelings. It
was then that I had connected to something deeper than the misery and
uncertainty of the war, something which some of my friends, now emigrated to
the West, found puzzling. They would express their wonder: “You love this place
more than us!”
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The joy of children's "Hosannas"!
(13 Apr. 2025 - Qantari, Beirut |
But “home” is more than geography.
It is geography plus people plus meaning. That is something we have found here,
in this battered scrap of the remnant of Western Armenia. We regularly hear the
comment, “Lebanon is such a beautiful country, but the people are trash! That’s
the problem with this country.” Upon hearing this, a friend of ours countered, “But
the people are beautiful, too! We have such dear ones around us, like you, to
share a cup of coffee with!” Yesterday, during Palm Sunday services, I reminded
myself that the presence of the children singing God’s praises, right before
us, is more valuable than the memories of past Palm Sundays when there were so
many more children, or when times were “better”.
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Beirut ProTip: You can always find a place to
park if you look for the "No Parking" signs.
(11 Apr. 2025 - Hamra, Beirut) |
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Living with contrasts and
contradictions; that’s what it’s like to live in Lebanon. Some of the most
beautiful springtime flowers in Beirut are the variegated orange
blooms that come up amidst bright green leaves
[Nasturtiums, for you gardeners] – and they are often seen proliferating…
around garbage dumpsters. Or, to keep people from parking on sidewalks and to open up
a place to walk instead of the streets, bollards are installed everywhere, to
the point where you can’t walk on the sidewalks because the bollards take up
all the space. Or, on Bliss Street, at the crosswalk across from the Main Gate
of the American University, concrete blocks were placed in the street to keep
people from double and triple parking and to improve the traffic flow. The
result is that people double and triple park next to the obstacles, and so traffic
on Bliss Street crawls more slowly in the narrow path remaining. And then there
are the rubble-filled lots, or the bullet-ridden buildings that have been
abandoned since the Civil War, that, thanks to nature, have given a bit of
extra greenery to the crowded streets, while also serving as public toilets for
taxi drivers. None of this is new to me, but it showed itself afresh as I
reinstituted my daily walks, something I had scant opportunity to do while in
the U.S.
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Is Beirut still screaming? Shouldn't it be
louder? (28 Mar. 2025 - Gemmayzeh, Beirut) |
Last week while driving to the dojo where
I work out I found myself stuck in a traffic jam, different than the usual
evening rush hour. Motorbikes were weaving in and out of the rows of cars, some
of them on delivery routes, but others of them with flags and Palestinian
scarves. As I inched forward, I realized that I was headed into a demonstration.
The wide sidewalk at Ain el Mraisseh was crowded with people, likely both
Lebanese and Palestinians, protesting the war on Gaza. It seemed that those driving
by were more in number than those on the sidewalk, though I didn’t stop and
count. But as with all crises, including all the abuses perpetrated upon the
Lebanese by their leaders, along with the rampant corruption infecting all
spheres of life, things that may prove too entrenched to eradicate any time
soon, those who just want to get on with their business (like me) will remain in
the majority. Instead of resisting and raising our voices, we will merely complain
and move on. But if it’s your home that’s at risk, shouldn’t you try to do more?
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LebCat 65: Waiting for that one phone call,
that big break that will turn everything
around! (12 Apr. 2025 - Geitawi, Beirut) |
And so, my thoughts inevitably go to
Armenia, both the part that the international community sort-of recognizes as well
as the parts that are either ignored or considered inconvenient (even by some in
Armenia’s officialdom). Calling Armenia “home” or “homeland” should lead us to
do more than simply to hold a remembrance event on April 24. It must unite – in
our thoughts, feelings and especially our actions – land, people and meaning,
in the pursuit of what is just, not what is convenient. To that end, for the
sake of “our homeland,” what am I doing? And what are you doing?
[LNB]
