Are You from Paradise?

23.Are You from Paradise? (27 February 2019)

Looking deceptively like a paradise. (23 Jan. 2019 –
Ain Mreisse, Beirut)

            No one could accuse us of moving to “paradise” in coming to Lebanon. Just to give a brief whiff of what I mean, the Armenian papers recently published a statement from the nearby Bourj Hammoud municipality explaining (or insisting) that it was not responsible for the terrible garbage smell that has been filling the air in recent weeks. The smell is originating from one of many garbage dumps the government has created up and down the coast (also inland) over the years, where every sort of trash (including millions of plastic bottles as well as chemicals that should not be put in a seaside landfill) is piled high, then flattened out into the Mediterranean, trampling underfoot international treaties and responsible ecological stewardship. And the health of all, men and women, young and old, educated and illiterate, citizens and refugees, believers and agnostics alike.

Let’s say you want to walk on a Beirut sidewalk
instead of the street. Go ahead, give it a try.
(15 Feb. 2019 – Hamra, Beirut)

            Recently Maria and I entered a store to buy something, and the shop owner, detecting that my Armenian accent was unlike the local Armenian style spoken in Bourj Hammoud, asked me (in Armenian) with a bit of a sarcastic tone, “Are you from paradise?” I don’t think he was referring to my Pennsylvania roots (I’ll wait while you look up that place name). It struck us as a strange comment to make to a customer, and it took me a moment as I tried to figure what his intent was. Maybe he was looking for a pretext for charging full price (plus) for what I was buying? So, as lightheartedly as I could muster, I pointed upwards and said, “That paradise? I hope that’s where I’m headed!” He responded by saying, “It’s all the same, there or there, it’s all the same place.”

            OK, now I was confused. So I smiled and let him go on with his… was it a rant? a dissertation? I wasn’t sure of all the ramifications of his lecture to me. But I am sure that many, many people here consider the west – and my country in particular – “paradise”. When you are assaulted by the smells of rotting corruption, and you still don’t have regular water or electricity 30 years after the end of the Civil War, how can you fault people for feeling the way they do?

Maybe try this sidewalk? Careful not to trip over
the steps. (15 Feb. 2019 – Khalil Beddawi, Beirut)

            On the other hand, we’ve been idealizing the west for a long, long time. In the 19^th century, when Armenians and others were traveling to Europe and the U.S. for their education, bringing back to their homeland in the Ottoman Empire the ideals and ideas of the west, it was inevitable that discontent would result, followed by flight from the homeland. Could they have seen the endpoint of their westward movement: a dissipation and dissolution of the people called “Armenians”, especially the western-Armenian variety? That discontent and abandonment also had another by-product; it brought about an infatuation with the west, which in today’s Middle East, combined with the disgusting aromas, the ever-increasing cost of basic goods and services, and the actions of an entrenched ruling class, and you have huge numbers of people, Christians and Muslims, looking to the west – to “paradise” – as their avenue of escape. A mentor of mine, commenting on the state of affairs here since the 1975-1990 Civil War, said, “They took a paradise of a country (Lebanon) and turned it into a garbage dump.”

Students at curtain call after their Vartanants program, along
with their stage director, Sister Nariné, who was transferred to
Beirut from Philadelphia… kind of like us! (25 Feb. 2019 –
Bourj Hammoud)

            Tomorrow is the celebration of “Vartanants”, commemorating a battle the Armenians waged in A.D. 451 to resist the Persian Empire’s efforts to convert them from Christianity back to Zoroastrianism. It is considered a decisive, defining moment in our history, when somehow the Armenian people found the courage to choose death with honor, rather than a life subservient to the dominant forces of the day. But where is that courage now? Occasionally it appears, but more often than not Armenians are driven by their fears, not by their ideals or principles.

            An elderly Armenian Catholic nun spoke of this at a Vartanants school program I attended a few days ago. She remarked how she had spent two weeks at an Armenian school in the Los Angeles area, and during recess time, not once did she hear one child speak to another in Armenian. And she challenged the Lebanese-Armenian parents in attendance not to give up in imparting Christian and Armenian values to their children, first at home, and then in Armenian schools. What is happening to us? What befell us to make us this way?

  Don’t give up just yet. Try this sidewalk.
(27 Feb. 2019 – Geitawi, Beirut)

            One thing that definitely shaped us into a fear-filled people was our centuries of existence as a repressed subject people in the Ottoman Empire. Armenians survived by keeping their eyes cast down to the ground, trying their best not to provoke the harshness of the surrounding tribes, who were the real authorities in their historic Armenian lands. Those tribes, still in existence today, and still active in the same ways, considered it their right and privilege to take advantage of the industry of Armenians in agriculture and the trades. A portion of what they stole always went to the government in Constantinople, ensuring that there would be no change in this status quo. Toward the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, when Armenians tried to organize to defend themselves and resist governmental and “irregular” terror, before and during the Genocide, they were frequently opposed by other Armenians who feared disturbing the status quo. This is how only a few Ottoman soldiers with guns were able to herd hundreds of Christians to their deaths in the Syrian desert.

            These fears are still alive and well inside of us, so that when a hint of trouble appears in this region, many of us (as well as other Christian groups) are among the first to pack up and leave. A sad contrast to our ancient Christian witness amid trials, as well as our capacity to endure as a distinctive culture group anywhere in the world, including Armenia. I wonder if Vartanants should be a day of national mourning for Armenians, in place of April 24 (i.e., Genocide Remembrance Day). Back then our forebears with their lifeblood took a stand “for Christ and for the homeland”, as the famous saying goes in Yeghishé’s “History of the Armenians”. Today? What remains of who we were?

LebCat 22: Nothing like a good morning stretch. Watch out for
what’s lurking behind the bench, though.
(18 Feb. 2019 – Qobaiyat, Beirut)

            What else, but the struggle, the urgency to continue the struggle, to seek God right where we are, and to not waste our energies seeking “paradise”. This is what every Armenian school is doing, at great cost, amid threatened funding cuts from organizations that should be increasing, not decreasing, their investment in these institutions. This is what every Armenian church is doing, though some would prefer to drop the ethnic orientation and just fit in with the local church scene. This is what every Armenian cultural activity is about, and what every Armenian choir is doing (like the Armiss choir!), what every individual does when opening up a Bible or a book in the Armenian language, or at least when reading about Armenians. “Struggle, struggle, unending struggle” is what a friend exhorted me to do when I wrote to him a few Vartanantses ago. It may not fit well in a world where people want to be entertained. But what sense is there in exchanging the weight of millennia of faith, history, culture and identity for something as ephemeral as whatever is “trending”?   [LNB]

Bullying

10.Bullying (12 November 2017)

The street where we live, dug up for new electric cables…
we think. Our building entrance is at the far left edge
of the picture. (9 Nov. 2017 – Beirut)

            One of the popular topics in various levels of society here is “bullying”. People are trying to bring some awareness to the topic on the local scene by holding seminars to help employees in difficult work environments, or by providing training for teachers to guide children to interact with respect toward each other. It’s a tough road to walk – to live without intimidating or being intimidated – because its expression in Middle Eastern culture is pervasive, and quite accepted. Having intrinsic rights as an individual, a very Western concept, is difficult to grasp in a culture that views groups and collectives as the basic building blocks of societal existence.

            But bullying is also the way that politics is done. And not just in the Middle East. Big countries bully small countries. We use sophisticated terms to describe it, and political theorists (from big countries) create ideologies and terminology to justify it, but it’s the same behavior you on view in any playground the world over. It’s part of what makes up our “unlovable” side, the side sorely in need of redeeming.

Arabic coffee and French toast, prepared on our new oven.
It’s what’s for breakfast. (4 Nov. 2017 – Beirut)

            So here we are, 10 days away from the 74^th anniversary of the independence of Lebanon. And how are we celebrating? By wondering what happened to the country’s Prime Minister, Saad al Hariri. Someone in the royal family summons him to Saudi Arabia nine days ago for some reason, and before you can say, “Pass the tabbouleh,” the very next day (the very same day a purge happened in the political halls of the kingdom) Lebanon’s Prime Minister is sitting in front of a TV camera way off in Riyadh, reading a resignation speech that sounds quite unlike what he usually says. He claims he is being bullied, or threatened, and that Lebanon is being bullied, too. But big countries bully small countries. Powerful groups bully weaker groups. This is a reality that a seminar or training cannot easily change.

Sevag's and my view of the massive demonstrations twelve
years ago, protesting, among other things, former Prime
Minister Rafiq al Hariri’s assassination. (14 Mar. 2005 – Beirut)

            A lot is being said about what is happening, both in the local media as well as international. I’m not sure what is worth reading and what isn’t. (That’s why I’m not including a bunch of links here. Better that you read for yourself what’s current.) But none of that really matters, because the outcome is that everyone here is feeling bullied, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Except, maybe, to pick themselves off the blacktop and figure out what to do now. For some it means trying to leave the playground as quickly as possible. For others, it means finding a way to stand back up and not let the bullies have their way.

            Twelve years ago, the year the current Prime Minister’s father, Rafiq al Hariri, was assassinated, the Beirut Marathon Association decided to adopt the slogan “For Lebanon”, and to push forward with this international event to show the world – but mostly the Lebanese – that life will continue. This year’s slogan is for the anniversary year, “15 Years of Running Beirut”. Now, I don’t think that means what it says, but I have a feeling that in bringing so many disparate groups together for marathons in this country, May Khalil (the marathon’s founder and tireless promoter) and her crew might do at least as good a job as the professional politicians here.

After today’s 8 km race, with a slogan we can
believe in… (12 Nov. 2017 – Beirut)

            During the Prime Minister’s absence (he has since appeared in a live TV interview this evening), the organizers decided to dedicate this year’s run to PM Saad Hariri, to show a united front across all political and religious groups. This solidarity, being carefully expressed by political opponents in the country, may keep the Lebanese from any precipitous actions against each other. That’s a good thing, and it may also keep the bullies off the playground – for a while.

            Meanwhile, I ran/walked the Marathon’s 8 km “Fun Run” today, and lived to tell about it! There were tens of thousands of people in this race, so I got to the starting line 35 minutes after the actual start of the run. It took me 70 minutes to complete the course, and I only stopped once (to say hello to my favorite falafel maker, a young Egyptian fellow who was completely surprised when I went up to shake his hand). The weather was clear and beautiful, the participants happy and friendly, almost making you forget that you are living through yet another crisis.

LebCat 10: Surveying its kingdom in ruins. Actually the house
where Maria and family lived in the early 1960s, behind the
Armenian Evangelical College. Currently totally demolished.
(12 Mar. 2017 – Beirut)

            A friend of mine said yesterday (my paraphrase), “Enough of thinking defeatist thoughts. We have to move forward with a vision, convinced that we are doing good, and God will provide the resources.” Living in this environment is teaching us that “walking by faith, not by sight” (II Cor. 5.7) is not just an admirable ideal; it is crucial for our existence as Christians, as Armenians (in our case), and as humans who are determined not to succumb to bullying – whether ideological, or financial, or cultural.

            When I signed up for today’s race, it was mostly for me – to do a run two years post-cancer, to push myself out of my sedentary lifestyle, to see what my body can take in its sixth decade. But now I think that I’m not just running for the sake of the Prime Minister; I’m really running for Lebanon.

            Read my prayer letter and pray, too. [LNB]