365 DAYS, A year already

365 days have past since the Syrian forces have withdrawn from Lebanese land (at least officially) from the Lebanese territories.
365 days were enough for the Lebanese to realize that this victory will not make our Lebanon a pretty healthy oasis again.
365 days were enough for many people to face reality again.
365 days for us to realize that we are not as united as we pretend to be.
365 days to realize that it’s not just Hezbollah that needs the Syrians.
I hope that it won’t take us some 365 years to realize the find some peace in this hell we call “the land of cedars”.

Don’t get me wrong I am not disappointed with what was achieved. But you see, a week before the 14th of March 2005 there were a certain boiling beneath the surface. We knew it and everybody else knew it. It was like an orgasm building up, you can’t really predict it or control it, but you know its coming. I remember that 6 days before that when Hezbollah and Amal proclaimed the the million protesters the rest of Lebanon was shook up. We knew it wasn’t a million, we knew that many were paid, but the only way to disprove them was to bring down a real million and let history judge, and it built up for the whole week, we auto-recruited ourselves.

And then came April the 14th. It was a day never to be forgotten. Two things I will never forget:
1- The faces of old people on the balconies.
2- Freedom.

Forget about the freedom from the Syrians and forget the freedom that we even cheered for. It was not about that. It was just about walking in a huge croud of strangers, without the fear of others, and having no rule to respect.

I remember people cheering against the Syrians Dogs, I remember calling basher el-Açad “3akroot” (a very slang way to say son of a bitch), I remember people raising slogans inviting the Syrians to leave, inviting all there puppies to leave too starting with Lahoud (and yes the LFPM, aka Aounists were the ones who demanded that the most). I remember so many other things. Until that day we spoke about the Syrians inside our houses, sometimes in whisper. But now we said it on top of roofs we said it on the streets, and yes we were not fair! We bashed them really bad, but what did you expect, 30 years of occupation!! The Israelis occupied South Lebanon for something less than 20 years+we were never forced to call them brothers+they were not as destructive as Syrians, and still they still illustrate the evil enemies today.

Yes we hated the Syrians for there occupation. Yes the whole Syrian people take responsibility for the Occupation. I know they are as oppressed as we were (actually much more than us) but that is no excuse for them, and they never sympathized with us. They were never our brothers, so let them take responsibility of this injustice! The Germans were blamed for both the 1st and 2nd World War, right?

But it’s ok forgetfulness is very human. Lebanese will soon forget that. Besides, who cares for that now? We have other stuff to argue about, we have so many problems nowadays.

Prices are going nuts, you see the political cast took advantage of the political turmoil to raise prices and taxes.

People are tired of the political futile debates (yes sure they still support there leaders, but they are disappointed).

Young people are being tempted with holding the guns again (morons).

We are being dumped by everyone everywhere.

No we have achieved very little during this whole independence thing. And you know what? We paid such a high price. I know others took there independence at much higher prices. But none can say that we paid nothing, we paid lives!

We paid Hariri/Fleihan/12civilians, we paid the lives of two foreign workers that were going to a friends place for some celebration, we paid Samir kassir, we paid Georges Hawi, we paid two more civilians, and we paid Tueni and his two companions… What happened to all the dreams? Where did all that go? What did we do wrong? Did we dream too much? Did we make wrong choices?

NO, we did everything we could, we tried to make the right choices, we tried to know better. But give us a break everyone, we are just humans, and we are living a difficult situation, we came out of a civil war, and we came out of several occupations, we never chose our homeland and we don’t really know what to do. And none can blame us for this. Think of all the political failures all around the world, hell! Think of politics in general, no one’s satisfied with there achievements!

When everyone was hopeful I was telling everyone: “come down people, it’s not going to be heaven, they’ll all turn against us”.
Now that everyone’s feeling hopeless I am trying to say to people: “Cheer up everyone, we made a step forward!”

But I am no reference so no one listens to me; I’m just the clown that makes people laugh in class since I am the one who’d look silly to make them smart by comparison.