Happy Valentine’s Day… I guess

I had planned to talk to you about my birthday, it was yesterday and yes now I’m 23 but as you all know, in Lebanon, Valentine’s Day is less celebrated than the death of Hariri exactly three years ago. A friend of mine was asking me to go but I had said no, for a very clear reason that I will talk about later. Last night around my neighborhood in Beirut, 14^th of Marcher were calling on people to participate in today’s demonstration using loud speakers and stuff. Keep in mind that I live in a Christian (combining both FPMers and Christians 14^th of Marchers of all factions!) area that is currently being engulfed by the rapid expansion of the Dahieh.

As far as I am concerned this move did nothing to change my mind, why would I change my mind aslan?

At around 10pm I go to bed as usual, at 2:20am I wake up, not on the sound of an explosion but the sound of gun shots! Around my house there are certain unusual and unhealthy phenomena taking place and at certain occasions guns were used, but this time it was different, it wasn’t the result of some personal problem, since it wasn’t a single shot or something, it was several (somewhere around 7 and 10) shots. Needless to say I jumped out of my bed to get a grip of what was happening but I didn’t jump to the windows, a habit I have learnt from previous gun shots J. But I was genuinely scared. Not much was known so I went back to bed.

This morning, my uncle informs me that our building was specifically targeted! Shooting on the first floor where there are commercial shops and stuff, a few shots landed on the façade of the building also. What’s even funnier is that a small explosive was thrown but didn’t explode.

The news certainly wasn’t aware of this news, for many reasons:

1- Tomorrow is the 14^th of March, it’s better to promote a fake image of security

2- his is a delicate area it would be unwise to wake the demon lying next to us

3-I’m sure there were many incidents that were meant to scare people, promoting it would be giving the perpetrators what they wanted

Surprisingly no one got hurt and we got back to our normal lives… more or less…