حدا بيتذكر هالشعار؟ هيدا كان الشعار اللي نزل فيه حزب الله وحلفاؤه بالـ٢٠٠٥ بوج اللي كانوا عم يتظاهروا لخروج الجيش السوري من لبنان. في كتير إشيا تغيّرت من وقتا لهلّق. في كتير ظلم ارتكبوه لبنانيي بحق عمال سوريي. اي، كانت فشة خلق، وما بقول هالشي لتبرير وإنما لتجريم اللي صار.
بس مش هون الفكرة، الفكرة انو أنا حابة إكتب لثوار سوريا، بركي البعض منن بيسمع وبيحس بالتقدير اللي حسيت فيه تجاهكن.
I've recently finished reading the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. It'd be difficult to summarize this book into a simple tagcloud, my favorite tool to summarize a text, or textful object. Ah, the beauty of technology! How it helps me shroud my laziness and ignorance.
Anyway, regarding the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it is supposed to be the story of a young black woman, diagnosed with cancer, then her cells were taken away from her without informed consent. The cells quickly turn into a biology legend. They were the first and most successful human cells ever cloned.
I was peacefully sipping my coffee, smoking my ciggy, and struggling to remember the old days as good ones, when on the road in front of me I see a bike passing, no, there was nothing unusual, or unlebanese about the bike. It was one of those expensive mopeds that you see everyday in Lebanon. The driver was a Lebanese dude on the verge of the hairloss journey, with gel coagulating his hair in a way that clearly shows the head skin craving to shine brighter in a few years. And of course, I could see all these details because he was not wearing a helmet, which makes him one of those Lebanese men that you see everyday in Lebanon.
All of you people talking about Gaza, on facebook, msn and everyone you can type a whole sentence; all of you putting pictures of slaughtered children in the streets and of scared mothers; all of you giving me crap about the viciousness of Israel… You are the people who care the least about Gaza or Palestine or the children that die pour un oui ou pour un non. Khalas ba2a, tla3o min rase with your stupid avatars and your stupid words… Khalas hypocrisy dressed in compassion. Stop highjacking online media to do the Jihad you are too chicken to do, what are you looking for? Exposure of the Palestinian cause? Ma Gaza is on every fucking station. Shi marra face this frightening truth that stares you in the face and bi2ouwa hal ba7sa… The only enemy to the Palestinian cause is Hamas and those lli bishiddo 3a mshadda. Ma ba2a trab7oune jmeele with your bigotry.
Given the latest problems in my beloved home, and to comfort you all about my situation in Lebanon I just wanted you all to know that I am safe and everything. I don’t know if I should talk about what has been happening in Lebanon or not. It is really not clear. What is clear however is that Hezbollah has won yet another war. But on the other hand it finally made the mistake of flagrantly using its arsenal against the Lebanese people. We’ll wait and see in the next few days how it evolves… As for me, I was in Jordan from Thursday till Sunday. I can’t talk about the details of my trip for security concerns. But I can tell you that was one of the most stressful situations I had ever been through. Though I wasn’t worried about my parents, I couldn’t stay insensitive to my friends’ tears, and a lot were shed. The way back to Lebanon was full of setbacks and difficulties and took us 13 fucking hours! But we made it. Now the situation seems a bit better… it’s improving by the day. I don’t really want to talk about the implications of what has happened because I am simply clueless, I have more than one theory about it, maybe hen I will know better I will let you all know…
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, 14th 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 14th 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 14th 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…
It’s weird how life can turn around and twist us to the point of breaking us apart and then it would gather our broken pieces and breathe life back to our bones and we go on with our life as if we never suffer. Then years after it you would still think about it and remember it but the pain is gone, you still cry but you’re not sad anymore. It’s funny how so much suffering can be remembered with nothing but compassion and sympathy for the tortured child you were, I guess that’s a sign that it’s behind you. Ever since I cam to accept my troubling past I have gathered the courage to talk to a few people about it, I expected to find many people sharing some similar experiences but what I didn’t expect was to see how much they suffer remembering those moments of their lives, it must be so painful for them. It’s not the same for me…
Exactly a decade ago I was in my dark ages I was struggling with repeated suicide attempts as clearly all of my friends already know. Now a lot has changed, for the best mainly. But around 11 years ago, I was dragged by my mom to church it was at this time of the year, it was the last week of fast and there is this Christian ritual where they celebrate the suffering of the Christ, there were a few songs that cut right through me and touched my heart like no other experience would ever again and I cried. Luckily my mom didn’t see me cry back then, but something changed in me that evening and I was never the same. Over the next 2 years I would go from celebrating suffering to meditation, prayer and perpetual fast… then drop down into excessive guilt, self-hatred and of course suicide.
That evening I heard three Hymns that touched me, I’ll try to translate the other two but this is one of them. By the way, try to ignore the video itself it’s full of blood and doesn’t always convey the suffering in its true meaning…
***In the voice of mary****
Habibi Habibi (I didn’t translate habibi because there is no English word that could capture its Arabic sweetness) look at how you have become
Who has troubled you, who gave you this cup of vinegar that you would accept to drink?
Habibi, what wrong have you done, what despicable act have you done?
You’re exhausted and you’re wounded beyond healing
***in the voice of Jesus***
I was in the garden at night and I was troubled to the gut
I prayed and I prayed until I sweat
I said: God, if you may, save me from the pain ahead of me
In my heart incomparable grief, not even to drowning in mud
Like a sheep they laid me down on earth and crucified me
All those around me abandoned me as if I was a stranger
So I turned back to god, the only one that capable of helping me, the only one watching over the world
And to injustice succeeded sorrow, despair and bitter tears
Tied up, beaten as if I was the lowest of decadents
Whipped like the nastiest of criminals
And all for your sake, for your wellbeing, for you to be happy sane and secure
Look at me! Have you ever seen such suffering under the sky?
It must sound so awkward for an atheist to be moved by such a Hymn but it’s actually the memories that leave me speechless, there are things that I can never express, which is good I guess
Anencephaly literately means the absence of a brain. It’s a very rare case of congenital malformation of the neural tube. The neural tube being the origin of the whole nervous system, it is a structure that develops early on and any defect on its level has dramatic repercussions. Technically: The neural tube is formed starting from the 3rd week of pregnancy. It’s formed from the thickening of a precise region of a tissue called Ectoderm, the rest of the ectoderm will form the skin and the neural plate will penetrate the embryo and later on form a closed tube (neural tube), the sensory cells scattered around in the skin. The neural tube will give the brain and the spinal cord. Unfortunately, in some cases this is not how things happen, the neural tube fails to close in the cephalic region. The tube is no longer a tube in that region, and the skin can’t climb over it and close it. Instead some underdeveloped nervous cells pile up, in a more or less organized manor without any bones to protect them or even skin. Not all kids affected die prematurely, 45% of them reach the term of their gestation, but none lives a lot longer than 6 days. They are born blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain. Never in their short life will they gain any consciousness and most of them actually die because their rudimentary brain cannot regulate properly essential body functions. 95% of parents, once informed with their child’s situation choose to terminate it. Though medical intervention (reparatory surgeries for other defects that may accompany anencephaly, antibiotics, assisted ventilation…) may increase the life of such a baby, but most of the times the child is allowed to die smoothly and with as much dignity as possible. There is no cure for this defect, because by the time the case is diagnosed the development is already altered, and there is no way to fix it. The only weapon we have is folic acid which is known to reduce the prevalence of this defect, problem is that by the time a woman knows she is pregnant then it’d be too late! When I read this I can’t help but to remember all the babies/kids/people that only get a partial chance of living, the ones that are born with severe defects, the ones that are born in severe poverty, in war, in abusive families. I can’t help but to think of Layal. In my mind I keep on thinking: which one had a better chance? Which life was better? Certainly Layal lived till teenage and sure she actually KNEW the world, these kids never had that chance. But on the other hand Layal only had the chance to know a world she REALISE she would be deprived off, a world that she KNEW she never belonged to, and a world she SAW how she will leave… She felt pain and she realized she will die… Soon! Isn’t that much more cruel than leaving a world you never knew to care for?
Stratten was laying face down on the end of Snider's waterbed, the side of her face and one of her fingers blown off by a 12 gauge shotgun blast. Nearby was Snider, lying on top of the Mossberg shotgun he had used to kill Stratten before turning it on himself; his face between his eyes was gone and his left eyeball was dangling out of its socket. Both of them were nude and covered in ants; Stratten's body was determined to have been moved post-mortem, and further examination of the body turned up several bloody fingerprints, determined to be Snider's. On her posterior were two perfectly formed bloody handprints, also determined to be Snider's. Next to Stratten's corpse was a home-made sex apparatus that Snider had designed to support a woman in a frog-like position for the purpose of anal sex. Police determined that after Snider killed Stratten, he fastened her corpse to the apparatus with medical tape and sodomized her for the next half-hour before un-strapping her and then killing himself.
Not that I would defend this guy or giving him any excuses, there’s no excuse to return Dorothy to life or change what has been done.
But in the end I have read a lot about the traumatism and the great agony that rape victims suffer from, how they never really heal, how some would start sleeping with their shoes on, in case their rapist come back (in that case they’d be ready to run away), how they sleep with the lights on, how they never trust men ever again…
And how many times have we heard about guys raping women then killing them, imagine the horrible death! Nothing’s more precious to a woman than her intimacy and rape is not the most pleasant memory to leave this world with.
This guy raped her after her death, she felt none of it. She just died and everything ended there, she never knew what happened to her body after it, so maybe death is a bliss after all. And maybe that guy did something right in the end.
And think of what he did to himself, I wonder what he felt. He must’ve felt so terrible didn’t he?
9 to 10 years ago, I was 12-13 years old. We didn’t live in Jounieh; we lived somewhere else for only one year. I was a religious freak. I lived in a very self-centered world where no one really existed. We had neighbors. I was for the first time in my life being noticed in school (only 23 class-mates) Of all our neighbors one family was remarkable.
They were a nice family, a mom a dad and 2 adorable kids (7 and 4). The dad was a school math teacher. The whole family was nice and friendly. But there were a tiny problem in this utopia. The parents were cousins, and at the time they got married, the government didn’t impose on future couples to go through any tests to detect any potential genetic tare. And they had a genetic tare. As a result, their children had a genetic defect in their immune system; they had little or no immunity.
They had ulcers in their mouths. They coughed all the time. They threw up everything they ate and they had to eat some more to compensate the food they threw up. At one occasion my brother was playing with them and he made the boy laugh so hard the kid almost suffocated with his coughs… My brother learned his lesson: They are kids but they can only handle moderate amounts of laughter.
One day their parent’s managed to take them to the USA. The boy had a more fragile health and there were hope of a bone marrow transplant from his dad, but there were not enough compatibility and the process was aborted. Meanwhile they got introduced to a method applied in the USA, transplanting anti-bodies, it seemed to work miracles on the children. But the treatment is not available in Lebanon so they had to import the serum from the US when they came back to Lebanon. The cost was huge but that didn’t worry them. One day the external tube (in which the antibody was injected) exploded and there were no way of putting another one in Lebanon.
I remember hearing that their immune system will improve with time. I remember thinking about how they will one day look at their difficult childhood, smile and say:
“Well, one way or the other we survived”
I also remember their cousin; she looked a lot like them but with a perfectly healthy immune system. I always looked at her and thought to myself “this is how they were supposed to look like”. She was so sweet.
A few years back, the parent’s did a colossal job trying to raise money for an operation for the boy; they never managed to raise the whole sum cause the kid died, of pulmonary infection. He must’ve been 10 years old or something. Two days ago my mom told me the girl died too, her name was Layal and she was too young to die. I guess this is where you finally realize that Layal won’t get better and that all that those hopes were false ones. And Layal will never look back at her childhood and smile. This is where the story ends and probably the suffering too. They say far from the eye, far from the heart. I haven’t seen Layal in the last 10 years and when I think of her death I can’t really cry about it. In fact when I heard of her death I was silent. It’s like losing an old relative, you know you will miss her/him but you can’t help to feel that maybe this is how it is supposed to happen… we are all invited to die someday, right? Well NO, this isn’t right! She’s not an old relative… she’s a young woman! She’s a teenager; her death shouldn’t be the normal course of events that you accept with a little bitterness.
Shit, she just died and that was probably not such a bad thing, and they say we’re exaggerating when we say life’s empty. Yes I know tragedies like this happen everyday and even worse things happen to some… But that only proves my point of view:
LIFE IS EMPTY AND WE ONLY ENJOY IT CAUSE WE CAN’T AFFORD TO HATE IT
