The Good, The Bad and The Lebanese


As I was driving home today I saw a taxi cab in front of me slow down as he spied a dead cat in the middle of the road. He turned his wheel ever so slightly, took aim and drove his left front wheel over the carcass, as if deriving some kind of obscene thrill from mangling an already dead animal. I knew exactly what I wanted to do; stop my car, walk up to him and give him a piece of my mind. Chances are he would have a gun or a baseball bat and would have no qualms shooting me or beating me senseless. So, I thought maybe not.

I did not mention this episode to disgust readers only to illustrate a point and that point being: the Lebanese defy all attempts to define, analyse or classify them into a neat stereotype. You have your cat killers and cat manglers, and then you have Khalil Gebran, most Lebanese fall somewhere in the middle.

We are constant disappointments to each other and yet we also continue to exceed each other's expectations, in both our capacity for inhuman cruelty and on the other end of the scale our compassion and humanity.

To say we are street smart thugs is not wrong, but we are also cultured and educated. To say we are unprofessional would to a degree hold true, and yet many of us are model professionals. To say we have no respect for the law is no extraordinary feat of deduction, but our laws have laid the foundations for a democratic society that is the most sophisticated and labyrinthine in the region.

I know its easy to fall into the praise game, we do it so well in Lebanon that we end up believing our own flattering embellishments. Today, I will suspend my criticsm for a day and try to see the good around me. First, it might help my anger driven elevated blood pressure, and two, I might actually learn something.

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