Persiflage & Paroxysm

Nine years ago to the day my father left me with a smile, he asked if I needed a ride to work, I said no. At 9pm that day I learned that his mangled body lay in a cold drawer at Tawam Hospital, the victim of a mysterious road crash, the cause of which I still do not fully understand. His passing filled every part of our lives my mother and I with boundless stillness and an unquenchable yearning to hear his voice or see his smile. I struggle daily to remember his face, its weird what the mind does to what it unilaterally deems ‘old useless data’ that takes up too much precious grey-cell space. I have had a hard time talking about his passing, even writing about it, it’s not an easy subject to bring up without getting emotional. The span of years has done little to dull the pain of a sudden unexpected loss. His counsel is often needed yet all I have are dusty memory reels replayed in my mind during moments of still contemplation. I have sought to find the words to describe or eulogize hi...

The reason the modern State of Israel exists is simple and it has nothing to do with religion or biblical prophecy or any claim Jews have overthe land of Palestine. They have as much claim to the land as a Mexican Christian has to Nazareth and Bethlehem, or an Indonesian Muslim has to Mecca and Medina. Sacred and holy places, yes, faith-based country, no! The Middle East and the third world in general has long been the traditional dumping grounds for Europe’s rejects; Europe's Jews were just at the top of that list. Many Jews willingly left Europe at the end of the Second World War, refusing to live among people who at the very least stood by quietly while their loved ones were gassed to death. Frankly, I don’t blame them for leaving and choosing to settle in Palestine. If anything the influx of European Jews enriched Palestinian society in the 20s and 30s, or so my father used to tell me as he lived in Palestine until he was 18. To absolve Europe and the Europeans of any blame for...

The Merry and Bitter Month of May, 63 Springs and Countin g (Dedicated to my late father) By Hani M Bathish THIS year May 15 arrived as an unwanted but badly needed visitor, much like Nanny McPhee (from the film by the same name). An extraordinary flood of confused and mixed emotions welled up and churned inside me like a really bad shish tawook sandwich with mayonnaise that had gone bad. I was Lebanese on the 14th, fully focused on purely Lebanese issues, and then with the first images of the front lines of Maroun el Ras and Qunaitra, I realized I was Palestinian too. I put on Fairuz and replayed Sayfoun Fal Youch’har over and over and over again, that rare Rahbani foray into the battle-cry genre. I discovered I was in the wrong place, on a couch in front of the TV, when I should have been down there at Maroun el Ras with my people. It’s a long story. You see it all began in Lebanon in the early 1620s during the reign of Emir Fakhereddine in Mount Lebanon, who was the darling o...

Joshua Landis, American professor and writer, paints a dire picture of a post Assad Syria, he describes a country plunged in to turmoil and civil strife, divided along geographic and sectarian lines. What is even more worrying is the warning issued last Thursday night on Marcel Ghanem’s popular TV talk show by seasoned Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, who said that the fall of the regime in Syria could lead to civil war in Lebanon. I tend to heed the warnings of the pessimists because our dystopian world often proves them right. The trickle of Syrian civilians into Lebanon that is fast turning into a steady stream is of great concern if only because no one knows how long their stay will be. Their displacement could last for years. Crossing over into Lebanon just today civilians tell of more violence and more insecurity. One old Syrian woman interviewed on LBC as she crossed into Lebanon responded thus to being asked how the situation was across the border: "Zift, zift, zift....

When a country becomes famous for a certain product it is remarkable how that reputation can sustain exports and economic success millennia into the future even in the face of aggressive competition and modern intensive production techniques. It’s hard to imagine tulips from anywhere else but from Holland, it’s like Nokias from Finland or Champagne from Champagne, every country has at least one. The Phoenicians were famous for their olive oil and their wines: olive oil exports gave the ancient Greeks a run for their money, Phoenician wines were highly prized in the region, the Pharaohs even took it with them to their graves, literally, both to make the journey to the underworld more bearable and to entertain their guests in the afterlife. “Lebanese wines, served in heaven,” now that’s an award winning ad campaign in the making if ever there was one! In fact the Phoenician merchant fleet carried more goods per ship than anything afloat in the ancient world. One source states that “The...

A friend of mine once asked me: “How does it feel to leave mainstream daily news reporting and commit to the world of financial and business journalism, isn’t it awfully dry and boring?” My answer was and remains this: In daily general reporting the focus is always on the bad news and how to present it in a splashier way than our competitors, with maybe a little more detail and information. Scoops are rare and often contain very little that is new wrapped in a lot of shiny packaging. In mainstream journalism it is also harder to escape taking sides, even the kind of stories one reports or doesn’t define a publication’s political direction. I’m not saying the same risks do not apply in financial journalism, they do, but there is always a clearer and better defined line. In financial or business reporting, especially in a country with few sources of reliable hard data and information for businesses, the sky for the financial journalist is literary the limit. The same rigor and perfecti...