The first word I learned in Lebanon was ‘thawra.’ It means revolution in Arabic.
It was my first day in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. I was on an alternative walking tour of the city with a focus on its political history. Our gen X guide had been active in the 2019 movement – the ‘thawra’ – against the government after the bank corruption scandal that caused millions of Lebanese to lose their life savings and sent the country into a financial spiral. The revolution fizzled out with the pandemic and then the catastrophic ammonium nitrate blast in the Beirut harbor of August 2020, the largest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded. The Lebanese have certainly had their share of problems.
According to our guide, its never been easy to be Lebanese. Between the sectarian system inherited from the French colonialists (ensuring equal representation of 18 religious sects in politics and society), and increasing poverty and widening inequality, “The only thing the Lebanese have in common is our trauma.”
Everyone talks about how resilient the Lebanese are. And when you hear what normal people have endured you want to say the same thing. I bought some organic body lotion from a man who recently returned with his father to their village in Southern Lebanon. The village was no more. The houses were flattened, the lamp-posts had been plowed down, and even the olive trees had been systematically uprooted and moved in a symbolically humiliating action. The olive trees that they rely on for olive oil to make their lotions and creams. One of the key agricultural products of the country. So they were in a dark house on the edge of the village making lotions to sell in Beirut to rich people like me. I wanted to tell him how resilient he was. But it felt condescending. The Lebanese are not resilient. They are just trying to survive.
