After Tunisia: Joumana Haddad on Lebanon
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For months I've been deprived of sleep in the morning because the bulldozers start work at six o'clock. I used to wake up cursing the property development boom in my neighbourhood, and all the buildings that are endlessly emerging, rising high in the skies of Beirut. But for several days now they have been silenced. Did the developers become more respectful of our sleep, and decide to delay the digging works? No. The bulldozers have stopped because now everything is blocked here; because now is not the time to "build", but to wait silently for the unnamable.
The other day it took me 13 minutes to get from my house to my office at An Nahar newspaper, in downtown Beirut, a journey that used to take an hour and a half before the collapse of the government. You'd think I'd be happy. Not at all. The traffic did not disappear because someone found a miraculous solution to our urban problems, but because people are afraid. Now is not the time to "circulate".
This silence is a metaphor for the state of things in Lebanon today. Expectations have also disappeared. And with them many of the foreign funds that were being invested in the country's numerous projects. Other things that are swiftly disappearing are a joy in life, faith in tomorrow and the strength to tell ourselves that in spite of everything, "it will be OK".
What remains? The terror, the uncertainty, the threats, the divisions, and the more and more imposing threat of a new civil war.
You do not live in Beirut: you survive it. And the Tunisian dream seems so far out of our reach. David has beaten Goliath with a stone. But if the sling is in the hands of Goliath, what can one do?
It has been days since the sound of bulldozers woke me up. But you won't see me rejoicing. I am sad. So sad that I am thinking about writing a poem about the sound of bulldozers – the sound of hope.
Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese writer and journalist. Her most recent publication in the UK is I Killed Scheherazade (Saqi Books).