Fleeing Beirut

Sunday, July 23, 2006

  Lebanon is in ruins. Lebanon has been in ruins before, and nowadays many a Lebanese flee their beloved cities with a sense of deja vu. They have seen this scene before. They have been through this agony before. They know what it means to be afraid of a sudden death that might come out of nowhere, just as they know firsthand how fear is capable of disappearing when you least expect it to, making you not so brave and firm as simply numb. They know how one can switch from one pole to another, from euphoria to numbness, and how life can turn upside down any moment. They know these today, just like they knew them in the past. The only difference is that they thought it was over, this volatility and ambiguity, long gone. The only difference is that they had momentarily put out of their mind the remnants of a past too painful to remember all the time. But it just came back: The realization that life can be smashed to smithereens overnight and nothing, meaning nothing, can be taken for granted. You might have a nice house, a nice family, a nice job, a nice future in front of you... and then, with one step, in one night, you might find yourself stripped of all but the maddening voice inside your head. All of a sudden you might lose everything and turn into a homeless refugee. This happens to be a piece of valuable insight that is equally relevant for each and every one of us, and yet strangely, is accepted by only a few around the globe. The rest of us prefer to live pretending that life is ordered and predictable. Some among us even seem to believe that it is in their hands to control their destiny and shape the movements of Fortuna -- that unreliable feminine force which surely is as slippery as eel and as old as violence and pain. At the time this article was being penned, the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon was still rising dramatically. How does one come to think of life and death, love and hatred when there are bombshells raining on his roof? What becomes of daily life matters that we oftentimes take so seriously when you know that you might die any moment? What does “home” mean when you are told to evacuate your house of so many years only to run into the unknown?Just like Beirut, Istanbul too is an ancient crossroads where deeply-rooted ethnic, religious and cultural differences have both clashed and coexisted all throughout history. Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Delhi, Shanghai…. Living in an old and multifaceted city such as these would normally be expected to furnish its citizens with an additional wisdom about the recurring patterns in history, about how human beings are capable of producing violence and hatred. And yet, strangely, the denizens of long-standing cities also tend to be the ones with the scantiest recollections, like aged people with infantile memories. After all, the need and desire to be future-oriented is too strong to resist. People need to forget to carry on. Amnesia proves to be more appealing than memory, especially when and where people die easily, accidentally, and randomly. Only the inhabitants of newly-built orderly cities or relatively tranquil nation-states, or better still, only those diaspora people without a home city or homeland can afford to stick to long-lasting memories. But behind the hectic pulsation and the commotion of daily life, flowing as silently and secretly as an undercurrent, is the painful history of the Middle East and the Balkans, as well as all those boiling regions in the world where internal conflicts do not pass away, but merely take a nap every few years. And this is precisely what the prevailing amnesia of old Eastern cities hides under the surface: the knowledge that life is subject to sudden change, that order and stability is subject to abrupt obliteration, and that as much as they resist becoming settlers and making long-term investments as if they would never die, human beings are capable of destroying their homes and turning themselves into unexpected expatriates any moment.

  Do the cities in which we live affect our level of comprehension and wisdom? Do the age, composition and the painful memories of the places where we reside shape our approach to the notions of death and life, as well as to art and politics?