Sick Apathy...

Sick Apathy…

Published on November 18, 2012 in National, Social

I passed by, during my visit to Lebanon, on the place where Gnl Wissam el Hassan was murdered….

The first thing that came to my mind was the famous cliché on how fast we start the reconstruction. Indeed reconstruction of the area had restarted.

The scene was a macabre death scene… I need not describe the feelings with the aftermath, we had lived these scenes so many times before. But somehow, this was one scene too much for me, or I was it that I was absent for too long?

I saw a man standing, and asked him about the exact location of the explosion. He answered: “you’re standing on it”… He was a supervisor of a construction company. I asked him about the holes in a wall, whether they were from the war-time or this explosion, he answered that they were from the explosion, then he pointed at the wall: ” do you see these black stains?, it is human flesh”…

Absolutely shocking…. Here we were standing where 4 persons were alive, and in a split of a second ended up bits and pieces every where. But what was even more astonishing was the sick apathy he displayed toward what really looked like a scene from some horror movie.

Then came his political analysis, a rhetoric of what we hear on the news, I will abstain to comment but I will stop on two statements: “if they had to kill him, why do they blow him in Ashrafieh? (Insinuating a predominantly Christian area) Why not in Dahiye or Ras Beirut?”, Then realizing that this didn’t get my acknowledgment, he smoothly shifted to “… Also if they had to kill him, why did they not simply shoot him?”…

I nodded, said goodbye, and left… I have heard these arguments on and on, by so many, during this short stay… I could not believe the absurd logic and the way we ascertain our social & political views on these massacres, as if they are inevitable & fatalistic…

I once was proud of the fact that we automatically restart building the next day of any explosion. I think it’s about time to be ashamed of doing systematically only that, it’s about time we start thinking on why we are allowing the endless repetition and see how to stop this vicious, undeserving cycle…

I believe it starts from doubting and questioning that same political scenery we belong to. Questioning with what we are taught to believe as displayed before us, their pros as much as their cons…