About the Beirut Ashrafieh Sassine bombing of October 19th 2012

* Find my original Facebook post here
** Photo taken from the web

 1933 ،جبران خليل جبران، حديقة النبي-

“Pity the nation that raises its voices only when it walks in a funeral,
that only acts proud when among ruins,
that only rebels when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose sages are mute with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.”

-Gibran Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1933. 

I hope we all will be this proud of being Lebanese next week when, albeit momentarily, corpses stop being pulled out of the ruins of our bombed buildings, when the party’s kids run out of tires to burn, when pubs and nightclubs are no longer shut down in mourning, and when children’s snipers are no longer pointing down from buildings at our heads. For to be a patriot, means to love one’s country every single day, all the damn time, not only in dramatic times.

Maybe our continuous critical stances will stop exclusively aiming at Lebanese women’s plastic surgery, or our Lebanese singers’ video clips and shift its intensity towards the flagrant corruption scandals and complete absence of this country’s rule of law. This country needs our love, loyalty and consciousness, our words of denouncement, our patriotism and our stance against injustice every day, most especially when the news channels have nothing bloody and ostentatious to say, for the worst Lebanese violations continuously happen in the calmest of our days, yet we collectively & willingly remain silent and oblivious to the everyday crimes. The Syrian war will only spillover onto our soil if we do not adjust our consciousness once and for all.

Rest in peace Major General Wissam al-Hassan and fellow martyred Lebanese citizens. My thoughts and prayers are with your families and loved ones. May the living Lebanese make it their everyday passion and duty to restore this country’s honor in thought, action and emotion, invariably and consistently.