Fake Independence, failed state, failed democracy






In the 73rd memorial of the Lebanese Independence Day, still, a deep surge of wonder and uncertainty circulate my shallow conception about the country I was born, raised and reborn many times into. A question mark keeps lingering in my head while no definite answer can be reached. Is Lebanon as we know it today, deserve to be an entity inclusive to all its indigenous residents?


I was born in 1981, a considerably dangerous year to be alive, or at least to be aware in Lebanon. As it was mentioned on my ID, my residential birth was the nearest hospital possible to the shelter where my parents used to take cover. Up until my 9th birthday, most of my childhood memories were made either in shelters or in a 5 Km radius away from.


The crystal clear images in my head remained from the year 1990, when I had my first communion and the battles between the Christian faction “Lebanese Forces” and the Lebanese army. I remember the shelling, I remember death, I remember the voices of the combatant whom were overthrown by the Lebanese army and were trying to survive in the asylum of the civilian buildings, with no success. I remember the humility felt in our collective consciousness when the Syrian army invaded our presidential palace. It was just like yesterday for me.


All of this is not a drama soap opera I’m trying to write, extracting its details from the darkest side where my childhood memories, and thousands like me, were thrown. Even now the saga of my ill-born country still follows me like a clingy mistress, who have no mercy and vicious imagination. Devastation proclaimed our past and is imposing our future. The war killed us already, just after we were born and way earlier than our demise. I'm here today to question what was the purpose and the meaning of Lebanon for people who lived in the land of milk and honey. Well, there is none, except the illusions living through Rahbani family and their apparatus Fairuz, whom we are celebrating her 81st anniversary.


Our independence was never a consensus. It was merely a requirement for the elite of people from different religious background, yet from the same upper class, to gather forces refuting a mandate only to replace it by their own farm like structure. Nationalism thought to be a resonate playback to ignite the feelings of belonging, the false feelings of belonging.
Through the years, the accumulation of perception has taught me that the Lebanese national notion is a big fat lie we’ve been consuming for a long time now. My country has taken everything I have from me, in return I get nothing but humiliation, tricksters, fraudulent governments derived from fraudulent citizens, a hazy future, tormented parents and strained community.

In 2016, nothing changed. Lebanon remains a country with undefined loyalties and ruined potentials. It is a nation with disproved collective history, identity, and future. With all this being said, for me as a citizen of the so called nation, what does Independence Day means to me? What should the Independence Day mean to me anyway? Absolutely nothing. It is and it has always been a false independence that drove us to a failed state that is being governed by a failed democracy!

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