Lebanon: A nation in decay

These words may reach the people through articles written by petty officials and commissioned by their masters.

But these articles are like carrier pigeon messages that never land, or like poets reciting their poems without an audience. The words are devoid of truth similar to what fortune tellers tell their customers.

Lebanon is in decay. No one believes what is being said anymore. Even banknotes, despite their scarcity and the sweeping poverty, have become worthless. The air in the streets has become stuffy and the expressions on people's faces have become muted. 

Those who stand for hours at the doors of banks are accustomed to daily humiliation. In their tattered clothes and gloomy silence, they wait for rations to be distributed.

An alternate reality

Still, a reliable report found that the Lebanese, during 2022, spent $1.25 billion on new cars. Convoys of new imported cars are still sitting on the sidewalks of the destroyed port, waiting for customs clearance.

One of the local TV stations is promoting the beauty of Lebanon and the achievements of its people in the diaspora and how successful Lebanese stars are in the region and the world in a bid to attract tourists to the country.

However, the evening news on the same station reports the daily struggles of citizens in Lebanon.

In two spacious streets on the Beirut waterfront, not far from the ruins of the port and abandoned luxury hotels, there are cafes and restaurants.

These streets are lined with the most luxurious SUVs, Lamborghinis, and Cadillacs and vintage cars. And on the terraces of these cafes and restaurants sit women with Botox and men with Cuban cigars.

The rest of society suffers

On Hamra Street, which has become gloomy and depressing, middle-class people (including retired university professors) often meet in old cafes.

Their conversations revolve around the dollar exchange rate on the black market and the monthly subscription prices for electricity generators compared to the cost of solar energy equipment.

In the inner Beirut neighbourhoods, where the lower-middle class Lebanese live, elevators have almost all been out of service for two years.

The buildings at night look like abandoned houses in a quiet ghost town after the war. Residents buy only what is necessary for their survival.

Taxi drivers change their fares every day, telling passengers about their misery. Teachers in public schools are on permanent strike. Houses and alleys are crowded with students who seem to be on an everlasting vacation.

A student who graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the Lebanese University recounts that 25 of his classmates have fled the country.

The few who did not are suffocating due to financial hardship that prevented them from emigrating in the first place.

Meaningless words

It is hard make sense of these contrasting scenes unfolding in Beirut and across the country. Amid the chaos there are stories and facts that only an investigator can gather into a collective case.

As for the worthless words being thrown around today about federalism, administrative and financial decentralisation, self-security, partition and other terms that will be introduced in the coming seasons, they mean nothing to the people living in this suffocated, dismembered country.

Oddly enough, those who use these words as weapons know very well how little they mean to people. Those who reject federalism are not different than those who advocate for it.

They both know that speaking for or against a cause is only doing so on behalf of a community or sectarian identity. 

They wage wars of words to stir up a whirlwind that they think will help them get a ministerial, governmental or presidential position.

Amid the whirlwind of pointless rhetoric, nothing is certain except for the widening schizophrenic chasm between the wreckage of the tragic reality and hollow words.