Samir Kassir

How incredible was that guy. I admit that my knowledge about Samir Kassir was naive. I didn’t use to read his articles in the 90s. Few ones I read in the 21st century. Maybe you can not tell how deep the thinking of Samir Kassir is until you read his articles in sequence. Through that, you can draw a map of the incidents according to their appearance in Lebanon's new history. It is not a coincidence for an educated man like Samir Kassir, who has a diploma in Philosophy from Sorbonne University to analyze what was going on in the way he did. For that reason he was chased many times by the Lebanese-Syrian intelligent forces. He struck on the most sensitive subject that was considered a scarecrow in that time. He didn’t fear anything although everything was scary. His belief in freedom and democracy surpassed the fear other journalists went through. Many considered him crazy according to the sensitivity of the subjects he wrote about.His main concern was the 'Dictatoration" of the Lebanese democracy. He uncovered all the attempts to smoothen the monster's teeth. He knew that deception was the name of the game; the intense monitoring of the Lebanese media, especially the opposition's media, and the staging of hollow debates between politicians, in addition to the lubrication of the presidential behaviors which appeared to him during the first months of Lahhoud's presidency, that the whole story was nothing more than a written statement of promises which lack the implementation procedures; It was impossible to achieve it in an era where the Syrian power was strangling the Lebanese political life and molding it into a puppet stage where the whole became submissive to the stringed fingers who move these puppets and implement their wills.

Selectivity in corruption scandals was a big part in the impunity program that was set. Those who were starting to diverse from the Syrian rules were under fire. Fears of the other corrupted politicians to face the same consequences lead them to shut their mouths and reply to the above orders. Since all politicians have their own corruption programs, all were tied up to be submissive.

Many things did Samir Kassir uncover during his life. His belief in the possible Arab-democracy that can find its way starting from Beirut was solidified. He knew that the West-wing current can comply with the global liberation of markets and economy and the open border schema against the rising Islamic radicalists who were threatening, as they gain power, to explode the suppressed societies and put the dictatorships and whole systems on stake. Not only that, but this may provide a solid ground for such fundamentalism to spread through the middle eastern nations whose people are suppressed and just looking for a way to turn the table upside down.

Wonderful and thoughtful was this man; and that was the main reason that caused his assassination on June 2, 2005. His vision of a great peaceful change that can turn the dictators into retirement and that may dilute the rising Islamic movements' powers, along with an American or western change in beliefs that the Islamic Arab nations can undergo a democratic change without the use of power, was just a road map to achieve a complete change with no casualties. He was killed and his young spirit of dreams and change was shut into silence surely in an effort to shut the remaining brave journalists who saw in Samir Kassir a repertoire which can be followed to contain the powerful Syrian-Lebanese intelligence system, which took control of all the political, economical, and juridical Lebanese life.

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*references: Samir Kassir's book: عسكر على مين 2004

TIME

It's the sixth anniversary for September 11 attacks. I will not talk about the event; I will talk about time.

Everything is running fast. We are waking up, going to work, coming back, sleep, then wake up again. But the counter is non-stopping. Hours, days, weeks, months, and years are rushing and we are somehow incapable of catching up. Everything is being incremented. The date, the time, the age, the population. It's an irreversible momentum. How will we be able to catch up with that? As for me I don't want. If I can live the moment to the maximum I won't hesitate. Every moment we are leaving back will not be replaced in any circumstance. Even when you see your family after a period of departure they are not definitely the same; They aged, their features changed, their wrinckles are deepend, their bodies are bent, and their thoughts as well shifted. I prefer to have the morning coffee with mom NOW, not even a moment after. How I feel afraid of certain thoughts that sometimes pass my mind. And when they do, I feel nothing but the need to go back home and invest every moment with my parents. I want to stay there among those who I love and who love me for nothing in return. I want to see them age, I want to follow the process. I want them to feel me between them too. At the end, we work and travel and work and travel for what? To secure our future? But what’s the benefits of having a good financial future when those you love are gone?? I don't want to sound pessimistic and mystical. It's just the same thread that invaded my thoughts and makes me stop at it and think; Is all that worth it? Will all the money we gather will be capable of returning our good times? Will we be more confident about our futures when we make-fat our bank accounts? For me it's not. I am never sad for a penny I spend; I am never sad for an object I lost; But I am sad for the time I have been living abroad away from the people I love, from the people who care for me, from the people who stood by me during my early age and who are ready to give yet anything for my safety and happiness.

Stereotyping Prostitutes !

With her black smoky eyes, with her devil-red lip sticks, with her exaggerated makeup, with her stretched summarized dress, with her exhumed hair, she enters to master the hall. She moves to take her seat, waiting for a customer to pass by and invite her for the nightly drink. If she accepts, then her night journey begins; if not, then another customer may be of better taste and wealth to have a slightly higher tip for her services. That’s how she lives, eroding herself from all human emotions to become a great actor. She can be the prostitute of pleasure, she can me the caring mother for those running away from their daily life pressures, and she can be a companion in a chilly night in Geneva. After all that, she comes to her dorm, removes all of her accessories, unmask her makeup, looks to the mirror and see her true self, a girl who was dreaming in her calm village in Brazil of finding her true love, got married to a handsome man, raising their children in her sea side house and living her life in secure. But the excitement to know what lies beyond the hills of her town drove her into a world she thought in the beginning that it will provide her with wealth, fame, and power. She ended to become a Brazilian prostitute in the cold city of Geneva; and this is the start.

Every time she discovered a new thing. She met different kinds of men; Men with different social and business standards who appear to differ in their demands. The most important thing she kept in her mind is not to fall in love with any. She knew that she was here to work and gain some money that will enable her to go back to her town and open a farm and marry the love of her life. But the love feeling was unavoidable. At the end she is a human, she has the right to feel, but she has to make sure that the other side does not perceive her as a prostitute at all. There were the problem of the look she received or any misinterpretations that happen in any held dialogue. She always wanted to come out of the environment she was living in, but the need for money always kept her break up any attempts. Even when she had all the money to go back home, something kept her nailed to that piece of land. It was the warmth she started to feel with the painter who discovered the light in her. She felt weird for how can a beautiful prostitute, who met a lot of men, still hold a light within. That was the reason that unleashed her emotions again through believing that she was looked at as a woman, not as the profession she masters.

So, for any reasons, we don’t have the right to stereotype. We don’t know the main reasons and circumstances that pushed such girls to become prostitutes. If we don’t want to generalize at least we don’t want to specify. Life creates barriers and handicaps for people and obliges them sometimes to use roads they never intended to use. A prostitute may be more honorable from inside than a house raised lady. She may hold decent manners another lady lack. Again, sometimes the current of life sweeps the human being in accordance to circumstances he/she is experiencing away from his/her real dreams and intentions.

Lost in ... Nationality

Sense of belonging. An important notion that we all thrive to achieve in the best means we have. Once we are integrated in a certain population or group, we feel safety; an essential component of one's life. Whatever that group was, we still find shelter there among them. We still feel backed up when all life's doors are blocked and its ways twist. Sense of belonging is a way to acquiring Nationality, a term that protects the person from all the dangers that pop up in this highly bordered world.

Nationality is not just holding a passport. Its concept is deeper and more ramified than it appears. It's a combination of geography, history, culture, heritage, education, and people. To feel Nationalistic, you should have part of each of the total whole. Sometimes we lose parts of some, but yet we still feel the essence of it. But in other occasions, due to circumstances that couldn't be faced and couldn't be changed, the feeling of a great lack of the sense of belonging in the land and in the group is felt, and this implies on the nation we hold its passport as a whole.

This is a horrible feeling, I don't envy anyone who feels it, but yet it's a reality that faces some of the people we see everyday but they hide it inside, they don't want to become exposed or feel naked in front of the group. Integration here is lacked and there lies the problem. When the memories of the place and the friends and the family are loosened and don't have the strength to bind us to the nation, we start searching for the place that will fulfill our need for safety and belonging. This journey doesn’t stop. It's the instinct that drives us as humans, as it drives animals, to integrate in a group and be one with them.

Confusion should be paused; concentration on the elements that mean to us may help to formulate the puzzle that will form the whole road map. Until that moment comes, we remain in a fierce struggle; a struggle for the search of our own identity, for our own nationality, for our own history and future at the same time. Once you know the future upon which you will project your past, then you definitely found the way; Thus your life becomes steady.

Discovering The Internal Self

In the time we are living, where cement sculptures rise, highways spread, technology flourishes, and individualism rules, the last thing we do think of is developing our internal self. The daily work pressure and all its problems exert a great force on the human self and rip it off of all its powers so that the body becomes a machine and the mind becomes coded just to what the work requires. No more, no less.

In a book I am still in the process of reading, another way of understanding and another way of behavior and thinking is taught so that the person becomes happier, more satisfied, and in a peaceful status with his soul. When this conformity is established, time becomes a pleasure and life becomes a flowery garden.

To become happier and in a peaceful status with our souls and minds, many things can be done just to relief the body from the unnecessary spoiling threads of thinking. In an ordinary day for example, our mind undergoes 60,000 thinking processes regarding different aspects. When we start becoming able to narrow down these 60,000 into smaller and smaller fractions, we start relieving our mind from being depleted and we start concentrating on our main topic that we want to achieve. Once we reach the level that 59,999 thinking threads are eliminated, then it can be said that the real purpose of life is settled and all mental powers are directed towards achieving it.

But if we want to break down the process, it’s not that simple. Many things should be changed and adopted in order to attain the ultimate. The most important thing is to realize what we really want to be in this life. When this objective is set clear, then the ways to attain it are easier to find. The first step lies in making a clear image to what we want to be. Give ourselves a time period to achieve it, since any goal without a deadline is not preferably to be achieved. Then a certain pressure should be imposed to foster the objective attainability. For example, if you want to lose weight, then you may specify a period of 10 weeks to achieve it. The pressure comes here by informing your surroundings that you decided to lose weight. Then, on a daily basis, they will start to monitor your improvement. This imposes a pressure on you to continue what you have started in order to prove your capability in achieving your goal. Failure to achieve the set objective requires certain sanctions just as sages of Sivana do (characters in the book). They walk towards the chili waterfall and sit beneath it until their peripherals numb.

To start changing the old behavior, a period of 21 days of repetitive action should be followed in order to become familiar with what you are doing. In a method used to enable concentration called The Heart Of The Rose, the person is asked to sit in a calm area with a rose in front of him. He should start concentrating at the heart of the rose, thus it’s naming, until he becomes able to think just of the single object in front of him thus relieving his brain from all distortions and noise. This is an important step to start nurturing the brain and make it used to the one-thing thinking process.

Another method used is called the Opposition Thinking. It is agreed that negative thinking drains the brain from its powers; this reflects on the total body status. The Opposition Thinking method is simple; just replace any negative thought with a positive one. Repeating this process makes the person happier and more peaceful. When, for example, you face problems at work for any reason, on the spot just think that you will go home and have a delightful dinner with your wife or family. This will save your brain powers and keep you relaxed. Opposition Thinking is proved to have productive outcomes since it keeps the mental and spiritual aspects of the human being in a positive thinking pattern.

What was mentioned above is part of a spiritual and mental healing process that directs the human powers towards achieving what the human aims to be, to generate positive energy, and to attain spiritual peace and conformity with the surrounding and the universe as a whole.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Notes where quoted from the book “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma, an international Best Seller 1997.

Dining Turkish, Sensing Morocan

In life there is always a first time. There is always a first step. There is always a first approach, a first trial, a first look, and among all the firsts, there is a first taste. Sometimes we take things for granted; we don't just scratch the crust to discover what lies beneath and reveal the truth. We all eat Lebanese. We never thought where from does the naming or recipies of our dishes came from. Yesterday, in a dinner at a Turkish restaurant here, something rang a bell in my head. It's true that we were under the Otoman occupation for 400 consecutive years. So, it's not weird to have had acquired and developed certain Turkish behavioral acts. We eat Turkish, we drink Turkish, we smoke Turkish, and yes we dress Turkish. But thanks god we speak Arabic, and we preserved and developed, to a great extent, our Lebanese folklore, culture, and traditions.

That was just an introduction, and its not what I wanted to talk about. I say "yes" I enjoyed Turkish cuisine, maybe not because it is tasty, not because I love eggplants, not because it's something new, not at all; it's because of the company. We all agree that it's the gathering not the food that adds the taste to food. And hereby, I say the same; I am still normal and I didnt come with anything new. It's the company, it's the company, it's the company.I am never enough listening to the conversation. I am never enough enjoying my time, I am never enough feeling content when such company is present. But I am never enough also of trying different tastes, different moods, different places, and different times.Since I have spoken about times, what is more is that time has a completely different taste when it goes Morocan. Morocoo is a representation or the Orient. The east with its complicated decorations, diversified drinks and tastes, cozy atmospheres, relaxing couches, and the secret blend of tobacoo whose odour fills the place and tempts the person to stay.Again, I enjoyed the place, I enjoyed the taste, I enjoyed the mild Morocan tea, the wild decorations, the decending lanterns, the reddish walls, and the arabic oriental essence that fills the place. But what I enjoyed more, is the interrupted dialogue with the group I was with. What I am enjoying with this group is that the dialogue never becomes silly. Its always something new and interesting to talk about. When it starts to complicate, all go silent fetching for a new topic to launch. Everything is allowed to talk about. New books' releases, new music CDs, Politics, traditions, culture, habits, and it does not pass without a great deal of talking personal, and that adds the richness.I am just enjoying my time. I am trying to discover the Dubai identity, which is lost in all the international crowd. I am sure that I will find it sometimes in the future, but I am not sure where. Will it be in a building, in a place, in a garden, in a space, or maybe in a person.