Letter 2: ...From the heart of the entity
Letters From The Ground 2: ...From the heart of the entity
From: Zoukak CollectiveTo: the Lebanese society
It is a time of pain and cruelty. Exhausted from watching death and destruction, it seems that, for a moment, we are no longer able to see due to the density of smoke and dust of the rubble. Amidst the haze, we stare into the ashes of history, into the remains of disintegrated bodies that try to bond with their blood, we stare. Death reveals the eternal truth of existence. For a moment, it seems that everything has ended.
In this ending, we immerse then drown in our thoughts, we try to breathe as if it were our last breath. With that breath are born the last components of existence and the simplest features of life. Some may call it hope but in fact it’s just a wish. What remains is a potentiality born from our mere presence as spectators, as observers, as onlookers, as listeners, as feeling beings. What remains is a possibility which generates a potential to follow, where a story is born and history begins.
In Lebanon, we are used to seeing our lives in ashes. It was both a source of pride and mockery. We prided ourselves for that ability but also hated ourselves because of it. These two powers possess us. We love Lebanon and hate it. We long to emigrate but we love living here. Lebanon is a paradise on earth and it is a pile of waste. Lebanon is coexistence and chaos. Lebanon is diversity and fighting. We look at these two forces as destructive forces. We get tired. We often surrender and despair. Other times we blow up with hatred. We either move along or emigrate. And so on.
We look at our cultural expression, our music and songs, and our representations of identity in the Lebanese flag, the national anthem. We look into our political and partisan ideologies and see its contradiction. In the flag, where the red blood is represented by two lines that never meet, as if the blood was double. The fiery red versus the snowy white. The green of the tree sits over snow and fire. Lebanon is the mountain and the sea. Our anthem declares that "Its Sea, its Land”, "Our Old Man and the Young Man”,"Our Sword and the Pen." The village and the city. The village in the city and the city in the village. Lebanon the Land and "Piece of heaven." Little Lebanon and "The breadth of the world." Arab Lebanon and Phoenician Lebanon. Bordered Lebanon and International Lebanon. Lebanon the State and the Sect. Lebanon the Sectarian and the Secular. Lebanon the Muslim and the Christian. Lebanon the resident and the diaspora. Lebanon the leader and the institutions.
We look at these contradictions. We see how many times we have positioned ourselves within them, how many times we have struggled and disagreed and fought. From our loss, from our despair, from our death we look, we notice the simplest possibility: our continued creation of potentiality and life. Contradiction turns into another, and a new story begins. Lebanon today is a teenage country seeking self-realization. What is the possibility? What is the probability? What are the latent forces that prevented this entity from becoming superficial; from being governed by a single logic? How did it manage to leave spaces, however fragile, for difference? How did it resist the logic of total elimination? How did it manage to create a continuity of life? How did Lebanon move through history past the stages of childhood and adolescence?
We look at society. We notice. When the financial system began to collapse, people revolted, the COVID-19 pandemic followed, the currency collapsed, the criminal bombing occurred in the port of Beirut, people lost their money, a large number of people fell below the poverty line, state institutions were weakened and security forces emptied of their capabilities and numbers.We expected the collapse of society and the prevalence of chaos, theft and crimes. Years passed and the crime rate did not rise. We compare ourselves with countries governed by the sovereignty of authority and security to see that Lebanon is among the most secure countries on the social level. How did this society endure and contain this epoch? We look at the streets, the intersections, where despite the absence of police and crossing signals, and despite the tension that overcomes us every time we drive our cars, we move and help others move. In every traffic jam, we notice a number of citizens directing traffic and finding exits. Under a barrage of insults and outbursts of screaming, we cross and let others cross.
Is it a miracle? No. It is not a myth or pride either, nor boasting for the personality of the intelligent, sophisticated, independent Lebanese who ignore the authority of the law. We are not here to paint a romantic portrait of Lebanese steadfastness and the “myth” of its survival. We look to observe the latent forces in our society, to feel the possibility of our existence again. What do we build on? What does our political presence mean? Which Lebanon do we want and to which Lebanon do we belong? Looking south, we see another model of an entity, at the age of adolescence. It builds its structure on the beds of the elderly and the cradles of premature babies, and reinforces its foundations with their corpses. An entity based on a religious narrative in which God has chosen his people and selected them alone. An entity that has stripped the Jews of the region of their natural, historical, and societal presence, and boasts that it is replacing backward, barbaric, savage, and animalistic societies. An entity that does not recognize the final borders of its state, possesses a nuclear bomb, and promotes the idea that small armed groups in its vicinity are capable of annihilating it, while it persists in annihilating a people and a memory.
We look at our situation again, at our political entity, at our presence in society. We see that such a project stands in contradiction to our historical, cultural, civilizational, societal, intellectual, and ideological structure, and to our sectarian system - which we have always viewed as the basis of the problem. Flying over in the clouds of our history and in the dust of our present, we realize that there is a source, a reason, the historical fact of our existence: a force of contrasting diversity, which carries the flow of life and resurrects us. The possibility of a smile appears on our faces. We sense it and we smile. Our smiles are contrasting. We smile mockingly at our fate, we smile at the stupidity of our reality, we smile tiredly, we smile sleeplessly, we smile in pain, we smile proudly, we smile in hope, we smile pretentiously, we smile gloriously. From that smile we create possibility, whatever it may be, it is ultimately a smile. A flow of life. That is us.
We smile and we trust our existence. It is important for us to smile to see, to see what we appreciate, to appreciate what brought us here with all its difficulties, setbacks, mistakes, achievements and sacrifices. To appreciate that we are not like the ones who threaten us. To appreciate that we are not in the position of the executioner. To appreciate that we are not isolated, cold, neutral and indifferent. Let us appreciate that we differ on all of this and create multiple possibilities. Let us appreciate that in our differences there is something that makes it difficult to flatten us and subjugate us. Let us appreciate that our contradictions lead to actions and results from what we do not know. Once we accept ourselves and appreciate all that has made us continue, we create a unique system from our reality.
We are encouraged and ask: what matters? We remember our rich resources of diversity, contrast, cohesion, interaction, disagreement and difference. We remember that we would not be who we are if we got rid of a specific sectarian group. We remember that, in an era in which every small country is linked to financing and borrowing, political projects may be created among us that are financed from abroad. We remember that wherever these projects come into being, there are people behind them just like us, people who are our social fabric, a history and a culture. We act on what we believe politically and fight for it, and in turn we protect people, communities, families, individuals. In doing so, we create the possibility and the systems we long for.
We realize that we must look at history in order to see, in the ideas and experiences that preceded the emergence of the state, the time of the end of the empire, in those political proposals of pluralistic thought to protect individuals and society and run the state, proposals that colonialism thwarted by legitimizing sectarianism as a political system; an entrance to incomplete sovereignty. We believe that the time has come to revive the present of political work by creating new experiences that go beyond colonial thought and the legacies of authority that were founded on the ruins of the civil war. We believe that the time has come for our political parties to dust off their dust and work to create comprehensive national dynamics that bear in their principles and formations social, cultural, sectarian, regional, geographical and class diversity. We believe that the time has come for these parties to develop their working tools and create participatory dynamics that restore meaning to political work. We believe that the time has come for us to see that real change begins with practice, in parties, movements, groups, families, homes, it begins with each of us.
We learn from the moment and from the practices that got us all here. We learn instead of gloating and blaming, we learn instead of being stubborn, we learn instead of mourning and cursing, we learn instead of hoping for salvation, we learn instead of condemning ourselves to failure, we learn to see. We see and listen and learn so that the vision may be clear. Possibility fades away, new questions and actions are born. The meaning of what we stand for is born.
We close our eyes. We listen to our inner voice. It is a moment in which to go back to the basics to protect what remains and build what will remain. We realize that the time has come to move beyond the principle of dependence on an outsider, a country, a project. We realize that the time has come to break the cycles of schadenfreude and distributing sweets over an assassination here and an assassination there. We realize that those candy distributors are few. We realize that killing any person in Lebanon at the hands of foreigners is a threat to Lebanon, an exposure to its entity, a breach of its security, and a crime that is not a cause for pride or boasting. We know that the time has come to acknowledge what we have committed, those we have killed and those we have forcibly disappeared. We know that the time has come to bring our missing people out of the darkness of history. We know that the time has come for all of us to mourn all our dead, our martyrs, our victims. Let's acknowledge our sorrows, let's comfort each other in our pains and losses, let's congratulate each other on our steadfastness and survival. Allow silence to contain our reflections, for it will give our political existence meaning and clarity. And from the heart of the entity, another one is born.
