The View from the 13th
Thursday night, November 12th. I’m sitting in my friend’s apartment in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and a bomb has just gone off in Beirut’s southern suburbs. I’m far from shocked. This is normal, routine, so much so that the BBC’s headline is still focusing on the apparent death of ISIS figure “Jihadi John” earlier in the day. Since the bombing is in Dahiyeh, I know it targeted Shi’ites, and that my Maronite family is okay. I don’t bother calling my father in America to hear his reaction. What will he say that’s any different from the usual?
Friday night, November 12th. I’m in the same apartment while 20 minutes away from me, armed men are murdering with guns and bombs. The first inkling I receive of the horrors that are taking place is an email from a friend back home, asking if I’m okay. As the night drags on, I can’t tear my eyes away from the computer screen, following the attacks minute-by-minute while outside, sirens blare.
Saturday morning, November 13th. My Facebook feed is a parade of French flags, “Pray for Paris” statuses, those million little ways that users can pat themselves on the back, tell themselves that with one click and a pithy little message “you have made a difference today”. People are beginning to ask why Paris came as such a shock when Beirut was widely ignored by the media, why Facebook decided to offer users a chance to slap a French flag on their photo when a Lebanese one was never available, or why its users in the French capital could press a handy “safety button” to reassure their family and friends, whereas Beirutis had no similar options.
Yet when we examine the history of a country that been torn apart by violence for decades, whose capital has been synonymous with bombings for almost as long as it has belonged to an independent Lebanon, how can we even begin to compare the attacks?
The events in Paris were meant to shock the world, to demonstrate the capabilities of Daesh to infiltrate one of the crown jewels of the West, and to brazenly defy France’s sophisticated security apparatus by causing absolute mayhem in the streets. They were meant to spread terror in a country that has not had to face such widespread, casual violence since the end of WWII.
Conversely, the bombings in Beirut were a normal part of the political conversation of the Middle East, a conversation where words are bullets, and arguments are punctuated with bomb blasts. The recent attacks will simply be a footnote in the meat grinder that is the Syrian conflict.
Does this mean that those who perished in Beirut are less important, somehow, than the Frenchmen who died in the 11th and 10th arrondissements? I wonder. I wonder, like Joey Ayoub in his fantastic reflection piece, about the value of my body. An ethnic body, an Arab body, one that wouldn’t look out of place on top of a pile of other similar bodies in Baghdad, Aleppo, or Beirut. A body that clutches on to his American passport in airports so that the authorities can see that while I might look like them, I am not one of them.
Back home in America, governors are refusing to accept Syrian refugees, fearing the spectre of Daesh that supposedly lurks beneath. Here in France, Marine Le Pen’s ideas are gaining ground, and the threat of more attacks comes both from Islamic extremists and reactionary right-wingers, intent on tearing off hijabs in the streets or burning mosques to the ground. We are still numb, but the backlash is fast building.
I can say no more, add no novel thoughts to the massive body of articles that have already emerged about the attacks. Even these words that I type feel empty, as empty as those hues of red and blue that adorn almost every picture on Facebook feel. A week before, those who superimposed the tricouleur over a photo of themselves would have been looked at as far-right sympathizers. Overnight, it feels obligatory.
I have hope, but it is not much. Syria will not recover in the short term, nor in the medium term. Sunnis and Shi’ites will continue to succumb to the sectarian fear that their clerics shovel to them. Minorities will continue to be wiped out in Iraq. In France, the children of North-African immigrants will continue to feel adrift in a country that does not accept them, and these disaffected children will continue to be infected with the diseased ideology of radical Islam. France will bomb a few meaningless targets in Raqqa or Deir-ez Zor, even while they sell arms to the Saudi princes who will one day have to answer for the disaster they have caused the world by propagating Wahabbism. In a few months, the West will move on, while in Lebanon, citizens will continue to vote for the same politicians who have failed them time and time again.
In Paris, the death toll stands at 129. In Beirut, the death toll reaches the hundreds of thousands – victims of a region where violence has not stopped since 1975. The bodies in Paris will be buried. The bodies in Lebanon will continue to pile up.
Claude Khalife
Thursday night, November 12th. I’m sitting in my friend’s apartment in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and a bomb has just gone off in Beirut’s southern suburbs. I’m far from shocked. This is normal, routine, so much so that the BBC’s headline is still focusing on the apparent death of ISIS figure “Jihadi John” earlier in the day. Since the bombing is in Dahiyeh, I know it targeted Shi’ites, and that my Maronite family is okay. I don’t bother calling my father in America to hear his reaction. What will he say that’s any different from the usual?
Friday night, November 12th. I’m in the same apartment while 20 minutes away from me, armed men are murdering with guns and bombs. The first inkling I receive of the horrors that are taking place is an email from a friend back home, asking if I’m okay. As the night drags on, I can’t tear my eyes away from the computer screen, following the attacks minute-by-minute while outside, sirens blare.
Saturday morning, November 13th. My Facebook feed is a parade of French flags, “Pray for Paris” statuses, those million little ways that users can pat themselves on the back, tell themselves that with one click and a pithy little message “you have made a difference today”. People are beginning to ask why Paris came as such a shock when Beirut was widely ignored by the media, why Facebook decided to offer users a chance to slap a French flag on their photo when a Lebanese one was never available, or why its users in the French capital could press a handy “safety button” to reassure their family and friends, whereas Beirutis had no similar options.
Yet when we examine the history of a country that been torn apart by violence for decades, whose capital has been synonymous with bombings for almost as long as it has belonged to an independent Lebanon, how can we even begin to compare the attacks?
The events in Paris were meant to shock the world, to demonstrate the capabilities of Daesh to infiltrate one of the crown jewels of the West, and to brazenly defy France’s sophisticated security apparatus by causing absolute mayhem in the streets. They were meant to spread terror in a country that has not had to face such widespread, casual violence since the end of WWII.
Conversely, the bombings in Beirut were a normal part of the political conversation of the Middle East, a conversation where words are bullets, and arguments are punctuated with bomb blasts. The recent attacks will simply be a footnote in the meat grinder that is the Syrian conflict.
Does this mean that those who perished in Beirut are less important, somehow, than the Frenchmen who died in the 11th and 10th arrondissements? I wonder. I wonder, like Joey Ayoub in his fantastic reflection piece, about the value of my body. An ethnic body, an Arab body, one that wouldn’t look out of place on top of a pile of other similar bodies in Baghdad, Aleppo, or Beirut. A body that clutches on to his American passport in airports so that the authorities can see that while I might look like them, I am not one of them.
Back home in America, governors are refusing to accept Syrian refugees, fearing the spectre of Daesh that supposedly lurks beneath. Here in France, Marine Le Pen’s ideas are gaining ground, and the threat of more attacks comes both from Islamic extremists and reactionary right-wingers, intent on tearing off hijabs in the streets or burning mosques to the ground. We are still numb, but the backlash is fast building.
I can say no more, add no novel thoughts to the massive body of articles that have already emerged about the attacks. Even these words that I type feel empty, as empty as those hues of red and blue that adorn almost every picture on Facebook feel. A week before, those who superimposed the tricouleur over a photo of themselves would have been looked at as far-right sympathizers. Overnight, it feels obligatory.
I have hope, but it is not much. Syria will not recover in the short term, nor in the medium term. Sunnis and Shi’ites will continue to succumb to the sectarian fear that their clerics shovel to them. Minorities will continue to be wiped out in Iraq. In France, the children of North-African immigrants will continue to feel adrift in a country that does not accept them, and these disaffected children will continue to be infected with the diseased ideology of radical Islam. France will bomb a few meaningless targets in Raqqa or Deir-ez Zor, even while they sell arms to the Saudi princes who will one day have to answer for the disaster they have caused the world by propagating Wahabbism. In a few months, the West will move on, while in Lebanon, citizens will continue to vote for the same politicians who have failed them time and time again.
In Paris, the death toll stands at 129. In Beirut, the death toll reaches the hundreds of thousands – victims of a region where violence has not stopped since 1975. The bodies in Paris will be buried. The bodies in Lebanon will continue to pile up.
Claude Khalife