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In his reply to my post
regarding the basic principles and the identity of
Lebanon, Mr. James Selman wrote:
"You
people can't live in prosperity…Lebanon is what it is
because we build it on the principle of good education
and freedom and openness to the outside world… You are
impotent, and are not allowed to have a critical mind. I
don't blame you, that is you, and i feel pitty for
you."
…
Well-said James! This is exactly your true color and I’m really glad that you couldn’t hide it no more!
No, James, “We people” can’t live in prosperity. “We people” took poverty by choice just like “You” chose prosperity and “You” marvelously excelled in it!
You see, we’re used to the rough and harsh life of the desert from which we came. And even when “You”, the free, educated, open minded and prosperous tried so hard, over more than fifty years, to help us get off our misery and become a bit civilized and educated, we couldn’t do it. Poor “We people”; it’s maybe a genetic deficiency on “our” part just as much it’s a genuine and historic superiority on “Yours”!
“We people” are so fond of illiteracy that had “You” even thought of building schools or, God forbids, colleges, for our kids in Hirmil, Baalbak, Bint Jbeil, Akkar (and the rest of these damned marginal frontiers, which “You” and “Your” civilized and caring “Mother” threw as extras to “Your” lavish Lebanon), we would protest against such corrupting ideas.
“We people” never needed hospitals or even clinics because we like to die anyway, just as much as we like to cry and produce more poor and sick babies. And when some little urgent incidents occur, such as whole families buried beneath their bombed homes near the southern border, “You” would graciously dispatch a few ambulances and along some TV cameras to show your support. “You” may even send one of your representatives to visit our wounded children in “Your” hospitals and bring them some of “Your” children’s old cloths. “We” greatly appreciate such generous gestures from “prosperous” people like “You”.
“We people” enjoy living without running water unless it’s a sewerage that runs open in our filthy streets in the suburbs, especially when it comes pouring down from “Your” majestic cities and towns in the Mount. “We” also happily live without electricity because we lack the tools and knowledge to use it after all.
“We people” didn’t know what to do with telephones had it crossed “Your” mind to get our humble little houses connected. Nor have “We people” ever needed roads like the ones you opened throughout your prosperous cities and towns. Our mules can get anywhere anyway and we are in no hurry to get to the banks before they close or to meet some foreign investors on a business lunch in a luxurious downtown hotel to negotiate hefty contracts and become more “prosperous”. That’s why the phones were “Yours”, the roads were “Yours”, the banks, the hotels, and a whole myriad of civil necessities for which we have had no need, unless you decided to import our children to build such facilities for you and to serve you and your clients when needed.
”We people”, the voiceless for whom this newspaper came into existence some quarter of a century ago, do not fathom what some “free and open-minded people”, such as you and your like, mean by “Freedom”, “Independence”, and “Respecting Others Opinions”. Such terms are not part of our lexicon, and the way we are brought up, whether civilly and/or religiously, does not allow for critical mindedness. How could we acquire such highly civilized traits and we have never been to the Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard or Yale, like you and your offspring. We’re nothing but a bunch of “Arabs” whom you have to domesticate in the hope of bringing up some good out of us, if any.
Well, don’t blame us, Mr. Selman, that’s who we are! Pitiful, is it not?!
Khalil
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