In Lebanon, a wave of indignant ink has been spilled in response to a report by Georges Malbrunot, published at the end of August, about Fakra. The article, appearing in Le Figaro, dwelled on indulgence in a somewhat closed society where competition in spending and ostentation is open. The cliché of the rich Lebanese lounging in a luxurious cocoon, immune to the raging conflicts around them, is certainly marketable. It’s a stereotype that persists, as extravagance never lacks an audience.
What may seem scandalous in any other civilization is, in Lebanon, customary. At this very moment, activists are watching over the hatching and safe access to the sea for baby turtles at the sanctuary in Mansouri, near Sour. Yet, the region has been intermittently bombarded for weeks.
A non-Lebanese cannot imagine life continuing in times of war, or that people would risk their lives to protect vulnerable creatures. A non-Lebanese cannot grasp that money lavishly spent, sometimes for a moment of shared pleasure, may — also — come from honest sources and even hard work. Nor that a car, a watch, or an expensive piece of jewelry, beyond a questionable display of status, represent a self-reward for achieving success.
In Lebanon, money is not demonized as it is elsewhere. Certainly, in a collapsed economy, monetized to the extreme, with no real oversight, and lacking significant input from a nearly nonexistent state, despite taxes being duly paid by hundreds of thousands of employees and businesses, one must stay vigilant. Just as balance is found, everything can be upended again. One must also be wary of those dirty bills, passing from hand to hand with their sulfuric stench, likely tainted by smuggling, major trafficking, and invisible embezzlement. Still, Carpe Diem is the general motto here, from the top to the bottom of the pyramid, symbolizing a uniquely Lebanese trickle-down theory: the rich spend and the poor live off the rich's spending. While far from equitable, this exotic aspect of our economy keeps things running (and businesses too), as we wait for reforms that resemble Godot.
The very French perspective — half-amused, half-scandalized — of Le Figaro's journalist on the villas, lawns, pools, Lamborghinis, and Fakra sunsets (images that are common in many other privileged places worldwide) is not shared by the Lebanese. As long as the money flows in, no one asks for its visa. The geographical confetti we call our country is itself divided into a thousand confetti, a thousand regions with two faces. Outside the Fakra phenomenon, a bourgeois complex nestled in the mountains, occasionally punctuated by the sporadic arrival of some visibility-hungry characters, there are also modest farming villages, vast regions locked into their traditions, where people make do with the little that seasonal and artisanal provisions offer. If the journalist aimed to highlight the contrast between one part of the small country enjoying a privileged life while another faces daily bombings, he missed the point. Constantly subjected to abrupt disruptions in their daily lives, Lebanese people, across all income levels, have learned to live as if there is no tomorrow and to enjoy intensely the moments that won’t return. Rich or poor, people would rather waste their money than their life. Here, despite the violent inequalities, the sunsets are among the most beautiful in the world, and human warmth is the most universally shared source of happiness.