We’ve all heard it. Worse, we’ve all said it. That phrase sums up our collective surrender to letting our country be nothing more than a chaotic mess.
Sometimes it’s amusing, more often it’s bewildering. From the building concierge to the highest levels of state authority, everyone uses it to justify their own complacency, their disregard for laws or basic logic, their resistance to even the slightest change, or their narrow-minded conservatism.
Valet drivers who park your car on street corners but still expect a hefty tip?
“Hayda Lebnen.” (This is Lebanon). Drivers speeding through narrow streets, overtaking from the left and the right, darting around like cockroaches and tossing their trash out the window? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Illegal buildings competing in bad taste and disfiguring the landscape? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Supposedly upscale restaurants where you go to be seen while eating cafeteria food at Michelin-star prices? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Civil servants particularly receptive to petty corruption, wasta and constant power games? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Political leaders who speak only to their own community, usually in populist terms meant to mask their total lack of vision? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Governments coming and going without ever changing anything, eventually convincing themselves and their domestic and international counterparts that maybe it's better this way? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Civil servants appointed or sidelined from strategic positions based on their sectarian affiliation? “Hayda Lebnen.”
Bankers who grow rich for years in an economy built and run like a casino, yet refuse to reach into their own pockets when nothing is left, and the game is over? “Hayda Lebnen.”
A president elected through the aggressive and unapologetic interference of foreign powers? “Hayda Lebnen.”
A political party armed to the teeth that, following the wishes of its foreign sponsor, decides matters of war and peace instead of the state and is ready to use any excuse, even the color of hydrangeas, to preserve this outrageous anomaly? “Hayda Lebnen.”
It’s a country where everything changes so quickly that nothing really changes.
One could go on listing examples endlessly. The moment this premise is questioned, the reactions are almost always the same. “It’s a complex country, you can’t understand it.”
“You think like a Westerner, it doesn’t work that way here.”
“These are fragile balances, you can’t just disrupt everything.”
This is not, of course, to downplay the complexity of the Lebanese situation, both internally and externally. Nor to deny that certain behaviors are so deeply rooted that it would be not only presumptuous but also counterproductive to try to change them at all costs in a short period of time.
The phrase we throw around so freely undoubtedly contains a grain of truth.
Otherwise, how can one explain that Lebanese history has largely been made up of — to borrow the words of Karim Emile Bitar — “impossible revolutions and improbable reforms?”
But by repeating it so often, we have turned it into a state religion. The idea that this country is the way it is and will never be any different is so deeply embedded in our mindset that the phrase has become performative. Any attempt to do things differently is immediately mocked and dismissed as naïve.
Maybe they are all right.
Maybe Lebanon is nothing more than this and never will be. But at the very least, they should do everything they can to make it otherwise.
Or at the very least, they should not be content with it, let alone proud of it. Because if Lebanon has reached this point today, it is largely due to this mindset, one as deeply conservative as it is fundamentally mediocre, that has driven away the most creative and brilliant minds of this country. And the result speaks for itself.
To the point that if this really is Lebanon, a country in a constant state of both construction and collapse, there is truly nothing to be proud of.
“I don’t aim to change this country. I just don’t want this country to change me,” said Ziad Rahbani. As we continue to mark his passing, we would all do well to make that our own motto.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour and was translated by Sahar Ghoussoub.
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