Only a few people on Planet Earth were born with enough stamina to keep up with the atrocious complexities of Lebanese livin’. And if you just so happen to be one of them, then the following mysteries must’ve impacted your existence in one way or another.
1. What in the civilized world is happening to Garbage?
Driving/walking around Beirut these days feels more like sticking your head willingly into a putrefied garbage bag. And yet none of the people in charge bothers enlightening us as a suffocating population on what their genius ‘waste management’ will smell like in the very near future.
2. Jal El Dib Bridge [and bridges in general].
Image via LebanonDebate
Lebanese infrastructure logic 101: let’s slash out three lanes from each side of the main highway and have poor drivers who were already dying in hellish traffic get stuck in an even bigger congestion for at least an extra hour all the way from Nahr El Kalb to Jal EL Dib meanwhile, in order to construct a life-saving bridge that should have probably been built a decade ago and will now take just as much to complete [not to mention that we still don’t know how exactly it will contribute to easing traffic after completion]. You’re basically making the architectural mid-highway marvel that is Dora Bridge look good in comparison.
3. How people earning little more than minimum wage can afford expensive cars.
They also happen to be the same people nagging constantly about وضع البلد [useless Arabic phrase used to depict the country’s less-than-okay situation], generator bills and their children’s unbearable tuition fee raise. But you still gotta keep the prestige when you got for a drive around the neighborhood or hand your vehicle to the valet at the latest club in town no?
Lebanon’s inherent smallness and interconnectedness can get truly mind-blowing at times. From wedding parties and random events to Instagram and even the mini-market next door, strange encounters and unthinkable connections between people are almost too frequent to still be deemed surprising. One the bright side, life is much more interesting when there’s a 50 percent chance that everyone you meet is a distant relative.
6. The audacity of public transport minivans.
Is there a secret minivan society in Lebanon? Do minivan drivers organize weekly underground meetings to discuss how they can inflict more pain and terror upon other drivers by turning the road into a living hell? Are they straight up okay with risking the sheer death of everyone who dares hover near them? Is there any room for behavioral improvement anywhere in the horizon?
7. Traffic times and patterns.
Image via NNA
I stopped thinking of a logical way to anticipate traffic patterns on any given day. It’s just hopeless and you just gotta live with it.
8. Suicidal highway crossing.
What is it exactly that crosses someone’s mind amid the suicidal act of crossing an actual highway?
9. Politico-religious propaganda being a pillar of the political system.
It is just sad to witness how Lebanese politicians feed upon religious propaganda and carefully camouflaged hate speech to fuel their supporters’ energy [and awaken dormant conflicts] whenever their interests and/or reputation are at stake. What’s even worse is that this discourse has become so inherent to Lebanese politics that the population has become practically oblivious to its destructive nature.
10. Having an entire population of self-proclaimed influencers.
Where do most Lebanese people get the guts/confidence/whatever it is to label their own self as ‘influencer’ or ‘public figure’? In what way are your designer slippers adding value to pop culture? How about you leave it up to people to decide how profoundly they are influenced by your irrelevant brand endorsements before you go on assigning big titles to yourself? What would be left of you if Instagram ceased to exist?
