Sunday, August 27, 2006

...but not forgotten

Having to follow up closely with lebanon seemed to imply turning the pages over Iraq, and Palestine really quickly..
As if you can only handle one page at a time.
And maybe that's true. How much can a human heart or mind handle at once.
Sometimes i read the blogs or pieces of news and nodd slowly closing and opening my eyes emphetically; as if to say 'yes i know... i know this one..' becuase i have heard/read it so many times before. Sometimes it's difficult to remember the context, you scroll back to the top or flip the page to check with region you're reading again, and sometimes it doesn't really matter.

Helpless? la2, that's not what i'm feeling at all.
I personally felt a very positive movement towards lebanon on all our parts and also towards the political and not so political (but invaded by corrupted politics) events here in Egypt. Bas what triggers us everytime? Is it the pictures on the news? What if they just stop coming through? What if we get less inspiring emails by foreign MP speeches, or people in Lebanon who are able to send out their messages creatively? Not that we shouldn't make the best of such media, bas how do we keep ourselves stimulated to act, continuously...?

There are a few things in Riverbend's (Iraqi girl's blog below) that echoed very familiarly;

"I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?"

When does it feel right to stay behind and fight for it, and when does it feel necessary to find a 'stable life somehwere else' or at least one you can relate to... how many of us have asked ourselves that question :)

Another one was;
"I woke up this morning to scenes of carnage and destruction on the television and for the briefest of moments, I thought it was footage of Iraq. It took me a few seconds to realize it was actually Qana in Lebanon."

This was on the irony of how difficult it is to tell what's happening where anymore. it seems to be happening everywhere.

And finally;

"No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?
Right?"

I just watched Hotel Rwanda the other day and remembered how the UN forces were telling Paul, (Rwandan hotel owner) that the rescue they were all anticipating, was NOT coming.. why? Because you're african, and nobody cares about Africa.. This is not on a low note, khales, Quite the contrary.

The other day Heikal was talking to a Lebanese host on a program, reflecting on the events in the region, and lebanon in particular. And he was talking about observing change, or the events to note; and he said our problem is we see the '3awasef' (the Storms) very clearly, bas we never really notice the debris or particles that surround it or come with it..

I couldn't remember the exact phrase, bas the sense i got from it, was that it was not only the storms, the very big events, or very big changes that we should anticipate or account for, bas all that surrounds them; precedes them; preludes them in the air..

There is such a strong air of resistance that comes from lebanon, and i don't speak of Nasrallah,bas the youth and the artists and the general collective and individual movements that have risen up. THe same is to be said for Eygpt, even if the politically oriented movements seem to struggle, there is such hope in the cultural resurgence (or insurgance), the growing social responsibility, and the growing political movement. It's as if there is a growing sense of ownership, and a general sense of;
'if i cannot find that which i'm looking for; i build it..'
A surge of conscience and consciousness keda.

It's happening very slowly and the efforts may at times seem scattered, bas alot of networking and clustering and bonding is happening, alot is being written and alot is being built and alot is being DONE.. there is a movement. Even Egyptians abroad are generating energy and sending it back in.

And it's not only limited to Egypt.
I've a sense, (and i may not be able to back it up entirely empirically), bas whole socio-cultural-political centre of gravity seems to be shifting.. and whilst things 'are happening to us', and we are reacting to them, everytime we react we build, even if it is only a foundation we build, or solidarity, or more scope for stronger action, or production, bas we're really building.

Like a sort of system or systems, or a whole new life system is building up in parallel to that which we shun or are forced to live in. And i don't want to limit it to 'the government' or the political system, because it's not only that. El Share3, wel turath, wel tareekh, wel ard kolaha lenna.

We're retrieving it, getting it back one by one. It's happening very slowly, bas as we create our own grounds, our own havens where we do things as they should be done, see the things that we would like to see, and live in the world as we would have loved to find it; we are retrieving it.

Riverbend's blog;
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

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