Global Voices Online

This week on the Lebanese Blogosphere: Mom, Dad and God.

Mustapha · 13:21 · Middle East & North Africa

While the squabbling in the National Dialogue continues, the English side of the Lebanese Blogosphere went on about the various intricacies involved. Ur Shalim observed the similarity between the Lebanese Civil war and the nascent Iraqi one, while Across The Bay and Beirut To the Beltway delved into the various details.

This week however, we’re giving politics a break; thanks to Eve in Mysterious Eve, I’m going to translate some excerpts from the Arabic side of the Lebanese Blogosphere, which usually covers more personal stuff than its English counterpart.

Eve, in her trademark contemplative and poetic style, imagines a scenario where God and an angel are assigning the destinies of newborn children in this world.

-ماذا عن هذا يا إلهنا؟
- فلتنفث رذاذاً أشقر بين خصلاته، ولتصبغ عينيه بلون البحر حين تنسكب عليه شمس المغيب. إجعله جميلاً فيفتتن به الجميع، وقويّاً فلا يحتاج إلى أحدٍ.
ينظر الملاك في قائمته المرجعيّة، ويضع علامةً قرب خانة “ملعقة الذّهب”. ثمّ يردف:
- وماذا عن الأعراض الجانبيّة؟
- سيظلّ يغرز أوتاداً في شغاف قلبه، بحثاً عن صورةٍ ليست في المرآة. ولسوف يناجي طيف النّوم، فينسى أنّ في أزرق عينيه بعضاً من بريق شمسٍ. وفي نهاية المطاف، إمّا يتناثر أو تتحطّم الصّورة في المرآة.

-What about this one my lord? The angel asks pointing to one of the boys
-Make him blond, blue-eyed, so charming that he'll seduce everyone, so strong that he won’t need anyone.
-Any side effects your highness?
-He would suffer and lose sleep, trying to be someone he’s not, forgetting about what makes him special, until he finally dissolves or has his image in the mirror shattered..

Eve gives another example, then moves to her own life:

“ولمّا حان دوري، فرك الله يديه بإمعان، والتمعت في عينيه ومضةٌ تفضح أكثر ممّا تخفي، ثمّ ضحك ضحكته الجبّارة وهتف:
- والآن، كم سنتسلّى!

“…and when my turn came, God rubbed his hands thoroughly, and with a revealing spark in his eyes, laughed mightily and shouted: Now we’re going to have so much fun”

Other bloggers were busy writing about their parents. Sasmen writes a touching poem to his mother on Mothers’ Day, which occurs on March 21st in Lebanon.

Hilal from Nostalgia wrote a piece about a father who can’t let go of his daughter, only to inspire Rat to write a letter to her father who passed away last year. Rat’s experience is unfortunately very common in our part of the world. Here’s an excerpt:

و اضحك اليوم منك و من نفسي عندما استعيد وحشيتك المطلقة في التعامل مع خطيبي الاول؟ يقول مساء الخير , لا ترد التحية, نتأهب للجلوس على مائدة الطعام, تتجاهل وجوده كليا … بعد فترة و عندما شعرت بقيود الزواج تحيط بي , قررت الانفصال و استسلمت لقيودك التي اسرتني بين جدران المنزل لاشهر عدة, لكن بريق السعادة في عينيك لم يكن ليخفى على احد. تتاللت الايام و توالى العرسان و ردات فعلك, هذا اهبل, و هذا من ديانة مختلفة, و هذا نسونجي و بقينا سنوات على هذا الحال

..Today I laugh at you and at myself, when I remember the absolute savagery with which you treated my first fiancé. He greets you, you don’t reply, you go have supper instead. You completely ignore his existence…Later, when I felt I was close to getting married, I chose to broke up with him and surrendered to your chains instead, chains that locked me home for many months. But the spark of joy in your eyes was very obvious. Days have passed, suitors came by and went. You found faults with them all: crazy, different religion, womanizer.. many years have passed just like that…

Of course, not all Lebanese entries in Arabic are personal. Some are still writing about, you guessed it, the National Dialogue.

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Buying In, Selling Out or Scraping By: Francophone African Bloggers on Social Mobility and Education

Alice Backer · 03:57 · Sub-Saharan Africa

School on Hold While Mom Scrapes By

Carine - DR Congo
Carine. Courtesy Tony Katombe.

Le Blog du Congolais shares (FR) the touching story of Carine, a 22 year-old from the DRC with an infectious smile who sells omelettes and doughnuts during school hours:

Today I don't feel like eating Carine's omelettes. I can't fathom why a rather pretty young woman is selling omelettes and doughnuts all day instead of seeking a brighter future. She wants to know why I'm not having anything and I want to know why she isn't in school. “Because of hard times, she explains, this year Mom decided to send my sister who is in 12th grade and my younger brother and sister … to school. Next year, if Mom can afford it, my brother and I will go.”

And if Mom can't afford school next year? Well, the brother will go and Carine will wait again. She'll then be 23, the age to be graduating college, but instead she'll attend 8th grade.

Carine's mom explains to blogger Tony Katombe that her employer, a Congolese airline, hasn't paid her in several months. She likens her solution to delestage a term used to describe the government's rationing of electricity by delivering it to different neighborhoods every night. Apparently, Congolese families going through tough times practice delestage when it comes to food rationing as well: boys eat on even days while girls eat on uneven days.

Buying In Yet Stuck Between Two Worlds

Le Pangolin reflects (FR) on Ferdinand Oyono's novel Le Negre et la Medaille [The Man and the Medallion] about an African who donates land to colonial authorities, is rewarded with a medallion and then looses touch with reality:

[Kocumbo] no longer has “his feet on the ground”… [H]e's lost touch with reality. He's lost control of his being and of his body by giving up the gravity that attached him to the earth. Gravity is necessary to his equilibrium because the soil he distances himself from is the native land, that of his ancestors.

He is deprived of his traditional garb, but modern attire doesn't suit him any better. He is cut from his world but his new world doesn't fully embrace him either. Ill-adjusted and ill-adapted, Kocumbo floats between … two incompatible worlds: the traditional and the modern. His disease and his despair come principally from these two forces pulling him in antithetical directions.

(more…)

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