“If RafiK Hariri were alive, we wouldn’t be suffering as we are today.” This phrase, recently repeated by several Lebanese citizens, was also published as articles, and it found a space for itself in political interventions and statements. “If he were alive” is the heading of a theory flourishing in Lebanon today.
Some say it in reference to Imam Musa al-Sadr. Some mean Kamal Jumblatt or Bashir Gemayel. A third group goes further back, referring to Camille Chamoun, Fouad Chehab or Raymond Edde. If only they were alive!
Little truth is blended with a lot of delusion to shape the virtues attributed to these late politicians. However, the most prominent underlying factor behind people’s choice, or the majority’s choice, is their man of choice’s sectarian or regional identity, and in rare cases, ideological and political proclivities intersect with those identities.
This plea for a savior comes in many Lebanese varieties these days, bearing in mind that those making the pleas know better than to expect their savior’s second coming. For them, the matter is more about publicizing an inflated nostalgia given the scale of the comprehensive economic collapse that they can do nothing about, possessing neither the strength to stand in its way or the tools or proposals to resolve it. The furthest they can go is listen to Fairouz, whose voice continues to reign over restaurants and cafes, spreading nostalgia for an old Lebanon, deluding them about their division and preaching about a Lebanese unity and love far removed from reality.
Of course, the problem is not tied to a particular late leader, to say nothing about his impossible return. The problem, on the other hand, is that the only past that actually does “return” is the worst element in the present, and the strongest hurdle blocking the future.
Let us contemplate our current political affairs a little: Muslim-Christian strife “returns” more than other, as indicated today by the seasonal back-and-forth between Michel Aoun and Nabih Berri, the alignment of Berri, Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt’s positions, and the social media war between the youths of the Free Patriotic Movement and those of Hezbollah, not to mention the sporadic statements by religious figures expressing solidarity with the political leaders of their sects. On top of that, Muslim- Christian strife, which is both new and old, does not replace Sunni-Shiite strife, but is added to it.
Two forms of strife, then, instead of one.
It seems that the Lebanese people’s nostalgia for a belle epoque does not end with them. This nostalgia has taken the Arab Levant as a whole by storm, an epoch whose embellishment exacerbates the present’s exceptional misery.
Iraqis recall the days of the monarchy and Nouri al-Saeed, as well as the days of Abdel Karim Qassem or Saddam Hussein, each according to their proclivities or sense of belonging. Some of them long for Iraq’s Jews and “their days,” and others’ longing takes them as far back as the Mesopotamian era.
Syrians long for everything that preceded the Assads’ 50 consecutive years in power. Even despotic figures like Hosni al-Zaim, Adib al-Shishakli and Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj have come to deserve forgiveness merely because they ruled before 1970. Any leader who did not equate himself with “eternity” is OK. The Palestinians, whose memory has been crushed repeatedly, forcefully and ferociously, have many “pre-s” that they cling to: pre-1948, pre-1967, pre the Jordan and Lebanon wars, pre-Oslo, pre-Gaza wars, pre the obliteration of the Yarmouk camp...
The sentiment that any era in the Arab Levant is better than the present prevails, and the further the era is from the present, the more positively it is regarded. Indeed, the people of the Levant now resemble a man whose pain in the left side of his chest has left him with no hope but to be struck with pain in the right side of that same chest. Only thus would he be certain that the original pain does not stem from his heart and is not lethal.
Worse still, in this case, is the total lack of vision for the future and our limited knowledge of what the world has in store for that future, be it positive or negative. For the distance that separates us from that world is vaster today than it had ever been in the past. On top of that, as soon as we try to connect with the world in one way or another, someone emerges to stand in our way in the name of a cause we can only protect through isolation and by closing ourselves off.
In Lebanon, isolation has behind it an armed party that relies on an armed state, a state overseen by men who claim to be directly connected to God. Fairouz, meanwhile, continues to sing and inform us that “we and the moon are neighbors” and many other things of this sort.
