Lebanon: Abandoned Baby in Plastic Bag Found in Stray Dog’s Mouth

This is the only headline on Lebanon in the international section of Le Figaro today

I am writing these lines on an electronic platform, or whatever you want to call this publishing artefact, in a language which my ears learnt to hear quite late in life. It means I have Internet access, through a laptop or a tablet, some electricity. It means I had the opportunity to learn this language at some point. If you read me on this platform, we probably share access to the same kind of opportunities and resources. We belong to a bubble, that of people who have the time and means to spare a few minutes in a day to spend on something else than survival.

Everything seems relatively fine in this world of ours. We might have had less sunny days sometimes, we might have felt a lighter kind of poverty than what you see on television, you know, late electricity bills, bailiff reminders, redundancy. We have never met real hunger. It does not belong to this bubble in which we revel. We have never held a dying child in our arms, in front of closed hospital doors, being denied urgent care because of our dire finances. People like that are seldom part of our world. They do not belong to the bubble. We only meet them in news headlines every once in a while.

Which brings me to the main topic of this post, a simple but terrible fact taken from the news headlines.

Lebanon: Abandoned Baby in Plastic Bag Found in Stray Dog’s Mouth

This is the only headline on Lebanon in the international section of Le Figaro today. It is the only fact to emerge from the waves in which this country is sinking.

Lebanon in the summer of 2023 seems to be under the sign of celebration, nevertheless. Restaurants are springing up like mushroom. Clubs are packed and refusing people. Beaches are full and roads are jammed with German sedans, American SUVs, and the occasional sports car. The few remaining Airbnb rentals cost a fortune. Two million tourists, mostly Lebanese expatriates, are expected this season. All of them are part of the bubble. The others however are numerous, invisible, silent. The vast majority of my fellow citizens do not have access to basic necessities. Healthcare. Mobility. A decent job. Food safety. Plain safety. The state institutions are absent at best and the infrastructure is collapsing.

As you know, I claim in my posts to belong to a small country on the verge of oblivion. This country which seems to stubbornly contradict me is ill. really ill. Maybe terminally ill. This child, abandoned in a plastic bag, is a silent witness of the state of the country and a victim of it. My fellow citizens, do not allow yourselves to be fooled by what you see. The global summer party is but an illusion. You can feel it somehow. Look beyond the ice walls of the bubble shielding you from reality and remember that at the end of the sparkling night, the sun may very well not rise on this small country on the verge of oblivion.

Let the board sound

Rabih