urban_memories [the unfinished polaroids]

I am a new blogger. I seldom talk about politics. I first started urban-memories as a notepad to write my thoughts about "Memory," my favorite topic of research, reading, and discussion. This blog does not contain or allude to pornographic content. Why would they ban me? I was frustrated and convinced again, that in China, freedom of speech does not exist. Thank God I am Lebanese – I thought!

For a while now, I have been debating whether I should write about the June 1^st Riots in Beirut. I don’t feel too comfortable touching on current politics on my blog. I’ve laid it dormant for a few days, hoping that it was going to become obsolete and disappear the next day, as many issues do in Lebanon. If I let it go for a while I might even lose the drive to write about it – I said.

However, the subject is anything but dormant and statements are still hailing daily, from many sides and parties. And if I am writing, I am just stating the obvious from a social point of view; from the point of view of a “concerned” citizen.
Hmmm, I feel apologetic already.
Anyway, here it goes.

"Bass Met Watan," a televised satire show, apparently stepped over the line for the second time. After being banned a couple of years back, it was once again facing serious threats after last week’s episode. I can see them going on a forced vacation for a while. Yet another time!

“Bass Met Watan” is a double-entendre in Arabic; it could mean both “when a country died,” and “the smiles of a country,” and quite frankly they could use them both now. When we can’t smile in a country, the country is as good as dead!

“Police did not interfere, but security officials said soldiers were deployed along some areas of the former demarcation line between Christian and Muslim neighborhoods of south Beirut to prevent the unrest from taking a sectarian tone” – naharnet.com

Is War Imminent in Lebanon? Haven’t we learned anything?

Now I didn't watch that week’s “Bass Met Watan” episode; the one that "insulted the symbol of the resistance and its leader" – naharnet.com, and eventually led to those riots. To put it quite frankly, I don't even like the show! I wouldn’t have watched it anyway. But that's irrelevant. Comedy shows air on television daily, joking and mocking political and religious leaders of different religious affiliations. We laugh and sometimes carry the joke with us to work the next day. Why is it that in a fortnight ONE PART of our society, belonging to a certain group, lost its sense of humor? How could they, without warning, decide that they are going to stop laughing with the rest of us! I thought we were all in this together? They can’t stop laughing at the same jokes now. They can’t be the ones deciding what is funny and what is not!
I thought that Humor and being able to laugh at our own tragedies and miseries, is what got us through and out of the war with half a sane brain. Otherwise we would have all turned into zombies. A good sense of humor has always been a Lebanese “thing”. It would be too bad if we lost it. There will be no telling on what we could lose next.

Laugh my friends. Laugh, because the way things stand, our country is damn funny, and everybody is laughing at us.

I hope that I won’t be asked to apologize after this post.

Photo source: www.naharnet.com