Bayan Itani - Al-Jazeera Talk - Beirut
Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations… The sentence that many Lebanese and non-Lebanese citizens heard or stated much today. After the “magnificent” miracle that occurred in Qatar where the Lebanese puppets finally agreed, “congratulations” was the best word choice.
I went to the university as usual. My friends arrived to class congratulating me and the other students. In another class, the instructor who is American congratulated us. For the first time in my life I hear the word “congratulations” this much, much more than the time I heard it when I graduated from high school or when my sister got married.
Am I, the pure Lebanese, supposed to be happy? The dilemma am experiencing goes further when I open my Facebook account. Palestinian guys, Jordanian guys, people who I doubt ever came to Lebanon or know something about it, are all congratulating Lebanon for the honorable agreement the Lebanese honorable leaders reached.
 Not to appear as a traitor, I smile faintly when someone tells me congrats and when my friends pass by happily. My faint smile takes me again to my faint face during the days of the clashes. I remember my tears that scattered when thinking about what happened. Thinking if I accept for the person who was kidnapped and kicked because he’s a “Zionist” to be my brother or boyfriend. Thinking if I was the one who got tortured whether I can tolerate living with no eyes or fingers or not.
I remember the sound of bullets and bombs I heard few days ago. Not on the TV, but in the nearby street. No one knew perhaps those bullets would have killed me. They are aimed to kill any one whether he is involved in what was happening or not. They are even ready to kill people on the sides of the hospitals.
To hell with that, “Lebanon has won today after Doha’s agreement”. I knew that. Lebanon won in the 1975 civil war, Lebanon won in 2008 civil war. Lebanon is always a winner, especially if more than 60 people were killed and at least 188 were injured…
Congratulations…
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