New Year's Fever

Chatah Car Bombing 1

This new year I hoped and pleaded with the spirits that be that the new year will start and end with safety and sanity.

That the year wouldn't burn like a sickness.

On December 27, 2013 my uncle, a politician in Lebanon on the March 14 camp was killed by an explosive car bomb.

On January 2, 2014 a car bomb was detonated in the Haret Hreik, a predominantly Shiite area known to be home of Al Manar the March 8th camps leading news agency.

Haret Hreik Car Bombing 1

Lebanon's divisions have always been cause for conflict, but now it seems like the need to ignite these differences into full blown civil war is of far more interest than urging stability.

It's unclear who is behind the bloodshed. Some argue Syria planted the bomb that killed my uncle, Mohamad Chatah, and that the attacks in Haret Hreik were a reactionary response by radicalized Sunni Muslims in the country and in Syria. Others argue it was fundamentalists that did both attacks. Either side doesn't have enough evidence to place responsibility in the hands of those criminals who committed the crimes.

Haret Hreik Car Bombing 2

Receiving justice for the crimes committed against the Lebanese people whether they are March 8 or 14 is tough and the population has little control over the outcomes. Lebanon can't even form a collaborative government shared by all the sects in the country as the sects are adamantly divided on how to respond to the Syrian crisis.

This is what the new year brought us Lebanese. The gift of war which tastes bitter and salty like blood.

I want to say NO! to this sickness. But where does one person draw the line when the pencil is flat and needs sharpening? How do millions draw parallel lines when there aren't enough pencils for all? What happens when colors matter and gray is simply not enough?

Chatah Car Bombing 2

I pencil my way to trying to make sense of old and new wounds that scab and scar. So little can be said about writing when all it amounts to is another voice in a crowd of the unheard.

Its a bad start for the new year!