So... Are You Muslim or Christian ? (Billet particulièrement bien amené, je trouve.)
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/so-are-you-muslim-or-christian
Hamra is a crazy place. Its wounds are entertaining and crippling at the same time.
Hamra is a crazy, surreal place, but it is not a microcosm of the Lebanese dynamic. One cannot expand what happens in Hamra to project an image of the country, so I can’t generalize. Hamra is much more inclusive and tolerant than most neighborhoods in Lebanon, so if the situation here is this frenzied, what could be happening elsewhere? If you’re asked about your god in Hamra, and refuse to dignify the question with an answer, it’s possible that you’ll win. But what would have happened elsewhere?
The hyper-centralized nature of Lebanon created a pseudo-cosmopolitan capital city and everywhere else is crippled. Sipping coffee from my paper cup, with its nervous bitemarks, I thought of what would have happened if I were in Tripoli for example? Would the man in front of me in a café be free enough to refuse to answer? Would the question there have a right and a wrong answer? If so, what if he had provided the wrong answer?