When the war started I had just turned 12, and was in the process of discovering the effects of what is recognized as the weaker sex (for those who are foreign to this notion, women that is). I was infatuated with a classmate called Michelle H (blonde with green eyes) I spent most of my allowance buying her candy and chewing gum from “Cubitus” (the snack opposite the Lycee), and trying to let her allow me to walk her back home (Badaro) after school. Notes were exchanged in class during lectures, some were intercepted by teachers and I had to suffer the consequences for my actions.
Yesterday, when my son came over; he brought with him (In his jeans pocket) a note he received from a girl in his class in which she is declaring her love to him.
My son is about to turn 12; this brought back memories. Lebanon’s history has a knack of repeating itself, and this when I started to get worried. Memories came rushing in, memories of my first infatuation and what followed. 15 years of civil war, demarcation lines, unfounded prejudices, death, destruction, fanaticism, and most of all a lost childhood.
Yesterday I could not sleep. I started remembering how it all began and how I was catapulted into this cesspool of hatred, all that I have lost, and what I had to go through (and inflict onto others) before I came to my senses.
My son will turn 12 in October, I turned 12 a month before all hell broke loose; I hope and pray that Tarek (my son) will not have to make the same mistakes that I did for all the wrong reasons.
But then again this is Lebanon, and in this land of ours, history always comes back to bite you in the ass.
I will not sit idle and let my son go through the hell I have lived; the hell I am still trying to come to terms with. But I will not teach my son to turn the other cheek. I just pray and hope that Tarek will have the worries of any typical teenager, nothing more, nothing less!
3 comments:
When reading your post, the only thing that came to mind was the promotion that's been playing on LBC lately. http://youtube.com/watch?v=A8Gx62dOT7M
Your son is not going to go through the 15 years nightmare you had in your childhood, at least not at the age of 12, I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Well ...
this is why, no matter what is happening, a conflict is just inacceptable.
I was 5 years old when i saw my dad coming back home... with all this blood of his face. A bomb explosed under his car but he got few scratches.
We cannot anymore accept a civil war.
Very moving post. The difference now is that you and most of your generation have learned from the past. When you were 12, no one had been through 15 years of hell and knew enough not to ever let it happen again
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