Whereto, Lebanon?

السياسة في الجامعات

             هيثم العبد الله

دخلت السياسة قلوب اللبنانيين وعقولهم حتى أضحت قوتهم اليومي وشغلهم الشاغل في أدق تفاصيلها وأصبح للكبير والصغير وللأطفال حتى مواقفهم السياسيّة التي تتأثر طبعاً بانتماءاتهم الطائفية والمناطقية و... أو انتماء والديهم السياسي.

بما أن "السياسة" ما دخلت شيئاً إلا أفسدته خاصة في مجتمع متنوع مثل المجتمع اللبناني,

وبما أن طلاب الجامعات هم الأكثر نشاطاً للعمل والإلتزام السياسي نظراً لخطورة الوضع تداعت معظم الجامعات إلى تعليق مؤقت للأنشطة السياسية التي من شأنها أن توتر الأجواء بين الطلبة.

كيف ينظر هؤلاء الطلاب إلى هذا القرار؟ وما هي أراؤهم؟ وما هو دورهم لإبعاد التوتر عن الجامعات؟ وماذا يحملون من إقتراحات لتفعيل الدور السياسي للحركة الطلابية في ظل قدرتهم على التأثير في الحياة العامة في لبنان؟ هذه أسئلة قد طرحناها على عيّنة من الطلاب، وقد كانت حصيلة الإجابات كالتالي:

اختبار مدرسي من قلب الحدث

إلهام خليل

صحيح أن دوي المدافع ورعب الإنفجارات صار جزءا من الحياة اليومية في هذا البلد ، الا أن المدارس لا تقفل أبوابه ا قبل اجراء الإمتحانات. ومن البديهي أن يكون هذا هو الوضع في بلد لم تفارقه مظاهر الحرب منذ ثلاثين عاما، ومن الطبيعي أن نصيد أياما عادية أو شبه عادية لنتابع حياتنا ونتظاهر بأننا نعيش كاللآخرين في البلاد العربية التي تنظم قصائد الرثاء  يوميا لنا ولبلدنا.

كان علي أن أجري اختباراتي في الصفوف الصغيرة مع معلمات الصفوف، وكان أهم التمارين هي أن يؤلف التلميذ كلمات من أحرف ، أو جملا من كلمات متفرقة، أوأن يعلّق على صورة.وبالطبع أنا أتكلم هنا على تلاميذ بين الرابعة والسادسة من العمر.أما الطريقة فهي أن تطرح المعلمة الأسئلة فيما أسجل ملاحظاتي.

التلميذ  الأول كان "رالف" سجلت المعلمة على اللوح الأحرف التالية :( ر،ا،ب،ق،ن،خ،د،ح،ع،) وطلبت منه ان يختار الأحرف التي يريدها ويؤلف منها كلمة،فاختار الأحرف التالية:(ح،ر،ب،)

وقال :حرب،...ثم اختار مجموعة أخرىمؤلفة من:( خ،ن،د،ق،)....وبعدها اختار :ب،ن،د،ق، وصرخ قائلا: لقد نسيت أيتها الآنسة أن تضعي الحرفين (ي،ة،)لتصبح بندقية،!!!!!!

ظننت أن هذا الصبي مغرم بالسلاح فلم أمنح الأمر أهمية كبيرة مع ان الظاهرة لفتتني ولكن!!!

جاء دور ريما وهي فتاة كاللعبة في غنجها وسحرها،وسجلت المعلمة لها الأحرف التالية:

(ص،ع،س،ة،و،ر،ق،ن،ك ، )خيل الي انها ستقول عروسة،صقر،..لكنها قالت: عسكر،قنص، وسألتها لماذا لم تختاري :سكر،ورقة فلم ترد علي بل التفتت الى معلمتها وقالت: لو وضعت الألف لقلت( قناص)، ثم تذكرت سؤالي فقالت برقة هذه هي الكلمات التي نسمعها في هذه الأيام!!!!!!

What We Think and How We Think It

Rima Abushakra

In Beirut these days, it is hard to know what to expect, who to believe and what to do. For a while, it felt like the events around us were escalating faster and faster, but now the tension feels like the status quo and has been accommodated into everyday life in search of normalcy, denial and a way of pretending things will go back to normal and Lebanon will be as we remember it.

The politicians are still talking, but giving us little hope. The opposition says that their campaign will intensify after the holidays, which is almost amusing. It doesn’t feel like the holidays. People are depressed and unsure. When you make a Christmas wish or a New Year’s resolution, you assume that you have some agency to determine what you can do and what the near future will look like. Not this year. 

The tents are still erected downtown. I have stopped listening to the hearsay, because who knows the reality. A nightclub named Taboo reopened on Saturday night and there was a minor altercation outside. Some say that some protesters were threatening the club-goers and that the Hizbollah guards stopped them. Others say that the Hizbollah members were telling club-goers that they shouldn’t serve alcohol and dance. I personally don’t care to get to the bottom of this. Either way you look at things it is bad.

Farewell

Maya Talih 

Yesterday I walked down to the martyr’s square with the free people of this country to celebrate the life of a young freedom fighter and say my final farewell to Sheikh Pierre Amin Gemayel. A prince taken by the darkness that incessantly looms in our land. A prince taken well before his time. His murder felt like a knife cutting through our flesh, not only because we lost such a courageous rebel, but also because it was done in a contemptuously lowly manner. Like a mafia member, he was gunned down in broad daylight. They used a silencer on his fervently vocal soul, maybe as a sardonic threat to all the young men and women in this country to remain silent, stand in line, and join the ranks of those willing to forsake their homeland.

As I dragged my feet, heavy with sadness and lost hope, I began to hear the chants of the crowds in the distance, their voices moved in waves. It was an old Arabic saying they were repeating, this loses much of its majesty in translation, its literal translation is “if the people one day decide they want life, it is inevitable that fate will concede”. Those words quickened my pace and I looked ahead at the hundreds of thousands, if not million or more, of Lebanese from all the different sects the country has to offer, standing side by side. Together, demanding justice, demanding freedom, demanding life, demanding the return of their homeland. For the first time in months, I did not feel like I belonged to a minority. For the first time in months, I realized that I only felt like a minority when it was pounded into my head by the threatening opposition. The opposition feeding into Syria’s old and broken record of ‘divide and conquer’.   

The Feeling in the Air

Rima Abushakra

It is difficult to predict what will happen in Lebanon over the coming week and weeks.  Walking around the city, you sometimes feel like you are in a movie where the director has meticulously designed what the main character should see and hear in order to convey the sense on the street and the buzz in the air. In Beirut these days, politics is the buzz and the buzz itself is unavoidable.  It is everywhere. Walking down the street, you hear political conversations and televisions and radio stations airing news between the regular horns and everyday conversations one encounters throughout a day.  In front of Ras Beirut’s City Café, not far from Hariri’s residence and the lower gate of Lebanese American University (LAU), a tank is parked with two young armed guards.  The calmer conversations tend to be about whether or not a civil war is likely to take place.  The more heated conversations are filled with accusations, insults, anger and distrust; distrust of the Other, distrust of the Other’s version of the facts, distrust of the Other’s intentions and above all distrust of the Other’s foreign allies.

Student Elections

Maya Talih

The American University of Beirut’s student elections are scheduled for the 15^th of November, so I decided to take a walk on campus and see if politics has again managed to create an atmosphere of nefarious tension amongst the students. It has. Groups consisting of five to ten students were strategically dispersed around the grounds, stretching from College Hall to West Hall, all the way to the Green Oval, where the ‘cool’ people lurk. Various heads in the various clusters were suspiciously turned over their shoulders to spy on the other huddled groups, while each settled on their particular bench or under their particular tree, an heirloom from the venerable students that ruled before. The stench of restlessness was familiar and even though I graduated from AUB five years ago, the lull before the storm was unchanged from my days, I smiled thinking of those days of hope, now forsaken.