----------------------------------------------
Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
--------------------
To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com
--------------------
Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
audio
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Just got back from my sleepwalk to Jounieh.
On arrival at the taxi rank, the hobo who thinks that I’m a priest greeted me (“welcome Father”) but the actual taxi driver was preoccupied – he was chasing some youths with a stick.
It appeared to be politically related because the taxi company supports one candidate and the young men were setting up Aoun paraphernalia.
I stood and watched for a little while, not wanting to intervene because it looked too insignificant to warrant intervention (an old man chasing some boys with a stick) but the hobo kept yelling to the driver “stop it – the priest is here!”
So I thought that if they think I’m a priest, I should fulfill my priestly duties.
Thus, to the protestations of the hobo who was saying “don’t bother with it Father”, I walked over and convinced the driver to renounce violence and drive me up here (he told me “they were disrespecting their elders so I decided to ‘fan’ them a bit”).
Just call me The Reverend Jesse Jackson.
The reason I didn’t correct the hobo is that I don’t like contradicting people – a la the taxi driver who still thinks that my name is William.So I’m all things to all taxi drivers and their hangers-on.
I walk to Jounieh nearly every day now – quite a departure for someone who used to consider showering a form of exercise (my only form of exercise).
I used to somewhat enjoy my walks until I became too "professional" about them - power walking has cut the time it takes in half (from approximately an hour to approximatley half an hour) but doubled my discomfort.
The good thing about walking down a mountain is that you can’t turn back – you have to keep going all the way to the bottom of the mountain because the alternative, walking back up the mountain, is suicide (the only flat terrain in Lebanon is in your appartment).
And the bad thing about walking down a mountain is that you can’t turn back.
It’s not your mountain until you’ve walked it – surveyed and reconnoitered it on foot.
I used to walk down a smaller mountain on the outskirts of Campbelltown to the closest shops (in Campbelltown proper) in the middle of the night when I’d run out of smokes – a forty-minute roundtrip that was counterproductive because I’d be too winded to actually smoke them when I got back (for a while anyway).
Not the safest thing to do in the world – put it this way, I feel a lot safer walking in Lebanon at 3.00am than I do in Sydney or Melbourne.
Quite ironic.
Seeing the ubiquitous police patrols didn’t make me feel very much safer either – what are they doing? Why are they here? Now I know that it’s unsafe, that just confirms it.
I don’t know anybody in Lebanon who has a house alarm – we don’t need alarms we have neighbours.
An informal yet very effective neighbourhood watch.
Put quite simply, everybody watches everybody else.
3:00 am
|
|
| |
|
|
|
