Bittersweet Symphony
2004-05-21 at 2:41 p.m.
Hate and stuff
When Hassan Nasrallah gave his speech, he told everyone to go to Beirut today to protest the war, so now busses and busses full of people are going by, the people carrying Hezbollah flags and singing and yelling. They said that the war would incite Arab anger, and, yeah, well done. Someone told me that they tried to kill Nasrallah last week. I think it's a good idea. America does not need him as an enemy. I've been reading up on him. He's definitely a skilled propagandist and military strategist. But killing him is stupid, really, really, stupid. Even people who like America also love him. He kicked Israel out. Dude's their hero. You can't underestimate what it means to end 10 years of violence and insecurity. I'm not allowed to talk politics anymore, and I am NOT used to holding my tongue, hence my preoccupation here. I don't really want to anyway. I have a definite inability to get my point across. Also, there is a general apathy in the family (immediate) to politics. If there's anything I hate, it is when people say they don't care about politics, but really they care about one or two things, but don't want to discuss them or have their ideas challenged.I read a speech by Nasrallah from two years ago criticizing American society. He said we don't love our families and we only see each other two or three times a year. Here, you pretty much have to live with your family until you get married. And then you visit each other just about every goddamned day. That's fine. This is also a teeny tiny country and you almost always live right by your family. Also, most importantly, most people don't freaking work, so they have gobs and gobs of time in which to do these things and they aren't too tired to do them. And I think if the economy was better, people would move out when they reached adulthood.
Of course, the biggest piss me off thing is the view of women. Now, Lebanon is the most liberal of Arab countries. But still, there is a very deepset opinion about girls. They aren't allowed to go out at night without their family, and this extends past adulthood, the family controlling until marriage, and then the husband afterwards. I understand this feeling because I have seen it too much. But by now, I have pretty much convinced my husband that he will, under no circumstances, treat our daughters any differently than our sons. I'm sure we all know good people who hold bad and wrong ideas. It's not that my husband is bad, he at least is willing to listen to reason and slowly shake off his old paradigms. I see now that this idea came straight from his mother, who is not, like him, willing to examine her belief. I think I can understand that. We are unwilling to do that about something we really believe. Because, if we reject something that has been close to us, it is in many ways like rejecting ourselves. So I don't blame my MIL. But she is staying at least 10 feet away from any teenaged daughters I may have.
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