A Collective Diatribe on Lebanon's Predicament

New book compiles raw expressions of love and dissatisfaction with problem-plagued country
By Bojan Preradovic
Special to The Daily Star
Friday, September 07, 2007

Review

BEIRUT: "The idea is to portray our frustration and feelings about the current situation in Lebanon," says the introduction to "The Book of Closure." "It's the arguments and the debates we have between ourselves, our friends and with God." Newly published with a spare white cover completely devoid of text or even a title, the book opens up as an anthology of poems, short stories, drawings and other cathartic expressions of dissatisfaction with Lebanon's current (and ostensibly perpetual) predicament.

The contributors are local authors from all over the demographic spectrum - one is a sixth-grader, the eldest is about 70 years old - along with visitors and immigrants with first-hand experience of the paradoxes and ailments that afflict Lebanese society. Some of the material is new; some is reprinted. Some selections have been written in English; others in Arabic and one brief entry is penned in French.

"The Book of Closure" was compiled by P.INC, or Prodigies Incorporated, better known as a graphic design house and advertising agency. P.INC's services are employed by a roster of clients including the Virgin Megastores, Fashion Television Arabia and the American University of Beirut.

The company was established in Beirut in 2002, and has branches in Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. The members of P.INC's team pride themselves on offering customers a range of services beyond just graphic design, such as events management, media research and 3D-animation.

The book opens with "Lebanon During 1870," authored by a Protestant minister over 130 years ago, a brief yet tremendously effective demonstration of how little the Lebanese polity has changed over the past century: "There is no common bond of union ... but an endless number of dislocated fragments, faults, and dikes, by which the masses are tilted up in hopeless confusion, and lie at every conceivable angle of antagonism to each other."

Nancy Jamaleddine, one of the contemporary writers published in "The Book," attributes Lebanon's problems to "our credo, talking about pride, patriotism, and bragging up high different insignias that veil reality," while adding that "each one of us attached to a manifesto is nothing better than a petty warmonger."

As Henry Saliba's contribution "Closure?" demonstrates, there seems to be consensus among the authors on the belief that uncompromising devotion to religious or political principles is counterproductive: "I pray for prosperity, but they pray to their hollow ideology," he writes, in reference to Lebanon's aging political class of familiar faces. "I am sorry, but I cannot give you closure."

Maria De Lourdes offers a similar verbalization of anguish: "I prefer war in Lebanon with Israel to this horrible present situation."

Others, like Ralf Cremona (the title of whose piece demands "For the Love of God Wake Up!"), grieve over what has now become a literal exodus of domestic young talent, who, in the face of an acute shortage of prospects for employment, are leaving the country en masse: "My dear Friends, Relatives, Citizens, and Leaders ... I left the country for you because you are so blind to see!" Such sentiments recur. Ronda Hassen's contribution is aptly titled "Why Did I Have to Leave?"

Older contributors with children voice concerns about the values that will filter down through the minds of the next generation. Soha Chehayeb discusses the importance of teaching "our children to accept others regardless of their origin or affiliation." Her resentment is unequivocal: "I hate it when they come to me asking about the meaning of Christian or Moslem. I want them to be Lebanese and only Lebanese."

On occasion, nevertheless, some writers explicitly convey their love for Lebanon, instead of expressing it through acrimony. As Joseph Hoyek romantically declares: "I love Lebanon, I love life, the life of dignity."

The name of each author is printed below a barcode, an allusion to the "feeling that we are all just numbers; just items in a supermarket," says Diana Jarmakani of P.INC, who wrote the book's introduction. She explains that the project was "done for the sake of doing it - it was to exercise ourselves in our free time, and was the result of my colleagues' constant complaints to me about the national situation."

The idea behind the spare white cover is to allow buyers of the book to personalize their purchase with stickers found inside the front flap.

In yet another attempt at ingenuity and interactive experience, the publisher leaves the closing four pages of the book blank, nudging readers to articulate their own grievances and exasperations.

"We wanted to make it look like it has nothing to do with graphic design," Jarmakani says of the book. The method by which the material was compiled was also simple: "I just sent out a group email, and the book is actually the collection of what I received as replies to that email in the next few days," she says.

"Everything in the book is completely unedited - we just copied and pasted what we received," she adds. "And I have to say, everyone who sent us something said that they ended up feeling much better because they were able to voice their frustrations."

That said, one wonders whether or not P.INC has overstepped the boundaries of entrepreneurial eclecticism. Granted, the many contributors to "The Book of Closure" unanimously highlight the themes of bitterness and dismay at what has become of the country they call (or used to call) home.

Because the material was left raw and unedited, some of the texts find the grammatical principles of the English language rather elusive. Words like "un-understanding" and "r" (as an abbreviated substitute for "are") find their way onto the page and agitate.

Nonetheless, through this outpouring of emotion, the authors seek to therapeutically rid themselves of the anxiety they feel, and focus instead

on the love and passion they have for Lebanon. Their collective diatribe may fall short of offering real solutions to the ills of Lebanese society, but as Jarmakani states: "The book offers an outlet and a channel for expressing the anger that we may feel, so that we can be able to look past it and try to think positively."