When I was young, a little over a decade ago, my mother would be careful about how she dresses my sister and me. Girls would wear decent clothes. We wouldna��t see girls wearing tight t-shirts with explicit prints on them, we wouldna��t see girls wearing the shortest version of shorts or mini-skirts and we definitely […]
Author Archives: Red Lips High Heels
Toward Resilient Arab Societies
I was invited more than 10 years ago by an association of psychologists in Montreal (Quebec- Canada) to testify about my experience as a war survivor. The main theme was ‘Resilience’ and my hosts and colleagues defined it as having a positive attitude, optimism, and the ability to change one’s life even after a misfortune. […]
En souvenir des victimes de guerre… Pour que cesse la folie meurtrière!
L’attentat à la voiture piégée à Roueiss (banlieue sud de Beyrouth) hier vendredi ayant fait plus de 20 morts et 250 blessés, n’est pas un incident ponctuel, un événement ‘sensationnel’ du moment, mais il fait partie de la tragédie libanaise, de la guerre continue au Liban voilà des décennies et son cortège de victimes, de […]
NOUS et le COLONIALISME : un divorce inconsommé!
L’analyse des guerres continues en Asie du Sud-Ouest – que l’on tient encore à nommer ‘Moyen-Orient’ en adoptant un concept eurocentriste – ne devrait pas faire fi de l’héritage du colonialisme du 20e siècle et du néo-colonialisme actuel. En tenir compte n’implique pas la déresponsabilisation des populations locales, mais je trouve aberrant de taxer celles-ci […]
We Fear the Unknown, and Prefer to Keep it Locked up!
This is Lebanon. Here, we have degrees of citizenship. Its factors are skin color, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and profession. We dona��t consider foreign workers to be human. We treat them inhumanely; we overwork them, we exhaust them, we dona��t give them the space every human being needs, we expect the very best of them […]
Entre deux rives (Canada et Liban)
Je publie à nouveau ce matin un de mes articles parus dans l’Orient-le-Jour et dans la revue du Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour (2006). A l’époque, nous avions, mon mari et moi, pris la décision de retourner au Liban, pour des raisons tant familiales que ‘nationalistes’. Il faut dire que notre visite lors de l’été 2006 […]
Pity our Nation?
I woke up this morning with those three words in my head “Pity the Nation” while thinking of Lebanon, Lebanese, of our sad situation caught in a never-ending cycle of wars, both physical and psychological. “Pity the Nation” is the title of Robert Fisk’s publication in England (1990) and the US (1991). Strange how the […]
About the Crisis of Celibacy in Lebanon
JK, mid-40s, I’ve known him since 5 years now, he is in charge of the entertainment at our place; not his main job, he rather does it as a hobby. A very decent man, workaholic to the max and dependable as no one else, seeking a life partner, sometimes desperately, but not finding any. Straight […]
How married/divorced women are usually perceived!
The way society views married women is a shock to me. But then again, why should it surprise me? This society has no respect for anything, no respect for anything at all. Yes, I’ve been told on many occasions that there aren’t a lot of men who think like I do. Yes, Ia��m becoming more […]
"Weak, undependable, defective and inferiors" ? More than enough!
I have been a girl that lived in a conservative society for my whole life. Thank god, to a point my parents were a bit loose. But that doesn’t mean I have not seen what a cruel moral and physical treatment a woman receives. So next, I’m not going to talk about women’s right in […]