**If you feel in despair and darkness, talk to someone who can understand and help you through. Please CALL 1564 Embrace LifeLine Lebanon.**
Lebanon is on the brink of collapse. Some are blaming the revolution. Those blaming it seem to have forgotten in which status the country was just a few weeks before the protests.
Gas stations were closing off and on, causing panics. Medicine was getting more expensive, hence inaccessible to many. Healthcare was becoming a luxury. Kids were dying at hospital doors. Many businesses were shutting down.
Garbage was drowning the country beneath it for over two years. Students couldn’t pay their tuition. Job opportunities were scarce.
Austerity measures were being implemented. Over 1.1 million people were living on $4 a day. And the only thing that has changed is that the people have revolted in unison.
Only those who didn’t suffer pre-revolution and aren’t suffering still from any of the above, especially the lack of money and food, can possibly forget and blame the revolution.
The revolution is not the cause of any of the above and the economic crisis. The above and the economic crisis caused the revolution.
This is not a political revolution but a revolution of the sufferers and those conscious enough to stand by them and their country.
If some haven’t realized it yet, then a pathological denial is their problem; or maybe they are too loaded to care about the agony of their own country and their fellow citizens.
If, on the other hand, their denial is due to them deeming their leaders as gods or equal to God, as some recently claimed, it’s time they ask for a miraculous intervention or two, for soon the agony will reach them as well if they live in this country. There is no escape.
For a long time, humanity seemed to have disappeared in our country, until this revolution came to bring people together like never before.
It has eradicated the demarcation lines not only between sects but most importantly between the people of all walks of life; at least the conscious majority.
In the 7th week of the revolution, the cries of the Lebanese have reached the world yet not the authority in this country.
There is a threat that wheat will no longer be available, bread prices will increase, and supermarket prices have already increased by 1.36%. That in addition to the unsolved crises previously mentioned.
In the light of this worsening situation, people are running out of options, out of money, out of food, and in turn being thrown out into the streets.
Just this week, a father named Naji Flaity hit rock bottom when his little daughter asked him for 1000 L.L (less than $1) for school, and he could not give it to her. He ended his life. May he rest in peace.
**If you feel in despair and darkness, talk to someone who can understand and help you through. Please CALL 1564 Embrace LifeLine Lebanon.**
The next day, a mother took to the streets in despair, wanting to sell her kidney. In an interview with her, she said that her 9-year old has a heart problem, and she is unable to take him to a doctor.
Her income is not enough for her family of five and her husband has been arrested, and still detained for the past 12 days. She continues saying that she and her family are being evicted from their home, and they have no place to go.
Later in the same evening, a man from Al Bire in Akkar threatened to burn himself in front of the people, if “the demands of the people were not met and gave a 24-hour deadline to implement it.”
These are not the only dramatic cases Lebanon is witnessing. The situation is getting worse as the government has fallen into a deeper sleep, or is it deep egocentrism?
Action should be taken to control the chaos that Lebanon is diving into; the chaos that has existed pre-revolution in the shadows of daily life and pretenses.