American University of Beirut students attending a concert in AUB’s Green Field, 1980. From Maroun Baghdadi’s ‘Whispers’ The following is an unfinished essay partly inspired by Noam Chomsky’s “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967) and Dwight MacDonald’s “Responsibility of Peoples, and Other Essays in Political Criticism” (1957) as well as by the works of several journalists, intellectuals, activists and historians, namely Howard Zinn, Edward Said, Hannah Arendt, and Murray Bookchin. Needless to say, focusing on Lebanon is a practical choice rather than a moral one. The essay is applicable regardless of your nationality and/or place of residence. It originally appeared in AUB’s Outlook in a slightly modified form, in print as well as online, for the week of October 28, 2014. The year is 1980. Musician Haitham Haddad is an architecture student at the American University of Beirut (AUB) when Nadia Tueni, Lebanon’s famed poet, approaches him. She had been walking across our war-ridden country with film director Maroun Baghdadi when, at the end of her journey, she stopped at AUB. The exchange, seen in the video below, is surreal. The scene is taken from “Whispers”, one of Baghdadi’s most hauntingly beautiful documentaries. Throughout the film, Nadia Tueni’s relentless optimism is sharply contrasted with the cynicism of the destruction around her. The shattered streets she walked on are the same ones we walk today, suggesting perhaps that optimism scored a small but significant victory. “Whispers” allows us a brief glimpse into the past, although a disturbing one, with Tueni narrating this journey of fainting life amidst the rubble of death. But “Whispers” isn’t just a look into the past. The ghosts it hunts are still present today, albeit in a more discreet manner. Today, we live in a state of profound cynicism where no individual action is believed to be capable of leading to genuine change. At the same time, we in Lebanon live in a country filled with talent and extraordinary resilience. The challenge, therefore, is to break down the imaginary barrier which separates the imagination from the cold reality of everyday life. This is not only feasible, but a moral imperative. Haitham Haddad being interviewed in Maroun Baghdadi’s ‘Whispers’ And here comes a very profoundly held belief: that just as students have been at the forefront of change in virtually every society for over a century—from Chile to South Africa, Hong Kong to Vietnam, Egypt to Palestine, France to the United States—so do we, the students of Lebanon, have a major role to play in the running of this country. In fact, we have the most important one. Students have shaped history when history seemed to be at its most rigid state, and Lebanon is no different. The exchange between Haitham Haddad and Nadia Tueni revealed a student who dared to hope and trust that young people can unite and change the world around them. Thirty-four years later, have we betrayed that trust? Our government is by its very nature incapable of radical change. The only thing Parliament has managed to achieve was extend its own term illegally. We had to take to the streets in our thousands to demand, over and over again, that the women of this country be protected from the savagery of domestic violence; and when parliamentarians finally agreed, the law that was passed turned out to be a much weakened version of the one we had demanded so loudly and so repeatedly. (Rape is still legal, in case we forgot. We can thank the religious “authorities” for that.) Why do we expect them to care about the injustices that countless Lebanese women are told to ‘accept’? Over half of them voted against the domestic violence law to begin with. Our foreign minister confuses representing Lebanon at the United Nations with representing his penis, and the very man who proposed the illegal extension of parliament’s term seems to be too busy punching women in the neck to listen to what we have to say. Mothers and loved ones of victims of domestic violence at an anti-domestic violence protest organize by KAFA last summer. Photo by Cynthia Ghoussoub And this is just one issue among too many issues to list. Realizing their urgency is necessary for the illusory helplessness we hold so self-destructively to fade away. In 1991, just as our parents were celebrating the “end” of the Civil War, the great American historian Howard Zinn wrote: “If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets.