Monday, January 17, 2011

Mess

My house is a mess, it cannot accept any visitors. Same for my heart. Whoever messed up my heart had hers messed up by another victim ad infinitum. Therefore, I cannot blame anyone but my own lavish passion and restless curiosity, and I can do nothing about it as time proves more and more to me that it is irreversible.

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Ottoman Empire

On 1918 and with the end of the second world war came the end of four centuries of the Turkish occupation of Lebanon and many nearby countries. A more neutral term like colonization comes to mind when I think of our gastronomy that was evolved thanks to the Turks. Regardless of the of term adequacy, I fear that 1918 was not as effective as it seemed about ending the Ottoman colonization and I am not arguing about the cultural, linguistic or culinary influence that it had already made to a certain extent. I am talking about the active invasion of our local media, common talk and even unique identities by Turkish soap opera. The Ottoman Empire is alive and kicking, it is streaming Bollywood of forbidden love stories that are scarily addictive. I am not exaggerating, I am describing a daily experience of solitude when my whole family is gathered in front of the TV between 7pm and 8pm to watch another episode of forbidden love. My solitude is aggravated when the whole nation is petrified for an hour every day by a Turkish soap opera and animated during the day when talking about it as if it were the holy grail. It is said that television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education but my lament is too faint of a sob to be heard, it is overwhelmed by the volume of Television and ignored by generations of couch potatoes. Our poor nation is in constant search of distraction and oblivion after all the wars it survived. Perhaps the miserable lives of our friends the Turks could bring consolation to our souls. Perhaps we can experience vicariously the forbidden love that we cannot live nor dare wish for. If I were asked to give a title to the play we cast on stage every day, it would be "Distraction Ad Mortem" were soap opera is only one minute scene in a theatrical piece about and by mankind.