Boring Dystopia Rant from Lebanon: logging in to WFH during war
Boring Dystopia Rant from Lebanon: logging in to WFH during war
Hi everyone.
I’m on my work computer on the perennially terrible Lebanese internet, in a relatively safe town. I’m talking about some stupid client KPIs in a meeting with a bunch of people around the world. An “important” meeting. The clients assume I’m in Dubai or somewhere like that, and I don’t correct them.
I’ll get asked “How are things in Lebanon?” by some coworker in Dubai or Europe after the call and I’ll say the classic “Alhamdulillah, my family and I are okay.” And we’re safe, we haven’t been bombed, not personally. I am lucky to work with decent people, but how could they understand. Will HR give me shit if they learn how much time I’ve spent out and about helping move essentials to shelters in the “dangerous outside world” instead of just burying myself at home “until it’s over”? Maybe I can get fired for putting myself in danger. Or maybe they give me leeway as a relatively senior person with the best English in my team who they get to pay less than everyone else because I don’t have a French passport - what a steal! (They pay me okay, and quite well compared to others around me, but we all know what this arrangement really is)
But corporate work, in normal times, rots the soul from the inside out. This is worse. I have to stare at the bad screen for hours while the EMTs dig people from under their homes. I have a duty to at least try to help my people, but I can’t. If I quit my job, my family loses this home and this security, and we have no place to go now that our original town is being bombed. I don’t come from money. I can’t just move or buy a house abroad or even a plane ticket (Lebanese people with no other nationality can’t go many places without a long visa process). I can’t “just move to Europe bro”, I can’t “just move to Dubai bro”. I have responsibilities. I’d love to move, but I can’t. Maybe I should.
Naturally, even nice coworkers cannot comprehend this. Besides, they need my input on the KPIs. This client is very important and number must go up after all. I hear another thud in the distance, through the crickets, I feel it in the pit of my stomach. Not close enough to threaten my life, but close enough to understand I might be next and that no area is truly safe.
This isn’t a woe is me post and I don’t want people in the comments feeling too sorry for my situation yeah. I still have my family, four limbs and two eyes, my home, a source of income in actual usable currency. Save your real sorrow for the people who have lost more both here and in the occupied territories. It could have been me in Gaza, it could have been you.
Please donate to the Lebanese Red Cross if you have the ability. Our people in the orange jumpsuits are our pride and they need everything they can get, especially now that they’re being hit as well. Relatively transparent and reputable org with boots on the ground and a functional donation platform, please consider helping.
This isn't boring dystopia, this is just straight up Monday for a true dystopia.
Lebanon has been spiraling for some time, but I wouldn't say it's a dystopia. Or a utopia, of course. But it's genuine. People don't kick their kids out on the street at 18 like they apparently do in the US, kids don't get shot in school either. People don't get stabbed or mugged, sometimes harassed by beggars but there's usually not violent crime. More positively, there's a lot to do that isn't centered around making you pay for experiences. I feel like that might not be the case everywhere. At least when we're not being terrorized, Lebanon is... very chill. Chill with a side of feudalism, but that's not today's topic.
Most of us pull together, we have relatively tough social bonds from years of facing difficulties together. On paper everything is fucked: currency is worthless, terrible infrastructure, literal terrorist state looking to Lebensraum us with impunity, mob-run essential services. But I don't know how to leave this behind. I know how to live on 8 hours of electricity per day, I know how to ration bathing water and fuel. I don't know how to deal with the more complex shit I see people dealing with elsewhere online.
Like a ton of people move to Canada. Sure, I speak both English and French decently well. But isn't a house anywhere worth living prohibitively expensive? Our Canadian-Palestinian friends have been discriminated against for the past twenty years, am I going to have to live as a second class citizen? etc etc. Sure as a Lebanese Christian I think I'd get a pass where others won't, but I don't want a pass, I want a safe place to home. All I write here is from a place of relative privilege though. I don't deal with extra shit for being poor or from a religion whose followers tend to be poor, I'm not LGBT, I don't come from a border town, I wasn't born into a town or family that has tribalish skirmishes. It's easy for me to sit and wonder about immigration at my leisure.
There's also analysis paralysis, right. I can theoretically move to many countries. In practice, every place has pros and cons, and it looks like the cons keep piling up pretty much everywhere while the pros drop one by one. Although that applies to Lebanon as well. If I'm going to be struggling, where better to struggle than among friends and family, in the land I call home?
the people i descend from have been native to this country for thousands of years; but they need permission from the american government to live here. second class citizen is right; but if you're willful enough, you can pretend it's not true, like all of our politicians.
it sounds silly; but that's literally what's happening in this country with trump gaining ground on all minority voters until kamala entered the race.
and i think; for myself; it's telling that i was incensed by your first paragraph going over american stereotypes until i saw your third paragraph where you at least admit lebanon shits on their own minorities as much as this country does; or would do if lebanon were richer.
Facts.
Damn, what a surreal and unpleasant experience this must be. Sorry man. Hope your and your family stay safe and secure.
I can't imagine what it's like. You've done a great job explaining it. But still, I haven't walked in your shoes. But I guess it's all about walking that fine line, right? Doing enough to get your job done for your employer, while also chipping away some time to give back a little to this in need in a fucking crazy, bad situation. Sounds like you're doing a good job with that balancing act.
Thanks for the charity recommendation. I'll see what I can do there.
I definitely sympathize with your plight. WFH definitely provides a distance where we do forget what others are going through. Currently at work, I have a coworker who bitches about how he has to spend more time to pirate Nintendo games, while another coworker is wondering if his wife will survive surgery.
And here, I'm too busy worried about my cat's vomit, and all I can do is shrug at my coworker's Nintendo problem and my other coworker's family surgery. Don't take it the wrong way - both suck, as do your plight.
So don't take it as people don't care. And it's not a boring dystopia - we are more connected then ever (which is a good thing), but we as humans only have finite mental energy and I can't care about everything equally.
It sucks what you're going through. It sucks that you as a human have to look at KPIs and how to increase it by 0.0001% while wondering if tomorrow is the day when you have to flee your home.
I went on vacation a few months ago and on the map, it showed me I was flying near a area in severe poverty, next to a pretty damn wealthy city. I kind of cried a bit on the flight thinking how unfair it was that I get to spend thousands of dollars to enjoy a vacation while literally a hundred miles away, some family drinks filthy water. And yet, it's all the same dirt underneath us.
I hope you and your family health and safety.
Don't let the bastards grind you down!
What a shitty situation. I hope you'll manage to make it through it.
So many things are outside of your control, and all any of us can do is look after the people that we have the power to help.
In the context, I'm sure your job feels unimportant and trivial, but for those around you it's an island of stability in the storm of chaos.
French woman here. I used to live in Damascus and I know Lebanon a bit. It was a wonderful place with great people (and dumbasses, obviously, but the great people were really great). Just wanted to say: I get it. I see you.
yo, do you blog? I would read your blog/diary/novel. You have a very calm(ing), distanced and at the same time immediate sense to your writing. It's good readin'!