But that is exactly what we are living today in Lebanon. The end of an entire way of life. I read the headlines about us, and they are a list of facts and numbers. The currency has lost over 90 percent of its value since 2019; 78 percent of the population is estimated to be living in poverty; there are severe shortages of fuel and diesel; society is on the verge of total implosion. But what does all this mean? It means days entirely occupied with the scramble for basic necessities. A life reduced to the logistics of survival and a population that is physically, mentally and emotionally depleted.
[...]
It is nearly impossible to sit down to work. My laptop battery lasts only so long anyway. In my neighborhood, government-provided power comes on for just an hour a day. The UPS battery that keeps the internet router working runs out of juice by noon. I’m behind on every deadline; I’ve written countless shamefaced emails of apology. What am I even supposed to say? “My country is falling apart and there’s not a single moment of my day that isn’t beholden to its collapse”? Nights are sleepless in the choking summer heat. Building generators operate for only four hours before going off around midnight to save diesel — if they are turned on at all.
Every few days there’s a new low to get used to. One recent morning I needed to exchange some dollars to buy groceries, chiefly bread. At the exchange shop there was a long line of people because the dollar rate was slightly down. There had been rumors that the new prime minister was close to forming a government. At this point such news is like a joke — we’ve been without a government since the cataclysmic port blast on Aug. 4, 2020, and the three prime ministers delegated by Parliament to form a government since then have failed to do so because of infighting between political parties, the same ones who’ve brought this country to ruin. Still, all markets are susceptible to rumor, and whenever the dollar rate goes down, people flock to convert their useless Lebanese lira into dollars.
Once I had my money, I headed to the supermarket, and on my way I encountered a tiny old woman sitting on the pavement. I wanted to give her some money and a bottle of cold water. I went to four shops before I found one. This was how I first learned that we are now also facing a shortage of bottled water. The week before, I’d discovered that there was a shortage of cooking gas after our canister ran out and I had to make a dozen calls — and pay five times what it once cost — to replace it. While cooking gas is vital, the shortage of bottled water is an even bigger disaster in a country where most Lebanese believe the tap water isn’t even safe enough to cook with. (Tap water, too, is at risk of being shut down.) I read about it later: There isn’t enough fuel to power the machines forming the plastic bottles or the pumps that fill them. No fuel for the trucks making deliveries.
[...]
At every turn I must remind you: I am one of the lucky few. For every hardship I’m living through, there are those who have it worse. I have four hours of generator power a day; many have none. I am able-bodied enough to climb up and down the stairs every time I need to leave my apartment; the elderly and disabled are imprisoned indoors. I work from home; I don’t have to forgo work altogether to spend entire days lining up for fuel. The monthly minimum wage is now worth less than $50, while the price of food alone has risen by more than 500 percent over the past year.
[...]
There’s no break from this kind of economic warfare. Because that’s exactly what this is. Fuel and medicine, though scarce, are not entirely unavailable. They are unattainable, hoarded by politically connected individuals and organizations, likely to be exported or sold on the black market. In a world where the maximalist pursuit of profit is supreme, such behavior is simply the way the system was built to work. Lebanon is not an exception. It is a preview of what happens when people run out of resources they believe are infinite. This is how fast a society can collapse. This is what it looks like when the world as we know it ends.
Bookmarks