Lebanon Unchained: Fight. Fill up. Repeat.
This summer I visited Lebanon, where I grew up. I have rarely been angrier or sadder. If you’ve ever chatted with a Lebanese or visited in years past, you might be familiar with tales of natural beauty, epic merry-making and delicious food. In the first year of the ‘roaring twenties’, the Lebanon I visited this August is a far cry from it. This is my personal account witnessing the Lebanese fighting for survival and filling up — literally on gas and figuratively on energy — to live another day.
[Full tank] The country’s latest currency devaluation is one for the history books: 90% in a span of 18 months at the time of writing. It is now to the point of not being able to afford to buy enough fuel to power the basic economic machine. One of the daily battles of the Lebanese people revolves around filling up their cars with (imported) petrol to get moving, and their buildings’ generators with mazut to stay productive. I was lucky: my dad’s friend’s son knows a guy who is buddies with the manager of a gas station in town. One morning, he announced he had just gotten a shipment and could hook us up (pun intended) if we were at the station before dawn. That week, I felt princely as I could come and go as I pleased. These haves and have-nots gave new meaning to the adage that we live sheltered lives in Western countries where basic needs are guaranteed by functioning states. In the 40-degree Celsius heat and humidity of Beirut summers, we had to set up a UPS system (that is an Uninterruptible Power Supply) at my father’s bedside so he can get assisted breathing at night and nap through daily power cuts.
[3/4 tank] The fuel crisis is the latest to pile up on top of the now arm-long list of crises Lebanon has been going through in recent years. The garbage crisis (2015), the financial crisis (2019’s capital controls), the humanitarian crisis (2020’s double explosion and wreckage), the decades-long refugee crisis (Syrians, Palestinians), and the worst socio-political crisis of the country’s modern history. No wonder economic output in Lebanon is taking a nose dive, with annual GDP forecasted to drop 20% in 2021 from the already dismal 2020 levels. In order to ‘turn on the lights’, households and businesses alike have to pay up in ‘fresh United States dollar’, i.e. currency not locked into the closed-loop financial system. The result is a system of rationing power throughout the day, with an ever-changing schedule of hours with/without power to match the supply of fuel. Last week I learned about the latest schedule the hard way. I took the elevator past midnight — a 2021-Beirut-rookie move. When it stopped midway through its ascent with no electricity, I had no phone network to ask for help and no one in the building to hear the alarm since every family had escaped the scorching heat to the mountains. I accepted my fate and slept in the hotbox 2 square-meter elevator until the morning’s next power refill.
[Half tank] Needless to say, the next day my productivity had plummeted — just like that of those living here, who deal with such circumstances and their impact on their livelihoods day in and day out. To give a sense of the time and resource wasted on life support, certain medications my father takes are only found in pharmacies every few weeks. Others are just no longer found and require purchasing abroad in bulk and shipping in friends’ suitcases. Of course, Lebanon has a deep-rooted habit to spread its people across the world. The latest exodus is one of the quickest of its history, though. In a country of 4 million, around 300 people are leaving every day. Growing up in Beirut before joining the exodus for university, I now only count two close friends that are still fighting for a life in Lebanon. On the positive side, this brain drain may continue to fuel the healthy portion of GDP (around 25%) that flow back to the country as remittances. Still, in the short term it is breaking families apart. In the medium term, it is starving the country of its educated youth, a much needed resource to rebuild trustworthy and sturdy institutions.
[Quarter tank] Speaking of institutions, because of governmental mismanagement Lebanon is currently suffering with the trifecta of economic and political collapse. Alongside the quickly devaluing currency, the country is going through banking collapse with strict capital controls in place since 2019. These mean that transferring funds from a Lebanese bank abroad is impossible, in an economy mostly relying on imports. The result: hundreds of thousands of businesses dropping to a standstill or going bust, including my father’s gemstone wholesale import and distribution. Starved of economic output, most households are left in a daily sprint to stay solvent without state support. It is estimated that almost 80% of the population now lives below the poverty line. My mother summarises her mornings with the question ‘where will today’s slap come from?’. It is heart-breaking to see loved ones resigned to this fate.
[Empty tank] Just when I was running out of consolations for my mother — and gas — I met up with one of those two local friends and he gave me hope for the country’s future. At dinner a few days before I headed back to London (my home for the past few years), he announced he was preparing to run at next year’s parliamentary elections under a thawra (or revolution) platform. Thawra currently joins several political parties and social movements, all broadly sharing anti-establishment aspirations. What is more, he is part of a rare breed of Lebanese that grew up outside of the country and left a cushy professional services job in Dubai to move back there. Even if he fails, he plans to continue fighting for Lebanon’s sovereignty and economic prosperity on the ground. What an inspiring story of commitment to make a change and break the endless chain of the country politicians’ empty promises. Speaking of empty, this reminds me I need to ask my father’s friend for one more favour. Otherwise, I won’t be able to fill up, fight another day, and get myself to the airport.
