Abdullah Al-Haqim 
Maroun Elias Merhej
In the region where I was born in my country, Lebanon, and for thousands of years, when the first people opened their eyes on the face of this land, they stood at the foot of the blessed mountain, the Baroque Mountain, stunned of beauty. As the sun rises every day, the frankincense began, incense the rice of the Lord from the Baroque until a human being melting to the sky, a token of thanks for this beauty. The sky echoed the song of thanksgiving, announcing the cultivation of the eternal feeling of the Lebanese identity of this small people.
From that day to the present day, poets and art people in my country inhale, and they breathe their talents creatively, raising the slogan of Beirut throughout the ages: “The capital of love and world peace.”
With the passage of times and years, nations began to form and grow around us, and whenever they grow up, their pride grew up, so they colonized and persecuted us. In many cases, they were and still persecuted their peoples, so many of their people resort to the homeland of rice, fleeing repression, eager to the beauty of freedom, afraid that their soul will suffocate, so life passes without memories of love, which has no meaning, taste or longing.
However, the refugee people from the east and west of the earth, and from all boredom and religions, were sometimes trying to impose on this host land, customs and traditions, incompatible with the nature of Lebanese life, so some of the fanatical minority of the indigenous people of the homeland respond to some of the cruelty, but the majority was always trying, with all the spaciousness, to explain to the coming of the role of the home For the peaceful Lebanese doctrine, which, since the existence and existence, has always believed and secured freedom for every individual and group, because without freedom, there is no value for a person on the face of this earth.
And I want to remember always, that freedom is the cause of our dignity, the glory of our soul, the creativity of our soul, the culture of our mind, the expansion of our thought and its openness to the entire universe. With this freedom, we distinguished us throughout the ages from all our surroundings in the east and sometimes in the West.
Hence the words of our philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran: “My country is the human being, my country is Lebanon.” Therefore, it is important to those who believe in Lebanon, or from outside it, that he can dictate to the other a lifestyle contrary to the nature of this land, not in thinking, worship or culture, not even in clothing, food and drink.
For all this, we are all, if we are fanatical or more flexible, we are afraid of the loss of identity, because if our emotion is lost, our freedom is lost with it, and we have people without value.
History has taught us that all imported identities and lifestyles that were not like us, which were to praise our land throughout the ages, due to envy and the ambitions of empires, always went to the disappearance. Because, in the end, when the rice is spreading its fragrance on the area of the whole country, and mixes with the rotation of the soul, a day comes, in which the deep sense of belonging to this small homeland rises on all the false feelings, and with it all the incubating environments of these strange identities, to the mother embrace, the Lebanese identity.
We have seen several times in our history, how this strange feeling surprised us with its explosion, such as the stagnant volcano that we do not know when its revolution comes. The “Cedar Revolution” uprising on March 14, 2005, which spontaneously came by the Lebanese people, is the biggest proof of this; On that day, when the sky whispered with an upper spirit, the Lebanese identity came out in terms of hiding in our depths, such as a terrible mother who woke up with a blatant dream, she came out barefoot, naked, unparalleled to people’s words, not afraid of all mercenary threats, and she started searching for her lost son. A section of the Lebanese sites in their homes, looking at the window, trembling their feelings inside their depths, in the terrible subconscious, asking themselves: Are we really who kidnapped her son?! Are we not, that wasted boy who was lost on his way, and our mother is broken, does not fall asleep her eye, searching for our return to our home?!
But when the snow dissolves and a new day comes, we are waiting for all of them, so many terrifying facts are revealed, and this section of our country’s sons is disappointed by their leaders, and their imported beliefs, then the lost son returns to his mother’s bosom, the Lebanese identity, with shame overwhelmed by joy.
My brother, and every intellectual in my country, remember that our brother, who was lost on his way, can, in some stages of his madness, kill his brothers and family, but the parents cannot or in any way can kill their son, especially as they know that he is lost, and that he will return one day.
Myself have been ready for a long time, waiting for his return to overwhelm him and forgive him, so what about you, my brothers, have your souls become pure in order to deserve the joy of the meeting? I have been waiting for a long time, my country, the day that all your family will launch, from your burden to your mountain to your ease, and from your north to your south, a final comprehensive cleaning campaign, on everything from which your beautiful and peaceful nature is alienated from it: hatred, slavery, lifestyles that do not resemble us … and waste, and then the Lebanese identity heals from all the exotic ideological diseases on its body.
My sorrow and my crying on you today, and for the ugliness of your situation, and from the failure to organize your structures, the roads of your cities, and the distortion of your nature, may turn tomorrow into great joy, stemming from the depths of the heart, especially when you imagine your nature as a super beautiful woman, we have given us the Creator, so the engineers and builders are decorated Creativity, just as the groom decorates his bride with jewelry and glossy gold, and it increases her beauty on beauty, and he fails for him from the joy of the heart of the first creator, the creator and holder of the universes, when he looks at it through our eyes.
When we describe all of our intentions, and we stand with each other in front of each other, recognizing our mistakes, God will always help us and inevitably elect new rulers, unveiling smart people, calling for the interest of all citizens, so we start with them with a white procession from the hell that we have reached, to the paradise of the beauty that awaits us, so they spend the goods of our country on our economy, and to improve our livelihood Our cities and our loss again, for the sake of our comfort … then we will be happy when we see varicose veins that have been indicated from the surfaces of our homes, and the beautiful buildings harmonious with their size and height, the roofs of their red brick have embraced with the pine trees, so the heart of our master and our great mother Mary from joy, when she looks at the top of her mountain in Harissa to her bay Blue, green and red.
Thus our lives turn into yellow clusters that radiate us with gold with the reflection of the sun every morning. Some of you may accuse me that I am an unrealistic person on this earth, who lives with the dreams that he picks from heaven, such as poets, writers and painters … so he responded to him that nature does not know stagnation or surrender. Although I am a practical and realistic person, and I am not a poet, the civilizations of nations throughout history and their development have been built by scholars with the help of their peoples, and from the inspiration of poets and the people of art. It did not lead to extinction and disappearance, had it not been for the ambitions and exploits of the majority of politicians and some of the corrupt leaders on the ground.
As for our capital, Beirut, which is the pulse of our feelings, which although it carries in the depths of its heart the bitterness of times and the burning of the mother, from the many blood of her children who were asked on its soil throughout the ages due to the ambitions, conspiracies and foreign occupations, she still remembers and dreams of the love of love in which Jesus Nazareth was planted when he visited her one day, whispering in her ear: To raise the slogan of your old glory, “the capital of love and world peace”. Then our city will be closed to the throne of the Mediterranean, as a pearl that radiates human beauty in the entire universe. I do not know, my dear reader, where I was born a thousand years ago, and in any desert, ancestors of the ancestors grew up. I do not know when the time passes through this loving country, but I know very well that I am now Lebanese. My brothers, who are committed to them, the Syrian and the Canaani (the Palestinian today) with all their sects, have their homes and my home. My Arab cousins, I aspire to build with them a new civilization for this tormented Middle East.
I hope that the Persian, Turkish and Kurdish will participate in it, in addition to all the peoples of the region that lost its land, identity and states throughout the ages as a result of the occupations. I am Lebanese, and whenever I am in depth in my Lebanese, I loved all nations as I loved my nation. Perhaps many people will say that I have gone over in praise and glorification of my nation, and he responded to them, saying: The Lebanese people, despite all the fatal impurities and fatal mistakes, will continue to be proud of life, that he did not exceed any of their neighbors, and no people colonized by the power of arms, and nor destroyed countries or even the names of countries to build on their ruins a state for it. And who knows what the gift that life hides, in order to reward him for this beautiful behavior.
For this exact reason, Gibran Khalil Gibran said his famous speech: “If Lebanon was not a patriotic, Lebanon would have chosen my homeland.” But when the bonus comes, and for this pride not to turn into an arrogance and a situation in front of the rest of the nations, the Lebanese will always remember that they are in many periods over time. I hope to be learned. Some of you will ask: I have been talking about the Lebanese identity that emerged with the dawn of history, and I came to mention our brothers, the Canaanite people, but never came to mention the Phoenicians, with their role and status in the history of our life and our ancient existence. I say it with confidence, that the “Phoenicia” is nothing more than a title, which the Greeks launched to all the peoples who were inhabiting the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, from the beaches of Gaza today in Palestine to Lattakia in Syria, relative to the palm trees (dates), which means (Phoenica foínika) In the Greek language to this day. For this reason, this title did not stand up, and he was lost with time, and the Lebanese identity remained as an eternal internal feeling that controls us throughout the ages.
As for the “Canaanite”, it is the identity of a people who established their entire state with its capital, Jerusalem, on its soil, the land of Canaan, before the name of Palestine appeared in relation to the Greek leader with his tribe PalestoAnd the name of Israel, the name that the first prophets were given. One of the history scholars in Russia says that when a day comes when history appears a full true truth for us, it is “rough” and painful for every person who tried through the ages to visit this history. I did not want through this intervention to make some feeling of some of you. But I also do not want a day to come when many facts are revealed to us and the historians, so I had to walk in disguise behind the folds of time, bending the head, afraid that I would raise my face, so I would bold history, because I once wanted to enlighten it for an mortal interest. The transgression of history and the identities of the earth and peoples is a sin. History is well known when he wants how to liberate himself from all the restrictions that false and political historians are obligated for for their whims and interests.
A person who cannot look at history fairly and correctly will never be able to see the future.
