Is it still considered bad luck if you're entering a church?

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Who Remembers the Lebanon of the Not-So-Distant Past? Let Me Jog Your Memory.

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Lebanon has arguably never seen worse days than those we’re weathering now. Constant electricity outages; a seemingly unresolvable fuel shortage translating to long lines at the pump; rampant hyperinflation; poverty engulfing three-quarters of the population; rising unemployment; the depletion of medicine; oversaturated hospitals and healthcare facilities…all impetuses propelling the mass exodus of emigrants who will go literally anywhere to escape the trials and tribulations of home. Where were we just two years ago, and where are we now? Ever see those memes split into two columns, juxtaposing “How it started” and “How it’s going”? Yeah, well, in Lebanon’s case, it just isn’t going. End of story. No doubt many of us find ourselves reflecting on the not-so-distant past, nostalgic for the golden age we didn’t even know we were reveling in until the rug was violently pulled out from under our feet. Here's what I've been missing most. 1. Who remembers when Anthony Salamé an
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Abysmal and Inconsolable: A Day in the Life of A Lebanese Resident

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Reader, brace yourself. I’m about to push you beyond your comfort zone. You’re being warned: the following sequence of events is not for the faint-hearted. Prepare for a freefalling nightmare of evils and darkness, a bottomless pit of misadventures. This story is about agony, grief, humiliation, inhumanity, and curse after curse after curse. After all, every day -- and not just today -- is now Friday the 13th in Lebanon. Imagine waking at half past 02:00, in the dead of night, choking on the insufferable Mediterranean heat and humidity of a treacherous summer. The air conditioner is off, the room is pitch black. You get up and fumble your way to the light switch, only to find there’s no electricity. You slide the window open, praying for a sea breeze, but the air is flat, dead, unforgiving. You’d been hearing all along about the state’s impending fuel shortages as a result of its inability to pay suppliers with its dwindling foreign reserves. But as with everything in wretched Leba
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August 4, 2020: A Day That Will Forever Live in Lebanese Infamy

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Every morning, my Google Photos app depicts a memory from the archive. Today, it was this capture from August 4, 2017: on the left, St. Georges Maronite Cathedral neighboring Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque, nestled in the heart of downtown Beirut. We often say that the beauty of Lebanon is in the peaceful coexistence of so many faiths, creeds, and sects, and this is one symbol-laden image. St. Georges Maronite Cathedral (left) and Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque, downtown Beirut. Three years to the day after this photo was snapped, one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in the history of the world detonated in the port of Beirut. Annihilation doesn't begin to describe the aftermath: hundreds of lives were obliterated; thousands more, injured; hundreds of thousands, displaced; and large sections of the city and neighboring regions, completely leveled. Beirut was gutted, and its soul cast into an abyss of tribulation and mourning that continues to scale deeper and deeper fathoms as the days tran
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