I had a friend in secondary school who was the typical Nigerianized Lebanese, Muhannad Ghraizi. Muhannad was honourable but proud, and had once given me a tour of his home in Abuja, complete with artefacts from the days his parents lived back in Beirut. One of those artefacts was a bulletproof Mercedes Benz sedan belonging to his father, which he proudly told me had once been ridden by Yasser Arafat.
We were quite close and joked around with each other quite freely. I remember one of my taunts was that Israel was able to beat a coalition of six Arab armies in just six days, and this was to downplay an event he won’t stop gloating about—that he once fended off six of our classmates in a brawl long enough for our class teacher to arrive and break it up.
Lebanon was one of those countries I was fascinated by, perhaps because its citizens were easiest to come by in Nigeria. It was a small country but so rich in history—of note is the fact that the Latin script you are reading as I tell you this story was invented by people who originated from Lebanon. From antiquity down to the intellectual revolution that followed the dawn of the 20th Century in the Levant, there was always something fascinating about Lebanon.
When I learned that the Brits brought in the Lebanese and Indians to Nigeria to handle commerce and industry in order to avoid the Boston Tea Party and the chain of events that cost the British crown its American colonies—I joked about him being a “dan ci-rani”, literally a migrant worker in Hausa, although the term carried derogatory overtones.
- Bandits invade Kaduna farms, chase away farmers
- Fubara appoints 8 commissioners, charges them on loyalty
When Mohannad would not stop embellishing and telling tall tales about the day he singlehandedly took down six guys, I would remind him that six Arab armies were defeated by underdog-Israel in 1967. I would tell him that if I were Arab, I would have long committed Japanese ritual suicide out of shame.
Mohannad would then tell me how his kind still holds the aces in many of Nigeria’s economic niches decades after we were supposedly handed control of our own destiny. And if we can’t control our own destinies even after being given actual control of those destinies enough to steer ourselves away from hunger and disease, “you ain’t no n***s”, he would tell me.
Coming off that juvenile understanding of reality, I have for the last past couple of months been gnashing my teeth at the thought of the terrible curse that is the terrible Arab leadership of the Arab world. It defied all reason trying to understand how the Arab elite lives with itself given the spectacular failures they preside over. I began to wonder how my Arab friend from the ornament of Arabia face the people they face every day.
What breed of human beings can be so immobilized so bankrupt they cannot get their act together enough to protect itself from the terrible horrors people in Syria, Libya and most emphatically Palestine face today. It was confounding that the quantum of support for the Palestinian cause overwhelms anything and everything from Arabia. It took the actions of non-Muslim South Africa for the world to step up, it took the actions of Ajami Iran and Turkey for the Palestinians to be able to sustain some form of dignified resistance against Israeli barbarism.
It defied every sense I had trying to understand how the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia would go the lengths they went to defend or aid the defence murdering their own kinsmen by the tens of thousands. Not only that, but they would not lift a finger to, at least by laying claim to neutrality, participate in the defence of their people.
It was bizarre!
It was such a massive shame on them!
Recently I discovered new perspective through which to look at it. We all moralise and theorise about different issues that contribute to Middle Eastern instability. Most of the issues don’t necessarily contradict themselves but rather give different outcomes on what adds to the instability and issues. One thing I never realised was quite significant. The Middle East might still be recovering from the fall of the Ottoman Empire
In fact, most of the issues in the Middle East bear a lot of correlation to what is happening in the other lands of the Ottoman Empire: In the Balkans for instance, there is constant war/unrest and genocides same as the Arabian peninsula. These are fueled by sectarianism and predation and corruption and weak economies same as in the Arab world.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. Just like Europe entered the dark ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Middle East (and the Balkans) have entered a period of instability, violence, radicalism, and fundamentalism following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Just like the Huns and Franks took pieces of the Roman Empire, so too did the Sykes/Picot rip apart the Ottoman corpse before it even cold went cold.
The period following the Fall of the Roman Empire, the so-called Dark Ages, was a defining time period for Europe. It was during that time where we see the modern ethnic and national identities of Europe begin to form. By the time Europe emerged from these dark ages during the High Middle Ages, most of the modern European nationalities had already consolidated themselves and their identities, with most of the next 1000 years being a battle over values and borders.
This is being replicated in the Middle East. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, we have seen a wide range of exploration of ethnic and national identities. We have seen an Israeli state and an Egyptian state governed by Jews and Egyptians themselves for the first time since the days of the Roman Empire. We have also seen conflicts between a pan-Slavic identity of the former Yugoslav Republic as opposed to the various regional, religious and ethnic identities existing today.
We are likewise seeing the Arab-speaking countries questioning what it means to be Arab, whether they should define themselves on their Arab identity, or hearken back to their Pre-Islamic or “Jahiliyya” identities (as idealised by the Ba’ath Party) as a pragmatic approach to the turbulent dynamics of a world in critical transition.
In these thoughts, I find solace on why Palestine itself or the Arab world cannot offer much for Palestine. In these thoughts I found an inspired conviction that it has to be the civilised humanity, it also has to be the Ajami world that steps up. The Mohannad’s of this world, honourable and proud as they are, as rich as they may seem in the treasures of history and adventure cannot they cannot yet fend for themselves.
It is shame on you and on me if we don’t put a stop to this now.
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