Lebanese eyes remain fixed on the presidential palace, where consecutive meetings between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati are taking place, waiting for the formation of a new government. While this critical event is of utmost importance, for the seventy-year-old man known as "Abu Firas," it is overshadowed by the frightening challenges that crush the Lebanese in what they have experienced and witnessed in their history, as he told Al-Bayan.
As the world reaches a consensus that this country has become a decayed and devastated state, "Abu Firas" summarizes the suffocating crises that have recently tightened their grip on the Lebanese, highlighting what any forthcoming government will face due to a "terrifying and accumulated legacy" of crises that have transformed into a nightmare looming over the daily lives of Lebanese citizens. This is in a "devastated state, plagued by gangs worse than the era of militias, which exploit it at every turn, with each gang having its specialization and domain." He concludes with a single truth: Lebanon has turned into a "drowned state governed by darkness, with everything in it as black as a line at a gas station."
The gangs of gasoline and the humiliation of people in queues, the gangs of diesel plunging the country into darkness, the gangs of domestic gas which may soon become rare, the gangs of food supplies and the stolen support sold in thieves' shops, the gang of smuggling which is selling the country and its people for a handful of dollars, the dollar gang monopolizing and raising prices, and the drug gang hiding medicine and depriving the needy patients — in a most horrific crime against humanity. However, the most dangerous of these "gangs," according to "Abu Firas," is "the gang of lethargy and cowardice in deterring all these people and imprisoning them."
### Chapters of Pain
Thus, in a country that is "dying," where there is a dire need for wisdom to provide a government, and for responsibility and its derivatives to secure fuel and its derivatives, there is a consensus that the pain affects all Lebanese. It extends from the blackouts transcending political cantons and sectarian barricades, passing through hospitals that are "suffocating," with medicine missing unless obtained from the warehouses of monopolists who are untouchable, to the "rationed and dipped in diesel and gasoline bread, where no one cares about the sustenance of the poor and the needy," according to fifty-year-old "Um Rabi," who does not hesitate to insinuate about the "factions, debates, and battles of immunities," while "there is no immunity for the poor man's meal, nor for the bare minimum of his decent living." She concludes by telling Al-Bayan: "There is no strength or power in a country that has become besieged by all forms of death."
Thus, the words of "Abu Firas" and "Um Rabi" did not come out of nowhere; they were necessitated by the rapidly decaying symptoms of all state components, where vital indicators have crossed all red lines. In hospitals, patients are gathered in limited layers to conserve diesel amid a crisis threatening the health sector, affecting bakeries and ovens, while the country lives on "an engine connected to a respirator with no oxygen," said another. "The absence of oversight and the resignation of the relevant ministries from fulfilling their roles have turned crisis merchants into kings over the throne of citizens' livelihood, health, and their right to access electricity. Gasoline is available on the black market, diesel is stored in silos awaiting sale in pipes, and the generator mafia refuses to install meters, making citizens hostages to the complete darkness while adding zero after zero to their prices."
In conclusion, in light of what remains of a state in a land of upheavals, and under the gaze of the world, the Lebanese are wrestling with life without food, medicine, electricity, healthcare, money, or fuel, while only darkness prevails, and there is no advancement for even "one kilowatt" in any path that the Lebanese could possibly find hope in, even by the light of a candle!
