My War On Ignorance

My War on Ignorance

July 2017. The aroma of my favorite meal teases me from the kitchen, my entire family sitting around the table,  the background sound of muffled television plays through my ears, but I’m too distracted to listen to it, due to the glazed golden grilled chicken held in my mother's arms. As I started chewing the glorious drumstick, I felt the juicy taste of the savory skin and tender center combined with the interesting mixture of intriguing spices and astounding sauces. However, as soon as it entered my mouth, it was gone, as I had suddenly spit out the drumstick as my mind came back to reality and I heard a sentence, a sentence that haunts me to this day, a sentence that shook me to my very core, and it came out of the TV: “120,000 reported deaths, and 2,000 bombings around the nation.” that sentence, that one sentence, was enough to catch my attention for the rest of that broadcast. That sentence was followed up by half an hour of haunting statistics.

The broadcast showed horrible images, images taken during the former Lebanese Civil War that ended just 20 years earlier, images that I thought I would only see in documentaries about previously existent nations with names I couldn’t even pronounce, but there they were, pictures from the nation I was born in. The nation I was in just 2 months before. Buildings with less than half their walls still intact, no furniture insight, and a single photograph of a family burned to a crisp. Men and women. Fathers, mothers and their children. All running in fear of the metal ravens reeking the land with the rotting stench of death. Smoke and rubble floating throughout the air, forcing the running victims to cover up their mouths with whatever was left of their torn up ragged clothes. Many of which have just seen their homes demolished, their lives changed, and their nation left as a shadow of its former glory. Their nation and their life would never be the same again.

After half an hour of watching the broadcast, I hear the scrabbling of chairs as my family got up to go along with their days. But I wasn’t going to allow them to go that easily, I hastily picked up my dirty plate and bolted to put my plate in the sink. I started in pursuit of my mission to learn more about the tragic war. I met up with my parents in the living room and asked them about their experience in the civil war. I listened intently to their horrifying stories. Stories of my mother hiding in the garage waiting for the sounds of gunfire, flames, and screaming families to be over. Her mother holding her crying brother in her arms, and her father setting up the candles for the night. I heard stories of my father going to school through the middle of a gunfight, the bus shaking, and the whoosh of fighter jets going over the road. Stories of his school forced to move locations because of the threat of the war. But it was his last story that shook me to my very core. To this day I remember what he said “I was at work when I heard the sound of a fighter jet coming over the building I worked at just as I have heard almost every day since the start of the war, but this day, this day was different. This time I heard the now all too familiar sound of a bomb hurling towards the road in front of me. I panicked, my heart started beating faster and faster, my stomach spinning within my body while sweat started pouring down my face and I got up to escape. It was the first time, but not the last, that I truly felt the danger of the war, never had I been closer to being in a grave than at the moment, and I knew that this war has gone too far”. I heard him getting choked up, his voice quavering and tears ran down his face.

As a result of these stories, I felt it was my obligation to do my own research about the war rather than forcing my parents to relive their most horrid memories. After a few hours, I found a fact that disturbed me. I found out that nations like the U.S have been funding wars all around the middle east. This reminds me of the 9/11 attacks I learned about, the planes crashing into the twin towers, I also remember that Arabs were blamed for it, just like every other attack in the United States. I remember thinking 

‘100,00 more deaths in the Lebanese war but we are the terrorists.

 $1,000,000 sent to each side for better weapons, but we are the murderers, 

sending $2,000,000 worth of bombs and planes, but we are the killers. 

1,000,000 people made homeless as a result of the bombs, but we are the executioners

Every day Arabs are oppressed because of a few ones being involved in terrorist attacks, 

while the west is sending millions of dollars and troops to fight in the middle east and 

kill thousands of millions of innocent Arabs.’

I wondered why I had never heard of the war, but every year I would be reminded of the tragedy of September 11th. If the world had had information about superpowers funding wars around the world, they would have attempted to stop this, I believe that the people would have enough sympathy for the millions of human beings dying as a result of these heinous terrors. It was that day I felt betrayed by the world and for the first time, I felt truly naive. It was at that moment I vowed to never be misinformed upon anything, I will not take anyone’s word as fact and always look deeper into everything I’m told about, for never do I want to feel as I’ve felt that terrible day. Never do I want to feel as mislead and ignorant as I’ve felt that that day, just as I hope you, the reader, will do everything in your power to not feel that way either.