Trouble in the land of the lotus eaters

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In Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses and his men spend ten years lost at sea on their way home after the Trojan War. One day, they land in the realm of the lotus eaters, whose inhabitants subsist on a flower so intoxicating those who consume it lose all sense of purpose.

Those who ate the honey-sweet lotus fruit no longer wished to bring back word to us, or sail for home. They wanted to stay with the Lotus eaters, eating the lotus, forgetting all thoughts of return.

Who knows what the lotus eaters were trying to forget? There is a certain comfort in letting go of reality, focusing only on the hedonistic pleasures of life, even if it means ignoring the omens of impending catastrophe.

Lebanon has often felt to me like this mythological land of lotus. Life in Beirut can sometimes seem so easy, an oasis of carefree festivity mere kilometers away from the unrelenting Syrian conflict. For some, obliviousness is a survival instinct after having experienced the trauma of war and its consequences up close. Many foreigners are also seduced by Beirut's heady insouciance, its levity in spite of everything. Beirut can feel like the eye of the storm.

But we have reached a point where even the most voracious of the lotophages can't block out what is happening. Lebanon is no longer suffering from the occasional stray Syrian rocket at the border, or clashes between opposing cliques of impetuous gunmen. In the past weeks, Tripoli and Beirut's own Dahiyeh have been the victims of the deadliest attacks since the civil war. And this reality is getting harder to ignore.

In the almost two years I've been in Lebanon, security situations could simply be dealt with by avoiding going out for two or three days, then life returned to normal. But now, recent attackers have made clear that they are targeting Lebanon's remnants of normality: a supermarket the day before Ramadan; a busy intersection in a residential neighborhood; mosques during the Friday prayer.

These acts of terror (and yes, this is terrorism, despite Western media shying from using the word when these situations arise in places they deem deserve it) are meant to shatter the lotus bubble. Worried conversations arise as people make constant calculations on which risks are worth taking: Is it safe to go to this concert? This wedding? My office? This neighborhood? This country?

A week ago, I was at a rooftop bar with some friends in downtown Beirut, when one of them received a message from a relative in the army saying that there might be a car bomb downstairs. We all looked at each other, trying to assess the situation. Should we stay up here and face getting stuck, or take the elevator out at the risk of the car bomb exploding once we reached downstairs? In the end, we just kept on calmly drinking. We later got confirmation that this had been a false alarm, but the absurdity of our reaction was obvious to all of us.

As if the attacks on Lebanon were not enough, imminent American-led military action on Syria loom large on the horizon. The dash to organize a large scale strike a mere week after an alleged chemical attack occurred in Damascus' suburbs seems either rushed or alarmingly premeditated. The consequences of Western involvement are hard to predict, but could easily have repercussions in Lebanon and beyond. The use of Lebanese airspace to carry on the strike (hello, Lebanese sovereignty, are you there?) once again proves that Lebanon cannot escape being caught up in every turbulence in the region.

The ever more ominous political situation is shaking up our ostrich lifestyle. How willing are we to continue with our denial, at the expense of our safety, and perhaps even our lives? And yet, how willing are we to play into the hands of the aggressors and upend our day-to-day existence? How willing are we to capitulate to fear?

And so we go on, counting on our lucky star to keep us out of trouble, because sometimes biting into the lotus is the more powerful act of defiance.