Lineage

My friend Tarek and I managed to retrace our ancestries.

It took us a liter of strong beer each -- followed by a few minutes of staring into each others' faces -- to make our discovery: Tarek's ancestors are Crusaders, while I descend from Mongol conquerors. Tareq's green eyes and blond hair, and my Asian eyes and round face left no doubt concerning our findings. We verified these further by contrasting his relatively longer attention span with mine; it all agreed but too well with the characteristics of our presumed ancestors. While Crusaders came to this part of the world to stay for nearly three centuries, my forefathers only swept through these lands without leaving a single trace. 

After celebrating our breakthrough in genealogy, we got up and decided to revive our ancestors' heritage. We walked down Hamra street, giving these bastards of lowly local stock what they deserved. While Tarek despised the locals' heresy -- them being either Muslims or Christians of a faith tainted with Oriental blasphemy-- I looked down on their meager build and ignorance of horsemanship. Tarek decided to re-enact a battle about which he had read, and where chroniclers had witnessed cases of cannibalism. So he grabbed two seven-year old boys, crushed their miniscule skulls with a strike of his sword then feasted on their char-coaled meat. I hurried to the AUB library and started emptying the contents of its shelves into the sea. I was hoping to turn its water black, as  my ancestors had done to the Tigris after they had filled it with books from the libraries of Baghdad. I noticed, however, that the sea water was already soiled with sewage, and any dissolved ink would surely not be visible. I soon lost interest and  stopped.

Then, I called upon Tarek to stop building his castle and we sat down  to draft a plan for our  future in Lebanon. Our plan would commemorate our ancestors, and preserve our own rights as well as those of our fellow descendents from Crusaders and Mongols. 

Hence, we shall soon address the new government, asking for two new religious holidays, as well as two parliamentary seats reserved for the new sects: Crusaders and Mongols. 

photo credits: "A Separate State of Mind" http://stateofmind13.wordpress.com