I did not understand the meaning of belonging to a group or being rejected by another group until the assassination of Rafik Hariri. I was sitting in class at a university that is an exemplar of an open and progressive university in Lebanon. «You are the ones who killed the martyr Rafik Hariri, why don’t you get out of Lebanon?» A short sentence uttered by one of my classmates. I did not understand at first what he was saying! We who? Why did we kill Rafik Hariri? And why should I get out of Lebanon when I consider Lebanon to be my second home, not just because I live here, but also because half of my family are Lebanese nationals and lives here? But this view soon changed and the group I belong to became a popular and welcome group in Lebanon following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. Hence, after being a young man afraid of speaking on the street lest someone detects my accent, I became a young man overemphasizing his speech for a more prominent Syrian accent. This was followed by a return to the community that constitutes a burden on Lebanese society in every sense of the word. Today, I find myself stuck in a spiral of rejection and acceptance.
After all these years, I can confidently say that I am a man of multiple belongings. Someone seeking security in a country whose citizens do not feel secure. In a country encircled from every direction by two countries with raging wars and divided by political and sectarian polarization, how do I lead a life of a singular belonging to a unique group? How can I but wear shorts in Beirut and put on trousers in Tripoli? How can I but try to find a French tutor for a course on French language basics? In a city that has no place for me if I do not say bonjour to the taxi driver in Achrafieh? In a city where I hide my Syrian identity card at the security checkpoint and pull out my Saint Joseph University student card? How can I but think in the mornings of the many questions that shape my day and behavior in the two opposing cities I travel between? There are many questions, but, first and foremost, who am I?
I am a human being. I live on the planet Earth, in the Middle East. I have Syrian nationality. I was born and raised in a small village on the periphery of Syria. I come from a Muslim family. Sunni, Hanafi, male, short, black hair with a mole on the left cheek.
I am a refugee who has fled his country to grab someone else’s job in Lebanon. I am someone who will marry a Lebanese woman and deprive someone else of the chance of getting married. I am someone who causes the economy to stumble in a country whose citizenship half of my family holds. I am the saboteur who destroyed his country and has now come to Lebanon to destroy it too. I am the Sunni ISIS fighter who will rape the women of this country and cast them aside ruthlessly.
I am a human being. I live on planet Lebanon. I have Syrian nationality. I come from a country with a raging war. I fled, leaving everything behind to save my life. I have lost my ten cousins to imprisonment and death. I did not attend their funerals nor weep at their graves. I am someone who has lost his childhood friend to drowning as he fled the death machine in Syria. I was only able to pull out his body on the Syrian-Lebanese border after ten days for fear of snipers from the Syrian army. I am someone who has been dreaming of him for seven years as if he had just died yesterday. I am the child who has not slept in his bed on the upper floor, who has not had milk from his grandmother’s cow and who has not fed his neighbor’s donkey for ten years. I am the photo that my mother sent me months ago. A picture of me at the age of five sitting on the lap of a family friend who was kidnapped seven years ago at a security checkpoint in Homs and whose return we still await to this day. I am a message from my father in the morning that the house misses you.
I am all of the above. I am none of the above.
I am the Psychotherapist who has been working for seven years in the psychological and social field in Lebanon, trying to understand the causes of conflicts and wars, ignoring all my identities and belongings. I try to understand stereotyping in Lebanese society. To understand stereotyping, one must first go back to the origin of the word (namatiyya) in Arabic, with the root being the verb namata. The verb means to arrange or make in a particular type or manner. When used with vocabulary, it means to arrange them by their denotations. What makes a person tend to box in others in a specific type and manner? Or arrange them according to their denotations of language, color, race, historical experience? Stereotyping is fundamentally linked to the propensity of individuals to divide the world into discrete groups and units. People feel more comfortable viewing the world classified into different human groups with specific characteristics and attributes, not just classified geographically.
People’s proclivity to stereotype results from their social and educational baggage acquired during childhood from one’s parents who may prefer certain friends to others. From the mother who tells her child not to play with this kid but rather play with that kid who’s better. From school where the child learns that there are bright and dumb pupils and that straight-A students sit in the front of the class while the lazy ones are in the back. From the media talking day in and day out about the other as a life-threatening scourge. In addition, the position of people within a group with a specific structure and characteristics facilitates interaction with others. We cannot interact with each individual at a time when we have to deal with dozens every day. It is easier for us to deal with the person with a Syrian accent as a Syrian without thinking about everything that might have happened to them or helped shape them as an individual.
Interacting with people on an individual level and viewing each one as a discrete entity with all the human experiences – which may be harsh and violent in many cases – is considerable pressure on us and requires great energy to generate a high level of human compassion, kindness and understanding. Generating this compassion, kindness and understanding is travail for a society that is rife with divisions, ravaged by war and severed by political and sectarian interests. This mechanism also spares us the trouble of analyzing the information we receive from individuals discretely and makes it easier and simpler to apply to different groups saving us time and energy.
When discussing stereotyping in society, we cannot disregard the societies that are internally stereotyped and we should try to understand their mechanism of action in terms of dealing with the stereotyping of others and stereotyping other people in return. In other words, when the Syrian community in Lebanon is subjected to verbal and psychological abuse and repeated stereotyping on various issues, its members feel the danger of the other. The other is everyone who represents the other side. It is the opposite of the Syrian society in Lebanon. The other is the host. The other is someone who does not understand the pain, who did not experience seeking asylum, displacement. All this eventually leads to the formation of an entity very similar to the images imposed by the other. This may often lead to the formation of groups that draw their own temporal and spatial boundaries, whether defined geographically or virtually.
For example, if we go to Facebook and do a little search for Syrian groups in Lebanon, we will find dozens of pages, such as the Association of Syrian Students in Lebanon, the Association of Muslim Scholars in Lebanon, etc. Each of these associations represents specific belonging and thought to their members. Their members have come together because of a desperate psychological need to have a place that provides them with psychological and personal satisfaction for what they may have lost abroad.
Finally, people’s desire to belong to a community is an innate and natural need that stems from the fact that man is a social animal who has desires and needs that he shares with individuals who resemble him. But this need may sometimes become destructive when a person rejects the other and views them as a scourge, thus there is no place that can fit both. I do not know if it would be easy to change this reality. But human compassion, kindness and understanding are no doubt the magical potion that can easily change the world.