The view from here

Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer are sitting on the couch at Central Perk, cracking jokes for the audience's entertainment. I've seen this episode more than a million times, so I click over to AlJazeera. A very different scene unfolds in front of me.

The camera pans a fallen building and a street with stopped cars and piles of debris. There is screaming and wailing in the background, but I can't quite make out the Arabic because of the static in the recording. An ambulance car comes into view with a huddle of men in ripped clothing standing in front of it, pulling wounded man after wounded man into the back to the car. Corpses of barely-alive Lebanese men are being dragged to a safer place. A man with one leg is sliding along the ground in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen, clawing away from the wreckage. It's a beautiful, sunny day but no one is paying attention to the weather. The healthy ones are fighting against the large slabs of broken concrete to pull the others out of the razed building. Beirut, Lebanon, says the Arabic caption on the bottom of the screen. I half-expected it to say "West Bank, Palestine".

The next scene is one of President Hosni Mubarak at a press conference with President George W. Bush. Shaking hands and smiling, the two answer questions posed by reporters. Coward, my mom says. Where are you, Abdel Nasser? She looks at me. He was the only man who came up out of all these Arabs. The rest are cowards. May you rest in peace, Abdel Nasser. I watch her for a moment and I can't help but wonder what it was like in a time when political figures were considered heroes. Now we are all skeptical of all the political leaders because we've lost faith in each other (and with good reason). Political leaders are no longer in office because of merit or idealistic dreams. They are in Washington or whatever capital because of power and the semblance of democracy and righteousness.

Doing what's right has become passé, and so has working for what's right. People are campaigning their beliefs left and right, yet do they really beleive in what they say or is it a cover for something else? Are we all waging our own Iraqi war to cover up for the desire and ability to do anything for our version of oil and control? Are ethics all relative?

I was reading a friend's business ethics textbook (he's doing his MBA) and the book brought up a very interesting debate: do we not do things because we are afraid of reciprocation or do we not do things because we want our quality of life to improve? Ideally, we want to do or not do to improve the quality of life. But, a debate was raised with a friend the other day: In a parallel universe, if you had a chance to date a guy/girl you really liked even though you knew that they had a boy or girlfriend (perhaps in another state), would you do it? We both said no. Why? Normally, one is inclined to show their best face and say "Because it's just wrong!" but really, what he/she is thinking is "Because I wouldn't want that to happen to me!"

Upon delving more and more into who I want to be in the future, and thinking about my "dream" of being a mediating attorney for the UN in the Middle East, I am losing my optimism and starting to think that there is no way that we can ever resolve the issues that arise in that region. The issues are so seeped in hatred and generations after generations of being taught that the other person is bad/wrong/bastards(or any other swear word you would like to use).

And now Lebanon again. And again the world is unresponsive to the troubles of the Arabs. Damn it, not even the Arabs are answering the helpless pleas of their fellows. Look at this Al-J article.

May Allah brighten our path and show us the right way to solve these problems.