Star Scene

If I could imagine hell, it would be Beirut on November 20th from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. repeating over and over again.

Hundreds of cars packed on the Doura highway today with angry, frustrated drivers that cursed the day they decided to stay in Lebanon since I’m pretty sure most of us thought or had the opportunity to leave this country.

On a normal day, rush hour is the worst in the world so how about when officials decide to shut down the road leading to Beirut Port. Officials were practicing the military display that is to be demonstrated on Sunday for Independence Day. Not to mention, Notre Dame University holds its student elections today, so the north part of the country was in a jam, as well. Lebanon was purely a traffic jam.

Text messages and phone calls flooded radio stations as I was listening to the angry words Lebanese sent to early morning DJs. It was a bad day for everyone except for phone companies, I’m sure.

As you can imagine or experienced this morning, roads were blocked not only by officials but by cars. But really, what were we thinking leaving our houses to produce or add something to our development or general welfare?!!

Although traffic warnings were sent to some companies to avoid the wretched traffic jam. Some purposefully decided to leave for work two hours late, others either didn’t know or didn’t have a choice. No matter what your reason was, it was not your fault because simple, it’s not efficient to shut down roads during rush hours on weekdays.

Today, there was no forth sightedness, no efficient planning and no common sense and I’m writing this while hearing a mass sound of horns bursting out of cars, still.

Economists usually say that the simplest road to progress starts with good infrastructure primarily organized traffic and roads. Yes, we are so far away from any kind of progress since the roads are an essential, first step towards development.

Simple, being stuck in traffic for half an hour or an hour makes me angry and less motivated to get to work. No matter how many times I attempt to sing along to my favorite tunes, I am, subconsciously, irritated and mentally exhausted.

As soon as I reach work, I’m unmotivated, tired and want to relax for an hour. In this post-traffic jam hour, you are wasting your company’s money and you are wasting time that could be spent in producing something valuable or that might improve your work in the future.

The whole “Lebanese are always late and let’s laugh about it” is not funny anymore and it’s a serious issue that needs to be dealt with above all. Hopefully, these words are read and taken into consideration.

Happy Independence weekend!