Lebanon, our painfully ordinary country

Reading Lebanon: A Country in Fragments by Cambridge University’s Dr. Andrew Arsan feels like reading a socio-political biography of the country’s millennials, myself included. My mother was pregnant with me when the Syrian regime bombed our home, and shortly before I was born the Lebanese government passed an amnesty law forgiving most crimes committed during the fifteen-year-long war. I was 9 when Israel was forced out of Lebanon; 14 when Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated and I went to my first protest opposing Syrian troops’ presence in Lebanon; 15 when Israel bombed…