Zbélé signée

Now that our garbage is out in the open for everyone to see, many Lebanese “comme il faut” discovered with horror that the whole world noticed how ordinary their trash bags were.

“We were taken by surprise, we were not ready”, says an Ashrafieh resident, still traumatized by her ordeal. “Trash is not something people usually look at, so we never made any special effort about it… But it turned out to be a mistake of disastrous proportions for us”, she sighs, barely containing her tears.

“When they saw our ordinary trash, many of our friends stopped answering our calls, confesses a Rabieh resident, they even unfriended us on facebook.”

“How can you drive a Porsche Cayenne, live in a villa or a duplex with a built-in Jacuzzi, send your kids to the most expensive schools, go to the plastic surgeon as often as you go to the bathroom, buy your shoelaces from Aïshti and neglect your garbage bags?", wonders a prominent socialite who asked to remain anonymous. “If your trash is similar to any other ordinary Lebanese, what’s the point of living?”, she asks.

“I’ve never had so many patients, says a renown psychiatrist, many high society Lebanese went though a very traumatic experience, perhaps the worst of their life.”

There are even reports confirming that pharmacies throughout Lebanon’s posh areas have run out of anti-depressant.

“It’s a mistake we will never make again, says the Rabieh resident, from now on all our zbélé will be signée.”


© Claude El Khal, 2015

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