We Lebanese always look forward to imitating whatever futile and factitious is offered to us by the Western world. We rush to get the trendiest perfume, the latest action movie, the most fashionable swimming suit, the newest model of a multifunctional mobile phone, the most recent women magazine, the last diet cook book, the last address of a surgeon, the most recent horoscope… The Lebanese in general and the Beirutis in particular are always well aware of the latest innovations, which often impresses the visitors of the Cedars’ Land.

Nevertheless, while our country pretends to stem from an ancient literary and editorial tradition, it finds difficulty in imitating the West when it comes to more fundamental values such as citizenship, discipline, the Administration management, respect of the Constitution and public institutions, democracy, human rights… Beyond cliché and boastfulness that lead our friends to flatter us by highlighting “our role as a major intersection for publishing in the world”, reality is far less glorious. Fluency in languages (starting with our mother tongue), which used to be among our attributes is nothing more than a long forgotten memory. Soon enough, the true French and English speakers will turn into dinosaurs that sit in a zoo awaiting their forthcoming extinction. Our glorious past has lived well.

According to the latest UNESCO statistics (2006), every Frenchman today reads eight books per year, while an Arab (all Arab League countries combined) hardly reads the quarter of a page over the same period of time. The crown prince of a Gulf country courageously reckoned that the Arab world recently produced 5,600 books per year, against 40,000 for Latin America and 100,000 for the United States. He further quoted another UNESCO report stating that “the average annual reading time is 2 minutes in the Arab world, against six hours in Europe”. A major publisher in Beirut told me, ashamed, that within three years, he only sold 17 copies of an essay on Lebanon and the Lebanese. This included twelve copies ordered by foreign embassies and university libraries, four purchased by private individuals and one bought by the author himself as a gift to a friend.

It is therefore clear-cut, and the Lebanese who keep on singing their own praises should think twice before pretending they are in a slightly better position than in other neighboring countries. The saying: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” should not comfort them. Far from that!