LEBANON’S HOPES FROM BEIRUT TO BEIJING

About – News & Issues
banons-hopes-from-beirut-to-beijing.htm
Aug 8 2008
NY

It’s been a rough couple of years coming on top of a rough couple of
decades for Lebanon: The assassination of a respected prime minister in
2005, Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2006, an endless constitutional
crisis that left the country without a president and teetering on the
verge of another civil war for most of 2007 and parts of 2008 until the
belated election of Michel Suleiman in June and the formation, just
last month, of a "unity" government. This very evening the Lebanese
Parliament was meeting in an extraordinary session to consider Prime
Minister Fouad Siniora’s call to ratify, with a vote of confidence,
his cabinet’s blueprint for governance in the year ahead. Nothing
said he would get the vote.

For the Lebanese, who’ve always had keen interest in the Olympics
(cheering for every team in the world but their beleaguered if valiant
own), the next couple of weeks should prove a welcome break. Easier
to pay attention to Beijing than Beirut. And in any case Lebanon
already has its first gold medal, even before the Games’ first medals
were awarded.

>From Lebanon’s Daily Star: "A painting by Lebanese artist Lina
Kilikian won the gold medal at an international exhibition of art in
China preceding and accompanying the 2008 Olympic Games opening on
Friday in Beijing. For the exhibit entitled Colors and the Olympics,
in which hundreds of sculptures and paintings by about 700 artists
from 81 countries around the world were competing, Kilikian submitted
three works, one of which won."

And here’s how Kilikian described her work:

This painting reflects the suffering of the earth and human
beings. Yet, it leaves some white spaces for hope. That is how I
was seeing the globe at that moment. I am proud of this award, and
I offer it to my country, Lebanon, which has started paving the way
to stability and prosperity.

The Lebanese have their country’s Armenian heritage to thank for
Kilikian, whose achievement at least one member of Lebanon’s Olympic
team, also of Armenian heritage, hopes to echo: sprinter Gretta
Taslakian, one of six athletes representing Lebanon in Beijing,
will be running in the 200m.