A few years after the end of Lebanon’s civil war, when the country seemed like one that had buried its past of conflict for ever, I heard an interview on the BBC with a Lebanese woman from Beirut that has stayed with me for 30 years. She was asked if the country, then a flourishing cultural hub that seemed to take over the Arab airwaves and satellite TV almost overnight, had healed the deep divisions that fuelled the war. “They are buried,” she said. “But if you squeeze me very tight, it’s all still there, deep inside me.”
Perhaps it was still too soon after the end of the civil war, and that woman would feel differently today. But her words instilled in me a formative awareness that, no matter how dormant grievances are, they can still, under pressure, for good or for bad, come alive. Little flashes and large upheavals have validated that view, over and over again. The Arab spring was an uprising of grievances that several strongmen and deep states thought had been put to sleep for ever. But even as the forces of the status quo regrouped and the Arab spring was consigned to the tragic file of history, rumblings in places such as Egypt show that no matter how strong the crackdown, the threat of eruption remains.
