What's in the City?

In the city there is chaos!

The merchant tries to snatch what he can. No law restrains him, no conscience reproaches him. He exploits the war "and the postwar," and exploits poverty and death, just as the peasant exploits the apple tree — with an untroubled "conscience"... And famine is near, and catastrophe nearer, and the people cry out to the government, and the government listens, and they will go on crying out to it as long as God pleases...

And the motorcar driver drives down the forbidden road just as he drives down the open one — it is all "khosh bosh" between him and the law. He charges his customers in proportion to their need of him: under the rain the fare becomes double — a fare doubled to begin with. No tariff, no supervision. He in his turn demands rubber, and the people cry out and the driver cries out, and the government listens, and both will cry out to it as long as God pleases...

And the tramway company, together with some of its employees — it and they have no care but exploitation. People jostle "and come to blows" over getting on and getting off, until the well-mannered among them learn ill manners. The tramcar, like the sun, goes its own way; it can be neither stopped nor set moving except by a heavenly miracle from a new Jesus. As for the stations, as for the people, as for the screaming of women and children, as for pressing errands, as for the danger of death — these are matters that touch neither the driver, nor the ticket-taker, nor the chiefs! At every station a slaughter, on every line battles, and the curses rise from every side, and the people cry out to the government, and the government listens, and they will cry out to it as long as God pleases...

And some inhabitants of Beirut — order never crosses their minds, above all in matters of good taste. Here is a maid "sluicing down" the balcony onto people's heads and clothes, on the orders of her lady, the "mistress" of the house; here is another shaking the dust of her carpets out into her neighbors' windows and noses and lungs; here is a kitchen on the top floor that fancies nothing so much as eating kibbeh twice a week, though the pounding of the pestle disturbs the sixteen families living in the same house; here is a human being wearing every outward mark of humanity who charges like a wild beast to seize a place in the tramway, though he came last of all those waiting! And here is another who spits in front of you as if the ground were his handkerchief — or as if he were forever in the bath!

And the boys of the alleys — the ruffians of the future, its thieves and its criminals — fill the streets and sidewalks and street-corners, and on not one face among them is the mark of "decent folk." Sensible people wonder what is to become of these boys; they fear their numbers, their bad guidance, the consequence of neglecting them, and the evil of their social danger; and they cry out to the government, and the government listens, and they will cry out as long as God pleases...

And the garbage barrels along the roads are the most fertile ground for the breeding of insects, the rising of stenches, and the spread of diseases. And some people do not distinguish between the open ground and the privy — especially given how rare the latter is — so that scarcely a street is free of several "improvised" privies. And the people cry out to the government, and the government listens, and it will cry out as long as God pleases...

And the curses, the artistry in composing obscene phrases, create a perpetual melody amid all this chaos, until a man is ashamed to walk in the street with a child or a lady. And they complain of the chaos of the courts, the chaos of officialdom, the chaos of national education, and the chaos of morals; and they cry out to the government, and the government listens, and they will cry out as long as God pleases.