Rand found shot dead in his car on Thursday 4 February in southern Lebanon, Lokman Slim was an editor, essayist, archivist and documentary maker. An intellectual and political activist committed to bringing the memory of his country to life, and an opponent of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, denouncing the latter’s support in the Middle East, in particular the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. A few days before being assassinated, he accused Damascus, during an interview on Saudi television, of being responsible for the arrival, in the port of Beirut, of the stockpile of ammonium nitrate which was the source of the incident. he explosion of August 4, which killed more than 200 people and devastated entire neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital.
Born himself into a Shiite family, attached to political pluralism, fervent defender of democracy, the man, aged 58, was a “Lookout in many ways unique”, highlighted the daily L’Orient-Le Jour, who paid tribute to him in his edition of Saturday, February 6. “What to do, what to say when the horror strikes again?, asks the French-speaking Lebanese newspaper. What to do, if not to give the floor to those who do not give up speaking up against all odds? “
Twenty authors have thus taken up their pen to express their anger, their sorrow and their disillusions. “Le Monde des livres” publishes five of these forums.
Hoda Barakat, writer: “No! “
“We are going to forget Lokman, like we have forgotten all the others. Since all of our tales are just denials. Freedom, justice, resistance, resilience, struggle, memory… It is to laugh at this relentlessness to repeat, to repeat ourselves, to furnish this unacknowledged helplessness, for decades now, to want to bury our dead without dying, just to “fill ”This sidereal void.
We know very well, as does the killer, that’s all we’re going to do: lament and condolence that doesn’t go through, that doesn’t go anywhere. The killer has already calculated us before going to the murder. We are so predictable. So folkloric. Maybe it’s even become a Lebanese specialty, like tabbouleh. Maybe it’s even part of the national heritage, since we use the same lexicon as the national “parties”: resistance, freedom, justice… Everyone wants “that”, at the top of the list our pretty bitches of silicone singers …
We don’t scream anymore, we bleat, the killer knows it. We are weak and broken. The killer is too strong and he knows it.
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