“Lebanon Debate” – Ronnie Alpha
Mona Khalil looked like the turtles she loved. No, because they both lived near the sea. Nor because they were both accustomed to sand and waves. But because time passed for them in the same way. Slowly. Quiet. As if the world is not a race but a long journey towards a distant light.
The turtle does not know the wheel. You come out of the sea at night. You dig sand with the patience of a hermit. A deferred life is deposited in it. Then it returns to the water without noise, leaving behind a trace that is quickly erased by the waves. Mona was doing the same thing. She walks on Mansouri Beach as if she is completing an ancient story that began centuries before her. Bend over the nests. Monitor the eggs. She counts the little ones emerging from the sand towards the sea. In those moments, they seem less like humans and more like the place itself.
That’s why the sea was not a beautiful sight for her. It was a living being. Turtles were part of his large family. Know its seasons. She knows her silence. She knows her old fear of the world. Maybe that’s why she loved it so much. Turtles, like good people, move on the earth without harming anyone. She carries her house on her back and walks. Don’t ask for anything. Do not dispute with anyone over a beach, a wave, or a grain of sand.
But wars do not understand the language of meek beings. Fast wars hate everything that is slow. Tanks do not like creatures that teach patience. Rockets do not see the difference between a turtle’s nest and a human’s house. That is why what happened in Al-Mansouri seemed like a confrontation between two different times. A time represented by a turtle making its way towards life. A time represented by a huge machine that only knows the way to death.
There, at the edge of the sea, the two philosophies met. The philosophy of the wave that builds the beach, grain of sand upon grain of sand. And the philosophy of fire that destroys everything in one moment. There, Mona Khalil also fell. The woman who spent her life guarding small eggs from crows, dogs, and storms, and it never occurred to her that this time danger would come from the sky.
When she left, Lebanon not only lost an environmental activist. The sea lost one of its memories. Some people become part of places over time. We become unable to imagine the place without them. It was as if Al Mansouri was borrowing her face to introduce himself. As if the orange house was nothing but a window from which the sea overlooked the land.
Since she’s gone, the beach seems lonelier. The sand itself seems to be waiting for someone. The sea, which used to see her every morning, began sending its waves to the land and then returning them in disappointment. As for turtles, I like to imagine them emerging from the water on summer nights, heading towards their old nests, then stopping for a moment in front of the void left by Mona.
What do the turtles say about Mona?
Maybe you don’t say anything. Wise beings are not good at speeches. But she knows gratitude. You know that a woman stood between life and death for many years to protect her children. She knew that a human hand was, for the first time, closer to her than many of her kind. Perhaps when her fins touch the sand, when she buries her eggs in the ground, and when she returns to the sea under the moonlight, she will have written, in her own way, a little prayer for the soul of the woman whose language she understood.
As for Israel, it won, as usual, a new moment of killing. But she lost something bigger. You lost the opportunity to understand that the sea cannot be defeated by bombs. And turtles are older than all armies. And the waves that carried the Phoenicians’ ships are still capable of carrying the memory of a woman named Mona Khalil.
Years will pass. Governments will change. Maps will change.
The turtles will keep returning to Al Mansouri. Excavate the sand itself. And follow the same path. It is as if she is repeating one lesson for all humanity: Violence is quick. As for life, it is slow. That’s why you always win.
