His Excellency

In Lebanon, money opens almost every door. It speeds up decisions, simplifies procedures, brings down many resistances. Yet there is one door it cannot open: the door of dignity, the door of genuine respect, the kind that cannot be bought.

He knows it, even if he prefers not to admit it. He succeeded quickly, very quickly. Too quickly. A newly rich man, fortune arriving before recognition, money sometimes opaque, sometimes plainly dubious. Despite the assets, the connections, and the outward signs, he lives with a persistent unease: something is missing. A legitimacy. A place. The feeling of existing as something other than the one who pays.

His wound does not begin in adulthood. It begins much earlier. With a father belittled, never respected, from whom he understands very early that he must distance himself if he does not want to end up in the same place. With a family it is better to conceal, not out of lack of attachment, but because it recalls an origin deemed disqualifying. Very early on, something settles in the background. Old marks, never erased. So he acts as if it never mattered. He moves forward. He builds for himself an image more solid, more brilliant, more acceptable. He quickly understands that worth depends on status, on name, on position. He does not seek to be loved. He seeks no longer to be humiliated.

When money arrives, it heals nothing. It protects. It conceals. Whether it is clean or dubious matters little, as long as it allows him to impose himself and silence doubts. Success becomes a strategy of survival.

But when money is no longer enough to produce respect, another solution imposes itself: to become a Member of Parliament.

Here, the mandate is not a service. It is protection. In a State that protects no one, the seat becomes a personal guarantee, a de facto immunity, a way of transforming a contested fortune into official authority.

He is ready to pay. Dearly.

During the campaign, he repeats the expected words. Projects. Laws. Future. Reconstruction. He knows that all of this is merely a compulsory passage. What matters is shelter. To exist, at last, even if it is through fear.

He buys votes. Misery does the rest. When one is hungry, a vote can be sold. He knows it and takes advantage of it. He calls it assistance. In reality, it is simple corruption: money in exchange for silence, poverty in exchange for power.

Then comes the election. The title. The suit. And the void. Nothing is repaired. In the eyes of others, he remains the one who paid. And before himself, he remains the one he has always been.

He had sought respect. He obtains to be called “Your Excellency.”

And the most obscene thing is neither the lie, nor the failure, nor the emptiness.

The most obscene thing is that it is enough for him.