“Awake” Faith in Lebanese TV Restored


This might upset many of my friends who work on TV series in Lebanon, but I absolutely despise all locally produced drama series. The dialog never feels authentic, the plots are always about matrimonial infidelity, the tired trope that Muslims and Christians love each other despite everything and other story lines that are either incredibly insensitive/offensive, or something you’d expect a western journalist to write after a conversation with a couple of taxi drivers.

I got invited by the amazing team behind “Awake” (thanks Nagham!) to their set, and spent a few hours watching a couple of scenes being shot last month. It was my first time on a drama series shoot, and I must say it was a far cry from the news and live talk show sets and studios I’m more accustomed to.

It didn’t hurt that many of the actors in the series are good friends of mine, but the real treat was when the director and assistant director let me into the editing room to watch the rough cut of episode 1. I was told I could see the first 15 minutes, but I couldn’t help myself and watched the episode in its entirety. Speechless for the most part, interrupted by laughter at the witty dialog every so often, and a mouth open at the quality of the shots, angles and editing of certain scenes such as the tasteful timelapses that help set the mood and scene.


Plot

Awake is about a young woman, Dana (Flavia Bechara), who wakes up from a coma 12 years later, unable to speak or really interact with others. Surrounded by her loving family, and with the help of her sisters Lama (Stephanie Atallah) and Jinane (Ruba Zaarour), she slowly comes to grips with what happened to her and how social media has taken over the world, and that’s when the epic, unexpected twists begin.

I just watched the first episode mind you, but I am already dying to know what happens next. Watching it, I felt it was shot in more of cinematic way, instead of just a set or two with characters talking. The locations where it was shot are all very familiar, and it’ll make you smile when you recognize them and relate to some of the scenes in them.

The dialog is something that stuck out as well for me. The way actors talk on Lebanese TV feels robotic, corny and cheesy most of the time. It never feels real or authentic. In Awake, you feel like you’re peering into the lives of real people in extremely weird situations. It’s how you probably talk with your friends when you’re hanging out, and for once, a local TV show doesn’t feel like an old-timey play, but a deep dive into our modern society in Lebanon.

The Details

It took 12 months to create the first season, which included 83 full days of shooting to produce 15, 1-hour episodes. All shooting locations were in Lebanon.

Cast:
• Flavia Bechara as Dana
• Tarek Yaacoub as Ghassan
• Mohamad Akil as Walid
• Raymonde Azar as Mariam
• Stephanie Atallah as Lama
• Ruba Zaarour as Jinane
• Joseph Bou Nassar as Dr Mehio
• Camille Salameh as Fawzi
• Lisa Debs as Nada

Created by: Nadia Tabbara
Directed by: Mazen Fayad
Produced by: Mohamed Fathallah and Mazen Fayad
Production & Distribution Company: Momaz Flick
Post Production Company: The Brightside
Director of Photography: Toni el Khazen
Music Composer: Nasser Shibani
Casting Director: Mia Deaibes
Editors: Youssef Germanos and Faisal Merheb
VFX Director: Nadine Yamout

Release Date: Later in 2018

Beautiful Civil Wedding Ceremony Officiated by Joumana Haddad in Lebanon


Before you pop the champagne and jump up and down with happiness at the thought we can get a civil marriage in Lebanon now, we still can’t. Sadly, it’s dark ages religious courts that still decide personal status laws in Lebanon. However, more and more young loved ones are opting out of these outdated, unfair and illogical laws and deciding to take the civil marriage road, and that fills my heart with happiness.

Paperwork in Cyprus, Happiness in Sour

The beautiful bride and groom hopped on a plane to Cyprus to tie the knot on paper, but they decided to celebrate their love back home with their friends and family. Often, young couples face a tough choice: should we get married in a destination somewhere with civilized laws and drag our loved ones with us, or should we succumb to the will of old men in black robes here, paying them a whole lot of money so they can treat women badly if the worst happens?

This couple, which preferred to remain anonymous in this article, and whose privacy I will honor, decided to have the best of both worlds. They decided to let a modern law govern their marriage, but also to celebrate in the presence of their family and friends in a beautifully simple ceremony by the beach in South Lebanon. The cherry on top was that they chose Joumana Haddad to be their officiant.

Joumana Wrote the Ceremony


Instead of the usual misogynistic religious ceremony where a woman is ordered to serve her husband and be obedient, Joumana wrote a magnificent tri-lingual ceremony where the emphasis was on the couple being equal partners, where love came before god and where mutual respect and support was the promise.

This wedding wasn’t only beautiful, it also sent many powerful messages without being too in-your-face. The couple shunned the horrid misogyny of religious weddings. The couple challenged the Lebanese government, which still allows religious institutions to govern our private family lives. The couple decided to choose a strong, secular woman to help them make their vows to each other, someone they looked up to, someone who wouldn’t force them to change sects before getting hitched…

When Will Civil Marriage Be Legal Here?

Three of the four weddings I was invited to in Lebanon this year were just a ceremony. The happy couples had chosen to get married somewhere in Europe on paper, then come back home to celebrate with those they love. Till when do we have to go through all this trouble if a man or woman chooses a partner from a different sect, or doesn’t want ancient religious laws that are always skewed towards the husband, and never fair to the wife and kids?

Till when do we have to go and pay foreign governments to get married a 21st Century marriage, instead of an 11th Century one like the ones we have in Lebanon?

Till when will Lebanese people remain unequal, divided in rights and duties depending on the sect they were born into? How can we expect sectarianism to stop being Lebanon’s biggest problem, if we still don’t allow couples like the one in this wedding to marry, unless one of them switches sects in an extremely difficult, costly and often humiliating way?

I Wish You Happiness

Thank you for being trailblazers. Thank you for not conforming with something that’s not right. Thank you for making a statement by choosing a woman of Joumana Haddad’s caliber to write your secular ceremony instead of a priest or sheikh. Thank you for not forcing your friends to pay tickets and hotels to travel somewhere to celebrate with you. Most of all, thank you for reminding us all that we don’t need to accept the horrible status quo in Lebanon, and that there are always solutions we can come up with till our government finally wises up and allows civil marriage in Lebanon.

A Few Words on the #RecycleBeirutThugs

I am proud of exposing Recycle Beirut for what they really are: a bunch of thugs pretending to be upstanding citizens in a vicious turf war over making money from your garbage that our terrible government still hasn’t found an environmentally friendly solution to.

Allow me to thank all the amazing men and women who stood up to the thugs and helped in revealing their shameful tactics. Even though the cowards delete every comment and block every good citizen saying “enough”, while Recycle Beirut go on with their futile smear campaign instead of doing the jobs they blackmail citizens with constantly, while taking their money of course. Every bit matters.

However, I have seen a few things that worry me the past few days, and even though it was just a tiny minority, it’s one who I want to address directly in this post.

A Recycling Business Doesn’t Get a Carte Blanche

A few people thought that if they’re recycling, the rest of us have to put up with their vile, constant and frankly childish attacks and bullying campaigns. My answer is, “fuck no.” Doing something that you’re paid for, doesn’t mean you can lie, abuse people’s trust and manipulate public opinion, all the while attacking private citizens who dare to stand up to the constant lies and manipulation.

If you are fine with this abuse, because you feel it is somehow helping your situation, then congratulations, you have a new Lebanese political party which constantly abuses you, but you go back to because you have the false sense that they are actually doing something that will benefit you, when they’re not, they’re just benefiting themselves at your expense.

If you think it’s fine for the duo behind this racket to abuse other people in their industry, their own customers and Lebanese citizens in general, then you need to seriously reevaluate your stance and admit that you can recycle, without being a thug in the process.

Lies that Hurt Us All

For the people asking me to cool it down because the bigger fight should be about the garbage crisis, I tell them that these two fights aren’t mutually exclusive, and the way I see it, the government and Recycle Beirut are on the same team.

One telling example is a post they published to get credit for something they hadn’t done: stopping the dreaded incinerator project. In the middle of the fight against those cancer-machines the Beirut Municipality plans to put beside our homes, schools and offices, they posted an arrogant cover photo with smoke towers in the background, and the words “We Won” on it, claiming that they were the ones that stopped the incinerator plans.


This caused a great deal of confusion, and hurt efforts to pressure the government into stopping this horrible plan. Why? To try and take credit where credit was not due. Trying to take credit from the thousands of young men and women who were protesting for months and years, who got beaten and persecuted for their struggle against our government. Why? So a private business can clickbait with an outright lie that in their minds could increase their business.

Shame on them.

They not only use Lebanese people’s struggle to expand their own business, but they also try to take credit for something they didn’t do, and something that was inaccurate.

Fake news much?

They proceeded to delete the cover photo, without so much as an “oops” or “sorry we misled you guys” to the few thousand people unlucky enough to still follow them online after all this somehow.

So, the way I see it, they are actually helping in the misinformation campaign and even helping the incinerators become a reality quicker, instead of fight it with the rest of the awesome men and women in this country who do it to save Lebanon, not just rake in more money.

This is one of many horror stories people and groups have sent me after Recycle Beirut launched their nauseating attack. I will keep those with me, and release them if Recycle Beirut continue their campaign of misinformation, lies and personal attacks.

Why I Refuse to Give Up

For me, I thought it was enough to call them out when they lied (they still refuse to answer the questions I raised by the way, about why they purposefully lied about the reason their employees were arrested briefly) and moved on to do better things with my day than give these two thugs the attention they so crave.

However, I was surprised that their page (which they banned me and countless people from commenting on) was on a crazy (but futile) commenting rampage today, trying to badmouth me on pages and profiles associated with me. This proved to me once and for all that these people do this on purpose, not because they’re stupid or don’t know better, and proved they have malicious intent and will do anything to protect their revenue streams they think they can hold the rest of us hostage with.

Solving the garbage crisis will happen by honest, good-hearted people working for the good of our country, not a group of thugs that consistently mislead people and abuse their trust to push a personal business agenda. The only way we can become a united front, is if the number one abuser and attacker of Lebanese environmental activists and Lebanese communities, change their behavior, and focus on their work, not attacking people who call out their unacceptable and shameful behavior.

Till then, we won’t be going anywhere, and we’ll be waiting for each and every time Recycle Beirut choose to be on the government’s side against its people, each time they lie on purpose to try and expand their business operations.

My advice is to the duo is, stop this campaign and try to salvage what’s left of your reputation by doing good, honest, transparent work. Other people you abused before might have been too intimidated with your heavy-handed tactics to talk openly, I’m not, and all your tactics will do nothing to change my resolve to encourage you to be decent and honest and stop abusing the trust we all had placed in you when you kicked off what started out as a noble mission, and quickly turned into just another corrupt business in Lebanon.

5+ Better Alternatives to Recycle in Lebanon

After the short rope of lies for Recycle Beirut finally ran out, and they began their mass-blocking, personal attacks and usual fabrications in search of money, we decided to give those of you using their service alternatives that are more transparent, ethical and don’t attack the communities and people they claim to be serving (for a premium).

Live Love Recycle


I love these guys and this project, because it not only addresses the environmental catastrophe in a non-profit attitude, but also give jobs for the most in-need in Lebanon whether as drivers, or as cooks making sure all the employees are well-fed.

You can download their app and request a pick up twice a month, for free. I use them for my household recyclables and my place of business, and I have been very happy with them.

Check them out here.

Arcenciel


AEC are probably the first to integrate recycling into humanitarian causes in Lebanon. I remember back in school when we used to send them all our plastic bottle caps to help fund wheelchairs for people with disabilities who couldn’t afford them.

I recommend you pool a few households, and work with AEC who I love and admire as an NGO and trust them with doing good with the funds they make from recycling your sorted solid waste.

Check them out here.

L’ecoute

Association L’Ecoute is another NGO doing recycling work in Lebanon, with people with hearing disabilities benefiting from the revenue accumulated by L’ecoute rerouting recyclables to designated plants.

Check them out here.

Ganatch


Ganatch do weekly pickups for your recyclables, or you can drop them off yourself in one of their collection points.

Check them out here.

Khalife

Khalife work in Lebanon’s south, and you can find out more about them here.

Recycle Lebanon


Recycle Lebanon are currently focusing on used cigarette butts, the most polluting of all, even more than single-use plastic. So, if you’re a smoker consider rounding up all your used butts and giving them to Recycle Lebanon instead of them ending up in our sea.

Check them out here.

If you know of more ethical, transparent and non-violent initiatives in Lebanon, both for and non-profit, let me know. Let’s make sure corporations that are in it for the money, and the business of fabricating lies, exploiting vulnerable workers and abusing people’s trust and support stop reaping the rewards of our government’s corruption and ineptitude.

Recycle Beirut: When Greed Masquerades as Activism

This is somewhat of an open secret in environmental activist circles, but the fact it was recycling when we are all drowning in garbage made us all kind of turn a blind eye and hope for the best.

However, the antics of Recycle Beirut have become too much, and puts the greater struggle against the government’s horrible policies at risk, all for a private company’s struggle to make more profit off of Lebanon’s garbage woes.

For Profit

It’s not a crime to make money from projects that have a good stated purpose, but pretending you aren’t and treating it as a civil rights issue to rile up support based on unfounded claims preying on people’s frustration with the government, isn’t just unethical, it’s straight up manipulation.

String of Personal Attacks When Funding Falls Through

The only time Recycle Beirut slanders someone, is when they don’t give them the money they want for free. Who can forget the vicious campaign against the UN and EU, still visible on their pages, when funds for sustainable waste management and recycling went to several not-for-profits in it for the greater good, instead of Recycle Beirut.

It’s disgusting when someone asks for free money, to help their private business, and when they don’t get it, they attack not only the donors, but the local NGOs that were funded by them. For shame.

The Cornet Chehwan Lies

This morning was the last straw for me, when they posted this on their page before proceeding to block me after I called them out.


They blamed a municipality in upper Metn, for allegedly arresting their workers. They suggested that it’s because they criticized them on social media.

Here’s what happened here. The Cornet Chehwan municipality has been running its own recycling program since 2016. People sort in their homes, the municipality compresses and packages them, and sends them to recycling plant in a nearby town. Recycle Beirut wanted to profit from the fact residents in this town were sorting their garbage, and tried to replace the elected municipal authorities, in order to make profit, instead of letting the money go into the municipality and expanding the already functioning recycling program they had in place.

If Recycle Beirut’s mission isn’t making quick money, but recycling, why not go work in municipalities that aren’t recycling, instead of this absurd turf war they went into and went crazy when they weren’t allowed a cut of the cake as a private company instead of a local municipality.

They Lied About the Arrests

They claimed their workers were arrested because they criticized a municipality on social media. Turns out their employees papers weren’t up to date, and after that was sorted out, they were immediately released.

How low to use the arrest of undocumented workers, and their plight, and use it for your own purposes to try and smear someone that didn’t let you increase your profits. Next time make sure your workers are safe, instead of profit off their unjust arrest for your own greedy gains.

Don’t Use Noble Causes for Your Pockets Anymore

I hope Recyle Beirut become billionaires someday, but not on our backs. The lies and astro-turfing is disgusting. They are manipulating people with their lies, into thinking they’re supporting a just cause, when in reality, they’re just playing dirty games to make more money.

Plenty of Other Good, Ethical Recylcers in Lebanon

Recycle Beirut is just one group trying to make money, but plenty of others are doing much better work for no profit. Groups like Live Love Recyle, and many others. If you wanna recycle, go to them, and stop buying the lies of Recycle Beirut.

And for Recycle Beirut, the boy who cried wolf too many times, you can block whoever calls you out, but your time’s up, people know what kind of outfit you are, and the outbursts were cute at first, but now they’re just sad.

Lebanon’s Great Famine Gets a Monument 100 Years Later


During the First World War, half of the population in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate starved to death. A blockade by the allies, coupled with the Ottoman policy of prioritizing crops and supplies for their troops, meant that vital supplies from the neighboring Bekaa stopped coming in. With the political and man-made causes already plenty, Nature sent a swarm of locusts which over the course of 3 months, annihilated everything edible that was still left.

For such a catastrophic event in Lebanon’s recent history, it seems most of us know nothing or very little about it. You might remember some details from History class if you did the Lebanese Baccalaureate in high school, but for most, it’s part of the collective amnesia Lebanese have about most of the 20th Century.

Monument Designed by Yazan Halwani

A century later, Lebanon will finally have a memorial for everyone who died in The Great Famine of 1915 to 1918. The project was spearheaded by USJ’s Professor Christian Taoutel and Lebanese writer Ramzi Toufic Salameh. It’s financed by Banque du Liban, Lebanon’s Central Bank.

The monument is a steel tree, with quotes by prominent Lebanese contemporaries of the famine, such as Gebran Khalil Gebran, Tawfik Yousef Awwad, Anbara Salam Al-Khalidi and others, being the leaves.

Yazan’s rationale behind this monument is that a century later, only our trees still bear witness to the tragedy that led to half of Mount Lebanon’s population starving to death.



The memorial and the plaza it lies at the center of will be officially inaugurated later this year. It’s on the Damascus Road in Beirut, right where the Civil War’s demarcation line was.

It’s important we never forget traumatic events in our past, and honor the memory of our ancestors who perished in this mix of man-made and natural disasters. I hope this monument makes sure that we stop ignoring our brutal past, and work to make sure something like this never happens again.

ICE BAR is Coming to Lebanon


This September, Lebanon will get its first Ice Bar! It’ll officially open on September 15th at the Blueberry Square Mall in Dbayeh.

Ice bars are made in large part out of ice, with furniture, bars, cups, sculptures and other items carved out of solid ice slabs. Ice bars are usually kept at around 5 degrees below zero, so your time enjoying a drink inside is usually limited to around 20 minutes. Even staff working there will do shorter, alternating time shifts to accommodate for the cold weather inside.

I’ve personally never been to one, so I’m looking forward to trying out the infamous ice-cold vodka shots and cocktails in goblets made from ice. I’ll make sure to post about it when I go!


15 Uber Promo Codes to Club Safer in Beirut

I’m definitely an early adopter of Uber by Lebanese standards. I remember using it for the first time in San Francisco back in 2011, and would then order it in New York on date nights when the subway was just too stinky on summer nights. Naturally, when Uber made its Lebanese debut, I was the first to announce it on this very same blog.

Today, I use Uber mainly to shuttle between meetings in parking-less Beirut, and when out clubbing to avoid the horrible valet parking gangs. I can’t explain how awesome it is to be dropped off and picked up right from the entrance of a club, with just a couple of taps on your phone. No need to worry about driving while under the influence of alcohol, unexpected traffic jams putting a damper on your night or getting angry that valet parking mafias have taken over every single parking spot within walking distance.

With that news, I was thrilled that Uber has set up 15 promo codes in Lebanon recently for Beirut’s hottest clubs, and the place most of us after-party at to stave off the post-dancing munchies during the wee hours of the morning.

So, this weekend, and for the next few weeks, you will get 50% off on 10 rides to and from the following places:

AHM


The Garten


February 30


Discotek


Antika Bar


HNGR


Iris


Sayf


Caprice


ZWZ


ZWZSodeco18
ZWZZalka18
ZWZGemmayze18
ZWZBliss18
ZWZKaslik
ZWZHamra18

Lebanon: Where Speed Radars are to Make Money, Not Save Lives

If you take a quick look through Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) twitter account, you’ll see a tweet like this every day. Here are this week’s so far:

I was thinking of compiling the data week on week, only to discover the ISF already do that on their website.

7250 speed tickets were issued last week (20–27 August 2018)

Some Rough Calculations and Guesstimates

If you assume each fine was for 200,000 LBP, which is the first tier in Lebanon’s most recent iteration of a “traffic law”, that’s more than 960,000 USD made last week.

If we assume the trend of about 7000 speeding tickets stays roughly the same throughout the year, that means that the government makes at least 50 million USD a year from handing out speed tickets.

Steady Numbers Mean Failure

The fact that virtually every single day is in the 800 to 1100 tickets range, means people are still speeding, despite the massive amount of tickets being issued.

The entire point of having speed radars is to make people stop speeding, not see how many tickets the ISF can possibly hand out and tout on their social media like some victory, like their posts of half a joint ruining the lives of three teenagers…

Reasons for Failure

In Lebanon, speed radars and the specially fitted cars often hide behind obstacles, just to catch some poor dope who went a few kilometers above the speed limit. That guy or girl will still speed, given he or she has no idea they were clocked.

They get the fine days, weeks or months later, and as anyone who took intro to psychology in university knows, delayed conditioning doesn’t really work in deterring whatever behavior you’re trying to change.

The main problem is that Lebanon’s ISF thinks the route to safer roads is by latent punishment with fines that are pretty high, and can lead to jail time if you fail to get notified that you have one.

Why not put speed radars that are clearly marked and visible, in the very rare parts of the roads in Lebanon where there isn’t suffocating traffic 24/7? That way, people will not speed, knowing they might get clocked in and fined. That way, the government might make less money from fines, but at least people will stop speeding, and correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the entire point of speed radars, and not filling government coffers with millions of dollars without making roads any safer?

A Culture Problem

A police force is supposed to serve and protect its community, not only punish and police it. Too often, the ISF has become something our communities are scared of, instead of trust and respect. This falls into the patriarchal attitude most officials in Lebanon, both appointed and elected, have. An attitude where they think they’re the “dad” that needs to “discipline” us taxpayers.

Sorry to break it to you guys, but you’re not our dads, you’re supposed to keep us safe and do the jobs our taxes pay you for. A real victory would be the trend of speeding going down, not the number of tickets going up.

It’s time to re-evaluate the traffic law enforcement, and for once, think of the taxpayers well-being, not how you can make more from them with fines and tickets, without improving road safety.

ISIS Wannabes Emboldened with Lebanese Government’s Savage “Anti-Blasphemy” Campaigns from the Dark…


The entire nation was shaken to its core after the news broke of savage ambush, murder and desecration of the corpse of a man whose “crime” was saying “leave my god alone”.

A disgusting pig sheikh and his two siblings were out shopping, and overheard the man saying “7ello 3an rabbeh”. It’s a common expression of frustration in Lebanese slang, where you tell someone to “leave me alone” by saying “leave my god alone”.

Apparently, the extremist murderer sheikh thought this was a curse against the god he believes in, and decided to go all ISIS on the man, with some reports indicating the victim’s heart was taken out of his rib cage in classic ISIS-style punishment for “blasphemy”.

What Else Did You Expect?

In a country that likes to think of itself as more secular and liberal than most of its Arab counterparts, Lebanon’s government, judiciary and security forces have been mimicking Saudi’s now toothless moral police.

Banning movies, books, songs and every type of art and culture the old men in black robes are scared of. That’s just the start of it though. In recent weeks, religious vigilante groups from all sects have demonstrated the hate, violence and repulsiveness of these fanatics, harbored and supported by the institutions your taxes pay for.

From the vicious lynch mob that attacked Charbel over a joke their fragile egos couldn’t take, to the closures of popular Beirut clubs at the behest of a small minority of angry extremists that also get easily offended and manipulated, the government is sending a strong signal that religious extremism and violence is fine, while speaking up against the government and its policies will land you in jail or under investigation in a heart beat.

Dozens of threats of rape and murder, even doxxing the address of one of the victims of the lynch mob, wasn’t enough for the infamous “Cybercrimes” Bureau and the district attorneys that order it around to take any action. But a lame joke about an infertile couple praying to a local saint, made the entire government go into overdrive to suddenly become a moral police, with a judge blessing this barbaric and backwards practice by “sentencing” the victims of the lynch mob to one month off Facebook.

A doctored video, released weeks after an incident at a club, made the Lebanese government shut down a Lebanese nightlife titan for weeks, over false claims, even when a judge ruled to only give them a verbal warning after their apology.

In both cases, the violent savages on religion’s side were never approached, investigated or summoned by the authorities. Only the defenseless taxpayers that happened to fall into the hateful hands of the religious extreme.

What else do you expect? When religious hateful people roam free, unchecked for their crimes and threats, how can you be surprised when they behead, and rip hearts out over a term most of us use every other day stuck in traffic?

Get Your Shit Together.

The violent ISIS-wannabes need to rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Anything less will mean that our government and security forces are siding with religious extremists over law-abiding citizens.

For a government that prides itself on defeating ISIS, they need to stop coddling and fostering religious extremism, and bring the purveyors of hate, ignorance and violence to justice, and protect and defend law-abiding citizens.

At a time when places like Saudi Arabia are pseudo-trying to become less barbaric and savage, Lebanon, the supposed beacon of tolerance and enlightenment, can’t slip into an ISIS-style vibe.

And for those that cast doubt on the ability of the government to crack down on hate speech and violent extremism, just look at what they do when you criticize one of our ministers or his father-in-law. They have the ability to, they just only abuse it against upstanding citizens, but when an extremist group threatens an LGBT event, the current minister of interior “can’t guarantee their safety”.

Disgusting.

#حلو_عن_ربنا