6 Questions You Should Never Ask Anyone

Al-Nahar, Lebanon, September 3

We meet people every day. We talk. We hear rumors and gossip, and sometimes we even spread them. Broadly speaking, the Lebanese people live close to each other. Houses are crammed together. This adds to our ability to have easy conversations with people we meet for the first time. But it also contributes to our interference in other people’s personal lives. There are many questions in the world that one must not ask someone they know. For example, a question like “how much do you earn a month” is one of these questions, since it interferes with people’s personal financial lives. Similarly, while it’s okay to ask someone what year they graduated from school, it’s not okay to ask someone directly about their age. Another embarrassing question that people should stop asking is whether someone is single or married. This is typically followed by another question: “Do you have any children?” Once again, even though all of these questions have become normalized in our society, they really shouldn’t be asked. In recent years, another highly problematic question that came up relates to sexual orientation: “Are you gay or straight?” Needless to say, this is a gross violation of people’s private lives. In a country like Lebanon, people often, within three minutes of meeting you, want to know whether you are a Christian or a Muslim, how many partners you had, where you live and how much you earn. If they don’t get the answer they wanted right away, they pry and prod until they push you to divulge the information they’re interested in. In sum, there are six questions that we must not ask anyone – either in Lebanon or abroad. They revolve around: income, age, religion, relationship status, political beliefs, and sexual orientation. We would all be wiser to focus on our own business and leave others to their own. Perhaps we’ll all be sleeping better at night. – Samir Constantine (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)