At work today, I thought about rats. Don't ask me why because I don't have an answer for you. Living in Washington, D.C., I see a lot of rats. Rats never really bothered me the way they do other people, except once.

I was living in Beirut at the time. I used to take a taxi and then a bus to visit my girlfriend who lived 20 minutes north of the city. The taxi would stop in a roundabout called Dora (but pronounced Dawra). This was a poor area, but rich in diversity. Syrian refugees, Kurds, Armenians, Sudanese, Bengalis, and Lebanese would all gather here to smoke a water pipe (argileh in local dialect), eat a falafel sandwich, or just pass the time over 60 cent glasses of coffee or tea. But back to the rats.

I stepped out the taxi and cut across the roundabout to the dirt-filled median. It was fenced off, so I walked in the road as mini buses and vans sped past me, missing my back by fractions of an inch. I looked inside the fence and saw scurrying. Lots and lots of scurrying. 'Oh,' I thought. 'It is a rat.' But I was wrong.

'Oh, another ra..' I didn't finish the thought because I instantly saw the ground moving. There were hundreds of rats scurrying along the ground. All searching for a morsel of food in this safe zone, where the Syrian refugees, Kurds, Armenians, Sudanese, Bengalis, and Lebanese could not stomp on them or spray them with repellent. What a life a rat must live.

A Syrian refugee's life is not very often valued by a Lebanese. Nor is the life of a Kurd, Sudanese, or Bengali very valuable to someone from Lebanon. An Armenian is slightly more so. But a rat is not of value to the person who is not of value to the Lebanese, and thus they are lowest on the chain of valued life in a land where life truly has little value.

Or maybe I am wrong. Lebanon is now in the midst of a garbage crisis. Politicians cannot agree, though it is one of their sole duties, how to handle disposing of the country's waste. People have gotten so angry they demonstrated and called on the collapse of the government. In the meantime, the garbage stays. And if garbage stays, who benefits besides the rats? Is it possible I have it backward? Maybe the life of the rat is, in fact, of the highest value in Lebanon. More valuable than the Syrian refugee, the Kurd, the Armenian, the Sudani, the Bengali, and, even, the Lebanese. Yes. I think it may be the case.