When Moshi Moshi meets Salamou Alaykom

Remnants from the 2006 war (7)

2009-09-09T05:59:00.001-07:00

So, the war is over? The US and other Security Council members had already told us last week that we had to accept for now a “cessation of hostilities.” This deliberate ambiguity in terminologies mixed with a continuing painful debate about the deployment of the army and Hizbullah’s weapons have made the end of this war fragile and bitter sweet.

On Sunday night, I was standing on my balcony hearing the increasing number of the last bombs falling on the southern suburbs. I had the feeling one gets at the end of a bloody movie. The action is at its climax but you know the end is near. The next day I woke up to realize that it was finally the “new day” we have been waiting for in the last month or so.

Images of displaced people returning to their towns and villages in the south were filling all the screens. Life was regaining the whole country again.

But everybody was still waiting with anxiety the unfolding of events. Will Israel really stop its offensive? Will Hizbullah disarm? Will the army successfully deploy its troops in the South?

In other words, the vertiginous questions that had emerged during the war are still there. The uncertainties are still there and more threatening than before. The international community is relieved. They have done “their job” and come up with a resolution. Meanwhile, the Lebanese are left to deal with their divisions and contradictions. What kind of countries do the Lebanese want?

The Shiites have to heal the heavy wounds of the war.
Their houses were damaged, they lost their whole town, they lost the ones they love…

The other communities feel down. The prosperity and development they were promised just before the war now seem more than ever as sand castles. The idea of immigrating and looking for a better life elsewhere is haunting many Lebanese again.
One thing is clear however, the destruction and pain inflicted by Israel is incommensurate. As I walked through the ruins of Beirut suburbs yesterday, I saw tens of buildings flattened creating hills of rubble and turning my little walk into a hiking trip! People were flooding into the place to look for their houses and what was left from their belongings and childhood memories. A foreign journalist who works in Iraq whispered in my ears: “This is unbelievable, even the Americans have not caused such destruction in Iraq!”

Everywhere banners are comforting the people. “Israel and the US have destroyed your houses because they couldn’t face the resistance,” one of the banners said.

Visiting the southern suburbs was literally hallucinating. Amid the masses of inanimate concrete blocks and iron wires, I could see very personal objects, a birthday photo or a little doll. Objects that had a story or belonged to someone once, but that are left in a universe of total chaos.

In one month, some people lost everything! Everywhere, people are saying ironically: “this is the American civilization; this is what the new Middle-East looks like!”

That same day in the evening, Hizbullah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah reassured his supporters (most of the Shiites) that their houses would be rebuilt sooner than they had expected. The Shiites once again were embraced by Nasrallah. He also announced a “strategic victory” over Israel. The pride was greater than ever!

I guess it’s another counterproductive war designed by cold-hearted strategy builders in closed-door rooms. What they don’t really grasp is that they forged a new collective memory for the whole of Lebanon, one that makes the idea of an Israeli State “living in peace with its neighbors” even more absurd.

All those who suffered inside their houses, who lost a mother or a child, know now that their lives do not count for the US and Israel, that for the west they are an inferior race. Of course, the victims of this war might be feeling as well that their lives are vain when it comes to their dignity and their resistance. They believe in a cause, in the power of having a land. It’s a very strong spirit that wars cannot break. Who can blame them? You can manage to destroy a whole country but it is impossible to crush the will of people.

The next day, the rest of the Lebanese (those who were not subjected to the Israel’s ethnic cleansing) are reminded of their other neighbor: Syria. The Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first appearance on TV since the war started. His words were more cynical than ever. He rushed the Lebanese back into their little internal wars promising them indirectly that the Syrian hegemony over their little country will return in no time.

We don’t want Israel, we don’t want Syria, we don’t want Iran. We want an independent Lebanon! A leitmotiv one hears a lot here. But is it really possible to turn this small country into an isolated island?
For many, Lebanon is doomed and a victim of its great diversity and richness. Is there truly a way out?

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (6)

2009-09-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

“I am tired of thinking of the big picture. It drives to despair to think about diplomacy and the Security Council. The only way to go on now is to ignore everything and concentrate on small achievable goals.” This is what a colleague of mine told me this morning.

Lately, we haven’t been able that there would be a way out for us anytime soon especially that the UN Security Council has seemingly given up on Lebanon. First, they wanted to issue a draft resolution that does not take into account the complexity and specificities of Lebanon. Any decision that would call for the disarmament of Hizbullah while keeping Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil will only fuel an internal conflict. Despite the fact that France and the rest of the council’s members are convinced of the need to take into consideration the Lebanese demands, the United States does not want any concessions that do not blindly favor Israel.

Meanwhile, the war continues and for all those who think that Qana was a sad incident during this war, I say there are Qana massacres every single day. For suspicious minds, those who believe that Arab media is trying to manipulate the world and “invent” images of children getting killed, I say that I was present when they pulled children’s bodies from under the rubble in Chiyah (a southern suburb of Beirut) and I was at hospitals where children were suffering from burns and wounds and laid marks of shrapnel on their bodies. And if you don’t believe me, there were tens of “unbiased” foreign reporters.

The Lebanese media is an exceptionally vivid and powerful one. Freedom of expression is sacred in the media here. The debates on national televisions are highly diverse and are sometimes critical of Hizbullah. So for all those who believe war images coming from Lebanon are propaganda spare us your lectures and come here on the ground to see with your bare eyes! There are plenty of places were bodies are rotting on the ground, places that journalists cannot even reach! The horror and the terror that you see and witness are nothing in comparison with the reality of what’s going on.

I invite everybody after and if this war ever ends to pay Lebanon a visit and see with their own eyes what has really happened here. Self-defense? I am even tempted to laugh when I hear this argument! A couple of months ago, I remember how Israeli soldiers kidnapped Palestinian prisoners from a Palestinian jail humiliating prisoners and jailers there. The whole world did not see this as a provocation! That’s beside the point anyway. What is going on here is beyond any rational explanation.

Unfortunately, the world will soon get bored and turn a blind eye on the conflict. The tragedy will continue though whether the world watches or not! Today, I was sitting at the office in a Christian neighborhood in Beirut when we saw outside thousands of leaflets falling everywhere from the sky. The message was mean and direct, all the inhabitants of Chiyah, Burj al-Barajneh and Hay al-Sellom must leave immediately.

For those who do not know, all these names are those of dense neighborhoods in Beirut which had been more or less spared so far. This means that hundreds of thousands of people more than the million displaced already will be forced to leave their homes. Where will they go? The schools are already over crowded and children I have seen with my own eyes are living in deplorable situations where basic hygienic conditions are missing.

Yesterday, I was volunteering with a humanitarian group to play with the kids and help them deal with their traumas. Children are so innocent, they don’t realize really what’s going on, they want to play and have fun. Part of the activities is to allow children to express their feelings by drawing. They perfectly know that there is a war but it’s amazing how they have a capacity to evade it and imagine a rosy way out. I wonder for how long they could cope with this situation.

One nine-year old girl, Myriam, comes to me and tells me how much she likes to draw fish and the sea. She holds her younger sister’s hand compassionately. “I am praying all the time for peace, so I can return to my home” she says with a smile.

Again and again, I ask the world what is Israel achieving? Creating more hate, more frustration and more destruction. This will NOT solve anything.

Few minutes after the leaflets were dropped, my sister, who lives far from these neighborhoods, called me panicked saying that she wanted to move in with me.
“It would be safer to stay in a Christian neighborhood,” she said. I tried to calm her stressing that she was in rather safe Beiruti street. Shortly after hanging up, I kept thinking if that was something reasonable to say anyway. Is there really a safe place to stay?

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (5)

2009-09-07T12:38:00.001-07:00

The other day I was walking by the beach and it was so saddening to see thick slicks of fuel oil polluting the coast with fish and see life dead soaked in a black viscous material. In addition to all the human losses and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings and roads, Israel caused a major environmental catastrophe by targeting a power plant by the sea in Jiyye, 30 Km away from Beirut. Now one third of the coast is polluted with more than 10,000 tons of fuel oil and we are simply helpless facing this biggest environmental crisis on the East coast of the Mediterranean.

People living outside the circle of a war cannot grasp its profound impact on humans. The numerous small and big tragedies generated lead me to one strong desire that of seeing an end to hostilities IMMEDIATELY.

For those who read my first piece of writing, I said that Hizbullah started the first sparkle of this war but I repeat it again and again the disproportionate response and the tragic course of events makes it a moral responsibility on people and governments around the world to stop this ongoing absurdity.

I believe that the United States and Israel have the biggest duty with this respect be it in the name of civilization and Human Rights they continuously lecture us on.

If we carefully study the course of events on the 12th of July, the starting date of the conflict, we see that Hizbullah’s operation of kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers was very much contained in the sense that they clearly declared their purpose was to free four Lebanese citizens who had been held in Israeli jails for a very long time.

On that same day, Hizbullah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah eloquently declared that he did not want to kill any Israeli civilians and that he only wanted to swap prisoners.

Of course there were underlying regional tactics in the operation - I am not trying to portray a naïf picture here - Israel’s violent response, however, did not nothing but confirm that it had premeditated objectives to wage its war.

Hizbullah’s launching rockets on northern Israel only came in retaliation to Israel’s systematic destruction of infrastructure and civilians.

Can we really talk here about self-defense? Israel could have dealt with Hizbullah’s operation in a military way sparing the death of civilian casualties; instead, it is continuing its war calling the hundreds of civilians dying “collateral damage.”

The western world saw the 12th of July as the beginning of provocation by Hizbullah but nobody there was told really about the countless violations of the Lebanese air by Israel in the past years. Also, just few weeks before the war started, a network of Israeli spies carrying targeted killings in Lebanon was dismantled, isn’t this provocation?

What is more tragic is that Israel is destroying Lebanon for nothing really. Hizbullah cannot be routed out by a military operation. Hizbullah is not an obscure group hiding in caves. It is a political party with a very big popular base. They have seats in Parliament. They fund many social projects, they operate schools and hospitals.

And the Lebanese had been debating about the disarmament of Hizbullah in an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom of speech. What was going on is one of the most vibrant democratic processes in the whole Arab region. Since Lebanon is a democracy, it was not simply possible for the majority to disarm Hizbullah by force!

This unique democratic model is now threatened under Israeli bombs. Even those who were the fiercest political opponents to Hizbullah’s arms see the current course of events as disastrously leading away from any hope for the group’s disbanding.

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (4)

2009-09-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

Since the conflict started, I have been receiving daily emails from close and distant friends or simply people I met ages ago on a trip somewhere. They all write very compassionate words hoping for peace and expressing their support in these difficult times.

This sympathy of people from all nationalities keeps me warm despite the daily state of total depression I have been sharing with friends around me. The conflict is growingly weighing on our daily lives.

Every day, we wonder when Israeli will hit the next power station, when we will stop having electricity altogether, when we will stop finding our favorite food item on supermarket shelves… Plenty of questions floating in the air remain unanswerable, simply because the war is absurd.

Beirut which was once vibrant is now empty and sad. Endless lines of cars waiting at gas stations worried about the shortage in gasoline. The masses of displaced people passing time in parks and schools waiting anxiously for some news from family members trapped somewhere in the South.

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (3)

2009-09-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

It’s always poignant to realize that, after all, history does nothing but repeat itself! The whole world was shaken by the images of children being pulled out of the wreckage, caught by death in the middle of their sleep on Sunday.

More than fifty people were killed, buried under the rubble of a house in the southern village of Qana where they thought they could find shelter from Israeli bombing.

Almost the same incident happened ten years ago in the very same wholly town of Qana (mentioned in the bible as the place where Jesus Christ performed his first miracle of turning water into wine!)

Back in 1996, the killing of more than 100 civilians shook the world to its core and was enough to lead to a cessation of fire. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case in today’s more radical post-September 11 world. The US’s war on terrorists and terrorism can justify everything and anything from the torture of prisoners to the bombing of innocent civilians. Who said labor was an easy thing, especially when the newborn is a new Middle-East that the US has conceived?

As I zap from one channel to the other, I get slowly saturated by the images of cold dusty corpses and inhuman sounds of grief. Other images surface, those of politicians who condemn and accuse and others who apologize.

Also, trapped between these images are scenes from “The Beautiful Mind”, an American movie about a genius mathematician that was playing on one of the channels.

I ask myself: can we really find any logic in all these military operations? Is there any equation that can rationally link among all the current unknowns: the killing of civilians, self-defense, resistance, durable peace and above all the leitmotiv of the American administration, “sustainable ceasefire”?

Maybe Olmert or Condy have beautiful minds of their own and see the whole picture which we, the common mortals, cannot grasp!

Personally what I have seen in the riots of angry men and women who were attempting to destroy and burn the symbol of our modern world’s civilization, the United Nation’s building in Beirut, are hate and violence against as one of the rioters signs suggested “the silence of the lambs”.

I remember during one of my tours in the numerous schools of Beirut packed with refugees the look on an old woman from the south. I asked the futile question of how she felt being forced to leave her home and she looked at me with a docile, almost nonchalant gaze.

“What can I say my son, I’ve spent my whole youth fleeing Israel!” She recalled images of Israeli soldiers breaking into her house in a southern village more than twenty years ago. Strangely, those memories were more vivid and stronger than the recent stories of the thousands of displaced. Israel might justify its current military operation and prove its military superiority, but what it is really doing, is feeding the collective memories of hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon and millions around the world. All this violence will not lead to a sustainable ceasefire. It seems so obvious that I feel ridiculous writing it. Images don’t die, feelings don’t die; they cannot but fuel more violence and more defiance.

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (2)

2009-09-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Pulling myself out of bed was very difficult this morning despite the continuous sound of rockets falling on the southern suburbs of Beirut. I probably wanted to believe that all this was just a nightmare.

It is true that I live in the Christian part of the capital, which is relatively secure, but with the Israelis escalating their assault each day, safety has become a dull notion.

It’s as if I had taken hallucinogenic pills; sometimes I see images of warplanes shelling bombs that explode into mushrooms or shattered glass falling on my head like a thousand daggers. Everything is getting mixed up in my head. Numerous clichés and noises are resonating endlessly within me. I am starting to feel incapable of processing more data. I am like an empty vessel bearing more and more stuff to the point of exploding. The pattern is the same: air strikes, demolition, civilians dying, people displaced, foreigners evacuating, hollow political declarations. The details are only slightly different.

We entered the second week of this absurd conflict. I am realizing how helpless we are. I tune in to international news channels and all I get is pro-Israeli propaganda. Why doesn’t the world just come and spend few hours in the south where people are stranded and running out of food?

Tens of thousands of people have fled southern villages and towns in the last week. Those who stayed are cut from the outside world after Israel had bombed bridges, roads, electricity and telephone infrastructure turning the whole zone into small separated islands.

Everybody around me has lost faith in “the international community,” in “Lebanon’s friends,” in “our Arab brothers.” What is a human life or two or even 300 (the death toll so far) worth when the masters of the world are discussing how to split the earth’s resources at the G8 summit in St Petersburg!

I switch off the TV. I don’t feel like listening to analysis about the reasons and consequences anymore. It’s all futile.

Yesterday, I actually decided to see “reality” with my bare eyes. I went with a group of journalists to the heart of the southern suburbs, to Dahyeh, where tens of thousands of Shiites normally live spiralling around Hizbullah’s strongholds.

As we got closer to Haret Hreik, Hizbullah’s headquarters, which was reportedly almost wiped out by non-stop Israeli raids, large photos of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s chief and a semi-god for Shiites, and other Iranian ayatollahs were more and more abundant everywhere. The streets were very calm and few cars were circulating.

I tried to think to myself what total destruction could look like.

At some point, we were stopped by Hizbullah fighters who had encircled the “hot spot” forbidding us from getting closer. We were only allowed to take photos around “hell.” As I step out of the car, I immediately felt I was entering into a different reality. The sight had a certain esthetic about it; nothing but annihilation; pounded cars, pulverized glass, buildings cut into two and masses of gravel everywhere separated by a crushed bridge. Beyond the heavy silence, the laughter, the arguments, the screaming of all those who used to live here just few days ago were resonating through the walls and the indefinite concrete structures.

Almost everybody left in a hurry after Israel dropped hundreds of flyers summoning the Dahyeh’s residents to leave their homes before the army would start hitting.
This area is one of the most populated of Lebanon. It was haphazardly constructed during the Israeli occupation of the South (between 1978 and 2000). For years, the area kept receiving floods of displaced people forced to leave their villages in the South.

I move towards the ruined bridge. I stand on one of its broken edges and feel like the whole energy of the place is pouring inside me. It must have been one of the most intense moments of my life, as if I was allowed to sneak into another mysterious dimension where time and space are entangled.

It’s weird now that I remember all this; I cannot but feel like it had never really happened. It’s like this sight of the war with its splendor and horror could not have been but a movie scene. Tomorrow I might wake up and find out I had been caught up in a nightmare.

We have no evidence the sun will continue rising everyday, but we still believe it will happen anyway

-Isn’t this Hume’s motto?

I am really scared the situation would last too long to the point of getting up one day and realizing that the war has become an inescapable reality. It’s just day seven, fortunately I still have this tiny hope that tomorrow will be different.

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Remnants from the 2006 war (1)

2009-09-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

“We are facing a real annihilation carried out by Israel,” with these desperate words, the Lebanese Cabinet expressed their helpless observation of the current situation in Lebanon.

For the past five days, Israel’s destructive machinery has been demolishing the country’s infrastructure: bridges, roads, highways, power stations, buildings, airports, whole cities and villages… The numbers of dead and injured people is continuously on the rise.

Among the hundred and fifty individuals or so killed so far, the vast majority are civilians and children.

Numbers do not count anymore!

We’re under a real sea, air and land blockade; a blockade worthy of “the middle ages” like a Lebanese official declared few days ago. In the already deprived southern villages, the situation is disastrous and people are running out of food and medical care. The highly populated area of the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hizbullah’s strongholds lies, has been almost wiped out. There’s a mass exodus of thousands of people leaving the south and staying in schools, parks, and empty houses. The country is almost completely cut off from the outside world.

Of course one can always adopt the American position and say, well, Israel has the right to defend itself; Hizbullah has fired rockets on Northern Israeli towns killing civilians as well.

But when you see a little girl shredded into pieces, it means we’ve entered the absurd vicious cycle of war where violence begets violence and logic and words are simply meaningless.

On Wednesday, Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in order to press Israel to free four Lebanese prisoners. The Lebanese resistance group was founded in 1982 with the support of Iran as the result of Israel’s invasion of the country then.

Hizbullah was nationally and regionally praised when it succeeded in driving Israel out of the occupied southern parts of Lebanon in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

When all this started on Wednesday _I can’t believe we reached this stage of horror in just five days_, a lot of Lebanese bared a grudge about Hizbullah’s operation.

A majority of Lebanese were probably saying: “Hizbullah is crazy, they have dragged the whole country into a war that none of us chose. The decision of making war or peace has to be in the hands of the state and not of a militia.” Most of us were thinking of their plans for the weekend. Baalbek’s festival was about to open with a musical by Lebanon’s diva Fairouz. Most people had plans to tan on the beach, to hike in the mountains, go shopping… but NOT GO TO WAR.

Officials, hotel owners, businessmen were talking about high hopes and expectations about this year’s touristy season. Hundred thousands of tourists were here, more were coming, everybody was happy about the growth all this would generate and then in the blink of an eye Beirut’s summer turned into a nightmare.

But the disproportionate reaction of Israel to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and the killing of eight more leaves one with total indignation with Israel’s “barbaric and systematic war on Lebanon.”

None of this is new, what we have seen in Gaza and the Palestinian territories recently and continuously, should have fueled our imagination about Israel’s collective punishment in response to the kidnapping of its soldiers when the conflict started four days ago.

By now, we all pretty much understand that Hizbullah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah had opened “Pandora’s box.”

Many Lebanese think that Hizbullah has acted in coordination with Iran and Syria as a response to the international community’s pressure on Iran’s nuclear program and their mounting criticism of Syria for supporting violence in Iraq.

"The war is no longer Lebanon’s ... it is an Iranian war," said one of Lebanon’s staunchest opposing figure to Syria and Iran, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on
Saturday.

Even Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora had repeated that the government was not aware of Hizbullah’s operation. “We’re the last to know, and the first to be held accountable,” he said.

Anyway, the war in Lebanon is ongoing with the total indifference of the United Nations and lack of real defense or support from the Arabs. Like during Lebanon’s 15 year-old “civil war,” we are living “the others’ war on our territory.”

“The situation is literally: fearless Lebanese men fighting with high-technology Iranian arms.” This is what a former Hizbullah fighter boasted to me about the Lebanese resistance guerilla’s capacity to combat Israel “for a long time.”

Of course, this declaration is not the least surprising. For the past year, everybody here in Lebanon has feared that Hizbullah would drag the whole country in a war against Israel, orchestrated by Iran and Syria.

Although Syria and Iran are repeatedly accused by the US and Israel of standing behind Hizbullah, both countries are still outside the conflict. “For the moment, it is only Lebanon that we are targeting,” are the Israelis saying.

But beyond all these considerations, I think Hizbullah, which is fundamentally a religious group, views the conflict as “the Muslim nation’s war” against Israel, a war that would avenge all the long years of humiliation inflicted on Arabs and Muslims by the Jewish State.

"You Arab and Muslim people must take a position toward your future, the future of your children," Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a video-taped message. "The peoples of the Arab and Islamic world have a historic opportunity to score a defeat against the Zionist enemy ... We are providing the example."

"Hizbullah is not fighting a battle for Hizbullah or even for Lebanon, but for the Islamic nation," he said.

How haven’t we understood all this from the start? Hizbullah has repeatedly said that it was “a Lebanese” resistance and that it was not intending to “liberate” Palestine, -they even fully integrated in the country’s political life with parliamentarians and ministers. Did we really expect that the Party of God (this is what Hizbullah means in Arabic) which believes rewards are in the afterlife and which base their ideology on sacrificing human life for a bigger cause could really accept becoming a mediocre political party?

It’s only day five of the regional war fought on a Lebanese ground. With both Israel and Hizbullah seemingly determined to make it the last war against each other, no signs of hope fights would stop are clear in the horizon. Will repeated calls for ceasefire from the Lebanese government and the international community bare their fruits anytime soon? Nothing is less sure so far!

*This entry was published in a blog on Beirut during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel published by the website of the german newspaper, Die Zeit.

Beirut Ablaze

2007-10-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, the news spread like fire among Beirut’s revelers. The whole city was “ablaze”. Nothing to be alarmed about. This is just how young trendy Lebanese like to describe a place when music is ear-splitting and people are drinking and dancing shoulder-to-shoulder in an ambiance of fiesta.
It was a holiday weekend and many Lebanese were back in town to see their friends and family. After a fulfilling meal at a pleasant restaurant, I took a Greek friend, who was visiting Lebanon for the first time, on a tour of Beirut’s hot spots. We were moving slowly along the busy streets of Monot and Gemmayze, packed with fancy cars and flamboyant partygoers. Funky music and colorful lights were pouring out from pubs and restaurants. Beirut felt like genuinely exuberant.
I found myself sarcastically repeating to my friend, “you see how rough the days are in Beirut. You see how strained people look.”
Secretly, I wished this vision of Beirut, literally ebullient that night, would be strong enough to erase from his mind the numerous images of a city in distress and conflict he must have seen so many times on TV.
But deep inside, I think I was addressing these comments mainly to myself. When we, reporters, spend too much time listening to political news, we tend to forget that people’s realities could be so much different from the gloomy images portrayed by politicians.
In the past weeks, even months, my mind has been subjected to a plethora of speeches and statements revolving around division, conflict, tension and other terms drawing a somber future for the country.
Sometimes, it takes just a night out to realize how much more resilient Beirut is than anyone would wish. © El Periodista

A Nation of Martyrs

2007-10-12T02:32:00.000-07:00

If Times Square embodies the essence of New York, Trafalgar Square that of London and La Place de L’Etoile that of Paris, then the heart of Beirut is Martyrs’ Square, a square marked by a bronze statue of the nation’s first celebrated martyrs, that is.
During World War I, the occupying Ottoman forces hanged six nationalists in Beirut’s central square. Later, an epic statue, representing these six heroes holding the flame of freedom, was erected at this site to commemorate a sort of pioneering sacrifice for the nation.
But like in tragedies, the statue of martyrs turned out to be a sort of a curse tainting, for many years to come, the fate of the whole country with misfortune. It’s like ever since this original incident, Beirut was doomed to become a “factory for martyrs.”
From Hezbollah militants dying in fights along the borders with Israel to anti-Syrian politicians assassinated in car bombs, Lebanon was stockpiling martyrs. And the martyrs’ category was ever growing to encompass a wider range of people.
A blameless child kidnapped then killed is a martyr. A common passerby who involuntarily happened to be at a bomb scene is a martyr. A woman blown up in a bus while on her way to buy groceries is a martyr.
And this is only to mention recent “types” of martyrs, who became recurrent since the “martyrdom” of the country’s modern uberhero, former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, assassinated in February 2005. The long-drawn-out 1975-1990 civil war is full of other examples of martyrs.
Beirut seems to be more populated with the spirits of all these new and old martyrs -their photos along with lyrical odes to their memories are pasted all over the city- than with living Lebanese.
A new concept, that of “the living martyr”, was even invented to glorify those who survived assassination attempts.
Today, whatever your believes, your age, your profession are, if you happen to die accidentally in Lebanon just because you were inadvertently passing near a blast site, you are immediately branded as a martyr of freedom, independence, resistance or any other political cause.
Recently, the brother of a 27 year-old man who died in a car bomb made a symbolic cry from the heart on television when he said, “My brother Charles is not a martyr, he’s a victim.”
Charles Chikhani, was a dynamic middle-class young Lebanese, not really interested in politics, and apparently leading a normal, happy life among his friends and family. He was returning home from work when a bomb targeting another Lawmaker killed him.
Few days later, photos of Charles, a smiling happy man and, for once, a victim and not a martyr, were displayed all over Beirut. A march was organized to honor the memory of Charles, who became the symbol of any ordinary man killed and not martyred. Thousands of people from all backgrounds walked with candles that day in an unprecedented apolitical, free-of-slogans march.
It was a simple reminder to all of us, Lebanese, that we’ve become martyrs - living, dead or ready-to-die - against our will. After all, most of us are not heroes seeking sacrifice for a greater noble cause but simply normal people who are after the common joys of life. © El Periodista

Happy Hanukkah from Beirut!

2007-09-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

If you're preparing for the next Hanukkah in Beirut and are wondering where to find a Menorah (a seven-branched jewish chandelier), all you have to do is go to the popular Sunday flee market just East of Beirut. © El Periodista

Pavlov's dog

2007-09-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

During the past few days, I have been waking up in a natural way, gently tickled by dim sunrays. The commotion in the school courtyard across the street had magically disappeared. So for the past few days, the first moments of my mornings have been blissfully serene. Of course, it’s only seconds before I, then, realized the reason for the unusual quietness.
Here is what typically happened on one of these past mornings, chosen randomly. A series of mental links are established, a light bulb flashes in my head, a release of chemicals generates feelings of bitterness and melancholy. Another assassination had happened few days ago, a jumble of fuzzy images of ambulances, police, blood, metallic pieces sweeps through my mind, this leads into that official decision to close down schools.
Melting down, invaded by thousands of question marks hammering on my poor skull, I drag myself into the toilet. For a second, I hesitate between grapping a comic book, a light traveler’s diary or the Economist so as to enhance my daily experience of bonding with human nature. I am suddenly alarmed by the beeping of my mobile phone in my bedroom, announcing the landing of an sms. My heart starts pounding. The hammering of question marks intensifies. I rush back into the room. Iran has displayed its new far-ranging missile in a military parade, reads the sms. Sometimes, it’s another car bomb in Iraq. Adrenaline drops sharply. I am kind of relieved. It didn’t happen “chez-nous”! I can slip back into my morning routine.
This physical reaction engendered by an sms makes me poise for a while. Have I developed a sort of conditioning to sms? In a simplified scheme of one mental circuit, this could be something like: beeping (a typical alert of a received sms), an URGENT message sent by a mobile news service (I had subscribed to one for professional reasons) announcing some kind of “catastrophe”, heart pounding, weakness in my knees, stomach spasms…
I can’t help imagining myself as a dog in a Pavlov-type of experiments run by evil state-representatives all conspiring against me. Each one of them has the name of his country embroidered on his white lab coat, and they are all laughing maniacally. They could have been paid by mobile phone moguls to generate world disorder that could then drive people to use these news service sms.
Oh Well, conspiracy theories can have many many forms when one reaches a stage of such absurdity! © El Periodista

Die another day

2007-09-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

I climbed up the stairs of the damaged building feeling bits and pieces of glass cracking up under my feet. Armed with a notebook and a pen, I marched hesitantly in search for the eyewitnesses, the ones who can display raw emotions. I talked to an old man in the hallway who burst in tears the minute he recalled the feelings of horror generated by the blast. To escape the crowd of journalists who smothered the shocked old man with attention instantly after noticing his tears, I went up to another floor. A partly wrecked door attracted my attention, so I knocked. An elderly woman opened in her pajamas, her wounded arm wrapped in a bandage. Two quaint dogs swirled around her, oblivious to the mass of glass pieces covering the floor. A relative of hers pulled me towards the balcony to show me “the miracle.” He pointed at a figurine of Saint Rita –the woman was also called Rita- still erect, despite the carnage, below a lit red light bulb.
Below, a hodgepodge of policemen, soldiers, ordinary people, rescuers, filled spaces between burned twisted cars, ambulances and army jeeps.
Rita, not the Saint, was looking absent-mindedly around her. She was restless moving around her house; unable to believe the state of mess it was in. Suddenly, her son burst into the room through the door, kept close by a water gallon and a piece of wood. The two embraced for few seconds. The son could not hold his tears. I looked at his frenetic expressions to figure out whether he was happy to see his mother in one piece or infuriated by what his dear mother had to go through.
The scene has become way too familiar, I thought. I knew exactly the steps I was to follow to produce an article where I am supposed to squeeze all these confused emotions in.
Despite the chaos, there is a frightening sense of déjà vu about every car bomb I have covered. And every time, I can’t help feeling I am an alien trying to pierce into people’s minds and hearts.
I returned home exhausted with a multitude of sounds buzzing in my head. I called a friend who lived in the area of the car bomb. He was fine. He was going to check a book for learning Spanish, that I had recommended, at a bookshop right next to the blast. Fortunately, he changed his mind at the last moment. Another miracle?
A memory from my childhood is still vividly present on my mind. It was summer and I was playing cards with my sister. My mother was insisting I go and buy some groceries but I kept on telling her that I wanted to finish the game. Seconds later a bomb ripped through the walls of the living room. I was saved by a "divine intervention". A bomb had just exploded near that grocery store I was supposed to go to.
It's strange how this memory has been haunting me much more often in the past few years. When my mother used to urge me with a worried look to take care everytime I left home, my reaction was always to say with the nonchalance of youth: "Mum, I can die anywhere, even here at home, if that huge chandelier fell on my head!"
But now I am constantly driven into the mental paths of the "what ifs?".
"I guess I’ll die another day, it’s not my time to go…", Madonna would have said! © El Periodista

What's cooking?

2007-09-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

In the middle of the current political hodgepodge, I (a calculated sigh) was worrying about what to cook for dinner yesterday.
In the bus on my way to Beirut, I listened to the news. The presenter was warning of an “orgy” of divisions, partitioning, dissections and bisections (which all more or less mean the same thing); The whole jumble was said in a fluctuating somber tone inspiring anxiety over a nearby black future i.e. the upcoming presidential elections.
Meanwhile, I was exchanging SMSs with my long-awaited date about food.
Once at home, I browsed through the Yahoo Lebanon News articles stumbling upon another series of split, chaos, tension and other related terms as I prepared a list of groceries to buy and looked for enticing recipes.
In the kitchen, tears flooded in my eyes as I chopped onions trying to picture what will come after dinner. In the next room, the background noise of the holly 8 o’clock news bulletin roared with meaningless news.
I was suddenly struck by the thought that I might have become totally indifferent to the fate of “my” country.
I decided to boycott Berri’s interview on LBC.
Have I actually lost any sense of responsibility because I don’t feel concerned about our politicians’ daily warnings?
Maybe! But around me that day, I sensed complicity with the whole community. Everybody was preparing for his first Iftar. (Of course, I was buying wine instead of Amar-Eddine juice, but that’s not the point.) Nobody really cared about the positions of a one so-called man-of-state or another politician announcing his “presidential program”. (We should really learn to use more humble terms especially when all of us have access to channels around the world and can watch a presidential debate in France.)
We have simply become politically numb, I guess. The people of this country, all grouped under the generic word Lebanese, do not really care about “freedom, independence and sovereignty,” simply because our dear politicians have used them in all possible combinations and declinations to the point of revealing their true intentions: engaging in a Zajal competition. Our political class has mastered the art of the hollow rhetoric and we can’t but clap for such an achievement.
Lately, I liked to point out that my biggest fear these days was not being blown-up by a bomb but getting stuck in an elevator because of an unexpected electricity cut. Maybe I am exaggerating. Security is an issue not to be taken lightly. But so is electricity!
Everyday, I dig for any decent coverage of the recurrent electricity cuts. All I find instead is detailed accountings of the blabbering of X and Y. We are honestly fed-up.
Or let me speak for myself. I think this country is much less divided than they want us to believe. I freely move from North to South and East to West. I rarely feel threatened.
It’s time to tackle the real day-to-day issues and problems… Because everyone has at some point an important dinner to prepare for! © El Periodista

the story of a Green Line and a Yellow Building (adult version)

2007-09-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

Near the once-called green line, which severed Beirut during the long-drawn-out civil war, lies a pale, deeply stricken yellow building.
For almost seventeen years, the Lebanese, who entered a tedious phase of convalescence since the end of violence in 1990, were faced with the memory of their war every time they passed by this building.
The traces of shrapnel and bullets covering its walls mirrored the atrocity of the past conflict. The faded elegance of its columns and structures talked of the lost glory of the entire city.
Epitomizing that sharp contrast between beauty and horror so representative of Beirut’s metamorphosis, the building in its worn state was an ideal memorial of the Lebanese civil war.
Recently, the yellow building was suddenly concealed from view. It was not condemned to demolition like most traditional houses sadly are in this country. It is actually still standing in its wrecked state albeit completely hidden behind a gigantic poster with the drawing of its soon-to-be-revamped version.
On a first impression, the idea that the edifice will be restored and thus saved from the dejecting fate of destruction is heartwarming. A closer examination of the poster brings to light the destiny of the yellow building. Below the drawing, one can read in big letters: “A Museum for the Memory of Beirut,” a project initiated by the municipality of Beirut.
So after all, Beirut -which bolsters one of the most complex modern histories in the world- will be endowed with a museum documenting and exhibiting the various stages of its past!
My mind kept buzzing with questions for a moment. The visitors of the to be museum will see models of the city’s old tramway? They will have the chance to marvel at a sample of objects sold in its old downtown Souks in the 40s and 50s? They will listen to the accounts of an ex-sniper? They will be able to hear the voice of an ordinary mother telling how she breast fed her baby in a shelter as the city was being shelled?
It was actually naïf to even hint at questions like these. Rabih Mroue, one of Lebanon’s most outstanding artists, was recently banned from showing his latest play in Beirut. His “crime” was tackling the still-too-sensitive topic of the war –a phase that we have officially and supposedly put behind us seventeen years ago.
So, it comes as no surprise to learn that Beirut’s “Memory Museum” will eventually contain only a bunch of potteries and coins unearthed by archeological digs. Of course archeological findings are not to be undermined but it’s rather insulting to reduce the “memory” of Beirut to its ancient history.
In what looks like a practice common to authoritarian regimes, Lebanese officials have decided that Beirut’s citizens do not possess the maturity needed to reflect on the history of their city beyond Antiquity. Beirut under the Roman Empire was deemed the most recent phase that is benign enough to be exposed without jeopardizing “coexistence and national unity.”
Since the assassination of Premier Rafik Hariri, the past, specifically that pertaining to the civil war, has been constantly evoked in a selective and amputated manner. Remembrance has been appropriated by the country’s political class and merely used as a tool to gain influence. Parcels of the country’s history have been carefully trimmed and packaged to fit a certain narrow political paradigm.
However, bold attempts to shed light on the past through its various phases and convolutions are never really allowed to spill into the public sphere.
Actually, the “ritual” of covering the ravaged yellow building with a thin intact trompe l’oeil appearance reveals the official policy of dealing with the past, which merely consists in refurbishing the surface while keeping the core rotten and unhealed.
The state rationale is that remembering is dangerous when it is performed by the populace. Judging by a supposedly imminent risk of Lebanon falling again into the precipices of internal fighting, any productive debate on the past is silenced.
We’re told that the quest for understanding preceding events generates conflicts; therefore, any kind of even minimal reflection on the past should be shunned.
But why can’t we simply revive all versions of the past and place them side-by-side in a museum or another form of public space? By accepting that Beirut had divergent and multifaceted realities, we would be truly honoring the numerous and conflicting memories of the city.
Until the day we’re deemed capable of processing our collective memories, let’s simply leave the yellow building speak for itself. © El Periodista

The Story of a Green Line and a Yellow Building (fairy tale version)

2007-09-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a lavish green line formed of interweaving wild plants, separating two quaint villages known as West and East Beirut. The line fostered balance and harmony between the inhabitants of the two towns. A pale yellow building bearing smooth curved lines and elegant columns looked over the line, reflecting light and profusion unto its vegetation. Symbiosis was prevalent, until one day an army of microscopic beasts spread out of the line eating away, painfully and slowly, all the elements of the two towns.
The yellow building moaned resisting erosion as it witnessed the crumbling of everything around. The elements’ spirits forced to escape decaying matter found refuge on the walls of the building where they carved small niches.
Time led to a total erosion of life and non-life. Only the yellow building was left, preserving in its small cavities the souls and memories of the two towns and their green line’s infinite components.
Spreading all over, the army of tiny scavengers finally grew into new forms of life around the yellow building. The memories of the old times were left undeterred. They went on resting in peace for years, mirroring from time to time parcels of the past to passersby.
But the occasional escape of rebellious past memories was seen as a poisonous threat to the modern town’s bare atmosphere.
The wise descendants of the scavengers unanimously decided then to asphyxiate all the spirit particles of the past. The refuge holes should all be filled forever; they said. The past’s parasitic interference would be defeated for good; they triumphed.
They decided to baptize the new yellow building finally ridded of its infinite minute pasts as: the Museum of the Memory of Beirut (the name of one ancient Atlantic city mentioned in some weary manuscripts.)
Having one clean polished Memory was regarded as a safe foundation base for a glorious future. By that same principle, the citizens of the new modern town were subjected to regular meticulous sessions for cleaning their internal organs. It was suspected that some undisciplined past particles might have escaped into the souls and minds of the good citizens.
Soon, the heavy past would be lost forever prompting an uncontested air of unity in the modern town of Beirut.
The people and the structures of the city would be beautiful and glittering on the outside with an inside so pure that it’s absolutely empty. © El Periodista

Heigh Ho Nation

2007-09-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

Since that battle started in the North of the country, a magical change occurred in our society. We all became “better” people. We engaged as a nation in the mother of all battles; the epic struggle between Good and Evil.  The camp where the so-called tragic events are taking place might be far from where we live. Well at least not close enough for the steady sound of bombings or the sight of billows of smoke to pester us. Yet, every one of us feels that battle fermenting inside his own guts.  We are constantly compelled to turn on the TV and get infiltrated with a brief “update” on Nahr Al Bared. Every now and then, we sense an urge to see more smoke rising from building skeletons, the frame shaking from repetitive shelling and a reporter pointing fingers and telling bedtime fairy tales, all very well researched and sourced. And then, we recline in our sofa to ingurgitate that new dose of righteousness.  We have no need to see more; that Manichean battle is as ancient as time. We start feeling the forces of Good inside us fighting heroically against the forces of evil. It’s like a mix of pride and power. God with all his might will guide us into safety.  The mere idea of the camp comforts us about the virtues of our values and our morality. There is not a single slot for doubts. Angels and demons have never made such a clearer appearance.  May our blessed army smash those terrorists! Long lives our Nation! © El Periodista