The election has been delayed for the fifth time. The dealine is moved to next Friday.
So in about four hours, at the stroke of midnight, Lebanon will have no president.
There's a bunch of us watching a broadcast in Arabic of politicians from all the factions, as well as the deputy speaker of the House, give meaningless speeches about Lebanese unity and holding to the constitutional process. The army has been charged with maintaining the peace. Veiled, insinuous comments are made about rival parties and godfathers.
Obviously, the dons can't just admit: "Hey, we've got no president becase we're corrupt warlords who won't compromise on our tribal agendas for the security of our country!"... even if this has the virtue of being the truth.
So now, we've got another week of suspense, deserted streets, checkpoints, and surly soldiers.
Some hostel-mates and I might take the delay to head south to Shi'ite-held areas that the Lonely Planet is silent about. See some real Hezbollah country.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Lockdown
The presidential vote will take place at 1pm today. A couple of hours away.
Downtown Beirut is in lockdown.
On the way to this net café, I passed two APCs, mounted with double-barreled machine guns and flanked by soldiers. One grinned apologetically as he searched me. What’s this? Laptop? You journalist? No? Okay.
Trucks ferrying squads of soldiers trundle down largely deserted streets. Business has slowed to a crawl. Bars and clubs in the fashionable districts of Hamra and Gemmayzeh have reported up to 70% drops in clientele. Checkpoints and armed troopers choke off the downtown strip malls- with their cobblestone avenues and kitschy neo-French Mandate architecture- turning them into surreal, Disneyland-like ghost towns.
Further west, a building housing the international press has been walled in with armored barricades. A nearby tent city housing protestors from Hezbollah is loosely ringed by the army. Shi’ites sit in circles, sipping their morning coffee. Ten meters away, two troopers in green, tapping the triggers of their M16s, watch warily. One Shi’ite tells me that the tent city houses a thousand men. I look around the deserted area, the rows of ragged tents and tattered banners giving it an apocalyptic, carnivalesque feel. There aren’t more than a hundred Hezbollah men there. A week ago, one of them had invited me over the fence for a breakfast of cheese and naan. I don’t see him today. His compatriots look surly, tense.
I think of the patchworks of Sunni, Shi’ite, and Palestinian slums in South Beirut, a half-hour’s walk from the shimmering high-rises of the Corniche. I think of Sam- engineering student at Beirut Arab University by day, watchman of the Sunni Tareek Al-Jadidah by night. I think of his words at the Shatila Palestinian camp: “The Palestinians here are caught in the middle. There are Sunnis to the north, and Shi’ites to the south. What will they do? Who will they fight?”
It ain’t just the Palestinians. All the tribes are “caught in the middle.” Shi’ite neighborhoods are sandwiched between Sunni and Palestinian, and Sunni between Shi’ite and Palestinian, in densely-packed, locked-in cantons of rival tribes. If the time comes, what will they do? Who will they fight?
The political analysts profiled in the morning papers are unanimous: no one knows what will happen. “There are two many factors.” In a few hours, there may be a consensus candidate, a new Lebanese President, and a tenuous peace. Or there could be a split in the government, with the country dividing into tribal areas. If it does, the Shi’ite elements of the Lebanese Army may jump ship; in any case, the army doesn’t have the firepower to oppose Hezbollah, which could defend its southern strongholds with ease.
The travelers at my hostel debate the possibility of civil unrest. “Is it safe to go downtown?” one Pakistani girl asks. Our Druze hostel owners listen silently and with amused distaste written on their faces. Idiot, arrogant foreigners. What do they know? What have they lost? How can they understand?
The country’s on the verge of a meltdown, but it’s just an adventure to us, we strangers from strange lands. We aren’t invested in these tribal wars. Our families are safe in faraway suburbs. We fly in, drink in the tension, sample a little suffering, snap some pictures, and discuss the election with the light-hearted zeal of those who have nothing to lose from the consequences. Tourism in the headlines. If shit hits the fan, we head for the airport. Home before Christmas.
It’s also difficult to get a read on the situation from the locals. No one has a balanced take; everyone falls into the old tribal loyalties and will tell you something appropriately biased. Last night, the Druze brothers who own our hostel shook their heads at a broadcast of Emile Lahoud, the outgoing pro-Syrian president. “Get out now,” one of them muttered. I looked sideways at him. Sam would have agreed. But what about the Shi’ites I met in Baalbak and Tyre?
Moreover, the locals are equally divided on what’s going to happen- divided, or tight-lipped. Most understand the unpredictability of Lebanon’s Byzantine politics. There’s a small sense of “que sera, sera” fatalism in the air. Whatever will be, will be. Tweedle Dum today, Tweedle Dee tomorrow. It’s just another pissing contest between godfathers anyway. The tensions and divisions of Lebanon are too deep-seated for any one president to overturn, and whatever comes is just another storm to be weathered, just like all the ones that have come before. In the meantime, life goes on.
Others are more animated, and argue that the choice of president matters. For tribal interests, for economic interests, for foreign policy. Some say there will be consensus. “Lebanon is strong,” one woman with family in Canada said. “We Lebanese are united, we don’t want war.” Another disagreed. “There will be no president, and fighting. The Americans are trying to create a split between Sunnis and Shi’ites, so that they can get Arab oil. We Lebanese are victims.” Shi’ites rag on March 14th candidates as corrupt puppets of the West, Maronites denounce Hezbollah as warmongers. The simplest, and likely most prevalent opinion, came from a typically pretty Lebanese girl who I shared a cab with. “We are sick of war,” she said tiredly.
Most people are surprised to see us Westerners out and about. In the slums, they stare at us with thinly-veiled hostility. What the fuck are these foreigners doing here at a time like this? Even the university kids and downtown shopkeeps, who speak English and French fluently and are used to the Western set, are surprised. “Do you know that there’s an election? Don’t you know there are… er… troubles coming?” One man enthusiastically explained to me that Lebanon has Sunnis, Shi’ites, Maronites, and an evil empire in the south called “Hezbollah” who wanted to kill us all. I listened politely and nodded.
Last night, a German guy showed up at the hostel. “So many soldiers downtown!” he exclaimed irritably. Well, didn’t you hear about the election, bud? “No!” he replied, slinging his duffel bag on his bed. “If I’d known, I would not have come!”
Election’s one hour away now.
We’re planning to get drunk if they can’t find a president today. Witlessly hammered. We’re going to clean the hostel fridge out of Almaza beers, and pass out at whatever half-filled neo-industrially decorated club will accept us. Justin, my dorm-mate, joked that if he’s going to have to wake up to the sound of machine-gun fire, he’s damn sure going to do so hungover.
Waiting for the war. Anyone have a magic 8-ball?
Downtown Beirut is in lockdown.
On the way to this net café, I passed two APCs, mounted with double-barreled machine guns and flanked by soldiers. One grinned apologetically as he searched me. What’s this? Laptop? You journalist? No? Okay.
Trucks ferrying squads of soldiers trundle down largely deserted streets. Business has slowed to a crawl. Bars and clubs in the fashionable districts of Hamra and Gemmayzeh have reported up to 70% drops in clientele. Checkpoints and armed troopers choke off the downtown strip malls- with their cobblestone avenues and kitschy neo-French Mandate architecture- turning them into surreal, Disneyland-like ghost towns.
Further west, a building housing the international press has been walled in with armored barricades. A nearby tent city housing protestors from Hezbollah is loosely ringed by the army. Shi’ites sit in circles, sipping their morning coffee. Ten meters away, two troopers in green, tapping the triggers of their M16s, watch warily. One Shi’ite tells me that the tent city houses a thousand men. I look around the deserted area, the rows of ragged tents and tattered banners giving it an apocalyptic, carnivalesque feel. There aren’t more than a hundred Hezbollah men there. A week ago, one of them had invited me over the fence for a breakfast of cheese and naan. I don’t see him today. His compatriots look surly, tense.
I think of the patchworks of Sunni, Shi’ite, and Palestinian slums in South Beirut, a half-hour’s walk from the shimmering high-rises of the Corniche. I think of Sam- engineering student at Beirut Arab University by day, watchman of the Sunni Tareek Al-Jadidah by night. I think of his words at the Shatila Palestinian camp: “The Palestinians here are caught in the middle. There are Sunnis to the north, and Shi’ites to the south. What will they do? Who will they fight?”
It ain’t just the Palestinians. All the tribes are “caught in the middle.” Shi’ite neighborhoods are sandwiched between Sunni and Palestinian, and Sunni between Shi’ite and Palestinian, in densely-packed, locked-in cantons of rival tribes. If the time comes, what will they do? Who will they fight?
The political analysts profiled in the morning papers are unanimous: no one knows what will happen. “There are two many factors.” In a few hours, there may be a consensus candidate, a new Lebanese President, and a tenuous peace. Or there could be a split in the government, with the country dividing into tribal areas. If it does, the Shi’ite elements of the Lebanese Army may jump ship; in any case, the army doesn’t have the firepower to oppose Hezbollah, which could defend its southern strongholds with ease.
The travelers at my hostel debate the possibility of civil unrest. “Is it safe to go downtown?” one Pakistani girl asks. Our Druze hostel owners listen silently and with amused distaste written on their faces. Idiot, arrogant foreigners. What do they know? What have they lost? How can they understand?
The country’s on the verge of a meltdown, but it’s just an adventure to us, we strangers from strange lands. We aren’t invested in these tribal wars. Our families are safe in faraway suburbs. We fly in, drink in the tension, sample a little suffering, snap some pictures, and discuss the election with the light-hearted zeal of those who have nothing to lose from the consequences. Tourism in the headlines. If shit hits the fan, we head for the airport. Home before Christmas.
It’s also difficult to get a read on the situation from the locals. No one has a balanced take; everyone falls into the old tribal loyalties and will tell you something appropriately biased. Last night, the Druze brothers who own our hostel shook their heads at a broadcast of Emile Lahoud, the outgoing pro-Syrian president. “Get out now,” one of them muttered. I looked sideways at him. Sam would have agreed. But what about the Shi’ites I met in Baalbak and Tyre?
Moreover, the locals are equally divided on what’s going to happen- divided, or tight-lipped. Most understand the unpredictability of Lebanon’s Byzantine politics. There’s a small sense of “que sera, sera” fatalism in the air. Whatever will be, will be. Tweedle Dum today, Tweedle Dee tomorrow. It’s just another pissing contest between godfathers anyway. The tensions and divisions of Lebanon are too deep-seated for any one president to overturn, and whatever comes is just another storm to be weathered, just like all the ones that have come before. In the meantime, life goes on.
Others are more animated, and argue that the choice of president matters. For tribal interests, for economic interests, for foreign policy. Some say there will be consensus. “Lebanon is strong,” one woman with family in Canada said. “We Lebanese are united, we don’t want war.” Another disagreed. “There will be no president, and fighting. The Americans are trying to create a split between Sunnis and Shi’ites, so that they can get Arab oil. We Lebanese are victims.” Shi’ites rag on March 14th candidates as corrupt puppets of the West, Maronites denounce Hezbollah as warmongers. The simplest, and likely most prevalent opinion, came from a typically pretty Lebanese girl who I shared a cab with. “We are sick of war,” she said tiredly.
Most people are surprised to see us Westerners out and about. In the slums, they stare at us with thinly-veiled hostility. What the fuck are these foreigners doing here at a time like this? Even the university kids and downtown shopkeeps, who speak English and French fluently and are used to the Western set, are surprised. “Do you know that there’s an election? Don’t you know there are… er… troubles coming?” One man enthusiastically explained to me that Lebanon has Sunnis, Shi’ites, Maronites, and an evil empire in the south called “Hezbollah” who wanted to kill us all. I listened politely and nodded.
Last night, a German guy showed up at the hostel. “So many soldiers downtown!” he exclaimed irritably. Well, didn’t you hear about the election, bud? “No!” he replied, slinging his duffel bag on his bed. “If I’d known, I would not have come!”
Election’s one hour away now.
We’re planning to get drunk if they can’t find a president today. Witlessly hammered. We’re going to clean the hostel fridge out of Almaza beers, and pass out at whatever half-filled neo-industrially decorated club will accept us. Justin, my dorm-mate, joked that if he’s going to have to wake up to the sound of machine-gun fire, he’s damn sure going to do so hungover.
Waiting for the war. Anyone have a magic 8-ball?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Living In The Headlines
It’s the little details- the everyday, humdrum routine of life played out in Lebanon- that make the present situation so addictive. It’s doing everything that you’d do back home on a sunny (or rainy) Saturday- while living out of a backpack in a four-person dorm, in a tiny country on the verge of a political meltdown.
It’s about living what you read about in the morning paper.
Whenever I read the paper back home, I always felt divorced from the “Vancouver” described by the headlines. Tax cuts, policy debates, car accidents, and sports games. Well, so what? It wasn’t real to me. I could never see or feel the consequences of those stories- meaningfully and viscerally. Sure, they were taking place in my backyard. And maybe, in some roundabout, systemic way, they were changing my life. But they rarely, if ever, changed my day.
In Lebanon, the tensions and troubles boldly spelt out in the morning headlines act themselves out in your daily life in a thousand tiny ways- each as real and personal as a slap in the face. You live in the frontlines of the headlines.
* * *
I was at the Beirut Marathon on Sunday. Tens of thousands of people jogged, marched, and jostled their way down winding, narrow urban neighborhoods into the cobbled paths of the commercial malls, and then onto the wide boulevards of the waterfront- a colorful, shouting procession of merrymakers taking a welcome break from talk of politics and worry over war.
Of course, politics couldn’t stay away. It never can. Amid the crowd were whole groups representing the various factions, wearing party colors and carrying party banners. There were protest groups from the Khalass (Enough!) Movement and the Lebanese Red Cross. And alongside every street, stationed prominently amongst the performing troupes of blues bands, folk dancers, harlequins, and whirling dervishes, were squads of grim, glowering army troopers with M16s. Huge APCs with machine guns sat ponderously on every street corner.
The marathon wound its way along the oceanfront promenade, where Beirutis slung sixteen-foot-long fishing rods out into the shining waters and tossed writhing fish into wicker baskets. Behind them soared Beirut’s downtown skyline, a schizophrenic mix of the war-torn and the ultramodern. One building had been partially caved in by a bomb, another was a collapsed mass of concrete and girders. Mere meters away, a series of rebuilt glass-paned hotels scraped the sky, with several more under construction.
I snapped a picture of the sparkling, rebuilt Phoenicia International. During the Civil War, this hotel had been the starting point of the “Battle of the Hotels”, in which tribal militias had moved their turf war into Beirut’s tourist district. Hysterical Westerners were driven from their luxury suites into the basements and evacuated shortly after, collapsing the tourist industry once and for all. A security guard came sprinting out, waving his hands. He was afraid that I was gathering intelligence for car-bombers, who would ram vehicles packed with explosives into the front lobbies of buildings during the war.
The next morning, the morning paper disclosed from an anonymous military source that the government had used the marathon as a cover to move more APCs and troops into the streets of Beirut ahead of the upcoming election. Last night, one of my hostel-mates saw truckloads of camouflaged troopers hauling ass downtown. An APC has also parked itself opposite our hostel.
* * *
The army does not like to be photographed.
I was in Tyre last week, a Shi’ite city in the south where support for Hezbollah runs deep. On the other hand, the army, who holds a strong presence in Tyre, is crewed by Maronite Christian officers and Sunni rank-and-filers, and is largely loyal to the government. It’s a tense situation. Posters of Nasrallah and the yellow flags of Hezbollah compete with the checkpoints and gun emplacements of the army, decorated with the cedar flag of Lebanon.
I took a picture of a sandbagged machine-gun emplacement on a street corner. Immediately after, I was accosted by a skinny, bearded man in a black shirt. He grabbed my arm rudely and shouted in my face that I could not take pictures of the army, and that I must stay with him until an army officer could take me back to the local base.
I told him that unless he produced a badge or a uniform, I was going to the nearby Roman ruins, and he could burn in ten hells. The man was unfazed. “I am from the Lebanese Forces,” he shouted pompously. “You leave, I will make trouble for you.”
The Lebanese Forces are not the Lebanese Army. They are a Maronite militia led by Samir Geagea, who is considered a loose cannon with loose screws… even amongst the pantheon of Lebanese godfathers. Yes, the man might have been lying. But what if he wasn’t? I was the only Chinaman in Tyre. If I walked away, sometime later that day, a nondescript car could easily sidle on up, stuff me into the trunk, and take me somewhere to be shot.
So I ended up at the local army base, where the captain pored over my pictures. He asked for my passport; it was stuffed in my pocket. “It’s in the hotel,” I said. I crossed my fingers and prayed that he wouldn’t search my bag, which held a $1500 videocamera. Soldiers in their frayed, mismatched uniforms milled about, trying to dare me into a staring contest. I swore I hadn’t known that I was not allowed to snap photos of the army. Finally, I was released after deleting the offending picture.
This, of course, was a lie. I knew perfectly well that there was a ban on photographing all things military, and I had deliberately been snapping photos of army equipment in the most obvious, touristy way in the hope of getting caught. I had wanted to see what would happen to me.
I learned two things.
One. There are plainsclothed militiamen everywhere in Lebanon. You never know who’s watching. You never know who you’re watching. You don’t know who’s allied with the army and the government. You don’t know who they answer to. It’s anonymous, disconcerting, and intimidating.
Two. The army does not like to be photographed.
* * *
Later that day, I was wandering one of the archaeological sites of Tyre’s ruins. It was a heap of Roman rubble- a field strewn with toppled marble columns and lonely, wrecked archways, ringed by a wire fence. On the other side of the fence stood an equally desolate slum neighborhood. A crowd of boys were playing in the ruins- with rifles. They were taking turns firing a pair of WWI-issue bolt-action rifles at a series of marble column stumps. Another group of younger lads were playing hide-and-seek and catch in a cluster of engraved tombs and half-collapsed walls.
One boy sprinted up alongside me with his friends in tow. “Palestine?” I asked him. I thought they were Palestinian refugees, who have a huge camp, the Al-Bass, smack in the middle of Tyre. “Leh! Lubnaan, Shi’a!” he shouted. No, Lebanese, Shi’ite!
The leading boy then charged me, grinning impudently, and stuck a finger in my face. “You!” He yelled. “You Hezbollah?”
I stared at him. “No,” I heard myself reply. “I’m Canadian.”
* * *
Didier is a dangerously outspoken Quebecois math undergrad who can’t crunch numbers. Last year, completely disillusioned with his degree, he raised his hand in class.
“Sir,” he shouted at his professor. “I suck at Sudoku! Should I quit school?” His prof told him that if he still couldn’t solve Sudoku puzzles within a week, he should think about it. A few months later, Didier had ditched his degree and was halfway around the world with a bike and a backpack.
He was cycling through the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, and stopped at a village for water. A local accosted him rudely, demanding his passport. Didier went Francais on him. “Okay,” he snorted, pointing at a nearby woman. “Go ask that woman if she will show you her breasts. If she does, I’ll show you my passport.”
Didier was arrested.
Over the next twenty hours, he passed through the hands of a bewildering series of militia and government groups. He was first talked to by some men in uniform, then others in civilian clothing. He was then bundled into a car and driven to another town, questioned all the way. At the town, he was handed over to yet another group of men, who interrogated him with questions about the army and Hezbollah.
Didier never found out which militia group “arrested” him. He was never even sure if it was the army itself. He covered this uncertainty by ribaldly insulting every group of men placed in front of him in his rollicking Quebecois manner. At one point, convinced that his questioner was from the Lebanese Army, he burst out: “Hezbollah could kick the shit out of you!”
Finally, Didier was thrown into a brightly lit cell to sleep, and given a piece of green cloth to bind his eyes. He was released the next morning. When I met him, he produced his blindfold, waving it proudly like a towel at a Canucks game. The next day he flew back to Montreal.
“It will be so good to be home, tabarnac!” he said, and I promised to visit him.
* * *
Six of us hostel-mates took a stroll down to the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in South Beirut.
Along the way, we met a young, friendly guy named Sam, who’d studied engineering in New Mexico. He volunteered to take us to Shatila, and show us the surrounding neighborhoods. We were led through slums that were all much of a muchness; the same sand-toned, soot-blackened buildings. Most sported chipped paint, bullet-holes, and makeshift rain-covers draped over holes in the walls to keep out the rain.
The only difference lay in the election posters. In the Shi’ite neighborhoods, the green flags of Amal flew alongside the yellow of Hezbollah. We then crossed a busy street into Sunni territory, and abruptly, posters of Rafiq Hariri, his son Saad, and his allies replaced the Shi’ite militia banners.
Sam is a firm, uncompromising Sunni. He’s the member of a neighborhood watch group (read: paramilitia) called Tareek Al-Jadidah, whose logo, a snarling black panther, is plastered on flags and walls all over his neighborhood. And when I asked him about the electoral situation, he gave me the most heartfelt, pro-Sunni summary I’ve ever heard.
To Sam, Rafiq Hariri was not a corrupt mafia don who embezzled money from construction contracts and headed a Sunni economic elite that marginalized the Shi’ites for decades- he was a benevolent community leader who provided funds for the rebuilding of Beirut and fought for Lebanon’s independence from Syria.
To Sam, the Shi’ites are not Lebanon’s downtrodden second-class caste, but an expanding, extremist population whose heretical beliefs and hate for Sunnis go centuries back to the founding of Islam, when the two branches split over who was to be the Prophet’s successor. Hezbollah is not a legitimate defender of Shi’ite rights and security, but a terrorist organization splitting Lebanese unity and undermining the legitimacy of the March 14th government, whom the Sunnis support.
We passed a poster, on whom were immortalized Rafiq Hariri, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein. Sam read the stylized Arabic on the poster for us: “The dead who do not die”. But why Saddam? “Because,” Sam explained, “Saddam was a defender of Sunni rights against the Shi’ites. He fought against the Iranian Shi’ites in 1980 to 1988.” He was referring to the savage Iran-Iraq War of the 80’s, the last modern war to involve trench warfare and mustard gas.
We reached the concrete hovels and potholed streets of Shatila, decorated with murals of Arafat, the Dome of the Rock, and Palestinian flags, and slung with low-lying, sparking, electrical cables. Children played in a festering garbage dump, laughing and flinging soiled bits of trash at each other; others gathered around an old Street Fighter game in a run-down arcade. Sam shook his head in dismay. “These people are with the Shi’ites now,” he said. “They betrayed the Sunnis, even though we gave them so much in the war. They chose Hezbollah because they gave them money. And if they side with Hezbollah, we will have to fight them.”
Sam plans to march in any March 14th rallies that might take place if a president can’t be elected and Lebanon descends into civil strife. “We have to fight for what we believe in,” he stated matter-of-factly. I tried to imagine him with a placard or bullhorn in hand. With an electrical prod. With a gun.
The thing that kept me up that night was that Sam’s just a regular human being. He plays football, speaks perfect English with an Albuquerque twang, and we traded pickup lines and stupid college quips with friendly ease. Yes, he has political views that I find dangerously biased- but I’ve known Marxists, anarchists, and Fascists, and liked them all.
In sterile, glossy, consequence-free Vancouver, Sam would be just another friend with eccentric political views who you’d debate with over sushi and beer. But in Lebanon, these views matter more. He’s Sunni. And that means he’s part of a tribe. It means that he has to pick a side, and live and die with the old tribal hatreds- no matter how much he might regret having to, and no matter what he might stand for in another, better world.
* * *
The election is delayed till Friday now, mere hours before Lahoud’s term runs out and a presidential vacuum opens up.
The Maronite Patriarch Boutrous Sfeir has released a list of six presidential candidates for the MPs to choose from, including Michel Aoun and two members of the March 14th Movement. Lebanon’s godfathers are refusing to compromise on a candidate.
Bernard Kouchner, the French PM, is scooting circles around the militia camps, trying to mediate decades-long differences at the last minute. The bitter infighting and Byzantine schemes of the various camps are innocuously captured by the morning paper in phrases like: “Obstacles remain to an acceptable compromise.”
On Friday, there will be one president and peace, or two rival governments and war.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
It’s about living what you read about in the morning paper.
Whenever I read the paper back home, I always felt divorced from the “Vancouver” described by the headlines. Tax cuts, policy debates, car accidents, and sports games. Well, so what? It wasn’t real to me. I could never see or feel the consequences of those stories- meaningfully and viscerally. Sure, they were taking place in my backyard. And maybe, in some roundabout, systemic way, they were changing my life. But they rarely, if ever, changed my day.
In Lebanon, the tensions and troubles boldly spelt out in the morning headlines act themselves out in your daily life in a thousand tiny ways- each as real and personal as a slap in the face. You live in the frontlines of the headlines.
* * *
I was at the Beirut Marathon on Sunday. Tens of thousands of people jogged, marched, and jostled their way down winding, narrow urban neighborhoods into the cobbled paths of the commercial malls, and then onto the wide boulevards of the waterfront- a colorful, shouting procession of merrymakers taking a welcome break from talk of politics and worry over war.
Of course, politics couldn’t stay away. It never can. Amid the crowd were whole groups representing the various factions, wearing party colors and carrying party banners. There were protest groups from the Khalass (Enough!) Movement and the Lebanese Red Cross. And alongside every street, stationed prominently amongst the performing troupes of blues bands, folk dancers, harlequins, and whirling dervishes, were squads of grim, glowering army troopers with M16s. Huge APCs with machine guns sat ponderously on every street corner.
The marathon wound its way along the oceanfront promenade, where Beirutis slung sixteen-foot-long fishing rods out into the shining waters and tossed writhing fish into wicker baskets. Behind them soared Beirut’s downtown skyline, a schizophrenic mix of the war-torn and the ultramodern. One building had been partially caved in by a bomb, another was a collapsed mass of concrete and girders. Mere meters away, a series of rebuilt glass-paned hotels scraped the sky, with several more under construction.
I snapped a picture of the sparkling, rebuilt Phoenicia International. During the Civil War, this hotel had been the starting point of the “Battle of the Hotels”, in which tribal militias had moved their turf war into Beirut’s tourist district. Hysterical Westerners were driven from their luxury suites into the basements and evacuated shortly after, collapsing the tourist industry once and for all. A security guard came sprinting out, waving his hands. He was afraid that I was gathering intelligence for car-bombers, who would ram vehicles packed with explosives into the front lobbies of buildings during the war.
The next morning, the morning paper disclosed from an anonymous military source that the government had used the marathon as a cover to move more APCs and troops into the streets of Beirut ahead of the upcoming election. Last night, one of my hostel-mates saw truckloads of camouflaged troopers hauling ass downtown. An APC has also parked itself opposite our hostel.
* * *
The army does not like to be photographed.
I was in Tyre last week, a Shi’ite city in the south where support for Hezbollah runs deep. On the other hand, the army, who holds a strong presence in Tyre, is crewed by Maronite Christian officers and Sunni rank-and-filers, and is largely loyal to the government. It’s a tense situation. Posters of Nasrallah and the yellow flags of Hezbollah compete with the checkpoints and gun emplacements of the army, decorated with the cedar flag of Lebanon.
I took a picture of a sandbagged machine-gun emplacement on a street corner. Immediately after, I was accosted by a skinny, bearded man in a black shirt. He grabbed my arm rudely and shouted in my face that I could not take pictures of the army, and that I must stay with him until an army officer could take me back to the local base.
I told him that unless he produced a badge or a uniform, I was going to the nearby Roman ruins, and he could burn in ten hells. The man was unfazed. “I am from the Lebanese Forces,” he shouted pompously. “You leave, I will make trouble for you.”
The Lebanese Forces are not the Lebanese Army. They are a Maronite militia led by Samir Geagea, who is considered a loose cannon with loose screws… even amongst the pantheon of Lebanese godfathers. Yes, the man might have been lying. But what if he wasn’t? I was the only Chinaman in Tyre. If I walked away, sometime later that day, a nondescript car could easily sidle on up, stuff me into the trunk, and take me somewhere to be shot.
So I ended up at the local army base, where the captain pored over my pictures. He asked for my passport; it was stuffed in my pocket. “It’s in the hotel,” I said. I crossed my fingers and prayed that he wouldn’t search my bag, which held a $1500 videocamera. Soldiers in their frayed, mismatched uniforms milled about, trying to dare me into a staring contest. I swore I hadn’t known that I was not allowed to snap photos of the army. Finally, I was released after deleting the offending picture.
This, of course, was a lie. I knew perfectly well that there was a ban on photographing all things military, and I had deliberately been snapping photos of army equipment in the most obvious, touristy way in the hope of getting caught. I had wanted to see what would happen to me.
I learned two things.
One. There are plainsclothed militiamen everywhere in Lebanon. You never know who’s watching. You never know who you’re watching. You don’t know who’s allied with the army and the government. You don’t know who they answer to. It’s anonymous, disconcerting, and intimidating.
Two. The army does not like to be photographed.
* * *
Later that day, I was wandering one of the archaeological sites of Tyre’s ruins. It was a heap of Roman rubble- a field strewn with toppled marble columns and lonely, wrecked archways, ringed by a wire fence. On the other side of the fence stood an equally desolate slum neighborhood. A crowd of boys were playing in the ruins- with rifles. They were taking turns firing a pair of WWI-issue bolt-action rifles at a series of marble column stumps. Another group of younger lads were playing hide-and-seek and catch in a cluster of engraved tombs and half-collapsed walls.
One boy sprinted up alongside me with his friends in tow. “Palestine?” I asked him. I thought they were Palestinian refugees, who have a huge camp, the Al-Bass, smack in the middle of Tyre. “Leh! Lubnaan, Shi’a!” he shouted. No, Lebanese, Shi’ite!
The leading boy then charged me, grinning impudently, and stuck a finger in my face. “You!” He yelled. “You Hezbollah?”
I stared at him. “No,” I heard myself reply. “I’m Canadian.”
* * *
Didier is a dangerously outspoken Quebecois math undergrad who can’t crunch numbers. Last year, completely disillusioned with his degree, he raised his hand in class.
“Sir,” he shouted at his professor. “I suck at Sudoku! Should I quit school?” His prof told him that if he still couldn’t solve Sudoku puzzles within a week, he should think about it. A few months later, Didier had ditched his degree and was halfway around the world with a bike and a backpack.
He was cycling through the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, and stopped at a village for water. A local accosted him rudely, demanding his passport. Didier went Francais on him. “Okay,” he snorted, pointing at a nearby woman. “Go ask that woman if she will show you her breasts. If she does, I’ll show you my passport.”
Didier was arrested.
Over the next twenty hours, he passed through the hands of a bewildering series of militia and government groups. He was first talked to by some men in uniform, then others in civilian clothing. He was then bundled into a car and driven to another town, questioned all the way. At the town, he was handed over to yet another group of men, who interrogated him with questions about the army and Hezbollah.
Didier never found out which militia group “arrested” him. He was never even sure if it was the army itself. He covered this uncertainty by ribaldly insulting every group of men placed in front of him in his rollicking Quebecois manner. At one point, convinced that his questioner was from the Lebanese Army, he burst out: “Hezbollah could kick the shit out of you!”
Finally, Didier was thrown into a brightly lit cell to sleep, and given a piece of green cloth to bind his eyes. He was released the next morning. When I met him, he produced his blindfold, waving it proudly like a towel at a Canucks game. The next day he flew back to Montreal.
“It will be so good to be home, tabarnac!” he said, and I promised to visit him.
* * *
Six of us hostel-mates took a stroll down to the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in South Beirut.
Along the way, we met a young, friendly guy named Sam, who’d studied engineering in New Mexico. He volunteered to take us to Shatila, and show us the surrounding neighborhoods. We were led through slums that were all much of a muchness; the same sand-toned, soot-blackened buildings. Most sported chipped paint, bullet-holes, and makeshift rain-covers draped over holes in the walls to keep out the rain.
The only difference lay in the election posters. In the Shi’ite neighborhoods, the green flags of Amal flew alongside the yellow of Hezbollah. We then crossed a busy street into Sunni territory, and abruptly, posters of Rafiq Hariri, his son Saad, and his allies replaced the Shi’ite militia banners.
Sam is a firm, uncompromising Sunni. He’s the member of a neighborhood watch group (read: paramilitia) called Tareek Al-Jadidah, whose logo, a snarling black panther, is plastered on flags and walls all over his neighborhood. And when I asked him about the electoral situation, he gave me the most heartfelt, pro-Sunni summary I’ve ever heard.
To Sam, Rafiq Hariri was not a corrupt mafia don who embezzled money from construction contracts and headed a Sunni economic elite that marginalized the Shi’ites for decades- he was a benevolent community leader who provided funds for the rebuilding of Beirut and fought for Lebanon’s independence from Syria.
To Sam, the Shi’ites are not Lebanon’s downtrodden second-class caste, but an expanding, extremist population whose heretical beliefs and hate for Sunnis go centuries back to the founding of Islam, when the two branches split over who was to be the Prophet’s successor. Hezbollah is not a legitimate defender of Shi’ite rights and security, but a terrorist organization splitting Lebanese unity and undermining the legitimacy of the March 14th government, whom the Sunnis support.
We passed a poster, on whom were immortalized Rafiq Hariri, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein. Sam read the stylized Arabic on the poster for us: “The dead who do not die”. But why Saddam? “Because,” Sam explained, “Saddam was a defender of Sunni rights against the Shi’ites. He fought against the Iranian Shi’ites in 1980 to 1988.” He was referring to the savage Iran-Iraq War of the 80’s, the last modern war to involve trench warfare and mustard gas.
We reached the concrete hovels and potholed streets of Shatila, decorated with murals of Arafat, the Dome of the Rock, and Palestinian flags, and slung with low-lying, sparking, electrical cables. Children played in a festering garbage dump, laughing and flinging soiled bits of trash at each other; others gathered around an old Street Fighter game in a run-down arcade. Sam shook his head in dismay. “These people are with the Shi’ites now,” he said. “They betrayed the Sunnis, even though we gave them so much in the war. They chose Hezbollah because they gave them money. And if they side with Hezbollah, we will have to fight them.”
Sam plans to march in any March 14th rallies that might take place if a president can’t be elected and Lebanon descends into civil strife. “We have to fight for what we believe in,” he stated matter-of-factly. I tried to imagine him with a placard or bullhorn in hand. With an electrical prod. With a gun.
The thing that kept me up that night was that Sam’s just a regular human being. He plays football, speaks perfect English with an Albuquerque twang, and we traded pickup lines and stupid college quips with friendly ease. Yes, he has political views that I find dangerously biased- but I’ve known Marxists, anarchists, and Fascists, and liked them all.
In sterile, glossy, consequence-free Vancouver, Sam would be just another friend with eccentric political views who you’d debate with over sushi and beer. But in Lebanon, these views matter more. He’s Sunni. And that means he’s part of a tribe. It means that he has to pick a side, and live and die with the old tribal hatreds- no matter how much he might regret having to, and no matter what he might stand for in another, better world.
* * *
The election is delayed till Friday now, mere hours before Lahoud’s term runs out and a presidential vacuum opens up.
The Maronite Patriarch Boutrous Sfeir has released a list of six presidential candidates for the MPs to choose from, including Michel Aoun and two members of the March 14th Movement. Lebanon’s godfathers are refusing to compromise on a candidate.
Bernard Kouchner, the French PM, is scooting circles around the militia camps, trying to mediate decades-long differences at the last minute. The bitter infighting and Byzantine schemes of the various camps are innocuously captured by the morning paper in phrases like: “Obstacles remain to an acceptable compromise.”
On Friday, there will be one president and peace, or two rival governments and war.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Godfathers
In “Tribes”, I gave you my understanding of Lebanon as a “tourist with an opinion”- in Tom Friedman’s stunningly arrogant words- would understand it.
And I did this on purpose.
If you tune into the Western press- CNN, BBC, Agence France Press, Reuters- you’ll recognize the present electoral stalemate as a battle between the good guys and the forces of evil.
In one corner: the Western-backed March 14th Movement- Christians, Sunnis, and Druse, led by Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated Rafiq Hariri, rebuilder of Beirut and martyr of the Sunnis. Their goal: to curb the power of Hezbollah, to turn Lebanon towards the West, and to uproot Syria’s decades-long influence.
In the other: the Sh’ite hordes of the south, represented by Hezbollah- branded a terrorist organization by the US, at war with Israel, funded by Iran and backed by Syria, and led by the greybeard firebrand Sheikh Nasrallah. Their candidate: Michel Aoun, the ex-rebel commander now allied with militias supported by the same Syrians he once warred against.
A gold star for anyone who can tell me who’s good and who’s evil. You have one guess.
Now, I’ll tell you how the locals see it. But first, understand the following sentence, for in Lebanon, it is the supreme truth from which all other truths are derived.
Ready?
Lebanon. Is. A. Mafia. State.
Here’s the story. It ain’t pretty… but it’s the truth.
History lesson. Lebanon was once part of the Ottoman Empire, incorporated into a geographic region that now contains Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. Most of present-day Lebanon was filled with Arab Muslims of various sects, except for one notable exception- the Christians of Mount Lebanon, of whom the most powerful was a Catholic sect with ancient roots called the Maronites.
The Maronites survived for hundreds of years in a sea of Muslims by living with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the other. They have desperately clung to any identity that would differentiate them from the monolithic towel-headed hordes on Mount Lebanon’s doorstep- a spurious claim to being descended from the ancient Phoenicians, a centuries-old alliance with the Catholic Church, their European-rooted Christian rituals. So it’s no surprise that when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI and the French were given a mandate to govern the Levant, the Maronites went Francophone.
The Maronites embraced Europeanization and French culture, fusing them into their Christian tribal identity. And as the French and British carved up the Middle East into new states, the Maronites demanded a state of their own. The problem was that Christian dominated areas were, and still are, too small to make a viable country. So French cartographers sat down with Maronite leaders and stretched the borders- assimilating whole regions of Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Druse who couldn’t give two hoots about the strange new entity called “Lebanon”- the name of the biblical kingdom that gave cedars to King Solomon to build the Temple of the Israelites.
This is where Ottoman history meets French colonial interference.
Ottoman feudalism was based on a landowning class called the beys, who ruled over vast networks of merchants and peasantry, bound by religion, blood-ties and strings of feudal patronage. The system encompassed all the religious groups under Istanbul’s rule- Sunni, Shi’ite, Druse, and Christian. These clans were bound to regions, and then to smaller villages. To this day, if you ask a Lebanese what village they or their ancestors hailed from, you can correctly pinpoint their ethnicity, religion, and which bey they owe allegiance to.
I say this in the present tense, because the beys didn’t leave with the Ottomans. This is the root of the Lebanese mafia state. The French let the old networks remain within the religious cantons of Lebanon, with their powerful clan chieftains. The patron-client sociopolitical system continued on into independence, through the civil war, and on into today. Although a few are upstart nouveau riche businessmen, most political leaders in Lebanon today are the scions of the old feudal dynasties- grown wealthy, ruthless, and utterly corrupt. And around them are gathered their clans, who owe their sustenance and security to the ties of religion, blood, and patronage that bind them to their bey.
Lebanon is a mafia state because there is no rule of law. It is headed by a tiny clique of dons who are out to enlarge their personal empires, through business, war, and foreign backing. A Lebanese is always a member of a clan before a religion, and a religion before the nation. And the beys of those clans can be seen on electoral posters across Beirut. Today, we call them “Members of Parliament”.
Enter Michel Aoun and Hezbollah.
Michel Aoun is not a bey. He returned from exile in France to curb the power of the mafia dons. And he has the support of around half of Lebanon’s Christians- anyone whose livelihood isn’t dependent on loyalty to the Maronite beys: Chamoun, Gemayal, Franjieh, Geagea. And since Aoun is out to crush the beys in general, it isn’t just the Maronite leaders who don’t want him to be president- the Jumblatts and Arslans of the Druse, and the Hariris of the Sunnis feel the same way.
Guess who’s in the Western-backed March 14th Movement? Chamoun. Gemayal. Geagea. Jumblatt. And Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq the martyr. By the way, do you know why Rafiq Hariri was killed by Syria? He paid $10 million to Damascus in return for help in gerrymandering districts ahead of a parliamentary election- and then promptly refused to put any of Damascus’ recommendations on his party list. Syria was pissed, and put a bomb in his car.
But why is Aoun allied with Hezbollah, the terrorists backed by Syria and Iran?
History lesson number two. When the French created Lebanon, it incorporated the input of the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, the Sunnis of the coast and the lowlands, and the Druse of the Chouf mountains. But it thoroughly marginalized the Shi’ites of the south and western valleys- both economically and politically. This status quo, in which the long-suffering Shi’ites, abandoned by the beys in Beirut, grew into the largest religious group in Lebanon, continued for half a century. Along the way, the Palestinians, routed from Israel in 1967, flooded into the Shi’ite lands of the south. In 1982, the Israelis invaded to fight the Palestinian militants of the refugee camps, and Shi’ite lands were turned into broken battlefields.
Beirut turned a blind eye, its gaze fixed on its own tribal wars. The situation could not hold.
In came Hezbollah.
They arose as a religious and social organization in the 1980s, based on one simple precept. Hezbollah was to provide for the Shi’ites everything that the Lebanese state did not- and never had- provided: education, social services, economic growth, and self-defense against the other tribes, Israel, and the PLO. Slowly, they built a functioning governing and social establishment within the Shi’ite tribe- a state within a state. As Shi’ites, they were backed by Iran, and Syria, eager to maintain its political influence in Lebanon by any tribe necessary, quickly offered its support.
And since Aoun has no love from the beys of the March 14th Movement, he’s likely had no choice but to form an electoral alliance with Hezbollah.
So this, my Western friends, is the real Lebanese election.
It is a war of the beys against Aoun, their potential backbreaker, and Hezbollah, representatives of the Shi’ites forgotten by decades of Sunni and Maronite dominance.
It is a war between the beys who have turned to the America and France, promising a turn to the West in exchange for Western support in maintaining the political dominance of their clans - against Hezbollah, who have been tainted as terrorists by the US government for their aggressive defense of Shi’ite interests against all comers: American, Israeli, Palestinian, Maronite, Sunni- as well as to promote the American lackeys of the March 14th Movement to Western audiences.
It is a war between the Western powers and Syria and Iran, each trying to influence Lebanon’s future through their proxy militias. The US wants desperately to have a pro-Western government in Beirut to compensate for its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, and the US by association, wants a strong central government in Beirut to disarm Hezbollah, as the war between the two entities has now become self-perpetuating. Syria, on the other hand, cannot afford to allow its next-door neighbor to become a Western satellite, and Iran is trying to become the next great power in the Middle East.
This election is not about Syria interference, for Damascus is guilty only of the same motivations as Washington, Paris, and Jerusalem.
It is not about democracy, because if there was real political reform to replace the current system of beys in Lebanon, Hezbollah would win every election. Why do you think that the old system- in which the parliament, and not the people, must elect a Maronite to be president- still exists? Why do you think that Lebanon is still divided into heavily gerrymandered electoral districts that are meant to produce more Sunni, Druse and Christian MPs than their populations should allow?
This is about real, ugly, unromantic politics on the global chessboard: Western-backed tribal godfathers against a Syrian-backed coalition between an Islamist organization representing Lebanon’s forsaken and a Maronite general representing Lebanon’s fed-up.
I didn’t say it was pretty. But it is true.
And I did this on purpose.
If you tune into the Western press- CNN, BBC, Agence France Press, Reuters- you’ll recognize the present electoral stalemate as a battle between the good guys and the forces of evil.
In one corner: the Western-backed March 14th Movement- Christians, Sunnis, and Druse, led by Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated Rafiq Hariri, rebuilder of Beirut and martyr of the Sunnis. Their goal: to curb the power of Hezbollah, to turn Lebanon towards the West, and to uproot Syria’s decades-long influence.
In the other: the Sh’ite hordes of the south, represented by Hezbollah- branded a terrorist organization by the US, at war with Israel, funded by Iran and backed by Syria, and led by the greybeard firebrand Sheikh Nasrallah. Their candidate: Michel Aoun, the ex-rebel commander now allied with militias supported by the same Syrians he once warred against.
A gold star for anyone who can tell me who’s good and who’s evil. You have one guess.
Now, I’ll tell you how the locals see it. But first, understand the following sentence, for in Lebanon, it is the supreme truth from which all other truths are derived.
Ready?
Lebanon. Is. A. Mafia. State.
Here’s the story. It ain’t pretty… but it’s the truth.
History lesson. Lebanon was once part of the Ottoman Empire, incorporated into a geographic region that now contains Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. Most of present-day Lebanon was filled with Arab Muslims of various sects, except for one notable exception- the Christians of Mount Lebanon, of whom the most powerful was a Catholic sect with ancient roots called the Maronites.
The Maronites survived for hundreds of years in a sea of Muslims by living with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the other. They have desperately clung to any identity that would differentiate them from the monolithic towel-headed hordes on Mount Lebanon’s doorstep- a spurious claim to being descended from the ancient Phoenicians, a centuries-old alliance with the Catholic Church, their European-rooted Christian rituals. So it’s no surprise that when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI and the French were given a mandate to govern the Levant, the Maronites went Francophone.
The Maronites embraced Europeanization and French culture, fusing them into their Christian tribal identity. And as the French and British carved up the Middle East into new states, the Maronites demanded a state of their own. The problem was that Christian dominated areas were, and still are, too small to make a viable country. So French cartographers sat down with Maronite leaders and stretched the borders- assimilating whole regions of Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Druse who couldn’t give two hoots about the strange new entity called “Lebanon”- the name of the biblical kingdom that gave cedars to King Solomon to build the Temple of the Israelites.
This is where Ottoman history meets French colonial interference.
Ottoman feudalism was based on a landowning class called the beys, who ruled over vast networks of merchants and peasantry, bound by religion, blood-ties and strings of feudal patronage. The system encompassed all the religious groups under Istanbul’s rule- Sunni, Shi’ite, Druse, and Christian. These clans were bound to regions, and then to smaller villages. To this day, if you ask a Lebanese what village they or their ancestors hailed from, you can correctly pinpoint their ethnicity, religion, and which bey they owe allegiance to.
I say this in the present tense, because the beys didn’t leave with the Ottomans. This is the root of the Lebanese mafia state. The French let the old networks remain within the religious cantons of Lebanon, with their powerful clan chieftains. The patron-client sociopolitical system continued on into independence, through the civil war, and on into today. Although a few are upstart nouveau riche businessmen, most political leaders in Lebanon today are the scions of the old feudal dynasties- grown wealthy, ruthless, and utterly corrupt. And around them are gathered their clans, who owe their sustenance and security to the ties of religion, blood, and patronage that bind them to their bey.
Lebanon is a mafia state because there is no rule of law. It is headed by a tiny clique of dons who are out to enlarge their personal empires, through business, war, and foreign backing. A Lebanese is always a member of a clan before a religion, and a religion before the nation. And the beys of those clans can be seen on electoral posters across Beirut. Today, we call them “Members of Parliament”.
Enter Michel Aoun and Hezbollah.
Michel Aoun is not a bey. He returned from exile in France to curb the power of the mafia dons. And he has the support of around half of Lebanon’s Christians- anyone whose livelihood isn’t dependent on loyalty to the Maronite beys: Chamoun, Gemayal, Franjieh, Geagea. And since Aoun is out to crush the beys in general, it isn’t just the Maronite leaders who don’t want him to be president- the Jumblatts and Arslans of the Druse, and the Hariris of the Sunnis feel the same way.
Guess who’s in the Western-backed March 14th Movement? Chamoun. Gemayal. Geagea. Jumblatt. And Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq the martyr. By the way, do you know why Rafiq Hariri was killed by Syria? He paid $10 million to Damascus in return for help in gerrymandering districts ahead of a parliamentary election- and then promptly refused to put any of Damascus’ recommendations on his party list. Syria was pissed, and put a bomb in his car.
But why is Aoun allied with Hezbollah, the terrorists backed by Syria and Iran?
History lesson number two. When the French created Lebanon, it incorporated the input of the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, the Sunnis of the coast and the lowlands, and the Druse of the Chouf mountains. But it thoroughly marginalized the Shi’ites of the south and western valleys- both economically and politically. This status quo, in which the long-suffering Shi’ites, abandoned by the beys in Beirut, grew into the largest religious group in Lebanon, continued for half a century. Along the way, the Palestinians, routed from Israel in 1967, flooded into the Shi’ite lands of the south. In 1982, the Israelis invaded to fight the Palestinian militants of the refugee camps, and Shi’ite lands were turned into broken battlefields.
Beirut turned a blind eye, its gaze fixed on its own tribal wars. The situation could not hold.
In came Hezbollah.
They arose as a religious and social organization in the 1980s, based on one simple precept. Hezbollah was to provide for the Shi’ites everything that the Lebanese state did not- and never had- provided: education, social services, economic growth, and self-defense against the other tribes, Israel, and the PLO. Slowly, they built a functioning governing and social establishment within the Shi’ite tribe- a state within a state. As Shi’ites, they were backed by Iran, and Syria, eager to maintain its political influence in Lebanon by any tribe necessary, quickly offered its support.
And since Aoun has no love from the beys of the March 14th Movement, he’s likely had no choice but to form an electoral alliance with Hezbollah.
So this, my Western friends, is the real Lebanese election.
It is a war of the beys against Aoun, their potential backbreaker, and Hezbollah, representatives of the Shi’ites forgotten by decades of Sunni and Maronite dominance.
It is a war between the beys who have turned to the America and France, promising a turn to the West in exchange for Western support in maintaining the political dominance of their clans - against Hezbollah, who have been tainted as terrorists by the US government for their aggressive defense of Shi’ite interests against all comers: American, Israeli, Palestinian, Maronite, Sunni- as well as to promote the American lackeys of the March 14th Movement to Western audiences.
It is a war between the Western powers and Syria and Iran, each trying to influence Lebanon’s future through their proxy militias. The US wants desperately to have a pro-Western government in Beirut to compensate for its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, and the US by association, wants a strong central government in Beirut to disarm Hezbollah, as the war between the two entities has now become self-perpetuating. Syria, on the other hand, cannot afford to allow its next-door neighbor to become a Western satellite, and Iran is trying to become the next great power in the Middle East.
This election is not about Syria interference, for Damascus is guilty only of the same motivations as Washington, Paris, and Jerusalem.
It is not about democracy, because if there was real political reform to replace the current system of beys in Lebanon, Hezbollah would win every election. Why do you think that the old system- in which the parliament, and not the people, must elect a Maronite to be president- still exists? Why do you think that Lebanon is still divided into heavily gerrymandered electoral districts that are meant to produce more Sunni, Druse and Christian MPs than their populations should allow?
This is about real, ugly, unromantic politics on the global chessboard: Western-backed tribal godfathers against a Syrian-backed coalition between an Islamist organization representing Lebanon’s forsaken and a Maronite general representing Lebanon’s fed-up.
I didn’t say it was pretty. But it is true.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Tribes
A few days ago, I ditched my Arabic lessons and flew from Cairo to Beirut. There had been a presidential election scheduled for November 10th. Trouble was looming, and I wanted in.
The only thing I knew about Lebanon was that it had the most convoluted politics in the Middle East. It's an alphabet soup of religious groups and paramilitaries: Christians, Druse, Sunnis, Shi’ites, Palestinian refugees- each in turn broken down into smaller factions and subfactions.
This alphabet soup was stirred into a maelstrom during the 1975-1990 civil war, in which Lebanon literally descended into a Hobbesian state of nature. The tribes fought each other and fought themselves. They fought the Israelis, who invaded in 1982 to kick Arafat’s PLO out of Lebanon; they suicide-bombed the US Marines who showed up to impose democracy by the gun. The Syrian army marched in to “keep the peace” in its “little sister Lebanon”- and then refused to leave. Tom Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” contains a passage that captured a sectarian conflict so tragic that it was almost comedic. Friedman quoted an Israeli film, in which a veteran soldier explained Lebanon to a new arrival:
“It goes like this. The Christians hate the Druse, Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Palestinians. The Druse hate the Christians. No. Right. The Druse hate the Christians, Shi’ites, and the Syrians. The Shi’ites got screwed by them all for years, so they hate everyone. The Sunnis hate whomever their leader tells them to hate, and the Palestinians hate one another. Aside from that, they hate the others. And they all have a common denominator: they all hate us, the Israelis.”
Today, Lebanon’s tribes fight instead with words in the halls of power. Central Beirut, a morass of crisscrossing barricades, barbed wire, and bombed-out buildings during the civil war, has been rebuilt into neat boulevards lined with neoclassical buildings housing bustling shop-fronts and crowded European cafes.
But there are skeletons and guns hidden in every closet. It pains me to quote the Lonely Planet, but I can’t best this line: “Everybody has lost a loved one, and behind every corner lurks a scar.”
For every pristine rebuilt boulevard with pretentious echoes of the Champs d’Elysee, there is a slum street lined with posters of destroyed Israeli tanks. For every ultramodern, neon-lighted club with walls of pricey liquor and gyrating Princess Jasmine clones, there is a bombed, blackened shell of a building that has yet to be safely collapsed. Statues and buildings hide bullet-holes- some less discreetly than others. In Beirut, the scars of war sit luridly and unnervingly amidst the bright bustle and modern chic- ignored, yet unignorable.
You could say the same thing about the people. Behind the calm normalcy of the Beirut rat-race lies something intangible and ominous. I can’t put a finger on it, and no one will give voice to it. Again, from the Lonely Planet: there’s a “sense of collective amnesia”. I can’t get anyone to talk about the current election here. Blunt questions are stonewalled with an abrupt change of topic; subtle probing is parried with smooth misdirection. I certainly don’t dare to ask about the civil war. If asking about the election is picking at the scab, mentioning the civil war would be reopening the wound with a steak knife. Everyone I meet has fought in the civil war, known someone who has, or lost someone who has.
But as in every great novel, I’ve learned more from what isn’t said than from what is. And when you read between the lines in Lebanon, you find a minefield of hatreds half-buried beneath a layer of self-imposed silence. The Lebanese have become weathervanes, spinning with the winds of war and fortune. They pack their guns and memories away in times of peace, locking them behind tight lips, bright smiles, the most hard-partying attitude I’ve ever seen, and a desperate determination to milk every last drop of normality. But what will happen if the wind turns yet again?
So here I am, buying sandwiches, asking directions, seeing sights. And all the while, I can’t help but feel that the clean streets and calm civility are a façade for something dormant. I can’t help but feel that I’m shaking hands with Dr Jekyll; that I’m staring at the polished veneer of Pandora’s box.
This is the atmosphere of the lead-up to the presidential election, which had been scheduled for November 10th. Posters are everywhere, depicting the heads of Lebanon’s noble houses: Hariri, Chamoun, Geagea, Gemayal, Jumblatt, Berri, Lahoud. Sheikh Nasrallah of Hezbollah figures prominently in the Muslim slums of West Beirut. Sandwiched between glass-fronted buildings and gardens are barricades and checkpoints manned by soldiers with M16s, in anticipation of civil unrest.
Some background.
Lebanon’s president is elected not by popular vote, but by the parliament- at the best of times a den of thieves and liars comprising the leaders of Lebanon’s tribes. President Emile Lahoud’s term of office runs out late this month. If a president agreeable to all the tribes is not named by then, Lebanon will be plunged into a political vacuum. At best.
Why? Lebanon’s parliament has been simplistically broken down by the Western press as an anti-Syrian majority supported by the US, the West, and most of the Arab world- up against a pro-Syrian minority backed by Iran, Syria, and the Shi’ite (terrorist) organization Hezbollah. According to an unspoken agreement dating from the 1930s, the president of Lebanon must be Maronite Christian, the largest and most powerful of the Christian sects.
The anti-Syrians, made up of Sunnis, Druze, and various Christian groups, have put up four candidates, each of them a relative no-name. The pro-Syrians represent other Christians and the long-suffering Shi’ites- Lebanon’s largest religious group that was all but abandoned by the Lebanese government until the rise of Hezbollah. They have only one nominee: Michel Aoun, who led a bloody and defeated Christian insurrection against the Syrians in the 80s. Now returned from exile, he has shockingly formed an electoral alliance with Shi’ite militias backed by Syria.
The anti-Syrians vehemently despise Aoun. Hezbollah’s Shi’ites and Aoun’s Christians feel the same way about the other side. The Syrians, Iranians, Americans, and Israelis are watching their proxy war with itchy trigger fingers and worried faces. The best option would be a “consensual” candidate that everyone can agree with, but there are none.
Well, so what? You might say. It’s an election. The MPs vote, a nominee is elected, and the rule of law prevails. Right?
Hah. This is Lebanon. There are no rules. If you don't like a politician, you can ignore him... or kill him. Four MPs of the anti-Syrian bloc have been blown up in their cars since 2005- acts attributed to Syria.
If an anti-Syrian nominee comes to power, he’d best take the bus to work. If Aoun comes to power, he’ll be deadlocked against a parliamentary majority that won’t work with him- if he doesn't buy a farm of his own. And if the parliament can't choose a president, it's likely that Lahoud, the current pro-Syrian president, will extend his own term of office until further notice. Lahoud is about as popular in Beirut as a skinhead in a synagogue, and if he extends his term again- for the second or third time- the anti-Syrian bloc may well set up a rival government.
This may have a lot of popular support, with the potential to split Lebanon into rival cantons. A lot of people- mostly Christians and Sunnis- resent three decades of Syrian meddling in Lebanon. Among the blown-up anti-Syrian MPs was Rafiq Hariri, a popular Sunni former PM who had been spearheading the rebuilding of Beirut since the end of the civil war. His death in 2005 sparked a mass outcry of hundreds of thousands- the “Cedar Revolution”- that forced the Syrian army to leave Lebanon for the first time since they entered in the late 70s. What will these Lebanese do if they feel that Aoun's ties to pro-Syrian groups tarnish his credentials? What will they do if a rival government challenges a constitutional Aoun or Lahoud presidency? What will they do if an anti-Syrian candidate is elected... and is prompty blown up by Damascus?
On the flip side, there are the very numerous Shi’ites. They support Syria because Syria supports them. Funding for schools and social services, and weapons to use against Israel come from Iran through Syria. If an anti-Syrian candidate came to power, or if there is a parallel government, the Shi’ites will look to Sheikh Nasrallah for cues- and the old man is holding his cards close to his chest.
So there could be wrangling in the parliament and muttering in the streets. There could be mass rallies in front of the government palace and in Martyrs’ Place. There could be political killings. There could be civil unrest. There could be civil war.
No one knows. But I look forward to finding out.
The only thing I knew about Lebanon was that it had the most convoluted politics in the Middle East. It's an alphabet soup of religious groups and paramilitaries: Christians, Druse, Sunnis, Shi’ites, Palestinian refugees- each in turn broken down into smaller factions and subfactions.
This alphabet soup was stirred into a maelstrom during the 1975-1990 civil war, in which Lebanon literally descended into a Hobbesian state of nature. The tribes fought each other and fought themselves. They fought the Israelis, who invaded in 1982 to kick Arafat’s PLO out of Lebanon; they suicide-bombed the US Marines who showed up to impose democracy by the gun. The Syrian army marched in to “keep the peace” in its “little sister Lebanon”- and then refused to leave. Tom Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” contains a passage that captured a sectarian conflict so tragic that it was almost comedic. Friedman quoted an Israeli film, in which a veteran soldier explained Lebanon to a new arrival:
“It goes like this. The Christians hate the Druse, Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Palestinians. The Druse hate the Christians. No. Right. The Druse hate the Christians, Shi’ites, and the Syrians. The Shi’ites got screwed by them all for years, so they hate everyone. The Sunnis hate whomever their leader tells them to hate, and the Palestinians hate one another. Aside from that, they hate the others. And they all have a common denominator: they all hate us, the Israelis.”
Today, Lebanon’s tribes fight instead with words in the halls of power. Central Beirut, a morass of crisscrossing barricades, barbed wire, and bombed-out buildings during the civil war, has been rebuilt into neat boulevards lined with neoclassical buildings housing bustling shop-fronts and crowded European cafes.
But there are skeletons and guns hidden in every closet. It pains me to quote the Lonely Planet, but I can’t best this line: “Everybody has lost a loved one, and behind every corner lurks a scar.”
For every pristine rebuilt boulevard with pretentious echoes of the Champs d’Elysee, there is a slum street lined with posters of destroyed Israeli tanks. For every ultramodern, neon-lighted club with walls of pricey liquor and gyrating Princess Jasmine clones, there is a bombed, blackened shell of a building that has yet to be safely collapsed. Statues and buildings hide bullet-holes- some less discreetly than others. In Beirut, the scars of war sit luridly and unnervingly amidst the bright bustle and modern chic- ignored, yet unignorable.
You could say the same thing about the people. Behind the calm normalcy of the Beirut rat-race lies something intangible and ominous. I can’t put a finger on it, and no one will give voice to it. Again, from the Lonely Planet: there’s a “sense of collective amnesia”. I can’t get anyone to talk about the current election here. Blunt questions are stonewalled with an abrupt change of topic; subtle probing is parried with smooth misdirection. I certainly don’t dare to ask about the civil war. If asking about the election is picking at the scab, mentioning the civil war would be reopening the wound with a steak knife. Everyone I meet has fought in the civil war, known someone who has, or lost someone who has.
But as in every great novel, I’ve learned more from what isn’t said than from what is. And when you read between the lines in Lebanon, you find a minefield of hatreds half-buried beneath a layer of self-imposed silence. The Lebanese have become weathervanes, spinning with the winds of war and fortune. They pack their guns and memories away in times of peace, locking them behind tight lips, bright smiles, the most hard-partying attitude I’ve ever seen, and a desperate determination to milk every last drop of normality. But what will happen if the wind turns yet again?
So here I am, buying sandwiches, asking directions, seeing sights. And all the while, I can’t help but feel that the clean streets and calm civility are a façade for something dormant. I can’t help but feel that I’m shaking hands with Dr Jekyll; that I’m staring at the polished veneer of Pandora’s box.
This is the atmosphere of the lead-up to the presidential election, which had been scheduled for November 10th. Posters are everywhere, depicting the heads of Lebanon’s noble houses: Hariri, Chamoun, Geagea, Gemayal, Jumblatt, Berri, Lahoud. Sheikh Nasrallah of Hezbollah figures prominently in the Muslim slums of West Beirut. Sandwiched between glass-fronted buildings and gardens are barricades and checkpoints manned by soldiers with M16s, in anticipation of civil unrest.
Some background.
Lebanon’s president is elected not by popular vote, but by the parliament- at the best of times a den of thieves and liars comprising the leaders of Lebanon’s tribes. President Emile Lahoud’s term of office runs out late this month. If a president agreeable to all the tribes is not named by then, Lebanon will be plunged into a political vacuum. At best.
Why? Lebanon’s parliament has been simplistically broken down by the Western press as an anti-Syrian majority supported by the US, the West, and most of the Arab world- up against a pro-Syrian minority backed by Iran, Syria, and the Shi’ite (terrorist) organization Hezbollah. According to an unspoken agreement dating from the 1930s, the president of Lebanon must be Maronite Christian, the largest and most powerful of the Christian sects.
The anti-Syrians, made up of Sunnis, Druze, and various Christian groups, have put up four candidates, each of them a relative no-name. The pro-Syrians represent other Christians and the long-suffering Shi’ites- Lebanon’s largest religious group that was all but abandoned by the Lebanese government until the rise of Hezbollah. They have only one nominee: Michel Aoun, who led a bloody and defeated Christian insurrection against the Syrians in the 80s. Now returned from exile, he has shockingly formed an electoral alliance with Shi’ite militias backed by Syria.
The anti-Syrians vehemently despise Aoun. Hezbollah’s Shi’ites and Aoun’s Christians feel the same way about the other side. The Syrians, Iranians, Americans, and Israelis are watching their proxy war with itchy trigger fingers and worried faces. The best option would be a “consensual” candidate that everyone can agree with, but there are none.
Well, so what? You might say. It’s an election. The MPs vote, a nominee is elected, and the rule of law prevails. Right?
Hah. This is Lebanon. There are no rules. If you don't like a politician, you can ignore him... or kill him. Four MPs of the anti-Syrian bloc have been blown up in their cars since 2005- acts attributed to Syria.
If an anti-Syrian nominee comes to power, he’d best take the bus to work. If Aoun comes to power, he’ll be deadlocked against a parliamentary majority that won’t work with him- if he doesn't buy a farm of his own. And if the parliament can't choose a president, it's likely that Lahoud, the current pro-Syrian president, will extend his own term of office until further notice. Lahoud is about as popular in Beirut as a skinhead in a synagogue, and if he extends his term again- for the second or third time- the anti-Syrian bloc may well set up a rival government.
This may have a lot of popular support, with the potential to split Lebanon into rival cantons. A lot of people- mostly Christians and Sunnis- resent three decades of Syrian meddling in Lebanon. Among the blown-up anti-Syrian MPs was Rafiq Hariri, a popular Sunni former PM who had been spearheading the rebuilding of Beirut since the end of the civil war. His death in 2005 sparked a mass outcry of hundreds of thousands- the “Cedar Revolution”- that forced the Syrian army to leave Lebanon for the first time since they entered in the late 70s. What will these Lebanese do if they feel that Aoun's ties to pro-Syrian groups tarnish his credentials? What will they do if a rival government challenges a constitutional Aoun or Lahoud presidency? What will they do if an anti-Syrian candidate is elected... and is prompty blown up by Damascus?
On the flip side, there are the very numerous Shi’ites. They support Syria because Syria supports them. Funding for schools and social services, and weapons to use against Israel come from Iran through Syria. If an anti-Syrian candidate came to power, or if there is a parallel government, the Shi’ites will look to Sheikh Nasrallah for cues- and the old man is holding his cards close to his chest.
So there could be wrangling in the parliament and muttering in the streets. There could be mass rallies in front of the government palace and in Martyrs’ Place. There could be political killings. There could be civil unrest. There could be civil war.
No one knows. But I look forward to finding out.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Byramids
Ali, the short, pudgy, turbaned local astride the grunting camel, had never heard of Dr. Dre.
Five minutes earlier, Ali had trotted up to me on his beast, whom he’d introduced as Charlie Brown. Charlie was decked out in a colorfully embroidered saddle blanket, had tinkling bells on his reins, and smelled like the green turds he casually splattered on the desert sands as he plodded placidly alongside me.
“My friend!” He had shouted. “Come ride my camel! Very cheab, go round desert! See banoramic view of byramids…”
If I had allowed Ali to complete his well-rehearsed monologue, with his crocodilian smile and his “Ps” pronounced as “Bs”, it would have continued- and ended- like this:
“Where you from, my friend? Canada? I like Canada! I like you! For you only, cheab brice! Very cheab! 150 bound only!” “Come,” he would have said in response to my polite refusals, nudging Charlie Brown into a kneeling position. “Come,” he would have shouted, all genial enthusiasm, leaping nimbly off the camel, brandishing his riding stick. “No ride, no broblem! Take bicture only! Come!”
He would have pulled his turban off his head, wrapping it around mine, shoved the stick in my hands, and pulled me towards Charlie. With forceful motions belied by an endless flood of friendly words, he would have grabbed my camera and guided me onto Charlie’s saddle. A deft command later, Charlie would have swayed upright before I’d have the opportunity to think, let alone protest. I’d pose for a pair of pictures, and only because the shutter would have already been flashing. “Okay!” Ali would have bellowed merrily. “Now ride around desert! Very nice, banoramic view of byramids!”
But no, I might have protested. I don’t want a ride around the damned pyramids. I didn’t even want to sit on your blessed camel- Charlie Brown, his hide so alive with fleas that it looked like there was a biblical plague nesting in his flesh. Can you please let me off this camel, sir.
“Ride around desert now!” Ali would have said. He would already have been seated on another camel that would have materialized out of nowhere, summoned with an unseen hand gesture by a waiting colleague while I’d been posing for pictures. Sleight of hand, like a magician. Distract the audience, pull the trick, and wait for the stunned confusion. He’d have cantered off into the sands, Charlie in tow- my protests growing quieter as I realized that they were being drowned by Ali’s methodic recitations of the histories, dimensions, and splendor of the pyramids- the mighty, ruined tombs of the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.
What the hell, I’d have thought, resigned. Maybe this’ll be fun. And up ahead, Ali would have been hiding a smile behind his bushy handlebar. Egypt 1, Canada 0.
One part of me, somehow detached and dispassionate like a soul hovering over the corpse, would have watched this drama unfold, smirked, and known that I was getting worked. Yet Ali would have talked circles around me with such practiced ease that I would have stood there like Odysseus tied to the mast, mute and spellbound- and I would have been halfway around the desert on Charlie Brown before I’d have been willing to admit to myself that I’d been played like a harp.
Of course, none of this happened.
I’d seen camels like Charlie before- and I’d met touts like Ali before. These chaps have spent their lives- decades since childhood- plying the tourist trade. Some of them pimp out Pharaonic civilization in the form of souvenirs… papyrus scrolls mass printed with hieroglyphics, or little stone models of pyramids, sphinxes, and busts of Tutankhamen and Akhenaton, or jackal-headed Anubis and the osprey of Osiris. Some, like Ali, lead camels and horses around the base of the pyramids, sweet-tonguing foreigners into a ride around the surrounding desert for some exorbitant sum. One chap has a most creative schtick: he’ll conspiratorially tell you that for a small sum, he’ll help you climb one of the smaller pyramids by distracting the guards. But if you try to climb it yourself, he’ll gesture frantically to the guards instead, alerting them to your attempts.
This pack of thieves has one thing in common. The set of skills that the school of life has forced each of them to master consists SOLELY of ways to part tourists from their cash. It’s social conditioning at its most bewildering and amusing.
Each man can speak from four to six languages, but not fully. Whether in Spanish, English, Russian, French, Italian, or Arabic, each has mastered only a collection of phrases designed to begin, guide, and end a conversation that will eventually put your money in his pocket. It’s a play in which all the actors have their lines- and what most first-time visitors don’t realize is that the Egyptians write the script. It’s like those branching option trees: if whitey says A, say B. If he says C, say D. Every response has a creative counter-response, calculated for maximum wit and selling power over years of trial and error. If you tell a souvenir-hawker: “I want nothing, thanks,” he will respond: “I have ‘nothing’! What color you want?” Each man has developed the patience of a priest and the persistence of a paparazzo… if he can’t fast-talk his way into the white man’s wallet, he will instead grovel so shamelessly for his scraps that I’m glad they haven’t instituted a “Take Your Kids To Work” Day in Giza.
I stared at Ali yammering away on his camel, and a hundred thoughts raced through my head.
I tried to register the unbelievable idea that the entire experience of this man’s life had taught him little more than how to beg for my change. I wondered if these touts saw their working lives as one constant indignity after another, having to hassle and debase themselves before indignant foreigners- or if they recognized that sometimes, you’ve just “gotta do what you gotta do” to put shoes on your feet. I wondered if they resented the casual arrogance of these sweating white people with their sunburned bare arms and legs, bulging pockets, invincible economy, and overwhelming culture… and secretly longed to Columbine us all. Or if we tourists were just resources to be dispassionately mined, like wallets with legs.
I tried to reconcile the distaste I felt towards Ali’s greedy eyes and grasping hands with the understanding that this was how he brought bread home to his family, that he was only supplying a demand created by the all-knowing global market, and that if my presence dehumanized him, it also fed him.
And Hell, locals in foreign lands have been taking a cut from Western travelers since before the days of Marco Polo, before Vasco de Gama, Henry Stanley and Dr Livingston, and Freya Stark.
But still. It all felt wrong.
I recalled the earlier part of the afternoon- Kieran and I scampering across the foundation stones of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and lying on the casing stones of Menkaure’s smaller tomb, musing on the engineering genius of their architects and the Herculean feats of their laborers. Together, we had tried to imagine the pyramids cased in white granite with golden capstones, banded in hieroglyphics, populated only by the spirits of kings and robed priests burning incense, and we had laughed at our own romanticism.
There was nothing to romanticize. The glory and mystique of an earlier age had been cheapened by hectic, commercialized modernity, with its sweating throngs of tourists retreating to the comfort of their air-conditioned buses, and Arab touts who littered cigarette butts on the tombs of their forefathers and used a heritage they didn’t understand as a cash cow for their tourist economy.
Fuck it. Ali still sat there with his mouth open, a flood of words on the tip of his tongue. The musing was over.
“Ya’ll know me, still same ol’ G.” I began solemnly, looking up at Ali. The poor man looked confused. There was no prescribed response to Dr Dre. He was still searching his verbal arsenal when I broadsided him with gangsta rap. “But I’ve been low-key! Hated on by all these niggers, with no cheese, no deals and no Gs; no wheels and no keys; no boats, no snowmobiles and no skis.”
Ali stared blankly at me. Nothing came out when he moved his lips, just a bunch of gibberish. Slowly, he wheeled Charlie Brown around and headed off in the direction of a knot of Germans posing with stoic Aryan smiles.
“Mad at me,” I shouted after him. “that I can finally afford to provide my family with groceries!”
Ali did not look back, and I felt a small smirk spread across my face. Canada 1, Egypt 0.
Five minutes earlier, Ali had trotted up to me on his beast, whom he’d introduced as Charlie Brown. Charlie was decked out in a colorfully embroidered saddle blanket, had tinkling bells on his reins, and smelled like the green turds he casually splattered on the desert sands as he plodded placidly alongside me.
“My friend!” He had shouted. “Come ride my camel! Very cheab, go round desert! See banoramic view of byramids…”
If I had allowed Ali to complete his well-rehearsed monologue, with his crocodilian smile and his “Ps” pronounced as “Bs”, it would have continued- and ended- like this:
“Where you from, my friend? Canada? I like Canada! I like you! For you only, cheab brice! Very cheab! 150 bound only!” “Come,” he would have said in response to my polite refusals, nudging Charlie Brown into a kneeling position. “Come,” he would have shouted, all genial enthusiasm, leaping nimbly off the camel, brandishing his riding stick. “No ride, no broblem! Take bicture only! Come!”
He would have pulled his turban off his head, wrapping it around mine, shoved the stick in my hands, and pulled me towards Charlie. With forceful motions belied by an endless flood of friendly words, he would have grabbed my camera and guided me onto Charlie’s saddle. A deft command later, Charlie would have swayed upright before I’d have the opportunity to think, let alone protest. I’d pose for a pair of pictures, and only because the shutter would have already been flashing. “Okay!” Ali would have bellowed merrily. “Now ride around desert! Very nice, banoramic view of byramids!”
But no, I might have protested. I don’t want a ride around the damned pyramids. I didn’t even want to sit on your blessed camel- Charlie Brown, his hide so alive with fleas that it looked like there was a biblical plague nesting in his flesh. Can you please let me off this camel, sir.
“Ride around desert now!” Ali would have said. He would already have been seated on another camel that would have materialized out of nowhere, summoned with an unseen hand gesture by a waiting colleague while I’d been posing for pictures. Sleight of hand, like a magician. Distract the audience, pull the trick, and wait for the stunned confusion. He’d have cantered off into the sands, Charlie in tow- my protests growing quieter as I realized that they were being drowned by Ali’s methodic recitations of the histories, dimensions, and splendor of the pyramids- the mighty, ruined tombs of the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.
What the hell, I’d have thought, resigned. Maybe this’ll be fun. And up ahead, Ali would have been hiding a smile behind his bushy handlebar. Egypt 1, Canada 0.
One part of me, somehow detached and dispassionate like a soul hovering over the corpse, would have watched this drama unfold, smirked, and known that I was getting worked. Yet Ali would have talked circles around me with such practiced ease that I would have stood there like Odysseus tied to the mast, mute and spellbound- and I would have been halfway around the desert on Charlie Brown before I’d have been willing to admit to myself that I’d been played like a harp.
Of course, none of this happened.
I’d seen camels like Charlie before- and I’d met touts like Ali before. These chaps have spent their lives- decades since childhood- plying the tourist trade. Some of them pimp out Pharaonic civilization in the form of souvenirs… papyrus scrolls mass printed with hieroglyphics, or little stone models of pyramids, sphinxes, and busts of Tutankhamen and Akhenaton, or jackal-headed Anubis and the osprey of Osiris. Some, like Ali, lead camels and horses around the base of the pyramids, sweet-tonguing foreigners into a ride around the surrounding desert for some exorbitant sum. One chap has a most creative schtick: he’ll conspiratorially tell you that for a small sum, he’ll help you climb one of the smaller pyramids by distracting the guards. But if you try to climb it yourself, he’ll gesture frantically to the guards instead, alerting them to your attempts.
This pack of thieves has one thing in common. The set of skills that the school of life has forced each of them to master consists SOLELY of ways to part tourists from their cash. It’s social conditioning at its most bewildering and amusing.
Each man can speak from four to six languages, but not fully. Whether in Spanish, English, Russian, French, Italian, or Arabic, each has mastered only a collection of phrases designed to begin, guide, and end a conversation that will eventually put your money in his pocket. It’s a play in which all the actors have their lines- and what most first-time visitors don’t realize is that the Egyptians write the script. It’s like those branching option trees: if whitey says A, say B. If he says C, say D. Every response has a creative counter-response, calculated for maximum wit and selling power over years of trial and error. If you tell a souvenir-hawker: “I want nothing, thanks,” he will respond: “I have ‘nothing’! What color you want?” Each man has developed the patience of a priest and the persistence of a paparazzo… if he can’t fast-talk his way into the white man’s wallet, he will instead grovel so shamelessly for his scraps that I’m glad they haven’t instituted a “Take Your Kids To Work” Day in Giza.
I stared at Ali yammering away on his camel, and a hundred thoughts raced through my head.
I tried to register the unbelievable idea that the entire experience of this man’s life had taught him little more than how to beg for my change. I wondered if these touts saw their working lives as one constant indignity after another, having to hassle and debase themselves before indignant foreigners- or if they recognized that sometimes, you’ve just “gotta do what you gotta do” to put shoes on your feet. I wondered if they resented the casual arrogance of these sweating white people with their sunburned bare arms and legs, bulging pockets, invincible economy, and overwhelming culture… and secretly longed to Columbine us all. Or if we tourists were just resources to be dispassionately mined, like wallets with legs.
I tried to reconcile the distaste I felt towards Ali’s greedy eyes and grasping hands with the understanding that this was how he brought bread home to his family, that he was only supplying a demand created by the all-knowing global market, and that if my presence dehumanized him, it also fed him.
And Hell, locals in foreign lands have been taking a cut from Western travelers since before the days of Marco Polo, before Vasco de Gama, Henry Stanley and Dr Livingston, and Freya Stark.
But still. It all felt wrong.
I recalled the earlier part of the afternoon- Kieran and I scampering across the foundation stones of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and lying on the casing stones of Menkaure’s smaller tomb, musing on the engineering genius of their architects and the Herculean feats of their laborers. Together, we had tried to imagine the pyramids cased in white granite with golden capstones, banded in hieroglyphics, populated only by the spirits of kings and robed priests burning incense, and we had laughed at our own romanticism.
There was nothing to romanticize. The glory and mystique of an earlier age had been cheapened by hectic, commercialized modernity, with its sweating throngs of tourists retreating to the comfort of their air-conditioned buses, and Arab touts who littered cigarette butts on the tombs of their forefathers and used a heritage they didn’t understand as a cash cow for their tourist economy.
Fuck it. Ali still sat there with his mouth open, a flood of words on the tip of his tongue. The musing was over.
“Ya’ll know me, still same ol’ G.” I began solemnly, looking up at Ali. The poor man looked confused. There was no prescribed response to Dr Dre. He was still searching his verbal arsenal when I broadsided him with gangsta rap. “But I’ve been low-key! Hated on by all these niggers, with no cheese, no deals and no Gs; no wheels and no keys; no boats, no snowmobiles and no skis.”
Ali stared blankly at me. Nothing came out when he moved his lips, just a bunch of gibberish. Slowly, he wheeled Charlie Brown around and headed off in the direction of a knot of Germans posing with stoic Aryan smiles.
“Mad at me,” I shouted after him. “that I can finally afford to provide my family with groceries!”
Ali did not look back, and I felt a small smirk spread across my face. Canada 1, Egypt 0.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Talaat Harb Street
Egypt’s modern history is a familiar tale. First came colonization, then independence. Add in a few decades of straddling the fence between the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War while milking both sides for arms and aid. Finally, in the 1970s: trade liberalization and American neocolonization. Full circle. Pax Britannia to Pax Americana. Score one more for the Free World.
The man with the plan was Anwar Sadat, who took over the presidency in the late 60s with two goals. One. He offered Israel peace in exchange for the return of the Sinai, becoming the first Arab leader to recognize the Jewish state. For this, he got the Nobel Prize- and much later, a bullet. Two. He steered the ship of state right into Washington’s arms. Maybe he looked at Egypt’s Kafkaesque socialist system and saw the writing on the wall. Maybe he just wanted to take his fetish for American cars and music one step further. Regardless, Sadat’s “Open Door Policy” flung the gates wide open and lost the key.
The public sector shrank. Foreign corporations bustled noisily in. The American government flooded the economy with aid, and the American arms industry flooded the army with guns. The state retreated from fostering domestic industries, and Egyptian consumers became dependent on Western imports. On top of that, Sadat continued the decades-long trend of ignoring traditional Islamic institutions and vitality of the Arabic language- he was known to deliberately speak in butchered English at press conference just to avoid the use of Arabic.
It was a whole new world. Egypt was closed for prayer five times a day, and open for business the rest of the time.
And now, Egypt sits in limbo between its millennia-old history- the heritage of the Pharaohs, the moral code of Islam, the legacy of the Muslim dynasties that ended with the Ottomans- and the demands and allure of the free market and America’s brand-name pop culture.
We used to live in a hostel overlooking Talaat Harb Street. It’s Cairo’s main shopping strip, the centre of its nightlife, and the place to go to see Westernization flash its boobs at Islam’s conservative tradition. Talaat Harb is the polar opposite of Soliman Gohar. Every facet of life switches from local to global- and by “global”, I mean “Western”. I mean: The Gap, MTV, McDonalds, Starbucks, Motorola, and their identical local equivalents.
Throngs of teenage insomniacs in flashy European threads crowd the sidewalks, sandwiched between lighted storefronts, roadside vendors, and the long, snaking procession of honking cars. Girls ogle at the plastic bimbos preening the latest fashions from behind glass windows. Guys rifle through packages containing the latest camera, cellphone, and camera/cellphone models.
Stores filled with Converse sneakers or polished leather boots compete for business, flanked by European-style cafes with frothy lattes and autumn-colored furniture ripped from the pages of an Ikea catalogue. Across the street from one of the area’s three McDonald’s is the cinema. Its most popular offering: The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. And blared from the staticky loudspeakers of a dozen shops are bouncy Arab pop tunes that sound like an unholy union between techno and the reed pipes of snake-charmers.
Kieran didn’t want to live on Talaat Harb, where he couldn’t go five minutes without someone asking for his business or his charity- in English. “I like to keep away from a certain style of traveling,” he scoffed airily one night over dinner. He was referring to his disapproval for beaten-track travel, where you waste money at shopping malls, go on guided tours to famous tourist-traps, and live only amongst fellow foreigners in Westernized ghettos. That’s not “real” culture. That’s not “Egypt”.
Well, Talaat Harb IS Egypt. It’s Egypt run over by the neon-green freight train of globalization. It’s Cairo’s rowdy, gritty imitation of Broadway or Rodeo Drive; a buffet of Western styles, slang, technology, and attitudes that Egyptian youth wholeheartedly tuck into. It’s a scene I love to hate- watching brown kids in Cairo, yellow kids in Bangkok, and white kids in Rome and Vancouver all consume the same culture cooked up in the boardrooms of American corporations.
The superficial gloss of Talaat Harb hides a lot of uncomfortable realities. Egypt, like most former colonies with deep cultural roots, has spent its modern history thoroughly ignoring them. Successive generations of Western educated elites have spent this century experimenting with the foreign-imposed systems of “democracy”, “communism”, “socialism”, and “free trade”- at the cost of developing a viable “Egyptian” alternative that would update Arabic and Islamic culture and commerce for the modern age.
This sententious argument, which I plagiarized straight off the pages of a textbook on “postcolonial studies” – wait, was it neocolonial studies? – makes one good point: when Western culture was imported along with Western goods, it steamrolled a local culture that hadn’t been revised since the Ottoman Empire. Egypt’s yuppies have learned to see Islam and Arabic culture, while worthy of respect, as archaic- the way you politely greet your great-grandfather and then ignore him uncomfortably for the rest of the family dinner. Meanwhile, they’ve embraced the cultural trappings of the West because they’ve learned to associate it with the financial success and upward mobility that comes with the free market.
Add this to a pair of sobering facts. One. A third of Egypt’s population is under the age of 15, and its population grows by over a million every year. Two. The economy is propped up by huge influxes of American foreign aid. This means that Egypt is breeding more people than its domestic economy can actually support. Without the twin crutches of US aid and the ability of hordes of Egyptians to go abroad as cheap migrant labor, Egypt’s economy might be a ticking time bomb. Some say it already is.
The global market is a fickle god, and despite His diminished presence on the show, Egypt’s other, older god hasn’t quite left the stage. If the economy tanked, I wonder if Egyptian youths’ disillusionment with Western commerce would be accompanied by a backlash against Western culture- and a return to Islam as a vehicle for their frustrations.
This is not a doomsday pronouncement, but a simple observation. The West ignores the concerns and motivations of Arab youth at its peril. There are over a half billion Arabs, and at the forefront are Egypt’s 70 million. Half of them are our age and younger- a trend repeated across the length and breadth of the Thirdworlddevelopingworldglobalsouth.
I think the old white men in Washington and New York had better start asking themselves what their young brown counterparts on Talaat Harb think of their job performances. In the meantime, Kieran and I might try to figure that out on their behalf.
So maybe Talaat Harb ain’t the Pyramids. So it ain’t Al-Azhar mosque, with its marble courtyards and intricate stonework. It ain’t the temples of Luxor, or the oceanfront promenades of Alexandria, or the oases of the Libyan desert, or the fishing villages of the Nile. But that was Egypt then. This is Egypt now.
The man with the plan was Anwar Sadat, who took over the presidency in the late 60s with two goals. One. He offered Israel peace in exchange for the return of the Sinai, becoming the first Arab leader to recognize the Jewish state. For this, he got the Nobel Prize- and much later, a bullet. Two. He steered the ship of state right into Washington’s arms. Maybe he looked at Egypt’s Kafkaesque socialist system and saw the writing on the wall. Maybe he just wanted to take his fetish for American cars and music one step further. Regardless, Sadat’s “Open Door Policy” flung the gates wide open and lost the key.
The public sector shrank. Foreign corporations bustled noisily in. The American government flooded the economy with aid, and the American arms industry flooded the army with guns. The state retreated from fostering domestic industries, and Egyptian consumers became dependent on Western imports. On top of that, Sadat continued the decades-long trend of ignoring traditional Islamic institutions and vitality of the Arabic language- he was known to deliberately speak in butchered English at press conference just to avoid the use of Arabic.
It was a whole new world. Egypt was closed for prayer five times a day, and open for business the rest of the time.
And now, Egypt sits in limbo between its millennia-old history- the heritage of the Pharaohs, the moral code of Islam, the legacy of the Muslim dynasties that ended with the Ottomans- and the demands and allure of the free market and America’s brand-name pop culture.
We used to live in a hostel overlooking Talaat Harb Street. It’s Cairo’s main shopping strip, the centre of its nightlife, and the place to go to see Westernization flash its boobs at Islam’s conservative tradition. Talaat Harb is the polar opposite of Soliman Gohar. Every facet of life switches from local to global- and by “global”, I mean “Western”. I mean: The Gap, MTV, McDonalds, Starbucks, Motorola, and their identical local equivalents.
Throngs of teenage insomniacs in flashy European threads crowd the sidewalks, sandwiched between lighted storefronts, roadside vendors, and the long, snaking procession of honking cars. Girls ogle at the plastic bimbos preening the latest fashions from behind glass windows. Guys rifle through packages containing the latest camera, cellphone, and camera/cellphone models.
Stores filled with Converse sneakers or polished leather boots compete for business, flanked by European-style cafes with frothy lattes and autumn-colored furniture ripped from the pages of an Ikea catalogue. Across the street from one of the area’s three McDonald’s is the cinema. Its most popular offering: The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. And blared from the staticky loudspeakers of a dozen shops are bouncy Arab pop tunes that sound like an unholy union between techno and the reed pipes of snake-charmers.
Kieran didn’t want to live on Talaat Harb, where he couldn’t go five minutes without someone asking for his business or his charity- in English. “I like to keep away from a certain style of traveling,” he scoffed airily one night over dinner. He was referring to his disapproval for beaten-track travel, where you waste money at shopping malls, go on guided tours to famous tourist-traps, and live only amongst fellow foreigners in Westernized ghettos. That’s not “real” culture. That’s not “Egypt”.
Well, Talaat Harb IS Egypt. It’s Egypt run over by the neon-green freight train of globalization. It’s Cairo’s rowdy, gritty imitation of Broadway or Rodeo Drive; a buffet of Western styles, slang, technology, and attitudes that Egyptian youth wholeheartedly tuck into. It’s a scene I love to hate- watching brown kids in Cairo, yellow kids in Bangkok, and white kids in Rome and Vancouver all consume the same culture cooked up in the boardrooms of American corporations.
The superficial gloss of Talaat Harb hides a lot of uncomfortable realities. Egypt, like most former colonies with deep cultural roots, has spent its modern history thoroughly ignoring them. Successive generations of Western educated elites have spent this century experimenting with the foreign-imposed systems of “democracy”, “communism”, “socialism”, and “free trade”- at the cost of developing a viable “Egyptian” alternative that would update Arabic and Islamic culture and commerce for the modern age.
This sententious argument, which I plagiarized straight off the pages of a textbook on “postcolonial studies” – wait, was it neocolonial studies? – makes one good point: when Western culture was imported along with Western goods, it steamrolled a local culture that hadn’t been revised since the Ottoman Empire. Egypt’s yuppies have learned to see Islam and Arabic culture, while worthy of respect, as archaic- the way you politely greet your great-grandfather and then ignore him uncomfortably for the rest of the family dinner. Meanwhile, they’ve embraced the cultural trappings of the West because they’ve learned to associate it with the financial success and upward mobility that comes with the free market.
Add this to a pair of sobering facts. One. A third of Egypt’s population is under the age of 15, and its population grows by over a million every year. Two. The economy is propped up by huge influxes of American foreign aid. This means that Egypt is breeding more people than its domestic economy can actually support. Without the twin crutches of US aid and the ability of hordes of Egyptians to go abroad as cheap migrant labor, Egypt’s economy might be a ticking time bomb. Some say it already is.
The global market is a fickle god, and despite His diminished presence on the show, Egypt’s other, older god hasn’t quite left the stage. If the economy tanked, I wonder if Egyptian youths’ disillusionment with Western commerce would be accompanied by a backlash against Western culture- and a return to Islam as a vehicle for their frustrations.
This is not a doomsday pronouncement, but a simple observation. The West ignores the concerns and motivations of Arab youth at its peril. There are over a half billion Arabs, and at the forefront are Egypt’s 70 million. Half of them are our age and younger- a trend repeated across the length and breadth of the Thirdworlddevelopingworldglobalsouth.
I think the old white men in Washington and New York had better start asking themselves what their young brown counterparts on Talaat Harb think of their job performances. In the meantime, Kieran and I might try to figure that out on their behalf.
So maybe Talaat Harb ain’t the Pyramids. So it ain’t Al-Azhar mosque, with its marble courtyards and intricate stonework. It ain’t the temples of Luxor, or the oceanfront promenades of Alexandria, or the oases of the Libyan desert, or the fishing villages of the Nile. But that was Egypt then. This is Egypt now.
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