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?