The Rovers

“There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee
There was Hogan from County Tyrone
There was Johnny McGurk, who was scared stiff of work
And a man from West Meath named Malone
There was Slugger O’Toole who was drunk as a rule
And fighting Bill Tracy from Dover
And your man Mick McCann from the banks of the Bann
Was the skipper of the Irish Rover.”

Hotel Talal, sitting square on the Green Line that divided Christian East Beirut from Sunni West Beirut during the Civil War, has been a breeding ground for some quirky personalities.

Lebanon’s a political circus at the best of times, but for a couple of weeks, the situation descended firmly into the “gong show” category. President Lahoud vacated the Grand Serail, the mammoth, Versailles-style presidential chateau, to little fanfare and much apathy. The godfathers bandied crooked words, and the Lebanese Army choked off Beirut’s arteries with armor and barbwire. Hezbollah made calculated threats from their southern lairs. The West and Syria/Iran used Lebanon as their personal chessboard, moving tribal militias, parties, and religious authorities about like so many pawns and bishops. Strife was on the horizon. Blood was in the air.

And like bees to honey- or like crows to corpses- the adventurers, humanitarians, and reporters of the West bought tickets to the show.

Hotel Talal filled up. Small-time journalists hoping for the scoop that would break them into the big-time. Middle-East academics taking the opportunity to do some frontline research. Aimless vagabonds and sunburnt backpackers looking for a little tourism in the headlines- hoping to bring back photos of burning tires, memories of martial law, and a Hezbollah T-shirt or two back home as souvenirs. Party-goers who came to check out the “Paris of the Middle East”- only to find a bizarre mix of Paris 2008 and Paris 1919.

There was Darcy, the baby-faced, hard-drinking son of an infamous Aussie activist, who wanted to promote a one-world government vision he called “pan-Terranism”- through pornography. Patrick, a Polish photographer who “researched” natural hallucinogens in his spare time- everything from mushrooms, to hashish, to opium, to qat. Didier, the Quebecois math student who was arrested by an unknown militia group and slept blindfolded in a dank jail for a night.

Zoltan, a warble-voiced, nerdy Hungarian freelancer with a crushing handshake and a fluent command of Arabic. Leo, a tattooed Brazilian researching Palestinian refugee society in a squallid Bekaa Valley camp. Alan, a grungy, white-haired “freelance humanitarian” who had spent his life jetting between the hellholes of the Third World lending a helping hand.

Steve, a portly, balding blowhard who overcompensated for his cartoonish appearance and a writing career that didn’t quite match up to his own overexpectations by fancying- and worse, by advertising- himself as the James Bond of journalism. Pompous and secretive, paranoid and gullible, Steve was the laughingstock of the hostel. He eavesdropped on every conversation in a half-mile radius, talked in whispers, and boasted emptily of his sexual prowess and two-bit accomplishments.

The hostel crowd, in retaliation, delighted in pranking him. Yesterday, Steve turned green with jealousy when we convinced him that we had interviewed Amin Gemayal, the most well-known of the Maronite godfathers- an elitist prick who wouldn’t give anyone in Hotel Talal the time of day.

There was a small crew of people I hung out with in particular… a little mismatched group that- like the best travel crews- were mashed together by the Providence of Hotel Talal’s dorm-room-distribution, and would never have been friends off the backpack trail.

Jeremy, who rode his motorbike in from Turkey three weeks ago on his way to Iran- a lanky, low-key daredevil who’s rappelled out of helicopters for a forest fire rapid-reaction force, ice-climbed a score of frozen waterfalls, was bitten by a poisonous snake when he chased it to impress a girl, and wrote a book about riding his bike from Alberta to Panama to recover from a broken heart. “It’s called ‘Motorcycle Therapy’,” he’d quip, to good-natured eye rolling at the dinner table. “In stores now. Also available on amazon.com.”

Drew, a hulking, easy-going Californian who spent most of the last year hiking around east Africa, working for a typically obscure NGO in Kenya, and who once escaped being stalked by a pride of lionesses. Justin, who ditched Seattle’s yuppie scene to entertain the world’s backpackers with an astounding repertoire of hip-hop moves, pick-up lines, and insights about American foreign policy.

Tiny, waif-like Miriam, daughter of a former “interrogation expert” for the US army, who studies at a Turkish university and danced as if she were on the set of Grease: The Musical. Sam and Ola, an Aussie and a Brit who used their Muslim backgrounds to score nursing jobs in Saudi Arabia, and who entertained me with tales of the repressed sexuality and tribal-based incest of Saudi Arabia’s medieval culture over a few nights of losing ourselves in Beirut’s space-age nightlife.

And _______, an irreverent, one-man comedy show with verbal diarrhea. Combining a blunt, vulgar sense of humor with a less-than-perfect command of the English language, he provided a sound-bite for every occasion, regaling us with outrageous, barely believable tales of his sexual exploits and past pranks, and leading the tormenting of Steve with malicious glee.

His jovial, rakish demeanor was also completely at odds with a shady past as a political dissident in a nearby Arab state, from which he fled into exile some time ago. With impossible casualness, he’s told me an incredible tale about suffering the consequences of being a rank-and-file member of the underground, and taken me to meet a number of his fellow exiles.

I will relate this to you all after I leave the country from which he fled, for if I become linked to him while there, I will likely face… er… “questioning”.

So what’s happened since?


Simply put, things calmed down. Impossibly, the godfathers realized that perhaps civil war wasn’t in their best interests. Consensus slowly formed around General Michel Suleiman, commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces (which, in case you were wondering, isn’t a militia, but actually is the legitimate army of the state). Despite the obligatory heming, hawing, and tire-burning, the tribes are falling into line. About a week ago, it became apparent that Suleiman was going to be President, and that the rest is just details. Now, all that’s left is for the godfathers to divide up the political pie: what tribe gets what ministry and what jurisdiction in a new government.

No more civil war. Crisis averted. The Lebanese heaved a sigh of relief, and Hotel Talal buzzed with mixed feelings. From Steve: “Did I want something to happen? Fuck yeah!” From Jeremy: “I was hoping that nothing would happen. But if something had, I would’ve been glad to see it.” He related to me a story about his girlfriend, studying for a medical degree: “She would tell me, that as a doctor, you want to cure sickness, to ease suffering. But you also always want to see the most vile, fucked-up diseases in action… because… it’s… cool.”

When I find a better way to describe those twin desires, indescribable and paradoxical, I’ll let you know.

So one by one, the crew left. The bees buzzed off; the crows flew away. To Damascus, to Istanbul, to Paris, to Jerusalem. On the road again. Today, besides that noxious oaf Steve, I’m the last.

So now, I find myself filing away a heap of good memories with good people- of an experience as schizoid as Lebanon itself. Politics and partying. Barbed wire, bombs, bimbos, and beers. Protests and tension by day; debauchery by night. Wandering the ruins of Baalbek and the ruins of Maroun Al Ras. In Beirut, on the intersection between Middle-East and West, between war and peace, between slum-like poverty and ultra-modernity, between the hospitality demanded by Arab customs and the paranoia fueled by countless years of rivalry and war.

I knew half of them about half as well as I should’ve liked, and the other half about half as well as they deserved.

Good luck to you all. See you on the road.