[Peace-discuss] life in Beirut

[Ricky Baldwin]

[Catharine and my good friend Annia has been using a
Beirut hotel room as a base while reporting on Iraq
for the last couple years.  As we returned from
Mississippi and caught glimpses of the news on the
road, we were cold with fear for her safety.  Turns
out she and her husband Mohammed are safe, thankfully,
and she has written the following account for The
Nation. - Ricky]

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060731/fear_shopping_beirut
Fear and Shopping in Beirut

by ANNIA CIEZADLO

[posted online on July 17, 2006]

Beirut

The first warplanes sheared through the sky at about
3:30 am Friday, just as the call to prayer wavered out
from the mosque, the faint, pre-recorded voice of the
muezzin drowned in the rising growl of their engines.
The bombings began soon after, and the anti-aircraft
guns kicked in at about 4 am; we didn't get to sleep
until dawn. I woke up at 9, when a text message
bleeped into my cellphone. It was from a friend in
Baghdad, who wrote, "I hope U R OK and fine. We all
here in Iraq feel worried about U." I was glad to hear
from him, but his message didn't make me feel any
better: When Iraqis are texting from Baghdad to see if
you're OK, you know it's not good.

We were ready for this, sort of. The day after
Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, all of
Beirut prepared for war in time-honored Lebanese
fashion: shopping. We bought siege food, anything that
doesn't need refrigeration--powdered milk, canned
hummus, beans, cracked wheat. Less rationally,
however, we bought comfort food, compiling a
collective shopping list of fear and craving: I bought
a chocolate cake mix for no reason. Yogurt, which will
spoil once the electricity dies, disappeared from the
shelves. And everyone lined up to buy bread. It's
going to mold in a day or two, but who doesn't feel
better after smelling freshly baked bread, and who
knew when we'd smell that again? I bought five loaves
of it. So many Beirutis bought bread, in fact, that
the baker's syndicate issued a statement to the local
radio stations that people shouldn't stockpile bread,
because they have enough flour to continue making it.
"If you do continue to stockpile bread," warned the
bakers, "it will contribute to the crisis." Does that
mean that if I stop buying bread, Israel and Hezbollah
will stop bombing each other?

Our politics were as schizophrenic as our shopping
baskets. The first day, everyone I talked to was
furious at Hezbollah. "How can I express my anger?"
wrote a Lebanese friend in a mass e-mail blazing with
sarcasm. "Maybe by saying bravo to Hizbollah, thank
you to Hizbollah. Thank you for ruining the entire
season for the poor Lebanese who have been struggling
so hard to cover the losses of last year's events...
for destroying the tourism industry and
infrastructure? for weakening yet again an already
weak government and flushing all the hopes of millions
of Lebanese down the drain? should I say more?"

But then Israel bombed the airport, and suddenly,
surprisingly, I was hearing cautiously approving
statements from people who'd always railed against the
Shiite militia before. These were Christians and
secular Muslims, not Hezbollah partisans, but they
saved their wrath for Israel and the United States. "I
am angry, definitely, at the Israelis," said my friend
George, who until now had always been adamant that the
Party of God should give up its arms, like all the
other militias that sprang up during the Lebanese
civil war. "They have replied in a very aggressive
manner. It shouldn't take this much to get back the
two hostages. But what I'm also angry at is the US.
They haven't done anything yet. They say that they are
the country which helps the underprivileged countries,
but they have done nothing to help us."

As if this wasn't confusing enough, another friend
confessed to feeling nostalgia for Ariel
Sharon--wishing the man his critics once called the
"Butcher of Beirut" were still in command, instead of
a relatively inexperienced Israeli government with
everything to prove and Hamas on its hands. My
American friends were all calling me up, asking if
this whole thing was hurting Hezbollah's credibility
or helping it. I had no idea, and I don't think anyone
else did either.

Late Friday night, at about 8:30, Hezbollah's bearded,
apple-cheeked leader, Hassan Nasrallah, announced that
his fighters had just bombed an Israeli warship. Look
out of your windows, he said, and you'll see the ship
that attacked your homes in flames. "Now in the middle
of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that
has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and
civilians--look at it burning," he said in a
tape-recorded message. He promised the Israelis more
"surprises."

It was a hot night, and we had all the windows open.
As soon as Nasrallah made his dramatic announcement, I
heard cheers and clapping from nearby apartments. Soon
after that, cars took to the empty streets honking in
celebration, as though the death and destruction that
had been and would surely follow were a wedding or a
World Cup victory. Don't they realize this means more
bombings, more missiles, another war, I thought? Is he
trying to take us all out with him, make Lebanon into
a nation of shaheeds?

As usual, my mother-in-law summed it up best. "Why is
Hezbollah doing this now? What are they thinking?" she
complained. "Look at Egypt and Jordan, and all the
other Arab countries--they're not attacking Israel.
It's only in Lebanon that we we carry the board
sideways," she said, using a Lebanese expression for
someone who tries to force a board horizontally
through a doorway, stubbornly ramming it against the
doorframe, instead of simply turning it vertical to
carry it through. 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com