my articles: 1
this is coming out in the princeton packet on friday.
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The cease-fire between Israel and Hezbullah has, thankfully, come into effect, though there are still many concerns regarding the implementation of its terms and whether it will last. Throughout this conflict, I have felt torn. I have relatives in Israel and I have visited the country four times. At the same time, I just returned from Lebanon where I was living and studying for five months and I have many close friends there, all of whom have been affected by what most Lebanese refer to as the “July War.”
I studied at the American University of Beirut last semester – a slight departure from McGill University in Montreal where I am double majoring in Middle East Studies and Political Science. Several months at AUB, where I took courses ranging from colloquial Lebanese Arabic to Israeli Politics and Ideological Trends in the Middle East, I felt, would be both the cornerstone of and the gateway to my first on-site experience in the Arab world.
One week before I left, my family had dinner with my uncle who was visiting from Beersheva, Israel. Halfway through the evening, he turned to look at me. He put down his fork.
“So. You’re leaving for Beirut in a week.” I nodded. He told me that I was insane.
For months, I had heard the same argument against my decision to go to Lebanon: You are female, American, and, above all, Jewish. According to many, I was tempting the fates, challenging my executioner to a fistfight with my hands tied behind my back.
But my belief that Lebanon would be safe was well founded. I had read countless books and articles, asked my professors for political analyses, and talked to Lebanese people and others who had lived in Lebanon to study or work. The country is far and away the most “westernized” in the Arab world, a testament to when Lebanon was the “Switzerland of the Middle East” and much of the country’s revenue came from tourism. Lebanese women dress like their counterparts in Paris and New York and American pop culture is all the rage.
Regarding my last name, I resolved to claim generic Eastern European origins.
By the time I left in late January, I had concluded that, while the nature of Lebanon was inherently unstable, the likelihood of conflict in the near future was low, particularly since Syria had withdrawn from the country. There was certainly a security situation in Beirut, but it was, as the President of AUB explained to me, “a nasty game being played out by politicians” far above my head.
One of my first discoveries in Beirut was hospitality.
Nizar, a Lebanese friend of mine from college had given me the names and phone numbers of his closest friends in Beirut before I had left. One evening, I received a call from Joelle inviting me to cook dinner with her and her neighbor, Tamara.
Dinner and the extensive post-meal conversation continued until 1:30 a.m. Tamara subsequently suggested that I sleep at her family’s apartment rather than returning to the university. I felt uncomfortable; I had met her only five hours earlier. Sensing my unease, she assured me that I would not be imposing, that she wanted me to stay. I consented and she lent me pajamas that she had just purchased and a new toothbrush.
I stayed at the apartment the next day, as well. Concerned that I had not been eating sufficiently, Tamara’s mother cooked for me all day and then sent me home with a large container of lentil noodle soup. Before depositing me back at the university in the evening, she gave me her phone number.
“It’s so that in case you need anything or want to be with a family, you can call. Please come again soon, I would like to see you. Welcome to Lebanon, Ariana.”
I had experiences like these continually throughout my time in Lebanon. A girl I met in a shared taxi, Zahya, gave me her phone number in case I needed something. The middle-aged couple with whom I shared a bench on the waterfront one night invited me to their house in the mountains, telling me that, from the moment we met, I was their sister. Fruit vendors regularly sent me home with more than what I paid for, and I spent a day at my barber’s house two hours away from Beirut with his family.
For me, being a foreigner in Lebanon was an asset. The Lebanese are both very proud and acutely conscious of their country’s low standing outside the Middle East. As a result, they exert themselves considerably for foreigners in hopes that their actions will counter any negative conceptions of Lebanon.
I remember watching the news with a friend. Following a segment about Iraq, she clicked her tongue in disapproval. A moment later, she turned to me anxiously.
“When you go back to America, you will tell them we’re not like that, right? I think many Americans believe we are all the same.”
The country’s growing tourism, which came to an abrupt halt on July 12, was an indicator that post-civil war reconstruction had been successful and that people were regaining their confidence in Lebanon in general and in Beirut in particular. The summer was projected to bring 1.5 million visitors to a country of only 3.8 million people.
Beirut while I was there was more glamorous than any city I had ever visited or lived in, including New York, Montreal, Florence, and Barcelona. The downtown area, rebuilt by the late Prime Minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, is constructed of a material that looks like gold. There was always a cruise ship docked in Beirut’s port, its lights changing from purple to red to blue. Rue Monot had once again become the hub of Beirut’s legendary nightlife and beautiful people flocked there every night at any hour. I had to call in advance to reserve at almost any restaurant, bar, or jazz venue in Gemmayzeh.
The Beirut I left in late June was raucous and celebratory, teeming with life and aware that it was finally regaining its status of sophisticated metropolis.
Someone asked me recently if I thought I would return to Beirut. I could not answer the question. On a basic level, entry-points to the country are limited at the moment and will continue to be until money is raised or donated to Lebanon, and then the airport runways, ports, and border crossings are repaired. More than that, though, this latest violence has irreversibly altered the city. I received an e-mail recently from the coordinator of international students at AUB.
"The Beirut you came to know," she told me, "no longer exists."
Indeed, the Beirut lighthouse, where I always began my walks along the beach, is now only half there. At the same time, the Club Med I stayed at in the northern Israeli city of Achziv eight years ago has closed for security reasons twice since then. Club Med’s website says it hopes the resort will reopen later this year.
My American colleagues from AUB have either been evacuated or are stranded somewhere else because they were traveling when the hostilities began, but all of their belongings are in Beirut. Most of my Lebanese friends have moved elsewhere in the city or retreated to their villages.
My roommate from AUB, Ilham, however, lives in Sidon, the regional capital of South Lebanon. She and her boyfriend recently became engaged, but they will not be having a party to celebrate it.
“Mom feels shy for ordering cake,” she told me. “People are dying and it’s not nice to hold the usual parties for engagement. Maybe we will have one when the situation is settled.”
Nizar, the friend who connected me to Joelle and Tamara, has just arrived in Canada from Lebanon with his mother and two younger sisters.
“I’m proud of being Lebanese, of being an Arab, and I love my country. Yet I can’t but think this every minute: Screw being born in the Middle East. You can’t live one second without knowing that everything is just transient, temporary. You can’t even make plans for the future because you know that nothing is guaranteed in this region of the world, not even staying alive.”
In my observations, Lebanese people have progressed through three stages during this conflict. The first was shock. Shock became anger, followed by the humanitarian imperative.
The Daily Star, a first-class English-language newspaper based in Beirut, reported that women went to Beirut’s parks three times each day to deliver hot food to the hundreds of Lebanese from the South and the southern suburbs of Beirut who took refuge there. Those in better circumstances answered the calls for generosity, offering anything from their houses to children’s toys to laptop computers. Several student groups with links to charitable organizations materialized at AUB and among AUB’s students who are elsewhere for the summer.
“This is what we do,” another friend told me regarding wartime hospitality. “War can destroy lives, bridges, cell phone antennas, economies, TV stations, buildings, and even whole villages. But it can’t destroy a people. We are Lebanese. That’s it. If you were here when there was a bomb, I would invite you for coffee.”
posted by Ariana @ 5:27 PM
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