Power Struggle in Lebanon

Keeping the lights on in Beirut, and in Lebanon in general, is no mean feat. I'm writing this from my balcony looking out over the ocean and part of the city as twilight turns to night. The power in my building went out about 20 minutes ago, so I hopped out onto the balcony to see who else was without juice. Looking east along the Corniche, I can see the entire 8-story Bayview Hotel, including its first floor Hard Rock Cafe, blink in and out of existence as it loses and regains power several times per minute, as though its rooms were lights on a Christmas tree. The outsized Hard Rock guitar on the façade seems to turn off before the rest of the hotel and regain luminescence much later. In contrast, behind the Bayview and commanding the most attention on the skyline are the lights of the Four Seasons, carving a elegant curve against the night sky with the silhouette of a candle's flame. Notable is that the Four Seasons is under construction and nowhere near open, yet they have adumbrated the building's skeleton with brilliant blue and white lights seemingly immune to the vagaries of the capricious Lebanese electrical system. I suppose they are either sitting on a different grid than the Bayview and my darkened building, or the Four Seasons leaves nothing to chance and has diesel generators in the basement.

Today I visited the National Museum and got to see some of the earliest examples of human alphabetic writing in the form of Phoenician carvings on tombs. The museum showed a wonderfully put together film documenting the damage that was inflicted on the museum during the Lebanese civil war, and the work that was undertaken to restore it. Halfway through the film, the museum lost power, and the audience was plunged into total darkness inside the little theatre. Nobody said a word or moved for perhaps five minutes, behaving almost as though the film were still on. Finally, a American-accented Lebanese boy shouted, "We want our money back yalla!"

Construction (or reconstruction) seems to be the business to be in here in Beirut, what with all the new construction of hotels and condos, and of course the endless repair of the many scars left over from the last 30 years of conflicts, occupations, terrorist attacks, and inclement weather. Most notable of these scars, at least to me, is the ghost of the perhaps 20-story Holiday Inn that stands smack in the middle of Hamra near the city center. This windowless bullet-riddled shell is a mystery to me, as even the boundless Lebanese optimism must see it as a write-off, it has not been turned into a memorial to remind us with its gaping holes why civil wars are bad, and yet it has not been demolished to make way for something else. Just feet away from it is a haute couture boutique defiantly selling slinky dresses and bejeweled purses to the stratospherically wealthy. If anyone knows what the plan is here, please write to me because I am quite curious.

Speaking Mexican

By and large, folks in Syria and Lebanon are quite comfortable speaking to me in Classical Arabic (Fusha) in the streets, in stark contrast to my experience in Egypt. Everyone is so gracious in accommodating my many mistakes. But here in Lebanon this morning, I heard someone remark behind me that I was speaking Mexican. I spun around and indignantly told the guy that I was actually American, and I was pretty sure I was speaking Arabic, thank you so much.

"Oh no, you speak Fusha beautifully! But we call it 'Mexican' here, because we watch Mexican soap operas and they are all dubbed into Modern Standard Arabic. When we hear someone speaking Fusha, as you are, we say they're speaking Mexican. Anyway, welcome to Lebanon!" I sort of cried but mostly laughed, and then asked why they watch Mexican soaps and not the wildly popular Egyptian soaps which are in colloquial language. "Egyptian soaps are all about politics, or religious problems, or things like that. Mexican soaps are just about love and divorces and re-marriages, so we watch them instead, even though they are in Fusha."

About an hour later, someone else in the street asked me if I was Iranian, because I spoke Arabic like Iranians do, and I looked like someone they knew from Iran. Someone overheard him and said to me, "You are Iranian? I have a cousin in Tehran. Welcome to Lebanon!"

Entering Lebanon

Sitting on a balcony gazing across a lush valley of farms sitting between two mountain ranges running north-south, I eavesdropped over French-speaking tourists sipping chilled white wine from local vineyards. Breezy but warm with constant sun, I counted three Hummer H3's pass by on the main street below. I could have been in Napa, were it not for the yellow and green Kalishnikov-branded Hezbollah flags flapping everywhere, and pictures of martyrs hanging on all the street lamps. And in between my hotel balcony and the farms are ancient Roman ruins cut from some of the largest stones found anywhere on Earth. No, I'm not in Napa. I'm in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, home to the Party of God, the Baalbek ruins, wine country, Lebanon's cannabis production, and frequent power outages. This place is quite a cocktail.

I entered Lebanon from Syria in the north, via one of the four possible border checkpoints between the two countries. The border crossing experience was similar to my previous experiences from years ago: suddenly there are extra fees and surcharges not mentioned in any guidebook or website. After about 15 minutes of arguing, complaining, flattering, outright lying, admonishing, reciting poetry, and declaiming in formal Arabic about how a guest must be treated as a gift of God and not a dog in the street, I went from paying $100 for a 2-week visa to paying nothing for a 1-month visa. I gave both sides about $2 in baksheesh and on we went.

The first image that gripped me as we rocketed southward through the Bekaa was the mountain ranges on each side: the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges. To the west, high atop one of the peaks, I saw snow! The ancient taxi swayed from side to side as the constant strong wind from the West pushed us sideways. The northern part of the valley is fairly sparse, but every tree I saw slanted decidedly to the East. If I were a better writer, I suppose I would try to make a metaphor out of the effect of this relentless pressure from the West, but I won't beat that poor horse any further.

I arrived at the infamous Palmyra hotel, headquarters to the Germans in WWI, and the British in WWII. The place is enormous, grand, full of relics, faded, and certainly haunted. The theme song from "The Addams Family" popped into my head: "Their house is a museum: When people come to see 'em, it really is a scre-am, the Addams family!"

Even though Hezbollah is a bona fide political party here in Lebanon with seats in government and a local reputation for increasing social welfare, I am used to seeing either an Elephant or a Donkey on a political party's flag, not an assault rifle gripped in a fist. And I guess from whatever I've gotten out of newscasts and books, I associate Hezbollah with extremism and violence toward the West. I walked up to a guy selling Hezbollah T-shirts and after a few cups of tea and idle chitchat, I asked him point blank if I was going to run into any problems here in the Bekaa as an American wandering around snapping photos. I have since had the following conversation several times here in the Bekaa, and it goes like this:

(Translated from Arabic)

Me: Am I safe here in the Bekaa?

Hezbollah Dude: Absolutely. My house is your house. We have a huge problem with American policy toward Israel, but not with American people. We have Christians, Sunni, Shiite, and all kinds of foreigners here in the Bekaa, and everyone lives side by side and gets along fine.

Me: So it's safe for me here?

Hezbollah Dude: Sure. The place has been quiet and safe since Israel left two years ago. By the way, can you get me a visa to come live in America? And a job, too? I have a cousin in Detroit. I love Arnold the Terminator!

Me: You are of course aware that he is now governor of the State of California?

Hezbollah Dude: Yeah right! You Americans and your jokes!

By sheer serendipity, I happened to be in Baalbek at the time of their annual arts festival, hosted amidst the walls of the ruins. I'm reluctant to even call them ruins, since that usually implies a handful of stones spread across an acre of remote desolate land, accompanied by a plaque containing a sketch of what the place probably looked like back in the day, and a description that invariably begins with "Imagine the splendor that once was!". In Baalbek, imagination is not required. The place is epic and the stuff of legend, cut from blocks the size of a New York apartment. Last night it hosted a concert featuring the Tania Maria Quartet from Brazil. I had not heard of her, but when in Roman ruins....

Lots of Lebanese from this area fled to Brazil during Druze-Christian fighting a century ago, so about half-way through the concert, Brazilian flags came out in force, and the Temple of Jupiter rocked with Mas que Nada under the light of a full moon.

Last fall I was featured on GloboTV, Brazil's largest news channel, and at the time I thought it odd that Brazil would care so much about Arabic. Now I see why.

Language in Syria

It did not take me but a few hours in Syria to realize that my Arabic here was going to take me much further than it ever did in Egypt, and that I was going to comprehend more of what was being said to me. The Modern Standard Arabic I learned academically is much closer to Syrian colloquial than it is Egyptian colloquial, in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. And my personal experience suggests that the average Syrian on the street is able to produce educated Arabic much more readily than the average Egyptian, so in a pinch, they can speak like a newscaster to make themselves understood to me. But what has struck me most about the dialect here is the intonations and rhythm. It's difficult to explain in words, but I suppose many English speakers have one accent they like the best (for me it's Edinburgh Scottish or New South Wales Australian) and the one that grates on them (not telling!). For some reason the Damascene dialect sounds to me like someone is singing softly, the tones of the sentence not unlike what I'd hear on the beaches in California. I adopted it instantly.

After a few delightful days in Damascus, I took off for Hama in the northwest, where 70ft-tall wooden waterwheels creak away on the Orontes river. I used Hama as a base to go exploring all the cool ruins and citadels in the area, including Apamea, the ghost-towns of Syrgilla, the citadel of Salah al-Din, and most importantly, the Krak de Chavaliers. I got a driver (Muhammad) and off we went for two days, driving up and over mountain passes, across lush valleys, seemingly volcanic fields, and through tiny towns. Muhammad was relieved that he was not going to spend another two days of his life in a car in total silence with a tourist who spoke no Arabic (since he spoke no other language), and I found his Arabic to be extremely accessible and pleasant, so we got to chatting about all sorts of things, from religion to children to relationships to the local economy. We stopped off at one cafe where he offered me some Iranian beer, insisting it was non-alcoholic. A quick glance at the label on this liter bottle showed a big "3.5%", which is certainly alcoholic beer, if perhaps unsatisfying. Muhammad glanced back at me and allowed as to how, yes, there were traces of alcohol, but it was so small that it didn't count, so it was not forbidden for him to drink. A saying popped into my head: "Never underestimate the power of denial." 

Wherever we would go, I would hop out of the car and make my way to the ticket area. Pretty much all my conversations with Syrian ticket people would go as below. But first you need to know that Nizar Qabbani was a famous Syrian diplomat, thinker, and poet, and is a huge source of pride for people here. As a sweeping generalization, folks in the Middle East know their poets like Americans know Brittany Spears. 

(Translated from Arabic)

Me: Hi there! Good afternoon! How are things?

Ticket Dude: Uh. Welcome! Are you speaking Arabic?

Me: To some extent, yes, I am.

Ticket Dude: There, again, you spoke more Arabic. Where did you learn this?

Me: Arabic? Oh, from books mostly, and from the poems of Nizar Qabbani. 

Ticket Dude: Qabbani!? You...you have heard of him?

Me: Heard of him? Let me recite for you one of my favorites.....

[recital complete with emotional hand waving]

Ticket Dude: Allahu Akbar! What brings you to Syria?

Me: I was studying in Egypt but wanted to see Syria. I am American.

Ticket Dude: American! You are welcome here in Syria! How do you find our country? 

Me: I guess you could say I came for the citadels but stayed for the food and the people. How much is the ticket?

Ticket Dude: No, you are a guest here. Please come in.

In Syria

After over six weeks of non-stop Egypt, I am in Syria, feverishly writing down my first impressions as they wash over me. But I almost didn't get here. Flying out of Cairo was a mêlée or a mosh pit or perhaps uncorked anarchy is a better description. It was physical and people were screaming at each other in a way that was not the normal Arab screaming, using hand gestures that did not need a lot of translating. An Iraqi fellow standing near me must have seen the panic in my eyes. He told me to stick by him at all costs as he shepherded me through various mobs of people, explaining to me how he was on my flight to Damascus to visit his mother, who had fled Bagdad. He was in Baghdad until late 2005, when Shiite militia started killing all the engineers and doctors. His son is studying computer science in North Carolina, so we bonded instantly on the engineering connection. I then realized that he was wearing a pocket protector equipped with several pens and a notebook, and that he was awkward in speaking with others and had trouble with eye contact. He definitely had the engineering gene.

I now want to give Egypt Air credit for figuring out how to get an aircraft to 25000ft while maintaining a cabin temperature of over 90F despite outside temperatures hovering around -30F.

Just as our front wheel touched down in Damascus, the plane erupted with a simultaneous "Al Hamdu Lillah!" (Thanks be to God!), at which point everyone jumped up out of their seat and started wildly pawing at the overhead bins, climbing over each other, and of course screaming again, despite our rocketing down the runway at speeds in excess of 100mph. And in the background of this cacophony, if you strained to hear it, were the soft-spoken pre-recorded words inviting us all to please remain in our seats with seatbelts fastened until the plane had reached the gate and the fasten seatbelt light had turned off. We taxied for an unbelievable five minutes with everyone standing up, lurching from side to side as the plane turned this way and that, and when the barn door finally did open, it was all I could do to get out of the way of the stampede.

Apparently the luggage is handled by the same folks who compete in the hammer throw, because the luggage of our flight, and I guess all flights, was strewn about the waiting area according to a scheme known only to Muhammad (PBUH), his close friends, and associates. I waded thru the luggage swamp with everyone else, pushing and shoving, for about 10 minutes before I found mine.

But then I stepped outside into a warm and beautiful Syrian evening with an orange sky and a calm breeze, and all the muscles in my neck relaxed at once. I hopped in a taxi and in the space of a 20 minute cab ride, I jotted down these observations, mostly in contrast to my experience in Egypt:

- The car was a Chevy, and from this century without a doubt. Almost all Egyptian cabs are ancient Russian beasts. Syria has a blend of American, Iranian, and Indian cabs.

- The roads are paved and smooth. There are highways and overpasses. With signs. Cars can travel at speeds in excess of 50MPH without risk of imminent death.

- Syria is clean. Compared to Cairo or Alexandria, one could say that the place is gleaming.

- Horns are used only most of the time, or perhaps just very often, instead of all of the time. Horn volume has not been modified to cause pain.

- The air is cleaner, perhaps because so many cars in Syria have mufflers.

- There are stoplights! People observe them!

- Buses look like they are straight from Europe, with digital readouts on the side and bright colors.

- The buildings do not look like they are disintegrating. New constructions are not crumbling.

- Lots of cool looking shops, restaurants.

- People in the streets look lively, purposeful, even healthy.

- "Ahlan wa Sahlan" (Welcome) is the go-to phrase here, instead of "Al Hamdu Lillah" (Thanks be to God)

- Far less conservative. Only about 30% of the women wear the hijab, compared to maybe 98% in Alexandria.

Before I knew it, I was settled into my room and immediately started walking the kilometer into the Old City. Damascus is not at all what I remember from when I was here in 1995. I have for years called Damascus the creepiest place I have ever been, with Assad Sr. peering down at me from every lamppost and overhang, and tourist police hassling any locals who would talk to me without having the proper licenses. But Damascus of 2008 is thriving, welcoming, and apparently open for business. The place is packed, with hotels 100% full, restaurants turning tables, and the main Souq al-Hamadiyya brimming with activity.

Wandering through the souq's maze-like warren of alleys and byways, some just three feet wide, remind me of how old things are here. Damascus is sometimes said to have no history, since there has always been Damascus. It's perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth. Considering the place has essentially not had a day off in about 7000 years, it is aging well. I found a rooftop restaurant next to the walls of the citadel, and as I watched the moon rise over the Omayyad mosque, I ate my best meal in over six weeks, my now dormant and atrophied taste buds apoplectic from the sudden and unexpected rush of flavor.

El Alamein and Marsa Matrouh

I'm back from a fantastic weekend in Marsa Matrouh, a resort town on the northern Egyptian coast out by the Libyan border. We started on Thursday morning which meant skipping a day of classes, which suited everyone just fine. We wanted to get on the road early since the drive would be about 4hrs, and I wanted to stop at El Alamein to see the WWII museum there. For some reason, we were traveling without our multi-vehicle armed security escort this weekend, so it was just a handful of us in a mini-van. Nobody could ever really put a finger on why we had the escort last weekend, or why we didn't have one this weekend. These weekend trips, I'm learning, are the result of complex negotiations with the governor of this province, the mayor of that city, the cousin of the dean of the university, the brother of somebody else's cousin, and so on. I spent a bit of energy once trying to figure it all out, but I soon gave up and now I just show up when I'm told.

The museum at El Alamein was one of the best organized and creative museums I've seen in Egypt. They have so much authentic material from the desert campaign there--- uniforms, maps, ciphers, tanks, UXO (unexploded ordinance...seems iffy in a place where safety is not a top priority). I'd read a lot about this place, so I really appreciated the opportunity to drive through the region and see it with my own eyes.

Not long after getting back in the van, and right around the time we were equidistant from our origin and destination, our mini-van began to complain of the heat. Whereas once we had been galloping across the desert at a dangerous yet carefree tantivy, we were now plodding along the side of the road at barely a trot. Finally, we came to a stop near some Bedouin tents (nobody else out there for miiiiiiiles and miles), and began working on the radiator. As we sat in the blazing sun, soaked in sweat, I was imagining how poorly this weekend trip was going to turn out, and I wondered how so much could go wrong on any given day here in Egypt. We got the beast going and lots of short hops later, we rolled into our hotel named after Cleopatra due to her alleged bathing activity in the nearby waters. After seeing the Med turned into a thick garbage-strewn soup in Alexandria, I was giddy at the idea that there might be water here in Egypt that had not been completely destroyed. Despite an electric power plant being just 25 meters from our beach, the water was nice and the hotel was incredibly peaceful and calm. I jumped right in and splashed around for the first time this trip.

The next day we went out to a beach called "ageeba" (عجيبة) which means "amazing" in Arabic. Many aspects of this beach were indeed amazing, but for Loren the swimmer, the most amazing part of the beach was that I had this entire body of impossibly blue water, as far as the eye could see, to myself. We weren't alone at the beach by any means (see photo), but most Egyptians don't (or can't) swim, so they just go to beaches and wade in up to their knees. In this case, nobody got in at all due to somewhat rough conditions, so I swam around gleefully and played in the waves, careful to avoid the burqa-clad woman casting a line in my direction from shore. Speaking of women's clothes, a new word entered my vocabulary this weekend as I lounged on the shore--- the "burqini".

We headed home this morning but stopped off at Rommel's bunker headquarters (he also liked Marsa Matrouh). It's a pretty simple bunker, but it's striking in that they have it pretty much as it was left at the end of the desert campaign, complete with Rommel's field jacket, his desk, a Nazi flag on a flag pole, and maps showing tank placements, etc. I got a chill as I took hold of the Nazi flag and pulled it away from the flagpole, revealing the swastika. I can't think of another flag that would make that sort of impression on me, and I couldn't help but think that dire forces were somehow embodied in that cloth. I got the hell out of that bunker and headed down the road to McDonald's, where I slurped down a chocolate shake and a McArabia as I took in the brilliant blue of the Med one last time.

We made it back safe and sound to Alex, where I am about to begin my last week here before heading to Syria. I'm looking forward to it!

Port Said, Rosetta, and the Suez Canal

One of the goals of the program I'm on here is cultural education, so we've been allotted three weekend trips for the summer. The first was Cairo, which as I mentioned was a highlight of the entire summer so far. Friday morning we hopped in a van with an Egyptologist and took off for Rosetta (aka Rasheed), and Port Said. Rosetta is the place where some lucky French soldier found the Rosetta Stone, which enabled the ancient hieroglyphics to be read. Unfortunately, our Egyptologist was sent packing just hours into the weekend due to a religious misunderstanding that is too sad to recount here, so I ended up wandering around hot dusty alleys looking at ancient buildings without any real idea of their significance, contemplating how much human energy has gone into (and will continue to go into) arguing about religion.

We rode in silence for two hours to Port Said, a town that seems to have but two purposes these days: hosting weddings, and providing the last stop in the Suez Canal before it dumps into the Med. From my hotel room, I could see a dozen enormous cargo ships lined up on the horizon either coming or going to the canal.

Perhaps the most notable element of the trip was the company we kept. From the time we left Alexandria until the time we returned safe and sound, we had armed escorts. I took a few photos of this to try to convey what was happening here, but imagine a little mini-van on a remote desert road, flanked by police motorcycles, police cars with sirens and lights going, and a light-duty troop carrier with a handful of bored cops. We traveled like this for several hundred miles in each direction. When we walked around shopping in the souk, we had two plain clothes guys with automatic weapons under their jackets just steps behind us. These were real cops, not the ubiquitous chain-smoking half-asleep guys in ill-fitting white tunics perched outside every building in the country.

As Egypt is broken up into jurisdictions, we had to switch escort groups every 100km or so. Like a cell phone call getting passed from one tower to the next, or a runner passing the baton, these escorts would converge on the road, honk a bunch of times at each other to signal the hand-off, and then we'd press on at top speed, forcing all other cars out of the way. Of course, these cars would then look at our mini-van, see Westerners in it and all the attention we were getting, and scowl at us. We all agreed that from a diplomatic standpoint, the escorts were counterproductive and a waste of resources, but apparently this is policy handed down from Mubarek himself that Americans, British, and Israelis on "official trips" must be escorted around Egypt like this.

I can't think of a time so far in Egypt where I felt in danger because of being American. On the other hand, I felt slightly in danger yesterday when I picked up a crab that I thought was quite dead, and it turned out to be quite alive, and angry, and immediately chopped into my finger. The fishmonger had to use both hands to pry the front claws loose. So I am applying Neosporin to my finger today, but I am not taking it personally.