Peaking Inside Pandora's Box

It's been a while since my last post, and I apologize for having left on such a somber note. The week following the death of Sheikh Ahmad Abd-al-Wahad, which sparked the Tarek al-Jdideh clashes, was a weird one in Beirut, one that definitely showed a new aspect of Lebanon I had yet to see.

Hamra was uncharacteristically quiet. The usual traffic jams on the neighborhood's main street were conspicuously absent. The parking lot outside of my apartment, usually filled to the brim with haphazardly parked cars, was eerily empty. The café I holed myself in daily to work suddenly got a security person at the entrance. Small details that might have gone unnoticed to someone unfamiliar with my neighborhood, but showed that apprehension was shifting uneasily under the surface.

Waiting for the storm

The rumor has been going around for a while; hushed tones of confidentiality, with the gravity of a doctor giving a solemn diagnosis: This summer, it's happening. Lebanon is going to blow up.

At first, I shrugged it off, if a little uneasily. In the darkness of winter, the prospect of conflict months away seemed like a distant, unlikely possibility; so many things could change until then. But as word came of clashes in Tripoli, pitting Lebanese supporters of al-Assad against those supporting the Syrian rebels, it became that much harder to ignore the long-known fact that Lebanon absorbs every conflict, every tension from the region like a sponge.

But still, even as this revelation started setting in with incoming news of several deaths in the north last week, we began bargaining with fate: As long as this just stays in Tripoli, the country can be okay. Just some clashes at the Syrian border, Lebanon can handle that. As long as it doesn't get to Beirut, we'll be fine. Lebanon will be fine.

But these negotiations were over very soon. Last night, by text message, the news came: sporadic shootings in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Tarek el-Jdideh. In cause, the recent death of Sunni cleric Ahmad Abdel-Wahed, killed by Lebanese soldiers in the north.

Trying to fall asleep last night, I hung to this word, "sporadic," like a buoy. This didn't have to be big. One night of burning tires and shooting didn't have to mean the beginning of war. It couldn't. Lebanon has been through too much, it doesn't need this again.

Political bullshit, an excerpt

Today I had the chance to attend an event at AUB featuring Lebanon's very own prime minister, Najib Mikati. I do feel very lucky that I have had so many opportunities to be in the presence of prominent politicians since my arrival in Lebanon. However, said exposure to politicians up close has led to many nasty —dare I even call them this?—surprises. Let's just say the tepidity of political speeches never ceases to simultaneously amaze and depress me.

[Before I go on, I must note that my impressions discussed further down apply to the experience I have had today listening to Mikati himself speak, and that I am well aware that politicians, on every side of the political spectrum, in Lebanon, or in any other nation, are guilty of the same rhetorical emptiness. Fortunately for you all, I don't have enough time to detail my impressions of every shitty politician in France, the US or elsewhere. All that is to say that: please don't interpret this as me being pro-Occidental, pro-March 14 or what have you. These are systemic problems in politics, which I am addressing through one given personal experience. Make of it what you will.]

Gallivanting around Lebanon in pictures: Baalbek

So my parents came to visit me for a week, which was a great opportunity to show them around the country I have been calling home for seven or so months, and a welcome break from relentless studying. It is very easy to spend extended periods of time without leaving Beirut, and I had been itching to get out of the capital for a while. Over the course of their visit, I took them to Baalbek, Mleeta (yes, again) and Jeita, and let them see Sur and Jbeil on their own like the grownups they are.

Moving to Sector 37

Before coming to Lebanon, I had a hard time imagining what a new life in Beirut would be like, but I hoped that it would somehow involve a small apartment overlooking the sea, or something suggesting similar levels of exciting possibilities.

Instead, I was convinced by my mother to apply for university housing to allay her worries about me struggling to find housing upon arrival and having to sleep under a bridge with my 314 suitcases. This sounded like a reasonable suggestion. Perhaps my dorm room would have a balcony with a view on the sea.

I did end up with a balcony, with a splendid view on a construction site, and well within earshot of an Islamic cultural center broadcasting the five daily prayer calls and the hour-long Friday noon service.

Living in a dorm was a harsh reminder of my closeted misanthropy and my strong distaste for sharing sleeping quarters. I was assigned a two-person room, but was lucky to have it for myself for most of the semester. Eventually, I had to share my living space with another person for two months. While my roommate was very sweet, I still felt that I was accommodating an intruder on my territory, a presence coercing me to do things such as shower on a regular basis and not wallow in my pajamas all day eating cereal during finals. Cohabitation in such close quarters also led to some awkward cultural interactions, such as the couple of times I came home mere minutes before my roommate's morning prayer.

With my first semester nearing to an end, the perspective of going five more months without a kitchen and the assured presence of a permanent roommate this time around was too much. I had to move out and live the dream. So by early February, I threw all my belongings into neatly packed my suitcases, and left the AUB campus for a small apartment, three roommates and two cats in the nearby neighborhood of Qoreitem.

While I now bathed in the glow of having a room of my own, living off campus was my long-awaited introduction to some previously unseen aspects of day-to-day Beiruti life.

Salafis and Ba’th Party supporters in Beirut

On Sunday, two protests were scheduled to take place in downtown Beirut. The city is well-acquainted with recurring manifestations of political will but this time it was different: The two protests concerned Syria and represented pro- and anti-Bashar al-Assad camps. What’s more, the anti-Assad protest was run by Lebanese Salafis, marking the first time the Islamic group led a political demonstration in Beirut. Their presence was upsetting the usual pro-resistance March 8 / pro-Western March 14 political divide that governs most issues in Lebanon.

That one time I went to the Hezbollah Museum

One of the places I most desperately wanted to go to when I arrived in Lebanon was the Museum of the Resistance in Mleeta in the South. The museum was created in 2010 by Hezbollah to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the retreat of Israel from South Lebanon. A museum on a given political organization created and maintained by said organization is the kind of surrealist self-serving enterprise I just had to see for myself. In mid-January, one of my classes got to visit the museum, an occasion that was exciting for the reasons mentioned above, and also because I thought class trips were only for middle-schoolers.

The museum is situated on top of a hill which used to be the location of a Hezbollah encampment during the fighting against the Israeli Occupation Forces. At approximately 1.5 km in altitude, my attitude of denial when it comes to wearing proper winter clothing proved particularly painful on this January morning. The hill was covered in thick fog that we were told used to be prime weather to attack Israelis without being spotted.

View from Mleeta