reading while falling

Welcome to RWF.

2006-09-04T21:38:00.000+03:00

Hi,

Welcome to readingwhilefalling.

I began this blog at the start of the July 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel and kept it up until the cease-fire.

In June of 2006, I scraped together my (paltry) savings and took off for the middle east, determined to get a better, first-hand understanding of the region, its people and all its purported complexities. In spite of my grand itinerary, my first and last stop was Beirut; three days after arriving, Israel bombed Hariri Int'l Airport and I was stuck.

I spent the war assisting a local NGO with its psychological relief program directed towards children who had had their homes destroyed and who had lost loved ones.

Also, I did my best to keep a record of my observations and experiences: RWF, a series of photos, quotes, conversations and (a pile) of thoughts.

Given the circumstances, the hastily written blog still has spelling errors and parts that need obvious edits. Nonetheless, at the request of a few and for authenticity's sake I've decided to leave the blog up, unedited, in case anyone (now or in the future) might find it useful.

So, if this is your first time here, I suggest you flip back to the first post and work your way to the front.

Good luck and thanks for reading,

T

last one.

2006-08-26T01:55:00.000+03:00

Today, I finished rwf.blogspot.com. This, the final post, is built on a collection of notes from the past ten days. Thanks to all who have read - and good luck. T

I: HOSPITAL

You are sitting in the American University - Beirut Medical Center. In the lobby. It's visiting hours.

In the past few days, you have dutifully gone about your work at the SDC as the immediate threat of bombs has all but dissipated from the collective consciousness of the people around you. Alongside Selim, you have finished a sound proposal for funding that he will be circulating. Already, there is a rumor of a contribution from a local embassy, from some French contacts. You reserve comment, hoping somewhere there is an American philanthropist that will do you personally proud.

The SDC has switched gears. Selim has worked with uncanny speed to transition to the second phase of his plan to build peace culture and solidarity among the affected and non-affected youth of Lebanon. Although you occasionally broach the conversation with Selim or others (volunteers, shopkeepers, cab drivers), the war belongs only to the diplomats, to the UN, to the media. Other than the infrequent metaphorical glance to the southern horizon it is business as usual, it is time for rest, to mull reconstruction. At least in Beirut.

This weekend, having prepped, planned, gathered, and trained a small army of volunteers and enrolled hundreds of young participants, Selim and the SDC will launch the first of two years' of weekend retreats and camps. Children will come from all over, from all different confessions and political ideologies lured by the fun of the camps; there, they will share stories, and will actually start to determine what their role is in designing the future of their country. Together, they will laugh and train and plan. Selim will offer them the opportunity to work collaboratively on projects - building kites, making food, pitching tents - and will quietly inform them of their rights and opportunities as 'a citizen'. But he will leave the choice to them.

Selim (to me): "You know, we are not just having them build a trash bin. We build the trash bin and we say, 'OK, now you have a rubbish bin - if you use it, if you put your trash in it, you don't get sick. If you don't, you get (scratches his arm to indicate a rash).' And then we let them choose. If they choose it, we say, 'OK, it is your right to have one - and if you don't have one, it is your duty to ask for one."

The retreat series this weekend kicks off with 200 kids (organized in less than a week); the SDC will run the program series for two years, train hundreds of volunteers, host 100,000 participants if all goes according to plan. If your proposal strikes a chord.

Although you take a massive amount of pride in having come to Beirut, in having assisted in the propogation of sound, simple, and extraodinary methodologies for peace (and sanity) building, in having put faith in your own ability to carry through on your principles and come out ahead and unscathed (against controversy), you are struggling now with the looming questions that came out of the dark at the moment of cease-fire. a) What is the worth and impact of your accomplishment? b) When and how will you know when it will be your time to leave this? c1) What is the composition of society at large such that it allows (even plans?) for such conflict and bloodshed?c2) What can you do and what tool can you create to focus those bloodthirsty elements of the human condition towards the active pursuit of peace, justice and prosperity?

You are hesitant to accept what people have been telling you, their "advice" to you when you share with them your mission of building new channels to focus energy into cooperative construction. You have been told that people are bad...that there is no hope. Are you unable to believe this because it sounds too simplistic? (on the boat from Cyprus to Beirut, you can still hear Tucker Carlson giving you advice after he heard of your trip into the warzone, telling you that he admired those that ran towards the sound of gunfire, but that you would be doing it a lot in the future if you kept it up, that it would benefit you to acknowledge the existence of real evil in the world. You shuddered then to recall that this idea was the foundation of Sean Hannity's diatribes and, frustratingly, of the strength of his convictions - or so you thought or think.)

Or, you do not know if you simply choose not to believe this because it is inconsistent with your own upbringing. You have been labeled many times (with a sneer) an "idealist", a Liberal, a progressive...still, you realize that your supreme faith in the good nature of man might (ironically) be the one vestigal thought that remains from your Catholic upbringing. Even after years of conciously trying to disabuse yourself of all dogmatic claims in the effort of piecing together your own understanding of human beings by your own processes and data, you realize that you have been holding on to one memory: a conversation you had as a child with your Jesuit uncle where he explained to you that people were good, that it was tempation by evil that led the good astray.

Sitting in the lobby, you are cursing yourself. You have believed your choices and your plans to be based on a larger pragmatism. But should it be true that underneath you clutch nothing more than a frail and childish 'hope', you have committed the same 'crime' that you have accused the neocons (from the US to Iran) of perpetrating: decisions and action based on what they would like to see rather than what the reality of the situation demands.

You are sick. You are anxious to bleed the 'idealism' from your system. Sitting in the hospital lobby, you are sure that your uncle had been simplifying the matter for your young ears. He continues to be an intelligent and cutting thinker. You wish to go back to that conversation and force him to address the Church's idea of original sin. Is baptism, then, just a way of getting people to the church? A way of hooking themin, just as you get the camera only after enduring an exhaustive tour of time-share condos while salespeople cajole you into making a substantial investment?

Visiting hours are well patronized. You are at once a) aggravated that the architect chose to design a lobby that seems an all too patronizing image of the gateway to heaven and b) immediately touched by the delicate and potent humanity you see play out in the gestures and faces of people as they pass. A group of elderly people - two couples - leave the visitation center, the women walking in front of the men in twos. There is gentle laughter, an air of relief among them - "They are going to be all right". There is quiet after they leave. Then, a family of five departs the inner hospital and parades humbly through the waiting area; three teenagers walk silently intent on the exit door, a husband lets them lead and occupies the empty space - some 15 meters - between them and the mother, who is lagging, who is averting her eyes, who is searching for a tissue now in her large bag to stop the tears barely willed back. A young mother erupts into the waiting area having completed her checkup; she playfully runs to her little son who has, to her joy, waited patiently in the same spot where she left him. There is a shower of funny kisses with he takes pains to wipe at quickly as the embarrassment stings his cheeks.

To your right, you find a grandaughter and grandmother waiting side by side in silence. The child bounces her feet over the edge of the chair while the woman watches the doors to the interior of the hospital, where patients and visitors alike disappear, from which visitors only emerge. You think that they look alike; you see a line between them, sixty years of life time experience occupying the inches between their heads. You think about what it would take to make sure that when she's sixty that the little girl doesn't look just as exhausted as her grandmother does.

You wonder about getting up. This is your last official errand for the SDC. You have accompanied SDCCurlyRedHairVolunteer to the hospital so that SDCCRHV can have a meeting with one of the staff here. The SDC is producing a hygiene manual for children enduring tough conditions as their homes are being rebuilt. You have been told to wait as the meeting will last only 15 minutes. Over an hour has passed.

You take to the chair, only glancing up occasionally at the doctors and nurses emerging onto the balcony above the waiting area, silently and with straight faces and white coats watching the parade of people come in and out. The images of Qana roll through your mind as do the visions of destroyed bridges, the smoke rising from the port, the old man screaming in his bed, the filthy stickiness of the Beirut shelters, the overwhelming anger at how quietly this challenging and destructive failure of 'the system' and individuals seems to be slipping away, attention redirected to Iran or whatever new conflict currently brewing in the minds of the powers that be. Selim is convinced Israel will take the Bekaa Valley next, where Hizbullah is still strong and the International presence will be weak. By fear or by plan. And regardless, what has changed? There will be another conflict soon, there will be more dead given only a number to mark their graves. Some of them will be children. You are hit quickly with two successive impulses: 1) to rush into the hospital, to sit and chat and invest a comforting interest in the lives of those patients that have no one to visit them; 2) to shut up your stupid idealistic mind - who are you to do that job? You are certain that one of the patients would be upset with you for not being the rounds nurse that he has been expecting for over an hour with his pudding cup. Where is my pudding? Where is my pudding, dammit?

The doors to the interior hospital make a "whooshflpt" noise as they open and close.

II. INTERNATIONAL CAST OF CHARACTERS.

There has been an cast of international characters: Iran, Israel, the US, Syria, Lebanon, the UN, the "International Community" (which you realize means 'Europe'), the Arab League, etc.

You are familiar with them like people; the country of Iran, the United States doppleganger. Similar in its conservative nature, in its political posturing, in its constant claiming of the moral high ground, in it subversive political maneuvering and coup staging...not just Hizbullah here but purported to be funding the civil war in Iraq to violence in Africa in the name of Islam. Almost parallel levels of hypocrisy from both administrations. You have learned from your Iranian friends that the rural areas go conservative while Tehran goes progressive. Different in that it uses words well, and effectively. Selim says that Iran is attempting to unify the entire Arab world under its call - from Pakistan to Lebanon. Different in that it has a massive human rights problem, in that it stifles its press (better) and that unlike the US, its progressive movement (by virtue of intelligence or circumstance) quietly stand in patience while US Democrats flounder in spite of what's been handed to them.

Syria, 'the little country that could': ruled by the son of a powerful man that died with the hope of re-securing the Golan Heights, of dipping his toes in the water; the ruling son is now under internal as well as external scrutiny - he is part of a minority group clinging to control of the country. His father's aides, questioning his ability to maintain control, seem to circle him like sharks. Syria, playing both sides against the middle in a desperate attempt to reassert itself as real power in the region; making deals with Iran and Hizbullah, denying International troops on its borders while begging the United States and International Community to be allowed at the peace table. Syria... in the corner.

Israel, the lost. After iterations of war-dependent leaders, a truly decisive blow to reliance on military force: policy has driven its thinking and its population into check. They are stuck. Now would be the time to begin talking if they could; they've caused too much damage and have lost too much credibility to even conceive of going to the table. They will have to continue to find a way to fight. They are in a broken washing machine stuck on the spin cycle.

You think of Lebanon caught in the middle, tired, divided. You were angry with Lebanon, but no longer. After only a few weeks, you realize you too are tired. It is your time to leave. Selim has told you that your greatest asset is that you are an outsider, that it gives you greater clarity. He admonished you for your foolish pursuit of destruction on the last day of the Beirut bombing campaign. You told him in response that you thought it beneficial to your future role as a negotiator to understand the whole people at your table and you still believe that; he acknowledged the sentiment but after losing two uncles in the civil war and pulling himself back from a period of intense rage, he advises you to stick to the sidelines, to mind your role as--at best--a referee. Above all things he says to avoid politics and focus on planning and civil society. He is a bit irritated with your declaration that you will be President of the United States in 25 years, that you have a long term plan to grow your heart and your mind and your skill set, that you will continue to work on a pragmatic plan that will catch the United States up with the rest of the world...to craft a potent long-term and short-term agenda. If you do the math, if you commit to years of training and planning and research and experience and fighting, you think you can tear progressive from its weak "idealistic" label. You can prove an internationalist and humanist policy can be an economically beneficial one. You can make enlightened choices concrete and popular in the minds of the American public. You can be part of the renaissance.

He says he won't give you a dime for your campaign because either a) politics will always be too corrupted and you won't get anything done (which you can't stand because, by God, you're smart and stubborn) or b) you yourself will be corrupted. Politicians are useless. You listen to this and it only fuels you. It's the very reason you plan to do what you're doing to do.

But Lebanon's exhaustion tames that flame. You have realized that you're no longer angry with the Lebanese for not giving you your silly dream of political reconciliation across sectarian lines - at least not the people. In fact, you think that they may have. On your walks to work, you feel the traffic pass, watch people able to live and work without being immediately mindful of 'threat'; on walks home, the clubs 'bump' again and you wade through the people mobbing Gezmayzeh. You like to pretend on these walks that nothing ever happened or--better--that it is the simple love of life demonstrated by the Lebanese that already binds them together in a way that politics never could. The thought is enough for you to consider other commitments for your life in spite of how antagonized you are by political (or any kind, really) weakness, stupidity and corruption. Your brain twists and you keep asking yourself: what do I do to prevent children from being hit by bombs? What's the big idea, here?

You think of the US…you think of the bombastic 12 year old that found his Dad's gun and uses it to lord over the neighborhood. His parents don't ever seem to be coming back...

SECOND TO LAST NIGHT.

You think of all of these things swirling around the one central question: what will it take? What would it take to focus mankind's drive towards elegant progress in all spheres? What will it take to place cooperative action over bloodshed as the only real solution to conflict? You are awake for days, searching your brain, looking at all the systems that have been designed, from self discipline, to the church, to the non-state actor, to the state, to the international community. You are wondering about what simple code of conduct, what preventative mechanisms (such as education) and what system of justice and enforcement unifies each of these and could be demonstrated to unify all people in a way that accounts for human error and weakness. You are in Selim's backyard, unable to sleep for the third day.

It is 2 am when Selim and Baha find you in the back, staring at a candle. Again, there is not electricity.

Selim (to me): 'Thomas, what...what are you doing?'

Me: ...I...am...trying to figure something out...I am trying to figure out what I have learned.

Baha is the grease to the wheel, the older brother to the young volunteer staff at the SDC; he sweats humor and humanity; he's just hysterical. He's aware that he speaks only broken English and uses it to his advantage in making you laugh.

You mean to say: I am trying to pin down what I have learned here before I leave, before the subject matter is taken off the table. It has to be now, because when I try to figure it out later the integrity of what I have witnessed and felt will undoubtedly be corrupted by time and distraction. It is difficult for you to voice this without sounding....like an idiot. Outloud.

Baha: "Thomas, Thomas...I was going to make ...a joke? but I will tell you (he talks with his hand waving as both sit at the table with you around the candle) – seriously – only you can answer this question."

Selim: Baha, you know, he speaks the truth. So you tell us, you tell us what you have learned.

You think and try to visualize. Me: I have learned that …there is the feeling that humanity is driving a car. Very fast. But instead of looking forward to decide when to turn or to stop, humanity is driving forward while looking in the rearview mirror. That's how it feels.

Baha has a degree in Political Science, has heart, has teeth for conversation - he has an emphatic way of talking that demands both your intellectual respect and pulls your heart at once. He answers this image as if he'd been waiting to tell someone what he held for too long; he erupts.

Baha: Yes, but...in America, what is in the mirror!? When you look back there is only space...there is...there are question marks? You do not have the history. You had a civilization, but it is gone. You took it, you... You have a history but this history is not like the way that they teach it to you. You have a history that is built on lies; this...the first colony?

Me: Jamestown

Baha: ...it was a colony of prisoners!

Me: looking for gold.

Baha: Here we have had the Greeks, we have had the Romans, Ottomans, the Arabs, the French the British…

You remember that instead of taking a Guidebook with you to the Middle East all you took was a $4 Rand McNalley historical atlas of the world. In recent days you have been flipping through it, watching the area of Lebanon change color at almost every page, dominated by some new force...early in the book, the city of Tyre appears - on par with Carthage as one of the largest cities in the world 1000 BC. It's been leveled as of last month.

Baha: But ...and the history you have? You do not look to your history because you do not know it - only we see your history. Bush, Rice...they are saying that this is a new ...ah...it's a new...

Me: experiment

Baha: it is the same, it is the same that happens with us again and again. This is the same experiment – it is the same as 1950s, as 70s, as 80s as 90s... it is the same again and again!

We go through all of of Middle East modern history. The creation of Israel, the series of conflicts, the US buying off Egypt to secure peace, the US funding both sides of the Iran/Iraq war which killed hundreds of thousands (IranGate under Reagan); we touch back on other issues. They raise the argument that the US Civil War has more to do with economic interests than anything as noble as the rights of the human being, talk about Native Americans, the Louisiana purchase, contras, Bin Laden (funded until even '96 by the CIA under Clinton)... you talk about 9/11, you talk about Pearl Harbor, you talk about the military-industrial complex. You see your country as having fallen down a very, very slippery slope.

The themes of economic interests and ideological interests and military posturing as intertwined appears...

Selim: You know, we kick Baha around and we call him a jackass for fun but you know he is speaking the truth. The United States, you like to let us grow big big big so you can cut us down, so you can claim a victory. You like to keep us broken up...

You all agree that this is a problem, a course of action that has failed...and you sit and watch the others still trying to figure out how to transition to a more forward-thinking foreign policy. How to cement in the mind of the average American the idea that neighborliness is actually strength? That supporting economic development of all regions is the only way to lay the cornerstone to peace ("you know, people will fight when they are hungry")? To inspire a new level of competition in American companies that will reform our education system in a way that promotes truly innovative, capable and creative minds. You ask them what should be done.

Baha: You must...you should play the.. broker.

Me: The 'honest broker'.

Baha: Yes.

Selim: No no no, it's not gonna work. You can't, the United States can't do that anymore. You already have declared your stake. With this, you know, this changes things. You have to look at that stake first.

Me: Well, if I were president what would you tell me to do? You're my political advisor...

Selim: You have to figure out...what is the deal that the United States has with the Arabs?

He's right. We have no real foreign policy, no system in place, ad hoc decisions based on playing favorites...

Selim: To do that you stop funding Israel – no not stop funding - just fund who is right, who does the right thing. Play by rules. You have a stake now. America was built to be a republic, not an empire. You are not set up to do this. And look, look at what happens when you try to go against your own design? Look everywhere...this is just an embarrassment to the United States. This is a real embarrassment. With Clinton he did great things but they didn't take, they were weak and he left office. But still, he understood. With Bush? This guy... ..I know the Syrian Ambassador to the US, I have met him personally. And the Syrian Ambassador, who is a real jerk I don't like this guy, he told me this story. When he first arrived in the United States, he went with his wife to meet with the President. It's a custom to go and meet and introduce. He goes to meet with Bush. And Bush he turns to the ambassador's wife and he says 'so how do you like America?' and his wife says that she is bored, that she wants to find a place to continue her studies; Bush says, oh, what are you studying? Computer engineering. Bush says to her – and I cannot...he says to her: 'they let women study in the middle east? They let them go to college?" this is the most powerful man in the world! This is the man who claims to have a new plan and he does not know a thing about what he is doing!

Baha: "Thomas, Thomas look at me. I want for you to promise that you will do me a favor. Only to your friends, I want you to tell your friends. Tell them we have internet. Tell them we do not – we are not bombing things all the time (mimes bombs strapped to his chest). Tell them that we read books! Please Thomas! Ha ha ha! I am serious, you have to tell them. Tell your friends. Tell someone. Tell them we read books. Tell them these things.

Selim: We have culture here. Thousands of years.

Me: So, why the fighting? Because you would think with culture...you would think with age would come...

Selim: Because along with culture, we do not have a strong economy which means we do not have the best schools. Without good education the people turn to religion as a crutch, which leads to divisions. This is not just the middle east – this is everywhere, this is how people are, you know? And where the religion leads, the people support.

Me: I know the answer to this question - I know what I think, but what do you think of the idea of redrawing the map?

Selim: I really don't mind the idea of the theory, but it's just that it's a stupid idea that will never work. It's never going to work. Democracy it means different things to different people; it's a good idea but it has to come from the people; if it doesn't organically grow from the people over time, it's just not going to take. Anything imposed from the outside just doesn't work. And lots of times it's just a lie: Israel created Hamas to take Arafat out of power, you know? So to tell you what to do as president - ask yourself what your real stake is. Economic development: just be fair. When you start picking and choosing you loose credibility. Democracy can take care of itself from the inside, the system will adapt. There are plenty of progressive movements in the middle east, all good people. When you pick sides, when you damage the name of democracy, these people they lose hope and credibility.

You tell him the idea of eternal vigilance. That you think America is so used to climbing to the top and being the best that you get the feeling that once it achieved the best it just had no idea what to do with itself. It started looking for immediate thrills, a child with a loaded gun. The new kid on the block is a little weird and increasingly unpopular.

Selim: You know, Baha I kick him around and all we make fun of each other and he doesn't have a French education; but still he knows the history of your country much better than you do. You hear what they tell you they do; we see what they do. I went and I gave a lecture to a group of US students studying conflict resolution in the middle east. This was their course of study. Before the class started I drew the outline of the United States and Canada on a map and I erased the borders and things and just drew land and water. And I said, ok here we have a blank map of the middle east – please, students, come and tell me where is Lebanon? Where is Israel? And they started pointing to places on the map! – it was a map of the United States! And I said 'ok that's it, lecture's over'. If you don't know yourself, how can you know about anything else?

Selim: You know Thomas, I want to tell you something. I know that I - and I am being serious here – I know that I am fighting a losing battle.

You: What?

Selim: I know that I am fighting a losing the battle. You will always lose more than you win in what we do. People, it is in their nature to fight with one another.

And this runs contrary to everything you've seen up until that point. You look back on the entire conversation, the conflict, the senselessness, the way your country has acted, you scroll through the Rand McNally atlas in your head. These words from Selim make you want to vomit. You need to believe in solutions. You refused to leave having just 'endured', having just put a band-aid on the deep laceration.

You: People are not evil. They fight because they are looking to secure resources.

Selim: But still, they choose to fight.

It erupts. Selim invokes Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, realpolitik, the realists, the idea of naturalism.

And he is right, you agree. You agree that that this is not a question of good or evil but that good and evil are value judgements based on the actions people take when they feel their survival is threatened. Still, you defend the nature of man as good before these acts are committed. You persist in saying that fighting was the first solution to limited resources, to threat. But that it is equally a part of human nature to build tools, to build systems, to find solutions. That if you can clearly and unquestionably demonstrate to people the true effects of their actions, that they will choose cooperation - if you can show the revenge cycle, how it comes back around, you can build a market for new tools, for new policy. You just need to teach a different way of cooperating, of diffusing the tension fear and doubt and focus on solving the problems – which can and will be solved. You just need to provide new training in this. You think of all the ideas you've had for governance classes for high schoolers, for philosophy as a requirement for high school. You say it is already happening in minor ways, particularly with environmental issues - data shown makes the threats of global warming take root in the public mind. It takes persistence, it take a novel approach...the only limiting factor, as you see it, is the limited life span of human beings. There is so much to learn - but with a new era of international conflict comes a new opportunity to learn collectively. It can be done, it will just take the right people to do it! It will take an agreed upon vision of the future. You tell about your idea for www.readingwhilefalling.com - an open source wikipedia style interface where instead of telling of history and current events, people actually - by the design of the site, by consensus - design the future of the United States - from education to economy, from interest rates to city planning ordinances... It will take only the creation of vision! A workable goal! A light that we can all aim and work towards instead of being tossed back and forth by events and self-interested politicians!

Selim: You know, you just read realpolitik. It will never work, Thomas. They will fight over the design of the site.

You raise your voice and as you speak Baha leaves the table to the hammock - he has said what you are about to say to Selim before, he has taken the stance of the pragmatic idealist, has argued that people might resort to fighting but with proper alternative outlets - better outlets and better social training - that we, together, can solve this. Baha, as you are about to, has called Selim a hypocrite for this naturalistic stance: You do this. You do this! You stand apart, you stand apart! How can you claim to be losing the battle? How can you tell me my ideas on this don't hold merit!? You act under altruism and cooperation and you work it, you make it work. You are changing things in this very manner! You are tapping into the cooperative elements of human nature!

You have seen it with your own eyes. You have seen the rubbish bins.

Selim is quiet for just a second, thumbing the table.

For weeks you have seen eye-to-eye on policy, on politics, on methods of training and fundraising, on language for the SDC literature. You appreciate the same canonical texts and you both hold them close. But you are suddenly touched by his urging to 'stay out of it'; you start to understand that after all of the talk of outside factors, of history, of everything that has swirled about you, that most of this had been talk - just talk, by design. With passion, with intensity, granted. But it has been dinner conversation, not your training. You think of how serious his face got when he told you about how disappointed he was that you had taken off to see destruction, to see pain. And how he followed it up with his own personal story of loss, about how it got him nowhere.

You realize that he is so good at his job - so good at showing people a way beyond fighting - because he has been forced to put himself through it. You see him still struggle for a moment to find his footing; you realize that being good at being good means understanding the mindset of the 'bad', and that to be really good, you have to really understand the bad, keep it with you...and you see this as a burden, this idea of constantly having to vie against such a formidable foe as what has been called "human nature".

He is protecting you. You see a complicated man, whose mind and heart are pulled in two directions by personal history and intelligent hope. He is attempting to spare you some pain, you think. And you feel young and looking at him, your stomach is torn up by the first real understanding of all that will be sucked out of you if and when you attempt to implement your progressive ideas into the public mindset, guerullous and unforgiving. You see, just for a second, the absolute weight that he holds, you think of the face of the old woman, you think of your own face tired after only a few years of grassroots work. You are furious.

And Selim, as always, returns to calm, to light.

Selim: Because, what else am I gonna do, you know? I believe I am losing the battle. But I will tell you this one thing and then I will go to sleep. (He rises from the table; it is past three; Baha has passed out in the hammock). Let me tell you, as long as there is one person left that is willing to practice being a citizen and wants to do it and they have a heart that is beating in their chest, I will give it everything I've got.

You stay up until dawn, plotting the next twenty-five years of your life.

LAST DAY:

On your last day in the office, you pull out old Lebanese bills - currency from 20 years ago - and show them to the staff. A cab driver pushed them on you as a gift - you're still not sure why.

The proposals are complete, the literature is written, the camps are set to start in a day or two. The shop is tidy as far as you're concerned and if and when grant money comes you'll return. Selim has offered you a post under the prerequisite that you learn Arabic. Well. Until then, it'll be school in ethics and then development/econ/sociology and law. At least four more years of school.

Before that, it'll be a planeflight home to see your mother. You show SDCCurlyHair volunteer the old bills and she tells you the story of the day that as a child she was yelled at by a shopkeeper for trying to use them to buy chocolate, the day they had gone out of use. She asks you if you like Beirut and you struggle to find an answer that doesn't involve the word 'war'. She tells you have not had a social life and so you have not learned a thing about the Lebanese. She says you have to see the rocks at Rouche. You leave the office together; one last time you wander the city. You visit the coffee shop and inquire about Khawlah. She is gone. Not coming back, says the girl behind the counter. Still, you are pleased to find a gentle crowd in Nejmeh - more people than you've seen in weeks.

Together, you go to Rouche. In the dark, you stumble down a path on the other side of the guardrail fencing the coastal road from the cliffs. You climb out onto one of the rocky outcroppings and sit. Listen to the traffic and realize you are listening to traffic. Traffic. There is little light and you can barely see the stars through the haze that covers the coast, the dust and smoke and moisture. But you can see a plane approaching and you remember your tickets. "The last seat!" the travel agent proclaimed to you as he handed the tickets to you. He was saying it to everyone but you're still certain that it was one of the last that would get you out in time for school.

You lean back on the rocks in silence and stare up to watch the plane approach Beirut International. You watch it come in slowly along the coast, decending, searching through the night in front of it with its small nose light, dependent upon the lights miles ahead to guide it safely through the fog.

Penultimate Post.

2006-08-16T20:27:00.000+03:00

And then there was ...nothing.

When I woke up Monday and got ready for the trek to the Sustainable Democracy Center, I found myself looking to the faces of people staying in the Hostel or going about their business in the street for some sign, some proof that the cease-fire didn't take. Or the opposite--that everything seemed to be smooth sailing.

Smiles, frowns, furrowed brows, irritated hustle...?

Nothing.

For three days – Monday through Wednesday – the streets remained quiet in Beirut. Those that left the city for areas in the north waited to see if it was OK to return. Cars have begun to trickle back into Beirut during the past two days. Simultaneously, many of the displaced just up and left. Showing up to the SDC on Monday, I found some of the staff saying goodbyes; a number of our volunteers were from the South. They were going against Israeli warnings and heading back to see what was left of their homes.

At first, this wasn’t the case for all of the displaced--but over the week, waves of those willing to risk the trip grew larger. By Wednesday, Senayeh Park - which was once full of camps, tents, clotheslines and children - had been cleaned out. Literally cleaned - no trash, no scraps of clothing or dirty diapers. I stood outside the gates Wednesday night trying to frame a photograph for you…How do you frame nothing?

On Monday, we called the school that had scheduled us that afternoon to contine Selim's Crisis Phase activities. Our contact at the school told us coming was unnecessary, that the place was nearly empty. By Wednesday, Selim had stopped most of our current war-related programming and moved us into launching his enormous two-year response (phase two) to this conflict. I’ll get to what it is (i.e. the one hopeful element I’ll take away from this entire situation) later in the post.

Waking up in Beirut has been like waking up in an episode of the Twilight Zone. There is little talk of war...little talk of much at all. No tension, no joy in the expressions of any of the shopkeepers. Not even relief. Although in the cafes you’ll hear the occasional war-related comment (“What did you think of Nasrallah on the television last night?”) you would never guess that this was the same population that seemed fraught with anguish and urgency and frustration just days ago.

Perhaps it’s because I come from a country where growing up you are taught to associate the end of a “war” with ticker-tape parades and pictures of sailors kissing nurses, or banners that read “Mission Accomplished” (granted, not exactly an ‘end’). But even so, I don’t think that it was too much to expect something – some show of solidarity…some bookmark…

SDCSuperNiceVolunteer (to me, in the Prague coffeehouse): "This is just how it is! This is the Lebanese! Yesterday we have war, today is for the cleaning and tomorrow good as new. Back to life. Already they have ...what do you call them, I don't know, metal pieces across the bridge to the airport. The airport will be ready soon. Back to normal."

In the afternoons, the SDC staff has taken to moving over to the Prague coffeehouse for the cafe's semi-consistent streams of electricity and wireless internet; rolling blackouts still affect most of the city, the SDC office no exception. I am typing up the outline of Phase Two of Selim’s long-term plan for building Lebanese solidarity after the war. I am confused and because I appear to be alone in my confusion I am frustrated, trying to figure out why the silence is driving me up the wall.

Me (to SDCSuperNiceVolunteer): “Fine, that’s great. I admire a people that can get back to work, can get back to rebuilding. But what are you rebuilding exactly? What’s going to change after this? I just don’t understand why thus far there hasn’t been…there’s been nothing! There’s been no real unifying statement by politicians, no parade, nothing to signal...I guess I don’t understand how an entire country can suffer through something and not then feel some need to come together afterwards, to ….I (I am stammering)…I…I mean…who will mourn the dead? Who will mourn the dead?!?”

SDCCurlyRedHairVolunteer: (To me): “Hizbullah will. Hizbullah. Nobody cares. Hizbullah - if under Hizbullah you die, this is a good thing. you will go to heaven. So no one really cares and they will speak to the people there. You are made a Martyr.”

Me (to myself): You’re not a Martyr if you’re a four year old that got a bombed dropped on them. You’re…you’re a tragedy. You’re an egregious error that demands…at least a thought?!

Perhaps I am just impatient. In truth, perhaps the immediate strain deserves some immediate rest. Pehaps, too, people are still quietly waiting to see what happens in the south what the disarmament/international force/basic reasons for this war to still be all but up in the air. Still, the course of action still seems a powerful prelude to a full on return to the status quo here. And that's...that what I don't understand. More on that later.

The only overt sign or bookmark or whathaveyou that this painful and destructive military conflict had met its end was a tiny, pathetic fireworks show that I watched from Martyr Square on Monday night. Hearing them start while sitting in Talal’s I assumed that the cracks were gunfire. I wandered out anticipating the show, the rallying of hundreds in the streets, screaming in catharsis. Instead, other than the occasional cop or empty taxi passing by, I was alone in the city center of Beirut. In the Southern Suburbs of Beirut, Hizbullah supporters were shooting them off; at such a distance, they barely broke the horizon. Tiny little sparks and flashes in the sky... the sounds of the display distant, just echoes muted by the air between them and me.

A small line of cars and scooters - a group of Hizbullah supporters from the south, traversing the city in a hastily assembled parade. Together, there may have been 10 or 15 vehicles, moving like an amoeba up and down the still-abandoned major throughfares. I caught them just as they were passing the UN building; they stopped there to taunt the guards out front, to wave their one or two Hizbullah flags with ferocity. I barely caught them to get even this picture - the group was so small, moving so fast. I realized upon seeing them that they were not politicians, elected officials or even some group representative of a commonly held idea or opinion. It was simply a bunch of teenagers - 14, 18 some 22 yrs old - no older. It was a bunch of kids with a reason to ride mopeds through the streets and yell. This was no noble demonstration of a nation's or even of Hizbullah's 'victory' - this was...nothing.

For the past few days, I have oscillated between these feelings (a-d):

a) The feeling of angsty confusion at the Lebanese themselves for not coming together post-conflict!:

I want to scream on a soapbox: Yes, you are a war-torn country. Yes you are divided by confession, by politics, by history…but…did you all not suffer through this together? Hariri’s death, the spark of March 14th – the “Cedar Revolution” – was a different event, a different time - but not also so similar? Some have said that he was the one person that could have brought Lebanon together – but it wasn’t true! You did it, you all chose as individuals to join together under the flag, to march in unity. To rid your country of violence, of Syria - Is that dead now? Are you tired? Is that it? Should I hold off here and just let some time pass? Is that the right way to be? Am I...ugh...am I being too American?

The feelings reminded me of conversations with friends from Iran. Talking politics, we all agreed that as it stood those currently in the seats of power in Iran were not 'good news' for the people there. You get on the edge of your seat: "well, what can we do"

IranianFriend: "You can do nothing. You should do nothing. We will do it. We have to do it. It will take many years, a very long time to change things for the better. But we do not want war, we do not want revolution. Not like the last revolution - what did we get from that? All we got was blood. We will do it our own way."

Selim (to me): “You cannot be upset at this. This was humanitarian solidarity, yes, but this was not political solidarity. Look, here, there are four kinds of voters. The first kind is the kind that is fanatically devoted to their confession and to that confession's politician and to the block. The second kind is the kind that votes because of the services that their politician will get for them. And then there is the third kind and I hate this kind! – the kind that vote just because this person is the best of the worst, you know? There is the fourth kind - there are a few that will go through the categories and erase the names on the cards and instead of voting for a block will pick and choose…”
Me: “How do you vote?”
Selim: “How do I vote?”
Me: “In the last election how did you vote? Did you vote for all the categories?"
Selim: “There was no one that I thought was good. But I voted. I went to the box and I dropped in a blank card.”

b) The feeling of anger at the Lebanese gov't for not coming together post conflict:

One of the root causes of this conflict was the lack of a strong centralized government of Lebanon. The government - as I’m sure we all know – is divided along sectarian lines. An AUB professor explains to NPR the basics of the divisions here.

The voting system demands that you vote for a set number of politicians from each confession. Politicians will organize themselves into blocks, will hand voters a filled out card with then names of their blockmembers from each confession already filled in.

The sectarian system has always been destined to breed corruption. Imagine being grouped politically by something as personal as religion. Say you had a truly miserable politician representing you – it would still take a lot for you to consider ever voting for someone outside your religious fold – how could you trust that they would understand your point of view? Once in power, Parliamentarians here keep their people assuaged by giving them gifts. By providing them with the sort of public services and things that the central gov’t could and should; but the central gov’t is weak and divided because politicians continue to promote their ideological conflicts rather than build bridges for the common. Divisions grow, the same oligarchy remains in power, lines pockets… It’s an endless cycle, a debilitating circle.

It's a dirty understanding but this, at least, is how I've come to understand how the system works through conversations with the people here...when you can get them to invest in a conversation that is easier to avoid. I remember how Khawlah simply got quiet when I asked her...

Because of this and of the idea that it might just be too son, I cannot hold a grudge against the Lebanese citizen that simply returns to his shop with a mute expression and continues focusing on the one thing he truly has control over: the tomato display outside his shop.

With Hariri’s death, there was at least a figure, a leader, an icon to rally around. Now, it seems, the country can’t even decide what flag it likes best. A few recent polls allude to the allure of Hizbullah. Although, from all that I've seen ...people here don't strike me as pro-Hizbullah because they're committed to the overarching ideology of the group or military action...it's probably much different in the south. But up and down the country I think the overarching appeal of Hizbullah is simply that it acts. In some ways, it works.

Perhaps too because of the up in the air questions...perhaps it's just too soon to expect anything great from the government...still, the feeling that the moment has passed, that an opportunity is being lost...is just...it's just me, I know, it's just my vision of how this conflict might have motivated a subtle shift that might ensure against future conflicts...

In the ensuing days, Talal’s shifted once more. The war reporters left, replaced by another breed of freelancer – a more gentle type – the “reconstruction coverage” freelancer. A whole crew from Spain. All nice people, all asking me questions about where the stories were. I could tell them that the taxi drivers were no longer haggling quite as hard as it seems to be the common consensus that fuel will be widely available again soon. Other than that, I had nothing for them, my stomach in knotted disappointment every time they asked. Talal no longer sat on the balcony and stared at the port in anticipation during the nightly blackouts. Instead, he went back to more quotidian pursuits without a word. There was the matter of the new air conditioner to be installed, etc.

Only one cab driver from the Southern suburbs remained at Talal’s after the cease-fire. He’s probably about sixty or so. Since I’ve known him, I’ve heard him introduce himself to all of the ‘guests’ that come in and out of the place the very same way: “Hello. You know why I am here? I have a house! I have a house, I have many houses! They are gone (arms gesticulating) they are gone. This is why I am here.” All this in relatively garbled English on top of a speech impediment caused by his toothless lower jaw. “I have – I have many sons. 45, 43, 42 (years of age). They are not here. They are (hand wave ‘up’, which I've come to think means 'up North' and not 'Heaven', which is what I thought originally). You (to any tenant) you are like my son.”

When he said this to me the first time, I thought that he meant he had a son that sat around staring at the wall and thinking about how to crack society’s ills. After you hear him say it to four, five, eight people night after night, his loneliness starts to make its impression.

At night, sleeping in the same room, you will notice two things about ToothlessTaxiDriver. A) he is overcome with flatulence (particularly after he drinks) and b) he screams in Arabic in his sleep. I stayed up on Wednesday night unable to sleep, watching him gesticulate unconsciously.

Who will mourn the living?

The next morning, I checked out. Thursday. I carried my bags to the office and told Selim I needed to stay with him. I told him that the Hostel was exhausting me. I was intent on getting my head straight. Intent on sticking by him, on working on ideas to keep this momentum driving, every minute more acutely aware of what this man has been up against for so long, of the systemic roots of his intellectual prowess, his empathy and his indefatigable sense of humor. They’re tools.

The politicization of even major catastrophes is nothing new to any of us. It’s commonplace. The spin, the use of the public’s raw emotion for some political gain. Here, the various political factions all set up shop in the shelters across the city, happily providing services to the temporary residents with their flags and banners properly hung.

In Nejmeh Square, the centerpiece of Hariri’s reconstruction, the Future Party has made the best attempt at garnering some solidarity that I’ve yet seen.

Still, even this seems empty--a series of signs; hung in a city center that has been empty for weeks. Before the war they had been frequented mainly by the wealthy and trendy.

As I sat by and listened to ToothlessTaxiDriver scream and fart, I comforted myself by indulging in the act of planning. I thought more about the concert idea. I came to Selim on Thursday with a new plan:

Me (to Selim): "Just, just hear me out on this, OK? We're not going to be able to hold a simple relief concert without some politician just putting their name all over it, right? Which is b*******; so I think that we should just go in knowing that. We go in, we look for four or five powerful politicians to OK this idea but say 'look, here's the thing - just allow the people to do something good for themselves here without hijacking it. All we want is a simple concert - this isn't your publicity event, just let us have some relief. Right. So then, they'll obviously say 'no'; THEN, we go to the net. We start a net petition simply stating the very simple concert idea, that we wanted if for the people, by the people but that we weren't allowed to do this thing without some politician wanting to buy into it. We circulate that, we get hundreds ...whatever we get as many signatures as we can and then we take out a few newspaper pages saying "Look! Look! The people wanted the simplest thing in the world and the government couldn't do this - we make a huge deal about it and we keep hitting them until they respond."

Selim (to me): “I am telling you that – look, I have been doing this for 15 years. And I admire you – I admire that you have will. But just let me offer you my experience. The people will not come without the politicians. It is a two-way street here. This is Lebanon. And who is this concert for now? You’re not gonna do it for the displaced – they are all leaving. They are going back to their homes.”

This is where I get caught, always. I so admire the idea that people are actually going to rebuild. That they will, that in spite of the exhaustion and loss they are back in their cars and going to do it. And you’re caught again – right after that thought – in the cycle; what are we doing to prevent them from having to rebuild again in five years? Five weeks?

What are we doing? What are we all doing? How do we better understand and play our roles?

Me (to SDCCurlyRedHairVolunteer): “At least they get the virgins right? Isn’t that the Martyr’s fate? The 40 virgins and…there’s gold involved?”

SDCCurlyRedHairVolunteer: “It will be a mess.”
Me: “What do you mean?”
SDCCurlyRedHairVolunteer: “It will all be fighting. They will all be fighting over the virgins. They will be trying to trade them. No! (thinking again) It will not be like that. If you die and you are the sort of person who would fight about virgins, you would not go to Heaven. So it will be peaceful.”
Me: “So they all go to Hell? You should probably tell them that. Who goes to Heaven then? If no fighters?”
SDCCRHV: “No one! None of the Lebanese! We fight. We are fighters.”
Me: “I don’t get this. I don’t get the ‘still fighting’ thing. I get the history. I get the struggle. It just seems at this point people would be probably really tired, probably really willing to talk - not out of weakness - just because...that's what always happens. It always goes to talking - fighting does not work. Before this whole thing started – why not – if you’re Israel or you’re Hizbullah you arrange a trade – you say, look we will exchange prisoners for rockets? Where is the other idea? Is that it? What if you took some time to imagine this place without fighting…I mean, what is your vision of the world without fighting?”
SDCCRHV: “They would never do it.”
Me: “Humor me, humor me – what is your vision? What would it look like?”
SDCCRHV: “They wouldn’t do it.”
Me: “I’m not talking about NOT fighting, I’m talking about focusing all this at something else - at construction, at economic growth, at research and education, at building railways between nation capitals, about tourism, about …about…”
SDCCRHV: “They would fight about who will build the railroad.”

So, to c:

c) The feeling of sickness that this was not only a war between individuals in seats of power at the expense of the innocent in the middle (tending to his tomatoes), but even at this level there has been no change. It seems, really and truly that this was almost all for nothing on even a state and worldwide level. That over 1000 people on both sides died for ...what? WHAT!?

I’d be willing to take a modicum of solace from any change. All seem generally negative, though. Possibly, Hizbullah has gained some supporters, possibly Iran is more popular here, possibly the Israeli public is searching for a different way to go about this. Perhaps there is some good; perhaps the US public is breaking ranks, perhaps the US has used Israel through this whole thing only to learn that hitting hill-burrowed targets (see: Iran) with missiles doesn't work; perhaps all states have finally learned some lesson about dealing with non-state actors, perhaps they have finally learned that military operations do not work.

One can only hope that it's actually true that the NeoCon crew is rethinking the idea of remapping the middle east, has realized that ideas and influence cross borders and what are you going to do to "redraw the map" (whatever that means, even) whenever there's a new idea? Or the reverse, say the ideas stay in place - wouldn't the resultant neighboring communities will be so opposed, so out-of-touch with 'the others' on the other side of the border that war would simply be viewed as a more justifyable course of action (over talking) than it is now? With no background of relatability, no common humanity, wouldn't enemizing the other to whatever end be all that more simple? What about sticking to what you're supposed to do? What about bolstering civil society so that instead of creating divisions you work on enhancing the societal skills of the constituency? If we can teach young people calculus by 18, can't we teach them how to talk? How and why to cooperate? Perhaps the role of the State - the powers it does and does not have - might finally be becoming a bit clearer.

Of course, this is all useless unless we remember and hold to account. Unless we remain vigilant.

In the south, the same palpable threat and looming question that essentially sparked this conflict remains the same. There is, of course, a new addition to the equation - the presence of a more robust international force. Were this addressed before the conflict, were this the first step rather than the full scale invasion of the south perhaps the hundreds on both sides might not have had to meet such stomach-turning deaths. Selim (to me): "Sometimes, you have to escalate the conflict in order to solve the conflict". How many times do we have to 'escalate', I wonder? What is the appeal of war as a mechanism for change? The immediacy? The graphic nature of it? What alternative catalyst for change could you deploy around an issue to gain popular support for healthy change/negotiation/solution development other than killing? What other incentives exist?

d) The potent feeling of embarrassment: Was I was just a sucker to have imagined this as a potential catalyst to Lebanese solidarity and reform? A sucker to have never opened myself to the idea that this has happened before, that this happens? It's just wait and see, it's just wait and see...the conflict still steams, things are still far from ultimately settled...we'll wait and see if something sparks. I admit fully, humbly, that I am eons away from understanding the collective mindset of the region.

For the most part, (a-d) is over.

Selim (to me, today): "Saturday, don't make any plans. We are going to the South. Don't make any plans, ok?"
Me: "What plans would I make? - I don't do anything except sleep and then go to the SDC office."

The SDC continues to run its Crisis period programs ad-hoc; but as the numbers dwindle, the crew spends more and more time preparing for the future of the organization. Selim has developed the "Save Tomorrow's Humanity Today" program - we launch the 'Post Crisis' phase in two weeks. Phase Two will go for two years - it's Selim's long term plan to build solidarity. It's large and impressive. The SDC will launch a series of national activities (all designed to be fun with a social incentive twist): bus tours from the northerly/non-affected areas to bring those untouched by the war to the South, to witness the destruction, to speak with the residents there, work on projects together. Selim has this amazing bag of tricks - a series of fun activities that he does with people to help them work together. For the coming two years, he'll be using the war as conversation piece to bridge divides. There are summer camps planned (again for the coming two summers) which will also take place in the south. Selim will host thousands of children, will walk them through exercises in identity, will introduce them to the idea of being Lebanese, of building solidarity.

I have begun to realize how large and deep a problem the ongoing conflict know as the Middle East actually is. Looking at the sentence, I feel young and dumb...I have known from reading and talking with others how it has affected them, have been able to see it from the outsides and say 'well, that seems incredibly complicated'. But it has been an entirely greater education to actually feel it. It has been a powerful lesson to absorb, so large that I fought accepting it for the past few days as it seemed simply too big. For days, I've been up at night again. Pacing, feeling exhausted, trying to just breathe.

I was wrong, though, about it being too big. I came to Lebanon with conviction – granted on shaky legs, but still standing strong - empowered by the idea that one person (the individual, the empathetic human being) was the single most powerful force in conflict resolution. That the presence of empathy (buttressed by forward thinking and pragmatic planning, granted…cautiously made steps) could be relief in itself.

This is true--with one caveat. Empathy and trust building require incessant turning of the other cheek, require steadfast commitment, require an enlightened understanding that any falter is total loss. You must be on, all the time. You must "be the change you want to see", etc. You cannot simply 'employ' empathy as much as it and other qualities such as strength, intelligence, commitment can be tools. You have got to live it. You have to bleed it. You have to accept the role of being the best link in the chain.

I think most believe that this sort of person is some sort of fantasy, that that level of commitment (that I can only assume the coming years of international conflict will demand from each of us) no longer exists. It's been interesting, then, for the past few weeks, to have sat next to and worked alongside such an individual.

It didn’t come as a surprise to me when Selim told me that his undergraduate education was in architecture. He'll sit here, next to me in the office at times during the day facing his laptop. I watch his eyes. He’s building in his head. Assembling the pieces and the path he will lead the children on through his ‘summer camps’ in the coming two years; working through how he will develop solidarity among the youth of Lebanon through games and activities. You can see the corners of his mouth turn up just slightly now and again when he gets to the end of a successful mental run-through of a camp session or a weekend retreat. I imagine that in his mind’s eye he is witnessing how startled the children are to realize that they have made a true friend with a person of an opposing ideology.

He is doing it. He is certainly one of the most intrepid men I’ve ever met, but I don’t consider him uniquely gifted. Selim has simply committed himself to living his life in service to the ultimate good. He now employs the gifts I think we're all given in a more consistent way. He lives to build new tools to release the potential of us all. He has made his choice. He has made and continues to make his Stand. And he makes it look easy.

Tomorrow we go to the South. I'll spend the day helping Selim and the team work out logistics for the camp sites, the base of operations for the solidarity building camps and retreats for the next two years. I'm painfully aware of how - particularly after all of my negativity on this post - one might assume that this is a fool's errand.

It's not. Selim knows how to draw the people in with fun, with the proper incentives. As fractured as the people of this country and region are, they are capable of such unity. I have witnessed it.

I first arrived in Beirut on June 9th--the night of the World Cup. Perhaps thinking that what I had seen then - just a mass of people, a crowd of Lebanese all huddled about projection screens set up by the Nejmeh Square cafes - might possibly have been a single group, just Sunni or Shi'a or Christian or just one party dominating the place, I asked Selim in the car today what groups had comprised that crowd. Had there been only one group represented there that night?

Selim (to me, in the car on the way to the office): "Oh no, oh no. No they were all there. We all come out for the World Cup."

Hold your breath.

2006-08-13T22:58:00.000+03:00

Goliath (to me, in net cafe): "Tonight's the night, yo. It's the night. It's the night of reckoning. If they're going to get us, they're going to get it all in tonight."

Goliath is right and wrong, at least according to popular opinion and the common interpretations of 1701 which is set to go into effect at 8 am tomorrow, local time. The strength of the resolution, of course, is in question around the world.

Selim (to me, at the SDC today): "You said you would be leaving us when there is a cease-fire, right?"

Me: "Right, right. Well, plans change. But that's the plan-ish." (I've elected to go to graduate school in the fall. The only program of its kind that I could find - an MA in 'Human Values and Contemporary Global Ethics". I'm supposed to be there in late September. It's a 'working plan'.)

Selim: "Let me tell you something, there is not going to be a cease-fire. No one respects these resolutions. Hizbullah did not respect them, Israel sure as heck does not respect them. You will be with us here for a while."

Selim repeated the sentiment later on in the day. He had decided that after weeks of continuous work, the SDC crew deserved an afternoon of rest; he put together a barbecue for us. Two hours into the celebration (while Selim was leading us in chants and cheers - there were traditional Lebanese songs and dancing - I was trying to figure out how it was that the pelvises of Lebanese women could gyrate with such autonomy from the rest of their body without actually dislocating from the spine) Israel shook Beirut again. I went for my camera.

Selim: "Look, they will be back. You're going to go? They will be back - this is never the end." (In Lebanese bars - once everyone is good and tipsy - one of the 'dirty jokes' you'll hear from the war-weary patrons trying to make light of the situation is: "You are American? Let me tell you about Lebanon. Lebanon is like a woman, yes? It needs to bleed every month. And it will never go to the menopausal stage, this woman.") Me (to Selim): "It's just something that I need to do...I just want to see it before I go. I think now there's a chance they will stay away from Beirut."

There had been one thing sticking in my mind since my encounter with the freelancers: I had judged them (publicly) as blood thirsty while having no idea what they had been through. E (intrepid freelancer who had disappeared into the South for a few days and had been pushed into a van full of bodies) had mentioned that the freelancer goes into a mode, a professional way of being when gore was shoved into his face. He framed it with his camera. And I do that too--as evidenced by this blog. My way of pacing out the overwhelming waves of emotional input that hit me: I frame them, command them, they are mine. I am no longer at their whim...I can reflect on them, learn and grow.

Was the 'blood thirst' not their inherent nature but instead simply their human (perhaps extreme) reaction to the situation? Their one and only way of dealing with all that they had seen? Was I wrong to judge?

YESTERDAY:
Mona (to me, on the Corniche, by the sea): "She just sits in her room. She has been there for days. She is just crying...crying all the time. I tell her, 'you must eat you must do something' - she is going to go blind, I tell her."

Mona and Rafik - along with a few hundred others - have come down to the shore to collect the latest message from the Israelis. Leaving the the NetCafe in Hamra, I heard ...like a party-favor but perhaps 100 times as loud. I ran, rounded corners, looking to the skies for smoke or to the sides of buildings for evidence of shelling even though I knew by the noise what I had heard couldn't have been a shell or a strike. Still, everyone poured into the streets. We all looked up to see the flyers floating down like sick sparrows. I had seen the flyers from the Israeli army many times in the past, but had never had a 'capsule' of them explode right over my head.

Once we'd all realized that it was just another 'letter', the majority of the folks in the street started to laugh and crack jokes. I haven't been able to figure out what the Israeli army has hoped to gain from any of these messages. I suppose, like any propaganda, the aim has been to win support for their campaign or at least turn the tide of thinking against Hizbullah. But the whole idea of dropping warnings and strongly worded notes "from the skies above" hasn't served to frighten or change the minds of the people here, at least in Beirut. If anything, it's backfired-- they are further antagonized, and convinced that Israel is either a) ignorant of the Lebanese mindset, b) single-mindedly militant or c) just kind of dumb.

Mona: "It says the names of the Hizbullah that have been killed. These are the names that Israel says they have killed."
Rafik: "But this is not true! This is never true! They have done this before and the next day, one of the soldiers that they said that they killed came on television and he said 'Look, look am I dead!?' How would they know who has been killed?"
Me: "Well, how do we know who has been killed?"
Rafik: "When a soldier is killed, Hizbullah presents a gift to the family of the martyr - this is how we know. Israel has said they have killed 450 - there have only been 45 killed! We know this! Nasrallah - he tells the truth! He tells the truth and he wants peace. All Lebanese want peace. We do not want war."
We watched some of the children in area giggle as they tracked the falling paper; most of it had blown into the sea while falling. I asked Mona and Rafik why they were still in Beirut.
Mona: "We are working with many volunteers. Helping the people. Helping the people without shelter. They are living in the garbage, most of them. We give them food, sometimes clothes. There is one - do you know Qana? Do you know what happened? We have a woman from a place close by - also hit. She is staying with us now, crying all the time. When the bombs, when the missiles hit the house there was a huge explosion and her children - you have seen the pictures of the children who are burned? - her daughter was killed. The bomb burned the child's skin and hair off. The skin it fell off. The woman, when she found her child, she took her hand and brushed the child's hair away to see its face and the woman took all the child's skin and hair off in her hand. She just sits in her room. She has been there for days. She is just crying...crying all the time."

TODAY:
What did i come here for? I've moved passed the idea of representing 'America'-- an impossible task + ineffectual: Why narrow the potential of individual choice within the limited framework of the definition of the State? The individual: so powerful. The Stand.

So, if as an individual my goal is simply to provide an strong, human presence and apply whatever applicable skills I have towards securing relief for innocents caught in the cross fire, what fuels and guides that process? What is it that helps me to make good decisions in a situation like this? To be not just here, but effective while here?

Simple strategic thinking gets you where you need to be to make the impact; I found my way back, found a great organization doing progressive and intelligent work to address the root causes of continued conflict. But I've found that it's just sheer empathy that shows you how to be when it comes time to speak, to be there - to be there for kids, or to struggle through conversations with people who look at you the wrong way at the outset. You're there to build the bridge. To do that, you need to know the direction the bridge needs to go. Empathy as a skill.

In spite of all the 'showing up' I've done, all the conversations I've had, all the assistance (even the small amount) I've feel I've been able to provide in one way or another, I realize that I am still too far away from knowing the zip code of where the other end of the bridge needs to go. In truth, there's never one 'other end'; everyone is always different. Everywhere. Empathy as a skill: listening, searching for clues to inform your identification.

But with this demographic, with so many traumatized in the middle east, with an entire region so painfully accustomed to war, it would benefit that process of creating case-by-case bridges by doing all that you can to equip yourself with a strong understanding of the society, the events, the people. For now and for the future conversations. I am at the point where I need to know more about loss.

Simply, Selim looks saddened. He has organized this wonderful outing for us all; I feel sheepish telling him that I'm going to chase down a taxi and go to the impact site from the bombs we have just heard. I suddenly feel my nationality and all that it implies here. "There will be other times." Me: "I know, I know there will be other times." There will be for him, but my path will take me out of Beirut at some point soon. If by some small chance the cease-fire holds, this will be the last time in broad daylight I will be able to see the aftermath of twenty bombs delivered from above in quick succession, that cost, that loss. I have felt the bombs, I have seen the smoke from the distance...but no, I have never seen a burnt child at my feet, I have never seen a head being put into a bag. It's a sickening desire to have, but I just want to know.

Selim: "You take this then." He is worried, he hands me his glass of Arak and water. "Cheers." I drink and leave.

The French Educated Reporter is at the party; she has been on the phone since the echoes of the strikes; she has connections, knows where the hits were and knows where to tell the taxi to take us. She will find us a safe route, she says. We drive, she is on the phone and I hate what I am doing.

We are going to the southern suburbs. "It is forbidden to you" FER says to me. Me: "Just get me as close as you can."

The backroads we take turn out to be a tour through the past few weeks of strikes. Bridges are bombed out and taped off. At the top of one of the hills, the taxi driver stops the car. He starts speaking with FER. She looks back at me. "He will not go any further. We are asking him to put his life in danger. He wants to turn around."

Me: "How much money will it take?"

FER: "He wants to turn around."

We had reached a hill overlooking the city. Around us, others had stopped their cars; from the road, you could see the smoke in the distance. We watched the plume - one of the largest in the entire offensive - drift up for a few moments; it seemed farther away to me then than similar images I had seen with my own eyes or on television.

I'm still struggling with the paradox that caged my brain on the way home - the conflicting feelings at remembering Selim: 'It's never over'. I was struck first with the feeling of comfort - I would again have the opportunity to feel through such an experience and grow for the sake of service later on in life...should the need again arise to provide that service to someone that might need the helping.

The second feeling was disgust at having actually looked forward to some travesty happening somewhere for the sake of personal gain - even with the best of intentions.

Tomorrow at 9 o'clock I will head back into the SDC. Selim and I will talk cease-fire, what it means, will talk about the transition the organization will begin to consider making from 'crisis-mode' to 'post-crisis'. We will brew coffee on the gas stove on the porch of the office. All the plans will be tentative. Everyone's plans now are tentative. With a toothless resolution, a veritable war by proxy, and influential western partners seemingly occupied by other happenings, the people here are saying that a continuation of a conflict without oversight or accountability - a slipping back from even this tiniest of steps forward - is where we should make our plans. Here, there is only the faintest air of hope. I try to breathe it in and hold it.

Takes

2006-08-11T07:26:00.000+03:00

I can't tell if in times of war everyone around you becomes a "freelance photojournalist" or if flpjs just arrive to take the place of departed residents. I suppose it's a combination of the two, me a borderline example of the former, half of the current residents of Talal's shining examples of the latter.

Two days ago, Israel expanded its bombing campaign in Beirut for the first time into an area that included Christians - the Eastern Europeans, the Spainaird and the New Zealander were all there moments after the strike.

Me (close to midnight, in the hostel): 'How did you get down?'
EE1: 'We took a taxi. We got in and told him where we wanted to go. He said 'I know where is it, I just escaped from there. Really good luck."

Freelance reporters are more savage than most of the staff reporters I've come to know at any of the networks or papers here; they're working to make a name for themselves, they're in it for the risks, for the shock. They are vultures. They sat in the dorm room until well past one loading up their jpegs onto portable Macs, exasperated in joy at the sheer carnage they'd be able to capture. It was like kids picking over their candy after a successful Halloween.

EE1: "How did you get this!?" (It was a picture of a man putting a human head into a plastic bag.)
NZ: "He climbed up there, onto the roof where the bodies that had been inside had to go up."
S: "They were bringing the bodies up there, the ones they couldn't bring down...the whole roof. Where I was, there were all the bodies and the parts. They were putting them in bags because they will have to wrap all the parts."
EE2: "But you need...(poking his leg)...you need flesh, you need flesh!"
S: "Look here" (pointing to pictures of arms, etc)
EE2: "No no, is an arm - is part - just, you need just flesh - flesh!"

Sanayeh Park

2006-08-10T16:59:00.000+03:00

In Beirut, the warfare is more psychological; they've already cut off the city, trapping everyone while they continue to do fly-bys and break the sound barrier. They've used the city as a staging ground for this red rose message to either Hariri, Saudi Arabia (the embassy is near the tower which is out of use) or perhaps to goad Nasrallah himself as the UN decision grows closer.

Selim took some time to joke with the SDC staff yesterday about Israel's recent note to the civilians of Beirut. They've been dropping pamphlets all over the country recently to let people know that they should leave, should not drive large vehicles, etc.

Selim: "It says Hassan – because we all know him, we all know him by his first name – it says he played with fire and now the people of Lebanon are getting burned. Do not support Hizbullah. Shalom!" The staff laugh.

Diana: "But now he is going back on his words." Diana and Goliath independently confirm for me the general opinion of the public - Nasrallah is changing his tune. He couldn't keep the border, he has had to backpeddle; instead of "drive out Israel" he's switched his message to one of death in-country. Still ominous, but a clear sign of defeat.

Diana and I are driving to Sanayeh Park. I believe her to be the Lebanese goddess of winding her (family's) SUV through unsettlingly small openings in the traffic/people until she hits a tow truck.

Me: "It's your family's car? You're family is still here?"
Diana: "Where would we go? We do not have a place in the mountains or villages. We are from Beirut, all of us."
Me: "Are they involved in the relief effort too?"
Diana: "My Father - he asks me why I am doing this. He says this is Hizbullah's doing. They should do what you're doing, he says. I don't believe it's that. I don't believe that this is a question of 2 prisoners. This is a question of political autonomy for Lebanon. They don't like us to have democracy, to have political independence."
Me: "But why? Why wouldn't Israel want to actually have peace with Lebanon?"
Diana: "This is not defense. No, it is economic. Why would they do this to the whole country? Why do all of this?"

We pass one of the few gas stations in the city; I realize that the deadlocked line of cars and trucks leading up to it is the cause of the multi-block traffic. People here are allowed a few liters three times a week and line up hours in advance to get as much as they can before the fuel delivery runs out. Cops and military personnel oversee the delivery of the fuel, screaming at cars to back off and allow a red-cross truck in to fill up. Everyone is suffering.

Diana: "The tourism of Lebanon, the industry here takes from the Israeli network. Arab tourists come here rather than go to the south of France or Spain. I have been, I have studied in France. All of the tourist places are owned by Jews or Americans or people sympathetic to the Israeli network. This is not self defense, this is economic."

SANAYEH PARK

As we pull up to the garden, we're waved to circle the block and find some other place to park by yet another soldier. Inside, there has been a fight; there are military, police and ambulances trying to bring order to the people as we enter.

The second thing we see is the work of another group:

The SDC specializes in fostering Lebanese solidarity in a non-political, non-confessional way. Our goal with kids is to keep them positive, remind them that anything is doable, get them thinking about visions of the future and non-violent solutions to war. Other groups in Lebanon do not share that mission. They've been using this atrocity as a means of solidifying a certain kind of hatred in the kids' minds, having them draw only pictures of what they've lost and what they hate.

Diana (in the park): "But most people here they don't support Hizbullah. 80% hate them but they will never speak out. They are the only armed ones." Another volunteer, a girl of fourteen still in braces touches my shoulder. Diana: "Oh, she is saying that we do not touch the children in the park. It's much dirtier in the park than in the schools. Here, the children…how…what is the word? They have…"(makes little crawling motion on her arm).

They have fleas.

Diana gathers the kids in Sanayeh Park together for the day's activity. It's a young group today, 3-6 year olds mostly. We explain the exercise and do it alongside them. It's simple. On one side of the paper you draw your house after the attack; on the other side you draw your dream of your house in the future or what you're looking forward to doing after the war.

After I finished taking pictures with the kids and showing them to them (my primary way of communicating), I started taking photos of the rest of the park/camp/shelter.

There were three news crews when I got there. One Norwegian, one local and one Iranian woman from the Iranian national press.

IranianReporter (whispering to me as I framed the birdcage): "It's like the Israeli occupation." I lowered the camera and laughed with her. Some of the dark humor lately has been pretty comforting (this video has been playing on various computers in the net cafe for the past few days...) She smiled. She stared at me. "Where are you from?"
"United States - I'm working with -"
"Oh, you support Israel then"
"Actually - ah, I definitely don't 'support' anything here, either side in this. You just have all these people in the middle -"
"You support Israel. You are American. It is the same as Israel." That smile! Just beaming at me...
"No, it's not."
"It is. You are a murderer."
I have this bad habit of walking away from people that I think are frustrating. Then I went back to her.
"Exuse me, would you please take that back?"
"Hmm?" (smile!)
"What you said right now to me, would you please apologize for it?"
"You are American-"
"America is a big place and not all of us want what's happening here for a lot of different reasons. And, whatever the reasons, I'm just here to help this organization work with these kids."
"But you vote for Bush!"
"49% of 300 million did not vote for Bush - that's a lot of people - It was a polarized election and there's a lot more to what's happening in that country -" (we're pretty much a foot apart from each other now - she is smiling while I am gritting my teeth...I am doing a stupid thing.)
"Oh you vote for Kerry – he is the same as Bush! You sell the bombs. You give Israel the bombs"
"Um, I haven't ever built or sold a bomb in my life. Again, I'm here just spending time with these kids."
"You are a murderer, yes? You kill people. You are a murderer." Gah! Smile!
"I think you're pretty crazy and really pretty ill-informed for a reporter. Have a good day." Walk away. Hate walking away. Hate having to shake head and walk away.

I went back to the kids and asked Diana to translate what one of the little girls was talking with her about. Diana: "She says she is going home tomorrow – (leaning in to whisper to me) they tell all the children that. Tomorrow, they tell them."

Diana tells me as I'm leaving that they fight in the park had been caused by a notorious family here that will often attack new families that have recently arrived.
Diana: "The park is different than the schools. They come here and stay here because they like the freedom here. These are the people who do not want to go to the schools. They steal food and blankets. Curfew in the schools is normally 9 or 10 pm. I have a friend helping in the mountains. There, four adults - they came and asked for a woman!"
Me: "Were they joking?"
Diana: "No! They said it was an emergency need. Normally you ask for milk or blankets…The women now, they are asking for…the pill--contraception? An old woman asked for a small private room for her son and his new wife. She said they were newly married and they didn't have the chance to…you know….to practice!

D: "Yesterday we went to the school. There was a pool of waste water. Horrible. Sewer water. I tried to pull the kids out to distract them to do something else. You know what they did? They kicked it at me, the water, with their foot. It was like a game."

Selim told me that story when came back from field work yesterday, too. He immediately announced that as part of the hygiene-in-the-shelter course for kids, we would be buying the children soap. "I don't care, we're buying soap. We will tell them this it is a pet or something that they must keep with them all the time."

Yesterday, I didn't go to the schools; I was busy doing the org's budget for the coming two years of relief programming. Halfway through the afternoon I heard shelling and realized I needed to enter in a new line item: "Emergency Relocation Fund (in case of destroyed office)".

Before leaving the park I stopped to take a picture of an old man's prayer beads.
Old Man: "I am praying although I know we will have a victory soon."
Diana: "Look, when you have children drawing these, I think we already have a victory."
OM: "Look at this - this is not defense. Children? They have no guns to defend themselves. There is a song -'Lebanon is a piece of Heaven'. I believe this, I believe we have God. Where are you from?"
Me (stomach tight): "I'm from the United States...sorry."
OM: "Why are you sorry?"
Me: "I get strong reactions when I say that here."
OM: "Why? We don't' hate Americans here! In Lebanon? No. But if you apologize to me you are saying to me that you have done something wrong to me. If you are that image, if you are that image then we will judge you as that image. The people of Beirut, we do not hate Americans. We hate the policy, yes, but you? You are here! Not you. We like Americans. You must be proud, you are doing good."

Me (to Selim, back at the office): "Selim, can you tell me something? Am I....I hope you understand this...but to you am I ...do I like...you know the MidEast has this perception of 'all Americans'...is that me? Am I that?"

Selim (laughing): "You are losing your nationalism Thomas! You are losing your nationalism!"

Me: "I don't know - I don't know where I am with this - I know that I still love my country but ...seems really far away from where I am...very far away from what I'm doing. I don't know - I LOVE the United States...just frazzled...I don't feel like a United States citizen...I...it's like some of my identity has been worn away by this."

Selim: "This is good. You love your country, this is good to be a patriot. But when you start thinking of yourself as unique, you start to have something to protect, you start to have conflict. I think that you are a patriot yes, but you are not a nationalist. To me. I will make you a certificate if you want. Look, it's good to be part of your country. Look, we had a memorial here; there was a gathering in the city to mourn the dead in the conflict. And nobody went. Here, they do not care. 'This is a Hizbullah problem' or 'this is somebody else's problem.' They do not mourn even the dead of their own country! This is what we must change."

PolticsMusicNoise

2006-08-04T23:40:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, the 5 pm hit on the suburbs sent the kids into a panic.

With the Orient Queen and other international ships having completely vacated the city's ports, Beirut is now back on the list of targets. Israel continues to pound the southern suburbs of the city suspecting that the area is still some sort of a stronghold for Hizbullah leadership. I'm not sure that that's the only reason for what seems to be almost a needless bombardment. The campaign seems to have ratcheted up somewhat in frequency and intensity; you can feel that someone somewhere is angry. Emotion, I think, is starting to play an even greater role in things, perhaps muddling focus and forcing Israel to expand its operation to include a number of secondary targets. I mean, really, what's left in the south?: Before and After

I don't think the increase in intensity has much to do with time constraints any more. The US seems to be officially giving Israel all the time it needs; the first step: a loosely worded UN resolution crafted without Arab involvement, designed to fail.

Selim (to child): "Can you draw it?"

Having gained the trust of the children and the goodwill of the parents after days of fun activities with the kids, Selim has begun the transition into activities directly related to the big goals of the course: Lebanese solidarity (regardless of confession), ownership and understanding of the role of the citizen through this conflict through delivery of information and the exercise of free speech (in this case, painting). A small girl took a green marker from Selim's hand and, in front of the group of forty or so kids scrawled a picture of a chicken on the butcher paper Selim had tapped to the wall. It is, she said, her favorite dinner.

This was an exercise on Children's Rights; Selim had broken it down for them, telling them that no matter how old they were, they were entitled to certain things. What were they? Kids took turns answering, working with the UN document, drawing pictures of exactly what they felt they had a right to - things like rest, food, a home, an education. Chicken.

I am no longer phased or excited in anyway when the bombs hit. They're still a bit distracting. I find myself thinking about the pilots, thinking about what it's like for them to target and release, what they say to the command post, what they think about in the moment after a strike. So, I was distracted and it took me a full three seconds to realize that the kids are screaming; the girl had dropped the marker and had run back into the group now in chaos.

"OK OK!" Selim called with his arms up, "OK - who knows a song? What song do you want to sing?"

I did't understand the words, but I know Arabian pop when I hear it. Reluctantly at first but with growing commitment and enthusiasm the children began to follow each other in song. It took a minute but they relaxed. I looked to Selim waiting for him to give me a "phew" look; he never did. Some part of him was waiting for this, had already thought ahead.

Selim: "Thomas I'm not going to give you the political speech because we don't talk politics at SDC but now we are not at the SDC so I'm going to tell you what I think. There is going to be a civil war. There is going to be a civil war because at the end of the day - among other things - this is about the United States and Iran. This is war by proxy. This is war by proxy."

After work we went to a bar - Barometer ("Bar-o-metre"). Selim: "When I go out to places wherever I live I go only to two or three places. You are a regular you get the royal treatment." When the SDC staff arrived, Selim went behind the bar and got his own drinks. The Barometer bartender immediately asked a couple in the corner to move - they were sitting at Selim's table.

Reading through event listings and nightlife guides online is like combing the obituaries. Barometer is one of the few places still open in the city; small, crowded, run by a Hizbullah sympathizer. Selim: "I didn't come here for many months, I told him I didn't agree with his politics - there was a very big fight. He called me - he found my phone number and called me after three months. He apologized to me! Now, I come here all the time. I get the royal treatment."

Already arguments had started - it was only 8. The air filled with smoke, the tables increasingly cluttered with half empty glasses and bottles of Arak. The noise got sharper, peaked. Selim had brought a friend to join us, a reporter educated in France, well traveled, well informed. Her answers to my questions "what are your feelings about Hizbullah" were long, protracted...she has answers that are hours long...I looked around ....everyone's answers were hours long...there is density, confusion, passion, pouding of tables and shots and tables again, there is information batted back and forth...yelling...arabicarabicarabicbusharabicricearabice...there weren't any 'democrats' or 'republicans'...there were walking talking complications that paused only on occasion to tell dirty jokes (normally involving Winston Churchill). There are opinions upon opinions of opinions about opinions...just like there are all over the world, I suppose.

The Bartender rang a bell above the bar with great enthusiasm bringing the bar to silence. BT: (in arabic) "We just wanted to see...hold on ...listen...OK...we think it's OK...we just wanted to hear and see if we were getting attacked!" Riotous laughter. It's true, we were warned that Hamra would be hit tonight along with central Beirut; we were warned that Israel was angry.

Music is turned up. It's a drinking song. Selim's brother takes to the floor and dances with the bartender.

The politics of the situation are complicated on all levels. There is this war by proxy idea, there is this ongoing problem of the West's relationship with the Arab community, there is the blatant exclusion of said community from any real talks or negotiations, there is the almost sad dismissal of any of Lebanon's immediate desires for the first UN resolution (under debate), there are the local political figures at once demanding Lebanese sovereignty but allying themselves with Hizbullah (a non-state actor), there are little things making us all nervous, there is the press, Israel refusing to leave without Hizbullah disarming, Lebanon refusing to accept anything without Israel living, some calls in the middle for a simultaneous withdrawal, doubt as to the effectiveness of an international force...

Selim: "But it all comes down to this too - who is going to disarm Hizbullah? The Lebanese government will be put in that position - the army will be put in that position and they will split. There will be a civil war. Half of them with, half of them against. There is some unity now, but this will be broken."

Talal (To me, today): "There will not be a civil war if you say to the Palestinians just go and fight them some other place, go to Gaza go to west bank. But Bush and Rice! This is a Lebanese issue, this is a Lebanese issue!" This is a Lebanese issue exploited to conduct a war by proxy?

I stayed late at the internet cafe (it's an all night place); exhausted from the politics, I was looking for something else to do in this town.

Me (to NetCafeGuy @ 1 am): "What do you guys, like, do here?"
NetCafeGuy: "We just chill"
Me: "...but, I mean...I need some place to go. I can't remember the last time I had ...like, 'fun'"
NetCafeGuy (laughing): "It's WAR man!"

NetCafeGuy went back to typing away - he was updating his myspace account. NetCafeGuy: is about 6'4'' in bare feet. He's built like a teddy bear. He was that kid in high school that moved slow, that girls loved not in a romantic way but because he was just the sweetest 'big guy' in the world. He is the older cousin that plays your games with you (not the kind that teaches you the games of adults). He stands by and fetches and feeds your ball to you after you, 3 feet tall, struggle to push the ball up to the rim - he could easily dunk it. For you, because you are a kid, he never lets this on. He is kind. Too, since I've known him, NCG has been one of the cornerstones of the local relief effort, rounding up volunteers to do charitable works - food and clothing handouts. He's all about helping people and says "the cause" like it's a monolith in his mind's eye 24 hrs a day.

Nonetheless, NetCafeGuy is a budding gangsta rapper. Stage name: Goliath.

Goliath received an email at about 1:30 am. It was from some promo department in the UK, some label that wanted to promote his music on a new poster or card or something. They needed a publicity shot. ASAP.

Goliath: "You're a reporter right?"
Me: "Actually I'm here more for the relief effort. I work with the displaced kids in the schools."
Goliath: "Right, but you got a camera, right? You're good at taking pictures?"
Me: "Yeah, I can take a picture - what do you need?"
Situation explanation. Grabbing of camera. Propping up G on this odd cement block we found outside.
G: "I hope you don't mind man - really, really hate bothering you, you know? (dude is just...again, Teddy Bear)"
Me: "Really, it's no worry - you ready?"
G: "Oh, one more thing - I don't want to offend you, but you know, I've got like a stage thing, you know? I gotta get into it."
Me: "Whatever you gotta do..."

It was incredibly dark - I could barely see to frame Goliaths head and had to leave the shutter open for ten seconds to get anything. When it clicked closed, this came up on the screen.

Another complicated Lebanese personality. Granted, an incredibly funny one.

Still, looking at it brought up the feeling of sheepishness I felt a day or so after grappling with my deep seated desire (even if passing) to make some defiant stance against an invading force. Defiant stance = similar to but less than The Stand. Stand=non-aggressive, not even symbolically. Ideologically more...I don't' know, pure or sound.

Me: "You're a rapper?"

Goliath: "Yup"

Me: "You do shows around here? Do you know other rappers here or like other groups?"

Goliath: "Aw, there are some sick acts, so many spitting fire like sick."

Me: "Sick."

So, we started brewing it. We stayed up until four, plotting. We had a map of Hamra street. We had plans to get the Red Cross and UNICEF there in tents giving out vaccinations and medical supplies. We had enrollment booths plotted where the displaced (some living in random basements or bombed out buildings) could come and register their locations to get supplies. We had booths for local NGOs that wanted to advertise their services. We had plans to call the media. Me: "I want George Clooney to turn this into a Telethon for the Lebanon reconstruction effort." And in the middle a stage: and a line up of all Lebanese local artists to draw the people in hiding out for a night of relief. A night of solidarity. A night of music. I walked home dreaming up the T-Shirts: Black w/ red lettering: "We rocked Beirut harder than laser guided bombs."

Ministry Representative (on the phone): "Yes, this is - yes, I understand this idea. Now is not a good time. Now is a dangerous time. Now, we are telling people not to congregate in public. It is not a safe time."

Such was the consensus from ...everyone. It seems after hours of calls and chats with friends here that the very fear we wished to attack - the risk that we thought would be overturned and revealed as an opportunity if taken - would be too much. We were alone, it seemed, in our desire to ...be a part of something bigger than ourselves. So then, for right now, at least, I'll settle for quietly moving through my day, focusing all my energies on the kids and my work with the SDC.

We decided that it was important to be responsible above all things. The idea was to tap into our (mis)percieved 'will of the people' and build an opportunity for the public to find/find solidarity and services. We were wrong. Still, we have the plans, we built some contacts and we have all the phone numbers lined up. If and when the mood changes, if a cease-fire is reached, if a feeling of safety comes to re-pervade the city, Goliath and I are agreed: we will make those phone calls.

Still, even in this there is more debate:

Goliath: 'You know, though, there's a club here. Underground. Poeple want to stay underground where it's safe, so, you know, we just do it underground. Just do it small, like every week small shows. Let it grow, right?"

Resist.

2006-08-04T01:34:00.000+03:00

I asked Selim today what he would do if Israeli tanks rolled into Beirut.

In spite of trying to focus all of my energy on envisioning non-violent resistance, I have to admit that last night when the airstrikes resumed on Beirut I actually got stuck in a fantasy (in anger) about the moment that perhaps I'd get to see a line of tanks ...walked through all sorts of scenarios in my head...imagined how difficult it would be to NOT throw rocks. I smiled when I imagined the absurdity of the images you'd see on the news...a bunch of scrappy Lebanese tossing rocks a la Palestinian resistance - and there, in the middle of it, in the middle of the dust and the noise, throwing stones alongside the citizen resistance would be this tall, lanky white dude in cargo shorts and an American Apparel short-sleeved collared shirt. Baby blue.

After last night's strikes on the suburbs (I think they've moved to bunker-busters now), I spent some time on the balcony, trying to breathe through the anger. They've effectively cut off the city, now - meaning less aid to the displaced, meaning less fuel for the cars, meaning that Beirut now has a noose around its neck. Should the attacks continue tonight, HBLah has threatened to attack Tel Aviv (adding too, that should Israel pull back that this all will be over...). Should Tel Aviv come under attack...well, we'll just have to see.

There are a few new faces at Talal's - two traveling young men from eastern Europe (one, his arm has been mangled...I've avoided asking them directly where they're from until I know them both better, thinking that the conversation will come back to 'home', come back to the story of that arm); two fifty/sixty year old, leather-faced taxi drivers with scratchy, cigarette burned throats. They have decided to temporarily make Talal's their home and to work their routes in the downtown area until it's completely safe to be driving around the roads south of town. Where they're from.

The two Europeans once woken skipped to the balcony giving me a pang of nostalgia for the Poles, for the American, the Canadian and the Norwegian - for when we used to run up to the roof during the first days of the war. I roll over now, no longer morbidly curious.

Once they'd come back to bed and fallen asleep I had to get up, had to walk. I couldn't shake it, couldn't shake the feeling of knowing, knowing that I would throw a rock. At that moment, had I a tank in front of me, there would be no peaceful stand, there would only be attack. I stared off towards the faded sounds of the bunker-buster explosions biting my lip and trying to just...let it go.

Although I'm too exhausted most days to really investigate the questions, I have them all written down in my notebook:
1) Obligation of State to Citizen? To other states? To citizens of other states?
2) Obligation of Citizen to State? To other citizens? To citizens of other states?
3) Obligation of human being to human being?

When deciding to come back, I often asserted (to myself, mostly) that I would be a one man American Foreign Policy. I thought then that given how I disagreed with the politics of the situation, that I would simply be the politics. I argued to myself that as I was an American citizen and that as America is a democratic state (where, ideally, the act of the government is representative of the popular will of the people - where the people are culpable for the acts of the government, where we are all responsible directly for 'America') that it was my very job to be here, to be doing on the ground what the representative officials were not. America. I was, to my mind, just one of the team (granted, actively working against what seemed to be the intentions of the State).

Two days ago, I had an webpage forwarded to me and after reading it I was reminded that this idea that 'the citizen of the United States (again, democracy) can and should be held just as responsible for the acts of the state as the elected officials, official bodies, military etc' was and is the exact logic that Bin Laden uses to justify killing civilians.

In combination with how quickly I saw myself getting tripped up, getting sucked into this conflict in a way that blinded my own logic, I spent hours staring into the black of night wrestling to find some more valid way of explaining why I was here. What was it, I asked myself, that supported my actions if not an argument based out of the direct connection between the citizen and the democratic state. I liked the idea, I realized, of feeling empowered, of thinking of myself as an equal to the gov itself, just as capable, just as effective. But liking an idea doesn't make it valid. And I'm lost now - or at least I've given up on looking to define this 'thing' that I have done as some extension of my responsibilities as a citizen. It isn't true. It's deeper, I believe - it's personal. It's more about what I've perceived as the simple obligation of people to people.

Though here, in the realm of 'personal', of 'subjective' is where things get particularly dangerous. I have made the argument, too, that I came here as I simply had to live by my own principles. Incredibly dangerous. Some of the worst things in the world have come as a result of people living by their principles, their 'misguided' principles.

It's at that moment when you find yourself looking at yourself in a different way. You don't actually understand what you have done or why - at least not in any way you can substantiate with anything but trite turns of phrase. You need to look deeper and just ask yourself: why? And, more frighteningly, in spite of the story-value, is what you are doing right? Is it helping or hurting? What is your reasoning, here, kid?"

I had the courage to do this, to take this introspective look as by most accounts what I'm doing is actually an incredibly positive and constructive thing. Still, in this moment of weakness on the balcony I knew that I needed to go a lot deeper.

For a moment you let all of the lines disappear, let all of the categories and borders evaporate - the 'definitions' that you have heard applied to other people that you thought might also apply to you. You forget them. You unlearn for a moment every characteristic that you have ascribed to yourself that is based upon how you size up against other people. You imagine yourself floating in space. Then, you look to see what you are made of: what traits remain at the ready when you are not antagonized by some outside force?

What are these principles you speak of? Are they universal? Can they ever be wrong or, better, depending upon the circumstances applied as easily for a campaign of hurt as help?

Biting my lip, I could not imagine dropping the rock, could not imagine not fighting. I realized that I had to adjust the principle, had to adjust myself ...that it would not be enough to know that I could stand and would 'simply' stand only 99% of the time - that it would have to be 100% of the time...and that that last 1% would be the hardest to secure.

I got this email from a friend, which I rely on a lot these days:

(excerpt) : Ah, reading about your moral and ethical dilemma brings back fond memories of my favorite courses in college - philosophy and ethics. I was particularly fond of Immanuel Kant and his piece on the Ethics of Duty - an action has moral worth if it is done for the sake of duty; an action is morally correct if its maxim can be willed as a universal law; we should always treat humanity, whether in ourselves or other people, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means to an end. And the reason why I love having these discussions? Because they really make you open your eyes, to see things differently, to shake us out of our self-centeredness.

I realize that this has been a healthy exercise, that I have found new dimension to my own character - have found that the parts of myself which I had once considered underexercised to be surprisingly strong. Perhaps too strong. Somedays, it's as if - now that I'm here - the same momentum that carried me here to ostensibly 'do some good' carries me a little over the line, carries me to thoughts of throwing rocks. I am inclined to fight for what I believe in - this is a double edged sword that I must learn to handle responsibly. I suppose this means I am a human being.

I realize too that, as I'm young and as these principles have been so...underchallenged (?) that without a substantial further investigation during a period of relief, of leisure that that last 1% might never be secured. I decided, then, today to take off early from volunteering and go to the one place in Beirut that still seems relaxed. The AUB campus: very much intact, grounds well manicured, students strolling, cats chasing birds and sprawled in the sun. I sat alone, watching the sea. If you squint your eyes just right, you can't even see the Israeli warships.

If/when this conflict comes to an even temporary close, I 'get' to leave. Although many have claimed that due to this fact - the fact that I have a 'way out' - I could never truly put myself in the shoes of the Lebanese and therefore could never actually call this "my fight", I can only respectfully disagree. At least, today.

I've come to know that my/our (outsider) responsibility does not end with leaving, with absence - in fact, it grows. In my opinion. If you doubt it, read the news: everyone is looking to the United States now.

We have the gift of relief, we have the gift of leisure and time; we have the opportunity to actually learn, to follow our ideas, to imagine - to envision - solutions. All this because we have a nurturing environment difficult to imagine for Beirut, for the people of this country for years if not generations to come.

It's sort of a difficult idea to face, but part of what has and continues to support the existence of that environment are two things so decried by the most lividly liberal: the strength of the US military and benefits of a capitalistic economy.

So it gets complicated - but here's where I come to answer the question that so many people have written to me in emails: What can/do 'we' do?

Although it is not a sexy responsibility, has not the "story value" of sitting in front of a tank or the notoriety that comes from jumping a French ship to a warzone, what can and should be done is noble, nonetheless. It is the supreme stand, the quiet act of standing against our immediate desires and impulses for the sake of practicing the eternal vigilance that Eisenhower so lucidly described.

The role of the American citizen. To learn, to live, to vote - to vote well. To practice whatever life out of simple, common decency - out of an interest in humanity of others; to demand accountability of ourselves; to understand that although s/he may not have to fight gun in hand to secure power, that s/he has inherited a far more important task: the preservation of the idea of responsible citizenship through simple practice. The maintenance of what has been achieved, of what so many others long for and (in the country's better moments, at least) look to.

I'm sorry this has gotten so "America-centric" again. But I suppose the thoughts of the past few days have had me reciprocally envious of the positions - the actual power and influence - of those seated at home - my home - and reading this.

He didn't need much pressing on it.
Selim: "I would go down there! I would engage in non-violent protest."
Me: "Yeah, I would too...I would, I would too. I would beat you there, probably."
Selim: "You would be there with me?"
Me: "Yeah, that's what I would do. I would stand there, no question about it. But, I don't know, there are times...last night I was thinking that sitting there with a sign or something just wouldn't be enough for me -"
Selim: "Oh no enough (laughing), so what would you want to do?"
Me: "I think, since - look, it's personal at this point, so I mean, I would do my own form of protest"
Selim: "What, what is that?"

I looked up to the ceiling pretending I was looking at a tank. Selim looked up and acknowledged the vision and looked back, waited for me. I stared at the fake tank and, starting to laugh, gave it the finger.

Selim (laughing): "It's a deal. I will see you there." We shook on it.

I suppose I still have a lot of growing up to do.

Stay within the lines (?)

2006-08-01T19:34:00.000+03:00

These past few days have been all about kids.

There's plenty of material out there about the effect of this war on children. But I wanted to show you (again, an assumed to be "Western" audience) a few of the things probably not shown in the US media about what happened in the south.

These are comparably tame, but there's no need for you to click here if you have any sort of weak stomach.

These are the images on every television in every cafe across town. It...hits you. Continuously. But there are arguments and theories from all sides on how this could have happened, or why it's "ok" or not...it's exhausting.

E returned from the south yesterday. When I came downstairs to the lobby of Talal's, I found him settling up the bill and collecting his things together. It was like seeing a ghost - never thought I'd see him again.

"There's something dodgy going on there." E takes no prisoners - after a few years of traveling through some tough regions and a few near death experiences you can see that he's both shaken up and incredibly used to being shaken up. It's his job - he's a (quite intrepid and resourceful) freelance reporter. "I went, I went to the Hospitals - the three hospitals. I counted only 27 names. Which is half of what the BBC reported - I don't know what's going on, but I think that the government inflated the numbers."

"But...I mean, can you really keep track of all of the dead just by...I mean, what about people that just, like, didn't end up in the hospital."

"You can't do that - you're not allowed to report a number of dead unless those dead have been officially certified as dead by some official - they have to go through the hospital and I saw the list. There were only 27 names in total - I went to all the hospitals. I don't know, but...yeah, there's something not right there."

It's been an 'interesting' few days in the south. As soon as Israel agreed to refrain from airstrikes, reporters (including E) flooded to the region. "We were there four hours before any aid got there. You would think that the relief agencies would have been ready to get down there...I mean, reporters don't report on reporters but yesterday the reporters were the story."

At that time, Israel promptly reneged on it's commitment and continued striking the region, but not before E had some time to witness "I can't stand it - what is the need for it? We were walking and this man literally just picks up a baby - a dead baby off the ground by its foot - and holds it up and says 'look, look at what Israel does'. They shove it in our faces. There was this supposedly refrigerated truck for all the bodies. It wasn't refrigerated. The whole operation was incredibly slow. They had all these bodies in the truck and they open up the truck to show us the dead and this just wall of flies comes out from the back of the truck. And then they had to take each body out one by one and bury them one by one. They're putting them in coffins - which, they normally do not do that. They normally wrap them. But now they're numbering them so that when the families return they can give them a proper burial. Nobody's going to do that. And I was there and one of the guys by the truck - I was kind of by myself at this point by the truck - and the guy with the truck just shoves me into the truck with the bodies on both sides. They just shove it in your face."
Me: "Did you take pictures?"
E: "I did. You kind of, like, go into this mode..."
We debated the actions taken by the mob that attacked the UN building. E raised some valid points ("They're, like, the one organization actually trying to help you") - in most cases, he'll criticize just about anyone resorting to violence and framing it as...anything, as a "solution" "reaction" "action"...anything.

I actually responded by saying that I understood their frustration, that the UN left the border first thing, that they represented the international community...blah blah blah. The truth was, I didn't have any good reasons for why I thought that I too might throw stones and burn office chairs if I had been caught up in that protest - other than simple frustration. In Beirut, you feel like you're in one of those medical school operating rooms that you sometimes see on television. The kind with the "stadium seating" elevated around the upper circumference of the room for students (or whoever) to sit in and observe the surgery. You're the patient. You're strapped down. You're awake. The doctor is obviously insane; he's given you no anesthetic, he's tearing into your body, he's ruining you and you're in pain. Yet, the students, the spectators just sort of sit and watch. It's them you scream at - I mean, the doctor is insane - it's them you beg for help. And it's them that you hate when pain persists and gets worse. I get it, I feel it - and I'm not Lebanese.

"It is pathetic. The entire UNIFIL operation; these are the guys actually operating the machinery trying to dig people out of the rubble. Reporters had to do it - we were digging people out. The UN team; there were all Chinese operators and there were all Arabic people trying to tell them where to dig. No one spoke both languages. The language barrier was just...I couldn't believe it. I had to translate for like four hours just to help them dig out bodies. (E speaks both)."
E said that he'd be leaving to Israel, to cover the story from the other side, to see some old friends and generally search for some explanation of the recent actions that Israel had taken that could help him personally come to grips with everything he'd seen. I wished him luck.

If E helped me to reconsider my opinion of the media here, Nic Robertson and his CNN crew actually officially changed it. At least expanded it.

Nic: Can you just talk a bit?
Me: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6....
Nic (looking at my face): How are you feeling?
Me (breaking out of 'the stare'): Sorry, just a bit exhausted.
Nic: I recognized the look - it's staring back at me in the mirror every morning.

I've pitched the SDC's work to ABC, CBS, BBC, CNN and the Washington Post. "This is some actually good news from Beirut, truly amazing work, you just have to come down..." ABC and the BBC have agreed to contact Selim if "it's a features week", the Washington Post called and interviewed him...but only Nic and the CNN crew came down to see what we do. They came in part for the story about the crazy American who jumped a French ship to do relief work - but Selim's golden tongue changed their focus.

CNNProducer (to me while watching Selim answer Nic's questions): "He's...amazing"

Ashoka fellows: An aura glows about them when they talk about their work; they motivate, they inspire, they get TV producers who watch for "what plays well on camera" to fall in love with them. Selim was brilliant. CNN said they wanted more, that there was a real feature here, they called later that night to ask about another set up for the next day - then they called the next day to say that Nic had family business that he needed urgently to attend to in London...

Heartbreak.

We'll find out tonight if another production team will pick up the story/when Nic is scheduled to return. Wish us luck.

MadeUpWoman: "There is something I need to tell you. You need to know, you need to tell people that this is nothing new for children. For years they are used to gunfire, they are used to this."
Nic: "We are. We are telling these stories. We tell them - look, I was in Bosnia reporting for months telling people what was happening. No one was listening, they just don't listen, they - "
Me: "Why don't they listen? Why don't people pay attention?"
Nic: "They would rather go to the movies or watch...I don't know...Look, there's only so much a 24 hour cable news network can do."

I empathize with Nic - he, to my mind and from our limited interactions, is a good man. But I think Nic is wrong. I think people would watch more if they felt not only that what was happening affected their own lives - but that they were actually more an important part of what happened, that they actually could do something about it.

MadeUpWoman was not the only person accosting Nic. A number of the residents of the school we were at that day were more than proactive about getting their feelings on the air. There is anger, there is suffering...there is a camera and a microphone, a way of screaming to the observers sitting in a ring around our heads clinically taking notes.

MadeUpWoman was not one of the displaced, though - she was a volunteer with us that day. In her own way, she's been rocked by the recent events. SDC is the second organization that she's volunteered for - her first was the local hospital now having to scramble to deal with the massive influx of new patients. Her assignment lasted, from what I've heard, only a few hours. After registering as a volunteer, hospital staff asked her to attend to one group of patients that they had not had the opportunity to visit with in days - a room full of developmentally disabled individuals. Upon entering the room, she found that the group (having had no attention in days) was covered in their own feces and simply screaming in discomfort.

One of the displaced staring Nic down is Hizbullah. Before the arrival of the CNN crew, he had directed his gaze at me, watching me with intent. Too, he had been circulating a cartoon popular among Hizbullah sympathizers and, really that day, most Lebanese - it was a cartoon of C. Rice smiling while stepping over the bodies of the dead children hit in Qana. Five minutes after our crew of relief workers came to work with the children, it was on every wall of the common space of the school.

Mohammad (to me, holding picture up to my face, smiling): "Rice? Bush?" Other kids had showed us pictures that they had drawn before we had gotten there - pictures of bombs directed towards the Israeli ships with excerpts from Nasrallah's speeches etched in crayon above the pictures.
Me: (nodding head, take camera from under arm, open the view screen to show him how to frame, press the shutter button to show him how to shoot, hand it to him and the other boys to hold while I bend down to guide the lens with my hand) "Now!" (They press the button, we have a picture of Selim. Repeat.)

Selim is in rare form. The goal here is to remember the options, remember that reactionary courses of action will lead to continued pain and suffering, that revenge is not a solution to the problem. The first step to brainstorming other options is simply to get out of the war mindset. Selim gathers the group of children around him, about 40 in all. The parents are relieved to have him here; they sit and watch the activities with exhaustion on their faces. The common space - located adjacent to the main bathroom in this school - plainly smells. The facilities cannot accommodate so many people.

Selim holds up pictures: (In Arabic) "what is this?"
Children: "Toothbrush"
Selim: "Very good, very good - and what do we do with the toothbrush?"
Children: "Brush teeth!"

And so it goes for a few minutes; he takes them through a number of group games. For 30 beautiful minutes, there is smiling, there is laughter, there are kids. You can see them loosen up. In the coming couple of days, Selim will work with them on realizing their rights as Children, will help them to build/create/paint/act their ideas against war/for peace, will show them a path to power that does not involve a gun. He is tireless.

Selim (in the car, driving back): "They tried to ask me the trick question."
Me: "The Hezbollah question?"
Selim: "The political question. I told them that this was not about that. That that is not our issue, that is for others to decide. That our issue is with the children and that is that."

To close the day, the children are handed the pictures of trees and toothbrushes and asked to color them in. By that point, I am still the outsider, the one tall white American in the room. I can feel I am a distraction but can see no way around this but to go against a recommendation - I get more involved. When I pull myself into the circle of children, there is a growing sense of awe: apparently, I am a fantastic colorer. Names are exchanged. I learn Mohammad's, he learns mine. I ask another volunteer to translate: me:"M, what do you want in this tree? You want...I mean, it needs a tire swing in my opinion. Tire swing?" There is nodding, there is a group gathered around now. "What else do we want?" By the end of the afternoon, we have two birds nests, a ladder, a tire swing and an enormous monkey. When I leave, I am no longer called "USA"; the kids call me by my name, I call them by theirs. We have success.

Working with the kids is a help, but with this the frustration is growing. The American wrote to me today telling me that there were rumors that Israeli tanks might find their way to the southern suburbs. You need the eyes of kids upon you, you need that accountability incentive to keep your cool - you need to remind yourself what you're doing and why you came back. The situation, the exhaustion, watching Talal sit in the dark each night through the nightly rolling black outs, pissed off...gets to you. It's a challenge...it's an education on why these things persist. I find myself staring at this chart I made on powerpoint in Cyprus when I was considering returning. A teacher of mine in high school used to tell us that there are always three things you can do in any situation "Gentlemen, there is the right thing, the wrong thing and nothing - and guess which one is the worst."

I've never really paid much attention to the advice - think it's pretty dumb, actually - but while in Cyprus I couldn't get it out of my head. Then, it was like: well, I don't KNOW what I would do if I went back, I don't know what action would be "the right thing"; I knew that a relief effort was happening, I knew of ths organization, knew I had applicable skills...but the constant question from the concerned was "is there not a better way for you to apply your skills somewhere out of harms way? This is not worth the risk."

(Standing and bearing witness to (patience))

Right thing ---------*--------Wrong thing

(Sitting and watching)

It has been worth the risk. I'm not sure how done I am investigating this idea from the teacher, but it seems to me that there are two kinds of 'nothing' - there's the kind where you lay down and let the tanks roll over you and there's the kind where you stand in defiant non-participation and make them roll over you, with you staring the tank driver square in the eye the entire time. It is called making a stand for what you believe in, it is called nonviolent resistance, it is called active non-participation. And, from what I've read, it's been one of the most powerful tools for change in modern history.

Relief, anger and eating rice.

2006-07-30T14:20:00.000+03:00

This morning, I saw Talal punch his couch cushion in anger.

The cafes are full again, with Al Manar or Al Jazeera covering the...atrocity. People seem engrossed by the news for the first time this week, a period characterized largely by quiet regrouping, watching and waiting. Aside from the occasional rumble, Beirut is relatively quiet now facing only the task of caring for the (estimated) 500-800,000 displaced people living in or around the city in public parks or schoolbuildings converted to camps. I'm involved in the humanitarian relief effort and will speak more to my experience at the end of the post. Before I go any further, if you want to help me and help what I consider to be the most intelligent and important "aid" agency on the ground right now, go here: Sustainable Democracy Center. (The content of that website will be updated in a couple of days, but the features and functions still work fine. Below, too, I talk more about what the SDC is all about - if you have any ?s, just ask)

While diplomats scurry around the world (me to Talal: "Secretary Rice was here, right? While I was gone?" Talal: "Rice, rice, eating Rice, doing nothing, just eating Rice"), Israel continues to pound the south, Hizbullah vows not to withdraw and a continuous stream of refugees fill Beirut and its out suburbs the continued questions (Is this going to end? When will this end? How will this end? What happens next?) just sit on the stove.

At least they did, until this morning when the people of Beirut officially started choosing sides and taking matters into their own hands. Here's the location of the UN Building-it's the larger of the two in the complex, the other being the news bureau building containing CNN, BBC, Washington Post, etc. Normally playing the victim, parts of the fractured Lebanese government have begun to shift if not towards Hezbollah at least against Israel and demand some real action from the United States.

The news coverage of this morning's events is incredibly graphic when compared to television coverage in the United States. I sat this afternoon and watched images of crushed, dead bodies being excavated from the rubble, pictures of children whose bodies had been broken being carried in the arms of weeping civilians.

Things have changed. People are officially angry and acting on it.

Me (talking to person sitting next to me in Internet Cafe): 'What percentage of the Lebanese population is with Hizbullah?"
NetCafeGuy (late 20s, angry): "Before the war, you had maybe 20, 30 percent. At most. All my friends, they are Christians, they are in the Lebanese Guard - it's a Christian Military, mostly. But now, they are angry. We are all angry. You cannot do this - you do a blockade, you do it to an entire people. You tell people to evacuate but you bomb the roads? They have nowhere to go. They are trapped and you kill them? This is women and children. You do not kill women and children. You know, they call Hizbullah terrorist group - terrorist. Hizbullah, never before this did they strike the civilians, they do not take civilian targets...this is terrorism."

I can only hope that Bush and Condi's long term plan for the region
- (aside: they tried this once here before. It was called the Roadmap and it failed. That and the chaos in Iraq have me worried as to the actual nature of the plan, as to the priorities the administration will pursue. It's clear that US leadership is struggling with how to deal with non-state actors) -
involves more than simply disarming Hizbullah and creating an internationally monitored zone. I hope it does something for the Lebanese people, hope it can set the stage for actual strength through unification. This would mean involving civil society, of course.

The reason why people rush to Hizbullah in times of strife is because the government here is so weak, weak for two reasons. 1) built to ensure representation of every minority group in the country, there is infighting, refusal to give up power and flagrant bribery and corruption and 2) the people themselves, initially and continuously divided, feed this frustrated system. More about this in coming posts.

Ironically, although we have yet to see the cease-fire plan that the US is now trying to get on the table, regardless of the content of that plan I might have already gotten my wish. I'm sure it's not the US's intent at this stage but from what I've seen happening on the streets and through my conversations with people, the Israeli/US complex and its actions have, as of this morning, actually served to bring the Lebanese together under one banner. An impressive achievement. It's unfortunate that this is just another reason why yet another community in the Middle East will hold hate and anger against the United States and Israel for generations to come.

People in the US often wonder why it is that certain elements of the Arab community hate the US so much. After 9/11 it was a popular topic on both sides of the divide.. Bush will say with a swagger that 'the Terrorists' hate our freedom. Again, I'd assert that from here is seems that the people only hate our freedom from accountability. Here, now, officially, they look forward to the day when the US will be held accountable for the deaths of hundreds, when finally the facade of strength on the Administrations' faces will crack and the full realization that they stood by while innocents perished (something they could have prevented with a phone call). Mark this day - it's just one more little thing that won't go forgotten.

There's a dark omen over today, a feeling that not only did Rice and Bush stand passively by, allowing Israel to continue (their thinking: Hezbollah has to be either destroyed or totally embarrassed) but that by waiting, by not intervening they actually played into Hizbullah's hand. Israel's initial goal was to get it's soldiers back; when Hezbollah announced all out war, Israel had to respond in kind. The goals changed as chests were puffed. It became first a 10, 14, 20ish mile security zone and behind closed doors became about saving face. Israel needs to at the very least seem the victor here...my guess is that today their reaching to achieve that difficult task just pushed them beyond sane thought. And they killed 50 people.

The question on everyone's mind here was (for the past week): why? Why, if we're going to work towards peace, can we not do it while in ceasefire? Why can we not give even just a three day window to let aid to the south and let the innocents trapped in the fighting actually flee?

Again, they are trying here to break the back of Hizbullah, but to go back to how I started this: I am watching those who were once against Hizbullah here in the country now rally to their side. I am watching a failure of this administration unfold before my eyes, am watching them run up the debt that my generation will probably pay in blood in one way or another.

Talal: "Give US the guns!"
Me: "You should ask - write Bush a letter."
Talal: "Yes, give them to us - do not give them Israel. We can make Lebanon strong, we can protect the people, we can say to Hizbullah you can come, you can join the army but if you are looking to destroy Israel then you can go and live in Gaza or where you want. But give us the guns!"

That was last night. Talal, the Syrian and I are the have become the main figures within the hostel. There are a few other characters in and out. There are the Bulgarians - two shifty documentary filmmakers who never speak and who have pictures of Nasrallah taped to their cameras. It's not a bad idea as anyone with a camera even in the southern suburbs of Beirut will undoubtedly be stopped by a plainclothes member of Hezbollah and interrogated in the backseat of a car, in an alley, in a sympathetic safehouse...

This has happened already to two of the people staying in the Hostel - most recently to D [Canadian of Chinese decent, photographer with Lonely Planet, world traveler, 19 years old, currently battling vicious parasite which causes him to eat about twice as much as he normally does]. He returned from the suburbs late one night and, over Schawarma sandwiches, told me the story of being pulled into an alley and held and questioned threateningly; the next day, he left the Hostel with some gear for shooting more. We haven't seen him since. The Syrian gave up waiting on him, packed his things into his backpack and hung it from the coat rack in the room where it still hangs.

Too, there are M and J, both Lebanese. J and I have no idea what each other are saying, so we've taken to drawing symbols on my note pad in order to communicate ideas. It took me 10 minutes last night to figure that he wanted to know if I had the remote control to the television. M and J, both in their early twenties, work security at night, fish in the mornings by the Corniche (I saw them there today as I was running) and are rarely apart when they're in the hostel, normally wrestling each other to the ground at the drop of the hat or smoking cigarettes on the balcony.

M (to me): "You are an American."
Me: "I think I'm the last one."
M: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Boston."
M: "It's a beautiful place. I have seen it on television."
Me: "Why are you staying here in Talal's? Are you from the South?"
M: "No, no. I am here to work. I...I have many places. Many places around here. Many family live around here."
Me: "So...you come here...why are you..."
M: "My friend. I like to live the most with my friend. We stay here for two weeks or so. No family."

Displacement comes in all forms.

Back to Talal (this morning): "They do not understand this. They do not understand what they are doing. Violence - you do violence, you do damage - you make more violence. This is how this goes. (slamming his fist on the couch). This is how this happens. And now you think you can f*** the people? The Lebanese people? We will not take this. We will not - and we have something that Israel and Bush do not have - we have God."
(me: eyebrows go up - first time Talal has said a thing about God): "I understand. Just as long as you know that there are many Americans who do not like this, who...who do not want this, who want something else..."
Talal: "Yes, yes - go home to America, you go and kill that f****** b****** Bush"
Me: "Violence makes violence."
Talal: "(incomprehensible sound of frustration)"

In other, better news:

Earlier this week, I set out to figure out what was happening on the ground with the relief effort. You get all sorts of news reports from different agencies giving varying accounts as to the exact number of displaced living in or around Beirut; I thought that by stopping by an organization that had to keep close tabs on the numbers I would be able to navigate better. I went to the RedCross.

RC: "It is...oh, it's probably now about 500,000...at least. And probably much more."

The Red Cross rep said this with a lot of sighing. There were only three people left in the building, which had helmets, uniforms and just an array of items strewn about the commonspace in the old building that housed the outfit. You got the idea that things hadn't let up for the crew in weeks. They were exhausted but generally good natured. On my notebook, RC took the time to draw me a map of the "safety zone" where hundreds of thousands were now finding places to sleep and sit out the conflict. It was an enormous area of land stretching down from Beirut.

All estimates point to about 100,000 staying within the boundaries of Beirut itself - that was last week. Now, I'd guess that that number has tripled. The first international agencies to get into Lebanon have directed most of the aid here to those in the city.

For the hundreds of thousands still trapped in the South, there is nothing.

RC: "They will be different soon. We like these ones, we like the - what is this?"
Me: "Jumpsuit?"
RC: "We like the jump suit. They will give us new ones in a couple of weeks, with a jacket and with pants. These, though, we like these. This is our image from the Civil War, the jumpsuits with the big cross on the back."

Aid is a fulltime activity around the city. The youth group that I had signed up to volunteer with before I evacuated has picked up its pace and each time I visit the NetCafe that they've made their headquarters they are either moving in or moving out mattresses, food or clothing.

Selim (via phone): "Where are you?"
Me: "I'm at the RedCross building near your headquarters."
Selim: "We've moved, we're not there anymore"
Me: "Where are you, can you give me directions?"
Selim: "We're in the park. Go outside - a man wearing a green shirt will be by to pick you up in 3 minutes. Go outside."

Selim, an Ashoka fellow, runs the Sustainable Democracy Center in Beirut - a civil society organization aimed at (among other things) growing and strengthening civic participation and awareness in Lebanon. Who better to call and work with right now?

The SDC moved from it's former offices in the west of Beirut into an abandoned building close to the heart of the city - directly across from Al Sanayeh Park. The park is now "home" to 100s of people from the south. (I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the park itself, just yet. The coalition of NGOs running the relief operation are adamant about preserving the dignity of the displaced, not make the situation into some sort of zoo attraction).

In spite of getting very little sleep for days, Selim was jumping around, issuing orders, talking with reporters. He was in his element. The idea for Selim is to go beyond physical aid to people and to provide constructive mental and emotional relief to the children. Given that Lebanese families are large (averaging just under 7 people), this is a sizeable task. His team of volunteers run a range of activities within 14 of the schools and parks of Beirut, all aimed at helping the children to understand this crisis, understand their role, plant the seed for responsible civic participation down the line and help vent the fear and frustration that will lead to violence later in life. After all of my calls, his program seemed one of a kind, seemed to be the only one still focused on winning the battle of the hearts and minds from the inside, on fighting the urge to fight by strengthening the skills of thinking and empathy. I signed on.

The SDC crew and the other NGOs working out of the abandoned old building across from the park move quickly. From this building (once belonging to the notable Salam family that left during the civil war), food is prepared and rationed to the people who come at all hours, teams meet and prep and plan long into the night - it's civil society at its best.

Having no Arabic, I've been put in charge of communication with outside partners. I've been penning emergency funding proposals, website copy (the website will be more professionally established an updated in the coming days) and, of course, contacting US media.

When I wandered back into the media building cap in hand I saw a few old friends. The Washington Post reporter was on his way down to the south again.

WPR: "Oh my."

Me: "Look who's back."

WPR: "Wow..."

Me: "Hey, what contacts do you have that would want a great human interest piece about something that's happening in Lebanon that's actually good for a change?"

That was the pitch for all of them. CNN finally bit, sort of... "We would just love to do this story. We never can really plan as you never know what will happen day to day, but Nic Robertson will be calling you probably Monday morning."

Me: "That's great; let me give you Selim's phone number and that way we can just- "

Producer: "We love the NGO story, we love what you're doing, but we're really interested not only in the NGO but Nic will really want to talk to you, talk to you about all you told me, about coming back, about why you came back..."

Future of Lebanese civil society vs. dude that got on a boat. Oh, CNN...at least I can play it towards Selim and hopefully get the SDC some airtime.

The ports are all dark at night now that the International presence is gone. The Orient Queen made one last trip into town last Friday to retrieve the remaining few that had to really struggle to make it to Beirut. Lebanese soldiers have resumed sitting in the alleyways across from the port, tanks parked in the shadows waiting to peak out and get a shot at a warship. There is hope that they won't get the chance.

War Withdrawal: Part Three

2006-07-26T18:56:00.000+03:00

When you open your eyes, you're on your back on the flight deck of the USS Trenton. You haven't been sleeping because you can't. It is the middle of the night on Friday. There is no moon. Two things occupy your attention: a) the belt of stars that comprise the Milky Way stretching in an arch from horizon to horizon, b) the tightness in your stomach.

You call your family. You tell them that you are fine, relieved in fact. 1) This is partly true. Evacuation has been stressful. You've made a pact to carry pacifiers with you the next time you are evacuated from a warzone. With the immediate stress gone, you have noticed that your body is coming back to you, your physical strength is returning. There is tone to your calf muscles and shoulders after days of lugging around your backpack. In the bathroom belowdeck, you noticed that you have an even tan from the hours under the overpass sun. 2) This is partly a lie. There is something wrong, but as you're not the sort who gives ambiguous bad news without identifying the root cause and having created a portfolio of viable options for dealing with the issue, you keep your mouth shut and let the problem fester. And it does.

You have spent the day wandering the deck.

You have watched from a distance as the tension has receded with the coastline, watched as teenage Lebanese/American girls flirt with American/American navy personnel and marines...who enjoyed the hell out of it.

You have watched elderly men quip about the old days when they were soldiers and ask probing questions to the young, bored marines about the operation.

You learn that the ship you are on normally carries 274 crewmembers - today, there are almost 2000 on board. You learn that the ship is 40 ft across but lose the length as you are mentally converting ft to meters. You see it in your head as metres.

You wander the ships innards.

The screaming mothers/children/fathers have collapsed on every conceivable surface. You ask a crewmember where you should sleep, hoping that you'll be able to sleep. "Man, s***, I don't know. Look around, anywhere you know? How bout there?" He points to a dark bunk, the lowest on a stack of three. You thank him, get down on your hands and knees and crawl in. You rest your head on a pillow and find a squirming baby in its place. You start - it's pitch black, you can't see where its head is but you whisper "Sorry baby" and crawl out and wander to the kitchen.

You tried to eat the boxed lunch handed to you when you first got on, but couldn't.

You sit and try and eat the dinner - mashed potatoes from a box and processed beefstake.

You are thankful for it and could swear you are starving, but you can't eat. Something is officially wrong. Still, you push in a cookie. You have to eat, you tell yourself.

You pass out for a few minutes while watching AFTV (Armed Forces TV - closed circuit television station playing on a few sets throughout the ship). "National Treasure" is on; you have never been able to see the seams of movies to clearly. When you wake up you are watching a public service announcements made by AFTV for the troops; the spot features 1 white male soldier, 1 white female soldier, 1 black male soldier, 1 Japanese female soldier. They have perfect military teeth which they flaunt as they laugh in slow motion in a counseling circle. The spot advocates that military personnel with suicidal thoughts should see out help from 1) their onboard counselor, 2) their superior officer or 3) their fellow crewmembers in that order. The next spot is about sexual harassment and the military's policy towards sexual assault. You are almost certain this was not made for your eyes.

The spots lead into an airing of Hardball. Chris Matthews is interviewing the Washington Post Reporter from Beirut. You think of calling the WPR and telling him that you saw him on TV until you realize how dumb you sound even to you.

You get up, you find another empty bunk. You lay down. You look up. There's actually a pin up girl pinned up to baseboard above you. You have seen it all, you think. You pass out. You wake up. You look down to find a serviceman laying on the tiny empty spot between the bunks. There has been a shift change - it must be late. You hate yourself for having taken this man's bunk until you climb quietly down over him to realize that the floor is littered with navy bodies, telling tattoos of "Alabama" and other states etched into their forearms. They have all given up their beds. Now, you also have problems with this relief effort at large and struggle to find someway to tell these men "thank you". And this keeps you up.

You wander above deck. You take your belongings with you. You have seen the American for the last time hours before; then, you found him taking the same photograph that you were taking. One of a distant battleship providing escort for the Trenton under the setting son. He's happy, ready to go, ready to have his family relieved. He says he'll head to Turkey and then figure it out from there. You tell him that you're going to Cairo but feel tired when you say it. Your stomach is tight, your plans are changing.

With most people asleep, the deck dark and quiet you find yourself staring at the day-glow sticks the navy has used to outline the edge of the ship. You watch them bob. You think of the head of the little girl that lives above the internet cafe across from AUB that sticks her head out of the window when you sit outside in between blog entries. "psst" she says until you look up at her window. Down she goes in giggles.

Two men are talking: Military and Elderly. You wander over and chat with them. Elderly is press, has high powered friends from back in the day, got helicopter lifted to the deck of the Trenton hours earlier. "Really enjoyed the flight." Military is Press Officer "So, he'll be ready for you in a bit. Just have a few more logistics to figure out about boarding and such and he's all yours." Elderly (to me): "Where you headed?" Me: "I plan on heading to Cairo, and then to Pakistan to do civil society work." You are impressed with how official and worldly you sound. "So you're just wandering around, huh?" "Well, I suppose that's part of it, yes. Live, learn, all that." Elderly is smoking a cigar which he grips between his teeth when he laughs and says "Ha, who pays your mastercard bill, kid?" You are too exhausted to be jerked around; your face is stone, your tone even and you respond: "Respectfully, sir, I worked for the money for this trip and I pay my own Mastercard bill-online." Elderly and Military are quiet and for a moment you are king of the flight deck having sledgehammered Elderly's stereotype of your generation in a single sentence.

The boat slows and prepares for docking. No one knows how we will depart the ship as they've never pulled into this port before - Limmasol, Cyprus. You spend the next hour talking to every crew member you see, making a running tally of their guess at how we'll depart and giving extra points for what you perceive their level of confidence to be. You bet on the wisdom of crowds and are the 15th person to depart the vessel.

You run. Though customs. Stamped. Never breaking stride, you are tossed a sandwich and a bottle of water by a relief worker. You don't understand your hurry but you are frantic. Something is wrong.

You rush to the bus. The State Department Official overseeing the departure of evacuees has told you that you will be taken to a specially made camp on the island for Americans who will then wait 24-36 hours for a chartered flight to any one of a number of eastern seaboard states in the United States. You think of the states and are sick. You run to the bus which loads and takes you to Nicosia.

The trip takes you through all your old stomping grounds. You had completed a course in Middle East Conflict negotiation at Cyprus College only two weeks ago; then, you skipped class, aching to get on the ground. You couldn't stand to sit in chair with the world waiting so close. You're starting to realize that fate dealt you a card and you left it in Beirut.

You are determined to help something or someone; you arrive at the camp and realize that they aren't ready for you or anyone on the Trenton. Without a word to anyone, you start moving tables and computers into place with the other volunteers who are setting up the processing desk. You make a sign. You realize that in spite of your addition of the word "please" you sound exactly like the DoS officials on the truck. You find a cot in an empty room and, sick to your stomach, you pass out.

You wake up. You wander to Cyprus College. It is closed. You sit outside the window to the computer lab and steal their wireless to look up the phone number of a friend you know to be staying in a hostel. You make calls, you are being checked in. The hostel owner says: "And how long will you be staying?" "I don't know, two or three days?" "And where are you coming from?" "Beirut" "Oh, my, and how are things there?" "Tragic" "Yes" and that is that and you are checked in.

You do not leave your room for 24 hours. You read the news constantly, you cannot write, you cannot sleep and you cannot eat. You download Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust..." and listen to it on repeat for three hours. You shower and scream and punch the wall while in there. You collapse on your bed; you ache to have a beer with Talal like having a beer with Talal would solve the world's ills. You leave, you call your mother, you tell her that you're having trouble with coming to grips with the deaths of innocent civilians, that you've been hitting things. You say the same things to friends on Google Chat minutes later. You are suddenly emoting and, again frantic. You cannot keep this under wraps anylonger. You have officially questioned why you made the decision to leave. You have no answers just a new kind of sickness over what you're about to do, what you're about to put your family through. You are not torn, now, you are crushed under diametrically opposed priorities: the feelings of your loved ones and your very principles. On Google Chat, a friend tells you to be gentle with yourself. You agree to this idea in principle, but it tastes too much like soma today to be the right course of action. "Sometimes things just suck" you read and that is the last straw.

You have been asking for days "Where is my country?" The answer has been staring at you from the other side of the mirror the entire time.

You have no idea what you're doing. Your flesh is resistant but your bones are walking you to the American Camp. Your friend is with you; you have asked her how she's been - you cannot hear a word she is saying. Your eyes are straight forward, you are trying to get control of two sizeable fears: 1) That they will say "no" : the fear of being rejected from what you are about to attempt, you are deathly afraid that there is no taking back the mistake - the horrible, horrible mistake - you have made. 2) That they will say "yes": and that you will then have to find someway somehow to explain this to the people who have been writing and calling all day to express their relief. Something will have to break soon. It is ten pm on Sunday - you haven't slept or eaten properly in days.

DoSunglasses: 'Look, we are not letting Americans - we do not - this is an evacuation operation, we're not bringing people back into Beirut"
me: "look, I'm a freelancer (blogs count as freelance, right?) - I have people that I care about in Beirut - "
DoSunglasses (who wears sunglasses at night?): "Look, I told you -
Me: "No, you look - I'm telling you that if you don't tell me how reporters and people are getting back into Beirut, I'm just going to find someone else that will so you might as well make this easy on the two of -"
MrD: "Hey, ok...ok, buddy, ok" moving close to me, calming me down, hand on shoulder and flank "OK, ok, I got you...here, why..." looking at DoSunglasses "why don't we take a quick walk - it's ok, it's ok, I've got this one. It's ok." Walk towards central command. "You're freelance?" me: "I am, among other things." MrD. "OK, look" pulling out random piece of paper from his pocket "I want you to call this number, call this man. His name is MrC. He's Greek shipping security. Do you know where Larnaca is?" me: "Yeah, yeah of course." "Look, find MrC at the Larnaca port. Tell the cabbie to just take you to the Larnaca Port. We got a few people out yesterday. Tell him MrD sent you. He'll know, he'll know what you mean." You are exasperated by the fact that you have participated in you first shady meeting with a government official and that it has gone off exactly like you've seen in the movies. You ask fate for seconds. You reconsider your ability to see the seams.

You walk back to your hostel room; you wish your friend the best. You think you hear her knock an hour later to say goodbye; you ignore this, you are packing your bags. At three in morning, you find yourself searching for airfares to from Larnaca to Cairo. You are making a backup plan, you tell yourself, incase things don't work. This exhausts you further: it is not what you want to be doing. You officially do not care. You think only and constantly about how you will word what you are about to do to your family but as you do not actually understand it yourself you can only grope at the ideas. Your head is spinning. You do not sleep until the sun comes up. You sleep for 15 minutes and you are in a cab and in a service taxi on your way to the Port. You call the WPR for advice on how to play this. He tells you that this is not a good idea "y'know, they'll think you're a spy or something - really, it's best not to mess with these things." You thank him for his advice, promptly forget it and are walking to the port entry gates.

Port guard: "We cannot let - "
Me: "MrD at the Department of State sent m-"
PG: "You are press? You have some badge?"
Me: "I'm freelance - they don't give us badges - look MrD sent me to talk with MrC"
PG: "Come in the booth" You go in the booth "Who is this?"
You know that if you speak quickly enough they will not be able to understand your American accent well enough to get all the words; you rattle off "look, my name is ____ MrD at the United States Department of State sent me to see MrC" and watch the PG scribble down "___ Department of State". A phone call is made to MrC. You are handed a visitors pass.

You are so close.

Greek Civil Security Officer: "He is, he is not here. I'm so sorry - I do not think you can - have you contacted your embassy? The procedure is to contact the embassy and they will-"
Me: "MrD sent me, I need to talk with MrC - when will he be back? Look, MrD and MrC have discussed this. Paperwork, embassies, these things take a long time - I have obligations yesterday, hence the reason why MrD sent me directly to MrC. This has all been arranged."
GCSO: "He will be gone for some time - he is sleeping for the first time in days...you could..."
Me: "...."
GCSO: "Let me...hold on one moment"

A minute later you are talking to the head of French Evacuation Operation. A slight woman, late forties, she is chainsmoking. She is wearing a black T-Shirt with the French flag on front and back and holding a clipboard loosely.

Me: "how are you?"
FEO: "Oh, I'm good. We just got another 1500 out so this is cause for some celebration I think" She is in a good mood.
Me: "So, I'm...um..have you...do you know what I'm about to ask you?"
FEO: (exhaling): "It is no problem."
Me: "It is no problem?"
FEO: "No! Of course not, no! You want to go, go! We are not like the Americans - you do what you like. You have things to do then you go. It is no problem."
Me: "Oh my God"
FEO: "And we were quick, too! Faster than almost all the other countries. We get them out fast! And it's free for them - everything in France is free. This is sometimes a problem, but for right now it is a very good thing."
Me: "...thank...you. Oh, how much do you want?"
FEO: "I just said - it's free!"
Me: "you don't want me to pay anything?"
FEO: "We are the French!"

You spring forward and hug her, taking her well off guard. To her credit, she nudges her shoulder into you and maintains her cigarette like a pro.

Leaving her you say "Oh, and...man, I'm just so sorry about the World Cup." Tears actually spring to this woman's eyes. "We were...we were winning ..and then...and then we lost...we..."

You sit outside of the Port and make the hardest phone call you have ever made in your life. And then another. And then you think for a few hours. And then you make a few more. And you feel like you're dying inside because some part of you - that last tendril that attached you to your go to security back-up, your home - has been officially cut. By you. You listen to the sounds of crying and the insults piled upon your decision making ability by others who you hold in high esteem and it seems to you that they will say anything to get you not to do what you feel that you must. To put your money where your mouth is and rise to the opportunity to help people in great need. You realize that the criticisms do not line up with your principles and do not line up with what you believe to be the tough responsibilities we all have to own up to as human beings. That is your opinion. And that is that. You are the most alone you have ever been. That is that.

Later, you will be criticised for purportedly thinking of yourself as indestructible. The overwhelming nausea that results from two heartshattering/useless conversations implant the idea into your head that your body is incredibly frail but that your goddamn stubborn character is steel. You have spent the better part of three days trying to conveniently rationalize away what you see as your moral obligation to assist those in need for the sake of those that have an emotional stake in your well being - you have been fighting yourself. You have lost.

You sit on your luggage by the boat and wait for them to board. There are some 30 others waiting with you, there, at 10 pm on Monday night. There is a small group in red jackets which read "humanitarian relief". They are Swiss. The rest are Lebanese families nervously anticipating getting home to their country, to their houses and family.

Me (to Anthony, who could not be more than 14): "You speak very good French"
A: "Thank you - French too. I just was at a basketball camp in France. Now, we are going home."
Me: "That sounds nice. Are you nervous."
A: "Nervous, no, I am not nervous. A little nervous. What are you - you are American?"
Me: "I am"
A: "Why are you going to Beirut?"
Me: "Do you know the meaning of the word 'compelled' Anthony?"
A: (question mark on his face) "Well, if you need something, you tell me. I will help you."
You love the Lebanese.

You cannot sleep on the boat. You only hear the phone calls in your head. They are getting to you, they are weakening your resolve. You still have, you can still leave, you can get up and take a taxi to the airport and fly to Mars and sit this one out. You don't move. You cannot. You read the same page of "Wittgenstein's Poker" maybe 19 times and you get up and walk. You are hungry. You try to read the French and Greek lettering on the doors in hopes of recognizing something that sounds like "kitchen" and find your way into a dining room. It is dark, there is a fridge full of beer but you are afraid to drink, to lose your focus.

Leaving the Dining Room, you bump into a short, blonde American TV producer and Tucker Carlson. They must have just come on board. TC: "We got food in there?" "Only beer, I think" He opens the door wide and exclaims "Alright, a fridge full of beer!" "SHHH!" A head pops up from one of the booths, an irritated woman has been sleeping. TC: "Jesus, OK, we'll do beers later."

TC: "I've been pretty liberal, I think...they're all so pro-Israel in the states...it's politics...that's where the campaign money all comes from...it's ridiculous...but we were in Israel yesterday...MSNBC...we're flying by the seat of our pants here...real Heart of Darkness stuff...they don't care...just get an hour of TV out there...can't even get a Blackberry."
You talk for over an hour with Tucker Carlson and the producer about life, MSNBC and reporting. You have a problem with his politics and his bravado but you are so thankful that there's someone standing in front of you who doesn't give a goddamn about anything but enjoying this entire process. This is the oddest but most welcomed relief from the strain. A call comes through. You don't answer it but the tension in your face tells Tucker something.

TC: "Who is she?"
Me: "What?"
TC: "Was it a blood relative?"
Me: "No"
TC: "You sleeping with her?"
Me: "Ah, no, it was just a friend."
TC: "Good, because unless she's one or the other then she has no right to b**** to you about your life choices."

You share a chuckle with the Cast and Crew of The Situation Room and find a place to sleep. Where you stare at the ceiling until dawn. It is Tuesday. As you pull into Beirut, you see the American Evacuation Operation in full effect. It's not too late to turn back. You are still nervous.

You run off the boat, watching Anthony and his family receive kisses from aunts and uncles. You realize that you are the only person departing that hasn't anyone waiting to pick him up. You run to the customs check point at the entrance of the port. It is busy. They do not normally do this, they say. On your visa card, under occupation, you write "humanitarian relief" and then you write "/ freelance". You are hedging your bet. When you hand the application and your passport to the security official, you slip in an extra 10,000 Lebanese pounds. You are truly hedging your bet.

You are stamped. You run to Talal's, praying it is still open. You want a beer with Talal, you want to check your email, you want to phone the relief agency that you're going to volunteer with, you want to settle, you want to sleep, you want to run run run from the pain back home that you've been a part of. You run, you burn, you sweat; you have not properly eaten or slept for days. You come around the corner to Talal's with your heart in your throat convinced that it will be closed, that you will have no one.

You look up and see the trademark jeans and wifebeater t-shirt hung on a clothesline from the balcony. He is there. You run up the stairs. The staff bursts into laughter. You are checked in. You run up to you room. You throw your things on the floor and pull off your shoes. You promise yourself that tomorrow you will a) get working with your relief agency, b) get back to actually blogging like it's your job and get your photos an inserts up and never ever write a self indulgent blog post again even though it was, admittedly, essential to the narrative but at least you could have read it over before posting it? and c) never be afraid of following through on your principles again. It's too tiring and in the end you cannot beat yourself.

You sleep. For almost two days, in fact. In the middle, you toss up two crappy blog posts while you figure out how you're going to write this one. You sleep and rise for food and sleep. You check your email and find only this from the DoS:

The U.S. Embassy advises American citizens in Lebanon that the last scheduled ship departure from Lebanon will be on Wednesday, July 26. The Embassy believes that most American citizens who wished to depart Lebanon with U.S. Government assistance have now done so. All Americans who wish to depart Lebanon and who are able to do so are strongly urged to do so. They should proceed directly to the Dbayeh Processing Center. Processing will begin on July 26 at 9:00 am. Do not wait for a call from the U.S. Embassy. Further delay is not advisable. Future assisted departures will be on an emergency case-by-case basis and such departures may not be immediate...

: and realize this is for keeps.

In the middle of the second night, you open your eyes and realize you've fallen asleep on the roof of Talal's. Two things occupy your attention: a) the stars above you which you can barely see through the light coming from the billboard also placed on the roof and b) the filling feeling of Chicken Schawarma in your stomach.

War Withdrawal: Part Two

2006-07-26T14:11:00.000+03:00

At midday Friday, the marines marched the first of us down to the beach where a bulldozer had been working out a landing spot...

...for the beachcraft.

Me (to Marine): "Jesus - the only time I've ever seen anything like this is, like, Saving Private Ryan." Don't ask me why I chose that moment to bring up Normandy.

Marine: "Yeah, well, she's just about that old (slow turn to me - broad, bright grin (military teeth are so white) which was unnerving given that his eyes were still shielded by wrap-arounds); but she sure works like a charm."

I'll say this for the military: impressive. Big ships, well equipped soldiers with thick necks. Descending from the manifest desk down to the shore, we were surrounding by binoculars, choppers - high alert. The crippled and bruised evacuees came on board with a sense of relief - finally, there was some strength, some focus...there was some hope. The welcomed sight of the US flag.

On board the beachcraft, the first of the "so where are you headed?" conversations started. I met a great many people headed to school, to LA, to ...anywhere, ready for home. For lack of a better answer, I told people that I'd be headed to Cairo and then to Pakistan to do civil society work. Before the war started, this was indeed my "plan".

Relaxation set in. People pulled out cameras or just out and out collapsed:

...and then we pushed off. Floated out while the craft warmed up, turned and under escort moved to the USS Trenton. Most watched the Trenton, sitting idle ready to receive us in the distance;

I watched Beirut.

War Withdrawal: Part One

2006-07-22T13:42:00.000+03:00

On Friday morning, the American and I woke up at 4, hailed a taxi and arrived at the Dbayeh Bridge 'Processing' Center by 5 am - two full hours before officials there were to start letting in the first of the Americans.

Through the windsheid of the taxi, we could see that the bridge was in chaos. The exit ramps leading up to the overpass bridge were full of cars and the pass itself was bustling with people - a mini refugee camp. We jumped out of the taxi and ran towards the crowd with sun just breaking over the mountains to the east.

The day before, the State Department had issued their infamous "first come, first serve" email. Everyone came. Talking with a few people in the crowd, many had been there since midnight, sitting on the overpass and waiting. Those same people at the front now found themselves crowded and shoved into the truck barracading us from the actual processing center itself. As the hours between five and seven ticked away, the crowd grew more and more restless; like yesterday, there were the screams of babies, the screams of mothers for their babies, the screams of fathers for the mothers of their babies, demands for entry or information or something shouted out in vain and in anger.

This crowd was far bigger than the Thursday's and it grew quickly we approached 7 am - exacerbating the overall tension of the scene. I held up my camera to take a picture so that I could better gauge the number of people only to realize that the crowd actually disappeared down the slope of the other side of the bridge. My guess is that - by seven am - there were already 7 or 8,000 people on that overpass.

"Folks - OK, folks, we just need you to remain calm, OK? Everybody's going home today, OK? We've got spots for 5000 people, OK? Everybody's going home! Let's just - hey! - let's just be civil here, OK? We've got young children here." Maybe from where he stood up on that truck (the Lebanese military had created a barrier of trucks and razor wire to keep Americans out of the American run processing camp until State Department officials gave the OK to let people in) gave him a better view of the crowd; I don't know. But the consensus among myself and the American - both of us pretty tall - was that this was far more than 5000 people already and that the gentleman from the State Department with the whining, pleading voice was terribly wrong. Not everyone was going home today - not even close. Crowds can smell BS pretty quickly; the people grew increasingly anxious.

When people are in crowds, it's amazing how quickly they lapse into talking as if they're character actors on a 1950s television drama. You've all probably seen old television shows where randoms shout out their two cents in perfectly timed increments - or at least seen such scenes parodied by the Simpsons. "Hey buddy! Let's get some water down here!" "What about my children?! Please, I have a child!" "We've all got children - wait your turn in line just like everyone else!"

Before this experience, I would have guessed that that sort of thing never actually happened, that it was just a device used by writers to introduce a large cast of characters or to give the overall "feel" of the mob. I would have guessed wrong - mobs actually act like that. It's surreal.

The only difference is that when you're there, you find your heart and your head being tossed back and forth, slapped around by people's calls for this or that...you find yourself constantly wanting too to shout, to control, to impose some sense onto the situation - you're trying to figure out who to ally yourself with as part of the bigger question: how the hell do I get out of this? And with so many people pushing you and shoving, at some point you will be called out, you will have to take sides on something. I heard yelling directly behind me and felt pushing on my pack. Looking over my shoulder, I found a woman just slapping my backpack. "Please, I must get through - I must get through I have a child!" The kid looked about two? three? "Is he sick?" "He is a child!" "He looks a lot like all the other children here" I turned around and tuned her out.

Too, at some point it dawns on you how dangerous the situation is - you realize that no, this isn't TV at all. And...oh! Reality hits. A few feet in front of me, a woman had to watch her elderly mother collapse of heat exhaustion. The sun was coming up and unlike the overcast Thursday, there wasn't a sky in the cloud today; Friday was going to bake us. Sitting, exposed on the highway with bodies packed around her like cattle, the old woman just gave out; cries for help went up. Again, though, we had thousands more in the crowd than we did the day before - but within roughly the same amount of space. With bodies so close, medics had a hard time getting to the elderly woman - her daughter had to just stand and weep and wait.

The American and I, seasoned veterans of this horrible operation, just waited it out, clutching the green waivers that we'd received after a full day of waiting the day before - an 8 1/2 x 11 promise from the State Department that we were to be the first let in today for processing, the first on the boat. This was a lie. It meant nothing to them at this stage. So, when waiving the green sheet of paper didn't work I took the $100US bill out of my pocket (my emergency travel cash) and waived that at the DontS on the truck. I don't think they thought I was funny.
Discarding the waiver system they'd put in place the night before, the Staties asked the Lebanese military to simply let us in 'first come, first serve'. The American and I had managed to work our way close enough to the front that we were let in just about nine.

Here's how the processing operation worked inside. Unlike the bridge which was primarily controlled by Lebanese police, inside you found only State Department workers and Marines. There were four checkpoints set up: 1) ID station, 2) wait for security tent, 3) security tent/baggage check and 4) manifest desk.

The ID was simple - if you had a valid US passport or visa or relative, you were through. I literally held mine up as I was walking past the Marine examining papers; he waived me through at a glance such that I never had to so much as break stride.

The "wait for security" tent was exactly that. Here's where the green waiver actually played a role - they let me bypass that tent which looked to be about a 30 minute wait. This was my reward for 9 hours of waiting the day before.

The security tent/baggage check was the bottleneck of this entire operation. This was where the combination of poor diplomacy, logistical planning and communication reached the breaking point. It was the root cause of the back up, the reason why people had to wait in tents inside the processing center and therefore the reason why people had to wait out on that torturous overpass.

Logistics: I don't think I need to talk too much to why the email system(s) they had in place failed. I mentioned in the last post that they didn't properly anticipate that more people would show up than invited (as people are naturally prone to bring their families with them when evacuating a warzone); too, their "first come first serve" system implemented and advertised the night before via email and radio meant an entirely new level of chaos - an overwhelming amount of people who would be spurred on to unruliness by the fact that there was an overwhelming amount of people. So, suffice it to say that as far as "pre planning" and communication with the public was concerned, the Department of State needed to do a far more effective census of the people they needed to move. Of course, as they were days upon days late with the entire evacuation effort (direct evidence that the US policy of "wait and see" might need some re-tooling)(well, this and Katrina)(oh, and the 9/11 CIA breif) they didn't have time for that sort of thinking or planning.

But really, simple ropes, counting of people as they came to the overpass so that the obvious extra could be told to return the next day- just simple event planning and math would have helped the situation enormously. Let's look at the stop gap inside the actual processing facility: the baggage check. As I sat in line, I clocked the time it was taking for people to get their bags checked in front of me. Getting your bags checked and getting through security consisted of: that 'wipe' thing they do to the zippers of your bags looking for evidence of explosive materials, opening your bags and going through everything you had (making the 'wipe' totally needless?)and then waving the magic metal detecting wand over you, arms outstretched.

For thirty people, my average was just over one minute per person (normally a little less, but every so often a person would show up with, say, 3 or 4 bags (in spite of the request that we bring no more than 15 kilos of luggage)). If the Military and the DoS wanted to fill their ships today, they would have to move 5000 people through that check point. At the baggage checkpoint, they only had two lines set up.

5000 people / two lines X one minute per person = 2500 minutes or over 40 hours of processing. It was taking almost two days to fill one day's worth of ships. When I asked a marine who was helping keep the lines in order how quickly they've been able to process people through this checkpoint, he said that they average about 100 people per hour (but that today they were aiming for 200). I wished that instead of aiming they would have just done some math.

So that's logistics. But to be fair, the logistical planning for half of this operation was impeded by the State Department's other huge weakness: diplomacy.

So again, 1) you wait on the bridge with the cattle under Lebanese Police jurisdiction until being let in for processing and then 2) you're processed before 3) being escorted to the ships. Granted, (2) was a wait and poorly thought out, but at least it was safe - no insane mobs there. It was the bridge itself (1) that was actually quite dangerous, where people were passing out, where US State Dept officials screamed at us over megaphones for calm, for peace, hey we've got children here, etc.

The thing here is that the bridge was still under the jurisdiction of the Lebanese police force. It was obvious that, well, being Lebanese, they really couldn't care less about the situation of 'America'. Occasionally they stood shoulder to should and held us back from pushing through to the processing center, but mostly did little more than stand there and guard the razor wire. Here, the US's inability to negotiate some sort of queue system, or counting system or something in order to quell the unrest was brutally apparent.

The irony of the whole situation was that the US would claim to us that they had to keep us on the overpass for security reasons. Within the processing center/under US jurisdiction, they were keeping us in small groups - there, they said, they weren't going to allow Americans into large groups (while on "American Soil") in case there was some sort of Hizbullah strike - I guess the thinking was that less would be killed or injured if we were in small packs. But....GAH! What of the thousands of Americans clumped together on a highway overpass?! Totally, utterly exposed? What system could have been worked out to save our bodies and our sanity there? The whole thing reeked of a) the USDoS trying to make sure that no litigation could be brought against them in the event of some catastrophy and b) a total diplomatic failure at the expense of thousands of people.

It just blew my mind. I got through the checkpoints as quickly as possible. When I reached the manifest desk (where they took your name and information so that you could then be officially registered as an evacuee) I realized I had lost the American in the tussle. I would see him again, though, on the flight deck of the USS Trenton.

Complete nightmare

2006-07-20T18:33:00.000+03:00

Today, I had to elbow a reporter in the chest to get him stop pushing me (and as a result the people in front of me) into razor wire for the sake of getting a shot.

First the news.

When I got back to Talal's last night, I heard him swear for the first time, for the first time get actually emotional about what is happening in Lebanon. It's starting to happen. This is what he was angry about:

Over 300. All civilians. Compared to the Israeli number in the tens (still with a high percentage of civilians), the news has helped to shift the tone of the war. It's much more serious now, much more personal than it was even days ago. Then, Talal laughed it off pretty easy, saying it would be one, two days...some damage and then they go home. "Is always how it is." Not this time, I think.

The world seems to be getting more and more polarized on the issue. Some want peace, outright. Some still seem content with war. The issue is dividing communities. Everywhere, everyone is weighing in. It's growing, and it's growing fear.

Where is my country?

Here in the city, things are complicated on a different scale:

Today in a cab - Cabbie (to me): "Why are you still here? Why? Leave Lebanon!"

Me: "The boat was full. Why are you still here?"

Cabbie: "Where can I go? I live in the south. Every night, Israel f***s my home. Every night. Last night was the first I have slept in a week."

(The same can be said for me - with international evacuations taking place, Israel has calmed its airstrikes in the city. Last night was so wonderfully peaceful. The only hit we took was to a parking lot in my neighborhood - apparently, some construction company had parked a large drilling machine (the kind you see used to drill holes for large posts and things) in a lot near the hostel. The Israelis, it is thought, took it to be a missile launcher.)

Me: "Will you fight?"

Cabbie: "I have lost - in the civil war, I lost my whole family. A brother, my father - when I was a kid, yes, I would fight. Now, look (motioning out the window) look at the bird - I could not kill a bird. Could you? Could you kill a man?"

Me (thinking about the one and only thing I have killed with a gun - a turtle in a pond in Texas - and hating myself for even that childish exploration): "No, no I couldn't."

Cabbie: "And they want you to. Today, today I was asked am I Christian? Am I Muslim? You know Sunni and Shi'a? Today! I was asked it! It never change! Lebanon never change."

There had been this idea early on that such a provocation of Hizbullah might cause, yes, a response from that group but then a secondary response from that groups enemies within the country...leading to another civil war. I didn't think that a valid concern until I heard what people were talking about on the street...And in the news.

Still, the main issues (to me) are the dead and the injured - as well as the crippled city. At least for right now. And my heart really felt sick when I arrived this morning to take my place in line for a boat to Cyprus.

Back to the boat. The American and I showed up just after 7 am where we found that the Lebanese military had set up a blockade (two large military trucks with razor wire between them) to keep people back. As the minutes passed, the group waiting to be let in past the Lebanese to be processed by the Americans (marines and State Department Reps) grew quickly...and quickly grew restless.

Here's a quick summary of how the State Department is handling getting people to the boats. The first step is "contact". We've all registered with the DontS through phone or email. They have a list (according to them, today) of almost 35,000 people who either want evac information or want to get out. 10,000 bigger than estimated in most news articles. For the past couple of days, the DontS have been calling the same number of people that they have room for on whatever boats can take bodies that day (two military cruisers are now transporting Americans, alongside the well publicized "Orient Queen" cruiseliner). This, obviously, has been a misstep as not only will the invited show up to take their place but so will their family members (OF COURSE). So, from what I can gather, they have had up to four or five times the number of people come for processing and departure as they can handle each of the last two days.

As you can imagine, the scene this morning was total, absolute chaos. The Americans ("for our safety") process us miles from the dock and then transport those processed to the ships by bus. The processing point is a parking lot north of town and the line leading up to the processing point is on an overpass of the highway. We sat, baking in the morning sun, gulping up exhaust fumes and trying desperately to find some information, something to act on, something to think. Babies were crying, adults were screaming for respect, the military was screaming at us about lists and checkpoints and please calm and can we form a line - people got thirsty and hungry, shoved each other. It was a terrifying display of the worst parts of people. Including me - once or twice.

The DontS would come forward with "information" only once every hour or two; I think they stayed away as a) the fact of the matter was that they were simply taking an incredibly long time to process people already inside and had nothing new to report and b) they simply couldn't respond to the demands screamed at them by this incredibly irate mob. Some people waiting had waited all day yesterday as well - they had been given vouchers which promised them easy access today...at the appearance of a Dont or military person, the vouchers would shoot up into the air frantically, madly.

The thing was, the waivers didn't matter. Nothing really mattered - there were four for five systems, different rules changing all the time, chaos. An overwhelmed StateDepRep ran frantically about, sometimes screaming this or that into a weak megaphone...

It was basically children and the sick first (which took up the majority of the spots for today) and then, with really no system of actually getting to the people with vouchers, it devolved into first come first serve. Hence, this sad email from the State Department today:

Because of the high-volume of Americans going to the ship processing center,Embassy Beirut is moving from a reservation based system to a first come,first serve system for assisting Americans in departing Lebanon.

Americans wishing to depart Lebanon should monitor the local radio -105.5FM,or the embassy website http://lebanon.usemabassy.gov for the latestinformation on when and how to depart Lebanon.

We waited nine hours in total, moving some 300 feet. During that time, I only got into two scuffles. First, while waiting close to the razor wire, looking for someone to direct a question to I was pushed from behind into the two young girls in front of me which then pushed them shockingly close to the razor wire set up by the Lebanese. "Back off!" I yelled over my shoulder but the pushing kept coming. It was (guesses?) a reporter, leaning into me to get a good shot of the military talking across the threatening looking wire to the people pleading for assistance or answers (the military had scolded him earlier and told him to go - he was using us as cover). He dug into my back, I took my elbow and knocked him in the chest back hard and turned and (actually) gave him that raised eyebrows/shrugged shoulders "you want to go?" motion...and...yeah...just a heated stare down into his black eyes (they were black!) for about 10 solid seconds. I guess blue beat black - he walked. "Boys, stop fighting!" yelled an Irish woman (who I had met ten minutes earlier) just as the stare down came to a finish. After he left, I went over to her and said "Sorry, yeah, sorry that was pretty childish...but it was pretty cool though." She laughed and quietly conceded it was cool. I'm still not sure if it was actually cool. Cool's hard.

But yeah, in the mob people were going insane. What's funny about mobs is that characters start to appear - it's like standing in a broken elevator with 1000 people for 9 hours - you get to know them pretty quickly as they're under amazing stress. For his part, I can't speak highly enough of the American. Dude keeps his cool, keeps it light. He's also particularly savvy at getting physically through a crowd and knowing what information you should and should not trust from the talking heads that came out occasionally.

It took the American and another friend to calm me down during the only time I officially lost my cool - the second scuffle. The day was hot and no one had brought enough water. Every so often, a marine would show up with a few bottles of water and instruct the crowd to pass them around and share them. I had brought my own and so would just pass the bottles to the woman behind me - the second time around, I noticed her take the bottle and slide it into her stroller (she had four children with her) where, too, there was another full bottle of water from the last distribution.

"Excuse me, are you...are you just taking that water?"

"I have four children."

"What? WHAT?! Look around - everyone here has children! We're supposed to share this water with people who need it!"

"There's no water on the boat!"

"Look, Jesus Christ I'm not going to argue with you - you do what you want but I don't know what makes your children more thirsty than any of the other kids here - but whatever, let's just be clear here - you're just stealing from people - you just do what you want."

When I turned around, the American was sitting on his backpack and smiling at me. "This always happens in crowds."

I had forgotten to try and find a silver lining. I mean, you had to scour the place for it, but this has been something I've been trying to work on. A friend of mine (who seems to find the bright side to absolutely everything - to my general awe and often to my annoyance) told me the story of how she developed optimism as a skill. As a child, she had to take a horrible hour long ride home from school on a bus full of kids she didn't like - the most painful part of her day. To try and change how it effected her, she started practicing finding the good things about this daily nightmare - would think to herself the good things about how the bus was well constructed and how amazing the combustion engine that ran it was, this or that good thing about any person on the bus...she worked at it and it worked.

Today, here are some of the things I thought as practice:

"That Razor wire is so shiny"

"That man really puts his whole body into screaming"

"Man can that baby just suck on that toy"

In other, better news:

When we got back to the hostel, it was dark. The city has been doing rolling blackouts for the past week. We ran up the stairs - myself and the American - to find sitting in the lobby Talal with...a girl.

Last night while looking through and deleting some of the photos that I had uploaded to the Hostel's community computer, I found a few pictures of Talal and this same young woman by the sea. The pictures seemed to be of some date...and I thought it kind of adorable that Talal had taken the time to upload them to his computer - to save them in spite of how relatively unspectacular they seemed (lots of out of focus, odd angles, etc.)

You could see from the photos two people who - although they looked from their body language to be a 'new' couple - genuinely enjoyed each other's company. Just a lot of honest, playful smiles in the photos.

When we walked in to find them in the lobby...they were just sitting, talking...they looked just as they did in the photos, as two people who took comfort, joy and a mature excitement from the other that gave each of them a sort of glow. Talal was quiet when we walked in (he's normally quite a character); he had the quiet look of confidence that comes from contentment, from securing something for himself that fed something pretty deep. He was happy.

I can leave Beirut.

Francisco speaks.

2006-07-19T16:13:00.000+03:00

This morning, a Spanish newspaper ("El Pais") wrote a story on blogs in Beirut (Reading While Falling was featured).

http://www.elpais.es/articulo/internet/Beirut/centro/atencion/Red/elpportec/20060718elpepunet_4/Tes/
We'll get to that later. First, the news of the hour:

There she is, my beautiful 'Orient Queen'. She came into port last night. At first, when I heard the horns blowing as the ship docked I thought it was an air raid siren. Talal laughed at me.

Again, I'm right by the port. I can SEE this boat out my window, sitting there taunting me. I've not yet received an email from the DoS (I call it the "DontS" when I'm angry) but this morning, the American simply packed his bags and went for a walk to the port. Upon his return some thirty minutes later (we laughed when he got back, Talal asking him if he had changed his mind?), he claimed that he got through the first level of security (Lebanese military gaurding the port) and then made a b-line for a boat. American Special Forces made him then register at a tent set up on the dock by the cruiseline. To hear him tell it, it was just heartbreaking - they gave him a key to a room and everything, checked him in, a CBS news person begged him to take a camera and role footage of the trip and give it to another CBS person on the other side...it was all so close. But Special Forces stepped in again to do one last check before he jumped on the boat - he wasn't on "the list". "Sir, there are a number of reasons we cannot let you on this boat." "What are the reasons?" he asked. "Yes," one of the Lebanese military standing gaurd chimed in, "he's an American - let him go, just let him go on board."

"Sir, there are a number of reasons why we cannot let you on this ship."

And that was that.

But there is some good news. First, the American got an email upon his return to the hostel. It reads like this:

The Department of State and U.S. Embassy in Beirut received yourresponse toour email regarding assistance to Americans wanting to depart LebanonforCyprus with onward travel to the United States.Screening for departure will take place the morning of Thursday, July20 .

To facilitate the screening process we are staging it in two-hourshifts.Please e-mail us at: askocs@state.gov to confirm which of the timeslistedbelow you wish to be scheduled for.You and your family should be at the (7 a.m., 9 a.m., 11 a.m.) screeninglocal Beirut time.Screening for additional departure will take place in the afternoon ofThursday, July 20 . To facilitate the screening process, we are stagingitin two hour shifts. You and your family should be at the (1 pm, 3 pm)screening.You should come prepared to wait, and bring adequate water and food tosustain you and your family.

You should report to the Dbayeh Bridge in Beirut, specifically theMobileForces Barracks (Marina Khoury) facing the water station pump nearDbayehPort.What to Bring:What to bring:(1) Passport or green card (as appropriate), money, credit cards, anyotheressential documents. Lebanese nationals should also bring theirLebanesenational ID, especially if they have acquired a new US passport duringthisstay in the country. (They will need to show their Lebanese ID to theLebanese immigration authorities in order to obtain an exit stamp intheirpassport.)(2) Each person should bring only one small carry-on, maximum weight 15kg.In that bag, they should bring a change of clothes for 2-3 days,essentialmedication, glasses/contact lenses, toiletries, water, snack food. Ifbringing children, it is advisable to bring along one toy for eachchild,diapers and formula as appropriate, etc.

What to Expect:(1) The initial screening will involve verification of your Americancitizenship and eligibility for travel.(2) To ensure your security and that of other travelers, a securityscreening will also be conducted.(3) Once these steps are completed, you will be taken by bus to theport.You will go through Lebanese immigration procedures at the port, beforeboarding the ship.Arrival in Cyprus and Onward Travel:(1) You will be met by U.S. consular officers in Cyprus who will assistyouin moving to staging sites for preparation for onward travel to the U.S.(2) We are arranging charter flights to take travelers to the U.S.(3) Once in the U.S., you will be able to make onward arrangements toreturnto your home.

I didn't get any such email, but I'll be there tomorrow morning. Too, as of last night they've decided that we won't have to pay for our own evacuation. Here's a transcript from last night's Larry King Live where Sen Stabenow (D-Michigan) announces the news:

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/18/lkl.01.html

Key Excerpt:

KING: Let's see the thoughts as we go to Washington. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and Congressman John Dingell the veteran Representative from the state of Michigan. Senator Stabenow, do you offer any hope to Sandra?

SEN. DEBBIE STABENOW (D), MICHIGAN: Well, yes. In fact, just a few minutes ago we finally got the State Department to say, first of all, they're not going to charge people to evacuate them, which was just a horrendous policy that they were talking about doing. People who are trapped. Thank goodness people are not trapped and can leave Israel. But in Lebanon we have 25,000 people from America. Over 5,000 family members from Michigan who are literally trapped. I have been spending time on the phone and my staff has with hundreds of people, trying to help children who have gone to visit grandpa and grandma, folks who have gone back for weddings and so on. And so finally, we're hearing that there are going to be, after six days of waiting, that ships are finally going to arrive. But I have to say, Larry, that this reminds me of watching the pictures of people sitting on rooftops in New Orleans that should have been evacuated much more quickly than they were. Six days is way too long. People are afraid and have every right to be. People at home are worried about their families. And it's been at least six days, and it may be much, much longer before people are able to get home.

(End Excerpt). I'm still trying to figure out who "they" is. Exactly.

So, I took my laundry down from the clothesline and started packing my bags for tomorrow. I...I thought this would be an exciting exercise - like, that I'd be incredibly happy to see this day come. Honestly, though, I just wanted to punch someone. I realized then that the frustration I had been feeling for the past few days was not the result of boredom - simply, I hate war. More than that, I hate the feeling of powerlessness that comes from hearing jets overhead threaten innocents and then hearing ...God...just hearing Bush...why? The world is waiting - please, just step in and stop it. You can do it - you, sir, are the only one. Why?

I came to the middle east to do a conference on conflict mediation. I cut class A LOT, frustrated that I couldn't get my hands dirty. I wanted to get on the ground. Wish answered.

But seeing "it" now on the ground, I'm reminded why I'm attracted to work over tourism - the simple feeling of making some progress. Here, floating through the streets, the size and complications of the conflict are mind numbing. I tried in vain to get some element of truth out to the people back home (see previous posts) and hope that this stupid blog helped some of you understand this experience a bit.

But the pictures, the snippets of dialogue, the little stories cannot - could never - convey the overwhelming fear I have now at the advent of something far more treacherous than even an Israeli bomb: acceptance.

There was that fateful moment yesterday when, sitting in Talal's lobby we found ourselves flipping through the channels and settling on watching a re-run of The Highlander rather keeping glued to Al-Jazeera. This odd malaise seems to have taken over the city, like war is just here and the city and it's people have let their eyes glaze over as a means of getting through it. It is acceptance manifesting itself - and it's terrifying. In Hamra, the cafes still blare the news creating this odd din as you walk around the city but fewer and fewer people are actually watching the screen. It's ...it's just happening now. It's life for however long. And it's crushing me.

So there is this sophomoric allure to staying, to just staying put and trying in some way to at least be a part of the relief effort (yesterday, I joined a student group at AUB that takes donations and then delivers them to refugees - so far, they haven't called...and I've been waiting...waiting just to do something good - for the love of God, something.) I feel completely useless - all I want to be is President of the United States. Seriously, just give me twenty four hours. PLEASE.

Talal offered to drive me over to Hamra where there's still a 24 hour net cafe up and running. I asked him as we drove, "What are you going to do now?"

Talal: "We will drive, we will drive across the city."

Me: "No, I mean what will you do? For the next couple weeks or however long?"

Talal: "(Shrug) Strange things are happening. Very strange." He turned up the radio.

You can see people starting to just...spin it. Just push it in circles as a way of dealing with it:

Cabbie from last night: "Things are bad in Lebanon. You know, but you need to...there is a saying that some wars can solve some problems. I think every 20 years, we need war to change things. Ideas come, they go. Ideas are like the fashion. Sometimes short, sometimes long. Me, I fought with a gun in the 80s; then, I put my gun down. Now, I have three children - two boys, engineers, a daughter getting and MA in Religious Studies. Boys and girls are good."

Me: "Do you vote?"

Cabbie: "I vote, yes. I vote my mind. I read. Everyday the paper, I know how to read what they say and what do not say and know what is more important."

Me: (re: the sectarian system here) "Does your vote matter?"

Cabbie: (laughing) "Things...no things here will never change. No."

So, it all comes down to the same question: what are we doing, really? Or maybe better: What should we do - as a country, as citizens? What is the vision here? And, even better, how do we make it happen?

Back to Larry King from last night. This time a quote from J Dingell:

KING: Congressman Dingell obviously they've waived the fees. Are you criticizing the other efforts?

REP. JOHN DINGELL (D), MICHIGAN: No. I'm not criticizing any of the other efforts. I want to see this matter resolved, and I want to see the United States begin to provide the leadership that it can provide for peace, to bring the countries of Europe and the world together, to bring the people in the nations in the area together, and let's get started bringing peace to the area and let's stop having this finger pointing where the Israelis say, well, the Hezbollah did this and Hezbollah says, well, the Israelis did this. I happen to think that Hezbollah started it, and I think it's shameful. But I think Israel's overreacted. But I don't think those are the points that we ought to address. What we have to address now is how do we ease the suffering of those people?

(end excerpt).

Two readers from Spain took the time to post comments on rwf. I thank them both. RWF - to me - is not about personal attacks or any sort of tit for tatting - and so, I've made it a rule to never respond directly to one persons remarks. Doing so just isn't what this blog is about in content or spirit. However one of our posts from Spain brings up an idea - a critism, I think, of the United States that I hear a lot...this will be touchy, but I'd like to talk about the ideas presented in this post from FC. FC, please don't take this as a personal attack, but you sum up nicely the general sentiment that I'm witnessing felt towards the United States...and, too, its people. All it's people. Let's try and talk about this:

"My name is Francisco Castro, from Spain. Try to think in this situation you are living. Israel, supported by your goverment, is killing inoccents. And you say still America is the land of freedom. Your goverment needs to learn more about diplomacy and less about business."

(here are a few links that will help you to learn a bit more about what Francisco is talking about:

Arms Sales Stats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trade#Top_Arms_Exporters

And, although the influence of USAid is under debate (as are the forces influencing USAid disbursement), this is a good place to start reading: http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp

Some counter info, though, F - just an FYI: Israel using US arms illegally:
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/1130 )

But it's true, although the US does provide funding for a number of regions (including aid to Palestine for social programs), Israeli funding is certainly the dark horse in the room.

So, I'll just close this with two points because the blog is getting too long.

1) I think that you're right. You're right re: 'we' need to learn more about foreign policy if you are referring strictly to the Bush Administration (although, given Bush's track record with the businesses he's headed, I don't think he took much away from the Harvard MBA.

That's not news. In fact, it's pretty basic common sense. In a war where all sides are losers, Bush has actually picked a side. In spite of the fact that everyone the world over has asked "the international community" and specifically the USofA to broker a peace settlement, let the dust clear and sort this thing out...Bush, oh Bush...

This is not only stupid as far as settling the conflict is concerned (can you imagine a marriage counselor telling one side of the couple that it's all their fault???), it is incredibly dangerous. We - the military powerhouse of the world - are now on a side where endless fighting and sudden, uncontrollable escalation is the norm?

So this idea that America has some serious reconsidering to do when it comes to foreign policy is concerned (in this and other ways/regions) is, to me, well substantiated down through history. But since we're talking now: YES, where is the best version of American when we so need it? Where is my country? When will we redefine the idea of strength to include the ideas of patience and humility?

A country that uses it's strength to step forward first to listen and learn, to mediate and negotiate not simply a temporary cease fire or peace but that commits itself to helping design a plan that brings prosperity, removing us all from the idea of war by two degrees.

Bush will make the argument that there are dangerous people in the world, that we need to hunt them down where they sleep. This is the overarching 'strategy' behind the "this or against" us war on terror, I think. This is also crap - in the end, we always aim to talk it out. Always. We did it in Korea, Vietnam and now the Iraqi gov't has offered talks to the insurgency there. We do it because talking actually works.

But the hunt may be all that Bush knows? Although this strategy might be able to contain rogue states (actually, not even: Iraq, anyone?), the recent surge in non-state actors cannot be dealt with by this administration that only knows black and white and shock and awe.

There is a better, more intelligent third way here. I have a lot of friends that advocate for the revolution. Watching people's lives fall apart in front me makes me think of a conversation I had with a female student from Iran last month. "We don't want a revolution," she said "we did that, and look where it got us. It was bloody and now we have this."

What we need is a Renaissance.

So, 2) back to FCs ideas: I hear your frustrations, F. The only issue I take with your comment would be that it's hypocritical in my estimation. So, again, yes to you and to so many folks who have pinned me - an "American" - as part of the problem I humbly admit, yes, our government needs to practice a higher level of diplomacy for the benefit of all who would work with us.

But the follow up response after the agreement and the recognition of the anger that my country's government incites would be that there are still a great many Americans trying so hard to change things. 49%, I think. And we need your help. Good diplomacy, as you know, comes as the result of a couple of things, among those a) knowing who you are talking to/doing your research and b) being able to be the bigger person so as to build a trusting rapport.

Today, F, you slotted me (or, if you meant "you" to mean all Americans, then all Americans) with the extremist, ailing portion of my country without bothering to ask me who I was and why I was here in the MidEast in the first place. You assume I've/we've given no thought to and assume no responsibility for the atrocities committed by the US government and I think you are making the claim that I (and "Americans") seem to brazonly enjoy "freedom" while putting others in veritable shackles through a variety of means.

You're half right, maybe, about "we" - but as you encourage us to look, listen and learn so would I encourage the firey foreigners among the readers of this blog. There are good people in America - find us, work with us.

My grandmother taught me one key lesson before I headed off to run political campaigns, labor union campaigns and now to learn more about what will have to be done diplomatically abroad in the coming decades. Regardless of the institution, office, organization, corporation, group, church, etc - regardless of what the institution claims to stand for, what the banner reads or the wording of the mission statement - there are good people in this world and there are bad people. No matter where you are, you'll find both - sometimes, by fate or circumstance, going through the same motions. Sometimes, until push comes to shove, it's terribly hard to tell them apart. And this must be the case for outsiders looking in on 'Americans'.

It's true, my current government has "mismanagement", poorly considered ideals and utter lack of productive, insightful long term planning written all over it. It's true that my country and its residents may appear at times the picture of total ignorance. Nonetheless, that Renaissance I'm talking about? It is happening. And I and so many of my country look forward to inheriting the responsibility for this monster, taming it and finaly employing policy based on intelligent, humanistic ideas. We work and suffer through having to sit next to the old guard in a taxi while we quietly plan to - in the near future - work alongside our fellow global citizens and employ the prosperity of our powerful country to the benefit of all. Everyone.

As is the case with Bush, the time for name-calling and quick black and white judgements is over. Learn from our mistakes, please, and instead please help us by offering profound constructive and comprehensive advice. I, for one, will take it. Humbly.

In other, better news:

If indeed I'm on a sea cruise tomorrow, I wanted to do three things: first, announce that this will be the end of readingwhilefalling for a while; second, to thank you for reading; and third, to leave by saying that even should I take my 'proper' role on a boat full of Americans, I'll be staying in region for a while, still committed to sorting "this all" out. It'll continue to be the focus of my life, I'm sure.

When I was trying to figure out what I was going to call this blog, I tried to conjure up some image of "the middle east". Having just spent a month talking to a wide variety of representatives from the region, I was struck by how the ongoing conflict with Israel so utterly dominated the region's focus. How quick sides were to simply attack, how the uncompromising vision that either side had for the region overshadowed the price paid for the conflicts in blood and overshadowed any foreign idea of peace. It was an image of a man, engrossed in a book held close to his face not noticing he was falling and about to crack into the sidewalk that popped into my head.

It's a different image now. Seeing the glaze over the eyes and seeing the exhaustion in my own face even after only a week of this, it'd be a wonder that anyone involved here would have the capacity to really focus on anything. It's like the machine has just started up again.

I've got to get back to Talal's and see what I can do for him before I go.

Exodus starts

2006-07-18T14:31:00.000+03:00

When I woke up this morning, the Norwegian and the American were gone.

First the big news:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/17/world/main1807307.shtml?source=RSS&attr=HOME_1807307

Favorite quote: "I think we've made a mistake in policy," said CBS News Military Analyst Ret. Army Col. Mitch Mitchell. "When we see a hot war starting, whether it's going to turn into an all out war or not, we should be doing everything we can to get Americans out and I don't think we're doing a good job at all."

Back to this morning: The Norwegians (like every other country) had arranged for a boat. At 7:30 this morning, they met downtown but with 500 extra seats on the ship that they chartered, hundreds of people from other countries showed up trying to find a way on board. The American was one of the hopeful and he'd spent the evening packing his bags while myself and the Canadian sipped beer on the balcony and waiting for the nightly bombing to start. The Israelis - those masters of psychological warfare - had been flying their jets low and slow for hours, circling like sharks. It was just a matter of time.

So in the morning when two of the four beds were empty, I wasn't surprised; I rolled over and dozed off again but upon waking the second time I found the American back asleep in the bunk next to me. Apparently it was a no go. I got up and, noticing the time, called the travel agency that had booked my ill fated trip to Jordan.

They haven't been open since the bombing started, but I call every day just the same. Today, M. Barakat of Barakat Travel picked up the phone - I almost forget what it was that I was calling about.

"Hi...me...American...Jordan...bombed runway...Reimbursement?"

"Yes, yes we can do this for you - but not today. We are closing. Come later this week."

"Well, I mean, I could be on a boat to Cyprus soon - can I - "

"Later this week."

"Well, when are you open?"

"Oh, ha, that depends on the weather." (The two of us laugh).

"Look, can you give me 10 minutes? I'll be there in 10 minutes!" Run Run Run.

It worked out - he said his credit card machines were down so he handed me the refund in cash which I promptly spent on a taxi to AUB, one of the few areas of town with internet cafes still up and running.

At AUB I saw one of the most majestic sights I've ever seen. It looked like this:

It's true, by all accounts our government was one of if not the slowest to begin pulling out its citizens (I think we actually beat Canada) but it was still heartwarming to see something actually happening. Last night, a few individuals with medical conditions were taken out by either the French or US Choppers. Today, the students at AUB got called (although, really, AUB is one of the safest places in the city - articles like this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13862665/

:are sensationalistic pieces of crap. With all due respect, for a 27 year old, this woman has a lot of growing up to do. Reading it only served to reinforce some of the fuzzy ideas I put in towards the end of my first post. I say this tentatively - we all have our own experiences and fears - and 9/11 was inexplicably horrible; though, I would assert in the same breath that we (particulary my generation) needs to learn to be stronger than this if we're going to be able to deal with the coming storm responsibly. Continuing, the only thing close to AUB that got shelled was the lighthouse. Comparatively, she's worlds away from it and surrounded by a security guard force 24/7. MSNBC should talk to my friend in the south who had a bomb dropped 100 yards from him, or my other friend that lives by the airport, or my another American who got their balcony knocked off by a shell, or to me, cautiously eying every refugee from the south that walks through the door to the Hostel, introducing myself promptly and gregariously to initiate conversation that would allow me to figure out who's pro-Hizbullah and do some quick and dirty diplomacy while warplanes bomb the port across the street.

...the lighthouse shelling wasn't much - and MSNBC knows that. They picked her because she was afraid, they picked her to sell the news. Again, don't trust the news.

Boarding the bus just as I got there, I saw a guy named Randy who I had met in a cafe two days ago. He's a late 40s schoolteacher originally from Philly who had been working in Topeka, KS for years; he'd come to take Arabic back to his students. When we talked in the cafe, I asked him mainly about his life. We somehow got onto the concept of beards (no idea how), about how they were at one time warn by fashionable young American men who had a bit of a rebellious streak to them. (I thought of old pictures I'd seen of Coppola on the set of the Godfather and of my father in a new context.) Because of the conversation we were having I found myself looking at his face a lot; he was cheery man, but you could see the tension around his mouth. He was ready to go, in my opinion. However, just now while boarding the bus - Red Sox hat squarely on his head - Randy was all smiles.

I haven't gotten a call or an email from the State department letting me know of when I'm supposed to be where. My guess is that with some 10,000 Americans to get out of Beirut and with only one cruise ship that's only able to carry 750 passengers per trip, that it will still be a few days.

And no, I don't know if there'll be a dinner show.

The war at home

2006-07-17T16:00:00.000+03:00

This morning, ABC News called me 9 times in a row until I picked up.

It was about 8:30, and we'd all just fallen back to sleep after this (above) a series of strikes on the port. Maybe it'd be helpful for you to know where I am:

http://local.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&q=beirut,+lebanon&ie=UTF8&ll=33.896962,35.510597&spn=0.001995,0.005364&t=k&om=1

: Talal's is the very center of the screen. If you zoom out and pan to the right, you can see the port area which is the only direct threat to the safety of the people of this area of town.

Like every other news agency here, ABC seems overworked and understaffed. I finally picked up their call and they announced that they'd like to do an interview ASAP, that they'd be over to the hotel in 15 or 20 minutes. I told them then that that wasn't enough warning, that they had said they would have emailed me last night if it was a 'go' - that fifteen minutes simply wasn't enough time for me to talk with Talal and his staff (not even up yet) and make sure that the Lebanese refugees in the hotel were comfortable with a news crew anywhere near the hotel. One hour, I told them. 15 minutes later, they (a reporter and a cameraman) were in the lobby. I was furious.

Talal's too nice to say no to anyone, so he woke up his staff (one of the boys sleeps in a fold out couch in the lobby) and sat and allowed the crew to set up the rig. The reporter kept making calls in spite of my signaling her with the universal "we need to talk" point to a quiet corner. I finally pulled her and her cameraman down the hall.

"Let me be very, very clear - we were not aware that you would be here this early - you said I had an hour - this man has had to wake up his staff and we've also got refugees from the south who probably aren't too happy to have some news people here. You have got to pay people proper respect before you just come in - "

Reporter: "But it's all great, it's all part of the story"

Me (livid through clenched teeth in spite of my call for quiet in the hotel) "I don't care about your story, I care about these people's lives."

Too tired to fight, I just capitulated when they kept staring - just sat in front of the camera hoping to get it over with. Things ran quickly and smoothly after that - the took a few shots of myself and the American watching television, on the computer, wasting time, etc. The questions they asked us were pretty lackluster, though. When I first met the reporter yesterday, she said she was interested in getting some strong opinions about how the USFed was (not) responding to the situation. I told her I was her man, and so myself and the American were ready to speak to the issues - what this war was all about, talking about the complications, etc. The questions leading us to that sort of talk never came and you can see me (if you see me - who knows if ABC will use any of me or the American) kind of quietly confused that we were again and again getting fluff questions. Too, I was asked to rephrase my wording a lot to make it less conversation and more...editable? I realized, kind of sadly, that I was a soundbite with a heartbeat.

Before she left, the ABC reporter pulled me aside and said, "you know, I hear what you're saying about having respect for people's lives, you know?" I shook her hand and said goodbye, trying to get her out the door as quickly as possibly. I don't think she had a problem with that - she left quickly, again on the phone.

It was a great learning experience. I learned this 1) have coffee if it's an early morning interview, 2) control the time, place and questions, 3) it's better to have some background with the press person talking to you, so you understand at least the nature of the person if not their angle and 4) don't be afraid to kick out the press. One things for sure, I need to get a lot better at this.

I took the American to lunch afterwards to one of the few open restaurants in the city. After days of cheap shawarma sandwiches from down the block, rice and fatouche was a great change. We learned along the way that the French ship would be arriving shortly complete with the Prime Minister and that the French would be evacuated. The Italians were all taken out by bus earlier today. Too, tomorrow or the next day the Norwegian and Swiss boats should be docking.

We heard from one of the American's friends that used to work at the embassy that now they're considering a plan involving planes...sigh.

A groundskeeper picks up flyers from yesterday's drop outside of a hotel downtown...

I get letters

2006-07-16T18:25:00.000+03:00

Last night, the first of the Lebanese refugees from the south came to stay at my hotel.

But first, the news: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aETA7P9gJAgs&refer=uk

We spent last evening in relative quiet - myself, the American, the Canadian and the Norwegian. We're the last tenants here aside from Talal himself, his nephew and a young worker from Syria.

On the roof, we sat in silence while the sun dropped. It's been nearly silent for days - no commerce, no construction, no people; the cranes on the skyline haven't moved. Just the occasional military transport thundering by.

Night is a different story. I found myself doing something kind of odd last night. The heavy shelling from the military boats and the airstrikes typically start some time after midnight. While attempting to push myself into sleep I found myself counting the seconds between the "poof" (sound of far off military boat firing) and the resounding impact of the shell somewhere in the city. And then telling myself "one mile per second."

(Fitty poster near AUBeirut)

When I was a kid, we used to play a game during those flash thunder storms common in the evenings after a hazy New England summer day. Before the start of the rain, myself and whatever kids I was running around with would run inside the nearest house and group around a windowsill to watch the sheets come down. We'd pray for lightning and when it came we'd count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the thunder crack - we'd count out loud as a group. The number of seconds equaled how far away the lighting strike was.

For obvious reasons, this technique does not apply when trying to figure out how far away an Israeli gunship is from it's target, let alone your hostel. Nonetheless, it was the only thing that got me to sleep last night through the sound of the attacks. Upon the sound of an impact, you'd hear a cacophony of cars horns - I think they beep in defiance, but I'm not sure how anyone who had honked their horn after narrowly being missed by a shell would explain their actions. Or if it matters.

After midnight, myself and the American - alone in one of the dorm rooms among a few empty beds - jumped out of bed when the sound of a small group of people entering into the room. Hair trigger, I guess.

The Syrian ushered an old man into the room while a few other Lebanese from the south were finding their way into rooms down the hall. Just after midnight, Talal's became a safehouse for refugees. When I came down into the lobby in the morning, a family of eight sat waiting to check in.

Mostly, they're quiet - I don't speak Arabic, they have no English. Well, one does. An intense young man who constantly invited us throughout the day to take walks, to wander, to talk, to eat - anything to not be alone. We entertained him at first, chatting on the roof for some time. This talk revealed how hostile he was - not just to Americans, but to everyone there. Seeing his stress, the Norwegian offered him a sip of beer. "No," he said "No. Me, I never take a drink in my entire life." "It's never too late to start," - the Norwegian smiles through his eyes.

The Norwegian - a maintenance manager at a secondary school in Norway, probably in his early forties - has proved to be quite handy. He's got lots of gadgets and scissors and such for keeping his belongings tidy. Mostly, he sits on the balcony, sips beer and smokes cigarettes while he offers us information. From him, I've learned how to tell the difference between what's a military boat shelling and what's an airstrike by sound as well as a few other things. He claims to have spent each of his vacations for the past three years here in Beirut. "Will you be back next year?" "Oh, we'll just have to see..."

After noon - even though it was cloudy today - I did what every self respecting American would do in a time of tension: I went to the beach. It was closed. Even the rocky shore along the Corniche where the locals will flock to swim and socialize during the evenings and weekends was entirely deserted. I walked through a few back alleys looking for Casablanca. The doors were locked.

Just now, here's the email from the State Department.

A message to American citizens in Lebanon:

The US Department of State and the US Department of Defense continue working on a plan to help American citizens who wish to depart Lebanon to leave in a secure and orderly manner. To assist in the development of that operation, the U.S. Government is sending an assessment team to Beirut to facilitate the safe departure of Americans who wish to leave.

The Embassy is open and will remain open at this time in support of American citizens in Lebanon. American citizens may register by contacting the Embassy in Beirut directly, or through the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs registration site at http://travelregistration.state.gov. For updated information, visit the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs website at http://travel.state.gov.

Updated information on travel and security in Lebanon may be obtained from the Department of State by calling 1-888-407-4747 within the United States, or, from overseas, 1-202-501-4444. Additional information, as it becomes available will be released via the media, Embassy warden announcements and on the Department and Embassy websites.

However, many have called or emailed me to say that the US is putting together an evacuation plan, that boats are on the way, that people have been flown in to "assess" the situation, etc.

It's a familiar message...

Too, the Israelis are sending their own messages. On my way back from the shore, I looked up along with the one or two other people roaming the streets when we heard the sound of aircraft. Down the strip, I could hear an uproar and ran to the Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel to find the streets littered with flyers.

They were from an Israeli airdrop - this is what they look like.

If you can't tell, the cartoon is of the leaders of Iran, Syria and Hamas summoning the leader of Hezbollah. It's an argument of sorts but relatively weak propoganda given Talal's reaction to it (hysterical laughter and mild confusion).

Too, they dropped this warning:

: which, according to Talal, loosely translates to the following: "Don't associate with/help Hezbollah. Cheers, Israel. PS- we're about to bomb you again."

At the scene of the airdrop, I found an ABC news reporter - actually, she found me and asked if I could give an interview. I told her I'd have to ask back home - from what I can tell, my grandparents have no idea what's going on with me and the last way we'd all like them to find out is via ABC World News Tonight. After placing a few "check in" phone calls, I've decided to do it. Too, apparently the ABC news "bunker" (not my term) is understaffed.

Finally, in other, better news. A dog followed the Canadian back to the Hostel. He's in and out, but now officially a welcomed presence:

Also, quote I found. On the side of the Hardrock Cafe, Beirut (which is also closed):

Fox and Friends...and me.

2006-07-15T19:29:00.000+03:00

This afternoon, the Israelis bombed my lighthouse. Right now, the Israelis are still bombing my port.

Just a quick update. Got a phone call just now from New York - it was Fox News! One of the producers on the ground passed on my phone number and they wanted me to come on to Fox and Friends tomorrow morning...

Oh, I was torn as always: the glory of national airtime vs. providing fodder for the Evil Machine that seems to be the media here. In the end, I answered their questions as to the state of things in Beirut to try and inform them better of what was happening on the ground, but declined the invitation to speak on air, telling them that my cell phone reception was spotty at best and that were better off finding someone else...not what I wanted to say ("Honestly, I just disagree with the points that Fox aims to make. I think their conservative point of view is really hampering international progress. In general") but I'm trying to be more "Clinton-esque" lately (i.e. "nice").

Anyhow, I've contacted my college newspaper and the Providence Journal to see who would want to pick up a freelance mood piece on the life of Americans here in Beirut during the ...what is this? Is it a siege? I think siege is too strong. Somewhere between siege and annoyance.

The point is, if you have news contacts: friends in print, television, etc then send them my way :
I'd love to get them photos and short articles or do interviews on the fly - there's not enough on the ground reporting, from what I can see.

What other way am I going to pay for that boat trip to Cyprus?

(apparently 'taxes' doesn't work)

What boat?

2006-07-15T15:48:00.000+03:00

This morning, the US Embassy emailed us to let us know they were working on an evacuation plan.

Walking down the street in Beirut is like picking your way through a salad bar of attitude. The soldiers in the square are hot and bored, the Americans are all but freaking out, the locals are equal parts excited to crush Israel (it's an odd sort of fake enthusiasm though, like a hold over from the world cup mentality) and scared for their lives/belongings. This is what happens when fear of the unknown begins to grip a town I figure.

For my own part, I've remained relatively calm if not frustrated; however, this morning was the first time I began making calls and writing emails to get a serious and dependable back up plan in place. Last night, "all out war" was declared between Hezbollah/Hizbullah and Israel (by Hizbullah) (although, has this not been all out war for three days? What about the shockwaves rattling the city? The warships? Was this just pageantry?), meaning that permission has been given to all to act on emotion and instinct, to forget for however long their role as 'the civilized'. Today, Hezbollah flags flew from cars passing by in the city - I spent the majority of the day inside.

And where is our government through all of this? Here they are:

EMAIL TO AMERICANS IN LEBANON FROM STATE DEPARTMENT, SENT TODAY:

Message to Americans in Lebanon

The Department of State continues to work with the Department of Defense on a plan to help American citizens depart Lebanon. As of the morning of July 15, we are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus. Once in Cyprus, Americans can then board commercial aircraft for onward travel. Commercial airlines provide the safest and most efficient repatriation options to final destinations.

The Department of State reminds American citizens that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date. In a subsequent message, when we have specific details about the transportation arrangements, we will inform you about the costs you will incur. We will also work with commercial aircraft to ensure that they have adequate flights to help you depart Cyprus and connect to your final destination.

The Department of State continues to work around the clock and will continue to send updates to you as appropriate.

...God, if this doesn't just crush a man's soul. We need better management in our government; not only has it taken them days to put together a plan (not even done? "Round the clock?" You're working around the clock and you have nothing in place after days? What's going on, exactly?), but - oh God it burns - they're actually making us pay for our own evacuation from a war zone. Deep, deep sigh. What about the people trapped in the south? They haven't paid enough?

In other, better news:

This morning, I called Fox News. Thankfully, they didn't pick up. However, I was prepared to tell them that, no, I wouldn't be working with them today. Or ever (if they pushed me). I admit, I've been anxious to get my hands on a camera and record a lot of this; still, a) it's Fox - I just don't agree with Fox - our philosophies don't line up - that'd be selling my soul; and b) from everything I've seen on television (from Fox, CNN, BBC, A.J., etc.) the news has done nothing but to sensationalize this conflict (yes, it's a very real conflict, dangerous things are happening in the south and on the border) but they're blowing everything out of proportion and, frankly, lying. Particularly in their portrayal of Beirut. Honestly, they western reporters either cannot gain access to the south or are too afraid, and so, it seems, they're bringing the danger to them. That's not something I want to be apart of and the argument to "change the system from the inside" has never made as much sense to me as the argument for simple non-participation.

Yesterday, we saw a report on the BBC wherein a British reporter voiced "We woke this morning to the sound of explosions" - funny, I was at the BBC the day before they bombed the Airport roads - was there quite a long time - and frankly, I just don't recall seeing one Brit. And why does he include himself in the opening line of a news report about the situation? Why say "we"? Where's the news?

Casablanca

2006-07-14T22:16:00.000+03:00

This morning, the Israelis bombed my road to Damascus.

It happened at 5 am - the road and I think a few other targets out by the airport, about 5 miles away. Still, we could feel the shockwave - it woke us all up. Myself and the four other guys sleeping in the hostel dorm (they were: Pole A and Pole B, the reporter from Portugal and the American) ran up the steps of the building to the roof. Dawn had just broken and we could see the smoke snaking up through the morning mist miles off.

Soon, the other hostel dwellers joined us. I can't speak highly enough of Talal and his international hostel. It's like a model UN - Polish, Portuguese, Arabic, English, Japanese, Canadian - it's all spoken here. With tensions rising (generally) the debates between the hostel tennants are teaching me more about other points of view than even the month long symposium on middle east conflict resolution I just attended.

A few more claps of thunder knocked through the city and then the city stayed quiet for a while. The crowd on the roof (all men, oddly, even though there were a handful of women staying here as well - why all men?) slipped back down into the building and back to sleep.

Talal's a savvy businessman; what with the mild Mediterranean weather and little/no rain here, he's put beds actually on top of the building - four bunks up on the roof. I sat back on one of the old mattresses, one eye watching the smoke, the other watching the rising sun and passed out. When I woke up: a) the power was out and b) the Japanese had sent a car for the Japanese citizens staying in Talal's. God Bless Japanese efficiency.

Two things: a) Fridays are a day of rest for many Lebanese and b) the city is generally/comparatively a ghost town. During the evenings, the Talal group watches TV and, when bombs sound, runs to the roof or the balcony to see what got hit. But during the day - especially today - it was just hours or sitting, waiting, frustration. On my flight from JFK, one of the inflight movies was Casablanca - one of my favorites, so I stayed up less to watch and more to ...dream? I guess? The romantic in me? Planned to find a way to get there before I went back to the States.

Well, I made it. A bunch of expats, sitting around, wasting time and money until the war/diplomatic efforts release them from this stupid prison. In fact, today while looking at a tourist map of the city, I found out that there's a restaurant not a mile from my hostel: Rest. Casablanca. Tomorrow, if I don't make a run for the Syrian border, that's where you'll find me. And if you do find me, could you bring a chopper?

YESTERDAY: After I left the coffee shop (which was closed today - the manager said none of the employees showed up), I ran to the news building. "Who needs a cameraman?" just ran up and down stairs, asking CNN, BBC, AP, whoever looked frantic "what can I do? I did film in undergrad!" It was sheer insanity, and (actually) BBC and the AP actually took my cell. "We...yeah, we might actually need you."

On the way out of the building, a news crew had set up on the sidewalk - they were: two women (chainsmoking (producers?)); one cameraman (struggling with the smoking generator); one male reporter (waiting impatiently for cameraman, under lights).

I introduced myself, told them what I could offer:

Producer 1: "Oh great, can you work a PD 170?"
Me: "I can work a 150, so unless there's a huge difference..."
Prod: "Oh, this is great - we need filler shots of the city, people buying groceries and things - this is so great - I mean, we don't even have an office yet, this is just so lucky to find you!"
(exchanges of cell phone numbers and agreements for meeting the next day and introductions and...the reporter walks over...)
Reporter: "Great, good to have you on the team - what's your name?"
Me (excited): "Thomas, sir."
Reporter: "Thomas, great to meet you - Name's Michael. Welcome to Fox News."

Gah!

Run run run!

The call to prayer was echoing through the city as I ran home. The city was buckling down.

Got back to Hostel. Talal's nephew (who helps run the place) was keeping score of the dead, proud that 19 Israelis had been wounded. I went upstairs to read and wait until the evening, when everyone would again find their way out to the roof and watch the sky.

The only person then in the room was one of the Poles - smoking a cigarette and sipping on Arak. "Oh, it's war war war" he said, "you want Arak?" I thought he said "Iraq" (putting me, as an American in the MidEast, on my conversational gaurd) - "what do you mean?" "Arak, Arak," shaking a small glass bottle at me. "Oh! Oh God yes" and we did shots to peace.

"Why are you here? Why come to Lebanon?" he asked. "I heard they had nice weather," I said. "Oh, yes...you are traveling?" "Yeah." "You are...you are 'life tired'?" "Yeah, I think so," I said, "looks like I picked the worst place in the world to rest up."

Then, I fell asleep until (see beginning of post).

Things are fine now. There have been a few localized hits in the city, but it's always the same - just damage to infrastructure...annoying. At least here. Things are, I'm sure, terribly worse in the south. I count myself lucky. Well, actually the conflict has escalated along the coast here and Hezbollah has begun hitting the Israeli naval ships - I believe with bombs attached to remote control toy boats (at least, that's what Talal says)...but still, Beirut is quiet as always. Tomorrow, the American and I might try for Syria, but my guess is that if the coffeeshop is open I'll just stick around.

Quick answers to FAQs:

Yes, I'm registered with the embassy
No, I don't think the syrians will let me through
Yes, I'm fine

Life happens when you're making other plans.

2006-07-13T11:47:00.000+03:00

This morning, Israel bombed my runway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1819295,00.html

RECAP:
1) Woke up
2) Recovered my laundry from the clothesline on the roof of the hostel I've been staying in (Talal's New Hotel - not to be confused with Talal's (old) Hotel which, from what I can gather, was a brothel)
3) Packed my bags (well) - including one-way ticket to Amman
4) Walked into the lobby of the hostel to call for a cab to the airport
5) Found small group of people huddled around television in silence

(me, to Talal (not his real name)/hostel owner): "Hey, do you know how I could call a cab?"
(Talal): "To where, the airport!?" Cackling laughter from the group.

At six AM this morning, the Israeli military bombed (at least one) of the runways of Beirut Int'l - my flight for Jordan was scheduled to depart just after noon.

(me, to travel agent) "How long do you think it will be?"
(travel agent who had booked my ticket to Jordan, smiling) "Oh, you know..."

Israel has claimed that the runway target was/is part of a strategic air/land/sea blockade designed to hamper the purported delivery of weapons to Hizbullah (pro Palestinian militant faction operating in the south of Lebanon) but the strike, I'd guess, is aimed more at the simple disruption of Lebanese business and tourism. Why would Syria choose to fly weapons caches to Lebanon when it could simply smuggle them over ground (cheaper, more covert)? It's not a smart play for Israel - many Gulf States like doing business in Lebanon...attacking the West Bank is one thing, but this move directly antagonizes the entire region against the Israelis.

Anyway, so it begins. Depending upon how quickly diplomatic efforts can quell this fiasco, I'm going to be here in Beirut for at least a few days. Can't go south (border/warzone), can't go north or east (Syrians not too keen on the US Passport these days) and can't go west (Israeli naval blockade). Great.

The city's pace has quickened; everything has a pre-war feel to it. The cafe televisions that normally blare with comically risque middle eastern music videos are all tuned to Al-Jazeera. Nejmeh Square (where I take my coffee and wireless) has stepped up security from the normal thirty or so soldiers grouped about the Parliament building to a new deployment of one soldier positioned literally every thirty feet. This is a marked departure from last night, when the city seemed to be watching this all play out like a dramatic soap opera.

It's very, very interesting to see the difference in people at large as they move through the city. People here in Nejmeh are still shopping, still dining but you can almost see them walk on their toes, can almost feel the hairs on the backs of their necks. Here, in my little coffee shop, people are markedly more quiet, speaking in close tones.

I can't tell if I prefer this reaction to the only other "invasion" reaction I've ever witnessed: The American public during 9/11. This current skirmish is nowhere on that scale (yet), granted, but Sept11 is all I've got to go on. Then, we (Americans) were all in a frenzy, some crying out for peace, some demanding revenge and blood and counterattacks - but most, if I recall, were simply stunned, were hardpressed to know what to think let alone what to do. "Why?" through tears. In fact, Bush addressed this idea that Americans just didn't know how to operate in his first televised speech after the attacks: (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html).

Reading through it, it's as if he needed to take a group of stunned children by the hand and simply say "look, the first responders are doing their job, we've got a strong military and they're doing their job, the economy is top notch so no worries on money....look, your job is just to pray."

The Lebanese are remarkably good at this. They're demonstrating to me exactly how being under relatively constant threat manifests itself into the public character. Frankly, I'm impressed and a little bit...jealous. They all know how to walk through this fire drill; I don't envy their (geographic, historic, political) position - wouldn't wish it on most - but the resultant degree of emotional control...can't figure out just yet if it's strength or ambivalence or what.

In other/better news:

(me, to Hawlah - coffeehouse staff): "you mean, in person?"

(Hawlah): "Yes, in the United States"

"No. She used to date - remember Ben? I think they might have hung around Boston when they were...whatever they were...but..."

"I want - she is, to me, my best actress and my best singer. I want to be Arabian Jennifer Lopez."

"well, we all...have...dreams..."

Last night, before I left this coffee shop in Nejmeh Square, Beirut, the staff presented me with a free bag of coffee. Like I said, I spend a lot of time here. Again, only wireless in the area. So, I know them all pretty well - they've started to get me my coffee for free (they even know how to make it) and when I announced that I'd be departing for Jordan the next day, it was if a member of the staff was leaving. I didn't have the heart to tell them that a) I don't have a coffee maker and b) I didn't have room in my bag for a sack of coffee beans. Still, I was touched. As I left and they waved me goodbye I said, "wish me luck in Israel" at which point they broke into laughter. Store Owner (broken English): "tell them we say hello!"

This morning, the staff were all pretty happy to see me when I waltzed in after learning that no one would be flying in or out of Lebanon for a few days. I agreed to play guitar for Hawlah to help her practice her singing if she agreed to help me with my Arabic.

OK, I'm off to find the Washington Post reporter I met two days ago and ask about taking photos.

Shukran.

PS: As I'm leaving, transcript of portion of heated "conversation" between Parliamentarians (taking a break in the coffee shop) and an Israeli women/peace activist:

Woman: "If I make you angry, you will hit me I swear - you should not make the people angry! You have to - you must look - how many times do you have to look - you should not make the other person angry - if there are prisoners...then...diplomatic action! Lebanon must become strong inside..."

P: "30 years diplomatic! There is no solution - no diplomatic - we have many presidents in Israel in 30 years - the only way is to fight. Many times MY HOUSE on the border destroyed by Israeli. How much Israeli forces destroyed many countries - how many killed!"

"Yes but if you get invasion - you must ask why! Why we are doing this"

"We don't have time for why!"

"Oh I hate this - people dying - the war the violence all weapons...the people...you have to eliminate all weapons, the children dying...the..."

"No this is not the problem - there is the bigger problem - there is a bigger problem."

"It makes me cry - my people, my children - killing..."

"You have no leader - you have one leader - the president and then there is the resistance"

"Did you just say the resistance? HA! Killers!"

"You cannot take the Israeli at the wall...anything you have to do, big surrounded...we take two Israeli soldiers...this?"

Continued bickering and crying and screaming....