spring cleaning, militia style

Despite my initial mental wool-gathering, I have been able to cobble together a reasonably productive work day. Whew. It still doesn’t feel normal outside, but in the little bubble that is my office, things are looking up.

On my way to the gym this morning I stopped to take a few photographs of the subtle differences I mentioned in my previous post - like this one:

I’ve mentioned this graffiti before - its all around one of the neighborhoods I pass through on my walk to the gym. Or at least it was all around. This morning I noticed that every graffiti I passed had been carefully sprayed over, with black or silver paint. Its a tidy job - and not a very effective one when done in silver. But its a definite change.

This bit of “spring cleaning” I think was actually a mistake, or the product of some over-zealous young guy with more poster-tearing enthusiasm than brains:

Yes, that’s right. The opposition militia that took these streets decided to tear down posters of the country’s consensus presidential candidate, General Michel Sleiman. They also tore up posters of Saad Hariri, but left almost every poster of Rafiq Hariri intact.

Tearing up the posters of Saad isn’t a surprise. Leaving the posters of Rafiq (or at least the parts with him on them) hanging is a bit of a surprise, given some of the television coverage I’ve seen showing defaced Hariri posters. And tearing up the posters of Sleiman is very odd. I don’t think it was a militia-wide order - I think this poster-tearer was on a rampage and didn’t realize what he was doing.

But someone else must have, because a bit further down the wall there is another poster of Sleiman, torn only part way. And after that one, the rest are all intact. I imagine that the half-torn poster shows the point at which the poster-tearer’s supervisor noticed, ran over, and started yelling.

Wonder what the neighbors thought of THAT in the midst of all the shooting :).

“doing normal”

I’m back at work this morning and feeling a bit aimless. Before I left last week, I carefully arranged my work in piles - a thinking-ahead effort by my last week’s self to smooth my eventual return.

I appreciate my own thoughtfulness, but unfortunately it hasn’t prevented me from being scatterbrained today. Thus far I’ve caught up on email, looked at the piles and merged two of them, but I haven’t yet come up with an outline for my day. Usually I have a whole list of tasks, big and small, and by 9:45 am humming well along. Today I seem to be more of a slow lurcher.

And today again I seem to be one of very few in my office, if not the entire building. There has been no trash collection since last week, understandably, and the bathrooms could use a bit of a spiff-up. In short, the place feels a bit abandoned, which isn’t helping me kick myself into productivity.

We came back to the city last night, delighted to be back home but also hyper-aware of the subtle differences. The streets of “West Beirut” were unusually quiet, even for 10 pm, and the buildings were hushed. When we reached my neighborhood, we had our pick of street parking - meaning that many of my neighbors must still be away. But the streets themselves were dark. Although the power was on, the street-lights were off. The darkness wasn’t dangerous, but it did make me want to scurry inside.

When we dropped off our guest in Hamra, where he lives, we noticed that the fast food spots on Bliss, across from AUB, were open. They had customers, but not enough even for a row of double-parked cars - let alone the triple-parking that reduces Bliss from four lanes to one on most evenings. Across from our friend’s building was a freshly painted trio of SSNP flying swastikas, or whatever its logo is meant to resemble. And under the logos, in three white plastic garden chairs, sat three late middle-aged men.

They weren’t armed, and they weren’t young hooligans - in fact, they all jumped up to warn H when they thought he might back up into the one other car out driving in Hamra. But they definitely weren’t sitting there just to enjoy the evening hawwa - they had no coffee, no tawla board, and no arguileh.

Today it all feels normal, kind of. The sun is shining and my gym is open - and old men do sit out on the streets in plastic garden chairs. But there are almost no cars on the roads, and from what I saw this morning, many of the shops and restaurants remain closed.

Ten years ago, I saw an art exhibit at the SF MoMA with my college boyfriend, called “Doing Normal”. I didn’t like the exhibit, but I remember it.

The exhibit was built around the idea that there is a difference between simply being normal - going about one’s daily life unconscious of one’s habits - and doing normal. Doing normal is by definition artificial - its the conscious attempt to dress normally, speak normally, behave normally, go to work normally, run errands normally, go out at night normally, etc.

“Doing normal” is the fiction of normalcy in un-normal times, and that is exactly what my part of Beirut is doing right now.

media wars

Everyone is blogging about the Lebanese media and its coverage of the situation, our guest said yesterday evening.

Well, include me among the guilty - I think that the media coverage itself - how each channel has been covering events here - has been fascinating. Plus really, what else are we doing? Most of my work is done on my computer, so I’m online constantly - and because I have a laptop, I can work in front of the television. I imagine that many bloggers here are in similar situations - so in a way the sudden flowering of media-related blog posts is merely making a virtue of necessity.

But media wars of various kinds have been going on for some time - and not only between the media outlets of sparring groups.

Earlier this spring, the Ouwet Front - a very pro-Lebanese Forces blog - announced that the website manager for the LF’s official site had again asked the blog to shut down. When the blog’s administrator refused, the LF’s website administrator told him that it was a “direct order” from LF boss Samir Geagea.

The two men continued exchanging heated emails, which you can read through the attached link above, but in the end they appear to have agreed to hold their noses and carry on, with the official site ignoring the blog and the blog continuing to link and refer to the official site as if nothing had happened.

I can’t stand Samir Geagea, and the LF’s political platform makes me ill, but I do check the Ouwet blog from time to time. I don’t agree with many of its writers’ and commentators’ conclusions, but I appreciate the effort they all seem to make to think through their positions intellectually, and to try to push the boundaries of their (what I consider rather narrow) understanding of who counts as Lebanese.

That’s the background. And at the beginning of last week, before all this started, I noticed that the LF had upped the ante. It is now advertising its website on billboards in Christian areas:

I don’t think that we’ve heard the last of Geagea in this crisis, either. So feel free to check out the “official” site. As the billboard says, “for the truth a website”. Imagine my eyes rolling.

While I have been writing this post, H came in and turned on the news. Nasser Qandil has been giving an unending press conference on Manar. He’s not saying anything new, and he’s certainly not saying anything particularly interesting, but his press conference is one of my top five for the crisis thus far. The power went out in his house just after he began, so the screen showed 30 seconds of black screen and the sounds of a beeping UPS until his generator kicked back in.

Ah, Beirut. This may be a coup, but even Hizbullah can’t order EDL around.

a tale of two universities

The two major American universities in Beirut have issued their take on the current situation here (which is still a mess - despite a major workout this morning, I am still fully grumpy about the utter vacuum of leadership in this country and its wretched consequences). Each has posted its statement on its website and, so I understand, has sent the same information to faculty, students, and staff by email.

Here is what LAU has to say about the situation:

Dearest LAU family: Faculty, Students, and Staff,

We are writing to greet you. We hope that you and your families are all safe. Your safety is uppermost on our mind. As we promised, we are writing to update you on new LAU developments. This morning, the President, Vice Presidents, and Deans, met to assess the current situation in the country and its impact on LAU. In light of that assessment, the following decisions were made:

1. Faculty and Staff. For tomorrow, May 13, the University, with both of its campuses in Beirut and in Byblos, will be open. We ask our faculty and staff to use their judgment before coming to work, taking into consideration road conditions and their personal safety. If in your judgment, you feel that you can’t come to work for safety considerations, please don’t do so.

2. Faculty and Students. There will be no classes for tomorrow, May 13, 2008.

With respect to this matter, we would like to re-assure our students and their parents, that the University will make sure that our students will complete the semester, so that those students who will fulfill the requirements for graduation can graduate on time, and the others can complete successfully the semester’s coursework and move on to the next year in their advancement toward graduation. We are in the process of planning a make-up schedule for all classes lost and we will inform our students accordingly and in due time.

We will be meeting on a daily basis and will keep you informed of new developments. Please be safe with your families and loved ones. We hope and pray that the political and security situation will begin to stabilize and the Lebanese leaders will come to a consensus and settle their differences soon, so that we all can resume our normal lives.

With our best wishes,

Joseph G. Jabbra
President

Its a personal communication from the university president, using terms of affection and placing human lives as the university’s top priority.

Here is what AUB, the country and perhaps the region’s most venerable university, has to say:

The American University of Beirut will resume classes as soon as conditions permit. The University will, as of that point, make arrangements to complete the second semester and help students make up for missed work. Medical students are expected to attend to their duties throughout.

Regular full-time employees and workers at AUB are expected to attend to their duties as normally scheduled. As on previous similar occasions, any day of absence will be charged towards days of regular vacation to be deducted from the employee’s earned annual leave.

AUB’s statement is an impersonal communication that puts the university’s (and its affiliated hospital’s) staff needs first.

I haven’t been overly impressed with graduates of either university, but if I had been one of them, I would be much prouder at this moment to have LAU as my alma mater.

Monday morning grumpies

Duhnuh, duhnuh, duhnuh duhnuh duhnuh: imagine the Jaws theme. As I type, the USS Cole (”mudammara” in Arabic, which really drives home the meaning of the word “destroyer”) is sailing up from the Suez Canal to an undisclosed location “in the Mediterranean”, according to the AFP and all the morning newscasts. I wonder where it could be going, I say to myseld, tongue in cheek. And I wonder what State Department idiot thought that sending the Cole back here was a good idea.

American battleships and Lebanon go way back - and their relationship is not a happy one. The Chouf was already bombed yesterday - no need to bring back Civil War memories of the USS New Jersey doing the same twenty years ago.

On the other hand, perhaps this is the “private watercraft” that the last warden message mentioned …

I’ll let you know when the Cole arrives. Meanwhile, its another beautiful morning here in the non-shot-out hills, although a bit hazy. Here’s a slightly shifted view of the city, focusing on the deep downtown and the coast:

As the days wear on, I’m handling the situation less and less gracefully. I’m grumpy - I miss my routine, my apartment, my wardrobe, my neighborhood. But I am gaining new respect for one of my least favorite za3ims: Walid Jumblatt. What happened yesterday in the Chouf was awful - and Jumblatt stepped up and showed real leadership.

There are too many egos in Lebanese politics - too many men who use their constituencies to feather their own nests and to defend imagined slights to their big-man image. Jumblatt did the opposite yesterday: he put his own ego aside in order to keep the people of the Jebel from sparking a full out conflagration with one another and Hizbullah.

(For those of you who don’t speak Arabic, he gave an interview on Al Jazeera English’s Inside Story that aired this morning around 7:15. I can’t find it on the channel’s website yet, but it should be up soon. He’s unshaven and dressed in his usual one-step-above-homeless style, but he speaks well. And this morning he has been on the phone with every news channel I have flipped to, from New TV to Arabiya, explaining his decision and the importance of civil peace.)

Thanks to the shoot-out in the Jebel and the crisis generally, I have a new mini-za3im to snicker at: Jumblatt’s cousin, Talal Arslan. What a goober. He has never had such media attention before, and with each press conference he looks more and more self-important, talking about how the Jebel is and will remain “lil-muqawama wa al-muqawamin”. Right. And the muqawama is lil-Arslan and will remain so as long as he is a useful alat.

Oh well - he’s getting his 15 minutes of fame, and clearly reveling in it. Here is is giving press conference number four or five yesterday evening, with an entourage of men:

Wherever there is a cameraman in the Middle East, there are men. Sometimes young, sometimes old - but always there. They are the same men who halt their conversations when I walk by - men with nothing better to do than 1) watch girls and 2) stand patiently behind the person being interviewed for the fleeting pleasure of appearing on satellite television. Not to be sexist, but women seem to have better things to do with their time.

Of course, some of these men were probably encouraged to stand behind Arslan - big men need big entourages. But they enjoyed it - whenever Arslan shifted position, the men nearest him shifted as well, to make certain that they were still on camera. My favorite was the cool guy in sunglasses on Arslan’s left. Sunglasses at night and a black Hizbullah-style baseball cap - star qualities indeed.

But the most important man in this group - aside from Arslan - was the ceremonial Microphone Holder. No metal microphone rack for Arslan, but rather a 21st century version of the king’s chamberlain:

And unlike the entouragers, the microphone-ji was taking his responsibilities quite seriously. He didn’t make eye contact with the camera once - he was focused on his job. (And for the curious: the microphones belonged to Manar, OTV, and LBC. I don’t know why New TV wasn’t included, or NBN, or the satellite news channels - maybe he could only hold three microphones.)

I’m going to go and sweat off some of this grumpiness at the gym in a bit. Until then, I’ll be the one hissing at the screen while sending some Monday morning emails. After all, in the rest of the region (excluding poor Sudan) its a normal work day.

morning in the suburbs

Good morning and happy Sunday from Beirut’s suburbs. Its a beautiful day, and finally it seems that the city is becoming as calm as my current view of it suggests:

I think I’ll take advantage of the calm and blog about something trivial .

I’m an early sleeper and an early riser, so when I’m not living solo, I often spend my first waking moments indulging in a little forensics.

Yesterday afternoon we were joined by a mutual friend who had made it out of Hamra during a lull in the fighting. This morning, my CSI Lubnan investigations tell me that his presence has added greatly to the guy-ishness of H’s apartment.

961 beer bottles on the kitchen counter … cigarettes in the ashtray … TV remote controls inter-mixed with recharging laptops - all the trappings of a Saturday night at home in media-savvy guy land.

But I’m mystified by one thing: there are also five or six torn pieces of kleenex scattered around the living room and front hall, leading into the kitchen. They’re clean, but torn.

I can understand the remote controls (staying on top of the wada3) and the laptops (staying in touch with friends around the country and the world).

I can understand the beer (Saturday night) and the cigarettes (small acts of rebellion, justified by the wada3).

But what on earth were they doing with the little tufts of kleenex?

I’m tidying up my laptop as I ponder this utterly mystifying question, and sorting through photos I’ve taken over the past few weeks.

This is a photo of the Corniche, coming towards Ain El Mreisse, that I took on Wednesday afternoon. Thanks to the strike, the road was totally empty - shocking at the time, but now merely a footnote to all the events since then:

missing home, missing home, and missing the boat

My family called yesterday as H and I were out running errands - trying to find skim milk. We aren’t sure whether it was due more to the trauma of the cows or their owners, but fresh (non-UHT) milk was in short supply yesterday.

They called to get an update on the situation here, but also to tell me about my grandmother’s funeral, which had taken place yesterday morning, East Coast time, at the church where she worshipped for sixty years.

If I had known that Lebanon was about to implode as it has in the past three days, I would have been less sanctimonious about missing work (again) for her funeral. I’m still working, thanks to H’s parents wonderful ADSL line, but I’m certainly not in my office.

So I’m missing my US home this morning, although I know that if I were there, I would be equally desperate to be here.

And speaking of “here”, I saw that Jazeera was again broadcasting on the street near its office in Beirut this morning. The Jazeera office is next to Bardo, one of my favorite sous les bombes hangouts, and it overlooks the start of Hamra. I could see APCs parked on the street, but I could see relaxed darak soldiers laughing and pushing one another around, trying to get on camera.

Well, the ISF is never inspiring - the most professional thing about them is the fleet of US SUVs, which itself is undercut by their Chicken Little insistence on having the flashing lights on at all times. Now that its a real crisis, the lights seem a bit silly.

But the fact that they were relaxed was good - and there were cars passing them to get down Hamra: services, taxis, delivery trucks and regular cars. Jazeera described this morning as characterized by a “cautious calm” on the streets of Beirut, and said that the army’s presence was “spreading”.

The army’s presence is definitely not spreading due to its military capabilities, but I’ve seen the same information in several Arabic news sites, as well as in the posts of several bloggers I trust. Given the choice of Amal running my neighborhood or Hizbullah, I’d prefer Hizbullah (there’s not even the ghost of a SSNP presence in my neighborhood, so I doubt they’re running the show, although I understand that they are now overseeing parts of Hamra and Raouche. What a Lazarus moment for them :).). But it doesn’t seem that Hizbullah wants to run the neighborhoods directly.

From my perch outside the city, its a mystery. But seeing the sunny morning, the laughing ISF soldiers and the cars on the street, I’m missing my Beirut home as well.

On the other hand, I just received a rather stern warden message from the embassy. It starts with a bit of finger wagging:

As stated in the current Travel Warning for Lebanon, the Department of State continues to strongly urge that Americans defer travel to Lebanon and that American citizens in Lebanon consider carefully the risks of remaining.

In other words: you idiots, its your own fault that you are here. The warden message continues with a warning that regardless of what happens next, this will not be another 2006 government-organized, taxpayer-funded evacuation:

In a crisis situation, American citizens are responsible for arranging commercial or private means of transportation to depart Lebanon. American citizens wishing to depart Lebanon are urged to do so, keeping in mind that options are currently limited.

Okay, I get it. I didn’t join the US evacuation in 2006, so my conscience is clear. But I won’t expect a handout this time, logistical or otherwise.

Next, a situation update:

Major roads to Beirut International Airport remain blocked, and there is only limited airline service at present. Violent clashes in several areas in and around Beirut have been reported, and it is still not known when the airport road will re-open and normal air transport services
will resume. The main road to Damascus remains blocked.

And finally, some advice:

American citizens wanting to depart may wish to consider chartering private watercraft to Cyprus. Until such time as travel services out of Lebanon become available, the U.S. Embassy urges American citizens to ensure they have an adequate supply of food, water and other essential items and to remain safely inside their homes. Americans are encouraged
to review their travel plans following resumption of normal air services.

Chartering private watercraft? Could the embassy contribute any more to the stereotype that Americans are all millionaires? And could it be any more GOP?

I’m strong. If it comes to chartering a ship, I’ll be in the market for a rowboat :).

poster boys for a new Beirut

The city looked beautiful from afar this morning - beautiful, but deceptive. I don’t imagine that most people there currently find it beautiful, although the sun is shining and last night’s rain has freshened the air and the streets. (We hoped for a hurricane, but although it hailed up here, in Beirut the rain seems to have been a gentle spring drizzle.)

I’m tired of taking photographs from the hills, I’m tired of seeing my area on satellite television, and I’m tired of hearing the sounds of male personalities and female newscasters - and its been less than a day. Patience is not one of my virtues.

What I am thinking about (aside from tea, and the soon-to-be pressing question of why I packed three outfits but no underwear) is the Civil War posters exhibit that H and I saw last month.

This one was my favorite - its by the “National Lebanese Resistance (Ministry of the South)”, but I like to think of it as “speaking truth to power”:

But that wasn’t what the Civil War was about. It was about speaking small bits of power to other small bits of power, and pretending that holding a corner or a street was the most important thing in the world.

The poster exhibit that we saw had many posters, but the biggest number by far was the posters commemorating those who died for a corner, a street, or - if they were lucky - a hotel or government building.

A whole wall of pointless martyrdoms, in service of a war that ended with no victor:

This country has enough martyrdom issues already - there’s no need to fill another wall with posters from this week’s ishtibakat.

al-mustaqbal

I woke a bit later than usual this morning - my alarm went off at 5:45, and I turned it off. There’s no work today.

But twenty minutes later I got out of bed - too restless to sleep. The news doesn’t come on here until 7:00, and I spent the first ten minutes wrestling with the three remote controls that accompany H’s TV. I only see two destinations (one, the TV; and two, the satellite box) so I’m not sure what the third is for. And I’m hoping that its nothing - I remember living in a Damascus apartment years ago, in which the third remote control changed the position of the rooftop satellite. And I also remember being told not to touch it, because rotating the satellite dish too far would cause it to fall off the roof.

Well, I didn’t hear any crashing paraboles this morning, so I think I’m safe.

I flipped between LBC and Future Television - Al Jadid doesn’t come on until 7:30, and I couldn’t find Al Manar or Al Jazeera. Actually, I think I may have abandoned the satellite entirely and somehow switched to terrestrial channels, but I don’t know what I did to get there and I don’t know how to get back.

Around 7:40, I was watching Future, when in classic “off air” fashion, the picture contracted into the center of the screen, and the screen went blue.

I had read that Future’s newspaper building was under attack this morning, and had wondered how why anyone would attack the newspaper when the television station was nearby. Apparently the local armed men were wondering the same thing.

Around 8:02, Future put a screen image on its channels - terrestrial, satellite, and News (in the intervening twenty minutes I sorted out a few of my television issues). The image is an advertisement for “Dhakirat al-Makan”, one of its regular programs, but the time is frozen at 7:56 AM:

When Israel bombed Al Manar during the 2006 war, it showed a similar screen until its technicians could get the station up and running again. I hate this feeling of repetition, and I hate the little cloud of doom that seems to be lodging itself in my heart this morning.

On the other hand Tayyar is now reporting that the army has entered al-Mustaqbal’s television and newspaper buildings (الجيش يدخل منبيي تلفزيون وجريدة المستقبل 8:23), so perhaps the channel will soon be back on air. Poor army - shouldn’t it be fighting for national institutions?

Scene from our drive out of the city yesterday:

getting out

I have a confession to make:

I went to work this morning. H thought I was insane, but for a while it seemed normal. More people were at the gym than yesterday, and more people were at work as well - so the day started off companionably.

But by 11 the “normal” was falling apart. I stuck it out until 2:30, but the report that Nasrallah would be speaking at 4:00 seemed to have sent most people home already.

This was the street that crosses Hamra, taken looking up from the barbed-wire encrusted Tourism Ministry:

This was Hamra, location of my bank (I thought extra cash might be a good idea). Even Costa was closed:

H met me at the apartment a little while after I finally got home, and we packed “just in case” bags to take up to his parents (as in, “just in case we decide to stay over once we get there). As I loaded my bag into the car, we both heard a boom. Not in my neighborhood, but not so far, either.

The roads initially seemed deserted:

So out of habit we took Spears towards the ring road tunnel. The ring road was beautifully empty, and had we brought marshmallows it might have been worth staying a while.

We’re safe at H’s - the port road was open, and we joined the traffic jam of cars exiting stage left.

Charles Malik tells me that Hamra is full of gunfire and masked men, and I can see from the “breaking news” bulletins on the television that my next-door-neighborhood is filled with clashing young men.

And I see that the White House has issued an announcement urging Hizbullah to stop “spreading tension” in Lebanon. This is far beyond the point of tension.

I’m not tense - I’m tired. And I’m sad. On the way up we heard man after man speaking on the radio, each introduced as the head of a Civil War-era militia turned political party - parties that haven’t been major players in years.

I don’t like going backwards, and I don’t like this sinking sense that I am deja vu’ing. So many things are suddenly the same: packing up clothing and passport, trying to find alternate routes to safety now that the airport is closed off, and chatting online with Charles Malik about the security of our respective neighborhoods.

Yalla, Charles M - get out when you can, bring the latest collection of vintage bottles, and I’ll get A to find us another embassy party to crash. It will be just like 2006, only this time the country might truly be destroyed.