Logorrhea, Mufti-Style

When it rains, it pours. and pours. and pours. and sometimes pours out so much that it starts to sound rabid. or maybe just very, very, very post-modern.

When I clicked on Naharnet’s evening headline, Jouzo: Let the Lebanese Maronite and the Rest of Lebanon Go Back to Syria, what I hoped to find were a few mis-translation gems. It never crossed my mind that this headline might in fact actually be what Mufti “dare to spell differently” Muhammed al Jouzo said. But apparently it was.

So. Let’s take this step by step.

In a statement on Sunday, Lebanese Sunni Mufti of Mt. Lebanon Sheikh Muhammed al-Jouzo said that “Lebanon has turned into an Arab Babylonian tower with its folkloric leaderships and new parliamentary faces only fit for exhibitions and decorations while the losers turn into sectarian symbols standing on the government’s doors” with their conditions hindering the formation of the government.

It must be hard to be the Sunni mufti of Mount Lebanon, an area historically low in Sunnis and high in other groups with elevated senses of their own importance. But sometimes getting up on a soapbox does more harm than good. Ancient Babylon was not Arab, and Lebanon’s leaders are not folkloric, unless “za’imi” now translates as “folkloric”. On the other hand, a MP campfire singalong would make for a priceless photo op. And I bet Sheikh Saad has a guitar.

“There are politicians who move from right to left and vice versa while their slogans change with the stock exchange. One day you see him a Gulf Arab and another day a Persian Iranian when a third time he becomes an American and then again a Russian. One day you see him an enemy of Syria and then again Syria’s best friend and so on. There are no principles, no morale, no charters and the ‘unity’ presidency stands bewildered before the political “Sufi-sectarianism”; next to the allies or to the opposition!” he added.

The Lebanese stock exchange changes basically only when Solidere does. The U.S. stock exchange, on the other hand, has been on a pleasant upward tick, Friday’s 250-point decline aside. Which bourse is he referring to here? And the only political figure who might possibly qualify for the bewildering khaliji-ajami-amerki-russi raqs is, of course, Yoda Bey. But even with him I’m skeptical. As for “Sufi-sectarianism” … hunh. I just don’t get it, but I’m trying. (Sunni Mevlevis twirl with hands up, Shii with hands down?)

“There’s no civilized nation in the world like that of our Great Lebanon. The Lebanese people abhor this category. To those I ask you, what’s your true identity? Who robs the electricity money, the foreign, internal, sea and land telecommunications’ money? A nation that lives the culture of hate with leaders leading them to sectarian wars, hating each other; hatred in the name of religion, in the name of sectarianism and in the name of the parties,” he added.

I’ve read this bit several times now, and I’m still wondering: which category is it that the Lebanese people abhor? Civilized? Nation? Great? Lebanon? And are they the “those” whom al Jouza addresses? (I think we all get the point of his question about robbery, but I don’t understand its connection to this bit about categories and abhorrence.) Condemning hate sounds more equitably distributed – “hating each other” – and hate is a good thing for a religious leader to condemn, even if his words are a bit vague.

“Our educated youth is faced with only one exit, that of emigration. They have grown to hate their country and their nationality and have traveled in quest of finding another one keen to protect their integrity and protect them from the politicians and their resentment,” he continued.

What? I’m not questioning the fact of emigration, but what other types of exits might there be? Mental? And as for “hating their country and their nationality” and journeying on some heroic quest to find another (a much nicer way of putting it than “trying for the American passport”), most overseas Lebanese I’ve met want nothing more than to return home.

This is the Lebanon of today, so why don’t all the people emigrate and offer our country as a gift to Syria and their infidels? Did not the Maronite come from Syria, so why not go back to it and along with them all of Lebanon and not just those who have missed Syria?,” he concluded.

Ah, the sectarian fun begins. Here’s where an Arabic original would be helpful (and here’s also where we reach and exceed the limits of back translation …), as well as a history lesson. By “infidels” does he mean the Alaouites who run Syria, or is suggesting that Syrians in general are irreligious? And what’s with the jibe at Maronites?

Finally, and just as a minor point: historically speaking, the Lebanese who wanted Lebanon to go back to Syria were the Sunnis. And only the Sunnis.

Israeli zen.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Jerusalem Post. Love the easy access to its archives; hate its stance on many issues. But this afternoon I’m simply impressed with its Naharnet-like ability to put even the most inane statements to good use.

The Post’s article about the ongoing two-and-a-half-way spitfest between the Lebanese government and/or Hizbullah, and the Israeli government, is interesting for several reasons. First, note how it describes Ziad Baroud:

Israeli spying devices on foreign soil are a clear violation of international resolutions, Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud said during a visit to southern Lebanon on Sunday.

Baroud, a rising Maronite politician who was appointed interior minister in
2008 as a representative of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman’s bloc, expressed his “determination to continue to uncover espionage networks.”

Interesting. I can’t find any mention of Baroud as a Maronite in the New York Times – in fact, the only result I get when I search for “Maronite politician” is a  1993 article that mentions Michel Edde. To me it says a great deal about Israeli political culture (and, perhaps, the lingering presence of the SLA) that the Post can assume that “Maronite politician” is a term that readers will understand.

But what I really love about this article is the closing:

The Lebanese interior minister’s remarks came a day after Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced that Israel was gathering intelligence within Lebanon and would continue to do so until Hizbullah renounced its arms.

“During a conflict with an enemy, one must gather intelligence,” he said, adding that the conflict would end once peace with Lebanon was achieved.

The conflict will end when peace is achieved. Thank you, Mr. Ya’alon, for providing this Zen definition of the day.

another day, another Naharnet mystery

To be fair, today’s Naharnet “What?” looks like more of a Lebanese government “What?” – and its one I would love to understand.

Here’s the start of the article – this morning’s headliner, about the LAF’s recent arrest of a Fatah al-Islam figure (which in U.S. journalistic practice would be described as an alleged Fatah al-Islam figure) hiding out in the always-newsworthy Ain el Hilweh:

The Lebanese army intelligence has reportedly arrested a top Fatah al-Islam official after luring him outside the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh.

As Safir and al-Liwaa dailies said Saturday that Fadi Ghassan Ibrahim, known as Sikamo, was arrested at dawn the day before. They said the man is very close to Fatah al-Islam leader Abdel Rahman Awad who has been out of sight since October 2008.

Both newspapers described Ibrahim as a “hefty catch.”

So much to love here. “Luring him out” – all I can think of are the lost-in-the-backwoods remedies for tapeworm. or, less graphically, my father’s many failed (but entertaining) attempts to get the family dog, Used Diamond, to go for his prescribed morning walk on days that UD considers less than temperate.

As for calling the lured-out Ibrahim a catch … “hefty”? I’d like to know the Arabic word for this. And also, just FYI, some catches aren’t hefty: they’re just big-boned.

But these bits, delightful morning teatime reading though they were, are not what caught my attention. What I would – sincerely – like to know more about is this:

… Ibrahim, who is a Palestinian and was given the Lebanese citizenship in 1994, is also linked to the blast that targeted the patrol of the Irish contingent in Rmaileh, north of Sidon on January 8, 2008 …

My understanding is that the only Palestinians with Lebanese citizenship are the Christian families given it in the 1950s (1960s?) to help delay questions like “shouldn’t we take a new census since our numbers seem to have shifted?”. Why was this man given Lebanese citizenship? And: How? What’s the process – in general – for granting citizenship to a non-Lebanese male?

more firsts: Hariri in Time magazine

I’d like to say that Rafiq Hariri’s first appearance in Time magazine was just as much a non-sequitur as his first appearance in the New York Times. But it wasn’t. In fact, Hariri’s first appearance in Time heralds many later associations: construction wealth, civic generosity, an interest in ridding the streets of garbage, and a focus on Beirut’s downtown.

Hariri was first introduced to Time readers in a November 8, 1982 piece called “Coming Back to Life“, which is excerpted below:

Beirut rebuilds, but old wounds are slow to heal.

The flower shops are open again, with their carnations and birds of paradise spilling out of the open stalls and onto the sidewalks. Fruit and vegetables are once more being hawked on nearly every street corner, and coffee wagons have again sprouted their gaily colored umbrellas along the avenues. The sound of a car backfiring is likely to be exactly that and not the blast of gunfire. And early every morning, joggers of every description—Lebanese and foreigners, students and businessmen, paratroopers and housewives—swarm along the Avenue de Paris, popularly known as the Corniche.

Beirut, slowly, is coming back to life. It is a remarkable feat, considering what the city has endured. For most of the summer Beirut was a bloody battleground for Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas …

Nonetheless, recovery has begun. Aside from the gradual revival of commercial life, an extraordinary transformation has taken place in the shattered western section. Every day dozens of bulldozers clear away rubble, and convoys of trucks cart off debris. Shell craters have been filled, sidewalks repaired. The result: West Beirut is cleaner than at any time since the beginning of the civil war in 1975. The Corniche Mazraa, site of some of the war’s heaviest shelling and once littered with broken masonry, is well groomed, and the four-lane high way to the airport has been repaved.

Most of the credit for the cleanup operation belongs to Rafiq Bahaeddine al Hariri, a wealthy Lebanese businessman from Sidon. Owner of a construction firm called Oger, which has headquarters in Paris, Hariri has donated the services of hundreds of workers and a small army of equipment, including 40 bulldozers, 60 trucks, ten garbage trucks, five excavators and a pair of cranes, each able to hoist up to 40 tons. The estimated tab so far: $7.5 million, all of it paid by Hariri.

The siege has also created a chance to rebuild the old city center, which was reduced to rubble during the 1975-76 civil war. By cleaning up this section, Hariri hopes to bring life back to a no man’s land that most people in Beirut did not dare visit for seven years.

(The inflation calculator at www.dollartimes.com tells me that $7.5 million in 1982 dollars would be worth $16.77 million today.)

1982 was a very rough year for Beirut and its inhabitants. I’m tempted to say that I wonder how grateful the (Amin) Gemayel government was for this in-kind donation, but I’m not sure that one can wonder when one thinks she can already guess at the answer.

loving thy neighbor

Today’s post was intended to be a tour of Doha’s nightlife. But my eye was caught yesterday by two news stories – or rather, by the popular responses to each.

When it comes to Lebanon, I sometimes find it hard to follow Christ’s second commandment. And as a Christian, the neighbors I find harder to love are more often than not Lebanon’s Christians.

I don’t mean this post to be one of casting the first stone – after all, the United States has had its share of intra-Christian sectarian woes. I recall one of our childhood neighbors telling me that as a child his schoolmates demanded to see his horns, because as Protestants they had been told in church that Catholics have horns on their head like the Devil. But that was 50 years ago, and I am shocked by what I have read this week.

My first shock came from an article in Monday’s Daily Star about the current mayor of Broumanna, Waleed Rizk. Rizk, the town’s long-time vice-mayor, whatever that means, became mayor after the previous mayor, Pierre Achkar, stepped down in order to be eligible to run for Parliament in the recent elections.

That isn’t the shocking part – I think that requiring candidates for one post to give up their current post is not a bad idea, and one that the United States  might consider. What shocked me is the reaction of some Broumannis to the fact that their new mayor is Greek Orthodox and not Maronite:

Traditionally the mayor of Brummana is Maronite, usually running along family lines with Pierre’s own ancestors Georges, Chachine and Georges standing before him.

But, for the first time in Brummana’s history the position has been given not only to a vice mayor but to a Greek Orthodox candidate.

“Usually they say in Brummana the mayor has to be a Maronite, and the vice is Orthodox but now what has happened is I am the mayor and I am Orthodox,” says the newly-appointed Rizk. “When people come into the office surprised that I am Orthodox, I say ‘no, I am not Orthodox, I am simply Brummanese.’”

Rizk says this couldn’t have happened unless the last mayor was forced to step down to run in the parliamentary elections and forfeit his job, leaving little time for a new election.

But now Rizk is having to battle people’s perceptions. “Some people say I shouldn’t be mayor because of my religion, but because I am working hard I am making them start to forget this issue,” Rizk says. “And I do believe the Brummanese will soon forget about it.”

This was shock number one: that the sense of sectarian entitlement extends to the municipal level, and is so deeply felt. For an American equivalent, try substituting race:

“When people come into the office surprised that I am African-American, I say ‘no, I am not African-American, I am simply a New Yorker’.”

“Some people say I shouldn’t be mayor because of my race, but because I am working hard I am making them start to forget the issue.”

Lovely. But there was a second shock – Rizk the sectarian under-dog is also Rizk the very self-entitled member of a big family:

He says that there have always been two families in Brummana who had the ambition to be mayor – the Achkar family and the Rizk family, which caused many years of rivalry. “Our ancestors always used to fight, but now we need to put the past behind us – we are doing what is best for the municipality.”

Right. What if ‘what is best for the municipality’ were the creation of a mayoral position open not only to residents with varied religious backgrounds, but varied family backgrounds as well?

The third shock, as some of you may already suspect given the theme of this post, has been the reaction on assorted blogs and other websites to the wedding of Nayla Tueini and Malek Maktabi, such as these. (I don’t mean to pick on the Ouwet Front exclusively, but the Orange Room’s website is currently down and I’m searching primarily for comments in English.) There are a few voices of reason, but what I notice most is the vitriol of those unhappy with her marrying a Shia – some because she is a Christian MP, and some just because she is Christian.

I personally am not a great fan of Ms. Tueini (or of Mr. Maktabi’s talk show), but the explosive hostility of some of the commentators leaves me with a deep cold pit in my stomach. This type of irrational anger can be  deeply corrosive. On the other hand, both their Facebook pages are filled with congratulations, and at least those posting their anger online are still in conversation with others more sanguine about the ‘mariage’.

I don’t have a good conclusion to this post. I hope for better things in the future, am glad to see  any movement in the political system, and think that mixed marriages could be a major source of strength for the Lebanon of tomorrow.

And I’m looking very much forward to writing a nice quiet post about Doha nightlife tomorrow.

diamond vs. naharnet: a recipe for disgruntlement

Just don’t put this in your blog, H said yesterday, frowning at me across a Skype connection after finishing a particularly juicy Beirut story.

I stopped blogging months ago, I said, frowning back. Didn’t you notice?

H frowned more deeply, a familiar look of ‘oh no: she’s about to go beyond all bounds of rationality’ settling on his face.

Honestly, d., he said, trying to be conciliatory. I haven’t been online at all this summer. I haven’t even been on Naharnet.

Did you just compare my blog to Naharnet? I asked, eyebrows arching. Don’t get me wrong – as a blogger, I loved Naharnet. It gave me almost as steady a supply of entertaining language gaffes and random ‘news’ stories as the Daily Star.

But did I want my sweet little blog to be spoken of in the same breath? Certainly not.

That’s not what I meant, H said urgently, still trying to stave off the logic meltdown that seemed likely to take out much of Brooklyn.

I meant that I haven’t been online even to look at serious sources of news and analysis, like your blog and like Naharnet.

Argh.

Please stop, I said. The only saving grace is that you didn’t compare me to Now Lebanon.

I don’t have much to blog about these days, but thanks to a recent trip to Doha to visit my aunt, I do have a few stories to share. Look for a series of short, non-Naharnet’y anecdotes to stream their way from New York later this week, before I return to blog hibernation .

words and things: what’s in a car?

I’ve been slowly working my way through a thin but rich family memoir: Grace Dodge Guthrie’s Legacy to Lebanon, about the various contributions of her paternal and maternal families (the Dodges and the Blisses, both deeply connected to AUB and to Robert College in Istanbul). Grace, who was born in Beirut in 1915, writes sweetly of her childhood there and her parents’ work while her father, Bayard Dodge, served as AUB’s president.

She describes her father’s arrival to Beirut during a family trip in 1910:

After being ferried ashore by red-tarboushed boatmen rowing forward to prevent colliding with other boats and being waved through customs under President Bliss’s wing, the Dodge family would have ridden to the college in arabiyehs, open carriages manned by colorful drivers urging on their scrawny horses with cries and whips.

I’m rolling my eyes a bit at this depiction of AUB extra-legality (though under Ottoman laws the Dodges were likely exempt from most customs scrutiny in any case), but what really makes me curious is the word “arabiyeh”. When I studied Arabic in school, I was taught that “siyara” was the word for car.

As my aunt says, sometimes you don’t even know what it is that you don’t know. I didn’t hear the word “arabeh” in Damascus for some time, because I didn’t know to listen for it – just like I didn’t know to listen for “bagnole” when listening to my Parisian friends, because I knew that the word for “car” in French was “voiture”.

But I did begin to hear it – both as “arabeh” and “arabiyeh” – and I did begin to wonder. Why would there be a word for “car” in Arabic that sounded just like the word for “Arabic” in Arabic?

My short attention span meant that I stopped wondering at some point – probably when I grew enough accustomed to Lebanese car culture to refer to cars by their model and make, rather than simply as “car” . But Guthrie’s use of the term reawakened my curiosity, and I turned to my dictionary and to Google.

My dictionary confirmed what I already knew: that “araba” and “arabiyeh” both refer to a “carriage, vehicle, araba, cart, car, [or] coach”. And Google produced a Wiktionary entry, which gave me a sense of 1) just how much the Wikipedia empire has expanded and 2) the origins of the term. It defines “araba” as: a carriage used in Turkey and Asia Minor drawn by horses or oxen.

And – just like the OED – it includes historical illustrations of the word’s usage:

Quotations

• 1836: No one but a native of the luxurious East could ever have invented an araba, with its comfortable cushions, and its gaily painted roof, and gilded pillars. The prettiest are those of brown and gold, with rose-coloured draperies, through which the breeze flutters to your cheek as blandly as though it loved the tint that reminded it of the roses of the past season amid which it had wandered.”— Julia Pardoe, City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836.
• 1845: I found the examination of these antiquities much less pleasant than to look at the many troops of children assembled on the plain to play; and to watch them as they were dragged about in little queer arobas, or painted carriages, which are there kept for hire. William Makepeace Thackeray, Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, 1845
• 1898:There is, however, such a thing as an “araba,” a vehicle drawn by oxen, in which the wives of a rich man are sometimes dragged four or five miles over the grass by way of recreation. The carriage is rudely framed, but you recognise in the simple grandeur of its design a likeness to things majestic; in short, if your carpenter’s son were to make a “Lord Mayor’s coach” for little Amy, he would build a carriage very much in the style of a Turkish araba. — Alexander William Kinglake, Eothen, 1898.
• 1917:Whenever I mounted the araba, he would whip his horses to a sharp trot or canter for half a mile, and then at a word stop for me to get out. — W.J. Childs, Across Asia Minor on Foot, 1917.

I love these quotes, and even though I’m not a wiki’er, I love knowing the origins of the word “araba” (or “arabiyeh”). I see so many Ottoman influences in Lebanon and in Syria and am delighted to have found one more.

nothing but blah blah blue skies

I love posters, I love graphic design, and I love election campaigns. So its been killing me to miss out on all the fun that +961, Beirut/NTSC, QN, and others have been having with their photos of the various and varied electoral posters that currently pepper Lebanon’s highways and byways.

Of course, I have been enjoying all the digital riffs I’ve received via email (not to mention those on which friends have been “tagged” on Facebook); my favorite, of course, is the Jumblatt’ed “Sois Beik et Pivote”. And last week I began to have the glimmer of a hope that I might have stumbled upon a new source for electoral ads: the Daily Star.

But I’m not sure in the end that this is worth getting at all excited about. Here is last week’s political ad, courtesy of Mustaqbal:

Ho-hum.

Am I missing something here? Is there some deeper meaning to “blue sky”? I get that Mustaqbal’s color is blue, and that blue skies are tranquil. But in my memory, blue sky days are good not only for beachs and skiing, but also for a whole lot of less-than-tranquil ishtibakat’ing. If I were a voter, I’d like to see a detailed platform explaining how a Mustaqbal vote would encourage some blue-sky activities and discourage others.

Sometimes simplicity is artistic. And sometimes its just unhelpfully vague. Blue sky. Yawn.

the Lebanese takeover begins with skincare

Last night I was talking with H about a number of things, all somewhat Lebanese’y, when the conversation took an unusually cosmetic turn.

I forgot to mention to you before, H said, but last night I saw this infomercial for a new Cindy Crawford lotion, and her secret Hollywood facialist was a “French” guy called Jean Louis Sebagh. One more piece of the puzzle is now in place for the eventual Lebanese domination of the world.

Let’s leave aside the larger puzzle of just why H was watching an American infomercial rather than the Arabic news broadcasts he usually favors, and ignore entirely the fact that this was an infomercial addressed to middle-aged women looking for ‘hope in a jar’. My initial reaction was to laugh: after all, who tries to take over the world through skincare?

But when I turned back to the magazine I had been reading, I saw this advertisement:

There was another Lebanese man, Dr. F. Frederic Khoury, advising me that “Your cosmetic surgery is only as good as your cosmetic plastic surgeon.”

I’m not in the market for any of his services, thankfully (“ear plasty?”). But I am starting to wonder now whether H’s comment was less of a jest, and more of a warning .

Les hommes de ma vie: Dalida at Bardo

It was a warm spring evening in 2007, and G and I had no real plans. K had just returned from two days in a place I think of as ‘Maronite Central’, without being converted OR raising sectarian tensions, – an achievement that we thought deserved a drink in honor of religious diversity.

But given that it was spring 2007, and late spring at that, we were still wary of heading out to the marquee boites. So we met at the usual spot: Bardo, whose out-of-the-way location and bunker-like appearance had made it our number-one choice for bomb-free evenings out.

We arrived to find people spilling out into the garden walkway: Bardo was packed, and mostly with young, well-manicured Lebanese men. It was so crowded that not only were neither of our two usual tables available, but nothing was. We sat outside, at one of a set of makeshift garden tables brought out to accommodate the overflowing crowd.

What is going on? K asked.

A “Dalida tribute night”? G asked, horrified, after reading the chalkboard. I don’t think we want to stay at this place.

But I was hungry and lazy, and in any case our options were somewhat limited. So we stayed through a quick dinner and a round of drinks, as the volume of the speakers inside the restaurant increased steadily to the point that we had to lean in to hear one another speaking. And meanwhile we found ourselves eyewitnesses to at least one segment of Beirut’s vibrant gay culture. Dalida isn’t my favorite singer, but she clearly resonated with the young men around us, who sang along enthusiastically.

You too can enjoy an evening dedicated to video clips of such hits as “Helwe ya baladi” and “Je suis malade” sung by a woman who appears to be the Levantine gay male answer to Bette Midler. According to Time Out Beirut, Bardo is hosting another Dalida tribute this evening:

A tribute to Dalida
9pm Bardo, Mexico street, Opp Haigazian University, Clemenceau, 01 340060 Reservations recommended.
Bardo invites you to come celebrate the Egyptian Italian singer Dalida. With DJ Laila playing her tunes accompanied by clips from Dalida’s movies, this promises to be a nice evening full of nostalgia for a never forgotten singer.