The Strangest Sunday
On our second day in Beirut, a bright Sunday morning, long before we knew how long we’d stay, Michael and I wandered on foot into the downtown area. After twenty minutes, we’d been stopped three times by security officers–told to stop taking pictures and asked about where we were headed. All of this happened along landscaped medians, yellow-lined roads, glass-walled banks and track-suited joggers. As Michael had remarked, apart from the tanks, it looked a lot like San Diego.
Taking an unintentional detour past block after block of gnarled barbed wire and barricades, we slowly realized that this must be Hezbollah.
Aha! The occupied warzone amidst a cosmopolitan city that all those travelers had been talking about. Soldiers were everywhere. Below we spied a tiny tent city, but left our cameras safely inside our bags. Cars zoomed by, picking up speed toward a kind of highway. But the sidewalk remained. So carefully, cautiously, we pressed on. Clearly, we were on the fringe of what made Lebanon such a clusterfuck of politics, pride and prejudice.
Finally, as we veered slightly left, a black beret stopped us. We told him we were heading for downtown. After a brief conversation with his officer and a lively discussion with us about Hollywood and George Michael, he sent us directly through what appeared to be an army camp of plywood planks, construction, armed militia and tents. So surreal, it looked a little like a movie set. Condoleeza Rice smiled down from a poster. Officers barely glanced at us. At a final checkpoint, our bags were skim-searched and abruptly, we entered a promenade of dusty shop windows and naked mannequins, boutiques which, since the Summer War of ‘06 no longer attracted enough customers to survive.
Soon a plaza of chrome and wicker chairs emerged. Hagen Daaz smiled with creamy scoops and I could see Virgin Records across a star-shaped burst of urban renewal. But several storefronts were merely glossy ghosts. Only a few strollers and toddlers wobbled across the cobblestone-ringed center while Sri Lankan nannies followed.
A lone roller-blader criss-crossed the clock-tower-centerpiece. But like a Rolex sold on a corner in Soho, the face was a fake facade, the inside dead with dysfunction. Mimicking Beirut, its hands refused to work together. Four coffee drinkers whispered. Armed soldiers—I saw four from where I then stood– paced within their spaces.We realize now that what we crossed through the remains of the opposition’s sit-in. Tents from last spring. Still there.
That’s why the camp had looked abandoned. It was. The guards, with the American Secretary of State watching over, worked for the Lebanese government and were in protection mode. But who did they think would attack? Syria? America? Hezbollah? Al Qaeda? Israel? We learned that depends on who you talk to.It was the strangest Sunday morning we’d had in a long time.We’re now struggling to collect just a coin-purse full of unbiased facts. To figure what the hell is going on, what side we’re supposed to be on and how we should feel as Americans.
Stay tuned.
