White Baboon

See Michael here, on the front terrace of our Beirut apartment, reading Sophie’s World? He is quite content, sitting in the sun.

But just seven hours later, we’re settled into bed, ready for sleep, when the sounds begin. We hear the first one, glance at each other and say: Could have been a truck backfire.

And all is quiet for awhile. Then another one sounds, something a bit different. But we ignore it. Finally, I am teetering toward sleep when a long hollow ga-goooooon reverberates across the city. My eyes open.

I say: Oh my God.

And I suddenly understand that my whole life, until now, I have been hearing car backfires that SORT OF sounded like guns. But that what I just heard was clearly something quite a bit closer to a gun. I notice that my heart is beating fast, but I am calm. Michael is up, slipping on some pants.

He says: I’m going to the front terrace to check it out.

I say: What should I do?

He says: I guess just be ready to get dressed if we have to.

But Michael returns within a minute or two, reporting a peaceful neighborhood scene. There’s nothing unusual at our intersection–Corniche Mazra and Saeeb Salem– despite the fact that we live smack on the border between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, a cradle of potential conflict.

The next morning we talk to our friend Adel and he explains that celebratory firecrackers and shots were fired last night following a political speech. We learn later that February 14th (four days from now) will be the three year anniversary of Hariri’s assassination. We learn from our friend Maureen that a few days ago, following a Hezbollah panel, Hariri’s son made a speech essentially telling the “opposition” that he was ready for a fight.

Okay.

So, the next night, around the same time, just as we are attempting sleep, we hear a constant deafening noise. At first, I think it must be a strong wind. Then it sounds more like a tornado. I briefly consider a garbage truck, but then immediately dismiss that idea. Finally, I wonder if it is a very fast succession of gunshots. But when Michael opens the bedroom’s sliding glass door which faces the residential street below, the sound getting ever-louder, he does not panic.

He says: So THAT is what a tank sounds like.

And we try to sleep.

We were rolling on a smooth highway. Mercedes’—some asphalt scraping and others probably purchased outright—wove past. Rob, the Dutch director of Inma Foundation, a group which helps disadvantaged communities of Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees, was at the wheel of this Land Rover, positive energy sprouting from his expression. Eagles sang We Are the Sultans. . .The Monday before, we’d had dinner with Suzanne, a friend of my friend Kelly Korak, a talented graphic designer in Denver. Suzanne volunteers for Inma. In a whirlwind discovery of matched skills and needs, cooperation naturally came about. In exchange for a free flat, a loaned laptop and a small stipend, Michael would design a website and create mini documentaries on their projects. I would organize and compose their content and stories.

Today, we were on the way home from South Lebanon, where Michael had filmed and photographed Inma’s renovation project of a village impacted by the Lebanon-Israel Summer War of 06.

Now, from the west, cypress, stone and sea glared at me, powerful with sunshine. You see, it all screamed, you’ll never figure out this country. Not even if you stayed a lifetime.

Seasonal canvas signs reached out from the medians. First a row of red McDonald’s ads in Arabic. Then a soft beige variety, announcing the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashouraa, a ten-day period of memorial and prayer for Hussein, grandson of Mohammed, a martyr slain by the Sunni Muslim sect aver 1400 years ago.

As we entered greater Beirut, the cars slowed, forced to make their own decisions (which included parking and ramming) at four-way intersections void of stoplights or traffic cops. Meanwhile, tanks guarded embassy walls. Trendy, black-and-white, Von Dutch fatigue’d troops, youthful and shouldering assault rifles, patrolled the empty, sepia-toned house of parliament, where elections had been delayed for the 12th time since November. The government was choosing their battles. Literally. And when they couldn’t elect a president, vehicular misdemeanors hadn’t even made the spreadsheet. Of course, neither had electricity–outages were daily, frequent and for hours at a time. Mass transit was non-existent. Saltwater ran from our tap. DSL was a joke. While yellow cranes and bulldozers swung to life by 7 AM, clicking together a lego-land of investment from Lebanese who’d fled abroad in the last quarter century, state-owned skyscrapers stared out to sea with dark empty sockets, skeletons with no closet.

In Hamra, Lebanon could be described as chaos driving a Lexus, confusion carrying a Prada pocketbook, conflict ordering a grand latte. It was the inverse paradigm of the traditional developing country. Rather than shirt-off-their-back hospitality wrapped in a corrugated-tin-topped shack, we found this neighborhood in shades and shopping at Mango, attempting to hide the heartache of war, ignore the instability and ride the melo-dramatic rollercoaster of a power struggle which goes up and down and around again.

In our middle class Muslim neighborhood, coiffed men sold magazines, pasta, shampoo and tahini from tidy grocery stores on narrow streets lined with barricades, each striped in red and stenciled with a green tree, the Lebanese flag. Nearby, lavish home interior boutiques sold velour throw pillows and hallmark cards. Sweet shops boasted 47 different kinds of nuts. Riots about bread prices recently occurred–so we heard. If you wanted food fast, Pizza Hut delivered.

Not far away, ten-year olds used plywood for guns as they played in a field of trash. Unscrubbed potatoes rolled around a corner wagon. Under Saeb Salem Boulevardskirted women sold spinach. Out near the airport, what started as a Palestinian Refugee Camp in 1947 had become more like a Palestinian Quarter of poverty.And a few miles from there was Spinneys, an extra-strength shopping plaza full of high-priced, imported cottage cheese, Campbells Tomato Soup, and all that crap you buy at Target, too. Attached was a McDonalds, a Starbucks and a Claires in case you needed some cubic zirconia with your Coke.

But our flat, where we eat, sleep and watch Carnivale, (because, you know, we need something dark and brooding in our life) , is the biggest oxymoron of them all. Here, the drapes are more like DRRRRAPES, ideal for a drawing room in Versailles, or maybe playclothes if, say, I happened to be a governess for English-speaking children in 1940’s Austria. Our bed is so big that if Michael farts, I can lie on the opposite side, unaffected. Nearby is a love seat–obviously the one Kate Winslet posed upon before the ship went down. Chandeliers with cherubs–some winged, some wincing–bounce from the ceiling of all seven areas. Around every corner are white-washed women in stone, each trying out for the part of the “bare-breasted nymph #2″. There are four televisions, multiple luxury appliances, two stereo systems, one piano, three scary giraffe CD holders, around twenty-five lamps and a lot of shit that has been marinated in liquid gold.Yet the walls sprout far too few outlets to support such extravagance. We found just a handful of lightbulbs in the entire place. The televisions display four fuzzy channels. Our stainless steel oven simply doesn’t function. The microwave sprouts sparks. The water cooler leaks. There is no shower curtain. The heat is confined to areas that have a door.I am certainly not complaining. But this was, this is, Beirut–schizophrenic and sure of themselves all in the same Altoid-flavored breath.