It has just been announced that all educational institutions in Lebanon will remain closed on Monday. Tuesday is, anyway, a holiday (Ashoura, the Muslim mourning holiday), so there will be no school until Wednesday. So, IF (and here the hypothetical can be no more than that...stay tuned) we have school from Wednesday to Friday, that measn that we will have had five days of
school out of ten in this two-week period (as it is, next Saturday is, for my school, a school day, as we desperately - in both senses of the word - try to make up for the days lost to the summer war (I hesitate to call it the Lebanon-Israeli war, and equally I hesitate to call it the Hezbullah-Israeli war...language is a very tricky thing here)).The rationale behind this latest closure appears to be that, since Thursday's fighting originated in the Arab University, if the students are kept away from their educational institutions, then there are fewer possibilities for 'conflicts' to arise.
I am not even going to begin to analyse the illogicality (literally) of this assumption, you all know me well enough to know that such an analysis will be pedantic, boring, and will last a long time. The context, though, is this: last night Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces (a Christian, right-wing party) and Walid Jumblatt the Druze Party (a right-wing party, despite calling them selves 'Socialists') leader, both gave speeches. You can imagine what they both said. They hate Nasrallah, they are not that fond of Muslims in general, they have scores to settle from the Civil War, and they are supporters of the government, but minority players, which irks them no end. One of them, Geagea, is also a convicted war criminal, who served his time in prison and was released under an amnesty a few years ago. But here's the rub: they both served up photographs of the conflicts the other night which showed their supporters ONLY throwing stones, wielding batons and so on as PROOF that they are not aggressive. Now, it might be true (although stories from the Chouf mountains appear to indicate otherwise) that they are not the ones wielding guns, and
that three of the four who were killed on Thursday and who were from the Shiia Hezbullah were not killed by people like that, but to believe that showing pictures of your supporters attacking people is a virtuous act which proves your loyalty to democracy is a bit rich. Not that this has been pointed out, of course, because, and here's the rub, that kind of rhetoric carries here. The newspapers this morning (the four I checked anyway) carried pictures of the events, and all carried pictures of the snipers, not that they focused on them - they were one photograph amongst many others. Other articles played heavily on the 'how much this is like the beginning of the Civil War' angle - masked men asking for identity cards, districts of Beirut and areas in the Chouf being barricaded according to denomination and all of that.
So, Geagea (pronounced 'Gaga' - no coincidence from my point of view, the man is as mad as a march hare, and psychopathic to boot) and Jumblatt talking as they talked comes as no surprise, hardly registers, and elicits very little comment. And, as always, education is used as the political football. One of the endless complaints, one of the 'usual suspects', is the 'pernicious influence of The West' (in capital letters). The West gets blamed for quite a lot of things: I find it sadly ironic, then, that this attitude to education, this using education as a political tool, which I had long believed was one of the diseases of politics in The West, is echoed here.
Wednesday 18 February 2009
26th January, 2007
Last Tuesday evening I began to write the following:
"Well, what a morning we have had. I will spare you the details about the incompetent procedurals that lead to the school being closed, suffice it to say that it took a good couple of hours and lots of telephone calls for it to happen."
I stopped (obviously), and since then events have moved on apace, so let me try and bring you up to date. You have all probably been watching the news, reading the newspapers, looking at the photographs and images which have been published. As one of my friends said, "it probably looks more dramatic than it actually is", and isn't that always the case. The response to that comment is, of course, that it is both true and false.
I shall try and fill you in, backwards, not on what happened, but on what appeared to be happening from this perspective. YESTERDAY (Thursday), early in the afternoon, fighting broke out at the Arab University. By 18.15 the government (those bits of it that weren't in Paris schmoozing up to the Saudi's, French and Condi Rice, announced Martial Law until 06.30 this morning. The fighting dissipated gradually as the evening wore on, Nasrallah issued a fatwa telling everyone to go home (I won't bother telling you the cynical reaction that got from the Americans in my school as you can probably guess, but of course all sorts of Machiavellian intentions were induced), and so on, until everyone went home. In the Chouf mountains and on the road to the south, it appears, masked gunmen were stopping people in cars and asking for their identity cards which, if it happened (whether or not it did, it did, because people said it did) reminded everyone of the Civil War Identity Card Massacres (in Capital Letters). So, then, paranoia levels have been re-set to ape-shit.
The next several hours were spent channel-hopping looking at the different images being broadcast by the various TV channels here. Depending on who owned the TV station of course dictated what was seen. We saw the Syrian National Party offices being burned down for what seemed like hours on New TV, the Hariri channel, whilst al-Jazeera was out in the streets...and so on. Guess the rest yourselves. School today, Friday, was, of course, cancelled.
On TUESDAY morning we awoke to the pre-announced General Strike, which I am sure you have all read about, seen pictures of, and so on. School was cancelled, we all came home, tyres burned, guns were fired, people were shot (as they were yesterday) and, by the following morning, it was as if nothing had happened, although there was still no school.
Anyway, that's the sequence of events, and you all know it already. I don't want to bore you anymore with details and trivia that you might already know, so that's that.
What's not 'that', however, was a series of thoughts sparked off by a question one of my students asked me on Thursday in school (one of only two days of school this week): "What do you foreigners think of what's happening here in Lebanon?" (on a digression, this is, as some of you may know, a frequent question - those of you who live in a foreign country are more than
familiar with this question!). The answer, though, is this: I think the verb 'think' is perhaps not the most appropriate one. Put simply, for a whole host of reasons (lack of Arabic, limited social circles, work/time commitments etcetera), we foreigners neither know much nor, therefore, think much. There is one daily newspaper in English (there are many in French, but being an
anglophile community we ignore them!) and two English-language websites here in Lebanon, and then of course the BBC, Al Jazeera English and CNN on the illegal cable. So, there are a limited, very limited, range of opinions circulating and these tend to get circulated around, with Chinese-whisper alterations to suit political prejudice. These opinions are then added to by whatever limited contact we may have with "the local population" (Arabic teachers, shopkeepers). Add to this the 'return-to-civil-war' paranoia, the stories, rumours and inventions, all of which (and I have said this before) become the truth as soon as they are uttered, and, well, the answer to my student's question is easy: we don't think. We have thoughts, which is by no means the same thing at all, but you we be amazed how little we actually 'think'. We trade thoughts with each other, most of
which are in agreement, broadly, but there is little real thinking going on. I suppose you want an example, so here it is. Watching the TV images being broadcast by the various stations yesterday and on Tuesday, the word 'Live', of course, appeared in the corner of the screen. In most cases, what was being shown 'live' was, in fact, live, but watch it for long enough and you
begin to realise that they are just spooling the tape.
Now, we could speculate about the reasons, impact and effects of this practice, standard journalistic practice; we could also discuss the language used, the use of loaded questions, but all of those are for Media Studies classes, so I am saving those up if you don't mind. The point is this: we all saw the images, we all saw what was happening, as we sat inside our lounges, on
our sofas, channel-hopping. Occasionally a glance outside the window confirmed that it was, in fact, happening..except it didn't, of course, as we could see none of it, except the smoke from burning tyres on Tuesday. However, we all assure each other that we did 'see' it, that we were 'witnesses' to it all, and have an insight into it. The next day we meet each other, we foreigners, we talk to the students, we 'take the temperature of the school community' (I have to put up with crass phrases like this now I am part of a 'school community', so bear with me...), we trade anecdotes, all the time assuming (if it even gets to that level of cognition) that, because we are here, we saw it, participated in it (passively, in the sense that it is happening in our city) and, crucially, assuming that we all believe the same things about the same things and know the same things. Take another example, though it's an easy target: a colleague is leaving the school in July to go back to Uncle Sam to study...Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. Of course, I understand this, becuase the built-in assumption is that living here might be 'interesting' (insert your own vacuous, meaningless noun here), but it is not really a place where you can really study, whereas Washington State University (or whatever), being a serious place of academic study, is the best place to learn Arabic and study the Middle East. This is the sort of foreigner who populates this place. No further comment, but you all know me well enough to know what sorts of things I would say about this intellectual stupidity.
So, things have been happening, and I have not been thinking, because thinking is not what 'we foreigners' do much of.
And this all relates to a conversation I had months ago with a friend here. I like thinking; I like the process of processing thoughts, impressions, ideas. One of the reasons - the main reason - to leave Finland was the lack of external stimulus to think ABOUT. Now, curiously (and I am not going to say that here there is too MUCH of it to think about, to process), there is no time to process, to think about what is happening. I would say that I reflect, I have thoughts, but there is too much happening to be able to process any of it, and my interlocutor, a longer-term resident of Lebanon, said to me that the living of it IS the processing of it. The truism embedded in this statement has come home to roost in the last week. I have intended to write about what has been happening, first on Tuesday night, then last night, but the mediated experience of it, which IS the experience of it, IS that act of processing. Sitting down to write this is the closest I get these days to thinking as it might conventionally be described..but then, as you may have gathered, 'thinking' is not all that conventional here.
"Well, what a morning we have had. I will spare you the details about the incompetent procedurals that lead to the school being closed, suffice it to say that it took a good couple of hours and lots of telephone calls for it to happen."
I stopped (obviously), and since then events have moved on apace, so let me try and bring you up to date. You have all probably been watching the news, reading the newspapers, looking at the photographs and images which have been published. As one of my friends said, "it probably looks more dramatic than it actually is", and isn't that always the case. The response to that comment is, of course, that it is both true and false.
I shall try and fill you in, backwards, not on what happened, but on what appeared to be happening from this perspective. YESTERDAY (Thursday), early in the afternoon, fighting broke out at the Arab University. By 18.15 the government (those bits of it that weren't in Paris schmoozing up to the Saudi's, French and Condi Rice, announced Martial Law until 06.30 this morning. The fighting dissipated gradually as the evening wore on, Nasrallah issued a fatwa telling everyone to go home (I won't bother telling you the cynical reaction that got from the Americans in my school as you can probably guess, but of course all sorts of Machiavellian intentions were induced), and so on, until everyone went home. In the Chouf mountains and on the road to the south, it appears, masked gunmen were stopping people in cars and asking for their identity cards which, if it happened (whether or not it did, it did, because people said it did) reminded everyone of the Civil War Identity Card Massacres (in Capital Letters). So, then, paranoia levels have been re-set to ape-shit.
The next several hours were spent channel-hopping looking at the different images being broadcast by the various TV channels here. Depending on who owned the TV station of course dictated what was seen. We saw the Syrian National Party offices being burned down for what seemed like hours on New TV, the Hariri channel, whilst al-Jazeera was out in the streets...and so on. Guess the rest yourselves. School today, Friday, was, of course, cancelled.
On TUESDAY morning we awoke to the pre-announced General Strike, which I am sure you have all read about, seen pictures of, and so on. School was cancelled, we all came home, tyres burned, guns were fired, people were shot (as they were yesterday) and, by the following morning, it was as if nothing had happened, although there was still no school.
Anyway, that's the sequence of events, and you all know it already. I don't want to bore you anymore with details and trivia that you might already know, so that's that.
What's not 'that', however, was a series of thoughts sparked off by a question one of my students asked me on Thursday in school (one of only two days of school this week): "What do you foreigners think of what's happening here in Lebanon?" (on a digression, this is, as some of you may know, a frequent question - those of you who live in a foreign country are more than
familiar with this question!). The answer, though, is this: I think the verb 'think' is perhaps not the most appropriate one. Put simply, for a whole host of reasons (lack of Arabic, limited social circles, work/time commitments etcetera), we foreigners neither know much nor, therefore, think much. There is one daily newspaper in English (there are many in French, but being an
anglophile community we ignore them!) and two English-language websites here in Lebanon, and then of course the BBC, Al Jazeera English and CNN on the illegal cable. So, there are a limited, very limited, range of opinions circulating and these tend to get circulated around, with Chinese-whisper alterations to suit political prejudice. These opinions are then added to by whatever limited contact we may have with "the local population" (Arabic teachers, shopkeepers). Add to this the 'return-to-civil-war' paranoia, the stories, rumours and inventions, all of which (and I have said this before) become the truth as soon as they are uttered, and, well, the answer to my student's question is easy: we don't think. We have thoughts, which is by no means the same thing at all, but you we be amazed how little we actually 'think'. We trade thoughts with each other, most of
which are in agreement, broadly, but there is little real thinking going on. I suppose you want an example, so here it is. Watching the TV images being broadcast by the various stations yesterday and on Tuesday, the word 'Live', of course, appeared in the corner of the screen. In most cases, what was being shown 'live' was, in fact, live, but watch it for long enough and you
begin to realise that they are just spooling the tape.
Now, we could speculate about the reasons, impact and effects of this practice, standard journalistic practice; we could also discuss the language used, the use of loaded questions, but all of those are for Media Studies classes, so I am saving those up if you don't mind. The point is this: we all saw the images, we all saw what was happening, as we sat inside our lounges, on
our sofas, channel-hopping. Occasionally a glance outside the window confirmed that it was, in fact, happening..except it didn't, of course, as we could see none of it, except the smoke from burning tyres on Tuesday. However, we all assure each other that we did 'see' it, that we were 'witnesses' to it all, and have an insight into it. The next day we meet each other, we foreigners, we talk to the students, we 'take the temperature of the school community' (I have to put up with crass phrases like this now I am part of a 'school community', so bear with me...), we trade anecdotes, all the time assuming (if it even gets to that level of cognition) that, because we are here, we saw it, participated in it (passively, in the sense that it is happening in our city) and, crucially, assuming that we all believe the same things about the same things and know the same things. Take another example, though it's an easy target: a colleague is leaving the school in July to go back to Uncle Sam to study...Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. Of course, I understand this, becuase the built-in assumption is that living here might be 'interesting' (insert your own vacuous, meaningless noun here), but it is not really a place where you can really study, whereas Washington State University (or whatever), being a serious place of academic study, is the best place to learn Arabic and study the Middle East. This is the sort of foreigner who populates this place. No further comment, but you all know me well enough to know what sorts of things I would say about this intellectual stupidity.
So, things have been happening, and I have not been thinking, because thinking is not what 'we foreigners' do much of.
And this all relates to a conversation I had months ago with a friend here. I like thinking; I like the process of processing thoughts, impressions, ideas. One of the reasons - the main reason - to leave Finland was the lack of external stimulus to think ABOUT. Now, curiously (and I am not going to say that here there is too MUCH of it to think about, to process), there is no time to process, to think about what is happening. I would say that I reflect, I have thoughts, but there is too much happening to be able to process any of it, and my interlocutor, a longer-term resident of Lebanon, said to me that the living of it IS the processing of it. The truism embedded in this statement has come home to roost in the last week. I have intended to write about what has been happening, first on Tuesday night, then last night, but the mediated experience of it, which IS the experience of it, IS that act of processing. Sitting down to write this is the closest I get these days to thinking as it might conventionally be described..but then, as you may have gathered, 'thinking' is not all that conventional here.
January 22nd, 2007
Well, things have been all quiet on the western front for a while: the sit-in downtown is still taking place but, of course, the numbers have been steadily dwindling ever since the first demonstration; all was quiet (...they tell me) over the winter break, the newspapers have been quiet, all seems to have calmed down. On Friday night, however, Nasrallah gave a three hour long TV interview, featuring (from what I could gather) what appear to be his usual rhetorical tricks. The long and the short of it, though, is that 'Stage Three' (as it is now becoming known) begins tonight: Hezbollah want to close the port, the airport roads, the usual southern suburb stronghold, rejuvenate the protest (whilst denying that this, precisely, is what they want to do, but the 'translate Hizbullah codes into normal language' seems to indicate that this is the aim. Everything, then, is going to come to a halt tomorrow (...meaning tonight) and, indeed, it is now 16.37 and it has already begun in the usual manner - the cars 'n' flags 'n' noise roadshow has begun, even here in tranquil, Bohemian, yuppy-ish Ras Beirut. Apparently the left-leaning
newspapers announced this morning that schools etcetera would close, so they are trying to push for it. Down the hill at the Yankee Community School, however, we have the usual twofold response to such things - the 'local hires' (yes, friends, this is how the Lebanese members of staff are lovingly referred to) can talk about nothing else, and most of it is critical (...and the few Shiites are keeping quiet in the face of the Christian/Middle class majority), everybody is involved in displaying various shades of bravado of one sort or another, and the simplistic assessments are coming out for whoever will listen. I don't exempt myself from this last comment - I don't pretend to have ANY kind of authoritative angle on what is happening, I merely observe and offer my unedited perspective: if it gets me hung for being naive and simplistic, so be it. Our school, needless to say, is not closing, and that's why the phrase "giving in" has been used a great deal today, usually prefixed by "not." As I said, all a bit simplistic. If anything happens, I will let you know. What I can see from the window is a large lorry-load of armed policeman outside the local torture centre (Police station), although it has to be said that this is not anormal, plus the aforementioned wannabe yoof rally drivers with the flags and car stereos jacked up. Let's see, shall we.
newspapers announced this morning that schools etcetera would close, so they are trying to push for it. Down the hill at the Yankee Community School, however, we have the usual twofold response to such things - the 'local hires' (yes, friends, this is how the Lebanese members of staff are lovingly referred to) can talk about nothing else, and most of it is critical (...and the few Shiites are keeping quiet in the face of the Christian/Middle class majority), everybody is involved in displaying various shades of bravado of one sort or another, and the simplistic assessments are coming out for whoever will listen. I don't exempt myself from this last comment - I don't pretend to have ANY kind of authoritative angle on what is happening, I merely observe and offer my unedited perspective: if it gets me hung for being naive and simplistic, so be it. Our school, needless to say, is not closing, and that's why the phrase "giving in" has been used a great deal today, usually prefixed by "not." As I said, all a bit simplistic. If anything happens, I will let you know. What I can see from the window is a large lorry-load of armed policeman outside the local torture centre (Police station), although it has to be said that this is not anormal, plus the aforementioned wannabe yoof rally drivers with the flags and car stereos jacked up. Let's see, shall we.
December 7th, 2006
It's been a while, because, in all honesty, there has been nothing much to report, although that in itself is, at the same time, an understatement and an exaggeration. (a couple of night ago there was a "clash" and a Shiite was killed, by a gun, and that threatened to stir things up, although it didn't: so, in the end, a hothead who had been with his hothead friends stirring things up - frankly - in a Sunni neighborhood got shot and killed. It is not as innocent as it sounds - there is only one reason why they would be there, and that was to cause trouble and show off. Well, I hate to sound callous, but it was a little too much to expect no response to such provovcation...although logical argument like this gets not very far here. I simply record my observations, making no judgement other than the obvious...). Anyway, for the latest news on what is happening, you could do much worse than keep up to date via www.naharnet.com, "the Lebanese portal that keeps you coming back"..and..where was I?
Last Friday's demonstration, oh yes. Well, as you may recall, we were not going to go, but we did. Overwhelmingly, the impression I got was this: leave aside all of the pro- and anti-Syria rhetoric, leave aside (for the moment) the religious affiliations, what was apparent, in contradistinction to the previous week's 'funeral demonstration', was this: whereas the
overwhelming mass of people at the Gemayel funeral were, let's say, wealthy, middle and upper class, the immense majority of the people at Friday's anti-government demonstration were poor. Alright, so I am talking in generalities, but look anywhere else and you will get generalities also, though they might be different. This, it seems to me, is the salient point. Not the other things: not the fact (and let's not dispute it: it's fact) that Hezbullah are supported in a number of major or minor ways by "Syria" and "Iran", not the fact that, when the country (COUNTRY) was under attack by a foreign power (FOREIGN POWER) the national government and its army did nothing, not the hysteria about Hezbollah = Muslim fanatics, forgetting the words "Syria" and "Resolution: in whatever context they are uttered altogether.....the plain fact is that the current government represents a minority of the well-off, whilst the oppostition (which is more than just Hezbollah) represents a majority which is much less than well-off.
...and people keep asking me how I feel, whether I feel scared and so on. This morning, whilst preparing myself for work, I was listening to a UK radio station, Radio Five LIve. I like it: no music, just news and discussion. It's a purely domestic radio station, and I would like to say that it "keeps me in touch" with my native homeland, but that's not why I listen to it. The reasons are unimportant, suffice it to say that the news this morning were as follows: increased knife-related crime in London, ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) on the rise, tax increases, inner-city violence on the increase, etc. And etc. So, you probably get the picture. Do I feel scared in Lebanon....I would feel more scared living in the UK. If anything happens here, it will either be personally terminal or I will be on a foreign-passport chartered plane before the bad stuff begins. Walking around the demonstration provoked every shade of emotion except fear, but you wouldn't catch me anywhere near the centre of a small British city after sundown. There are no 'conclusions' to any of this, just a statement of fact.
The other thing is that people keep talking about "what is going to happen next" and, of course, this is part of the psyche of the whole thing: faouda (chat) in the form of theories and opinions is the closest thing any of us here have to 'fact' or 'truth', and the chat - as soon as it leaves the mouth - BECOMES the fact, so everybody treats opinion as though it were fact. Well, what is going to happen next is that, at 20.30 tonight, Nasrallah is going to address the sit-in (which, yes, is still going on in the centre of the city), so tune in to aljazeera.net/english where you will be able to see it live, online, with simultaneous dubbing. Right now, with an hour or so to go, there's a bit of activity: sirens, police, guns, but nothing out of the ordinary...because nothing that happens here could be considered out of the ordinary.
Another thing I have noticed in the last few weeks is this: all the foreigners have the same (received) opinion about "what is happening" as each other, and the opinion is what you could probably guess it is: Nasrallah is supported by Syria and Iran, he's a mad Mullah, the other lot are "anti-Syria" and a long etcetera of the sort of thing CNN tell you. Now this of course makes me suspicious. It would be TOO obvious to say that we foreigners have the same opinion due to the fact that a lack of Arabic means that our sources are limited, and I don't think that that is the only reason. So, we come right back to where we began........those lined up against the opposition belong to one socio-economic category, and that category includes, of course, foreign schoolteachers and those in the same professional category as we are. It might be true that Hezbollah is a Muslim/Islamist party, it might be true that they are backed by Syria and Iran, it might be true that the ultimate aim is to turn Lebanon into an Islamic state, but it might also be the case that none of those things are true. Besides, even if they are all
true, non of those things negates the fact that (i) the oppostion also includes two right-wing (and I am being reserved) Christian parties, the Communist Party (all three of its members) and (ii) it does not change the fact that the current government is a minority, right-wing autocracy. Up until the time that Israel bombs (again), or Naughty Nasrallah starts forcing women to wear veils, then I am calling it as I see it, and what I see is a lack of clear, critical thinking from people who should know better (and who claim to know better).
Oh yes, after the demonstration, we did go to see the Oud player and his fellow musicians, had dinner, stayed out until who knows what time in the morning, and had a great time....the audience was down, but there was still an audience. Life goes on; the demonstration goes on.
Last Friday's demonstration, oh yes. Well, as you may recall, we were not going to go, but we did. Overwhelmingly, the impression I got was this: leave aside all of the pro- and anti-Syria rhetoric, leave aside (for the moment) the religious affiliations, what was apparent, in contradistinction to the previous week's 'funeral demonstration', was this: whereas the
overwhelming mass of people at the Gemayel funeral were, let's say, wealthy, middle and upper class, the immense majority of the people at Friday's anti-government demonstration were poor. Alright, so I am talking in generalities, but look anywhere else and you will get generalities also, though they might be different. This, it seems to me, is the salient point. Not the other things: not the fact (and let's not dispute it: it's fact) that Hezbullah are supported in a number of major or minor ways by "Syria" and "Iran", not the fact that, when the country (COUNTRY) was under attack by a foreign power (FOREIGN POWER) the national government and its army did nothing, not the hysteria about Hezbollah = Muslim fanatics, forgetting the words "Syria" and "Resolution: in whatever context they are uttered altogether.....the plain fact is that the current government represents a minority of the well-off, whilst the oppostition (which is more than just Hezbollah) represents a majority which is much less than well-off.
...and people keep asking me how I feel, whether I feel scared and so on. This morning, whilst preparing myself for work, I was listening to a UK radio station, Radio Five LIve. I like it: no music, just news and discussion. It's a purely domestic radio station, and I would like to say that it "keeps me in touch" with my native homeland, but that's not why I listen to it. The reasons are unimportant, suffice it to say that the news this morning were as follows: increased knife-related crime in London, ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) on the rise, tax increases, inner-city violence on the increase, etc. And etc. So, you probably get the picture. Do I feel scared in Lebanon....I would feel more scared living in the UK. If anything happens here, it will either be personally terminal or I will be on a foreign-passport chartered plane before the bad stuff begins. Walking around the demonstration provoked every shade of emotion except fear, but you wouldn't catch me anywhere near the centre of a small British city after sundown. There are no 'conclusions' to any of this, just a statement of fact.
The other thing is that people keep talking about "what is going to happen next" and, of course, this is part of the psyche of the whole thing: faouda (chat) in the form of theories and opinions is the closest thing any of us here have to 'fact' or 'truth', and the chat - as soon as it leaves the mouth - BECOMES the fact, so everybody treats opinion as though it were fact. Well, what is going to happen next is that, at 20.30 tonight, Nasrallah is going to address the sit-in (which, yes, is still going on in the centre of the city), so tune in to aljazeera.net/english where you will be able to see it live, online, with simultaneous dubbing. Right now, with an hour or so to go, there's a bit of activity: sirens, police, guns, but nothing out of the ordinary...because nothing that happens here could be considered out of the ordinary.
Another thing I have noticed in the last few weeks is this: all the foreigners have the same (received) opinion about "what is happening" as each other, and the opinion is what you could probably guess it is: Nasrallah is supported by Syria and Iran, he's a mad Mullah, the other lot are "anti-Syria" and a long etcetera of the sort of thing CNN tell you. Now this of course makes me suspicious. It would be TOO obvious to say that we foreigners have the same opinion due to the fact that a lack of Arabic means that our sources are limited, and I don't think that that is the only reason. So, we come right back to where we began........those lined up against the opposition belong to one socio-economic category, and that category includes, of course, foreign schoolteachers and those in the same professional category as we are. It might be true that Hezbollah is a Muslim/Islamist party, it might be true that they are backed by Syria and Iran, it might be true that the ultimate aim is to turn Lebanon into an Islamic state, but it might also be the case that none of those things are true. Besides, even if they are all
true, non of those things negates the fact that (i) the oppostion also includes two right-wing (and I am being reserved) Christian parties, the Communist Party (all three of its members) and (ii) it does not change the fact that the current government is a minority, right-wing autocracy. Up until the time that Israel bombs (again), or Naughty Nasrallah starts forcing women to wear veils, then I am calling it as I see it, and what I see is a lack of clear, critical thinking from people who should know better (and who claim to know better).
Oh yes, after the demonstration, we did go to see the Oud player and his fellow musicians, had dinner, stayed out until who knows what time in the morning, and had a great time....the audience was down, but there was still an audience. Life goes on; the demonstration goes on.
December 6th, 2006
So, tomorrow (Friday), at 14.00, the long-awaited Hezbollah road show takes to the streets. Postponed due to the funeral of the assasinated Pierre Gemayel, postponed again, arranged by diktat at less than 24 hours notice, and (of course) taking place in the so-symbolic Martyr's Square...the demonstration that everyone has been waiting for with bated breath, with
anticipation and with trepidation, some with fear, all, however,....waiting,because it was coming, and has been for weeks. The temperature, of course, is high: since the resignation of the Hezbollah cabinet members, since the assasination of Gemayel, since the paranoia about Syrian involvement, since the government agreed to the UN tribunal for discovering Hariri's
killers, since Hezbollah's rejection of it, since Aoun's (Hezbollah allies) late-night confrontation with the Lebanese Forces (i.e. mad Geagea's lunatics) on the other side of town had to be quashed by the military...it's been coming. And it is going to be big. Already now (19.52) the cars are racing around the city, flags waving, horns blaring, raising the temperature. If this was
Brazil it would be to celebrate a World Cup win, but here it's politics. School tomorrow finishes early, at 12.00, so everyone can get home (or, in some cases, get to the demonstration) and clear the streets in time, there are going to be lots of arms around.
Today even the armed soldiers guarding PM Siniora's house were twitchy (literally: one of them I walked past was practicing his trigger action - he was bored, of course, and that's why he was doing it, but it was a bit odd nonetheless). In school, staff appear divided: the Lebanese are determined that the school day should be as normal as possible, the foreigners are happy (?!) to finish early. Why not? After all, those of us with foreign passports can get out easily if it all kicks
off, leaving the Lebanese to their fate once more...)...and let's not forget the talk of "Civil War". A nice trope, and an easy one. And also rather thoughtless: BBC Prime the other day had a talk show entitled "Lebanon: On the Brink of Civil War", and the more frightened and simple-minded are echoing it. Let's see, but keep your eyes on the news, my friends. I will update you
all tomorrow.
Stay safe...but come and visit.
anticipation and with trepidation, some with fear, all, however,....waiting,because it was coming, and has been for weeks. The temperature, of course, is high: since the resignation of the Hezbollah cabinet members, since the assasination of Gemayel, since the paranoia about Syrian involvement, since the government agreed to the UN tribunal for discovering Hariri's
killers, since Hezbollah's rejection of it, since Aoun's (Hezbollah allies) late-night confrontation with the Lebanese Forces (i.e. mad Geagea's lunatics) on the other side of town had to be quashed by the military...it's been coming. And it is going to be big. Already now (19.52) the cars are racing around the city, flags waving, horns blaring, raising the temperature. If this was
Brazil it would be to celebrate a World Cup win, but here it's politics. School tomorrow finishes early, at 12.00, so everyone can get home (or, in some cases, get to the demonstration) and clear the streets in time, there are going to be lots of arms around.
Today even the armed soldiers guarding PM Siniora's house were twitchy (literally: one of them I walked past was practicing his trigger action - he was bored, of course, and that's why he was doing it, but it was a bit odd nonetheless). In school, staff appear divided: the Lebanese are determined that the school day should be as normal as possible, the foreigners are happy (?!) to finish early. Why not? After all, those of us with foreign passports can get out easily if it all kicks
off, leaving the Lebanese to their fate once more...)...and let's not forget the talk of "Civil War". A nice trope, and an easy one. And also rather thoughtless: BBC Prime the other day had a talk show entitled "Lebanon: On the Brink of Civil War", and the more frightened and simple-minded are echoing it. Let's see, but keep your eyes on the news, my friends. I will update you
all tomorrow.
Stay safe...but come and visit.
December 1st, 2006
So, T minus one hour, and what a hectic night we had. At about 20.00 last night the rally started and the Hezbollah flags, in-car sound systems and bodies hanging out of windows started driving around. A couple of hours later, "the other lot" started
doing the same thing, following the same route. The police station opposite has never been so active, and the soldiers were scurrying down the road to look after Prime Minister Siniora's house. Lots of activity, lots of nervousness...and it continued all night. Needless to say, school was a waste of time: those students who did show up at school wanted to do nothing except discuss what was happening, and give their theories about what will happen. Now, every apartment visible from my balcony is bedecked with a Lebanese flag: Nasrallah told people not to bring sectarian flags, but only to bring or fly the national flag. Interesting, given that the Lebanese flag has been hijacked by the Christian/right-wing parties. Still, the convoys of cars are taking little notice of this, and I doubt there will be an absence of Hezbollah flags at the demonstration either. I think even Sheikh Hassan himself will not be able to control all the elements of this particular genie that he is letting out of the bottle.
It's a beautiful day: sunny, warm, the sea is a clear, bright blue, and everyone is on their balconies, watching (for the moment) and waiting. Until the sun goes down, things will maintain the party atmosphere, but let's see what ahppens after the sun goes down. More later.
Oh yes: we have a vantage point. We decided not to join the parade, but will instead go to the 24th floor of the Hayatt Hotel, where there is a rooftop bar, and will observe from there. Later, to a club to listen to a group of local musicians (Oud players, etc). Life goes on: apparently the bars of Achrafieh (partyville in Beirut) were packed last night, more so than usual, on the
grounds that it might be the last chance for a long time. We will see if that is just fatalistic paranoia.
More later.
doing the same thing, following the same route. The police station opposite has never been so active, and the soldiers were scurrying down the road to look after Prime Minister Siniora's house. Lots of activity, lots of nervousness...and it continued all night. Needless to say, school was a waste of time: those students who did show up at school wanted to do nothing except discuss what was happening, and give their theories about what will happen. Now, every apartment visible from my balcony is bedecked with a Lebanese flag: Nasrallah told people not to bring sectarian flags, but only to bring or fly the national flag. Interesting, given that the Lebanese flag has been hijacked by the Christian/right-wing parties. Still, the convoys of cars are taking little notice of this, and I doubt there will be an absence of Hezbollah flags at the demonstration either. I think even Sheikh Hassan himself will not be able to control all the elements of this particular genie that he is letting out of the bottle.
It's a beautiful day: sunny, warm, the sea is a clear, bright blue, and everyone is on their balconies, watching (for the moment) and waiting. Until the sun goes down, things will maintain the party atmosphere, but let's see what ahppens after the sun goes down. More later.
Oh yes: we have a vantage point. We decided not to join the parade, but will instead go to the 24th floor of the Hayatt Hotel, where there is a rooftop bar, and will observe from there. Later, to a club to listen to a group of local musicians (Oud players, etc). Life goes on: apparently the bars of Achrafieh (partyville in Beirut) were packed last night, more so than usual, on the
grounds that it might be the last chance for a long time. We will see if that is just fatalistic paranoia.
More later.
Never late than better..?
Nothing much prompted me to begin this here, now, except simply the desire to begin this here, now. I'll post some stuff I wrote a couple of years ago shortly after I moved to Beirut, and then I'll see where the mood takes me. One more voice in an ocean of voices, one more opinion blogging up the clogosphere...
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About Me
- Koutalakis
- Beirut, Lebanon
- Increasingly solipsistic... ...decreasingly materialistic... a wanderer... ...adapt or die...