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.