Lebanon Diary

As per Corwin's request, I started a new thread for the Lebanon diary. The first entry follows this post. Please feel free to comment and ask questions; that's what this place is for!

April 7: Arrival

Three and a half years, one war, one insurrection, a new president, a nearly perfectly paralyzed national unity government, several assassinations, and one global economic crisis later, I'm back in Lebanon. Service on the MEA flight from Paris was as good as ever, with an entertainment system, a quaint, printed menu announcing the choice of chicken or lasagne, and very large servings of your tipple of choice. The matron overseeing the cabin service would make for a marvelous film. I'm sure that she was there, making sure the standard of in-flight service would not flag, through wars, crises, and catastrophes, when the planes were flown by Dutch mercenaries or re-based in Damascus or Amman when Beirut was bombed out or under blockade. Very few other “ajnabi” on the plane, but the wide-body Airbus A330 was packed nevertheless. The hubbub of “merci k'tiir, ya madanm” sounded strangely familiar and reassuring, as did the always impeccably shiny Rafic Hariri airport, the surly immigration officer who first made me stand in line for a half an hour and then quizzed me very suspiciously for being still in line a half-hour after the plane arrived. No need to buy a stamp for the visa this time around, though; I just got my passport stamped, good for an entire month's stay.

Nothing has changed. Well, not much, anyway. Not visibly. The bombed-out bridges have been rebuilt, the highway has been repaved, the shrapnel holes have been plastered over, and the sea has washed away the oil slick from the Jiyyeh bombing. On the drive from the airport through the Southern Suburbs, KFC's Colonel Saunders was giving a friendly grin to the grim-faced bearded and be-turbaned imams on a Hezbollah poster across the street. America's latest weapon in the Global War on Terror... ahem, Overseas Contingency Operations? Just feed the buggers trans fats until they have heart attacks, or are too fat to do any serious fighting anyway.

The Southern Suburbs look somehow cleaner and neater than last time; with more neon lights, a big, gaudy, Iranian-style mosque growing out from the wall of a big, solid hospital. Maybe they seized the opportunity to spruce up the place after the Israeli Air Force did some preliminary work for them 2006. The Hezb also appear to have toned down the feel of its public presence, too – not so many martyrs or Kalashnikovs, more professionally-printed, designed, and back-lit posters with electoral slogans along the lines of “You are the resistance; your weapon – the vote.” Perhaps they feel that they made their point when they briefly took over the streets of Beirut and gave Walid Jumblatt's militias a good thrashing last spring.

L'Orient – Le Jour is screaming about a brutal battle to come in Sidon, but this time it's an electoral battle. The coalitions have shifted. The new kid on the political block is called L'Alternative Libanaise – the Lebanese Alternative. It's a Shi'ite party that's opposed to both the Hezbollah and the Amal. Nobody's been killed yet, although last night somebody did torch a car in front of their offices; not for the first time either, it seems.

Reading the economic news in L'Orient was a bit of a shock. As in, Lebanon is doing great. The government is running a fiscal surplus, the banking sector is sound as a bell, the flag-carrier is turning a profit (and did so even through the time its hub was bombed out and Lebanese airspace was blockaded, which is a quite a feat). What's more, as jobs dry up in the Gulf, the States, and Europe, Lebanon is seeing a mass return of its best and brightest, which is maintaining healthy demand in the real estate sector. A record number of tourists is expected next summer, with plenty of new jobs opening up there too.

I did run across some microeconomic consequences, though. The local grocer, M. Daccache, lost everything on the stock market. He repented his sins, entered a seminary, and is now in Rome. The new grocer isn't anywhere near as good as the old one; apparently he's not paying proper attention to inventory and is regularly out of small but essential items. Seems he also got into a scrap with the distributor of L'Orient – Le Jour, so for a while Aune and Selim had to go to nearby Okaibe for it.

Parliamentary elections are coming up in the summer. The fight is gearing up for them, and the participants are announcing their platforms:

When it comes to political reform, the program demands abolition of confessionalism, adoption of a modern electoral law based on proportional representation, establishment of a Planning Ministry, administrative decentralization and reorganization of the judiciary to be fully independent of political influence. The administration is to be reformed by way of instituting a genuine meritocracy, reinforcement of regulatory and administrative oversight organs, legislative reform to combat corruption and diversion of public funds, and a reorganization of administrative divisions of the country, including creation of the mohafazats of Baalbeck-Hermel and Akkar. ... The program envisions a stronger role for the state in economic policy in order to enforce social justice, and proposes establishing a system of public-private partnerships in order to break the vicious cycle of national debt, and to put in place incentives to develop the tourism, agricultural, and industrial sectors in the country. It calls for development of the University of Lebanon and more funds for public education. It also calls for respect for the freedom of expression and strengthening the role of women and youth in society. Finally, it calls for strengthening the role of the state in social services, preservation of the country's water resources, and declaration of a national state of environmental emergency.

(L'Orient – Le Jour, April 7, 2009)

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Oh, which party? Hezbollah, of course. Where do I sign up?

There's something strangely unsquashable about this country. It's like a rubber ball; the harder you hit it, the faster it bounces back (and occasionally repeatedly across the room).

Interesting how the french language still appear to occupy an important place in lebanese society. Do you have anything to say about this?

The story in brief: modern Lebanon is a creation of Maronite Christians. They're Catholics with an Eastern Christian rite celebrated in Arabic and Syriac. They've had a connection with the French since the 1500's or so. The French considered themselves the protectors of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and the Maronites, being Catholics, were especially close to them. Knowledge of French has been a mark of class and culture among them since then. This was further strengthened during the inter-war period, when the League of Nations mandated France to administer the territory. French is the other official language of Lebanon, beside Arabic. Lebanon has a pretty vigorous press; most of it is in Arabic but a quite a bit of the rest is in French -- besides L'Orient -- Le Jour there's Femme, Noun, Magazine du Liban et l'Orient Arabe, and a few others. This dominance of French means that most cultured Lebanese, regardless of their religion, will be fluent in the language. It's strong enough that it's developed a kind of dialect of its own, with some characteristic Libanisms, both in the written and the spoken versions of the language. There's a lot of social prestige associated with fluent command of French; "He only speaks Arabic!" is a damning comment, and barring exceptional entrepreneurial talent, it limits an individual to fairly menial jobs.

Lately, French has given up some ground to English, though -- but it's simultaneously gained a whole new group of speakers. Namely, Shi'ites from the South and the Beka'a. For ideological reasons, they're leery of the English language and Anglo-American culture, but they've been making pretty big investments in education, and consider it vital to open up culturally to the world beyond the Arabic-speaking part of it. Consequently, you'll find lots of young Shi'ites studying French as a second language; recently the Hezbollah even opened a French-only primary school in Nabatiyeh in South Lebanon, and they can't keep up with demand.

A side effect is that if you speak French, there's very little motivation for a Westerner ("ajnabi") to learn Arabic; my mother-in-law lived in Lebanon from about 1970 to about 2004, and her Arabic is still at the shopping-for-groceries level.

Interesting.

Thank you for the information. I had a vague idea that many people spoke french in lebanon because of the inter-war period but I had no up-to-date information about it.

I might visit the country, eventually. It makes it even easier and more interesting when there is no langage fence between you and most of the locals. I'm going to Peru next week and my spanish being fairly limited, I fear I won't have much contact with the population beside the ones working in the touristic industry.

PJ, hope you had a good time there.
Thanks for the insights, waiting for the rest
Do, you or your wife speak French/Arabic ?

Both of us speak French, and Joanna speaks Arabic as well. (We mostly speak French at home, actually.)

So you're multilingual too... (except for english) Well, waiting for day 2

Interesting about the french language--back when I was in school it was supposed to be learned as "the international language of diplomacy;" good to know it actually was somewhere.
A few questions on your Hezbollah platform block quote:
What is meant by "abolition of confessionalism?"
What is a "mohafazat?" (as in 'the mohafazats of Baalbeck-Hermel and Akkar')
I appreciate the education; the country seems much more diverse and complex than I'd expected. Thanks for posting and looking forward to the next episode.

Pladio said:

So you're multilingual too... (except for english) Well, waiting for day 2

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Languages are, or used to be, something of a hobby of mine, actually. It's been a while (nine years) since I last seriously studied a new one, though...

magerette said:

Interesting about the french language--back when I was in school it was supposed to be learned as "the international language of diplomacy;" good to know it actually was somewhere.

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It actually still is. There's a concept called "Francophonie" which is a loose organization of countries where French is the major second language or a significant minority one; it's a colonial legacy, but nowadays it does a quite a bit of good, too. You'll find some rather surprising members; Burundi, for example.

A few questions on your Hezbollah platform block quote:
What is meant by "abolition of confessionalism?"

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Lebanon has an insanely complicated political system known as "consensual" or "confessional" democracy. This means that each seat in the parliament is assigned to a particular religious confession and a particular electoral district. So, for example, in the religiously diverse district of Mubarif you might have four seats, two of which are Maronite Christian, one Sunni, and one Orthodox Christian. Then you'd naturally have a bunch of Maronites running for the Maronite seats, Sunnis for the Sunni one, and Orthodox for the Orthodox one. In the actual elections, you get to cast your vote for the seat matching your religion, plus, I believe, for one or more of the other seats, but with less weight given to these cross-confessional votes.

This makes everything about the elections insanely complicated -- finding the candidates, figuring out who, exactly, each of them is running against, figuring out how to vote, and even tallying up the votes.

The number of seats assigned to each confession is based on the census. Unfortunately, there hasn't *been* a census since the 1950's or 1960's, which means that the parliament no longer reflects the real demographic picture in the country. Specifically, there are proportionally way more Shi'ites now than there were then, with Maronites and Sunnis the big losers. There won't be a new census, either, because the Maronites and Sunnis in parliament will block it, since neither wants the Shi'ites to gain.

In Lebanon, pretty much everyone agrees that the system just plain doesn't work, and has to be abolished. Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes -- they can't agree what they should replace it with. So it just sort of soldiers on anyway.

At least this time around there's genuine choice in the elections -- over 700 candidates running for, IIRC, 128 seats.

What is a "mohafazat?" (as in 'the mohafazats of Baalbeck-Hermel and Akkar')

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Administrative district. As if it wasn't small enough, Lebanon is subdivided on two levels, mohafazats and cazas. I think the reason the Hezb wants this reshuffling is because Baalbeck-Hermel is mostly Shi'ite, whereas Akkar is mostly Christian.

I appreciate the education; the country seems much more diverse and complex than I'd expected. Thanks for posting and looking forward to the next episode.

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Hoo boy, is it ever. I've been following it and visiting it for ten years now, and it keeps surprising me. Think of it as a modern version of the world of Gothic -- small enough that you can walk across it, with terrain obstacles complicated enough to make that a challenge, but it includes everything from Vikings to Assassins, with some pirates, farmers, and knights errant thrown in for good measure. (I think I know who's playing the part of the Orcs, beards and all...)

April 9: A walk in Beirut

Today we drove down to Beirut. Traffic is as crazy as ever, except that there seems to be even more of it. Strangely, I felt right at home in it. To start with, though, Joanna's parents had found a hairdresser who does house calls, and got her to brush Joanna's hair so she'd be presentable enough for the city, so we only got going around 11 o'clock. We had a coffee at the Rawda, which, like a rock, remains entirely unchanged, other than the color of the tablecloths (tartan flannel; the last time it was white-and-blue cotton checkerboard).

Then we met Joanna's banker friend Tania for lunch L'Entrecôte in Verdun. She'd started going to the gym and was looking very svelte, despite wolfing down two large steaks with fries and some profiteroles for dessert. She was complaining that the government is doing nothing about the economic crisis, although she did note the mitigating circumstance that for the time being there is no crisis. According to her, there are two major reasons for that – a very strict and extremely conservative bank regulator, and the Israelis, who helpfully bombed out the country just about when there would have been a real estate bubble otherwise. Apparently the increase in traffic is due to Lebanese returning from the Gulf with their nice new cars. So, for the time being, and for once, and, it appears, to the surprise of most people here, Lebanon really is doing much better than most places, relatively speaking anyway.

New buildings had gone up, at least, and were continuing to go up. There was a major construction site just across L'Entrecôte, and smaller ones all over the place. After lunch, we headed toward Ras Beirut, found a parking, and then dropped by the American University of Beirut. The view to the sea has closed up a quite a bit, with three shiny new apartment blocks going up in front of it. The university itself had added a pretty impressive looking student center, named after Somebody Hostler. All done in tan and white, glass, and a funky arrangement with water flowing down a metal netting of sorts. Impressive Astroturf football field, too. The campus was looking very busy, and the students... like students. I noticed some leaflets on the bulletin boards advertising gatherings for secularists and atheists, which is a bit of a new development. Tania told us that it's very fashionable to be gay; perhaps atheism is an alternative for those who don't have the inclination for that sort of thing.

From AUB we walked to Hamra street. Bought some books and L'Orient – Le Jour, with a nice cuisine supplement including some rather creative recipes using Lebanese ingredients and techniques but combined in novel ways. Joanna mentioned that the gray cheerful lady at the till was the same one who had been there all through the war, just like the money changer with the funny hair. Then dropped by Joanna's old church, and lit some tapers for the Virgin. Joanna noted a somewhat mad-looking lady and an elderly gent counting out postcards with saints on them, who, apparently, had been there non-stop for the last 30 years. It's a nice little church, tucked away on Hamra. They've spruced up the interior, although the garden still looks a bit overgrown.

Continued on Hamra street toward downtown. They've improved the sidewalks big-time – really tall kerbs and the occasional iron post or tree are stopping cars from parking on them, so we could actually, just, you know, walk. Innovations like the zebra crossing haven't reached Beirut yet, though, so crossing some of the busier streets is a bit harrowing. The street looks generally much cleaner; some new buildings including a rather cool-looking one faced in Corten steel. The old padlocked and ruined palace to the right is still padlocked and ruined, though.

Turned down at the old Jewish quarter. They're supposed to start reconstructing the Magen Avraham synagogue that, in one of history's little ironies, survived the civil war intact until it got bombed out by the Israelis. I believe them, because when I tried to take a picture of a nice new garden and some just-reconstructed buildings that looked just like a movie set next to it, a security guard politely and cheerfully told me to put away the camera, because the leader of the Mustaqbal (Future) movement, Saad Hariri, lives there. No way he's going to have an overgrown ruin spoil his view. Still, it'd be a pretty nice symbolic gesture if they did rebuild it, and even better if some of the Lebanese Jewish diaspora returned.

We got back just before dark. Bought some falafel with tarator, pickles, and marqouq bread (from Arax Falafel, along the highway between Kaslik and Ghazir). They are really tasty. Ended the day with an animated discussion about Middle Eastern politics. Didn't manage to reconcile the Israelis, Palestinians, Shi'ites, Christians, Iranians, Americans, and Syrians this time either. Now Joanna's reading a book we bought from Antoine's – it's about posters from the civil war. Some pretty cool ones there; especially the Commies (and somewhat to my surprise, the Amal – they had two really cool-looking ones featuring, for some reason, a red horse) could command some real artistic talent.

You seem to have had a real interesting time in Beirut

Fascinating stuff. I get the feeling that, even though these posts certainly take a fair bit of time and effort, that this is a bit of a labor of love.

I'm a little curious, though. At various times, you've portrayed the Lebanese as starving cattle. Doesn't seem to be any shortage of food so far. I'm sure that there's going to be some variation between Beirut and regions that border with Israel, but it seems that the high points are too high to support the proposed average (if that makes sense). With such a small geographic region, you'd think the squallor would rapidly spread and pull down the average in the more affluent regions.

The income disparities in Lebanon are huge. Downtown Beirut is as posh as downtown Milan, complete with its Ferrari concession and ultra-luxury Hotel Phoenicia. OTOH Bekaa and South Lebanon are near-third-world in their living standards -- no running water and electricity in places. The Palestinian refugee camps and Bedouins are genuinely third-world in terms of sanitation and living standards.

The Lebanese never stop bitching about the disappeared middle class, but that's not quite that bad either. It has certainly shrunk a lot from what it was before the civil war, but it's still there. It's pretty easy to tell by looking at the cars on the road: you'll find lots of really beat-up old pre-war Renaults and such, more than the average number of various luxury cars, but also a quite a lot of fairly new compact Kias, Volkswagens, Peugeots and such -- middle-class cars, in other words.

There's no famine there, though, and there are pretty solid support networks in place to ensure that nobody actually starves -- churches for the Christian parts, Islamic charities for the Muslim parts, as well as various tribe and clan structures.

Lebanon is pretty much a typical second-world country in this sense: not a whole lot of grinding, life-threatening misery of poverty, but perhaps 40% of the population living near the poverty line, a pretty substantial ultra-rich upper class, and a middle class sandwiched somewhere between the two.

If I've portrayed the Lebanese as starving cattle, I must have meant some specific part of the Lebanese population -- historically (before the emergence of Amal and Hezbollah) the Shi'ites of the South and Beka'a would be fairly close to this description: they were (some still are) subsistence farmers kept intentionally in poverty and ignorance by feudal-style overlords. It's also possible that you're confusing something I've said about, say, Gaza with Lebanon; conditions in Gaza are drastically worse than anywhere in Lebanon, probably including even the Palestinian refugee camps.

Thing is, also, that stuff doesn't really spread that quickly. Because the neighborhoods and villages are religiously segregated and people like to live close to their families, people don't move around all that much; the usual processes of decay and gentrification are a lot slower there than in the US or even in most of Europe. The result is that you have really fancy, beautifully reconstructed and extremely expensive buildings next door to crumbling tenements or shot-up ruins.

Loved this part--if only the Fed had known, it could have called an airstrike...

According to her, there are two major reasons for that – a very strict and extremely conservative bank regulator, and the Israelis, who helpfully bombed out the country just about when there would have been a real estate bubble otherwise. ..

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Thanks for explaining all the terms--Yeesh--I thought we had some convoluted political rulesets..I had the feeling 'confessional' related to religion in some way, but it's an interesting construction, both grammatically and psychologically, to 'confess' your religious affiliation.

Your food descriptions, as always, make me wish I lived somewhere that had something regional other than chicken-fried steak on the menu.

You've got great food out there, magerette. It's one thing Mrs dte and I still miss to this day. There was a place called Pearls over by the southern mall (it went Quail Springs, Penn Square, and something in the southwestern corner) that we loved. Tore me up, but gads it was good. And Applewoods!!! Oh, lawdy lawdy. It's too bad Molly Murphy's House of Ill Repute got shut down--that was a good time.

PJ, I probably have mixed up the descriptions between Gaza and Lebanon, but I thought you had talked about crushing poverty in Lebanon as well. Are they too focused on religious divisions (and not getting shot by Israel) to have a good class war?

Actually, "class war" is a very significant dimension in the neverending Lebanese conflicts. The most acute internal problem there right now is Hezbollah's armed wing, and the reason nobody seems to be able to solve it is that there's no trust on either side. The reason for that is that Hezbollah's constituency always was the underclass that got fucked over by everybody else. The "feudal Shi'ites" fit into the dominant system just fine; it's the ignorant peasants that were the problem. Imam Moussa Sadr's movement was very much a class movement, even if its expression was religious. Now that they've armed, organized, and found their own sources of support (Iran), they can't be kept down anymore. They also believe (with some justification IMO) that should they disarm or allow their militia to be absorbed into the Lebanse army, the better-off parts of the population will immediately start to fuck them over once again. IOW, they won't do that until and unless they trust the government again.

So yeah, it is sectarian, but it's also class-based. What's more, religious sectarianism has historically been the main mode of expression for class or local particularism. If you're pissed off at The Man, you start a religion expressing exactly how you feel about him, and what should be done about it. That's how most of the sects got there in the first place.

The same goes for the Palestinians in Lebanon, btw -- they're extremely pissed off because they've been fenced off in crowded, squalid refugee camps, with no civil rights, nothing to lose, and no future. That's very fertile soil for extremism. (And yes, IMO the best thing for all concerned would be just to naturalize them in exchange for getting them to disband their militias. But good luck convincing any Lebanese of this!)

April 10: Good Friday

Note: The names and personally identifying information of some people appearing in this entry have been changed.

We're invited to Aune's old friend Rafic's for dinner, and we went to reconnoiter the route – it's not always easy to find your way after dark. This one ought to be easy, though – get off the highway just after the Nahr al-Kalb towards Dbayeh, get onto the old coast road, then eventually go left and up to Rabiyeh. Then we dropped by Jbeil. They've done a lot of work there – the town is much neater, they've built sidewalks with iron poles to stop cars from parking on them, and it's all very clean. Busy today, too, with Good Friday celebrations. The crowd on the streets there is very diverse; you can see tourists from the Gulf, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Orthodox, Maronites, even the occasional ajnabi like me.

Since last time, they've named a street after Pépé Abed, which probably means he's finally died. The fishing club still appears to be going strong, though.

The stones in and near the port are still black from the Jiyyeh bombing. Or perhaps it's just normal algae and I'm imagining it; I'll have to compare to some of my previous photos to make sure. Otherwise the sea looked nice and clean; still some people fishing, courting couples, what have you. Even the pelican from the fish shop along the way back to Safra was there.

It'll be interesting to hear the dinner table conversation at Rafic's tonight. Let's hope it goes beyond platitudes.

Back from Rafic's. Not entirely to my surprise, it turned out to be a somewhat bigger gathering than advertised. Besides Rafic and his wife Lina, their daughter Dana, their sons Samir and Salim (plus brand new and very presentable wife Zeina), we were introduced to a very old friend of Aune's named Antoine, a somewhat crazy-looking gentleman in a leather jacket and extremely dyed hair who is apparently M. Chehab, founder, owner, and managing director of one of the biggest alimentary product brands in Lebanon, and an Austrian business associate of Salim's, who is visiting Lebanon with his daughter, who had caught a stomach bug that caused a storm of fussing about and proffering of various remedies from boiled potatoes and tea to some rather suspicious-looking capsules.

Samir was still single, and looked somehow a good bit older than the last time we met. It seems he wanted to get married, but his brother and mother didn't approve of the match. Not rich enough? Not a good enough family? Not a Maronite? Who knows; these people belong to the class that has pretty limited numbers of potential marriage partners; I'm fairly certain Salim's marriage was an arranged one too.

M. Chehab had also brought his daughter and her husband, a dealer in construction materials who thought he was being very witty as he was telling dirty jokes of which the punch lines were almost always in Arabic. He suggested opium and hashish as a good remedy for stomach ailments of all varieties, and was bragging about the construction project he had just started. Apparently he got a really good deal for the land, since he bought it in 2006 during the Israeli invasion -- “buyer's market, you see.”

The food, predictably, was excellent. There was a bean soup which is traditional for Good Friday, the usual mezze including vegetarian kebbeh (no meat because it's Good Friday), grilled sea bass, and home-made ice cream for dessert. The conversation, not so much. I didn't really learn anything I hadn't heard before, except that the tourist season for Lebanon is expected to be huge, as Arabs scale down their European vacations to the cheaper but almost as good ones available here. The construction materials dealer was worried about what happens after that, because once the tourists leave after summer, there won't be all that much to do in the country – and the Lebanese who have lost their jobs in the Gulf and elsewhere will be returning en masse. I hear you can get a really good deal on an almost-new car in Dubai these days, since people who lost their jobs and haven't finished the payments on them simply drive them to the airport and leave them there, and the airport subsequently auctions them off.

Speaking of that sort of thing, here's an interesting cultural characteristic I've noticed. In these kinds of situations, the “So, what do you do for a living?” question inevitably pops up. In Finland, France, or most other places I've been to, the follow-up to my answer of “I work for a small Finnish software company” is “Cool, so what products do you have?” In Lebanon, however, the question is inevitably “Cool, so who are your customers?”

Obama. Man, they love him here. More than any of their own leaders anyway. Of course, that means everyone is convinced the Zionists are going to kill him before the year is out – the ultimate compliment anyone can give a politician in these parts, I suppose. Antoine's bookshop was full of books by, about, and around him, too. Oh, Americans – you really have a chance to turn things around for yourself in the M-E, no matter what goes down in Israel/Palestine, about which everyone is still as pessimistic as ever.

Just wanted to say thanks PJ. I for one didn't know jack diddly about Lebanon other than they fight a lot. Your diary entries breathes a little life into a country that I knew nothing about.