Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 17

  We both shook our heads mutely. The driver looked at us in kindly empathy. “I have to stop here to put chains on my car, why don’t you step out for a bit?”

  “Oh please! Yes please!” we chorused, fumbling with the handle of the car door as we slowed to a stop by the roadside to jump out, the imprint of our feet defiling the snow drift’s pure surface.

  A world of wondrous white met our unbelieving eyes … the mountain slope to the valley down below … blanketed in white … bright blinding white that muted sound and transformed the familiar into the strange and the hushed. Rocks and tufts of grass and dark earth touched by the glitter of the snow fairy of our girlhood dreams had disappeared under veils of shimmering white. We dug our hands into the mouth-watering snowdrift and brought fistfuls into our mouths … what a letdown to all our delicious epicurean fantasies when the powdery snow reached the tips of our tongues and melted into metallic gravelly ice water. Laughing giddily, we grabbed more snow to form into balls only to have them disappear into tiny puddles in the palm of our hands. We had to make a snowman. And what a sorry snowman it was. Barely a foot off the ground, he had a misshapen head with gravel stones for two unevenly positioned eyes and a twig with several small branches for a mouth. Two more thorny twigs stuck out from his neck for arms. For us he was the most beautiful snowman ever … our first snowman on the topmost peak of Lebanon’s Ante-Lebanon mountain range of Dahr-el-Baider. Our driver coughed politely. We came back to reality. Our hands were raw from the freezing wind and snow, our shoes were soaked through and our cheeks were bright red from euphoria. Now we knew what snow was! With this important experience a part of our knowledge of the world, we climbed back into the car, changed girls.

  ***

  My induction into the Arab world in general and the Lebanese world in particular, proceeded in discomfiting fits and starts as I learned about me as an Arab and me as a Muslim in a manner that embarrassingly exposed my ignorance and naïveté before my thoroughly politicized and informed Lebanese peers. One such unforgettable incident was the day that I discovered that Islam consisted of more than only the Sunni sect. A day student was describing her hometown to me, Nabatiyeh, an ancient market town in the south of Lebanon, and mentioned that the majority of the inhabitants were ‘Mettawlehs.’ She could immediately tell by the blank look on my face that ‘Mettawleh’ did not register so she replaced it with ‘Shi’a’ as ‘Mettawleh’ was a colloquial word for ‘Shi’a.’ Not a particularly sweet girl by nature, she quickly spotted sufficient confusion written across my face that said quite clearly that I had no clue what she was talking about to throw her and her friends into paroxysms of laughter at my abject ignorance. As a child in Dhahran School I had studied the Koran with a Palestinian teacher, Mrs. Darwish, who had the thankless task of teaching us Arabic by having us memorize its contents. Of course most of the hour was just ‘blah blah blah’ to us as she never veered from the text and we never asked her to. She did not inform us that there was a Shi’a sect because there are no Shi’a in Palestine so it didn’t seem to be a particularly important detail to educate us about. Not that we would have known what she was talking about because there were no Shi’a in Damascus in my mother’s circles either and in Saudi Arabia, the Shi’a were so oppressed that the majority of the non-Shi’a population grew up ignorant of their existence. In Lebanon, the Shi’a fared only slightly better, the difference being that the Lebanese acknowledged their existence openly. My induction into the wider world of Arab politics was becoming more and more sophisticated as the days passed.

  My second year at BESG, 1967, was nearing its end. We were getting ready for our finals which were doubly difficult to prepare for as we were already in summer holiday mode. One beautiful morning in June, my co-boarders and I straggled late into class as usual, looking forward to continuing our morning sleep during our first period of the day, Ethics. Taught by a timorous white-haired old American lady, Miss Donk, who was as shy as she was big, it was normal to see the girls grouped in gaggles while she attempted to get the day started. But this morning was different. The girls were in one big gaggle crowded around a transistor radio clapping and cheering in response to the voice of a very frantic and already hoarse announcer over the airwaves:

  “We have vanquished the enemy! We have shown the world our prowess! We have taught the Zionists a lesson they will never forget! The count of fighter planes shot down by our brave Arab pilots has gone to fifty-six, no it’s one hundred fifty-seven! The Zionists are dropping like flies…”

  The infectious euphoria that was whipping the girls into a hysterical frenzy including Esther, the Jewish girl in our class, now gripped us, exceeding that of the radio announcer’s (if that could have been humanly possible).

  “We’re fighting the Zionists,” the girls exclaimed exultantly. “We’re decimating them. Palestine will be ours once more.”

  Miss Donk chose this moment of hysterical invincibility amongst the girls to assert her authority. “Girls, turn off that radio and sit down right this minute,” she ordered in her quivering falsetto voice. Her timing could not have been more unfortunate. The girls stopped mid-cheer and turned silently in her direction. What they saw was not a flushed old lady trying to get her class in order. They saw the ENEMY. They rose slowly to their feet and menacingly advanced towards her.

  “You Americans are responsible for our suffering. You support the Zionists. You hate us. We will show you what we will do to ALL the Americans in this country,” they shouted as they began to crowd threateningly around Miss Donk. Poor, terrified, Miss Donk did not wait to hear any more. She ran out of the classroom panic-stricken, sobbing loudly, never to be seen in the area again. Had she waited around for just five more days, she would have seen another scenario altogether. She would have witnessed the Arab world reeling in disbelief as its triumphant dreams of might and invincibility came crashing to the ground in their abysmal defeat by the Zionist war machine and all-out American support in what came to be humiliatingly known as the Six Day War.

  At the first lull in the ongoing hostilities of the war, schools were closed, finals were cancelled, and we were told to pack our bags and go to our respective homes. But before leaving, my friends and I begged permission to visit Amber, who had not appeared at school since the outbreak of the war. She had moved out of the boarding school that year. We walked into Amber’s home and it was a house in mourning. Her mother was dressed in black, the normally impeccable apartment was in complete disarray, and suitcases were ready by the door. They met us with tears streaming down their faces.

  “What has happened to our home in Jerusalem?” Amber cried. “Do we still have one? My grandfather’s dead, Fadia, he couldn’t handle it. They’ve taken his home. It’s been in our family forever…”

  And she broke down in loud wails and sobs. The Israelis were emptying Jerusalem brutally and systematically of all its Arab inhabitants and her beloved grandfather was now dead from a heart attack after being turned out of his ancestral home. I will forever remember her mother’s grim, pain-wracked face as she endured the bleakest moment of her life. Amber would never regain her teenage lightheartedness. The following day, all of us were shipped off on chartered flights from an airport in complete pandemonium, as no one yet knew what air battles were raging in the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian air spaces.

  The fallout of the 1967 War came soon enough. It brought in the darkest hour to the Arab world since the Arab–Israeli war of 1948. What was most painful of all was that Gamal Abdel Nasser had not calculated that this war would happen, he had merely been bluffing in a game of brinksmanship with the ‘Zionist entity.’ In May of 1967, riding high on the adulation of the Pan-Arabs in a show of bravado of Arab might, Nasser had abruptly dismissed a UN peacekeeping force that kept the Straits of Tiran of Egypt open for the oil tankers and Israeli shipping to the West, and moved troops to Israel’s border. Less than two weeks later and with no attendant saber rattling, Israel attacked Syria, Egypt, and Jordan in a US
-supported blitzkrieg. Six days later, the bulk of Arab armies were destroyed, and the holy city of Jerusalem, the fertile, cosmopolitan and historically-rich West Bank of Jordan, the oil-rich Sinai of Egypt and the water-rich and highly strategic Golan Heights of Syria … an area three times the size of Occupied Palestine of 1948 … were captured by the Zionists, who made it no secret that these territories were theirs to keep. Gamal Abdul Nasser had lost the war.

  In the immediate aftermath of the defeat, one important change came for Arab citizenry. No longer could their rulers soothe them with the magic balm of the Arabic word that was raised like a mighty but imaginary sword to fight Zionist occupation of Palestine. The humiliating defeat of the Arabs in 1967 was a reality-check for the Palestinians now into their second generation of refugees … a wake-up call to take up the armed struggle and regain Palestine with their own men. The loss of so much territory in so little time was more than the Arab world could bear. The reaction on the streets of the Arab cities was growing sympathy for the Palestinian cause and wide support for the ‘fedayeen’ (Palestinian guerrillas). In Lebanon it not only let loose the passions of 150,000 Palestinian refugees crammed into the camps but those of the Arab nationalists, young and old, in support of the fedayeen. The Palestinian guerilla movement and the mass Arab move to support it posed a threat to the Arab despots who had reached their seats of power through subservience to the superpowers of the Cold War. The Achilles heel of these Arab potentates, with their love of power that exceeded their love for their fellow Arabs, was now plainly exposed. It became clear to all that the tears shed for Palestine were but crocodile tears and a growing divide grew between the governors and the governed, particularly in Lebanon.

  What the 1967 war did to our generation was demarcate our lives as Arabs into black and white: Arabs versus Zionists. Those supporting the Palestinian cause were friends and those supporting the Zionists were the enemy. The Palestinian right of return became tied to Arab honor and dignity that was now in tatters. Dejection and despair gripped the Arab world as the harsh iron fists of its dictators, purportedly secular rulers, became even more absolute. The dictators needed only the accusation of ‘consorting with the enemy’ to rid themselves of any opposition. The dream of secular rule that had moved generations of Arabs to aspire to a united Arab world was hideously disfigured as secular rule morphed into ruthless demagoguery. Meanwhile, the democracies of the West looked discreetly away as puppet-rulers provided them easy access to the desert statelets’ oil fields at the cost of the livelihoods and dreams of generations upon generations of Arab citizens being held hostage under their rule.

  I regarded my acclimatization as an Arab to be complete the day I was invited to spend an afternoon with my American friends attending the American Community School (ACS) of Beirut, which was exclusively open to Americans only. As I stepped into the room full of young American teenagers, I felt surprisingly overwhelmed by the same oddness I had felt upon entering BESG that September morning in 1965, seemingly so long ago. That feeling of disaffection was now transferred to the ACS crowd. Sprawled in cliques on sofas in the lounge and standing around in groups in the corridor, they squealed and laughed loudly and spoke to one another across the room in self-consciously staged sound bites. I felt worlds apart from these young Americans. A flashback to my first day of first grade came vividly to my mind with its accompanying feeling of alienation. I had come full circle and returned to the point I had started from. The Arab-Israeli conflict didn’t mean much to these teenagers and none had more than a passing interest in the Middle Eastern countries they were living in and where their parents were working, be it Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. I could no longer relate to their general topics of interest of sports and dances. An overwhelming desire to return to BESG and sit on the tiny straw stools with my new friends on the other side of the teachers’ toilets tugged at my heart. I now felt as one with my new BESG friends, who shared the same destiny as mine.

  Graduation day from BESG finally arrived on June 16, 1968. I opened my eyes blissfully that morning with the liberating thought that today would be the last day I would have to answer to Miss Jureidini. My three long years at the Beirut Evangelical School for Girls were finally at an end. Our day began joyfully as we laid out our beautiful white dresses that were the customary graduating outfits for high school girls. After we paraded to our seats, we settled down in our chairs, convinced that the best part of the day was now behind us and resigned ourselves to two long hours of empty words by the authorities of BESG.

  After the perfunctory opening with the national anthem, word from the principal and a prayer from the evangelical priest, our guest speaker was introduced. Suddenly, a gasp of wonder escaped from the audience. A tall, handsome Shi’a cleric in black flowing robes and a black turban pushed back to expose a charming forelock, was climbing the steps to the podium in big confident strides. Waves of whispers rippled up and down the rows of parents asking one another incredulously, “Who is he?” and even more urgently, “A Shi’a sheikh at the Evangelical school?”

  Giggles emanated from our section seated behind the podium at this novel choice of speaker. Upon reaching the speaker’s stand, the cleric formally greeted the parents and teachers, and then stunned the audience even more as he slowly turned his back on them and faced us. His intelligent green eyes mesmerized us into a rapt, respectful hush. Our high school graduation speaker was none other than the Imam Moussa al Sadr, an Irani Shi’a cleric of Lebanese descent, mufti of Tyre, the future champion and icon of the militant Lebanese Shiite movement, who would be the first in modern Lebanese history to put a face and a voice to the as yet invisible Shi’a. This man, with his larger than life persona, instantly turned our mundane graduation ceremony into a singularly unique one. He addressed us as the ‘ummahat al sighar’ (the young mothers) who would be the power behind future Arab patriots. At our young age motherhood was not something immediate, but the manner in which he spoke his simple words of guidance made the contents special. As he had promised, his speech was brief, but for those of us who had become captivated by the expressive rise and fall of his mellifluous voice, it was too brief. Very few of us had any notion who this black-turbaned sheikh with the incredible eyes was before he spoke, but none of us forgot him after he spoke.

  On this particular graduation day, BESG seemed to have done something close to revolutionary for the first time in its conservative history. Why would a school with such an openly pro-West outlook with respect to education and politics choose someone like Imam Moussa al Sadr to be the guest speaker in 1968?

  The answer was tied in with the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Cold War. In the early days of the Palestinian resistance, before the formal inauguration of the PLO under Yasser Arafat in 1964, the Shiite Lebanese in the South bonded with the stateless refugees who they viewed to be in the same boat with respect to human rights and the Israeli aggressor. The southerners warmly welcomed, protected, and fought with the PLO commandos. Angered by the protection the southern villagers provided for the Palestinian commandos, the Zionists bombed Lebanese territory with air and mortar attacks that destroyed homes, harvests and livestock; they kidnapped suspected Lebanese pro-Palestinian guerilla sympathizers (many of whom are still incarcerated in Israeli prisons to this day) as a collective punishment, thinking this would stir the Lebanese against the Palestinian resistance movement. Such aggression by the Israelis did stir the Lebanese villagers into action, but not in the direction the Zionists wanted. Instead, the enraged villages demanded air raid shelters, trenches, and arms from their government to defend themselves from the enemy. The government’s response was to send armored personnel, forcibly evacuate the inhabitants under the threat of Zionist attacks, then studiously ignore what damage befell their livelihoods after the attacks occurred, rendering the Shi’a of the south invisible once again. Displaced and forsaken, many villagers had no choice but to abandon their destroyed villages and become Lebanese refugees alongside the Palesti
nian refugees and Lebanese poor in Beirut’s ever-expanding misery belt.

  Small Communist parties established in Lebanon from the 1940s began to fill the vacuum of the nonexistent government in the south with humanitarian needs and sympathetic politics, gaining strength among the southern Lebanese villagers (a mixture of Shi’a, Maronites and Druze), who became increasingly drawn to the nascent left-wing political movement. Bolstered by Communist support, villagers began to refuse to vacate their villages under threat from Israel in unprecedented open acts of civil disobedience that made it clear that the Communist Party was making headway amongst the Southern villagers. A gathering of such frustrated and angry villagers in Bint Jbeil, the southernmost town bordering Israel, brought Imam Moussa Al Sadr, then mufti of Tyre, to their side. He addressed them as the ‘Disinherited of the Earth,’ an electrifying prophetic phrase that hit a raw nerve in the Shi’a villagers. It answered their anguished cries and threw an open challenge to those most hated by the Shi’a villagers: the Shi’a feudal landlords. Imam Moussa al Sadr called for the creation of a Lebanese resistance to prevent the loss of Lebanon in the way that Palestine had been lost. By attaching the Palestinian question to the Shiites’ civil demands, he brought on board those whose voices were not being heard alongside the Lebanese Shi’a, further broadening his base of supporters. With his charisma, commanding physique, and rousing oratory, Imam Al Sadr won their hearts and allegiance and, most importantly, turned the people of the South away from the Communist Party. A nationwide strike called by Imam Al Sadr to “make the South a part of Lebanon” paralyzed the country with demonstrators shouting, “We want arms.” When they began to rally around him in the tens of thousands, and militant groupings began to form, this new face and voice of the Lebanese Shi’a, leaning a great deal to the right, began to be heard by the very hard-of-hearing Maronite Establishment. The government decided to woo Imam Moussa al Sadr – hence his appearance at our graduation ceremony.