Brownies and Kalashnikovs Read online

  We arrived to find the bookstore in the same chaotic, jumbled state of transition that the remainder of the sheikhdom was in. In charge of All Prints were its two main pillars, Sa’adallah, an old Coptic Egyptian clerk and determinedly confirmed bachelor, and Hilda, a plump, cheerful Indian secretary from Goa. The salesmen and drivers were an international collection from Baluchistan, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The difficulty with this mix of employees was that they all hated one another personally, religiously, and politically. The only two who got along were Sa’adallah and Hilda. They attended the same Indian social center and its Friday night dances. I was twenty-three and Adnan twenty-eight and we were in charge of men and women twice our age who, save for Sa’adallah and Hilda, made it no secret they were less than overwhelmed by our fresh-faced entrée into their lives. But more daunting than the international tangle among our personnel, was the appallingly chaotic state All Prints was in. Boxes of stationery covered in thick layers of dust, and teetering towers of paperbacks swayed precariously on whatever floor and shelf space was free. Well-fed cockroaches and mice had the run of the place. The customers were desperate enough for reading material to forego dignity and squat with legs akimbo while they sorted through piles of paperbacks in English, French and Arabic. Hilda and Sa’adallah’s had an ‘office’ at the back of the bookstore. A stool and a school desk were provided for Sa’adallah to do his accounts. Hilda had a three-legged desk (her knee providing the fourth) to do her typing, one hand on the keys, the other to keep the typewriter from slipping to the floor.

  We dived in head first – literally in some sections of the store – to turn the bookstore into a bookstore, prodding a very reluctant staff that had been quite comfortable up until now with the non-work they were being paid for. It was the cleaning that got on everyone’s nerves. They’d been doing just fine, they could be overheard grousing as they slapped a dirty rag back and forth across a counter, so why were we insisting on making them do what they regarded to be outside of their job description? Adnan and I plunged in, hoping to set an example and lure them into action. Naturally we ended up doing most of the work. On one of those early days of putting the shop in order, Adnan walked in with a group of book publishers to introduce them to me as I was in charge of ordering the books in English (and French, which I barely understood). I popped out disheveled and dust-covered from under a shelf of stationery I had just begun to negotiate. Before I could say a word, I heard Adnan apologetically inform his guests while standing next to me that he couldn’t find his wife, turning slightly in my direction with a warning but ever so polite nod, she must have gone to walk the dog!

  Everyone in Abu Dhabi came to our bookstore. The global collection of humanity that congregated in this tiny but loaded emirate was extraordinary. Abu Dhabi nationals visited our bookstore with falcons perched on their arms, fearsome even with the hand-stitched leather hood that covered their piercing eyes. Other more benign locals came asking for pens that wrote English. Ambassadors, office boys, doctors, lawyers, janitors, urban planners, telephone operators, house helpers, the top brass of Abu Dhabi’s brand-new army on loan from Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, and Egypt rubbed shoulders in our bookstore, as everyone partook equally in the common pursuit of the written word.

  Despite the physically challenging work we undertook – Adnan woke up every morning at 3 a.m. to get the newspapers personally from the airport, to keep them from being sold to rival newspaper distributors by our own employees – it was an exciting time to be in the Gulf. Most importantly, Abu Dhabi was not Saudi Arabia. It had a wise ‘open door’ policy for any potential entrepreneur, a blank slate for anyone who wanted to have a go at striking it rich. The modest hotels were overwhelmed with demands for rooms. Businessmen decked out in suit and tie asleep on sofas in the lobby became a common sight. The sofas went for a fee, of course. And those who had found that sofa to sleep on considered themselves fortunate among the rush of hopefuls landing in droves in this desert-oil bonanza of opportunity. The prospects for success were infinite as Abu Dhabi had nothing but money – and needed everything.

  Lucrative deals abounded as Abu Dhabi acquired everything, from traffic lights to supermarkets, uniforms for the army, navy and police and desks for them to sit behind, all for the first time. A cacophony of construction surrounded us as government ministries, palaces for the sheikhs, villa compounds for the expatriates, school buildings, apartment high rises, and of course, floods of five-star hotels went up. The building crane began to be referred to as Abu Dhabi’s national bird. Streets were paved and at long last, we had sidewalks. Buildings sprouted at an unbelievable speed in lots that had been seemingly empty the day before. Architects from around the world had carte blanche from the as yet unsophisticated nouveau riche Bedouin owners to embellish the streets of Abu Dhabi with whatever design ideas they desired. It became commonplace to see Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Cadillacs filled to capacity with wives, servants and children in the front seats and goats placidly chewing their cud in the back where they lay on bales of alfalfa, recently bought from the market.

  Abu Dhabi’s security personnel were a hastily put together hodge-podge of impoverished Omanis, Baluchis, and Pakistanis, poorly qualified and poorly outfitted. We watched army parades in those early years celebrating Sheikh Zayed’s ascent to the throne that were a confusion of arms and legs that rose and fell independently of one another to a band that struck more sour notes than correct ones.

  Outside a government ministry next door to our apartment, there were two army guards on sentry duty. They played cards during the day and when we went to bed so did they. Then, one night, we heard the unmistakable pop of a gunshot. Rushing to the balcony we saw one of the guards prostrate on the ground and his partner trying desperately to revive him. Adnan ran down in his pajamas to assist in any way he could. He reached the guard lying face down on the sidewalk, his hand still clutching his aged rifle while his partner forgot any Arabic he knew with the emergency at hand and panicked in Baluchi. Adnan gingerly felt for injuries in the tiny guard’s body outfitted in a uniform five sizes too big for him, then turned him over to check his heart and any stomach injuries while a crowd from the neighboring apartments gathered silently. As he cradled the guard’s head in his arms, the man opened his eyes, took one look at the crowd and Adnan and shut them tight with a groan of embarrassment. His blunderbuss had accidentally fired while he was cleaning it and he had fainted from shock.

  To give credit where it is due, Sheikh Zayed was a wise leader for his tiny Emirate. With the lucid Bedouin sense of reality, he had no illusions of his global power and set out to make Abu Dhabi as accommodating and beautiful as possible for his people and those who came to find their fortune. He remained dedicated to his people and as he grew richer so did they. The distribution of wealth remained evenhanded, tribal traditions remained strong and women played a visible role. Women were recruited as passports officials and police officers, encouraged to open their own businesses and to be as educated as they aspired to be without censor so long as they remained respectful of their family’s values and the norms of Islam. Raised in a world of plenty, the young Abu Dhabians, male and female, grew into respectful, soft-spoken, slim and graceful adults with large soulful eyes and an ingrained Bedouin common sense about life matters, but far more naïve than the old Abu Dhabians who were as sharp as their beloved falcons.

  Our landlord Meezar al Suweidi was one of the old Abu Dhabians who had grown up with Sheikh Zayed, fought with and against the British, and was now a tremendously wealthy real-estate landowner. His sons kissed his hand respectfully before they spoke to him and were the epitome of graciousness. They were all educated and occupied important government positions. But Meezar still wore his three-quarter-length thobe and carried his slippers under his arms when he didn’t need to wear them outside of government ministries, and addressed Sheikh Zayed and every man he met by their first name. Old habits die hard and Meezar’s biggest gag was bumm
ing cigarettes from anyone smoking in his environs. There were always two, one in his mouth and the other behind his ear. Another successful joke involved cash that could never pass hands in his presence without making a disappearing act into his front pocket as he took advantage of its rightful owners by pointing to an imaginary distraction.

  There were no barbed-wire fences surrounding expatriate communities as there had been in Aramco’s oil camps. Those non-nationals in Abu Dhabi and the other nearby Emirates of Bahrain, Dubai, Sharjah, Um el Guwein and Ras el Khaima minded their own business, literally. Sheikh Zayed did not lose his throne when girls in sundresses walked along the Corniche and revelers drank to their heart’s content. International decree prevented Saudi Arabia from forbidding such liberties in the Emirates. Why were religious extremists allowed so much power over the people of Saudi Arabia, and why were those same extremists curtailed in the Emirates, even though their peoples shared the same conservative Islamic values and traditions, and both lacked control over their oil politics? The answer lay with the Al Sa’uds and the Americans in their fear of losing control over Saudi Arabia’s oil. The ruling family was all too aware of the big question concerning their legitimacy as rulers over Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

  Abu Dhabi and the Gulf Emirates had the same tribal structure as Saudi Arabia, but that was the only common ground they shared. The Emirates developed so differently from Saudi Arabia because they were not Wahhabi-controlled. They followed the traditional conservative Muslim Sunni beliefs within tightly-knit extended families and as long as Arab and Muslim mores were observed, modernity and progress were accepted by the elders of the family. There was plenty for everyone. Fountains and public gardens sprouted everywhere as Sheikh Zayed developed a particular love affair with water and greenery. This was especially interesting to Adnan and turned to be our pot of gold as he focused his attention on the ‘greening’ of Abu Dhabi, while I ran the bookstore that we had finally whipped into shape. Our days were full but we never forgot our promise to ourselves that we would go back to Lebanon in the very near future.

  ***

  We were driving home to Abu Dhabi City from the desert oasis of Al Ain on February 9, 1975, four months after we had left Lebanon, when a news flash interrupted the regular radio program. Adnan hurriedly stopped the car at the side of the road to make sure he caught every word. The announcer read the headline, “Maarouf Saad has been shot.” Clamping his hands on his face, Adnan let out a grief-stricken moan. Mr. Maarouf Saad, the magnetic former mayor of Sidon, had been hit by a bullet that seemed to come from nowhere as he led Sidon’s fishermen in a peaceful protest march against a planned fishing monopoly by a powerful Christian Maronite and former president of the republic, Camille Chamoun. The bullet came from a Lebanese ISF sharpshooter and crumpled Maarouf Sa’ad to the ground in full view of a horrified Lebanese public watching the evening news. He died nine days later.

  Adnan’s heart broke over the loss of his boyhood hero, whom he had regarded as the only humane and reasonable voice in the sharkinfested Lebanese political scene. The people of Sidon completely lost control in their grief and rage. Massive anti-government demonstrations took place on the streets of Sidon and the Lebanese army sharpshooters kept on shooting. Nineteen people died and ninety-one were wounded. Tensions jumped from a shaken Sidon in late March to Tripoli, where it exploded in bloody clashes between Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and the Lebanese army. Adnan’s predicted ‘rivers of blood’ gushed forth with a vengeance. Militant extremists from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian issue took their positions in the Lebanese arena in preparation for a mad killing spree.

  Many cite the bullet that killed Ma’arouf Sa’ad as the spark that ignited Lebanon’s civil war, but alongside February 9, 1975 is another date marked as the formal beginning of the Lebanese civil war: April 13, 1975, depending on which side is debating the issue.

  On this date, Pierre Gemayel was consecrating a local church in Ain Rummaneh, a poor Christian neighborhood, when shots were fired at him, killing his bodyguard. At the sound of the first bullet in Pierre Gemayel’s direction, the Phalange militia, armed and simmering, snapped into action fanning out up and down the street itching for revenge. A city bus filled with Palestinian refugees haplessly trundled into the ambush on its scheduled route. Twenty-seven Palestinian men, women and children were killed at point-blank range. News of the shooting spread at lightning speed throughout Beirut, where tensions were already high, to armed and simmering members of the Palestinian and Lebanese pro-Palestinian militias who raced to pre-designated battle stations on street corners and rooftops all over the city. Many previous shootouts had taken place between the Phalange, the government forces and the Palestinians. Some say the attempted assassination of Pierre Gemayel was in retaliation for the shooting of two Palestinians at a Maronite roadblock the preceding week, whose memorial service the Palestinians on the ill-fated bus had just attended.

  There is an ironic Arabic saying that seems fitting here concerning what sparked the civil war:

  “The reasons are many but the death is one.”

  ***

  Angel of Mercy

  The projected rivers of blood were held back temporarily during the summer of 1975. A ceasefire took hold that July bringing with it the illusion that the conflict was over. Beaches filled with sunbathers, traffic jammed the streets and restaurants overflowed with holiday makers. The incumbent Prime Minister, Rashid Karami, expressed similar wishful thinking when he announced the ‘all clear’ signal. Most preferred to ignore the signs that all was not clear … that despite the beaches on Lebanon’s placid shores being filled with sunbathers, there was a significant number of these sunbathers whose machine guns remained firmly at their side. What most preferred to see was that the militias had dismantled the barricades and had removed the bags of sand and blocks of cement. But what no one wanted to openly admit was that these barricades still remained in everyone’s mental vision of the ‘other.’

  Throughout that ‘peaceful’ summer the protagonists continued to stockpile weapons that arrived at a steady pace via all the deep sea ports along Lebanon’s coast and overland through Syria. Some weapons came courtesy of the Israelis, some courtesy of Libya, some from Iraq, and still others from the United States and the Soviet Union. Most were funded by Saudi Arabia through its agent, an upcoming billionaire businessman from Sidon, Rafik Hariri, who would eventually become Lebanon’s longest-reigning and most powerful post-war prime minister. No one outside the militias gave the weapon stockpiling any weight, sweeping away any thought of war from their field of vision. “Just saber rattling,” was everyone’s hope against hope, including mine and Adnan’s.

  We actually spent part of our summer holiday that July with my in-laws, who had rented a beautiful old house deep in the Chouf Mountains in a village called Suq el Gharb. Suq el Gharb was still untouched by the war. We could revert to life as we knew it amongst runaway jumbles of orange and pink bougainvillea that spilled everywhere over low-lying garden walls. We took leisurely walks along meandering cobblestone pathways among clusters of white limestone houses, whose walls were covered with fragrant jasmine vines and climbing roses. We settled back on our exclusive porch above the city and relaxed in the soft breeze of the mountain’s evenings. Aromatic and cool, the summer breeze wove its hypnotic magic on us as we gazed at a view that changed color with every variation of light and cloud. The village commanded a striking view overlooking all of Beirut, its airport, its seaport and the mountains beyond. Sadly, this quiet village of Christians and Druze who whiled away their evenings in communal harmony playing cards, would not survive the war. Its breathtaking sweep over the coastal terrain, the mountains, and the city of Beirut and its airport was exactly what the warring factions needed to control the capital and particularly the Palestinian refugee camps that sprawled around its airport. But that would come five years into the war. For now, the battles were halted, a truce had been signed and a new cabinet
was assigned with the main goal of restoring security. Although people still hurried home when night fell, life continued as usual during the day.

  We convinced ourselves that war was at bay and made plans for some badly needed R&R in Europe. On the day before our trip to Europe, I discovered that I was pregnant. We were ecstatic, but none more so than Im Bashar, who immediately asked me not to travel. It was non-negotiable for me; how could travel upset a pregnancy? More importantly, planning and saving for this visit to Europe was what had kept us going during our grueling hours of hard work in Abu Dhabi, and the trip was a treat we were not ready to drop. So against Im Bashar’s advice we traveled to Italy.

  Two weeks later Adnan and I returned from our trip to a quiet Beirut. All was well with Lebanon but it was not with me. On the last leg of our trip in Florence, I had lost the baby. I was taken to a hospital run by nuns who gave us information on a need-to-know basis in Italian, a language we did not yet understand. What we did understand was that I was to remain hospitalized until the nuns decided I was well enough to travel. Maybe they were right to insist on such caution but we were not about to spend the rest of the summer locked up in a hospital room. So we slipped out after paying what was to be the first installment of our stay and flew immediately back into Im Bashar’s capable hands. She was gracious enough to gently remind me only once to listen closely to older and more experienced people’s advice in the future. I took her words to heart and they would be the mainstay of my sanity in the difficult years awaiting us. On August 28, 1975, we were booked to return to Abu Dhabi. I was still not well and my mother-in-law convinced me to stay while I regained my strength. Adnan reluctantly said goodbye and returned to Abu Dhabi to attend to his business.

  His trip to the airport was through a bustling city filled to capacity with summer holidaymakers. But as his MEA flight took off, Beirut imploded. The civil war thundered at breakneck speed from the northern city of Tripoli and consumed Beirut. His flight’s wheels were barely inside the carriage when mortar shells landed on the airport, killing a pilot and copilot as they waited in their cockpit on an MEA flight to Jeddah. An ill-fated traveler at the front of the passenger’s bus just minutes away from the airplane was killed too. It was madness, all-out war. As the fighting engulfed the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Palestinian camps and all roads leading to the airport, the Phalange forces launched a furious mortar attack on downtown Beirut, its commercial center where its banks with their towering piles of gold reserves lined up grandly on Bank Street. That day, September 17, 1975, when blood, gore, and gold bullions mixed with twisted ideology, organized crime and just plain stupidity, was the day that Beirut died. We watched in horror from our eagle’s nest at the macabre fireworks of battle, blindingly bright in the clear summer night as they devoured the city’s heart. What words can I use to express what we felt? Disbelief? Rage? Horror? Panic? Torment? Revulsion? A heavy, unshakeable weight clamped down upon our shoulders while we sobbed at the nightmare burning down below.