Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 28
A faction representing one of the big warlords would decide they needed to test a competing faction’s power. The easiest and shortest test was by wresting full control over a particular street. The challenging faction would cook up a pre-decided argument over right-of-way with the first car from the opposing faction to drive through. The argument would accelerate into a full-blown gun battle in a matter of three minutes and gunmen from both sides would dash to their sandbagged battlements beginning their shooting en route cowboy style. After several deafening and lethal rounds of gunfire and death and destruction of everyone and everything in that street, the guns would suddenly fall silent and one side would withdraw from the area. Both protagonists would have seen enough of the fighting prowess of the other for future ‘alqas … the only raison d’etre of the battle.
Silencing the guns went according to a well-written script and with well-versed actors as well. For the disengagement of the two, the script went as follows:
A masqool (thug-in-charge) of a certain stature with a certain level of influence on both sides would be brought in from his house to the area of the mashkal (problem) by ‘neutral’ elements in a convoy of identical bullet-proof SUVs, all carrying the same license plate or none at all. He would force a junior masqool from each side to communicate with the other over walkie talkies. Once a final agreement to stop the shooting was reached, the two junior masqools would appear at each end of the alley-turned-battleground and walk to the middle, where the important masqool would be standing amidst a retinue of sycophants. The junior masqools would shake hands and hug, then give the all-clear signal that declared the gun battle over as suddenly as it had begun. Meanwhile the ambulances would already be at their daily task of picking up bodies and body parts and fire engines would be dousing flames of shattered homes and dreams.
Much of our militia education came from our driver, Mohammed Mzannar, an exAmal militiaman. With war came severe unemployment and a large percentage of poor and uneducated young men such as Mzannar found no other income outside the militias’ monthly stipend that was temptingly generous. Drugs were passed around freely to increase the killing potential of the inexperienced young boys and atrocities were committed under the influence by otherwise decent men had they been born in times of peace. One of his comrades-in-arms’ favorite pastime while they whiled away long hours in empty buildings waiting for the signal to start shooting, was a ghoulish contest of who could blow bigger holes into buildings on the ‘other side’ with their RPGs. They called it ‘RPG roulette.’ The high point of the game was to watch the walls collapse from the targeted building and expose terrified or dead apartment dwellers as they cowered under sinks or on stairwells.
In those days of social turmoil, random destruction, and triggerhappy militia men, one never knew what to expect to see on the streets. The quick-witted Lebanese turned the radio into a lifesaver. Beirut radio’s terminologies normally used to inform motorists which streets to avoid due to congestion, amneh and salkeh (safe and clear) began to be used by one creative rado announcer to warn motorists which streets were free of kidnapping and sniper fire. The two words quickly became the catchword for the civil war, so much so that a Beiruti couple named their newborn twin girls Amneh and Salkeh.
I was doing my grocery shopping one afternoon when two militia boys rushed past yelling urgently into their walkie talkies about some gun battle that had just broken out somewhere in West Beirut. One had three revolvers stuffed in his belt and the other had two bullet belts crisscrossing his chest, and two Kalashnikovs slung over each shoulder. Both were carrying bouquets of red roses. It was Mother’s Day.
***
In 1983, the United States formally became one of the factions fighting one another in Lebanon. It permanently lost its exalted role as arbiter after its US warship New Jersey lobbed a shell into the Chouf Mountains in support of the Phalange militias and killed one Druze sheikh. In response to its impressive military action, omnipotent New Jersey was nicknamed the New Jursah (embarrassment) by the irrepressible Lebanese. This jursah was followed by yet another embarrassing but far bloodier failure: the CIA-funded car bomb targeting Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, which exploded in a southern suburb of Beirut, killed eighty civilians and missed Sheikh Fadlallah by minutes. The United States’ might and power, weighing in behind local supporters for Israeli control over Lebanon, had the opposite effect of the intention to weaken those who resisted Israeli hegemony. Not having the necessary weaponry to retaliate in kind, young Shi’a, Sunni and Christian Orthodox men and women turned their bodies into mighty and powerful human bombs as they detonated themselves against Western and Israeli targets in Lebanon. Westerners began to be abducted in increasing numbers and our golden-haired children suddenly came under closer scrutiny than usual at checkpoints en route to school. They learned to speak only Arabic when the driver slowed down at the checkpoints.
Irrespective of whether we had made the right decision to bring our children into the height of the civil war or not … and there were much heated discussion on this topic, mainly instigated by me in moments of frustration … we could not turn back. Adnan and I had become irreversibly committed. So I reverted to my time-honored tactic of weaving a cocoon around our children’s world to keep the ugliness of the war in Lebanon out of their lives. We did not tell them the complete story of what was happening in their country. There was no mention of religion in our house and they spent most of their early childhoods vaguely thinking they were Christian because of our frequent visits to cathedrals on our trips to Europe and Adnan’s collection of Byzantine icons that were displayed throughout our house. Once they started school, they realized that everyone else had a religion, Sunni Muslim, Shi’a Muslim, Druze, Maronite Christian, Orthodox Christian, Protestant Christian etc. My answer to their question of religion was always the same, “It doesn’t matter now, maybe it will later in your life, but not now, just be good.” At some point they settled on being Muslim but weren’t too clear whether they were Sunni or Shi’a. We left them to find their way. They were young and loved everyone. Why burden them with unnecessary hate? I carefully monitored their exposure to the media to exclude anything that related to violence whether it was in movies, television programs or the evening news – particularly the evening news. The moment they heard the signature opening tune for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC), the local television network, they knew that they had to be in bed or else. But it was like trying to hide behind one’s finger, as they always uncovered the truth. Children are far more attuned to truth than adults.
Six months after we moved back to Beirut, Amal began a long siege of Palestinian camps in southern Beirut and around Sidon to crush the Palestinian presence in Lebanon’s politics after it became apparent that PLO militants exiled to Tunis had reentered Beirut, regrouped, rearmed and were threatening Syrian hegemony over Lebanon. The Lebanese Preparatory School (LPS) that our children attended was a street away from both the airport road and the Sabra and Chatila camps. The ‘War of the Camps,’ between Amal and the Palestinians broke out at noon on a school day when Adnan was in Abu Dhabi and I was alone in the house. I didn’t need to hear any radio news; I could clearly hear the rat-tat-tat of the artillery and the crashes of the mortars from my house. No matter which radio station I turned to, I heard nothing that helped still my panic. Each radio station gave the slant that supported its side and if they had no vested interest, I got music and propaganda. I shut my eyes tight trying very hard not to think the unthinkable, my knees buckling beneath me as my ears heard of battles raging around my children’s school with the injured and dead by the dozens and heavy artillery from all sides. I found myself running out of the house and dashing up and down the street willing my children transported into my arms. I gasped for air from sheer anxiety and prayed in loud sobs to God to bring my children home safely. While I prayed and panicked, our driver had herded Munira, Amer, Ghassan and their cousin Bushra into the car and was sp
eeding through a deadly gauntlet of indiscriminate fire as both sides let loose with all the weaponry they possessed. When the car finally crested the curve leading to the house, I collapsed to the sidewalk, numb with relief. They tumbled out of the car, wild eyed and frantic, interrupting one another about being thrown into the car like bags of potatoes by Mzannar, who had ordered them to bend over double in the car with their hands over their heads and of the sound of bullets flying around their car. I could only stare blankly in a catatonic state of intense relief, with only one thought going round and round in my head. How right my mother was in her unshakeable belief in Fate. Only such faith could keep one sane in insane moments like these. The children were running into the house still reliving their ride and cursing the Israelis for the shooting and I did not correct them.
That evening, I stood with my 8-year-old daughter Munira and -year-old daughter Munira and year-old son Amer on our terrace that overlooked the southern entrance to Beirut where Sabra and Chatila lay and watched the battle raging below. Streaker bullets and artillery shells arched over our house from Amal’s position around the camps below to crash into the Chouf Mountains behind us. Amal’s shells were aimed at none other than Suq el Gharb, the tranquil village where Adnan and I had spent the summer of 1975 with his family before Lebanon began to self-destruct. Suq el Gharb’s sweeping view of the coastline from south to north had turned it into a vantage point for the artillery of the Druze and Palestinian fighters in the battle against the Alawite Syrian and Lebanese Shiite for control. Amer kept his eyes straight ahead as he traced the path of the streaker bullets, and declared heatedly, “Mom, I hate the Israelis, they’re killing our people.” Munira turned to me wide eyed and waited silently for my response. She knew that the case wasn’t so; she had heard snippets from Mzannar’s conversation with me.
“Oh no,” I thought to myself in alarm, “what should I tell them? How could I word the truth without confusing them?” These people fighting one another had been allies against the common enemy. And now one faction, Amal, was doing to the Palestinians exactly what the Zionists and the Maronites had wanted to do. If only Adnan were here. He had his mother’s knack for choosing words that made matters seem so much less disastrous. He was trapped in Abu Dhabi trying desperately to join us through overland routes or sea as the airport was now officially closed and would remain so for another year. I had no choice but to tell it like it was.
“These are not the Israelis this time,” I answered quietly. Amer looked up at me, eyes round with astonishment, while Munira turned away and shut her eyes tight. “What do you mean? Who are they then?” Amer demanded angrily. I chose my words carefully, “Some Lebanese with lots of guns who want to control everything that gives them more power and money are shooting at the Palestinians because they don’t want them to be stronger than they are. From the hills behind us, other Lebanese have sided with the Palestinians to keep the Lebanese down there from winning.”
“Oh” was their brief answer as they both turned back to gaze at the hellhole in front of them. Then with a deep sigh far older than his years, Amer shrugged his shoulders silently and walked slowly back into the house. Munira remained rooted on the terrace fixated by the mortar shells as they exploded in a blinding white light below. I felt sick to my stomach with confusion.
We had brought our children to Lebanon in a fit of patriotism so that they could grow amongst their compatriots. All night the mortar shells continued to whistle and crash. Whoosh! Crash! Whoosh! Crash! I lay down on the bed at the feet of my sleeping children and began to count the dull thuds of cannonballs from the mountains beyond. How did we end up in such danger? The thuds of the cannons become one with the beats of my heart as I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Car bombs, assassinations, and ethnic cleansing killed and maimed countless of innocents in the coming years. The vestiges of community and decency as we knew them collapsed into abject apathy. Shopkeepers stopped dressing their dummies or replacing their broken glass facades. Once grand buildings were reduced to pock-marked shells stripped down to their skeletal frames. Nonetheless they provided a place to sleep for the steadily increasing homeless refugees from the south and other uninhabitable parts of the country. Car windows were smashed so often from wayward bullets that owners strapped for cash stopped replacing them altogether. It was not strange to see a man with his elderly mother in a car bereft of windows wearing ski hats and goggles against the wind. Signs in elaborate Arabic calligraphy were posted on the entrance to government buildings, hospitals, and public parks requesting all entrants to check in their guns at the door. Candles were the most important item to store in our homes. They replaced the erratic electricity that was more often off than on. For a modern touch, portable gas lights replaced the candles, their white glow embedded into the memory of those who were students during those dark days as they prepared for their diplomas and final exams. Gaily-colored jerry cans in different categories of quality lined the kitchens in both rich and poor homes to keep everyone as clean and well hydrated as possible on days when the water supply shrank to a trickle or stopped altogether. As the years dragged on in internecine turf battles, water-drilling rigs began their rhythmic beats for artesian wells and private diesel motors spewed their black smoke to supply electricity to hospitals, homes and blocks of apartment buildings as poor and rich alike gave up on their government and turned their homes into self-sustaining units.
As is often the case, our children’s play reflected their reality. They spent long hours piling cement breeze-blocks with their neighbors and cousins to build a check point in the middle of the road running past our house. They divided themselves into two groups: one group designated themselves ‘militiamen’ manning the checkpoint (the older ones), the rest (the younger ones) were designated ‘normal citizens’ passing through. Safe passage was only possible by uttering the magic word, majlis nuwwab (member of Parliament). And that magic word was whispered into the ears of a select few (the relatives) while others (the neighbors) were kept in ignorance and frisked, gagged, and tied for having no important connections to protect them. The children bought militia fatigues and alarmingly realistic Kalashnikov machine guns. There was no way we could dissuade them; they needed to act out their fears. Every afternoon, they marched in single file appropriately attired and armed into the bushes surrounding our house on reconnaissance missions against the enemy, to find it before it found them.
Politicians changed sides; militiamen did too. Truces were brokered, often coinciding with the end of the month so the necessary salaries could be distributed (often from the same paymaster). Christian militias held their fire in Ramadan against the Muslim militias at the hour for breaking the fast; Muslims held theirs during Christmas and Easter mass. Weaponry was tested freely on a nation considered outside of existence and outside of any human rights. In spite of all this, the Lebanese grimly hugged their tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea. There was no mass exodus. When the guns paused for replenishing, those who left their homes under fire, returned, rebuilt, and started over. We became part of this grim shuffle. Twice during the war years we packed up and left for Vienna to fill in necessary empty patches in our children’s education. The war pressed on, destroying livelihoods and souls. With the small shrug and rueful smile of accepting what was their Fate, battle-weary Lebanese faced circumstance and did what was in their power to keep their heads above water and their families fed and safe. West Beirut turned into a grey and bleak city crisscrossed with electricity wires stolen from government lines, broken glass windows replaced with cardboard or black plastic garbage bags, and mounds of rubbish everywhere. Shabbily-dressed people shuffled expressionless to and fro, oblivious to any traffic. There were no longer any sidewalks or streets, only potholes and checkpoints.
Beirut now belonged to the displaced refugees, mainly of the south and Bekaa. Many were born in the capital and knew their forcefully vacated village only by name. There was no femininity or masculinity on the streets, n
o pride or self respect, no tears, just apathy and blank stares which saw nothing while everyone plodded on, ticking off one day after the next in a country where bread and parsley prices were pegged to the dollar as were the rocks that came from the sides of the mountain. The roads jammed with trucks and dilapidated cars in an endless convoy of exhausted humanity stretching the length of the coastline laden with mattresses, cooking utensils and children as they edged forward from south to north and once more from north to south, moving out of the frying pan and into the fire on Lebanon’s potholed roads. West Beirut was the final destination for most at the rate of 20,000 a day, crowding onto sidewalks or vacant parking lots. Those with connections moved into apartments requisitioned by local militias, their former owners having either fled or been forcibly removed by the militias who saw them as expendable.
A gentle friend of my son Ghassan, a Palestinian Orthodox Christian boy, was terrorized as a young child when militiamen broke into the family home and locked him and his handicapped brother, Emil, in the bathroom. They knocked his mother unconscious and the attack was enough to frighten them into leaving their apartment in Ras Beirut. Another dear friend of mine whose husband is a Protestant from the Chouf, the losing confession in the Christian–Druze ‘War of the Mountains’ in the mid-eighties, opened her apartment door in the upscale residential Ain el Teeneh area of Beirut to be greeted by well-placed sons of a politician favored by the Syrians, giving them a non-negotiable offer to sell their apartments for peanuts or face the consequences. They sold and bitterly watched these sons and their father rise meteorically during the developments of the civil war as icons of nationalism and piety.
In my heart, I could not write off Lebanon as evil. It remained a country of stark contrasts, cruel at times and at others tenderly compassionate. I walked out of a bookstore off Hamra Street one afternoon and saw a crowd of young armed men looking agitatedly up at something with a lot of arm waving and instructions, “to the left, no to the right …” Curiosity got the better of me and I stepped closer to the crowd despite their obvious job description of hired fighters. I looked up in the direction of all the gesticulation with some trepidation, expecting to see someone threatening to jump. Instead I saw a distraught old woman on her balcony and a militiaman next to her, staring with much consternation at the balcony below. The object of all the traffic-stopping attention was a lone canary, obviously much loved and just as obviously terrified of flying. The young militiaman next to the old woman bent over the balcony rail as the canary edged within his grasp and scooped it up to a loud roar of claps and cheers. The old woman hugged the militiaman thanking him profusely. The next morning, a 44-year-old Druze lawyer was neatly gunned downed in a parking lot ten meters away from the canary’s balcony by two teenagers on a motorbike, very likely from that canary-loving crowd of militiamen.