Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 31

  And this was where Peres’ calculations fell flat. The ‘iron fist’ against the resistance did not have any effect on the ground. Hezbollah speedily organized large convoys under the protection of its fighters to move large swathes of the southern population to safety in Sidon and Beirut. Careful not to repeat the mistakes of previous refugee crises, Hezbollah promised the villagers that they would be able to return to their homes with compensation for any damage from the bombing while at the same time cooperating with a wide-spread relief effort in the two cities that were receiving the deluge of refugees who had only the clothes on their back.

  Our children joined the wave of relief efforts organized by school and university students in coordination with the Red Cross and the Red Crescent for the first time in their young lives. They fanned out with their schoolmates to distribute food, clothing and toys in the schools that had closed their doors to students and opened them to refugees. Donation spots were announced on television and radio for the general public.

  Never had Lebanon been so organized in facing the fallout of Israeli attacks in its short turbulent history. What made it different from all the others was Hezbollah, who underlined the importance of aiding the refugees through homegrown relief work and ultimately returning them to their homes, thus keeping the south alive and kicking.

  In an unanticipated reaction, unprecedented in Lebanon’s long bloody war with Israel, both Muslims and Christians alike vehemently condemned the attack on Qana. The Lebanese media joined in as well in another first. For the first time since civil war broke out in Lebanon, all the stations began to broadcast identical newscasts. Footage of the 1982 invasion and attacks during the civil war were replayed in between the hourly updates and newscasts. Rousing patriotic songs by Lebanon’s sweetheart, Feyrouz, and the firebrand with the honeyed voice, Marcel Khalife, filled the airwaves in nostalgic salutes to Lebanon.

  I caught Yasmine, Rola, and Ghassan staring at the television screen with disbelieving eyes at images of battles and events that they had lived through but had been oblivious of … events that had been rolled up and out of sight in an act of enforced collective amnesia. I stood staring at the footage with them, unsure of what to say. I was ashamed to admit I had been guilty of this enforced amnesia in my own home with my own children, thinking that ‘ignorance was bliss.’

  Yasmine turned to me eyes wide open in shock, “So that was the thunder that you kept hiding us from under the sink!”

  The Grapes of Wrath offensive forced opened the eyes of this young, apolitical and relatively unscathed Lebanese generation to all the anguish and pain that their tiny country had suffered. Their reaction to the death and destruction around them was to turn into fervent activists against Israeli occupation and fervent supporters of Hezbollah. Pictures of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary General, went up on Rola’s bedroom wall next to Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. To Rola, now, the words of Nasrallah’s talks made far more sense than Eddie’s lyrics. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah spoke of liberation and personally knew of sacrifice for his beliefs. When his son was killed in combat, he had accepted condolences with the words, “Now I can face parents who have lost sons fighting for their country and not feel ashamed.”

  The aftermath of the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ was painful for Israel. Not only did they suffer a first-time-ever defeat by a handful of resistance fighters, increasing numbers of Israelis began to question Israel’s illegal occupation of Lebanon. Daily protests by angry mothers who were losing sons in droves for a cause they did not believe in were staged across Israel. Meanwhile, support in Lebanon for Hezbollah’s fight to regain the south was growing stronger. Its trump card was its even-handed approach to resistance and religion. The fighters, a mix of professions who were fluent in several languages including Hebrew, were from the occupied Lebanese territories, homegrown soldiers who carried out their mission and melted back into civilian life as teachers, newspaper vendors, mechanics, etc. Secrecy was paramount and no one outside of the fighter’s cell had any clue to the fighter’s role in the resistance. On the website of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Fadlallah discusses the finer points of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and of love as the ultimate mover of all religions, not war. This was one resistance unlike any other.

  As Moussa al Sadr gave a face and a voice to the invisible impoverished Shi’a southerners, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah gave a face and a voice to the Lebanese Resistance. They set an unparalleled example to the rest of the Arab world of what a small group of dedicated, highly organized resistance fighters could do. The Lebanese, or factions of them at least, were able to prove their mettle under the right leadership. This was the leadership that my father-in-law had yearned for and this was the victory he could only have dreamed of.

  My School, the Enemy

  Yasmine and Rola became activists for the liberation of the south after the ‘Grapes of Wrath.’ They brought in speakers to their school to shed light on the atrocities commited against those who resisted occupation in the south. It was shortly after the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ that Mrs. Bashour’s true mettle shone through. While the world at large voiced moral outrage against the atrocities committed by Israel and the United States towards those who resisted their hegemony, Yasmine and Rola had their own enforcer of American and Israeli hegemony right there in ACS in the form of the Dean of Students, an Arab who did what she could to undermine their activism. Mrs. Bashour on the other hand, wielded her clout in Yasmine and Rola’s favor.

  It all came to a head during an awards ceremony on June 22, 1998, on the last day of Yasmine and Rola’s junior year in high school. Present at the awards ceremony was a group of American educators there to check ACS’s readiness for accreditation, something Mrs. Bashour had worked very long and very hard to accomplish.

  The Lebanese national anthem was played followed by the American national anthem. Yasmine and Rola and their close friend Dalia Halabi stood up for the Lebanese National Anthem then quietly remained seated during the American one. Sitting next to them were the American educators. The Dean of Students came rushing at them with a hiss and ordered them furiously to stand up immediately. They refused. She dramatically expelled them from the Assembly Hall. They left without objection. After the awards ceremony, Yasmine, Rola and Dalia were summoned to the Dean’s office where she informed them in a voice quivering with anger that they had done the unacceptable. Had it not been the last day of school, they would have been suspended and if it were her personal choice, she would have them expelled. They were forbidden from sitting for their final exams until she saw their parents. And they were forevermore banned from joining any politically-oriented groups such as FIST (Fight Israeli State Terrorism) – established by an American teacher – where, as she so ingeniously put it, they would have an excuse to express their political opinion. Her assistant entered at this point, another Arab, and told them they were following the path of all the other “loser Arabs” because they were speaking from their hearts and not their brains. She went on to tell them that because of their “stupid” behavior they had turned the clock back and now the administration would have to start all over again convincing the Board of Trustees that the student body really does see the “other side” of the story (meaning the Israel-Arab conflict and here in particular referring to the Israeli side). What exactly did she mean by the “other side,” the girls wanted to know? Was she implying that the aim of the Board of Trustees was to induce the students to accept the American-supported peace process and subsequently the imposed normalization between Israel and Lebanon?

  “If you don’t agree with the American government’s official policy in the Arab world, then get your parents to take you out of ACS,” was the Dean’s final comment before she sent them to the Student Affairs Counselor, a new American educator, in Lebanon for the first time.

  The counselor told them that he had revised the situation in a calmer manner and had decided to lessen the
punishment. They would not be expelled but would be placed on disciplinary probation for the fall semester. This meant that these top students would only be allowed to attend classes in their senior year and then go straight home at 3:05 pm. Any parties, extracurricular activities and social events would be off limits to them. These three girls were effectively being put on trial for voicing their opinions and their love for their country.

  While they were in counseling receiving their punishment, the Dean contacted me with an order that I attend a meeting the following day; if I did not, Yasmine and Rola would not be allowed to sit for their exams.

  “Did you know what your daughters did?” was how she began the phone call. She then went on to describe what they had done.

  If she was looking for support, she was speaking to the wrong person. I felt incredibly proud of my daughters, I told her, and I would not have expected them to behave otherwise. I was abruptly told that if I did not agree with the American point of view then I should look for another school. My answer to that was that they were staying in ACS and I would see to it that no action of any kind was taken against our daughters. They had committed no crime and should not be allowed to think that they had. There was nothing in the ACS charter that stated that the students had to stand up for the American national anthem, or that it had to be played in the general assembly twice a year, or that they and their parents had to share the same politics as that of the administration.

  I went to the assigned meeting the following day. The Dean and her assistant were there with a formal letter ready for me to sign that would place my daughters on disciplinary probation. I told them what they could do with that letter and stormed out. The day after that, Adnan was asked to come in for round two. This time Mrs. Bashour was in attendance along with the Dean and her assistant. The meeting was very brief, the Dean handed Adnan the letter and Mrs. Bashour took it from her and put it at the bottom of a pile of papers on her desk. She had obviously decided that it was time to end this circus. Shaking hands with Adnan, she commended him on his talented children and removed all of the restrictions placed on our daughters.

  Yasmine, Rola, and Dalia sat for their final exams, continued with FIST, and the American National anthem was not played at the school’s opening assembly the following fall semester.

  ***

  At Last …

  The year was 2000. The date was May 24, Amer’s 22nd birthday and his graduation day for his Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Adnan was the only family member attending his graduation. The rest of us were huddled around the TV and radio in Lebanon following Israel’s retreat from the south. Munira was working as a journalist at the time and she was relaying the developments on the ground to us as they happened. As soon as we heard Munira’s excited voice on the phone yelling out the news of the liberation of the southern villages from occupation, Yasmine, Rola and I left our still-warm lunch on the table and sped in the direction of the south.

  We fell in line behind hundreds of speeding cars wrapped in Hezbollah flags, filled to capacity with men, women, and children recklessly hanging out of car windows in extreme degrees of euphoria, clapping, singing and waving victory signs. The whole stretch of the southern coastal road filled with bumper to bumper traffic, turned into one huge party. Loudspeakers blasted songs and speeches and people danced in and on their cars. The Israeli Army was in full retreat and the SLA was in a panic-stricken shambles.

  We finally entered the south proper and drove through one liberated village after another filled with exhiliarated villagers throwing rice and rose petals on the visitors. We stopped at freshly abandoned SLA posts still smoking from fires desperately set to burn incriminating evidence. There, my children finally came face to face with the big guns of their nightmares that had terrorized them on their childhood visits to their grandmother’s house in Sidon.

  We arrived at Khiam and drove up to Khiam Prison, liberated just an hour before our arrival. With beating hearts, we slowly walked through the metal gates of the prison camp. A deep sad hush covered the newly liberated prison. Its grounds teemed with dazed prisoners who blinked in unaccustomed sunlight and freedom while they wept bittersweet tears of relief and sorrow with their families over time lost, never to be regained. Graffiti on the prison walls expressed the decades of incarceration on calendars marked off day by painful day, year after year after year. The prisoners’ belongings were still piled on rickety shelves next to narrow bunk beds of threes in dark, dank, and windowless rooms. The evil still lingered in the damp dark halls.

  Finally, at Fatima’s Gate, a crossing point into Israel from the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, we saw the hills of Galilee on the other side of the dividing barbed wire fence for the first time in our lives. We saw its development towns and settlements, tidy rows of white houses, small figures of people and pets doing what people do when they are not under occupation, so near, yet part of another universe.

  The path leading to the Israeli border guard post and Israel beyond was strewn with discarded suitcases, their contents scattered where they fell or plastered by the wind on the dividing barbed wire fence. These belonged to panic-stricken SLA officers and their families who had abandoned their cars and run on foot, to pile up in terror at the Israeli borders, begging to be let in as the Hezbollah steadily approached closer, reclaiming every inch of the south.

  And we witnessed a magical moment along the Israeli–Lebanese frontier when Palestinians from both sides of the uncrossable border found a way of reconnecting after 50 years of separation. Refugees piled into the buses and stood in families on opposite sides of a kilometer-long wire mesh fence divided by a path down the middle. To complete the surreal scene, the pathway dividing the Palestinian-lined sides was manned by young Israeli soldiers whose job it was to pass messages and coffee from one side to the other. The Palestinians shouted their village’s name across the divide and those from the named village shouted back. Names were called out with questions about their well being and whereabouts and answers of affirmation of their existence or death were shouted back in response. Old Palestinian men and women on the Lebanese side were carried by their sons and daughters on chairs up the difficult rocky slopes to the dividing fences so their parents would have a final chance to come close to what they had dreamed of doing for half a century. My daughters and I stood with them along the fence to absorb as much of the scene as we possibly could. We stared at a young Israeli soldier barely eighteen, the same age as my twin daughters, as he stood around, unsure of how to behave. The young Israeli seemed both annoyed and amused at being ordered to take a message from a white-haired Palestinian man to his equally white-haired brother on the other side of the barbed wire fence – rather than to shoot him.

  At the same time as our trek through the liberated south, Amer’s graduation ceremony was taking place. As he walked to the podium to receive his Master’s degree, he unfurled the Lebanese flag to cloak his graduation gown in a beautiful statement of pride in his country’s liberation: he received a standing ovation from the audience.

  16

  The Road Not Taken

  It was 2001 and I was back in Saudi Arabia, again to visit Mama, but she was no longer the Mama I knew. My mother had gone into the perfect escape to rest her mind from its tortuous conflict. She had overcome diabetes, heart surgery, breast cancer and a broken ankle but she could not keep her mind from slipping away. She drifted into her own world where she slept and ate and called insistently for her mother and father. She would only sleep peacefully when we reassured her that her parents sent their love. The doctor told me she had early-onset senility. I felt fortunate that she still recognized me. She smiled happily at me, “You’re my eldest daughter and you are my heart,” she said, adding, “you’ve grown older.”

  Mama recognized us all, Ghassan, Marwan, Fatin, and of course her husband Fahmi. But she did not recognize anyone else. I missed my mother and I miss her every day, I re
gret the days we were unable to share because of my father’s intransigence and her weakness to his commands. This had been a war too and the outcome was the same as in all wars: we had all lost.

  My sister-in-law, Hana, invited me to a luncheon held by a good friend of hers. “You’ll meet wonderful Saudi women,” she had promised. And she was right. Our hostess was a prominent Saudi artist and her home was of her design, a Palladian villa all light and grace with soaring vaulted ceilings decorated by swirls of pastel-colored arabesque designs. A row of slender marble columns led the eye to the garden through French doors that framed a turquoise blue oval swimming pool, sparkling invitingly surrounded by tall fruit-laden palm trees and emerald green grass. Tasteful objects of art were sprinkled throughout the airy salon on consoles and small side tables next to sofas arranged for easy conversation. Her paintings hung on the salon’s walls, giant canvases that burst with color and shape, like her house. Elegant and petite, she was modest and softly spoken and moved effortlessly amongst her guests who must have numbered at least fifty.

  The women attending the luncheon were the cream of Saudi society, professionals in their own right, university professors, television producers, writers, school supervisors, doctors and engineers. A small feeling of yearning stirred deep within me to be part of this group of women who had accepted their birthright and went on to do what they could to the best of their abilities, while they remained within the system. They were all politicized and sharp about their opinions, far more than the Saudi men I had met. At my table was a tall dignified American woman who spoke in the lilting Hijazi dialect with her teenage daughters who had their mother’s height and their Saudi family’s smooth olive skin and delicate features. Sitting across from me was a foreign-looking woman dressed in an exquisite silk kaftan who had a strangely familiar face, although I knew I had never met her before. Hana leaned over to whisper, “She was married to Prince Sa’ud Ibn Jiluwi’s son and never left the country so she could stay near to her daughter Yasmine.”