The Lebanese, and the various peoples and tribes who have lived on the land that is now Lebanon, have been scrapping since the dawn of civilization, and it doesn't look like they’re fit for stopping anytime soon either. As a tourist walking around the streets of Beirut, Tripoli, Saida or any other town, you don’t know whether the bullet holes are three weeks old, three months or thirty years, you don’t know who shot them and a guide book will only go so far as to explaining why. When asked why you're going to Beirut and respond with 'a holiday', jaws will drop, or at least contort, and confusion come on a face. As a visitor it is easy to enjoy the fine food, marvel at the architecture (and its bullet holes), engage the banter of the friendly locals, drink their beer and chat up their women but understanding the social dynamism that makes up a country is the thing that is likely to remain aloof when you’re just passing through.
To that end though, and wanting to understand something even if you’re told its propaganda, Hezbollah’s Museum for Resistance near Mleeta in the south will go someway to getting you some of that insight. The museum is dedicated to Hezbollah’s success in expelling the Israeli Defense Forces occupying the hills of southern Lebanon in a month-long war in 2006 when, as the tour guide puts it, ‘Israel got caught in the spider’s web,’ before they were ‘sent back to Palestine’. Not Israel, no? No, of course not! Here is a dramatic sense of Lebanon’s present, the latest in its long history of fighting, a militia museum set out almost as a nature trail, with bunkers, foxholes, rockets, shells, military gear, and wrecked Israeli tanks located along its route. The hill on which the museum is perched was a critical weapon in aiding Hezbollah’s expulsion of Israeli forces because of the network of caves located beneath which allowed them to move around freely and communicate effectively. Those caves are now a brilliant counter-piece to the walk around the sunny, rocket strewn nature trail up top. The tour guides here will be quick to point out that they have no issue with Judaism, simply Israel, and the sometimes terrifying propaganda that goes with this will illustrate just how much of an issue it is for them. Yes some say this is propaganda meeting tourism, and they’re probably right, but it is just way too fascinating to pass up. In going though, know that you have funded the Resistance, and know that buying sweets from the Hezbollah scout kids on the way back down the mountain counts too.
Hezbollah is not naive enough to rely on all of its funding from ‘Muslim donations’ (or the Iranian government as everyone else calls them), they’ll take funding from anywhere... including tourist traps. Just like the one at the entrance to the ruins of the still magnificent ancient Roman Temple to Jupiter in Baalbek. The ruins are some of the tallest surviving in what was the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, as with much Roman architecture it has been scavenged for building material since its former magnificence, though what remains is still impressive, you get a sense of what it was, and you know that it would’ve been spectacular. It sits on the outskirts of Baalbek, just off the main road leading north out of the town, and as with much of Lebanon the power of history is juxtapose the new social reality, this time it’s the Hezbollah gift shop on the way out that macabre curiosity again pulls you into... again. All the propaganda pariphanelia is there again, this time with imagery celebrating victory over the auld enemy.
There's no gift shop at Beaufort Castle, an old crusader fort perched atop a critically strategic hill in the South. There's no gift shop because its not somewhere frequented by tourists too often. That's because it's quite a bit out of the way, it's 9 kilometres from Israel and sits over a river (barely a stream) way down on the valley floor that you cannot cross without a permit from Saida, into the territory the Irish Army are currently peacekeeping. It's also wrecked. It's position atop the highest hill in the area made it worthy enough for the crusaders to build the thing in the Middle Ages, and it was still important enough between 1982-2000 for the Israeli Defense Forces to occupy it. Between Hezbollah shelling, and demolition by the Israelis, the castle is left largely in ruin - though, like Baalbek, it retains a sense of the spectacular, it's not difficult to imagine what it was and it's troubled history.
Entering Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli (Fortress of Muslims) from the hills behind it, the description of three communities add odds with each other, having been lobbing bullets and bombs at each other just three weeks beforehand, you find a resonance with what you hear about Belfast. Being Irish, we sort of understand their problems but being from the South rather than the North, you know it more as a familiar story you didn’t quite get growing up and now just come to accept that a lot of people just will not live happily together. In Northern Ireland, at least they’re not lobbing bullets and bombs anymore (for the most part), in Lebanon they’ve been at it since the dawn of civilisation. Driving into Tripoli on the way back from the Cedars (you can’t go to Lebanon without seeing the Cedars), the taxi driver recounts being shot during the civil war of the 1980s in the very district he’s driving through, describing the scar beneath his faded red t-shirt, beneath which you suspect the beer belly has stretched the scar. The guide describes in detail how the people at the top of the hill are shooting at the people in the middle of the hill, who in turn shoot back and shoot down the hill to a third community – the main street of which is dotted with army tanks, though life seems to carry on in some normality against the backdrop of charred concrete and bombed apartments. Around the corner from that street, it seems like you’re in Paris again as you nip into a pastry house for something the Lebanese are truly proud of.
You may wonder where the actual Lebanese Army fit into the Hezbollah equation, and a visit willl likely keep you wondering. Just like the bored looking soldier at his post, in his box, between the Cornice and Pigeon Rock, watching traffic pass, perhaps longing for a pastry, watching the traffic round the corner on the western edge of Hamra. The Hezbollah undercurrent seems to have a powerful hand in every level of society. Resitance to Israel, community building and fine dining... or not as the case may be. There's a Hezbollah-run restaurant in southern suburbs of Beirut you might think is worth visiting, but if you went back to Hamra to somewhere a little more western you wouldn't be missing out, because the restaurant is just KFC in disguise - and not a good one. Which is a pity, because food is the thing the Lebanese really are great at.
On any evening of the week families will take to the Cornice, and the restaurants all over the city, young people will converse lyrically, most smoking an argileh, enjoying a selection of Mezze, eating shawarma, dipping bread into humous, eating complimentary raw carrots with a beer. This, the social inclusivess of Beirut and the entire country, is what sets it apart as special, the food completes the equation.
The long history of constant scrapping is part of what makes Lebanon what it is, but (perhaps paradoxically) the exceptionally friendly people and incredible food are what makes it appealing. Walking around the Old Souk in Saida, for example, a vaulted market place still used today as it has been for years, people selling meat, vegetables, spices, pastries, textiles and whatever you want for that can’t be found in the Western-styled shopping mall the other side of town. The people are courteous, and polite, a welcome relief to the attention Westerners can often get in the East, possibly because Westerners are quite common, be they international students, foreign correspondents for news agencies, or young professionals filling gaps in the labour market.
This is very much a country of contrasts, often sitting right next to each other. The memories and scars of war are an intriguing part of Beirut that cannot be ignored, the cinema and Holiday Inn looming over downtown are testament to this, and the scattering of bullet holes all over both alarming evidence that the Lebanese (whichever side) clearly couldn’t shoot straight. The cranes and star-citect billboards of Beirut's building boom can neither be ignored though... they're right beside the wrecked Holiday Inn.
People may well tell you Beirut is the Paris of the East, but they say that about a fair few cities east of the original. However, the downtown area around the Rolex clocktower, with its pedestrian, cobbled streets flanked with al fresco diners does indeed have a Parisian feel, it comes close to the Paris of the East perhaps, though it is somewhat of an island, contrast against the chaos of the city flying around it. People may also tell you that Hamra in west Beirut is the new Greenwich Village. Not many people will tell you that, but there certainly is a music and art scene worth investigating, though that will require some scratching of the surface because you may fail to notice on the main Rue de Hamra where Western franchise stores and cafes will almost seduce you into feeling your back in mainland Europe.
Some other people may tell you that Beirut is the party capital of the Middle-East, that people love coming from all the other Arab countries for much the same reason as under-21 American university students love going to Mexico for spring break. The luxurious hotels with cordoned off beaches along the Cornice in Hamra and the wealth of up-market nightclubs will testify to this mantle. The why and how of that mantle is what makes Lebanon so unique and special, and indeed historically war torn. The population comprises a melting pot of ethnic groups, Christians, Sunnis, Shias for a start, then add the Syrian and Palestinian dimensions and you find a bunch of people living together with not all of them happy about it, though because of this, you also find a more liberal society than most Arab nations. That is Lebanon. It is contrast. It is no one thing in particular but a collection of social and hysical conditions that have evolved in that one place over a very, very long time. And it's not going to stop evoling any time soon either...
Beirut July 2011
There's no gift shop at Beaufort Castle, an old crusader fort perched atop a critically strategic hill in the South. There's no gift shop because its not somewhere frequented by tourists too often. That's because it's quite a bit out of the way, it's 9 kilometres from Israel and sits over a river (barely a stream) way down on the valley floor that you cannot cross without a permit from Saida, into the territory the Irish Army are currently peacekeeping. It's also wrecked. It's position atop the highest hill in the area made it worthy enough for the crusaders to build the thing in the Middle Ages, and it was still important enough between 1982-2000 for the Israeli Defense Forces to occupy it. Between Hezbollah shelling, and demolition by the Israelis, the castle is left largely in ruin - though, like Baalbek, it retains a sense of the spectacular, it's not difficult to imagine what it was and it's troubled history.
Entering Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli (Fortress of Muslims) from the hills behind it, the description of three communities add odds with each other, having been lobbing bullets and bombs at each other just three weeks beforehand, you find a resonance with what you hear about Belfast. Being Irish, we sort of understand their problems but being from the South rather than the North, you know it more as a familiar story you didn’t quite get growing up and now just come to accept that a lot of people just will not live happily together. In Northern Ireland, at least they’re not lobbing bullets and bombs anymore (for the most part), in Lebanon they’ve been at it since the dawn of civilisation. Driving into Tripoli on the way back from the Cedars (you can’t go to Lebanon without seeing the Cedars), the taxi driver recounts being shot during the civil war of the 1980s in the very district he’s driving through, describing the scar beneath his faded red t-shirt, beneath which you suspect the beer belly has stretched the scar. The guide describes in detail how the people at the top of the hill are shooting at the people in the middle of the hill, who in turn shoot back and shoot down the hill to a third community – the main street of which is dotted with army tanks, though life seems to carry on in some normality against the backdrop of charred concrete and bombed apartments. Around the corner from that street, it seems like you’re in Paris again as you nip into a pastry house for something the Lebanese are truly proud of.
You may wonder where the actual Lebanese Army fit into the Hezbollah equation, and a visit willl likely keep you wondering. Just like the bored looking soldier at his post, in his box, between the Cornice and Pigeon Rock, watching traffic pass, perhaps longing for a pastry, watching the traffic round the corner on the western edge of Hamra. The Hezbollah undercurrent seems to have a powerful hand in every level of society. Resitance to Israel, community building and fine dining... or not as the case may be. There's a Hezbollah-run restaurant in southern suburbs of Beirut you might think is worth visiting, but if you went back to Hamra to somewhere a little more western you wouldn't be missing out, because the restaurant is just KFC in disguise - and not a good one. Which is a pity, because food is the thing the Lebanese really are great at.
On any evening of the week families will take to the Cornice, and the restaurants all over the city, young people will converse lyrically, most smoking an argileh, enjoying a selection of Mezze, eating shawarma, dipping bread into humous, eating complimentary raw carrots with a beer. This, the social inclusivess of Beirut and the entire country, is what sets it apart as special, the food completes the equation.
The long history of constant scrapping is part of what makes Lebanon what it is, but (perhaps paradoxically) the exceptionally friendly people and incredible food are what makes it appealing. Walking around the Old Souk in Saida, for example, a vaulted market place still used today as it has been for years, people selling meat, vegetables, spices, pastries, textiles and whatever you want for that can’t be found in the Western-styled shopping mall the other side of town. The people are courteous, and polite, a welcome relief to the attention Westerners can often get in the East, possibly because Westerners are quite common, be they international students, foreign correspondents for news agencies, or young professionals filling gaps in the labour market.
This is very much a country of contrasts, often sitting right next to each other. The memories and scars of war are an intriguing part of Beirut that cannot be ignored, the cinema and Holiday Inn looming over downtown are testament to this, and the scattering of bullet holes all over both alarming evidence that the Lebanese (whichever side) clearly couldn’t shoot straight. The cranes and star-citect billboards of Beirut's building boom can neither be ignored though... they're right beside the wrecked Holiday Inn.
People may well tell you Beirut is the Paris of the East, but they say that about a fair few cities east of the original. However, the downtown area around the Rolex clocktower, with its pedestrian, cobbled streets flanked with al fresco diners does indeed have a Parisian feel, it comes close to the Paris of the East perhaps, though it is somewhat of an island, contrast against the chaos of the city flying around it. People may also tell you that Hamra in west Beirut is the new Greenwich Village. Not many people will tell you that, but there certainly is a music and art scene worth investigating, though that will require some scratching of the surface because you may fail to notice on the main Rue de Hamra where Western franchise stores and cafes will almost seduce you into feeling your back in mainland Europe.
Some other people may tell you that Beirut is the party capital of the Middle-East, that people love coming from all the other Arab countries for much the same reason as under-21 American university students love going to Mexico for spring break. The luxurious hotels with cordoned off beaches along the Cornice in Hamra and the wealth of up-market nightclubs will testify to this mantle. The why and how of that mantle is what makes Lebanon so unique and special, and indeed historically war torn. The population comprises a melting pot of ethnic groups, Christians, Sunnis, Shias for a start, then add the Syrian and Palestinian dimensions and you find a bunch of people living together with not all of them happy about it, though because of this, you also find a more liberal society than most Arab nations. That is Lebanon. It is contrast. It is no one thing in particular but a collection of social and hysical conditions that have evolved in that one place over a very, very long time. And it's not going to stop evoling any time soon either...
Beirut July 2011
