As usual, by the time my pay cheque cleared at the start of the month, I had already spent most of it.
This time, however, I have a legitimate reason for such a splurge. I am learning Arabic.
I won’t bother delving into how difficult a tongue it is to learn – anyone who has ever tried to master even a few phrases will know all about that.
What I like about it is its lucidity; it’s interchangeability and adaptability. A few, select, words or phrases can be used in a variety of situations in which the may mean anything and nothing. It is reassuring to begin to comprehend even a tiny bit of what is said around you all day long.
When Terry Anderson is talking to you, you stop and listen.
This is the man who was for a period of time the most famous journalist on the planet.
Anderson had been the AP’s Beirut bureau chief for two years when he was kidnapped by armed militias after a morning tennis game in Ain Al-Mreisseh, west Beirut on 16 March 1985.
He spent six years and nine months being held as a hostage by a group answering to the name Islamic Jihad. Often beaten and maltreated, he won the unwanted title of the longest-held Western captive in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
Anderson was in Beirut on Monday to talk about press freedom, a two word phrase, the facets and sum of which he knows plenty about.
Speaking earnestly, thoughtfully holding my gaze from beneath spectacles as thick as your thumb, Anderson said how important it was for a journalist to believe in what he was doing.
It’s a job that might get you killed, he said, so you damn well better see its necessity.
The question and answer session ended. Anderson, jokingly complaining of being offered too much acrid black coffee, addressed the room in general and me in particular. What followed was a serious of journalistic epithets, each concentrating the bible of reporting advice Anderson has collected during 25 years in the profession into truisms spanning a few lines.
Print these off and tape them to your notepad:
Finding and telling the truth is a good all by itself, even if that’s all you can do.
When the truth is one sided, so is the story.
Journalism has always been more than a job. It is a mission.
Anderson’s response to an IDF general who asked him why he wrote bad things about the Israelis:
Sir, if you stop doing bad things, I’ll stop writing them.
And my personal favourite, sound advice indeed…
All the best journalists I know have a sense of indignation to them. They want to reach out, take you by the shoulder and say: ‘Look at this. This is important. You have to know this.’ They feel this demand to find the truth and to get you to listen to it.
Fireworks in Lebanon mean one thing: politics.
I watched the brilliant blue and gold explosions light up the Beirut skyline last night in silence, before the huge pops of thunder reached us on the roof of a Hamra hotel. Celebratory gunfire – that scourge of the town – ripped through the flat, close air.
Hariri had won, the pyrotechnics told us so.
The recent Tehran protests against President Ahmadinejad’s election ‘victory’ appear to gather momentum each day and, in no small way, serve to remind me of what could have occurred in the aftermath to Lebanon’s general election 10 days ago.
It is with catharsis that we view the different reactions to electoral defeat between the countries’ opposition parties.
In Lebanon, the Hizbullah-lead March 8 bloc – in spite of receiving the majority of the popular vote – immediately accepted defeat (apart from the notable excption of the Metn district.)
In Iran, supporters of the main opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, have taken to the streets in their thousands, chanting and demanding a recount with such conviction, that the Guardian Council caved in to the popular call. On Tuesday, it announced a recount of disputed ballots.
I might not the most authoritative source on all things Middle East, Lebanese or Iranian. Or all things for that matter. But the news today that Iran’s incumbent, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, has won Friday’s election, should be viewed with positivity here in Lebanon.
Coming six days after the Lebanese voted in their first post-Syrian elections- in which the ruling March 14 coalition won the majority of parliamentary seats – Iran’s electorate seem to have backed a hardliner and his antipathetic views towards the West.
The Lebanese election result was reported widely – if oversimplistically – as a victory for the West over Hizbullah’s support for (and from) Iran. Much of the Western press’ coverage centred on this reductive dichotomy of West vs East, of petrodollars and liberalism vs resistance and Islamist rhetoric.
“Well, I’ve never done that before,” I mutter as we walk down the stairs.
The sweet tea we’ve been given cloys at the back of my throat and as we emerge into the clamorous streets of the Dahiyeh, I suddenly realise I have absolutely no clue where were are.
A non-discript suburb of Beirut, up an annonymous set of stairs, is perhaps a fitting place for the headquarters of Hizbullah.
When I pitched an idea to my editor earlier in the week and told her the area I intended to do it in, she looked a little unsure and suggested that I go to meet her contact at Hizbullah, you know, just in case one of their depressingly numerous thugs decided to take a dislike to me.
So the next day we take a taxi through the sprawling, faceless suburbs of South Beirut to meet a representative of the Shiite group. A meet and greet with an organisation, the members of which are banned from travelling to the UK.
As I’m sure many of you will be aware, Lebanon had its first post-Syrian general elections. They were billed as the closest in a generation and could have proven to be pivotal in the Middle East peace process.
On one side was March 14, a Western-backed coalition lead by the Future Movement’s MP Saad Hariri. On the other, the Hizbollah-dominated March 8 alliance, seen as leaning towards Iran and the foundation of an independent Islamic state.
Fortunately for those of us with fair skin and blue eyes, March 14 won, an outcome that never seemed so straightforward during campaigning and polling. Speaking with entire subjectivity, this is a good thing for Lebanon. It means that the huge amounts of US aid dollars will continue to flow into the country and that the delicate but so far finely-kept peace should be maintained.
And odd hush has descended on Beirut. The shops around Rue Hamra are all still open, still the omnipresent middle-aged men sit on patio furniture smoking in the midday heat. Fruit sellers still stare blankly into the middle distance, ignoring the flies that cluster about their produce.
But no one is talking. Yesterday was the final day of campaigning and the Future Movement PR machine, as well as Hizbollah’s, was in full flow. Saad Hariri, with his impossibly symmetrical facial hair, looked at ease as the statesman, calling for free and fair elections, with “massive” participation.
A Hizbollah rally on state television showed easily 100,000 supporters deliriously waving yellow and green flags in South Beirut.
But not today. Today all is quiet. There is even talk of a curfew to ensure that things run nice and smoothly tomorrow. Cafes and bars are supposed to be shut by midnight and we are being advised against venturing out after that.
This lull in the fervent political dialogue is quite refreshing, even after less than a week. Speaking to Mihad, a Chemistry student at LAU yesterday, it was clear that my ennui is shared among the majority of Lebanese.
“I wish politicians would just leave us alone. We want to live in peace, to have fun. Everything else is a distraction.”
On Twitter, Beirut Spring summed it up thus: “That peace in the air is the sound of politicians not talking.. Today is a day for reflection.”
I have my first article in the Daily Star today, about student voting on Sunday (http://tinyurl.com/oxbw7z). The range and ardour of views still astounds me, particularly as a journalist. You hear about 20 different views, all delivered with utter, conviction, utter faith. Deciphering the truth between the isolationist rhetoric of March 8 and the scaremongering of March 14 is a little like walking a tightrope.
I hear many things. I hear that there will be huge violence among the Palestinian camps throughout Sunday. I hear that if it looks as if the government are winning by 4pm, militias will be mobilised. I also hear that (and want to believe this one) that violence is impossible, that Lebanon has bled too much, has travelled too far down this democratic road, for violence to once again engulf this tiny, proud state.
I filed my copy and made it to the Duke of Wellington, a hang out for expat journalists and teachers alike, in time for happy hour. The subsequent trip to the Captain’s Cabin was sweaty and loud in equal measure. The barman, Andre is a Beiruti institution. He seamlessly dispenses bottles of beer while taking your money and totting up about 30 different tabs. He is a machine.
I will no doubt skulk back to the Cabin’s enveloping dinge to watch the England match. I am not proud of myself.
I can’t really begin to describe Beirut. It is the most daunting, confusing, exciting, thrilling and challenging place I’ve ever been to. From the Lebanese Army officers who strut around checkpoints with AK-47s cocked to the 300 car political rallies that cruise down Gemmayzeh street beeping their horns when you are trying to sleep, Beirut is a taxing city.
The flat I am staying in is right next to an apartment block whose walls are pockmarked with civil war bullet holes.
But Beirut is also a city of tolerance, a city where people know how to live. I have been to so many amazing places, bars, shwarmah outlets and cafes. A friend and colleague perhaps summed it up best by saying, “Beirut can be anything you want it to be. If you want Paris, it’s here. If you want Arab culture, it’s here. If you want luxury hotels and shops, they are here.”
“If you don’t enjoy Beirut, you are doing it wrong.”
I have been thrown into the deep end of work with my first assignment involving speaking to youth voters at the city’s two main universities, AUB and LAU. The range of political affiliations, erudition and enthusiasm is both confusing and overwhelming.
A March 14 supporter, who I met beneath a wysteria plant, heavy with flowers, in AUB, saw me in Faysals, a jibni outlet late last night. I sat and ate flatbread as he and his friend showed me videos of Hizbollah and Future Movement forces shooting at one another last year on Rue Hamra, a street which I had been walking down less than an hour ago.
“This is not a movie. This is Lebanon,” he responds to my face of stupid astonishment.
I will try to post something a little more substantial on my day off tomorrow. There will be a 9pm curfew and everything is closing all of Sunday (except the trusty Daily Star!) for voting. I will be buying supplies of water and beer – you can never be too careful…
On Sunday I will be traveling to a District of East Beirut, Baabda, with an Arab journalistcumreporter, Osama. Baabda is key state, with the outcome of the entire election potentially hinging on how much ground March 8 can gain there.
I urge you to watch this on TV, or at the Daily Star. This could be a new chapter in the long and rugged book that is Lebanon.
So it turns out I’m moving to Beirut.
I will be writing for the Daily Star (no, not that one). It is an English-language newspaper, the largest in the Middle East, I believe. It can be found here: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
Keep checking the blog. I’ll be updating with all Lebanon’s bewildering diaspora in tow.
