I prefer to be in the field

Cairo, August 24, 2006.

When Churchill was about my age he traveled to revolutionary Cuba. After a bullet passed between his mouth and a drumstick of chicken we wished to eat, he remarked that "there is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect."

The first afternoon we arrived in Beirut, photographer Jonathan Giesen and I traveled – although we did not realize it at the time – to what was the epicentre of Hizballah activity in Beirut. As we contemplated driving down a barricaded road, armed but un-uniformed men arrived by scooter and asked for journalistic credentials, which we did not yet have. We fumbled nervously for our passports; a cell phone call to some headquarters was placed.

Without warning, there was a massive detonation down the road we had wished to take. The windows on Liban Poste across the street oscillated violently. The Hizballah men ran for the middle of the intersection and I followed them: They had experience under fire. When after 15 seconds there was no further blast, they ran back to their scooter. Just before he sped off, my eyes met those of the driver. For a split-second we understood each other: We both wanted to survive.

It was my first time under fire and I was indeed exhilarated. Fate – for it certainly was nothing I had done – spared me. Hizballah had stopped us from going down a road where we might have been struck by a shell. The shell then saved us from whoever was on the other end of the telephone line. Of course, when the effects are felt – by people other than me on that day – they are far from exhilarating.

It is hard to describe this exhilaration without seeming crass, voyeuristic or unethical. Imagine there is a flow of energy, time and outcomes that shapes our lives but with which we are normally only in indirect contact. War is violent and painful, but like exposure to all risks, it brings us closer to this unknown world. It is like being cut deeply then plunging the raw, white nerve endings into that flow. You feel a throbbing, painful, but electrifying connection to a realm that injects mere minutes with a lifetime’s possibilities for destruction and escape. It leaves a deep scar, but you feel so alive.

Two weeks later, Jonathan left Lebanon, headed to Georgia. There was no reason to stay in Lebanon; things were over. We heard there might soon be fighting over Abkhazia, Georgia’s new breakaway republic.

As he accelerated down the road, my emotion was stronger than it should have been at the parting of two men of such short acquaintance. A shared, challenging purpose, however, is to people what a magnetic field is to iron filings – it aligns us in unexpected and beautiful patterns.

It is not that it is lasting. Later, having lost the engine that drove them, these relationships often only go on as reminiscences. But while they last, they have a fleeting, present intensity that makes other forms of connection to human beings seem trivial. It was not the prospect of being apart, but rather the knowledge of just how close it is possible to be to another person – and the realization that most of life is not lived in that way – that was the source of my sadness.

The evening of Jonathan’s departure, I had dinner with two Greek relief workers from an organization called Médecins du Monde. They had arrived one day before the cease-fire. Were you disappointed, I asked their logistician.

"No, how can you be disappointed at the end of a war?" I pressed her: Come on, you weren’t just a little bit disappointed?

"Well, OK, maybe a little bit. But I am still glad the war is over," she said finally.
The medical doctor who was with her had come for only two weeks. I asked if this was long enough to do important work.

"To do something really significant, probably not. However, it is long enough to see some patients and give out some medications. I only have four weeks of holiday per year and I have already used one. I must keep at least one more to rest, so I could only come for two weeks."
It is great to take a break from work and do some good at the same time, but you always have to save some vacation for yourself too.

The two Greeks planned to travel to the south the following day, but I suggested that she should instead stay in Beirut and enjoy themselves. Hizballah, I suggested, did not want their aid in any case, nor did they probably need it.

"Well, I prefer to be in the field," said the logistician. I prefer to be in the field, she said. Undoubtedly this was true, more true, perhaps, than any desire to make a difference in Lebanon.

The next day, Middle East Airlines claimed to have re-established daily flights from Beirut to Amman. With me in the travel agency when I booked my ticket was another Canadian journalist, who wanted to travel to Japan. He sipped a Starbucks coffee and complained that it would take two days to get from Beirut to Tokyo. Things were really getting back to normal.

I was not prepared to believe that there would indeed be a flight until I boarded the aircraft. But Monday evening I was in Cairo. There were 11 other flights, including one from Amsterdam, on the arrivals and departures screen at the airport. My plane was not even two thirds full.
I fell asleep on the plane and it took the stewardess some effort to rouse me for the meal. I was very tired. As I ate my little triangular sandwich with the crusts cut off, as the British like it, I thought of what Robert Fisk had told me.

Robert Fisk is one of the longest-standing and most famous modern Middle East correspondents. The day before the ceasefire he met two friends and me for tea at his apartment overlooking the Mediterranean. He had recently returned to Beirut after spending 17 months in Ireland working on his latest book, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

He told us how tired he had become while in Ireland working on the book. But now that he was back in Lebanon, going out to get the news every day like he had always done, he felt energized again. He too preferred to be in the field.

When I got back to Cairo – a place I had thought not a city but a sensory bomb when I first arrived – all seemed quiet. Where had everyone gone? I collapsed and slept for twelve hours.

The text below first appeared in similar form in the Yukon News, Aug. 25 2006

The Colour of Lebanon

I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
Do you know for you I bleed myself dry
For you I bleed myself dry
– Coldplay, "Yellow"

Cairo, 23 August 2006. On my final day in Lebanon, I traveled throughout the south, to the places where four fifths of the homes are destroyed and the rest are damaged.

"I’ve never seen it so yellow before," said Samer Karam, my Lebanese companion.

I assumed he meant the colour of the land. The plants were yellow-brown, their twigs shriveled and brittle for lack of water, and the earth was dry and dusty. This seems normal for a country in the Middle East – until you see Israel.

Maroun er Ras was a village on mountain. Now it is breadcrumbs. An almighty palm ground it into the hilltop. The border is less than a kilometer away, where brown and yellow meet green. Where plants grow, and water flows, is Israel.

The contrasting colours made the border appear as though nature – not people – separated these lands. As though the lines on maps and razor-wire fences only ratified and enforced Divine will. But the transition was too abrupt to be natural. Irrigated, pruned, geometric orchards stood within fifty feet of fallow Lebanon, with only a dirt track and metal between them. It was a gash, like where old forest meets clear-cut.

From across the border my eye caught the sun’s glint from the surface of a stream or an unshattered pane of glass. It was too calm; too many flies landed everywhere on me. Through the shimmering air Israel looked like a desert mirage of the sweet, luscious gardens of light described in the Qur’an. Like those gardens – the promise of Allah to one who chooses martyrdom – there was only one way for the people whose homes lay ruined in Maroun er Ras to reach the verdant place: Through death.

I saw only two buildings in a usable state in Maroun er Ras: a UN observation point, and the town mosque.

The UN was pock-marked from shells or shrapnel and a large chunk was missing from the corner of the building, as though a giant had taken a bite out of it. A threadbare flag of white flew above the forlorn observation tower. I could not tell if the UN blue had been bleached out by the sun – if so, a sign that the facilities were abandoned since long before – or if the frightened peacekeepers had raised a flag of surrender in a bid to save themselves during the fighting.

The mosque was standing also. Perhaps it was left undisturbed to prove the West’s sincerity in claiming that "terrorists", not Islam, were the target in this war. While the villagers would surely appreciate the necessity of destroying their homes in order to flush out Hizballah, they might be angered by the wanton, unnecessary leveling of their place of worship.

If only someone were left in Maroun er Ras to witness this gesture. But where would they live now – the mosque?

We met only one man in the village. His name was Aisa. He was with a male relative who spoke no English. He was inspecting a pile of rubble. Was your home damaged?

"This is my home," he said, pointing at the rubble. I asked if I could take a picture of him next to his home, and he agreed. The photo shows him smiling slightly through drawn lips, looking sideways at the camera out of the corners of his eyes – a still polite, but weary, skeptical and sad man. His complexion looked unhealthy, perhaps a little yellow.

I wondered which of these two symbols of the forces that will shape the future of the area – the UN and the mosque – would prevail. The UN’s observation tower, bristling with communication antennae and satellite dishes, looked like the bridge of a battered battle ship, a 21st century Noah’s Ark run aground on a mountaintop. Perhaps inside was a perfect microcosm of humanity, tinted blue: Two exemplars of every human variety, saved from the deluge to repopulate the earth. But they would not come out when we approached. The mosque, on the other hand, was built low to the ground, of humble, solid stone, like the people of Maroun er Ras.

Samer was referring, however, not to the earth, but to the thousands of yellow Hizballah flags and banners that have been strung from every arch-way and telephone pole still standing in South Lebanon. They are the shroud that has been draped on the country’s shattered and bloody body.

Yellow is not always a bad colour. Yellow ribbons were used in America in the 1980s by those waiting for the return of loved ones kidnapped in the Iran hostage crisis. Since then, the yellow ribbon has taken on a more general significance and is displayed in the US by those who await the return of family who serve in the armed forces.

But Hizballah did not choose its shade wisely. It is not a soft, warm, golden yellow like you might see in a Van Gogh. There is something shrill and aggressive to it. The symbolism of this yellow comports too well with the Western image of the "terrorist".

For yellow is the colour of phlegm and jaundice. In the Middle Ages it was hung above areas with the plague. And again today, where the flag hangs there is – in the eyes of Israel and the West – a terrorist "plague."

"Terrorists", according to our imagination, are cowardly and dangerous. They are "yellow bellied". To Western eyes, the indecipherable Arabic writing and outline of a Kalashnikov on the Hizballah flag makes it look like it belongs to the family of geometric warning labels set to yellow backgrounds. Biohazard, nuclear waste, Hizballah: Danger.

Yellow is treachery also. The ecclesiastical colour ascribed to Judas was yellow, and his garment is often portrayed that colour, for example in paintings of the Last Supper by Giotto Bondone, Juan Juanes and Philippe de Champaigne.

Ironically, in Nazi Germany the Star of David insignia identifying Jews – the supposed betrayers of Christ – was yellow.

Many Lebanese will say that it is Israel who is cowardly, relying almost entirely on its unassailable air force to destroy Lebanon’s economy, while never engaging with Hizballah’s fighters on the ground. In the West we know that it is the "terrorists" who are cowardly and treasonous. They could be defeated if they would face us in open, fair combat. But in their weakness they employ deceit, which leads to their frightening, shadowy, suicidal dangerousness.

The irony that yellow is the colour of the suicide prevention "Ribbon Campaign" in North America could not have been lost on Hizballah.

But after visiting the south, only two images of yellow remained in my mind.

In French the expression "rire jaune" means mirthless laughter. It is the laughter of one who has reason to be angry or offended, but out of fear, politeness or caution forces himself to laugh.
The yellow of the rire jaune comes from the concentration, in the face, of yellow bile. Those who used to study the humours called sufferers of the yellow bile choleric and described them as irascible and bad tempered, but also charismatic, and inclined toward political or military leadership.

I thought also of the Coldplay song Yellow: "And it was all yellow. Your skin, Oh yeah your skin and bones, Turn into something beautiful. Do you know for you I bleed myself dry? For you I bleed myself dry."

I visited the south of Lebanon, and it was all yellow. It was bled dry. But can skin and bone really turn into something beautiful?

A similar text to that below first appeared in the Yukon News, Aug. 16 2006

Nous passons par les coeurs des gens

Beirut, 16 August 2006.

At 0800 local time on Monday 14 August, a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon went into effect. Hizballah promptly declared victory.

Within hours, tens of thousands of Lebanese – bunkered down for the past month in public schools, mountain villages or relatives’ homes – flooded the streets of Beirut’s suburbs and the highway to the south of the country.

In the southern suburb of Haret Hreik, one of the worst hit urban areas, hundreds of awe-struck observers strolled amid collapsed buildings in streets where no car can now pass, their neighbourhood transformed into a bizarre pedestrian mall of destruction.

A man named Ahmed Khatib, who appeared to be waiting for something, asked if we were from the BBC. No, the Yukon News. Perhaps you’ve heard of it also?

"Then I hope that you can ask Mr. Tony Blair why he has taken away my home again. I lost one home already in the 80s. I have come again today and found that my apartment is gone." Did you lose any family? "No." Well, perhaps things could be worse then?

"I did not lose any family today because I am the only one left. I already lost 9 members of my family in the 80s," replied Khatib.

"I am Palestinian, from Haifa. My family used to have a home there. I pray to God that Hassan Nassrallah will hit my home in Haifa and whoever lives there now. If I see a Jew I will hug him. But if you tell me you are from Israel, I want to kill you."

Ahmed Khatib, it seemed, had lost.

In another sector of the suburbs called Bourj el Barajneh, we came upon the smoldering wreckage of a massive apartment block being worked over by backhoes, bulldozers and a bobcat. Water containers, ventilation fans, and other fixtures normally on rooftops twenty storeys up were strewn on the ground.

Shouts erupted as the backhoe uncovered something. A body. According to an observer, there were nine the day before; this was the first on this day. As it was dug out, rescue crews immediately covered the cadaver with a shroud. There were shouts to the journalists not to take pictures of the body itself – a gesture of respect for the dead, I presumed.

More shouts. Two bodies this time. Caged in twisted rebar, they could not be freed. A firefighter produced bolt cutters and began chopping them out.

The second body was covered as it was removed, as the first had been. And again, workers again inched up an improvised shroud (a garish multi-coloured bath towel) on the third body as they dug.

The feet of the third body stuck out, but his torso and head were buried. When an arm was loosed from the rubble, I saw that it was small, and that this was a boy, not a man. I prayed that the workers not pull on the arm to try and dislodge the boy – if the body was rotten it might tear off. Mercifully, they continued digging. My gruesome prediction would not have come true, however: The death was too fresh and the body had not yet begun to decompose. The blood on the arm was only half-coagulated and still red, not black.

When finally the boy was extracted, he was not wrapped in the towel. Instead, one of the workers grasped the dead boy and held him up by the armpits to the crowd, like the monkey-shaman in ‘The Lion King’ presenting the newborn cub to the trumpeting and braying animal kingdom.

Another worker ran his latex-gloved hand through the boy’s dusty black hair and pulled his slumped head upward to show his face to the crowd, as they did in the French revolution, displaying the severed heads of the decapitated. The shutters of journalists and bystanders went wild.

I knew that somewhere, someone was happy about this death, for it sent a thousand gruesome images of Israeli barbarity around the world. This boy, indeed, everyone in this building, had contributed to the "victory" Hizballah now declared. They needed him to be killed – and the Israelis had obliged.

The boy, I imagined, did not want to die. He had lost, but it did not matter. He was part of something bigger, something that, frighteningly, the man holding him up seemed to grasp, while my pitiful and only precedent for the morbid spectacle came from a Disney film.
Leaving that place, I saw a teenager looking stoically on. He had Roman, statuesque features. His arms were held firm and straight by his sides; his chin was slightly upturned. On a blue T-Shirt, these words appeared: "Freedom. You can wish for future happiness but the only time you can be happy is now."

Did he know what the words meant? "No." I asked a bystander to translate them to him. He listened, then smiled, sweetly. But I could see how big and moist his eyes were now, as a crack appeared where there was a flaw in the marble.

On Tuesday we traveled south toward Marjayoun, a city close to the border from which Israeli troops had withdrawn only a half-day before.

Although the ceasefire is unproven and, many believe, fragile, the people displaced by the conflict were returning in droves to the places they are from.

"No one expected so many to return so quickly," said a Lebanese doctor. "But [Hassan] Nassrallah has told them to return, so they do."

Southbound buses, cars and trucks filled both sides of the divided Beirut—Sidon highway. In the previous weeks, two overpasses (in addition to numerous bridges) between Beirut and Sidon were bombed. At each collapsed overpass, the 8 southbound lanes bottlenecked into a single track, resulting in heavy traffic jams. Many vehicles had to be pushed up and over the steep incline, further slowing the progress of the massive millipede.

"Where is the government of Lebanon?" complained one man, referring to the absence of any construction equipment to clear the road. While the cabinet has yet to meet since the beginning of the ceasefire, Hassan Nassrallah made promises of money for reconstruction in a televised broadcast Monday evening. Numerous Hizballah flags and posters made clear the crowd’s allegiance.

Some of the returnees, expecting to find their homes destroyed, tied foam mattresses on the roofs of their cars. At least they will have something to sleep on when they arrive. They reminded me of people who return to the Mississippi valley after a flood: They have lost everything and know they will lose it again, yet still they return.

The Lebanese have an attachment to places, to the land, that is difficult for North Americans to understand. Our Lebanese hosts explained one evening that when they build a new house, they build it for one hundred years.

"We never move. We are born in one place, and we die in that same place. This is not a matter choice."

At last, a few kilometers from Marjayoun, we could go no further. A bridge over a cool blue creek had been bombed and there was no alternative route. Approximately 100 people were waiting as a work-crew slowly rebuilt the bridge.

The creek flowed in an idyllic valley where people might have lived, at another time, without knowledge of victory or defeat. Children tossed stones in the water; a man waded across carrying a watermelon. The sun was setting and, overwhelmed by the peacefulness of this place, I wanted to stay forever. I tried to convince my photographer to sleep the night, but he wished to return to Beirut. With the sense of having missed the chance to understand Lebanon for the first time, infuriating rationality prevailed.

On the road home, our motorcycle was rear-ended at a stop. As we inspected for damage, I turned and saw a banner stretched across the road. It read: "Vous avez détruit les ponts. Nous passons par les coeurs des gens."

You destroyed the bridges, but we pass through people’s hearts. So it is. Hizballah has won – the first round at least.