Did You Hear the Boom Boom?

[Guest guest]

Did You Hear the Boom Boom?

 

Written by Mehammed Mack

 

When the spin got too disconcerting, I muted the sound

on the TV news and tried to focus on the scenery the

reporter was blocking with his poofy, disaster-ready

flak jacket. Beirut was on fire, columns of smoke

rising in the majestic skyline where apartment

buildings ought to be. I caught sight of something

familiar — a European-style avenue I had often

strolled, near the Centre-Ville, an attractive money

magnet that had absorbed Saudi and Japanese investment

capital on its way to becoming Beirut’s shining

central flower, replete with nightclubs, cafés and

restaurants, sites of cherished memories for me.

 

I’d gone to Beirut in March ’03 and December ’04 to

see for myself whether the narrative of national

reconciliation was true, the one in which cocktails,

makeup, girls, boys, beach, sun and amnesiac fun

erased the wounds of endless civil war. Now, I

searched CNN for images of South Beirut’s Muslim

neighborhoods, trying to discern which wrecked

buildings were casualties of the old civil war and

Israeli occupation and which had been freshly bombed.

The pointless effort turned into a visual joke (on me)

about the cycle of violence.

 

Back in ’03, on the eve of the Iraq war, when

Christians and Muslims protested together at the UN

building in downtown Beirut, I saw this reconciliation

narrative materialize before my eyes. People were

reluctant to talk about the past, and unanimously

agreed to put old civil war polemics back in their

holsters in favor of the famous and unifying Lebanese

knack for celebration. The rest of the Arab world,

perhaps jealous of Lebanon’s beauty, fertility and

success, often makes the accusation that Lebanese only

care to “party” — this stereotype nourished by the

national channel LBC, which projects an endless stream

of overdone Lebanese video hos dancing for no apparent

reason (always a more popular broadcast than

depressing news headlines). When I brought up this

stereotype on the phone to Boston with my cousin

Ahmed, a Sunni Muslim who grew up in a Christian area

of Beirut, he sighed the same way I would if a New

Yorker took a simplistic jab at Los Angeles: He

explained that partying for the war-scarred Lebanese

is a way of life, a defense mechanism that can

generate love and agreement.

 

Seeing the destroyed ports on TV murdered another

memory in my mind: the time I’d taken some newly

befriended Palestinians from South Beirut out for a

night on the town, American dollars opening doors

normally closed in this still-segregated society. We’d

passed the same ports, in a delirious drunken

happiness, on our way to the Centre-Ville for a night

of dancing and flirting. My friends were horny,

soccer-fanatic teenagers delighted to enter posh clubs

usually reserved for Saudis and upper-crust Lebanese,

but that night every bouncer smiled and multicultural

Lebanon seemed a feasible reality. Now, on the phone,

Ahmed told me, “I’m scared of civil war” — referring

to what might result from this current game of chicken

being waged between Hezbollah and Israel — ripping me

from my nostalgia.

 

When I saw a crushed Mercedes in an upper-class area,

the sight affected me more than any Gaza bombardment,

making me aware of my own strange material racism that

marks a demolished First World neighborhood as more

noteworthy than routine Third World destruction. Yet

the inconsistency revealed something about the Arab

diaspora and the way it feels about Beirut, the

diamond of the Middle East, so often talked about in

loving, feminine terms — feelings that verge on

idolatry and pride. Beirut is the one great city “the

Arabs” have going, the one that in elementary Arabic

classes is qualified automatically as “beautiful,” the

trendsetter that always will be the first to break any

Arab stereotype of backwardness or conservatism, the

city that we are always in danger of losing, which we

love even more each time it dies and is resurrected.

Many are worried that, for all its resilience, Beirut

has run out of lives.

 

My old anger toward Israel, first stoked during the

second intifada and then desensitized, suddenly took

on new force and my mind raged with overly epic

questions. Oh, Israel! You who understand the mystical

longing for cities in collective memory, why do you

destroy beautiful things? Why did you attack Beirut

International Airport, the crowning symbol of a

chapter turned, of freedom to communicate with the

rest of the world, the great vector of the Lebanese

diaspora and the engine of Lebanon’s tourist economy?

 

Despite the huge disproportion in tit-for-tat

violence, despite the long-running precedent of

successful hostage negotiation between Hezbollah and

Israel that the Jewish state suddenly broke with last

week, much anger has also been directed at the Party

of God and Hassan Nasrallah, its secretary-general.

Hezbollah had previously warned that if the thousands

of Arab prisoners in legal limbo were not released,

they would “have to” kidnap soldiers. Cousin Ahmed,

with great emotion, said he was “so mad” at Nasrallah:

mad that Lebanon would be the ultimate casualty in an

exchange opposing other countries; mad that the

fragile, miraculous Lebanese peace was now endangered;

and, finally, mad when he heard that Nasrallah

proclaimed he would foot the bill for the $500

million-plus in damages to the country’s

infrastructure. Ahmed wanted to be in Beirut with his

mother, underneath the bombs, rather than in the safe

abode of his Boston apartment.

 

My family had thought our aunt Farida — cousin Ahmed’s

mother — was safe outside the country. But then we

found out that she had decided to stay put in her

hillside house overlooking the bay of Beirut, in a

Christian area near the town of Roumieh called

Nahr-el-Mot, which, come to think of it, has a

worrisome meaning (River of the Dead). She felt

especially determined to stay after hearing about some

acquaintances who attempted the trip out of the

country and barely escaped death. Alone with her

miniature dogs, she tearily watched the bloody

aftermath of a destroyed convoy trying to make its way

from Sidon to Beirut, made up of Lebanese fleeing the

country. Her house has a stunning panoramic view, a

prime vantage in the natural mountain amphitheater,

which we ordinarily appreciate for its picturesque

account of what is happening down in the city, but now

was exposing the drama of war.

 

Aunt Farida had been through this before. “Just give

it two or three days,” she told her son, “and it’ll

blow over,” just like in the late ’90s when Israel

attacked Beirut and the explosions crept dangerously

near their house, which was spared during the civil

war. An avid little boy back then, Ahmed had climbed

to the roof to look at the burning power plant near

their house; he remembers the maids screaming at him

to please come down. Now, on the phone with his

mother, she was getting tense and annoyed at all the

calls from worried friends and relatives begging her

to leave the country — she thought she had nothing to

fear until she started receiving these foreboding

pleas. For a time last week, she played it cool to

calm the nerves of her three sons, and she kept up a

weekly card game with her friend that she didn’t want

to miss. In her neighborhood, spread out like the

Hollywood Hills, there was a rooftop birthday party

going strong as if nothing was happening. It was the

“party defense” all over again.

 

But Monday morning, when Ahmed called his mom’s house,

Asha, my aunt’s Sri Lankan housekeeper, answered the

phone and revealed that Farida had managed to escape.

We don’t know if she’ll end up in Syria, Saudi Arabia

or Egypt, and hope she gets to her destination safely.

We are all waiting for and possibly dreading the next

phone call. Asha, meanwhile, was distraught and

speaking in broken Arabic mixed with English.

 

“It’s just me here now,” she said. “I’ve been crying

the whole day long. I couldn’t sleep last night.” Her

visa wouldn’t let her travel to any country except her

native Sri Lanka, now an impossibility since the

Beirut airport was out of commission.

 

“Lebanon is gone!” she exclaimed. Asha then paused for

a moment in the conversation. “Did you hear that?” she

asked. “Did you hear the boom boom?” A friend of Aunt

Farida’s was going to come housesit and keep Asha

company, but the injustice of Asha’s trapped situation

is worse than anything that might happen to Farida’s

beloved house.

 

 

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 July 2006 )

 

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