A Heart-to-heart with Israel

I want to take this Palestinian-Israeli story beyond the mind-numbing chatter about the details of hatred and violence. I am tired of debating the mechanics of malevolence close to a century into this conflict. Facts matter—they will always matter—but, whichever way our convictions choose to read them, they are mere foot soldiers in this bloodletting.

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I want to travel further into the realms of psyche and implication, into those of mindset and devastating aftereffect, because when facts kill, they kill for them.

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Dana Olmert, Yigal Arens, Avraham Burg and Avinadav Begin do not seal my last post as petty taunts. I do not float their names to state the very obvious: that dissent in Israel has reached the progeny of even its fiercest keepers. I am not embracing their rebellion the way I, in my younger college years in the US, latched on to Ahad Ha’am’s reservations about Herzel’s political zeal or marveled at Martin Buber’s spiritualism as evidence of a once tentative, self-questioning Zionism—if not self-questioning of its rights, then self-questioning of their impact on the rights and lives of others.

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I mention these angry children of Israel because 59 years ago, when political Zionism declared itself triumphant over its spiritual and cultural adversaries and Arab enemies, Israeli euphoria would give in only to the seduction of happy dreams. The naggings of nightmares were for the losers. I mention them because 59 years ago, when Israel became flesh and blood and thought it had finally laid to rest that ageless “Jewish Question,” Palestinian exodus seemed—even for those Zionists who acknowledged the injustice of it--a reasonable sacrifice for “Jewish Return.” There was no room then for qualms and foresight. The horror of the Holocaust was too recent, the righteousness of the Cause was too intoxicating and the opportunity in Palestine too compelling. Fifty-nine years ago the future of a messianic, exultant Zionism was intangible, but now it has become the real past, and on its surface yesterday’s dire predictions have bloomed into these children’s scathing verdicts. That is why I mention them.

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In protesting thus, are they not pleading with their country for more meaningful conversations about the possibilities of salvation for them and for this worn-out Middle East? Have we all not lived in this quagmire long enough to know that the misfortune of one people is not necessarily a windfall for the other?

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But there stands a flummoxed Israel, so mighty and yet so frightened, still hanging on to the promise in hellish scenarios. Shall it be yet another Palestinian transfer, as Avigador Lieberman demands, or shall it be permanent dominion over them? Shall it be 50 little Bantustans or one quadriplegic, deaf and mute, tiny Palestine? Dare we ponder the comeback of the Jordanian flag over a mutilated West Bank and Egyptian care for a destitute and seething Gazan Hammastan?

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Does Israel not see that Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that most fervent of Zionists, was right when he said of the Palestinians, “…they are not a rabble but a living people?” Do the raging fires of the past 60 years not tell it how wrong he was when he found his answer for Palestinian acquiescence written on an “Iron Wall?” Do they not understand that they cannot be in the Middle East but not of it? If a thriving IT sector, a robust economy and a healthy stock exchange brighten up the picture for Israel, don’t the people’s anxieties about the longevity of the state that permeate every poll and the fading sheen of military power as panacea make it a tad bit darker?

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Not a history replete with damning evidence, not the voices within and not the clamor without seem to be making a dent as Israel’s leaders, politicians and generals alike, go about their business of audaciously dressing up bigotry and cruelty as workable solutions for their people and ours.

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I am writing this as news trickles in about the killing of five UNIFEL Spanish soldiers in Southern Lebanon. Here’s one murderous act that exposes the mindsets meeting across divides to bring this country down. In identifying the guilty hands, one is at a loss between an Israel that has been agitating for another round to reclaim for the Israeli military its fading luster and help Lebanon and Hezbollah sink deeper into their morass; extremist Palestinian elements hitting in the South to spread the turmoil in the North; a Syria anxious to make the summer a very hot season for all of us.

Allah Yustur (God shield us). But I doubt he will.

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More conversations with Israel, the Arabs and Palestinians in my next post.

Chapter Three: Finita La Musica

Waddi’, as in Say Goodbye!

Let’s make this a new chapter and move on as we go backward.
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Beirut on a Sunday in June. A brisk, early swim—alone. None of the usual souls is at the pool four days after the assassination of Walid Eido, one of Sa’ad Harriri’s mps. I remember that line in The Year of Living Dangerously: “And so it begins.” Of course, it was a love affair these words were ushering in. No tentative whispers or fluttering butterflies here, just the footsteps of ominous beginnings.
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Sure, the omens had long lit the way to this moment—if you care to look back, they dress every paragraph of Pieces of me In This--but now you can actually see societies, a battered culture, self-respect, delusions, about to shatter all over the floor. We used to live our outbursts, more or less, one at time, but catastrophe does not care for timid displays of its gifts anymore; it wants to parade them in full regalia.
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Slow-motion collapse is eerie. The banal and the calamitous share the day’s space, blithely chatting away the ticking seconds, as people swing between routine and disaster. Soon, perhaps, soon the action may overrun us Lebanese in fast-forward—like Gaza this very minute, like Iraq three years ago.
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Look around you! These are not landscapes of political devastation you glimpse—devastation is for the birds, for the editorial pages; it has been sitting amongst us like a nonagenarian grandfather muttering every once in a while incomprehensibly. What those eyes of yours behold is a panorama of Arab shame on which is etched every imaginable visage of indecency.
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I am already well into a Tuesday. It is not the seventy-eight killed in a suicide bombing in a Shiite mosque in Baghdad that bespeak of an Iraqi nation in utter despair, it is those orphaned children with severe disabilities naked on the floor and chained to their beds (Al Hayyat, June 20, 2007). We can, with some persuasiveness, blame Iraqi fratricide on too many years of Saddam, or on foreign cabals in cahoots with local partners, but in front of the door of what Zionist or American conspiracy do we Arabs dump this humanitarian tragedy? Under what excuse do we shove such cruel behavior towards the weakest, the most helpless, the real innocents in this Iraqi family? What good is a country’s glorious past if its present finds it in such ignominy? Of what use are memories of greatness when, in the here and now, our conduct is so disgraceful? It is understandable that the Iraqi state is overwhelmed, that the Iraqi people are shellshocked, but is it fathomable that we collectively should succumb to such moral depravity? You’re not going to throw at me that Rumsfeldain gem, are you? “Stuff happens.” You’re not going to mention the street children of Brazil, or the child soldiers of Congo? That only adds to their dishonor but it takes nothing away from ours.
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And it is not the gunfire between Hamas and Fatah in the streets of Gaza that exposes a Palestinian leadership oscillating between madness and idiocy, between perfidy and contemptibility; it is the sight of a pair of glazed eyes staring out of the face of a Palestinian child as he waits for his family’s turn to march away from Gaza into yet another exile—that eternal Palestinian exile.
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Not so long ago, instability in our region was boring; unimaginative in its violence, predictable even in its surprises. But there is something of the capricious and unknowable in this bedlam. Not only the lame amongst us are feeling the punishing rewards of their stupidity, the smart ones who have long trifled with them are also facing the unintended afterclaps of their own cleverness. While the Palestinians agonize from the near-fatal wounds inflicted by their pathetic imitation of a resistance, Israel squirms from the terrifying corrosiveness of a colonial mentality that mocks its democratic Jewishness as it eats its way through the last of the two-state solution. While Hamas brings into full circle the incompetence, the fecklessness, the boundless cynicism, that started with Yasser Arafat, Israel ponders four million traumatized Palestinians whose multiplying numbers are the true and only measure of their hope for meaningful recognition.
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How anachronistic is it for the Derchewitzes and Finklesteins to debate the right and wrong of Zionism, when on the ground are gathered millions of Palestinians irritating every Israeli fait accompli and breathing life into that most mortifying of possibilities: an Israeli-Palestinian bi-national state! How mystified Israel must be that the murder of one half-good idea—two people, two states--can so furtively bring birth to the ruinous notion of one post-Zionist state for all. Impossible? Sure. Now.
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But what do you do with an occupied people who refuse to die or go away, crouching, furious and spent with barely anything to lose, at your doorstep? How many times do you pummel them, how many monsters do you breed in their midst, how many of their “moderate” leaders do you turn into straw men, how many of their God-obsessed fighters do you first feed and caress and then demonize, how many check points do you erect to humiliate them, how much of their land do you grab, how many of their resources do you confiscate, how many settlements do you implant on their expanse, how many settlers do you spread between them, how tall, how permanent, of a wall do you build to isolate them, before you realize that inhumanity kills both ways?
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If all this pain is administered for survival, for security, for protection against a treacherous subhuman lot, why do I find you, Israel, in the throes of an existential crisis? Why the befuddlement and the nervous sweat? Why the harsh censure from Avraham Burg, the one-time head of your Knesset and Youssuf Burg’s son? Why such disillusionment in Moshe Arens’ son? Why the fury of Ehud Olmert’s daughter? Why the anti-wall protests by Menachem Begin’s grandson? You say this is proof that you are Democracy itself. They are saying, This is precisely because you are not.
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Be patient! My thoughts are still in mid-stream.

Batikh Ykassir Ba’ado

Let Watermelons Break Each Other/as in A Plague Upon Both Your Houses

If you are disappointed that the rumpus in Nahr al Bared is settling into a monotonous rhythm, don’t be. We are still in the very early hours of this traggedia, as we like to call our misadventures in Franco-Araab. While information, good and bad, will keep seeping out of “anonymous” sources about Fath al Islam and the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in our refugee camps, the real show is actually playing somewhere else—in the political arena. And since we all have a strong feeling that we are barely scratching the surface of this morass, it only makes sense to dip our heads a little deeper for a closer look at the evils breeding at the bottom of it.

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The 12 refugee camps in Lebanon teeming with 425,000 of the wretched of Palestinian earth have long been home to every rent-a-cause kiosk conjured by our Arab brethren. For decades, they have been destinations for regional bullies in search of mercurial mercenaries and hideouts for roughnecks looking to change their footprints after every bad act. And why wouldn’t they be? There, people with no claim to any happy dream live in permanent tension with open sewage, overflowing garbage, overcrowded housing, promises unfulfilled, life not lived; there, people live as if on islands of oblivion, not quite visible to our leaders, not quite mattering to theirs.

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Fath al Islam may be the criminal of the month but it is only one of many groups most of whose time is spent thinking up ever grislier interpretations of and commands by the Quran. With an al Qaeda-like obsessiveness with the sinfulness of others that is constantly itching for spilt blood, their willingness to unleash terror throughout Lebanon is as certain as the waywardness of their faith. Whether they have the capacity—the sleeper cells, the backup, the mobility underground—to do so is not quite as evident.

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Hence even if the Lebanese army kills Fath al Islam’s ring leader Shaker Abbsi and every single one of his foot soldiers, Pandora might still be standing there with her box about to crack open. These largely foreign fighters may have been alien to Nahr al Bared but their appearance in it says much about both the Lebanese government (and Syrian efforts) that helped ease their way in and the Hobbsian conditions that tolerated their presence there. The question of the Palestinians in Lebanon—the destitution in which they live, the Palestinian Authority’s deteriorating influence over them, the mountain of arms in the hands of a sea of “liberators” of every non-religious persuasion or Jihadist motivation--has raced to the fore and the answers to it have become ever more pressing. Fath al Islam, as urgent as its specific case is now, is symptomatic of a festering malignancy that will not respond to our state’s favorite remedy: bazzi w lazzi’, spit and stick (remember that one from a very early Thinking Fits post?).

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Moreover, just as this extremist group blew the lid off the indefensible autonomous status of the refugee camps, it made Hezbollah’s unilateral disarmament practically unachievable. For the Sunni fanaticism that breeds in these places is as grave a threat to the interests of Hezbollah and the safety of the Shiite community as it is to the authority and stability of the state—or so Hezbollah shall argue with much credibility. It makes absolutely no sense anymore to speak of Hezbollah’s arms when conditions inside these camps have grown from very inconvenient to out-and-out perilous.

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It has thus become startlingly clear that whatever fixes the Lebanese government has in its bag they cannot be short term, they cannot be cosmetic, they cannot only involve firepower and they necessarily have to string together some mighty intelligence fieldwork and bold political moves.

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And this is just the easy part.

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This Lebanese crisis, like all the previous ones, is as much about regional intrigues as it is about internal maladies. The Rafiq Hariri international tribunal that has just passed in the UN’s Security Council under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, as critical as it is for the Syrians, does not swim alone in this region’s pool of peace-threatening problems. Although this country’s immediate quandary has its roots in Syria’s furious and bloody reaction to the loss of the only jewel in its crown, the exit from it will not necessarily lead us to salvation. The files in the hands of the powers which collectively, but very often competitively, preside over us are many and the issues packing them are complicated and thorny.

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The short of it is that Lebanon is meeting this latest test at a time when those who hate it and those who could care less about it far outnumber and outmuscle those who feel sorry for it. Mind you, the players manning the first two fronts are the peripatetic type. Depending on the stakes, they switch sides without even a pause. They may hate each other but towards us—subhan al Allah (Goodness Lord!)--their feelings are disturbingly chummy.

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Not coincidently, of course, the unkindness of those on the outside is playing footsie yet again with the feebleness of those on the inside: The near-paralyzed Lebanese government (whether it admits it or not) is grappling with the ramifications of breathtakingly irresponsible tactics that are making the plots against it easier to realize; the people are utterly demoralized; our educated youth is jumping this sinking ship; the state’s intelligence apparatus is less amenable to its orders than it is to the Syrians’; and our political class—the opposition and March 14th combined—has shown itself scandalously blasé about this country’s daunting challenges.

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Are you depressed yet, or do you just hate me?

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I cannot deny that this pretty much reads like a you-might-as-well-shoot-me-in-the-head scenario, but all I have done is set up the atmosphere for you; it is up to you to adjust the lights to your liking. For a happy thought, you might want to start with a Syrian-American deal that delivers to the tribunal two or three Syrian intelligence hoods, all arranged courtesy of Saudi Arabia and Iran. This deal is both conceivable and possible now that the court has been approved. Beyond this generous gesture, for a brighter picture you had better bring in those neon lights.

Pandemonium

Oh, dear! What did I tell you? Pandemonium! The reports from Nahr al Bared and other corners of the capital are flooding in; the sober ones are few, the idiotic are aplenty. Who would have thought Counterpunch would become as painful to read as the editorial page of the New York Post. That poor sod Franklin Lamb, whoever he is. All this time we’ve been watching out for crap coming from the right; now we have to duck in all directions.

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This Counterpunch man-on-the inside has been reporting from the womb of Nahr al Bared. There is little food, hardly any clean water, not a few innocent victims, too many Fath al Islam fighters, and the man clearly does not know from which end his take on the events is coming, no doubt too grateful that he’s been invited to the party to give sobriety a chance. This is sad—sad because that small space in his piece that does accommodate persuasive speculation about some of the reasons that brought us to this tumult suffocates from the much larger section that sinks into bluster, sensationalism and clichéd conspiracy theories; sad because I was not hearing it from Bill O’reilly on Fox, I was reading it in Counterpunch.

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Lamb starts out sensitively enough. The tragedy that is this forever harassed and abused Palestinian people graces the first part of his May 26 article, (as it should every reporter’s) and then it’s bye-bye from there. Had he stuck to some variation of Seymour Hersh’s argument of unintended consequences, or blow back--as some refer to it—he would have remained on safe ground, still marching close enough to intelligent conjecture and fact. But he quickly attaches himself very confidently to one scenario (obviously the Americans did it), inexplicably dispensing with all the requisite qualifications that typically accompany explanations to very dark and nebulous happenings.

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In his first post, he rambles on incoherently about the Welch Club (named after Assistant Secretary David Welch) and an American-inspired conspiracy against the Lebanese army, in the second he denies that there was a bank robbery or that Lebanese soldiers were beheaded. In neither does he tread carefully around the shadowy world in which Fath al Islam and like-minded extremists thrive or show appreciation for all the menacing (and often competing) forces that steer them within it. By offering only his own political predispositions and Fath al Islam denials to him as support for his suppositions, this very angry, if seemingly well-intentioned, American keeps himself in the dark and his hapless readers with him.

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No sense in jumping to last summer’s war in the midst of this commotion is there? Old news, that sad episode and its residues, now that we are discovering that we have been standing waist-deep in an infinitely larger sewer, and much of it of our own making—as usual.

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Who said stupidity is not fascinating to behold as it reveals itself in real time, mind-numbing in its willful ignorance, tragic in its self-deception? Are we not all mesmerized by the calamity that is about to give birth to its demonic offspring everywhere around us—all because, like the dimwitted midwife in those B-rated horror movies of yesteryear, we have obstinately cared for the pregnant beast, believing it against all evidence to be just the grouchy side of an essentially good woman?

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You think me hysterical?


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As the facts trickle out of Nahr al Bared, as the experts’ once tedious warnings suddenly become worthwhile reading, as once ridiculed investigative analyses about the naughty dealings of the bad boys parading as the good guys enjoy renewed respect, we begin to fathom the extent of the trouble ahead of us and the dearth of solutions.


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Every which way you turn it, the drama of Fath al Islam and all those other groups with equally nifty names--Jund al Sham, Ussbat al Ansar, Ansar al Islam, al Ahbash,…--is all thorns, filth and bad odors. But I have to say, whichever way you actually do turn it, it tickles the senses. The facts have yet to line up naked before us, but they sure are stripping. And the details they are exposing so far--escorted, of course, by all the standard provisos--are these:


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The Salafi Fath al Islam, a very recent (last November to be exact) offshoot of the non-religious Fath al Intifadah, a splinter itself from Yasser Arafat’s Fath, may well have been sponsored by the Saudis and the Hariris and cuddled by the Lebanese government which allowed it to roam relatively free between Palestinian camps. If those who accused the intrepid Seymour Hersh of being sloppy when he first revealed this in the New Yorker’s March 5th issue have not yet sent out their apologies, they should get on with it. Hersh was not right about everything, it is true--especially the very likely role Syria has been playing in this tawdry business—but he is close enough to the facts about Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s grand Shiite containment strategy sold last year to the Americans with a Saudi seal.


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For Bandar, it would seem the main threat to the region’s status quo (i.e. Sunni Arab dominance) is the Shiite resurgence and the Persians’ bourgeoning influence. That both were offered by the Americans to their ecstatic recipients, like dhulma on a silver platter, was especially rankling to the dumb-struck Saudis, and hence Bandar’s obsessive pursuit of a bold plan to reverse what the Bush administration itself had set in motion. Bandar thought and thought, and then thought some more, until one morning it landed on his head: Let the Americans hit Iran, let us Sunnis firmly (but secretly, of course) join hands with Israel against Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and last, but certainly not least, let our Sunni Lebanese protégés sponsor al-Qaeda-like extremists in Lebanon to check Hezbollah’s hegemony and threaten its interests.

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It is not clear whether Bandar, the maverick that he is, was playing solo all along, or whether King Abdullah, finally realizing that his dashing little prince had fallen face-down in his horse shit, abandoned him in mid-gallop. But all those in the know are speaking of the dimming star of a sidelined Bandar. King Abdullah reportedly was not too keen on Bandar’s proposition from the start, preferring a more creative and less combative approach. He, therefore, informed a surprised Dick Cheney that the Kingdom would not back a military hit against Iran, would not enter into an alliance with Israel and would much rather keep the doors open with Hezbollah. It is not that Abdullah is not nervous about the emboldened Iranians and Shiites in the region, especially in Iraq, he is—very—but let’s just say his spirit is not quite as adventurous as Bandar’s. Blame it on age and, thankfully, the bit of wisdom that sometimes comes with it.

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So far, so good? Here’s where things go from moronic to downright dangerous. In those few months Bandar was left to stray, he signals to the Hariri crew to start feeding Fath al Islam as well as other guns for hire and facilitating their armed existence in Palestinian camps. The Hariris, longtime supporters of the similarly hideous Ussbat al Ansar and other Islamist radicals—a few of whom were arrested in the Diniyeh clashes in 2000, and then pardoned due to Sa’ad Hariri and other Sunni leaders’ intercession—begin looking after Fath al Islam, signaling to the Lebanese government to let these gangs trek unhindered between refugee camps.

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This was more than a family affair; this was government policy apparently aimed at bolstering the Sunni community against a heavily armed Shiite Hezbollah. However, as mentioned in my previous post, these bridges between mainstream Lebanese Sunnism and the sect’s fringe elements are old constructions, and the Hariris were not the only active investors in this enterprise. From the outset, and long before this patronage morphed into a specific Saudi and Hariri-endowed political plan, it was obvious that the Sunni establishment was presiding over currents that make Hezbollah look positively angelic.

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The trail grows much colder at this juncture. Three likely scenarios make their case for space. Either the plug was pulled (prompted by a Saudi-American change of mind) on Fath al Islam, provoking it to show its canines; or Syria, the ingenious trickster that it is, drills inroads into Fath al Islam, works them like no master can, and turns them loose on their old patrons; or a combination of both: An unruly Fath al Islam dampens Hariri’s enthusiasm for them and creates a door through which Syria walks in and plays its hand. Nice!

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Whichever scenario is the closest to reality, Hariri and Saniora must be finding it very difficult to sit on their bums right about—oh, say-- this very minute because as we all know once you create a monster you can never be sure when it is going to turn around and bite you—hard.

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This is what I have been able to gather and deduce from the reports and assessments of those with serious insight into and knowledge about the different pieces of this puzzle.

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But, alas, as revelatory as all this is, it is not where the story may prove to be at its most meaningful—and unsettling.

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Spooky, huh?


Al baqiyyah fi al adad al Qadem (roughly, more later)

Contagion

A long break? Unfortunately, work got in the way. Besides, this new entry required—I don’t know?—a bit of thoughtfulness. I realize that, in the midst of the violence in Tripoli and the changing tactics of terror that are bringing the seeds of conflict to the heart of Sunni Beirut, there might be more interest in insights that address the immediate crisis, but, if you bear with me, you might find my contribution not entirely unhelpful.

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I need to dwell a little longer on, stretch a little more, this life of raw deals that we Arabs have been living, this choice we are constantly forced to make between evils. Had this dilemma remained squarely ours, today’s debate would echo yesterday’s. But there is a contagion making its rounds as of late—and not in these already afflicted parts.

As recently as September 10, 2001, Arabs like me who abhor that space between rocks and hard places would seek and find comfort somewhere in the perspectives of informed Western observers who knew enough about us to extract the repressed colors from a predicament dyed heavy for us in black and white. Even when they were very near they stood far enough to distinguish between issues fake and real. They could identify with the Arabs’ plight without buying into the professed credentials of its presumed defenders. They gave primacy to context when they met an apparent fact, and allowed nuance, however inconvenient, to intrude on absolute convictions.

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But the ease with which we, terminally beleaguered Arabs, choose sides is attracting converts from well outside the usual circle of acolytes. In the aftermath of a tragic September 11 that devastated lives, brought consequence agonizingly close to cause and let loose the demons of a very disturbed politics, out there in the West hysteria is harassing sound judgment the way it chased it away in my East. Islam has become the villain, the West a hero, civilizations are colliding and Western enlightenment itself is fighting for its life. The brightest of minds, with such unseemly haste, have joined the fight, long-cherished principles have been dumped and old nemeses have become the best of chums. Clearly panicky and besieged, they have fallen into the worst of our routines: Their political persuasions, pumped-up on noblesse oblige and high on rage, are planting themselves like bouncers at the door of every discourse and arbitrarily picking their way through the facts desperately trying to enter the argument.

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Still, truth be told, you cannot dismiss chagrin when it travels beyond its customary fringe quarters; when it is eloquent and only reluctantly hate filled; when it works so hard to justify and qualify if only to digest its own intolerance more easily. Similarly, you cannot embrace it simply because it cuts you all the slack you want, converts every fishy excuse of yours into a respectable reason and takes your obvious fibs for incontrovertible facts.

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You cannot ignore Martin Amis, one of England’s literary talents and a recovering liberal, when, in a three-part essay in the British Observer back in September 2006, he pronounces the Age of Horrorism, spawned by a maniacal Islamism, upon us. You cannot walk away from his words, which mystify precisely because they come from his pen. As an acquaintance of mine wrote after she read his piece, “Why would a man with his pulsating intellect, a man who seems to know enough and know it well write as if he knows nothing at all?”

And then it dawned on her:

As I read through Amis’s opening act, I quickly realized how forbidding the terrene of Islamism can be to the uninitiated…Before September 11, the West, he tells us, "had no views whatever on Islam," that, before the cruel indecency of that day, Islamism’s immediacy for the West was "…unforeseeable, altogether unknowable." These are confessions that tempt a rueful nod. After all, before September 11, grotesque or not, political Islam spread its poison way over here and therefore invited little Western attention and merited even less of its thought. Before September 11, to the deciders in much of the West, in an even larger slice of the East, and, yes, in Israel, Islamism seemed like an ugly enough of a good idea, a homegrown pit-bull that could harass unwelcome intruders and keep genuine moderation and secularism in check. Before September 11, it was for the East to painfully live through and climb up the steep learning curve about Islamism.
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How can I, then, not feel sympathy for Amis as he takes his first steps into the mind and purpose of Mohammad Atta; into the frightening message from that murderous day in a Madrid train station, that blood-dipped seventh of July in London? How can I not feel sympathy for him as he stumbles through the madness that is suicide-bombing Iraq into non-existence; through Palestinian suicide bombings that have sent a noble cause scampering to the moral low ground; through the blue burka and the black niqab that symbolize Islamism’s dire promise to us Muslim women; through the societies of "half-orphans" conceived by Muslim men given to polygamy and temporary legal pleasure? How can I not feel sympathy for Amis as he sits mortified through the rushes of an "anti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualistic, anti-democratic, and, most crucially, anti rational…" Islam?...

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…Because the monster is within Islam, the search for the external fiends that feed it, although duly noted by Amis, becomes a kind of appeasement. Because of its terrifying methods, of the promiscuity of its rage, Western transgressions and Israeli wickedness, although regrettable, become implicitly rational—a tolerable kind of malevolence. Death that comes in trickles from cluster bombs, death that comes in planeloads of reasonable justification or savvy rhetoric, death that eats its way slowly into its victim’s life, maybe be malevolent but it is certainly way short of "maximum." And moral equivalence in this apocalyptic conflict, relevant though it remains for Amis, does not in any way narrow the "vast and obvious" moral advantage of the West and does not render it any less superior.

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I read and I marvel and I think this is all so sad and so neat…

Indeed! The Age of Horrorism, the way Amis cannot help but see it, is with us and it is horrific in its deathly beliefs, gruesome in its means. However, although my friend is right to feel sympathy for Amis even as she points up the intellectual—and, yes--moral lethargy that send large sections of his article into a deep snore, I am still wondering to myself, How is this any less silly than the paranoiac nonsense thrown on us daily over here? It’s like looking at ourselves in the mirror. We are told that, unlike us, the West, traumatized though it may be, is endowed with liberal traditions and democratic practices entrenched enough to help it withstand and eventually overcome the witch-hunt mentality and jingoism that befall a people in times of crisis. We are told that, unlike ours, the West’s core—its center if you prefer—is elastic enough to let its illuminati run wild on the edge of sensibility before pulling them back, tamed, into the fold. Lovely! It seems to me that we have all the excuses we need for wholesale acquiescence in intimidated, cowering thought. What are the West’s?

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But, as I have just mentioned, this is not only about Amis and others like him who thoughtlessly sprinted to one extreme in search of incondite explanations for and defenses against a disturbingly aggressive strain of Islamic fundamentalism. This is equally about those who woke up on September 12, 2001, no less aware of our rich humanity than they were before Osama became a household name, and no less sensitive to our distress from a medley of incestuous wrongs: from colonialism; from an unforgivably callous American policy; from Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and people; from Israel’s pernicious meddling way past its borders; from our failure in building nations; from the ubiquity of authoritarianism in our region; from the pervasiveness of parochialism among our people; from our free fall to the bottom of that list of developing countries still struggling with illiteracy, shattered potential, lost youth, women’s rights, human right…you name it. I am actually lamenting those Western observers who (with the best of intentions, I am sure) have taken Amis’s jitters and turned them on their head: Incensed by the intellectual upheaval that has seen the defection of the dearest of colleagues and alarmed by a scandalously boorish American interventionism in collusion with unspeakably merciless Israeli practices, they are finding the light in the darkest of forces competing with them.

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If backdrops and diversity, the vibrancy of life itself, were kept out of Amis’s hyperventilating, dark screed on Islam and the East, blind empathy and schmaltzy romanticism have smothered every nuance in the pseudo-Chomskian harangues defending these. If, for Amis, Liz Cheney (of all people) is a heroine and her supposed fight for Muslim women’s liberation is the one thing that counts, for many on the other team, the champ is Hezbollah and its so-called resistance to American and Israeli plans is the one thing that matters. A history rich with super power machinations; the vile nature and atrocious track record of oppressive regimes, the virulent ideologies and questionable agendas of extremist movements; the cynicism and shared interests that make secret friends of ostensible enemies--all these, as guideposts to motives, as paths to context, have fallen by the wayside for both groups as they, like a merry-go-round, rotate obsessively around their one-and-only issue: the terrifying specter of Islamism for this crowd, the unbearable sight of America and Israel for that.

--
Even those miserable labels, which were dragged into this chaos already exhausted from too much abuse and bankrupt because of too many thefts, have been indiscriminately deployed in the service of every warring faction across this divide. Moderate, radical, reformist, patriot, crony, terrorist, traitor, defeatist, stooge are embossed like stamps of approvals on supporters or fired like bullets at dissenters in confrontations and spats that are seeing new faces fighting it out with very old hands.

--
We all know what makes officialdom and counterfeit ideologues (what I call repeat offenders) everywhere so prone to made-to-fit principles and silly-putty logic that change depending on the issue or the circumstance or the identity of the protagonists and their antagonists. It is not entirely unreasonable for politics to demand from its aficionados a shameless flirtatiousness with inconsistency. In fact, such is the tendency of our human nature: to bend into pleasing shape facts that get in the way of a particularly dear belief or objective. But when such proclivities begin to manifest themselves in those on whom we depend for a measure of sanity and intelligence in momentous discussions about momentous happenings, well, then, where can we possibly go from here.

--
Take the recent eruptions in Tripoli’s Nahr al Bared and Syria’s decades-old reign over Lebanon. Welcomed though Syrian hegemony might have been for a very long time by our political class and the powers that be, Syria’s deeds in this country can with total ease and absolute neutrality be described as disgraceful and just as revealing of Syria’s ill-will towards Lebanon as Israel’s own rich record is. In fact, one can very persuasively argue—and many of the best scholars and analysts have with ample evidence in their support—that the two countries, oftentimes in perfect sync, have taken turns in smacking us down. One might even suggest—if one wanted to play with fire—that Syria’s misbehavior in Lebanon was and is infinitely more offensive than Israel’s, because one anticipates the worst of treatments from an enemy but expects the best of care from a sister.

--
But the story, as always, does not stop here. And not surprisingly, Islamism today serves as the best example of how labyrinthine and murky this region’s politics can be. Quite a few of those--including every self-righteous March 14th leader— who paint Syria now as a reactionary power presiding over every militant Islamic group, from the almighty Shiite Hezbollah to the Shiite-hating Jihadist Sunni bands, had in the past either actively endorsed or been perfectly indifferent to Syria’s spine-chilling activities. It is a fact that many a self-described moderate, democracy-loving Sunni chief has done his bit in cultivating a base among fanatical Sunni currents. Those of us who have not been living on lala land for the past 20 years did not need Seymour Hersh to tell us about the connection between mainstream Lebanese Sunnism and its radical fringe elements. Our Sunni bosses, from the late Rafiq (and now his son Sa’ad) Hariri to Naguib Mikati to Fathi Yakan to the Mufti himself, have been at it and in on it for a very long time. And so, contrary to March 14's blatantly self-serving contention, monsters in our backyard are not only Syrian created and sponsored. But contrary as well to Hersh’s clueless claim made recently on CNN that Syria is innocent of such relations because of its alliance with Hezbollah, which reveals astonishing ignorance about the exhaustively researched mode with which Syria pursues its interests, a considerable number of our monsters (and very specifically Fath al Islam) have, for some of their bread and butter, Syria to thank. I am not venturing an opinion here, I am stating a fact. Fanaticism may be the common denominator between all these gangs, but their paymasters are different, their loyalties may clash and their agendas may at times compete and at others meet.

--
For these very sinister reasons, it is absurd to position oneself reflexively on either side of this explosive fault line. However, in this tumultuous environment of post-September 11 invasions and occupations, unholy alliances, axes of evil, dizzying flip-flops and holier-than-thou rhetoric suddenly all this background fades to black. In the aftermath of every flare-up in the current Lebanese debacle, the same two narratives make the strongest showing. For Syria’s fans or America’s detractors, America and Israel are always to blame. Syria’s treachery in Lebanon, the brutal nature of the regime itself, its proven very intimate links to many of the country’s disruptive forces and, most significantly, its very palpable anxiety about the international tribunal are at best immaterial, at worst a concoction by unpatriotic American stooges. For Syria’s detractors or America’s fans, Syria and Iran are always to blame. America’s own dubious history in Lebanon, its current regional entanglements, Israeli designs and the very shady ambitions and resumes of most of March 14's heroes are at best irrelevant, at worst propaganda by unpatriotic Iranian-Syrian operatives. And, as we used to say back in Arabic class years ago, wa haluma jarran (and so on and so forth.)

--
Nary an effort is made, except by the quietly sane and sufficiently detached, to follow the dynamic of the event itself, to identify the players with the highest stakes, to patiently way different scenario, to give fact more weight than sentiment, to read up on matters as yet neglected or unknown, to zoom out for a good look at regional intrigues and zero in on furtive mischief in our back alleys, before making up one’s mind or placing a safe bet.

--
You want another example? Take Last summer’s war between Hezbollah and Israel. The rest of this segment in three days’ time—hopefully.

Hasssounaaah!

Nassrallah! Hassan Nassrallah! Sort of like Bond. James Bond. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he, in this country of dandiprats. Here’s a Godly, Godlike and, so far as his followers can assure us, a Godsend man; a savior who actually liberated a chunk of Lebanese land; a Muslim-Arab leader who walked into a trap last summer but still delivered unto Israel a resounding slap; a Shiite—and a turbaned one at that—whose picture, after the war, graced many a Sunni street in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and, probably even, Pakistan; a paragon of incorruptibility untarnished by the swindles that have sullied most members of our political class; the one politician whose name, only a few months back, no one dared utter without first reciting the basmalah (In The Name of God the Merciful…). On and on I can go about the Nassrallah that was so special and so grand. There is no sarcastic timber to this tribute, I can assure you. Even his Lebanese enemies, once upon a time, sang his praises and tiptoed around him in every dispute. But well before Rafiq Hariri’s death and Nassrallah’s sudden knack for reckless displays of bravado, well before his ilahi (divine) victory over the rubble, there were a few Lebanese (and, yes, Shiite) unbelievers in this man. Yours truly was one of them.

--

Absolutely, Nassrallah captivates! He certainly captivates me because, through his galumph from unique to typical, through his role in this latest contrived battle for Lebanon’s soul, I can say much of what needs to be said about our regrettable circumstance.

****

Not so fast with the winks or the accusations! Don’t start running wild with joy or brooding in disappointment. The story is a little more intricate than that. No, not intricate like our Lebanese politics; intricate the way our Arab humanity, on a rare day, appreciates life’s complexities.

--

On these pages of mine the thoughts and convictions that feed my very sour mood about Nassrallah and his Party of God are just as hostile towards the other side. And just like my disagreements with the so-called coalition of March 14 are about essentials, my differences with Hezbollah and its prodigal son are about fundamentals. They do not shrink after a master stroke on the military battlefield and balloon after a political misdeed. They are constant because, from the start, we were worlds apart.

--

Beyond a singular meeting of minds over Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli occupation of the South before 2000, who they are and what they are about and who I am and what I want have always made the gulf between us vast and unbridgeable--vast because it is that void that forever separates Islamism from secularism; unbridgeable because there was a time, not so long ago, when Shiism pursued deliverance from marginalization through choices that were passionately nonsectarian and Hezbollah, for me, is a heartbreaking reminder of the collapse of that ambition. Vast because I have an addiction for thinking my way through anything, and their heaven-sanctioned instructions cover everything from ballot box habits to bathroom rituals. Unbridgeable because, for me, Iranian-Syrian patronage is the stuff of nightmares, but for them it is an ideal state of affairs. Vast because we both feel such outrage against Israeli savagery, but I alone feel it against Syrian brutality. Unbridgeable because they keep hollering at us that the sublime is only in them, that rectitude loves only them, and I keep whispering to myself the words of that dear poet Samih al Qassem, “Beware the rights of rhetoric dancing on blood.” Vast—and here I go walking again on the edge overlooking that damned valley of heresy—because they and Israel are ever so thankful for each other’s existence and both are ever so distressed by mine.

--

There! This is the flesh and skin of the antagonisms between me and Hezbollah. On their surface are scattered the very reasons that make this Levantine creature so feeble. Understand, would you, there are no good and bad guys fighting it out in Lebanon, and although there are currently two warring narratives of its future, both are so utterly devoid of anything remotely decent, so disrespectful towards this country’s desperate need to overcome its crippling deficiencies, that my refusal to subscribe to either is at peace with itself, undisturbed by doubts. I wonder though how many have made this escape along with me? For, sadly, in the midst of the emotions violently thrashing about in a horrendous blizzard of recriminations and counter-allegations, our politics has hurled us yet again into the tightest of spots—two, actually; the ones that go by the names of either and or.

--

The other day, I read these strangely comforting words by Annia Ciezadlo, the Christian Science Monitor’s woman in our neighborhood: “…Once again, Lebanon is facing the oldest, saddest choice in the modern Arab world: between undemocratic religious militants and a greedy, corrupt elite whose biggest selling point is its dubious ability to keep the militants at bay.” (Sect Symbols, The Nation, March 5, 2007). Ciezadlo, bless her heart, gets it. Hezbollah and March 14 may be in an existential tussle, but it is not about what shape a new, lovely Lebanon will take, it is about who gets to control the old, broken one. And barely under the surface of the sanctimonious vitriol and devil-may-care brinksmanship that have been consuming the country lurk the very ugly propositions of this nasty group and that miserable lot, each horsewhipping us into joining it in the trenches.

--

This fight may well be about issues of extreme import. It may be about the sword that the international tribunal for Hariri’s assassination is sure to swing over guilty Syria’s head. It may be about Hezbollah’s fury that the summer’s win against Israel unexpectedly contained within it the seeds of their political acquiescence, that the military confrontation had actually accelerated rather than retarded the momentum against their weapons. It may be about Persia’s insistence on finding its place in the sun and the US’s and Israel’s refusal to cede it. It may be about Sunni-Shiite tensions fueled by the demise of the Sunni regime in Baghdad. But these are just the mechanics that are driving this conflict. What has set them in motion is what has always made Lebanon so hooked on self-mutilation: this nation’s incapability of taking itself seriously.

****

As usual, in this mess of a situation the silliest slogans are mixing it up with the highest stakes. Like a battered wife, real economic grievances, genuine political aspirations, time and again, have been beaten to a pulp and stripped from any meaning by political bosses who still thrive on the adulation of their supporters and the complicity or silence of the others. Without even the trace of a smirk, March 14 have whipped their people into a frenzy about the pitch blackness of Iranian-Syrian tyranny conniving against the rainbow colors of Lebanon’s recovering democracy. And with a face as grim as their own scary tale, Hezbollah have roused their masses against an American-Israeli puppet government hell bent on fighting the axis of Truth, Justice, the Arab Nation and the Muslim Umma.

--

All this is such farcical theater--the actors so bombastic, their lines so over-the-top—you’d think folks are lining up for a bit of fun, but the queues are for much more than that: sides are being taken. Even the thinking ones are having to choose their teams as Lebanon revs up for another possibly bloody joust. Alas, the song of discord, and perhaps that of full-fledged mayhem, can be heard again and our leaders, marionettes that they are, have synchronized their death dance to the beat of foreign drummers.

--

But you’ve heard all this before. In fact, there would have been nothing unfamiliar about this game had it not been for the entry of its newest player: Hezbollah. The forces of March 14, along with old hands like Michel Aoun, Nabih Berri, Suleiman Frangieh..., have long been known to Lebanese, but the Man and men of Hezbollah, until two years ago, revealed themselves to us only at dusk, when the horizon is picture perfect and the day, tired and half-sleepy, begins to unwind. Much like those soldiers of old returning from their wars, to most of us, they appeared beautiful, glimmering with the battlefield’s dirt and dust. Political bickering was for the local and the small; Hezbollah’s was an identity and a stature deserving of larger regional, even international, tumult. They were here and very present, but as they went about studiously setting up shop, from schools to hospitals to databanks to underground tunnels, they only made quick visits to the back alleys of Lebanese politics where the others had long ago established permanent residence.

--

But that was then. And now?

--

A mere glance at the Lebanon of the past two years would reveal a political landscape that hovers between a paradox and an irony. In the most fundamental of ways it has been radically transformed and yet remains remarkably recognizable because the more this place changes, the more it stays the same. True, today, Lebanon is very far from where it was before 2005. Syria, once our one and only queen, has been knocked off her throne, and Hezbollah, for long an honored resistance movement that nitpicked its way through its obligations and our favors, is, at this very moment, smack in the middle of the political turmoil. True, its seems like the entire script has been rewritten since Hariri was expedited to his grave: politicians have changed roles, electoral alliances that made strange bedfellows of Hezbollah and Samir Geagea have come and gone, Aoun returned a March 14 star and ended up as Suleiman Frangieh’s ally and Hezbollah’s man of the hour…

--

But these are the time-honored shenanigans which make our politics so authentically Lebanese and so blatantly unprincipled. There is hardly anything untried we can marvel at in these stale schemes and dizzying tactics. It is Hezbollah’s entry into the boxing ring that has made this match so different and the serious bruising that the party and its man have taken so fascinating to watch. Because once circumstances changed after Hariri’s assassination, our fickle reality, not to mention Syria and Iran, demanded a different kind of performance from Hezbollah. And when it came—predictably self-righteous and imperious, but surprisingly clumsy and capricious—the enigma that made Nassrallah and Hezbollah storybook fabulous began to crack. And now that the mystique is gone it turns out that Hezbollah, full of guile against Israel, is petty, shrill and bizarrely lumbering against the many Lebanese who no longer sympathize with it or its cause.

--

See! Ti ti, ti ti, mitil ma rihti mitil ma jiti (as you went you came). Our sadistic democracy has imposed parity again. There are no more giants in our midst; all our politicians, thankfully, now come in miniature sizes.

--

You want specifics? There are plenty, and not all of them in the usual places that people like to look. If you prefer to stick to the mainstream, you could think back to that March 8th day two years ago, when, for no good reason at all, Nassrallah, probably elated by the throngs, scoffed at the size of the competition and its orange foulards, and received the first counterpunch by the astonishing turnout on March 14 that sent his chubby cheeks into deep red. Or you could dwell on that picture that showed him offering Rustum Ghazzaleh, Syria’s do-it man in Lebanon, a gold-plated Kalashnikov as a fare-thee-well present—a sight, I have to admit, that still unsettles my stomach. You could even ponder that evening a few months ago, when, shocked by the Sunni backlash to his onslaught on Prime Minister Saniora and rattled by the street chaos unleashed by his own burning tires and road-blocs, Nassrallah had to issue a political fatwa, of all things, against fitna (strife). Or you could mull over Hezbollah’s resignations from Saniora’s government. Unnerved by a majority they helped create through parliamentary elections which they endorsed and actively participated in, Hezbollah do not only walk out of the cabinet—which is their right—but decide they do not like this game after all and did not want to play with the rest of us anymore. Not for parliament this quarrel of theirs, for the streets, we were told; this rule as well, they insisted, owes them its exceptions.

--

However, if you’d rather pick your anecdotes from way off the beaten track, there is that time last summer, immediately after the Hezbollah’s triumph, when a woman begged for Nassrallah’s overcoat so that she can rub herself against it, and the party, t.v. cameras in tow, delivers it, leaving us to enjoy the show. A silly episode this, but—kid yourself not--so, so, so, very telling.

--

The Man Who Thought He knew It All and Fell from the Sky Straight to His Bunker. If I were ever to write about the odyssey of Nassrallah between March 8, 2005, and this Thursday in 2007, I would decorate its cover with this title--not a very elegant one, I have to say, but it is a rather tight sum-up to an act that has been no less lacking in grace.

--

If you are one of those who think Nassrallah still stands tall, listen to that pipsqueak Ahmad Fatfat, one of March 14's attack dogs, the next time he tares at Nassrallah in one of his press conferences. You can almost hear wings being clipped. And no basmalah!

****

If for no other reason than this I look back at the past two years with the most rueful of thoughts, not because there was never any hope of extracting from an unexpected and fleeting moment a Lebanon that is tangibly better and different, but because there was.

--

That famous March 14 day that asked Bashar Assad and Hassan Nassrallah to zoom out and take in the million and some faces would have been no more than a gathering of the paid and the umbilically attached had it not been for the likes of me—the stubbornly unaffiliated who went to Martyr Square to give that moment a chance.

--

I did it because a series of Syrian blunders had opened the door for this smothered, decaying nation, and I wanted to help her exit. I did it because I was apoplectic that decency could be trampled upon so often, for so long and with such nonchalance. I did it because I wanted our chiefs to register that the fury is more mine than theirs and the will to change is not for them alone to orchestrate. I did it because, on practically every issue, Hariri and I were diametrically opposed and I wanted my enraged reaction to his horrific death to be a clear message to his assassins.

--

Of course I knew that many among the old cast of characters were maestros in the art of debased give-and-take, their record glaringly bad, their political acrobatics hilarious to the ear and eye, their purpose, beyond the ouster of Syria, around which most of the sane could (and did) rally, painfully parochial. And it was lamentably manifest to me that our pervasive sectarianism had rendered our civic society dirt poor and barren, incapable of bringing to life, let alone nurturing, enlightened notions. So it was not naiveté that propelled me. It was actually the opposite: for once I did not want the jaded spectator in me to lecture on the events from the sidelines. On this possible turning point, I simply could not turn my back. That a mortal squabble between Syrian patrons and Lebanese cronies might just morph into something vaguely more elevated was a prospect titillating enough to stir me. That civil action could mobilize new names and make some space for a progressive secularism in this sea of multi-sectarian disaffection became, for me, a possibility well worth entertaining. But, as they say, il ain bassira wil yad aassira (the eye sees but the arm cannot reach). The usual screaming matches drowned out the whispers of fresh voices, blood, yet again, became the currency of payback, and those, like Samir Kassir, who imbued our quest with some eloquence, are lying now six feet under.

--

They failed! I failed! And here I am exactly were Ciezadlo has found me: an old arena, two packs of players, and a sucker of an audience who--which ever side wins--is sure to be the biggest loser.

****

Time for confessions! I have been struggling, truly struggling, with this last post for almost three weeks now. I suppose delicate themes call for delicate renditions, but our volatile times would not settle for anything dispassionate.

Chapter Two: Piss

It seems appropriate to start with the loneliness of good sense in this part of the world.

--

I am in Lebanon.

--

Izza ardta an ta’rif matha fi al Barazil yagib and ta’rif matha fi Italia (if you want to know what is happening in Brazil, you have to know what is happening in Italy). These unforgettable words belong to the perpetually befuddled, cuddly Husni al Barazan. He was the clueless journalist in Sah al Nawm (Good Morning), the Syrian series that made the evenings of our extreme youth, in those very early seventies, hilarious. Without Husni, Ghawwar al Tawsheh, the clownish character around whom every episode and its endless plots revolved, would not have been as brilliant. Dead-serious satire, Sah al Nawm--for me, at least--is perhaps the most fluent commentary on Arab society to date. And those words of Husni’s were meant to be the opening sentence of an article he spends the entirety of the show trying to finish—and never does.

--

And so it has been for us in the Arab world. In the face of chronic flux, we reach out for Husni’s izza ardta an ta’rif matha fi al Barazil yagib and ta’rif matha fi Italia, and stop there, like him, for what’s the use of seeking new meaning in the same old tired narrative. We like to pretend that our maladies are of the special kind, that the hurt is unique to us, its pain incomprehensible to strangers, even the sympathetic ones. But the truth of the matter is that there is no conundrum at the heart of us and this…Would that there were.

****

I am a few months into the latest wrestling match in Lebanon. It did not take long for this country to stroll back to the gutter. Barely fifteen years after a seventeen-year civil war, practically everywhere you look people are resting their chin on one hand, index finger shot across the cheek to give the face a knowing look, eyes in a half-squint, the lips softly smacking and, just as the other hand executes a half-turn to express wonder, “Maa’oul!” (Is this possible!) issues from our collective mouth. We are shocked, you see, shocked that we are plunging into violence again, shocked that we have forgotten yesterday’s catastrophe and its agonies.

But, then, what did we think two decades of amnesia were meant to deliver for us if not yet another round?

--

The civil war suddenly and miraculously comes to and end in 1992, and an era of bazzi’ w lazzi (spit and stick), as we like to describe our band-aid cleanups, follows. Peace is constructed on the same hopelessly sectarian edifice that collapsed seventeen years back. Syria wins the prize and plays patron and peace-keeper, ring-master and trouble-maker, business partner and sole negotiator, flag waver and resistance calibrator—roles inventive enough to mold out of a straightforward guardianship a labyrinthine occupation. Euphoria is artificially induced by Rafiq Hariri, a big man with big ideas floating on the hot air that filled them. A glimmering façade slowly begins to impose itself on political wounds that were never treated, over a predatory sectarianism that continued to feed on the delinquency of the state, over a shameless, boastful corruption of institutions and leaders and ordinary people (never ever skip over these) that dared its opponents to speak its name. And the people started to believe the war was a one-off, a hick-up. Talent flooded back. The young let loose their energies and gave life to their ambition. The older ones went looking for their aborted dreams. Hariri, through his Solidere, reinvented the old downtown. The Gulfies attacked. Haifa Wehbe swooned on the stage, her men spent the nights crooning. The restaurants, the clubs, the bars, the shops, the architectural statements, the exhibitions, the beaches, the fun, the summer festivals, glanced back at the recent past and declared it unworthy of mention.

--

Sure, the elections were always Syrian fixed and Lebanese rigged, and the old warlords became the new cabinet wards. Sure, newspapers, starved for cash, became little more their keeper’s mouthpieces, the best among them glorified word merchants. Sure, every sectarian leader created his own television station to give his agenda a jumpstart. Of course, Israel and Hezbollah went at each other every once in a while. Yes, the Syrians pillaged our resources to the tune of $2 billion a year. So what if Solidere was a private company for private profit, which confiscated private property whose value was determined by private committees set up and financed by that same private company? And is it really a big deal that bribes were always needed to grease big and small wheels? No denying that the absurdly high interest rates on the Lebanese pound were prolonged to nourish mega fortunes into a size that is hideously obese.

--

We all understood that every-- and I mean--every sectarian zaim (chief)) was happy to draw strength from the myriad quotas, from the coffers, from the silence of this hear-no-evil-see-no-evil state. Every one of us saw the sea fill up with shit and other some such filth, its centuries-old shores fast running out of sand. But only a trickle of us would concede that the poor Sunnis of Akkar and the Beka’a were joining the Christians of Burj Hammoud and the Shiites of the South in an ever widening poverty belt, while Beirut, our jewel of a bride, was sucking the government dry. But this is Lebanon, they kept telling the party poopers: private enterprise a la libanais, be-and-let-be mercantilism, shatara, cunning, not theft, all this was, a solute to the glory of Beirut, a commitment to its cosmopolitanism, a necessary concession to neo-liberalism.

--

And now ma’aoul is with us all over again. We are in genuine disbelief that an ugly bit of history is rewoven, willy-nilly, into the country’s present. That this history bursts into the scene with what looks like a new identity, a new set of friends and coteries, is making its return all the more frightening because the old trickster is not only back but he’s brought with him a whole new kind mischief.

****

As its practitioners keep explaining to newcomers with the patience of the chosen few and the truly privileged, the politics of this Levantine morass is so very intricate--intricate in the way serious, life-and-death issues are chopped into the smallest calculations the minute they knock on our door; intricate in the do’s and don’t’s for the Shiite and the Maronite, for the Sunni and the Druze, for this part of town and that section of it; intricate in the unfettered sectarianism that wraps itself so easily with nationalist slogans or, with a straight face, declares itself patriotism.

--

But who cares about intricacy, when a spectacle can say it so well and say it all.

--

A few meters away from me, as I am typing now, is a picture unforgivably telling in its downcast drabness. In the tent-city that haphazardly grew around Riad al Solh Square and the periphery of Beirut’s center sit, with hubbly-bubbly in hand, the perennially idle, eternally bored, for a while terrifying but now ignored sentries of a revolt that, for a second there, roared like a lion before it fell, like a car crash victim, into a coma.

--

Hardly anyone pays attention now to these men—a few Shiites, a handful of Maronites and Sunnis, a couple of Druze (yes, I am exaggerating for effect). Beirutis walk by and drive over this ramshackle town and its residents much like the way they distractedly uuphhh their way through the capital’s many daily nuisances, its ubiquitous eyesores. True, businesses are going bankrupt, the economy is imploding and a nation’s living is heading for the bottom in a freefall, but a political status quo stubbornly holds as its enemies flail on the edge of this battered heart of the city. As a Sunni prime minister overcomes--with not much difficulty, one has to say--a Hezbollah-led siege that may speak for half of the people but is Shiite in its numbers, Shiite in its yellow flags, Shiite in its muscle, the country’s very curious temperament comes to the fore: Lebanon itself may come to an end as this half fights that, but its long reigning atavisms can never be overturned.

--

In the once crowded tent-city that has become a ghostly expanse; in the nightly silence that trails a grand opening of blaring music and fiery speeches that gave you goose-bumps or raised your hair depending on where you stand; in the makeshift booths selling disposable lighters that etch on any surface the image of Hassan Nassrallah when you flick on their light; in the disappearance of the barbwire and barriers that once sealed this most expensive real estate in town, in that bigotry that erupted into an epidemic of chatter about piss and its distinct Shiite odor, in the queue of shops and restaurants that closed down, in all of these you could read the entire map of this political battleground.

--

Chez nous au Liban, you have to understand, the sect itself anoints and dumps the leaders it leases to the nation. In this confessional republic of ours, it is not for Shiite Hassan Nassrallah or Maronite Michel Aoun to topple Sunni Fuad Saniora, just like it is not for Sunni Sa’ad Hariri and Druze Walid Jumbulat to oust Maronite Emil Lahoud. Here, you need to know, political geography hyperventilates every time a sect steps over the red lines into another’s mental and physical space, so Shiite multitudes cannot descend on the so-called Sunni hub and shut it down. In this metropolis, historically drunk on its cosmopolitan exceptionalism, the crude, unpolished countryside cannot walk to the middle of Beirut and shake it out of its trance. With this screaming medley of communities, the push and pull of fragmented loyalties and clashing visions, in times of trouble, always turns into an incurable vulnerability to regional vicissitudes and a toxic addiction to foreign intrusions.

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If all this is Chinese to you, don’t be disheartened, even the brightest among us more often than not misread this country’s pathetically untidy picture. When totally lost, keep in mind two general rules: Don’t go rummaging in the lofty sections of our politics in search of explanations for our mudslinging, stick to the lower parts; and think big when you are outside Lebanon, think very, very, small when you come visiting.

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But, most important of all, keep your eyes on the spectacle because it says it so well and says it all. Right there between the empty tents and the scattered chairs, on the sullen faces that become defiant only when the camera begins rolling, is the tale of how this country works and how Nassrallah, once high and mighty, went local, aimed too high, fell flat on his face and became—well, what else? Tiny.