Beirut Dispatch 6.12.09 Ria Finally Meets John Sununu

In this Dispatch:

Ria Still Lives in Awe of the House of Sekina
Parliamentary Election and Observation
Ria Finally Meets John Sununu


The Story of Cleanliness and Gluttony in the House of Sekina

When measured for cleanliness, Sekina’s house easily puts any other house I’ve ever been to deep and unpenetrable shame. This is accomplished not so much with cleaning products as it is with oceans of water and universes of fresh air. Every single day all carpets are pulled up, brushed out on the balcony, the bathroom scrubbed from top to bottom, and all floors washed. Once a week, every single item in the house is wiped down – all spice containers removed from their cupboards and washed, all carpets hosed down and dried out by being hung over the walls of her outside porch, all bedsheets fairly boiled, all curtains taken down and wiped, each book on every bookshelf eradicated of its dust. Once a year, the mattresses are unstitched, their feathers and wool washed and dried in the sun, and then sewn up again. Yes, its just water water water and air air air, and a lemon or two here and there. For instance, the container which holds Sekina’s very clean sponges for dish washing is a container of water with lemon rinds in it, rinds that are changed every day. The main enemy to the army of cleaners – mostly, yes, women - of my neighborhood seems not so much to be of germs, but of dust and in their ceaseless eradication of this dust, the germs don’t stand a chance. We sleep with all the doors and windows open “because that’s how everyone should sleep.” In the winter, there are more blankets, but still fresh air because we can. I am in a perpetual state of peace and happiness in this condition.

On the opposite end of cleanliness is gluttony, and we do that too, but in a grand and rather tidy way that includes divvying up large lots of food between the apartments in my building. On fish days, twice a week, one of the Sri Lankan maids of the building is sent down to the port of Karantina to wait for Ali, the only fishmonger Sekina deems as worthy of her standards. Many pounds of fish – whose type changes according to the season or even the month – are brought up and laid out on a balcony where a whole row of maids goes to work deboning and ungutting and deeyeballing them swiftly and accurately. This is truly a sight to behold. Scales fly and innards are tossed into buckets which fill up, and are emptied at a feverish pace. On other days, my downstairs neighbor’s maid Dilhane is sent to find buckets and casks of cheese and yogurt, while another girl goes for meat – whole lambs, split up between the residents of the building. Wednesday, the row of girls is reassembled for the stuffing of squash with lamb and tomatoes or the forming of kibbe – holy yum. I like vegetable chopping day most of all because I am allowed to participate. This was only accomplished through a lot of begging after which Sekina relented and said that although I am not yet skilled enough to handle fish or meat, I’m okay with tomatoes and onions. During the washing and disassembling of 20 cabbages the other week, Sekina would save I and her grandsons the spines of the smallest cabbage leaves – sweet and considered a treat in Lebanon. I really marvel at this, a country where the spine of a cabbage is considered a treat and actually is sweet to eat. Sekina will tell me selected spice secrets, but of course not the ones I really want to know. Sabah baharat – seven spices – I have found out, is the answer to many of the mysterious spice questions. When new flowers come into season, I can find a bunch of them – always fragrant and lovely – placed next to my bed “for my dreams,” Sekina says. At 7:45 in the morning, Roro, the Sri Lankan maid comes in my room, places my slippers next to my bed, opens all the curtains and tells me my Arabic coffee will be ready in 10 minutes, which it always is.

When I have a cold, it is the most fun because the maids cook for me - Sekina doesn't like anything spicy but Roro and Dilhane make me scary spicy fish, Sri Lankan style and I am cured almost immediately. It will take 24 hours for me usually to get rid of a cold here, during which I will lay on the largest couch and Roro and Dilhane will vigorously massage various tiger balms into my joints "you need to release the bad energy", drape my arms in legs in strategic positions "because your blood is not flowing the right way," and feed me unidentifiable herbs "because your eyelids are the wrong color." I just love these girls.

Why would I ever voluntarily leave a place such as this? Okay, I do miss talking to men, I’ll admit that much and dating people, well I almost forget what that was like.

Bad Behavior

I am sometimes taken aback by how much I subvert some of my most regular behavior around Sekina. I am, at least while in her house, no longer a nail painter, fiction reader, make-up applier, ankle shower, DEFINITELY not a knee shower, alcohol drinker, pork eater, milk sipper, boy kisser, bubble bath taker, clothes or hair dryer, skinny dipper (most definitely out of the question.) The ways my life has vastly improved though are equivalent – I am fed five vegetables and fresh baked bread by the end of breakfast, clothes and sheets washed as soon as dirt touches them, an active participant in approximately 10K neighborhood lady conversations in Arabic about any topic that could ever be discussed, flowers cut for me just to make me happy, the Qur'an read aloud to me about 5 times so far, and accepted into an amazing community who I would never have expected would have a reason to want to accept me.

In my last few days at her house before her son returned to reclaim his bed, the neighborhood ladies talked election. Who did they like? I asked. "Well, not Sa'ad Hariri but we have to vote for him. We're Sunni." This conversation summarizes most of the 'who will you vote for?' conversations I've had as of late.

Parliamentary Observation and Ria Finally Meets John Sununu

Then, all of a sudden, the mufti was back for the summer and that meant Ria was out on the street. I was lucky to have a friend who shall remain nameless who gave me shelter for one tense day. Then all of my bags were fairly thrown into my lovely, if less clean that Sekina’s, new apartment in Hamra and I spent the next week holed up in the Phonecian Hotel, where I volunteered to help with the observation of the parliamentary election held on June 7th. Now I and the NGO with which I was temporarily accepted were definitely eating, hardly sleeping, but a lot of work was getting done in organizing this observation. On my third day, my 32nd birthday in fact, as a willing prisoner in the Phonecian, I was sent to pick up a visiting observer from the Beirut airport. Who was this observer? FORMER Senator John Sununu, a man to whom I had dedicated almost a year of my professional life to taking out of office. John Sununu, the stuff of so many bad dreams, who voted with George Bush 97% of the time! John Sununu, whose father was the first George Bush’s chief of staff! John Sununu, whose useful days in the US Senate were done!

I knew that this was going to be the best birthday ever.

I did not tell the nice gentleman with whom I went to the airport about my history with Sununu. “Ria," he said on the car ride over "This guy just lost a pretty big senate race and yes, he’s bitter.” I bit my lip “Is that so?” I could not wait to make it to the arrivals gate and look straight into his defeated face and then ask him if I could help him with his luggage. Of course, fate prevented this from happening. Sununu’s plane, we found out as I was practically exploding with excitement in the arrivals lounge, was being held for several hours in the gosh forsaken Charles De Gaulle airport in gay old Paris, a city I usually love but for now I was quite upset with.

I spent days hudled over a computer, holed up in an overcrowded hotel room, gettin' things done. On the actual day of the observation, for the few hours a few of us managed to leave the hotel room where all observation results were coming in, I was lucky to have the chance to go out and observe a polling location, in an Armenian quarter of Beirut called Borj Hammoud. Packed in the car with some DC staff and an Albanian Kosovar staffer in Jordan, it turned out that I was the only Arabic speaking person and so got to ask the observation questions of the polling place officials in my still-mangled Arabic (form question: Are voters fingers being checked for ink – Ria’s messy translation – are officials looking to see if there is blue on the fingers of people before they vote?) I asked the polling center head what the confessional makeup of the polling center was. “697 people - Armenian” one official said, drawing quick fire from two other officials, rather insistent -“There are two Shiia and 1 Sunni!” Then, a large argument of at least 6 people over whether one of the Shiia had died. “Mixed, but mostly Armenian,” I marked down on my sheet. I could have done that job all day.

Then, the morning after the election, I was heading down to the conference room to deliver some documents for presenting the election results when who should I find, standing in a hallway all alone, eating a croissant, but John Sununu. God could not have laid a more lovely present before me. I walked over and stuck out my hand "Senator Sununu" (at this point, I had a hard time not completing the sentence with "who does not have a plan for improving the economy for the hard-working families of New Hampshire!" but I held my tongue) "my name is Ria Riesner and I am a former resident of the great state of New Hampshire." (I was silently trying to figure out if he might, for some reason recognize me of one of the army of Jeanne Shaheen staff and volunteers who liked to attend functions where he was speaking and hold a million Jeanne Shaheen signs) “What did you do there?” Sununu asked. “Well, I’m one of the few people who can say they’ve worked for both D’s and R’s in NH (I spoke of who I had worked for, stressing the R part, keeping Jeanne Shaheen’s name entirely out of it). “Where did you live?” “Portsmouth,” I said. “Well, yours was probably the only vote I got in that town!” he said. FORMER Senator Sununu, if you ONLY knew.

We talked for 20 minutes of the peace process and of Israel and Palestine, of his family's interesting history in the Middle East and South America. We traded favorite book titles. As was my experience in chatting with other "scary" Republicans (John Ashcroft, John McCain) I went in thinking "standing so close to almost evil" and left thinking, he's actually a pretty decent guy. What a world this is, though, when I meet John Sununu in Beirut and he somehow thinks I voted for him.

I am continually amazed by the rich fabric that makes up my life. I'm just not sure I even deserve this stuff. Thanks, you, up there! I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Until the next Dispatch,

Ria

Beirut Dispatch 4.1.09 Fleeing Creepy Man, Ria Seeks Refuge Again in the House of Sekina

Top: View of Mt. Hermon, the mountain where the transfiguration of Jesus may or may not have taken place, from the balcony of the home of Dorothy Jabbour in Marjayoun, South Lebanon where Dorothy lets me stay when I am doing research in the security strip. (Photo: Jane Jabbour)

My Lebanese Mother Sekina's son, Mufti Selim, is not the man in this picture (the picture is of Lebanon's Grand Sunni Mufti Qabbani) but Qabbani is Sekina's son's boss, and they wear the same type of outfit.


Okay, this dispatch: I punch a man in the face, move back in with Sekina and the painful process of learning Arabic continues.


An Unsavory Man Meets The End of Ria’s Clenched Fist

Happily underwater at the AUB (American University of Beirut) swimming pool, I was enjoying the peerless view of the Mediterranean as I swam an hour of laps. After the swim, alone in the girl’s locker room taking the obligatory de-chlorinization shower, I heard the voice of a man, in Arabic, who apologized for being there, but just needed “to borrow some shower gel." An altercation ensued whereby the man attempted very gingerly to reach for my soap inside the shower stall as I, in great fear, fashioned a quick sort of dress out of the shower curtain and implored him to leave immediately. He inched closer and closer and I experienced three seconds of terror as I felt myself completely freeze up, and then, much to my relief, a great buildup of fury unleash through my every atom. He began to reach for my arm and so when he got close enough I punched him squarely and sharply in the nose. I wished I could have hit him harder, but I was at a comparative disadvantage being, as I was, naked, without shoes, completely soaking wet and rather covered in bubbles. His face turned blotchy and red and he grabbed at his nose in shock and pain. “Why do you hit me in the face when I only want to borrow soap from you?” He fled, I quickly dressed and found the security chief, and 30 security men fanned out over the sports complex and rounded up the four men who remained in the complex. Then they brought the guilty party in front of me and it almost made me laugh – the identification was easy because he was the only person in the gym who had a fist mark on his face! Anyway, that stupid man watched me swim and followed me in there and didn’t even touch me, but he’s now banned from campus and he’s lost his job at the AUB hospital. I would like to thank the many, many security guards who are now especially protective of my safety and drive me anywhere if I’m on campus. Thank you also, Chief of Protection Shalak!

Please, Sekina, Take Me Back

(background for new readers – in 2006 in Lebanon I lived with Sekina Alwan, the mother of a high Sunni mufti who muftis in Australia. I would sleep in the mufti's bed while he was in Australia and Sekina would try to convert me.)

I was still living with sweet American Lauren, but went to see Sekina to have lunch. I think Sekina’s son, during his stay here last month suggested that keeping a wild American girl in her saintly house was an unneeded pressure on her delicate state - Sekina obese and diabetic. Sekina loves me though and I love her and over lunch one day where we celebrated the birthday of the prophet Mohammed, I told her the story of the attempted molestation of me in the AUB shower and she was horrified in the most sincere way, told me how happy she was that I’d clocked the jerk, and demanded that I move in the next morning.

Ria Returns to the House of Sekina, Attempts to Read the Quran Aloud, Fails Miserably

Several things happened upon returning to the house of Sekina. First, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of joy even greater than the sort you feel when you are seven years old and it’s the night before Christmas. Even walking through her door, I felt I was descending into a bubble bath of many layers of variously correctly spoken Arabic. At any one time I can be talking with Sekina while the TV blares an Egyptian soap opera, a recitation of the Quran plays on the radio, two men in the street below haggle over the price of a new motor for a car, and Sekina’s maid, Roro giggles with her Sri Lankan girlfriends over how long it will take them to save for their dowries ($1000!) in a sort of pidgin Arabic because half of them are Tamil and the other half speak Sinhala. The second thing that happened was that I realized Sekina is Sunni, NOT Shiia. It’s a long story which I’ll spare you, but has to do with the fact that Sekina refuses to discuss the difference between Muslims and my interactions with Sekina’s many close friends who go regularly to the sermons of the Shiia Sheikh Nasrallah (the head of Hizbollah).

Sekina often reads the Qur’an to me, an activity which I genuinely enjoy and which she presumes, if done enough, will impel me to change my religion. I, in a spirit of cultural exchange and in an effort to improve my Arabic, suggested one morning that I read the Qur’an to her. This, I explained, would not be anything close to what Sekina enjoys listening to her Al-Azhar trained mufti son, Mufti Selim, read, but it was certainly a wholesome and time-honored way to pass time. Sekina looked at me askance with some suspicion and told me to take the largest Qur’an from the bookshelves – gently and with a towel – so that I would not touch it (not a rule she said, but she needed mufti clarification on this one). I then asked Sekina if I was allowed to touch the pages with my hand and she said she needed to talk to her son to make sure, but that she would turn the pages for me until we knew for certain. I began to read, starting with the obligatory “Bismillah al rahman al rahim” and then started, with the difficulty all foreigners have, to read. Sekina sat patiently and quietly, with the gentleness of a mother long used to hearing the semi-literate on the long and bumpy road to literacy, to listen to me read aloud but after a few sentences could not conceal the discomfort she felt, plainly visible on her face, which she then explained to me in words – the sound of me reading the Quran, causing “pain” in her ears, and sounding like “sick cats slowly dying in an alley.” I’ll try again later.


Ria Continues To Massacre the Arabic Language

I am downright fluent in about 25 conversations. The most often used of these is called “Yes, I Am Married,” and it goes on, “to a Polish man named Vaclav,” a conversation I have at least once a day. “Vaclav is an engineer for the central government in Krakow, but he came to Lebanon with me while I study. We will perhaps have children when I graduate from school. Until now, we live in Ras al Nebaa where I often make him ice cream from scratch.” Another conversation is called “It Does Not Matter What my Religion Is," and continues "I have the same amount of respect for Muslims, Christians and Jews.” A third is titled “The South of Lebanon is Beautiful,” and it goes on “The people in South Lebanon are good people. Even the political tension in this region cannot take away the beauty of the place – all of the citrus trees, the mountains and the olives, a beauty that God has given for us all to enjoy.”

In south Lebanon, I conduct all of the interviews for my thesis in Arabic. Talk with me about prison conditions, weapons training, military tribunals, asylum applications, resettlement schemes, national reconciliation, I’m fine. Ask me how to say “electrical outlet" and I’m at a loss. So it goes with Arabic, I guess. My friend Salam kindly let me read the newspaper to him the other day. During the first two articles on a football match and something related to factory closings I don’t think he understood a word and probably questioned why I had started to learn the language. The third article, about a multi-lateral summit, came out great. He was rather surprised. Those are the only words I really understand – the political vocabulary. Its funny to watch. I sometimes want to poke myself in the eye for all of the words I still dont know, but I go on.

When I’ve had a long day of Arabic frustration, Sekina cooks me fish and artichokes.
Sekina says her sun is a Lebanese mufti, but that I am her American daughter, and we will negotiate our way through the world together, and I can’t think of a better example for me to follow. Mashallah.

I hope you all are well!

Until the next Dispatch,

Ria

Ria Finally Gets to go to Syria and there is Finally a Dem in the White House

Photo of the shrine where many Muslims believe John the Baptists head to be interred, in a section of the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, which I visited this weekend.


Damascus, an amazing international city of immense historical import, only an hour and a tantalizing five dollar taxi ride away. In these circumstances, how could a girl not want to go to a country which had been forbidden to her for so long, at whose borders she had endured hours of interrogation, a soaking by a sneaky and hidden sprinkler, taunting by dozens of amused Syrian customs guards, practically days with only Dunkin’ Donuts for sustenance (see earlier posts from 2006 if none of this makes any sense). I spent this past weekend in Damascus, a place I can only describe as an absolute delight.

I was giddy heading to the Charles Helou bus station to go to Syria, this time with a legitimate and entirely legible visa from the Syrian Embassy in Washington. Loaded into a minibus of 11 Syrian construction workers and three Japanese 20-somethings who had been living out of their Hello Kitty backpacks for the past year as they traveled the world, I could not wait to explore the glory of this whole new country. At a stop along the way, I was chatting with a metalworking specialist from near the Syrian border with Iraq when a man came up selling bottles of fake Armani Code and CK One cologne. All of the workers watched as the man pulled bottle after bottle out of his bag, and then they asked me which cologne an American girl would like. I love being able to speak Arabic, well, kind of speak Arabic. In a sweeping a majestic tone, using ample expression with my arms, I said that if a man had soap, he did not need cologne, drawing a scowl from the salesman, but grateful nods from all of the workers. I have been a silent and often nauseous witness to this phenomenon throughout my life in every continent I've been to - the cologne applied with the heavy hand, as if an additional tablespoon of something will drive women insane with lust, when in truth it only makes us lose our appetite.

In Lebanon, some people (ummm, Christians mostly) will refer to Syria in a derogatory sense, as a sort of backwater, devoid of culture, barren of good food, a cesspool of blah. In Syria, many people will refer to Beirut as a quaint, lovely, but overall insignificant sattelite port city, “You know, like Homs,” one friend surmised, referring to the Syrian town of Homs, which is not a port city. Behind all of this trash talk, the Syrians and Lebanese cross each others border in teeming droves, both to visit family on the other side, the Lebanese to shop and some for religious pilgrammage, and the Syrians to Beirut for both the jobs available there and for vacation. So people can talk all the smack they want about you are a backwater and you are a city in the boondocks, but I know how it works.

Damascus is thought to be one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Over the centuries ruled by Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Crusaders, Selcuks, Mamluks, Timburlane, and Ottoman forces, for centuries, it was the center of the Islamic empire under the Ayyubids and Ummayyads, and many other dynasties. Walking through its streets and its expansive souqs, the scale of the city reminded me in many ways of Istanbul. The skyline is not dominated (yet) by these large hotel buildings which block the sun and could be described as an eyesore, if I were feeling kind enough to assign that word to those massive blobs of bleck. This was a city of real majesty – dusty, hazy and gorgeous.

My dear friend Alexa Poletto in Washington gave me the name of a friend of hers in Damascus who was the manager of a large hotel – and this was where I stayed, under the care of Alexa’s friend Mohammed, who was sweet and tolerant of my relative American ignorance about Syria. He was a fine and selfless host.

If I were to title the theme of my hotel room, it would be called “Crushed Velvet Fantasia.” This was a room I think that Elvis might have felt comfortable in – the reds, the hot pinks, the assertive and confident gold trim. At night, I would lay on my Baroqueish bed in my man's pajamas watching old Egyptian films and send down to the kitchen for whatever random food I saw people eating in the movie, and look out to the awesome view of the Old City.

Entering the grand covered Souq al Hamidiya in the early morning, I was struck by the sheer number of sequins and ruffles. Indeed, I had the sense that if there were an award given to the country with the highest percentage of sequins per capita, Syria might prevail. What a wonderful souq with its wide, open lanes, soaring arches and bright and dizzying wares on offer. One minute, I was on a street full of faucets, and the next on an avenue of womens panties, until I walked into a wall with a thousand vegetable colanders – there seemed to be no end to the merchandise. Another turn took me to the street of spice merchants and ataars, specialists who extract the oils and essences out of nuts, roots, flowers and other items. The smell of lavender and jasmine (the national flower of Syria, which grows everywhere) mixed with wood and musks. Delicate dried figs were pressed and dusted with powdered sugar before they were laced into lengths coiled up like snakes. Menageries of feather light dried starfish, baby alligators, snakes and other items were strung up over the stalls of the apothecaries stalls, and it was at one such stall, as I was buying dried sage (Ahmed’s mother made it for me in tea the other day in Borj al Borejni and I loved it), that I saw, leaning over a basket of dried lemons, the most beautiful woman I have seen in many years. She looked to be about 50 years old and had jet black wavy short hair and this skin that was absolutely almost mother-of-pearl in its luminescence. I walked over to ask her what she ate, what in the heck she put on her face to give it the sort of light usually reserved for especially innocent nuns and others of that ilk. She smiled, took my hand and started to lead me through low alleys and high, soapmakers and olive vendors till we arrived at a small door, which we entered to reveal an old man, hunched over a press, with a large consignment of fresh almonds beside him, smaller and more round than I had seen before. We sat down on benches, were served mint tea as he took a large quantity of almonds and began to turn a large bolt on top of a marble slab until a light, golden oil appeared trickling from a spout into a glass bowl. I have a bottle of this next to my bed now in Beirut and look at it with a sort of awe, almost not feeling worthy of opening the sweet stuff.

The people of “Sister Syria” seemed to be the progenitors of many peoples in the countries in the periphery surrounding her– there was something of the grandness and scale of the Turk, the modesty and religiousity of the Egyptian. Here were a noble people who drove sensible cars (in Lebanon, every other car is a Mercedes or a BMW) and wore sensible shoes (women in Beirut wear stilettos for a quick trip to the corner pharmacy). My interaction with every person with whom I spoke with was a pleasure.

On my second day, Mohammed took me around the main sights of Damascus – the Ummayyad Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the entire world, where, within a two block radius, you could visit three very interesting sites - the shrine of Hussein (a powerful symbol of resistance against tyranny in Shiia history)’s head (an intimate little shrine, the form of a body, draped in green silk) was meant to be buried, the shrine where John the Baptist’s head was meant to be buried, and the tomb of Saladin, the Kurdish Sunni who founded the Ayyubid Empire which at its high point around the 12th century ruled over Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Saladin is also especially beloved by the Arabs because he led the resistance against the European Crusaders when they were here. Mohammed told me that more than 70% of the people who come to Damascus come for religious reasons, and that most people, aside from the Lebanese, were from Iran and came to see the shrine to Hussein. The mosque was beautiful – with a massive and elegant mosaic soaring above us featuring turquoise, yellow and light green patterns of curling ferns and other items of pretty. John the Baptists Shrine was lit up electric green and had maybe almost a thousand people pushing their way inside. Mohammed said it all got to be confusing about whose heads were really where - for instance - Muslims believed JtheB to be buried here (he’s called Prophet Yahya in Arabic) but some Christians though he was in France and some other people thought he was in Macedonia, while still others thought this shrunken head rolling around somewhere in Rome was The Head, but after all this time, who really knew whose head was whose anyway? He also said he thought Husseins head and John the Baptists head were once here, but probably weren't anymore.

I shopped. A lot. No matter what I bought, it seemed to cost about a dollar. In greater truth, everything was at first $10 until people realized that I spoke the same dialect of Levantine Arabic - almost - that they did - then they would apologize and tell me the thing cost a dollar. I bought sumac and lavender and the most sweet little pinkish pistachios, apricots and dates and bright colored candles for Ramadan. A quick trip down to the pharmacy, I bought an athsma inhaler – in the US, without insurance, $44. In Lebanon, $82, in good old Syria, a cool $4.50. I left this shopping haven back to Beirut in a taxi with two couples and our collective 12 bags of swag– a Lebanese ships first mate in his navy cable knit sweater and his large, hijabed wife who let me spend most of the drive back with my head in her ample lap, and another young Syrian couple who were fleeing Damascus for the freedom of Beirut where they could stay in a hotel together, unwatched (this last bit about those two was constructed entirely out of my vivid imagination and is not based on fact in any way).

Back in Beirut, Fatah Ahmed, now the press secretary for Fatah in Lebanon or somesuch, reiterated his two year old offer of marriage, which seemed especially well-timed since he has recently become engaged to a 19 year old innocent from the refugee camp. We are having interesting discussions about this - there would be the quick matter of my technical religious conversion (there is no civil marriage in Lebanon), and then, bam, done. “You might actually like it, you know,” he said. Ahmed is dear and lovely and I have never met another person even remotely like him before. I would describe my feelings toward him, generally, in this sense - its as if there is the greatest show in the world happening, and Ahmed is the only one with the tickets. I've just never met anyone else who has the tickets. Well, I know I’m into my third glorious decade on earth, but still not remotely tempted to legally bind myself to a car, a house, a loan, even a small pet, come to think of it even a cell phone plan, let alone another person. Thanks, though, Abu Zoghdy, you are still my very favorite person fil Lubnan, well, except Sekina.

My days are a little bit empty with no work and no school yet, so I made a schedule of what I term “intentional conversations,” vigorous and targeted attempts to build my Arabic vocabulary. These are fun, educational daily trips where I go and meet a new person and ask them about their job and what it entails every day. The first day, I met an archeologist from Jordan, who led me through some of the Roman antiquities in the AUB museum’s storeroom. The second day it was a computer repairman, the third, a nurse – then a meat importer, rifle store owner, pilot, psychologist, school teacher, etc etc. Its getting impressive. I think I can order a ship's engine from the conversation I had with one of the main port's directors, and I can also explain how to load a rifle in Arabic, not to mention I just learned how to say "please wipe your nose" from a 3rd grade teacher.

America got a new president. Well, I could not be happier, as many of you all know. For a few minutes, watching the crowds on the National Mall, thinking of my entire family attending the swearing-in and the formal balls in their frilly dresses, I missed the city of my birth, but I am just glad that we have Obama, Biden, and Hillary (please do something about Gaza, Hillary, please), all of these other good, decent Dems locked out of the corridors of power for so long starting the important work of fixing my wonderful country. So, the Arabic is improving, Beirut’s chugging along, Syria let me peek under her veil for a while, and there is FINALLY a Dem in the White House and so I’m happy for now and hope you are too.

Best,

Ria

Ria is Back from South Lebanon

A British demining expert checks olive trees for potential remaining cluster bombs from the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah left in Zawtar Asharqia, southern Lebanon. Photograph: Marwan Naamani, AFP.



Happy New Year, every one of you!

I have just finished this year and what has been a particularly interesting month in my life so far - and to think about forcing a description of these heady weeks into a few, piddly paragraphs seems almost a task not worth attempting. I came to south Lebanon to work on my graduate thesis, which has to do with the topic of the South Lebanese Army (which broke off from the regular Lebanese Army and worked with Israel) during the Lebanese Civil War. To this end, I traveled to at least 40 towns and small villages in the UN Security Zone in the southernmost area of Lebanon. I cannot be bothered to think of how utterly ridiculous I must have looked – an American girl who speaks sort of passable Arabic, on the Israeli border, asking a bunch of former individuals who were tried as collaborators by the government, most put into prison, to give me information on how exactly they were recruited and what exactly they all did during and after the war.

I stayed in a town called Marjayoun, a primarily Christian hamlet a few miles or a vigorous olive’s tossing away from the Israeli border. Ensconsed atop a mountain ridge, I am surrounded by UN HQ to the north, Beaufort Castle to the west, Israel to the south, and Shebaa Farms and the Golan Heights to the east. A cease fire is still in effect here, one which I think of every morning when I wake up –please hold ceasefire, hold do! A certain aspect of calm prevailed, though, and Ill attempt to explain just why.

Dorothy Jabbour, a lovely Englishwoman I had met but only briefly in Beirut before she insisted that I take her summer mountain house for the month, was too kind to me and I am still almost in a state of shock that such a seemingly competent, in charge of all of her senses individual could look at me and think, yes, although I’ve only known her for oh, an hour or so, I somehow trust this gypsy American stranger to live in my beautiful old house, unsupervised, for weeks on end. Thank you, Dorothy.

Marjayoun is a very interesting town – the government electricity cuts out at 6pm, a few people still use outhouses, but you will not have trouble finding a jewelry store – yes, we live a highly politically unstable area with hundreds of peacekeeping forces patrolling the street, but far be it for the Lebanese to be too far away from their diamonds. I passed a crèche on the street a few weeks before Christmas and noticed that the plastic figure of Mary, cradling the baby Jesus, was adorned with both a large faux diamond and a pearl necklace. Virgin Mary, Lebanese style.

In the south, I barely buy a thing from the store, and neither does anyone else – my soap is from the olive trees nearby, as is the voluptuous and uncomprehendibly good olive oil we consume down here – I watched in awe as people who did not have running water, shoes or refrigerators , poured over their vegetables this velvet, golden elixir, olive oil so gorgeous we would pay hundreds of dollars a bottle for in America. In the garden of bayt Jabbour, trees proffering pine nuts, bushes of lavender, bushels of every type of citrus fruit lay before me, ready to be picked. The dear, fluffy chickens next door bequeathed to me their shelly bounty daily, if I express even the slightest bit of interest. I was surprised almost every other day to finally see the tree or bush from which a certain spice or food actually came. You know bay leaves, the large leaves that seem to hail historically from some older version of the modern day McCormick’s glass bottles? Those leaves come from bushes and now I know how they are meant to taste. Wow.

It is cold in Marjayoun in winter, and I sleep with a hot water bottle in gloves and a scarf and a hat. The general electricity goes out at 6pm and though I did have a generator, most of the towns would go dark. We would stand out on the main avenue, among the Christmas decorations, the life-size reindeer posed to look as if they were making a run over the fence toward Kiryat Shmona, the larger than life Santa and his sleigh whose lights had all been extinguished, and regard jealously the Shiia village of Khiam located in the valley who seemed somehow to have electricity ALL the time. Just beyond Khiam was the highest mountain around – jabal as-Sheikh (called Sheikh’s mountain because of the cap of snow almost always at the peak that resembled a sheikh’s neat white cap,) in English called Mt. Hermon, the place where the transfiguration of Jesus was meant to have occurred. I mean to climb this mountain in the spring.

I have never seen so many men in one place before. The southern border sometimes feels like towns full of older people and soldiers. Within about 48 hours of having arrived down south I became more popular with boys than I ever had before in my life entire. I only wished that I could speak Polish, Italian, Spanish, (more) French, Indonesian, Malay, or any of the many languages and dialects of Ghana or India so that I could speak to the UN soldiers. I was able, of course, almost competently to talk lots with all of the lovely Lebanese soldiers. For the foreign ones, my own version of cultural outreach in these difficult circumstances was conducted in the form of a lot of smiling and waving. One morning, I was at my preferred kanafe (kanafe is a sweet cheese confection popular for breakfast) purveyor when a whole battalion of Indonesian UN soldiers pulled up in tanks, ostensibly to also get their morning kanafe. Not even one of them spoke a word of English, but it was expressed to me, utilizing hand gestures, that these soldiers, all 45 of them, wanted a picture with me – and not in a group, but each one wanted a picture of me and them, alone, I think so that when they go back to Indonesia they can tell their friends about their American girlfriend in Marjayoun. I literally stood there with each one of them, in turn, and tried to keep myself from laughing.

I had rented a car and drove all over the south for a month – bumping along roads in many places that could more appropriately be described as piles of rock which used to be a roads before the harb al timmuz (August war of 2006). My new friend Kate, when I was in Beirut getting ready to come down, had one piece of advice for me – no matter what anyone says, no matter how tempting it is, do not go off of the roads anywhere down there. It was not bad advice – the place is still covered in unexploded cluster bombs which often, well, explode.

I would be popping into these tiny villages, a few hundred people, inspecting olive trees, kissing babies, tripping over chickens, conducting interviews in the form of whispered conversations under old, crumbling stairs, hoping and hoping that a war would not break out, hoping and hoping that I was translating conversation correctly. At bayt Jabbour, I would interview and write all week and on the weekends, Dorothy and her relative and my friend Salam the poet, olive farmer and champion Scrabble player would come down and bring the sunshine from Beirut with them, and we would feast upon Dorothy’s baba ghannouj and irreplicable apple cake.

Every new town felt like an unopened gift – what would I find? Who would I meet?

Dances with Druzies in Hasabaya

I went to Hasabaya, a primarily Druze (the Druze are a religious grouping of individuals who split off from mainstream Shiism around the 11th century, all the history books always add though, and I will too, that only the Druzies actually know what their belief system is - shrouded as it is in complete secrecy, written in a book somewhere - I want to read that book that's locked in a golden cave or whatever) town. Walking along a tiny, steep winding back road I came upon a tall, silver haired man and asked him if he knew where the Saraya Chehabea, the main tourist attraction in Hasabaya, was. “I am a Chehab prince,” he said “And I will welcome you to my castle!”We turned a corner where a massive stone fortification stood before us. There literally could be hundreds of rooms in the place. I was given a tour of the incredible building – rooms of Arabic inscriptions written out in marble, large fountains and expansive diwans, and then brought down to the private family quarters, through a small tunnel into a room with soaring vaulted stone ceilings, where I met the mistress of the castle, who invited me to eat with them. The conversation was lovely, and it was at this dinner that I was introduced to the yerba mate drinking tradition in the mountains of Lebanon. Yerba mate is a type of drink, originating in Argentina, that was brought over to Lebanon. I drank so much yerba mate over this last month that my veins are pulsing with it.

(short description of how yerba mate was drunk in most southern homes I was invited into)

A green, strawlike substance is stuffed into a hollowed-out squash that has been painted and hardened, and at this castle, was detailed in a silver border. Thus arrayed, this squash is called a qarA’a, and the fluted silver straw its drunk through is called a bombija. The Chehabs told me that many people drank yerba mate in the country, but that it was especially important in Druze culture to drink your turn at the qarA’a until you could hear the satisfying sucking sound that meant you had extracted all of the liquid from the container. I was given the qarA’a first, and then Id pass it over to the castle’s mistress, who would wash off the straw with the zest of a lemon, and then repack and pass the qarA’a to the person sitting next to me. We passed the squash around all night until I had about 11 turns of yerba mate.

Later, Emir Chehab took me to meet with a Druze SLA officer who had been in prison for several years. We met this man at a pastry shop among piles of confections several feet high – he wore traditional Druze clothing – baggy black pants, fitted black shirt, small white knitted cap, and large white handlebar moustache. I conducted this interview while eating several dainty pistachio and cream bundles of joy - so yummy I could not stop smiling - and just hoped that my happiness did not dilute the seriousness with which I hoped to conduct the interview.

Visit to Khiam Prison after the 2006 War

I went to Khiam prison, which I wrote about when I visited in 2006 (see blog archives if interested), and which had been almost completely levelled in the 2006 war. The Hizbollah had neatly bulldozed tons of rubble into piles that seemed even taller than the buildings that used to stand there. Interspersed among the piles of rocks were little, bordered flower beds filled with small violets and little bursts of a yellow flower. In one corner, shells of missiles, some fragmented, some whole, had been set into a sort of arrangement, and painted upon the larger shells “Made in the USA.” Peeps, America's PR situation over here is not good, people, not good.

There are Bedouin in Shebaa Farms?

One day I wound up in Shebaa Farms -past rows of cabbage in fields leading up to the highest part of Shebaa, that were so green they appeared on the cusp of becoming blue. I saw what looked like what I imagined to be a gypsy encampment, and then a very tall, wizened man in a long, black gallabiya and a red and white kuffayah atop his head, gently stroking a small, cooing gray pigeon cupped in his hands. He first gave me a tour of all of his animals – pigeons, donkeys, chickens, dogs to guard the chickens from the wolves in the area and then invited me for tea in a dialect I could scarcely comprehend. I was ushered in through a maze of tents which brought me to his family, now clearly Bedouin, the women’s faces all tattooed, the tents covered on all walls and floors with rich and ancient carpets. Two very new babies were presented to me like gifts all wrapped up in wool blankets, and placed on my lap– one 24 and the other just 12 days old. I was asked to stay for dinner. There was a dish involving thick slabs of sheeps tallow, and an incredible, very thin flatbread that was at least 3 feet across and covered in attractive constellation of bubbles. Small hot peppers were eaten raw and whole and then a mountain of raw spinach was chopped roughly and placed into a very large piece of raw bread dough. This was wrapped up in a bundle and tied at the top, and then the ball was placed in a fire pit, on top of the embers of a fire several feet below the ground. There was no furniture in the tents, but rich blankets and cushions and rugs upon which at least a dozen family members were draped over, among pillows and thick wool coverings and I sat and drank mint tea and listened to stories late into the night. When it came time to leave, although I was asked repeatedly to sleep over, I was sent off with a massive bag of produce, approximately half of which was composed of fruit I had never seen before in my life.

Sheep Slaughter in Debinne

Approaching Debinne, a small Shiia village close to Marjayoun, I saw a small river of blood streaming down the steep sides of the road. Officials from the government had told me that 80% of the buildings in Debinne were completely destroyed in the 2006 war, but these had all been rebuilt, villagers told me, by the Hizbollah. I walked up the street to the source of said blood and was invited to the sacrifice of a sheep and the relevant party for a villager who had just returned from the annual Hajj to Mecca. The house and garden were festooned in pastel covered streamers, and an attractive painting had been done on the façade of the family’s front door – a picture of a car, a plane, palm trees and Mecca, a visual representation of the gentleman’s journey to Hajj. The sheep were killed and some was cooked and passed out to guests and the rest distributed to villagers. I stared, agog at a small mountain of tabbouleh that was almost the size of a bathtub. Children danced in their sparkling and ruffle-laden dresses and new clothes and a good time was had by all.

An Interesting Gift from an Ex-Con in Ibl as-Saqi

In Ibl Saqi I interviewed many former SLA soldiers, each with a more interesting story than the last. I interviewed two cousins who had both been in prison during and after the war – one put in jail because he worked with the Israelis, and the other put in jail by the SLA for working against the Israelis for the resistance. One of them gave me a gift he had made while serving time in Khiam prison. It was a picture frame formed out of dozens of meticulously orgamied Winton’s Lights cigarette cartons. Although to say that I abhor smoking would be a gross understatement , it is a seriously cool frame.

There were so many other towns – Jarma and Blaat, Kfar Rouman and Nabatiye, Deir Mimas and Kfar Kila, Houla and Aytarun, Bint Jibayl and Rmeish, Mesa Jabal and other places I stopped in that even now seem a blur of identical gray houses, outsize pictures of Hassan Nasrallah, Fadlallah, Musa Sadr and the young soldiers of these towns who had been killed, huge olive presses, and piles of oranges the size of large trucks.

It came time to leave my lovely month in the south. I adored living in the mountains, getting my eggs still warm from the heat of their actual producer, breathing air so clean I wished that I could bottle it. I left the south with a much more profound understanding of Lebanon, and I also, of course left with many new friends, new friends who ran the gamut - soap makers and army sargeants, sheepherders and Sunni, Greek Orthodox and Shiia auto mechanics (I had several flat tires because of the condition of the roads,) peacekeeping forces and ex-cons, olive farmers and mukhabarat, Druze princes and kanafe experts. Oh south Lebanon, I have seen your charms and I will return soon with fondness and a gut ready for some seriously yummy victuals.

Its nice to be back in Beirut, though. I think its great that within a block of where I am currently staying I can go to a mosque OR get a Brazilian bikini wax. What a city. Sekina is still in Australia, and I am lucky to be staying with a dear girl called Lauren in Hamra until she returns. I talked to Sekina on the phone the other day, and she apologized that she isn’t back quite yet. The first question she asked though, was not how are you, Ria, how is school, how is your family. It was “ Ria, are you married yet, or please, at least engaged?” Oy vey. The communal attempts to get me married here, are really, beyond the pale.

I walked all over West Beirut early one morning – grand old, bullet-pocked houses are being knocked down and replaced at a steady clip with high rise condos that hold all of the allure for me of bottles of cheese that are dispensed from an aerosol can. My first apartment in Beirut from 2005, on Makhoul Street just next to the Blue Note Jazz Café, which boasted stunning views of the Med, is now a massive 50 foot deep hole in the ground where another set of condos will go up. The old parts of this city are disappearing, but I just try to look at the buildings while I can and I remain grateful that I can even be over here at all.

More on what has happened in the last few days in Beirut soon, promise.

A VERY happy new year to every one of you. Please keep in touch.

Best,
Ria

Off to Marjayoun for the Month! 11.25.08

Hello Mountains, goodbye internet!

I'm leaving tomorrow mornign to stay in Marjayoun for the next month - if you look at this map, Beirut is almost in the middle on the western coast of Lebanon. Marjayoun (spelled "Marj'uyun) is the southeasternmost city on this map - way in the mountains. Here's hoping the area stays very bomb-free, inshallah!

Hope you all are well.

Ria

Ria Returns to Beirut 11.14.08

Oh, I understand the premise of blogging – you write the here, you write the now, you keep it short, and people might care. This'll be a tad longer, because it describes a period of several months – leaving DC, working on the Democratic campaign in NH, travel ending up in Beirut, where I write you from now. Humor me, just for a second or two or five. Min fadlik, por favor.

I came up to New Hampshire only at the point where I just could not resist the siren song of the granite state even one day longer. During the last week I would live in DC for at least the next year I made it a point to use each of the 17 separate metro cards I had somehow accrued without even trying. Friends amused and overjoyed me by coming into town for one last visit from other states. I had drinks with my boyfriend from when I was 16. This made me smile. He had recently gotten the “R” tattoo he had inked on his ankle in a wild expression of adolescent affection when we were about 19, removed for the sake of his spouse. Smart move, Cab.

My mother spent the better part of a day tailoring my favorite clothes to fit perfect and even better sewing me up a set of pillowcases made from a pair of Yves St. Laurent sheets she had acquired in the 70’s, a set of sheets whose delectable remnants have become a matter of absolute obsession between my sister Gabrielle and I. Mom then loaded up the ipod she gave me for my birthday with songs I just adore. Muchas gracias, mi madre! Mom and my Rugga hosted a goodbye party of my favorite people in Washington the night before I left, a party which included many mojitoes and ended a few minutes before sunrise.

Hurricane Hannah and I made the long trip up the Eastern coast from DC to Boston together – she spewing explosions of balmy water and shredding rows of docks as if they were so many matchsticks, while I was curled up in a frothy, thick wool sweater with a book and a mediocre glass of club car wine, a silent and rapt witness to one stunning maelstrom. My friend T took me in for the night in Cambridge. T is a mom now! Wow – what a babe that Saw-dog was to see! As she drove me up to New Hampshire to deliver me to the state Democratic HQ, I assembled her breast-pump which T made use of going 70 mph down the highway. Impressive, that bit and that girl.

Working on any large campaign in a presidential cycle is akin to riding into the eye of a storm and I think it was Helen Thomas who said “They say that the only thing worse than working on a presidential campaign cycle is not working on one,” and she goes on to say how wrong “they” were. Ha! How right she is! Although I balked at the sometimes 4am alarm clock demands and the general lack of vegetables, I was more than honored and excited to work again with for my old bosses and the army of New Hampshire Dem state party loyalists and was incredibly impressed by the resourcefulness and general ability of the 8 staff in my office, who were all working on separate campaigns – Obama-President/Shaheen-Senate/Lynch-Governor/Carol Shea-Porter-Congress/Daphne Kenyon-State Senate (Emily, Hollie, Liz, Shauni, Jamie, Josh, Courtney, Matt.) Some of these very capable staffers had been in the trenches for months and had laid down important infrastructure. I worked for all of the campaigns and wanted every one of the Dems I worked for to be elected, but I woke up every morning thinking of Jeanne Shaheen, who was running for U.S Senate. Jeanne Shaheen was a beacon of light in a sea of desperate and sad John Sununu negative advertising. Jeanne Shaheen was a former school teacher who the Republicans attempted to vilify for doing something as wholesome and wonderful as expanding access to kindergarten for New Hampshire children. New Hampshire residents, I have learned by now, take their live-free-or-dieitiveness VERY seriously. I admire this about NH'ers in a serious way, and I would not sleep until I saw that girl elected.

On my first weekend in NH I was flown out to Valley Forge, PA by Rotary Intertional to tour the awesome battlefields where George Washington and his troops spent that famously difficult winter and so that I could give a speech about my Rotary year in Beirut to incoming Rotary scholars from around the world. We stayed in a historic location built over the site where munitions were forged in Washington's days and the place was oozing with energy – I could almost feel the cold suffered by the shoeless and almost coatless soldiers. I could practically taste the hardtack. On my third weekend on the campaign I took my GRE on almost no sleep and absolutely no studying. That morning was enjoyed thoroughly, as were my GRE scores, which were reflective of the preparation I undertook before the test.

In our dirty Derry office could I even explain the all out sprint in those last few weeks? We lived off of adrenaline, grilled cheese sandwiches and oh yes, a desire for change. My dear old friends Jeremy Hastings and Abi Green came in for the last days to help whip everyone into shape - bless them both. My old friend Gene Corbin came up, and though vastly overqualified, ran a phone bank. Elworthy came up with a bag of my favorite farmstand vegetables and with his cousin Lisa helped orchestrate the correction of an incorrect label debacle that had been worrying me much.

On election day, among untold drama and intrigue, we were able to help secure victories for all four of our top tier-candidates, and in the decidedly Republican area we were concentrated in, a few well-appreciated victories in more local races. Thank goodness, the world was finally going to become a better place. I think I had slept about 4 hours a night for most of the last week, but only a precious few winks of sleep after the party on election night before I raced down to Boston and then to Salt Lake City, Utah to see my dear and beloved niece and nephew and my equally dear sister Nicole and my bro-in law Kevin. We went to the Jazz game and at home danced and ate and read books and generally made trouble. Hillary Clinton, yes Hillary Clinton had been at a fundraiser in SLC this summer which my sister Nicole attended – there she randomly met a guy named Ali, a Lubnani- and so nice, while I was in town, he invited us to a huge Lebanese feast of so many foods I had missed. Thanks, Ali!

Elworthy oversaw the organization of my very last night in America. It is here that I would like to thank him for the scrumptious bubble bath which included more bubbles than I have ever seen in a bubble bath– you needn’t have used the entire bottle of bubbles, BRE, the glorious oysters, the lovely walk in the North End just after sunset, the cut of steak so stunning it could bring a girl to tears, and everything else. Your meat is always Grade A. Thanks, BRE.

The trip to Beirut was a long one. I had nary a piece of clean clothing on me, was plagued by the obligatory post-campaign cold, and had so very many miles to travel. My afternoon in London was spent perched half-asleep, nose dripping disgustingly, listening to Townes Van Zandt in a derelict British Airways lounge in a forgotten terminal far removed from the more popular, Boots, Harrods and WH Smith-packed terminals.

The descent into Beirut gave me goosebumps, though. I missed the way the Arabs cheer when the plane lands. Oh, this beautiful city. Stepping out to a taxi I smelled the sea. I stared in awe at the indecently attractive police force. I am too too lucky to be back here.

I will soon be living with Sekina again but must wait for her to return from Australia. It did not become obvious that Sekina had not yet returned from Australia until I was almost in Beirut. For yet another time in my life I was inches from homeless. I am very lucky that my friends John and Irina, married a few days ago, Irina in her cowboy boots, by a guy who had been knighted by the Order of the Cedars in a ceremony in Cyprus, are selfless and tolerant of vagabonds, and I write this from their cozy apartment in Sodeco, where I am eating a Lebanese breakfast of a cucumber, a tomato and a piece of cheese – I missed this!

My first day back in Lebanon - a walk across the city from East Beirut to the West, an old man squeezing a pomegranate in front of me for my breakfast, a lunch eaten on the corniche of the Mediterranean composed of chicken tucked into fresh-baked bread, topped with whole yogurt with garlic, a few slices of tomato and some mint leaves. On my first day in Beirut I met Salt Lake City Ali’s brother, Samir at 5pm and by later that night I was having dinner with his relatives – mountains of gorgeous fish, dandelion greens oh so gingerly caressed by lemons and oil. The next afternoon, a long walk down to my favorite cafe Rawda on the ocean, grilled Halloumi and salad, proper tea with mint. Everything here is making my mouth water. I dont know how it happens but I am hardly ever dissapointed here by anything. Oh, Beirut. I feel whole again – your beauty, your legumes! I do not NEED to go to heaven when I have this town.

Until the next Dispatch, I hope you all are well.

Ria

Beirut Dispatch 11.12.08

I've just arrived back in Beirut after a whirlwind few weeks - Obama/Shaheen/New Hampshire Democratic Party in NH until election day, Salt Lake City the couple of days after, back to Boston for a night, an afternoon in London, then last night I got to Beirut. Wow, have I missed this place. More to come soon!