Mental Safety vs. Physical Safety

This was a post that's been in my head since before I left, but of course I've been too busy to write it.

But it's really an important one.

The day before I left, Thursday. I was told that morning that we wouldn't leave til the next day. So I was like, I'm getting the hell out of this dorm.

So I called my friend, Muhammad, to meet me at Bliss Street. He pulls up in a car with his friend, and tells me to get in.

Get in!!! A car!! Like actually go somewhere.

So we drove around Beirut. And it looked like Beirut. People were out. People were doing stuff. But much less. Not the usual numbers of people. Most of the streets were pretty empty.

Then we went to the house where he's staying. His friend's. His family went to Jordan. His house in Hrat-Hreik was destroyed. His four little cousins had died the day before in the Bekaa when the house fell on them from an Israeli bomb. He's already lost two brothers from Israeli bombs in the 90's. He's from one of those big Shia families.

(I've been concerned to write about him for security concerns. But now, after talking to that DOD guy, I have a better sense of what's going to jeapordize people or not. I have to assume NSA in reading my e-mails and listening to all my phone conversations. They 've probalby already been doing that for a while. And they probably do that to eveyr American living in Lebanon. Basically, as long as I don't trade secrets or plan terrorist acts, me and my friends are safe.)

During this time, my mom is calling and tripping out. I had just posted that blog about going out, getting mone yfrom the bank (which was no problem), maybe taking some pictures, buying toiletries.

"Where are you?"

"Walking aorund near AUB."

"You need to hurry up and get back to the dorm."

"Yeah, okay." But my mom isn't stupid and she knows me. She knew I was out somewhere.

And then she calls back half an hour later, I was at my friend's house, at that point.

She's hysterical. "Get back to the dorm. Where are you?"

"Close, mom." But that was a big fat lie, because I was at my friend's house. And it was the first time I felt relaxed in a long time. Of course, we were watching disgusting imgaes on Al-Jazeera of what was happening in the South. But still I was with other people--locals--guys I knew from my church, and I just felt so much better.

So I lied to my mom about being close and heading back soon.

The guys told me how they'd been driving around this whole time, taking pictures. They went to the Dahiya and a bomb went off 30m from the car, and the whole car flew into the air. These are 20-somehting guys. They were kind of showing off.

Then I asked Muhammad, "When are you going to Jordan?"

"I'm not. I'm going to keep going to work everyday." Just like Rania, my other friend in Beirut, had said.

"I want to take pictures of the port."

So we went to the port, took pictures, foudn a restaurant that let us climb to the second floor, then we walked to the dock. There was no one on the road. You could hear planes.

"There's no one out. I feel like I'm putting my life in your hands. Trusting you like this."

"Nothing's going to happen," he said.

Then we got to a dock and saw all these people. We took some pictures. But like a dumb ass, I didn't ask them their nationalities.

Then we walked throuhg downtown. Completely empty. Except one restaurant was making a million bag lunches. Probably for hte Canadians or or people waiting to get out on those boats.

Then I called Rania. She's 30, like me, was in Beirut during the war, grew up with that. She was getting out of work and met us in Downtown. So then we drove around. Checked out hte place in Ashrafieyah, wheer they bombed the day before. I had heard and blogged that it was a truck with humanitarian aid, but that was in the Bekaa or somewhere else. This was a big well-digger machine. It was kind of hard to make out and I couldn't really get close enough because it was behind a fence.

So we had lunch. And again I'm a dumb ass because I'm like, Things are going to get bad.

But Rania keeps pointing out the positives, like there was parking space on the street in Ashrafiya and there's no traffic. She says that becaus ethe stores had been preparing for a big summer tourist season they had overstocked. Even if produce runs out, Beirut won't run out of food.

So here's what I realized.

There's Mental Safety and Phyical Safety.

And the Lebanese who stay here and lived during the first war and the other Israeli incursions in their country and those who survive choose Mental Safety over Physical Safety.

Mental Safety is you keep living your life, and you deceive yourself into thinking you will be able to somewhat maintain your normal life. (There is major denial and self-deceptoin here. Because the reality of how bad it will get is too much to take. You have to protect your mind.)

Rania and Muhammad have chose Mental Safety over Physical Safety.

If you stay in a bomb shelter, maybe you will be physically safe, but you will quickly lose your mind. And it is not sustainable for any length of time.

After 36 hours in that AUB dorm which was physically safe (but actually, unlike the last war, no where is going to be physcially safe in Lebanon now), I was losing my mind. It wasn't safe for me to stay there any more. You could see how paranoid I was becoming.

I really felt like I had gotten to the point where I would have stayed and chosen to be Mentally Safe or Physically Safe. Like I would have gone around and taken pictures and done the blogging thing, because I think it's important and would have been the culminateing work of my whole life. Like everything I had ever done got me ready for this moment.

But then I thought about my mom. And that's it. That's why I came back. (I hope I don't start to hate my mom now.)

Or maybe I'm a big liar. Because mentally--it's hard to take the constant buzzing of planes over head and loud bombs that shake all the windows.

But they all say, I would get used to it. I would become like them. At first, it's crazy, but you get used to it. And they all honestly thought I would stay. 4 differnet people expected that I would stay with them in their houses in Beirut, not to mention ALL the people in Aley and Chennai and the Shouf and everywhere else who invited me.

And it was this understanding of Mental Safety vs . Physical Safety that got me to take the over-land journey to Amman.

Because once my mom became the priorit yin my head. And I honestly thought she would land in the hospital very soon. I decided I had to get home ASAP. Muhammad could take me to Jordna and other friends were probalby going home to Syria. So I knew I had ways to go.

But remember Israel was closing off the paths to Syria, and because they bombed those first days, the Lebanese govenrment had been opening up some roads. So roads were cleared, but that meant the Israelis could start bombing at any minute.

And then there was Syria. I heard they were giving Americans a hard time and turning them back at the border. What if things turned for the worse and somebody (like Syrians who are Hizbollah supporters) wanted to capture an American?

The whole time, as you faithful blog readers know, I was completely freaked out and against going anywhere near Syria. I had completely ruled out that option.

But after they told me on Friday that it was postponed again, and having enought time to become paranoid about hte true intentions of the U.S. government, I decided I had to go by myself. I didn't know when or if they would get me out. And my mom was dying.

And again Mental Safety vs. Physical Safety. I was going crazy in that dorm waiting, feeling like a sitting duck. I was losing my mind. Now looking back at it, and seeing I spent $2200 to get home, instead of letting you, U.S. tax payers, pay for it. Maybe that was stupid. And maybe they even got to go out on helicopters. . . Damn, that would have been cool. But still $2200 isn't too much to pay for an intact mind.

I couldn't have stayed there waiting any longer.

And as for physical safety. It's like what Rania says. "I believe in destiny. When it's your time to go, it's your time to go."

I mentioned this before. God is in control. He'll protect me and when it's my time to go, it's my time to go.

I told myself I would be in Amman, Jordan in the next eight hours. And that was it. I ddin't tell the AUB people I snuck out, because if I was turned back at the border and had to high tail it back to AUB I still wanted to be on that supposedly "special" list I was on to be evacuated.

I'll write up the over-land journey later.