Sad

One friends said "desolate." That's the general feeling of the Lebanese people I talk to.

"In two days they destroyed what it took 15 years to build."

How wanton. It's sick. Why would they do this?

Out of everyone I talked to, just Farhan, the man who watches the gate at the school campus I live in, blames the Israelis. He says, "Lebanon is ready to go to war with Israel. Stay here and watch. Israel isn't what it used to be. We're ready to fight them."

But everyone else keeps blaming Hizbollah and their leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

"You can't just slap Mike Tyson upside the head," explained Wael. "Because you know he'll just pound you into the ground."

They're threatening to bomb downtown. The thought makes me want to cry. I said in an earlier blog that I cried when Rafik Hariri was killed. Because eventhough he did have dirty, corrupt building contracts, he rebuilt this country after their 15-year civil war.

Downtown was a no-man's land, bisected by the Green Line. Anyone moving between East (Christian) Beirut and West (Muslim) Beirut risked sniper shots. (One priest told me he crossed the Green Line several times a day for 9 years. He knew the building and alleys to go by.)

And now Downtown is absolutely gorgeous. It's a symbol of what Lebanon used to be. . .the Paris of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah. And what it could be.

Is this another Iraq? Who's going to get the contract to rebuild all the bridges and roads? Or is it to make us feel like Palestinians in the West Bank, who can't move even 5 kilometers without having to navigate electric fences and check points. Families are divided; people can't get to school; ambulance rides are impossible.

For most of the foreigners, there's a general confusion, mixed with some fear, and the pressing question, "Are we supposed to leave?"

This morning, after promising my mother, I wouldn't go anywhere, my Lebanese friend said we should get out now. She knows the back roads to Syria. I just can't talk, she said.

"But my passport's in some government office in Beirut."

Hmmmm. . . .

I'm not going anywhere.