They destroyed Khiam & Visiting the South

One of my students went last week to Khiam, the infamous prison that Israel established in southern Lebanon, where they threw people suspected of being part of Hizbolah in prison without trial. I went last year. I took pictures of all those medieval torture devices that they were using until the year 2000, when Israel finally ended its occupation of southern Lebanon (because Hizbollah forced them out.)

Hizbollah ran Khiam as a museum, so the world would never forget what Israel did. And now look. It's gone. My student told me. In the war this summer, Israel bombed and destroyed Khiam. It was one of those places the guide books said to visit.

That was the one time I visited the South. I went with a Lebanese friend and an AUB student from Thailand. I forgot to bring my passport. I just had the copy of the first page that I always carry in my wallet. Soldiers at the checkpoint gave us a hardtime, but after 20 minutes of talking about her important relative judges in the region, my friend talked our way in.

My Lebanese friend said that the South is like a different country. There were yellow Hizbollah flags everywhere. And posters of boys' and men's faces on the street lamps and the walls. These are the martyrs. People killed by Israel. Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) does the same thing.

And after Khiam we visited an old Crusader castle--Beufort. And that's where I talked to the Danish UNIFIL officer. Those UNIFIL guys have been patrolling the South since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. That's why I was like--how is this ceasefire so different now? Now they're just beefing up the forces that were already there.

At Khiam, I bought a bunch of Hizbollah stuff. I thought I got rid of all of it while I was quickly packing up my stuff when I left during the war. But when I got to Houston, and my sister was helping me unpack, she pulled out a yellow bandana with Arabic writing on it.

"What's this?"

Daaag. That could have gotten me in big trouble at Customs. But I was mad that I had to get rid of all those DVDs that told the history of Lebanon from Hizbollah's point of view. But I shouldn't have that many problems finding them now.