Mattresses in Army Trucks

Mattresses in Army Trucks
Originally uploaded by Jane Rubio.

As I was walking in the souk (the main street/market) in Aley this morning, I saw army trucks with mattresses piled in the back. About 50 families are staying in the government schools in Aley. These are people, mostly Shia, from the South and the Dahiye (the southern suburbs of Beirut.)

Before Israel started bombing the Dahiye, they dropped leaflets telling the people to leave. So the government is housing them around the country.

The guy at the music shop just now told me that it's because Walid Beik (i.e. Walid Jumblatt) is in with Hassan Nasrallah (the leader of Hizbullah), and is helping him out. I talked about Walid Beik before. In the July 2005 archive of my blog, you can see a picture of me with him and an explanation of his significance in Arab history and Middle Eastern politics.

He's the consummate politician and is always changing his position. But first and foremost he defends and advocates for his people, the Druze, who make up about 8% of the Lebanese population. In some ways, he is akin to Yasser Arafat, who didn't let the world forget the Palestinians, and always went back and forth, maintaining his allegiance to them above all else.

But if Walid Beik is all chummy with Hassan Nasrallah, that wouldn't bode well for the safety of the people in Aley. Wouldn't that make Druze areas eventual targets of Israel?

But then someone else told me that the Israeli army won't go after Druze areas because so many of the people in the Israeli army, and especially the officers, are Druze.

It seems like half-and-half now. Half say this will be done in a couple days. Half say get out now and take me with you.

Should I stay or should I go? (But that's more of a rhetorical question.)

What a dumb question you might ask. Everyone is telling me to leave. At least all the e-mails I receive are telling me to leave.

I just talked to an American at AUB. She's getting in a car and going to Syria in half an hour. She knows this other group going in an hour if I want to come down now.

I think going through Syria is a bad idea. Maybe I've lived in Aley too long. But I don't feel safe in Syria. I have neighbors who've spent long times in Syrian jails.

Oh, and I don't have my passport. It's somewhere in Beirut.

She said the U.S. government is going to organize a convoy for Monday, probably to get Americans to Cyprus.
(And really I'm wondering more if I get an all-expense paid trip. That could really help me out. My mom said No, though.)

And then there's just the moral and emotional weirdness of my friends, half-joking, saying, "Take me with you."

I'm just not that freaked out. Bassem, who teaches high school Social Studies in Arabic at my school, predicts Hizbollah will back down in the next couple days, and it will end. Lebanon's economy is just going to be killed. He thinks it'll take about 6 months to rebuild the roads, bridges, airports.

There was nothing last night.
But I think they're pounding Ein Helwe right now, the most notorious Palestinian Refugee Camp in the south of Lebanon.

I'll work on getting that passport, and if the U.S. government organizes something, I'll go with. But I'm not heading in some car to Syria. No way.

Run, Forrest

Direct quote from my brother's e-mail--

"Don't do anything stupid, and if shit goes down, run."

I think he's trying to be funny. But where Oh, Charlie, shall I run? South--oh wait, that's a foreign territory that had been illegally occupied by Israel for 18 years and is now being pounded by it. They took out all the major bridges yesterday.

Then there's the east, towards Damascus. . . But then I'd be caught in the traffic with all the tourists from the Gulf who are hightailing it out of here.

And anways, since October, Syria has been giving Americans a hard time getting in. I went about 5 weeks ago with 2 Lebanese friends to go wedding shopping for a day. At the border, the Syrian officials told me that I'd probalby have to wait 8, 10, 12 hours. . .who knows? Could I go and come back? No. If I get the visa today, can I come in later with that visa? No. You must wait here and then when we decide to give you the visa (they say they have to fax people somewhere and wait for something), you must proceed directly. So I just came back. I went to Syria and Jordan last year twice. There was no problem.

Then there's the sea, but Israel has imposed a blockade. Can I swim to Cyprus?

I actually know these Americans who are so freaked out right now that one of them is paying a driver $600 to drive her to Aleppo, Syria, which I think is about 15 hours.

It's going to kill our tourism, and the economy. But at least right now these taxi drivers can get $200 from a Saudi to drive them from Beirut up to Aley in the mountain, where I live. It costs me $0.67 when I take the van with the Syrian workers or even less when I take the public bus.

And then there's my dad's e-mail message--

"I hope you are wll and safe. Make every effort to get out of there and come home. Dont wait any longer. Things will not get any better. Recover your passport and just pack a backpack and find you way out."

He's not trying to be funny. He's being serious. At the time (yesterday morning) I thought it was a little over the top. Now, it doesn't seem that silly.

I was at a birthday party about 10 minutes from my house. My dad called from Brazil and convinced me that I needed to get my bag ready, because if they do an evacuation I won't have that much time. I haven't packed the bag--but I'm mentally planning. All I need is my computer. I just need to start backing up, but I'm blogging instead. (That's a brain back up anyways.)

And then there's mom who immediately started calling the State Department. I thought that was funny and mom-ish and over-the-top in that mom-ish sort of way. But actually with all the calling that we Americans have been doing today, passing along her information has been very helpful for all the others.

Either way. I appreciate the e-mails and the calls.

The Bombs Woke Them Up

But somehow they didn't wake me up. While my friends were watching bombs and smoke, I was sleeping peacefully.

"Miss, you didn't hear that at 3 in the morning."

"They blew up the bridge right next to my house in Sawfar. Not the one to Aley (that's why he came to my SAT Prep class today) but the one to Damascas."

"It shook the windows."

"I had to use earplugs to sleep."

In Ein Al Rammane, close to the southern suburbs of Beirut, my friend said she heard the planes flying low all night. She heard the kids in the building next door, crying. They heard the Israelis bombing houses and bridges. She gets hysterical at times. I couldn't even make out everything she said to me on the phone this morning.

She was in Beirut during the 15-year civil war. It brings back bad memories.

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.

Why did I lend her my camera?

So right when I let someone borrow my camera, Lebanon becomes the center of world-wide media coverage.

What I should have gotten pictures of:

1) All the cars lined up at the gas station, with the guys standing outside their car doors, gesticulating, and yelling at each other.

2) The view from my apartment last night--the flames coming up from the gas tanks the Israelis blew up at the Beirut International Airport. (But those pictures usually come out crappy because they're at night.)

3) The Saudi family renting the apartment in the building next to mine--packing up their car last night, in the mad rush to get out.

4) The sky--it's just so creepy. It started last Friday, overcast, dark gray, windy. A 6th grader told me he's never seen it like this in the summer, and he's lived here his whole life. This is winter weather, not summer.

I got the camera back this morning. The fire was still raging at the airport, and during the day you can see the huge billows of black smoke.

I'm sure you're getting enough of this image anyways, from your end.

Rania was taking pictures of the orphanage where she worked. She'll be heading to the U.S. and Canada in a couple months to raise money for an orphanage she wants to start here in Aley. Once we get the web site up, we'll show you all how you can be involved. . . . (that's a shameless plug.)

I just received this text message

SAVE YOUR LIFE!
Sign up to *4556 to get up-to-date, breaking news messages.

Actually, I don't know if that's exactly what it said. Because when I got it, it annoyed me, and I immediately deleted it. But then I thought I should put this on the blog. So this is the general gist.

We're stuck

Ghada is in Rachaya. The Israelis blew up the Dahr al Baida bridge. She won't be going anywhere.

Randa and Rabih have been on their honeymoon in Batroun. They are coming back now to Chennai. They have to take back roads.

The phone signals have been going in and out since yesterday. We all keep trying to call each other.

"It's starting"

Smoke from the Airport
Originally uploaded by Jane Rubio.

I was just at a birthday party in Aley. As we were setting up the table and about to light the candles, I noticed that night had fallen fast. The magreb/sunset call to prayer must have finished a couple minutes before.

And then someone yelled, "Blesh". (It's starting.) So we ran out to the balcony, with the stunning view of Beirut, as you can see from the picture I had taken about two hours earlier.

We saw red star-like flashes in the sky.

We saw some orange flames coming up from the port.

We saw red and orange flares coming up from all around the Dahiye (the southern suburbs of Lebanon that Israel was bombing today--Hizbullah land). Some people were saying that they were just fireworks.

And everyone was out on their balconies yelling back and forth about what they were seeing. The guy next to me lent me his binoculars. But that was kind of useless, because I sort of have problems with depth-perception and discerning things from funny angles (like I can't follow movies like Star Wars when they switch between those models of the airplanes and the dudes talking in the little airplanes.)

But then it stopped. I have my balcony door open as I type, and I don't hear anything.

CUZ ARE YOU STILL IN BEIRUT???? GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THERE!!!!!

Thanks, Ignacio. I love getting stuff like this in my inbox.