Need a break from work...

So it's a good thing it's christmas!!! Before I start complaining though, I wanted to share some pictures from Gibran Tueni's funeral of last week, which was a weird mixture between burial and festival. At first - we went there around 10 in the morning - the crowd was only moderately large and gathering in front of the An-Nahar building. A band was playing cheerful music. The man on the picture is obviously Tueni, and the caption reads "The difference between darkness and light...is the word", in reference to his very outspoken opposition to Syria. (That's right, I am asking you to note my improved Arabic skills(!), although I am not sure about the word 'darkness', I more or less made that up because it would be the logical opposition to 'light'... :) )
Then it got bigger and bigger though, and it was really quite hot waiting in the sun with a big crowd of people. Although the Tueni family and the families of the two people killed with him had explicitly asked for no partisan flags to be displayed at their funeral...people could not resist, obviously. Instead, some daring teenagers climbed to the top of this crane in order to wave their flags at the risk of death - Progressive Socialist Party, Kataib, Lebanese Forces were all there, basically the youth organisations of Lebanon's big sectarian parties operating at the national level. This is of course a somewhat sad metaphor for what is happening in Lebanon in general in terms of sectarian politics. I will come back to this in a minute with another example. This, however, is what I call an impressive victory sign:
As the morning wore on, the crowd grew thicker and finally it became obvious what everybody had been waiting for - the three coffins were taken to the An-Nahar building once all family members of the victims and a bunch of political figures had arrived. From there they (the coffins) were carried by procession to the nearby St Georges Cathedral for the funeral service.
Well, and since then everybody has been slightly on the edge, there were a few days of heavier-than-usual military deployment and of few people on the streets. Some people (the youth movements of the 'March 14'-bloc, i.e. mostly Christian and in opposition to Syria) were going to resurrect the permanent camp in Martyr's Square that had been set up after Hariri's death to protest the killings that are going on here, and to protest Syria in general. However, I go by there often when I go running and haven't noticed any major signs of it so far. Hmm...
The last weekend before Christmas was very intense in terms of work, we had a workshop in the mountain resort of Ehden, which is extremely popular in summer but almost empty during the winter.

Unfortunately the batteries of my camera died after this picture, so I cannot show you some of the more cheerful vistas of Ehden, which is really quite pretty. The next mountain chain after the one you see here is already all covered in snow, and that's were most of the skiing resorts are. Anyway, so this workshop was really exhausting but ultimately a great learning experience. We (i.e. my employer) were supposed to assist in the foundation of a new youth movement aimed at overcoming sectarian differences in Lebanon and the feudal structures that still dominate politics here. Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem: this youth movement is doing exactly the opposite, by perpetuating sectarian divisions (these people are really hardcore Christians and I doubt any of them have had a lengthy encounter with any Muslims - not a small feat considering more than half of the population here is Muslim) and employing the exact feudal family structures they claim to fight against. How this works is: whoever has the highest ranking within the family context (in this case, whoever is most closely related to or most friendly with the Moawad family) is king and gets to dictate everything everybody does (in terms of politics) without ever seriously being questioned. It was so depressing to witness this first hand, especially since this was a bunch of young people who could really try and change things if they wanted to. Well, maybe they'll do some good things for their own community, but I really have my doubts they'll be doing any of the other peacy stuff they're talking about.

Finally, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day after

Today has been a lot more 'normal' than I thought it would be. Last night especially I thought the whole place was going to, I don't know, change? Go crazy? I was walking around trying to find a store so I could buy a phone card. Impossible! The place was like a ghost town, there wasn't a single person in the streets, all the shops were closed, no cars, just the thrash cats hanging around. Scary!!! The most frightening thing was the silence - something that seems completely impossible in Beirut under normal circumstances. But yesterday my whole neighbourhood was silent.

Today was a bit more lively although I did see the occasional tank in the street on my way to work. It also helped to know that other parts of Beirut were not as shut down as my neighbourhood yesterday. This is because the area I live in, Achrafiyeh, happens to be Gebran Tueni's constituency. So people were demonstrating their disbelief and shock here more than elsewhere I suppose. I actually found out today that at some point yesterday morning, while we were all in the office practically looking down on the hospital across the street, Tueni's body had been taken there for a while, before it was transferred to another hospital. I find that a really strange idea too. But on my way home from work today, I observed one man having a foot massage in a beauty salon, so things can't be so bad I guess.

On TV, I was watching part of a mourning ceremony that was taking place in a church in my neighbourhood. Marwan Hamadeh, the minister who survived a car bomb, was there, as well as Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese forces, and Nayla Moawad, the minister of social affairs who is at the same time president of the foundation I work at. I don't know why I'm writing this down, but it seemed really odd to see all these people, who are starting to look familiar now, and two of whom I have seen in real life already, appear on television when they were really just a few hundred yards away from where I was sitting on my couch. Gebran Tueni's wife was there also, she looked in a terrible state and like she was going to faint any minute.

What makes things seem even more unreal is the fact that every single Lebanese TV station - perhaps with the exception of Al-Manar, Hizballah's own broadcaster - has dug up every tape they have of Gebran Tueni and they're constantly broadcasting it. When I switch on the TV, he's right there as part of a talk show or giving an interview. His newspaper Al-Nahar is also re-publishing every editorial he ever wrote. For me, who had never seen him when he was alive or read his articles, this makes the whole situation even weirder than it already is.

A general strike has been called for tomorrow and the funeral is going to happen. Meanwhile, everyone keeps waiting for the Security Council debate on the second Mehlis report and there's a major government crisis here in Lebanon. Hizballah's ministers have suspended their participation in the cabinet after it adopted a motion that calls for an international investigation into all the recent car bombings. Looks like they're more or less keeping it together, at least the government hasn't resigned yet.

"Tu vas faire quoi maintenant?"

That's the question everybody is asking everybody else right now, because really, nobody knows. I got to work this morning and found the TV switched on, with everybody crowding around it as they came in. The entire office spent about 2 hours there to find out what had happened in the car bombing that shook the city around 9 o'clock. Most of my colleagues had heard the massive explosion too, except for me - I don't know, I was blissfully unaware and walking to work as I usually do in the mornings, climbing up the stairs to Sassine square and then going down from there towards Hotel-Dieu, the big university hospital that is directly opposite our office and I didn't hear a thing.

When the news came in that Gebran Tueni had been killed in the bombing the atmosphere changed. Before, there had still been a slight chance that it might have been an industrial accident, as the explosion happened right outside a factory. Or that there was some non-political, simple explanation behind it all. But the fact that this anti-Syrian MP had been killed unfortunately took away the simple way out and made it obvious to all that this was indeed a politically motivated murder, one that might spark off who-knows-which consequences, and that the whole ugly beast was rearing its head again etc.... One colleague had known the victim and is quite close to the family and she was in tears and so distraught. Everybody, in fact, was in a state of shock although no-one was willing to admit so much. But the feeling of 'please, no, please don't let this happen to us again', this tiredness and anxiety and outrage were quite palpable.

Trying to go back to work after this was near-impossible, most of the phone lines were down and everybody had other things on their minds anyway. All morning ambulances and security personnel were arriving at the hospital opposite and sirens were screeching constantly, with virtually no other traffic (by Beirut standards anyway). Around two o'clock the word spread that there would be a non-violent protest march outside the An-Nahar building in downtown - An-Nahar is the newspaper of which Gebran Tueni had been editor. So a bunch of my colleagues decided to go down there and I went with them. Traffic was chaotic and as we were sitting in the car driving down to the protest, a colleague got a phone call from her boyfriend who was panicking. From his balcony, he had just observed a service taxi being stopped and its Syrian passengers being dragged out of the car and beaten up by an angry mob. And you bet there was nobody there to stop them from doing so, not even police or security services.

By the time we got to downtown, part of the protest was dissolving already and lots of people carrying orange flags - supporters of Michel Aoun, the General who recently returned from France - were marching up to Sassine square to stage a separate protest and possibly look for more people to beat up. The remaining crowd outside the An-Nahar building was quite small, perhaps a hundred people or so, and almost all of them belonging to some party - the Phalanges and other Christian groups. They were waving their respective flags and chanting 'Fuck Syria'. After five minutes (actually maybe before that even) I felt the desperate urge to leave: I don't want to blame anyone, I don't want to be a voyeur, I don't belong to any of these movements, so what the hell am I doing here? Luckily my colleagues had reached a similar conclusion around the same time, so we all left again and ate lunch together at the office.

Seriously, all of this is so weird. A general strike is being called for for tomorrow. We'll see what happens.... I guess the coming days and weeks will bring more upheaval and more crucial decisions and events. The UN is debating the second Mehlis report tomorrow. And I'm asking myself the question: which theory makes more sense? Are the Syrians doing this in order to sow fear and anxiety in Lebanon, hoping to destabilise the situation and then once again move in here to 'guarantee security'? That would be a fairly blunt calculation, but then they aren't exactly well-known for their tact and subtleness when it comes to political strategies.
Or is someone trying to pour oil on the fire and to ignite the already enormous potential of hatred towards Syrians here - underlining the fact that Lebanon has been a victim of their designs for so long and that it needs to 'regain its full sovereignty'? This is of course the political demand that all Christian factions - and some others, of course - have been making throughout this year, and it happens to be what the U.S. wants as well. How convenient then that this reminder of the situation comes right before the debate on sanctions against Syria etc. that is to be held at the UN tomorrow. If I were a fan of conspiracy theory, I would find supporting evidence for the second theory in the fact that it barely took an hour or so after the bombing for orange flags to appear on all lamp posts on the major road outside our office - and they look official, not just improvised.

But then, I'm not a fan of these theories and honestly I have no idea what just happened here today. There will be a whole range of explanations as there usually is with such things. What I know for sure is that everybody is afraid for their future, their jobs, their security, their perspectives because nobody knows what's next. I will keep you posted!!!

Amman and back

On my first trip out of Beirut since I've been here, I went to Amman (the capital of Jordan, just because I have been asked this question before :) ) from Sunday to Tuesday to finally meet my colleagues at the regional office of the Naumann Foundation (my employer). To get over there I took a shared taxi from Beirut which takes about six hours, including getting in and out of the car a bunch of times because you have to get your passport stamped to leave Lebanon, then to enter Syria, then to leave Syria, then to enter Jordan..... my passport looks very colourful now with lots of stamps in it. The Syrian border guys forgot to charge me $8 for a transit visa because they thought my multiple entry visa from a year ago was still valid. This was much to the amusement of my fellow passengers who were happy to see the Syrians look incompentent, with the general verdict being that Syrians are stupid and "unable to understand anything" anyway. This bit of racism aside, they were very friendly people and saw to it that I, as the only foreigner, did not get confused by all the passport stamping and one of them would always accompany me to the customs counter.

After crossing Syria and passing through Damascus (horse-drawn carts and motorcycles going the wrong way on the highway), which made me feel very 'homesick', seeing it buzz under its usual cover of exhaust fumes, we got to Amman and a colleague picked me up and took me to my hotel. All hotels and restaurants in Amman now frisk everybody going in, but women only get searched if there's a woman frisker on duty which is not always the case. So listen up, female suicide bombers out there! Ok, I know it's not funny, but this policy makes no sense at all.

Basically, I spent most of my time there either at the office - everybody is very young and nice and seems to have a great sense of humour - or the Grand Hyatt Hotel which was bombed four weeks ago. Not that you would notice - it looks exactly like any other grand hotel of that sort, complete with a stylish Christmas tree made out ouf stacked wood painted purple in the lobby. Impossible to fathom what the scene looked like only a month ago...

The point of being there was a conference organised by the Naumann foundation and the Arab League on reforms in the Arab world. Very interesting. My favourite was a guy from the ruling party in Egypt who took 15 Minutes to basically state that there was a crucial difference between 'reform' and 'change'. You don't want change because nobody knows which way it'll go. Instead it's much better to have 'reforms' and to clearly limit what they can do. Well, at least he was being honest... But cynicism aside some of the discussions were quite good and everybody seemed happy at the end. I also thought it was pretty cool one Palestinian delegate in his fifties was wearing khaki Chucks. And the food was great!!

I also went to all of Amman's trendy bars (2 - two) in one evening - I guess that's why it's also called "The Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom" by a friend of mine... But Jordan is supposed to be really beautiful and you can do lots of hiking in the mountains or desert. I think I'm going back sometime.

On the way back to Beirut there were no direct taxis, so I took one to Damascus (with a couple from Turkey who were taking a bus to Istanbul from there, takes about 2 days...) and changed there to take a taxi to Beirut. This process took about 8 hours (more stamps) and was kind of tiring because I hadn't had time to eat anything all day and had to spend the ride to Beirut practically sitting in some teenager's lap and with a very unfriendly taxi driver. But I got back in one piece no problem and full of new impressions.

What happened to the cat

Yesterday I was walking home from work and came across a terrible sight. This orange, stripey cat was lying in the street, on its side, flipping its tail. At first I thought it was just having a nap or something, but then a car passed really close to it and it didn't move. Apparently it had been hit by a car and couldn't get up anymore to walk out of the road. I walked up to it and saw that it was bleeding and having difficulty breathing and was probably in a lot of pain.
So what was I supposed to do? There were lots of people around and everybody was ignoring the cat. I considered picking it up but then what would I have done with it? I looked at the shop owner who stood nearby and was looking at the whole scene, but he just looked away.

Finally, after pondering this for some time and feeling really helpless, I walked away because I decided that I personally could not help the cat (except maybe hold its paw while it was dying, but then I don't know if cats appreciate that kind of thing and plus, it was in the road) and that nobody was around to help it either. Basically, I just left it there to die!! Later, I was telling myself that not very many people have pets here (most of the cats in the neighbourhood live out of the thrash cans, although there are some pet cats and I have seen at least one pet dog), and that there were probably no vets around who could take care of a cat.

However, I was feeling bad about this line of argument later because I, of course, never tried to find a vet and help the cat but just walked away. And, come to think of it, people have bloody plastic surgery here all the time and everybody in my neighbourhood has servants (Filipinas who in the morning get to wash the shiny SUVs their employers drive and go shopping with their 'masters' in the supermarket in the afternoon, pushing the heavy trolley while the master selects the products for them to carry), so why wouldn't there be pets and, by implication, vets as well? I just didn't want to deal with it because I didn't want to look like a stupid European who cares too much about pets when that is not part of the culture here.

Am I going to burn in hell (who wants to meet up there)? Are all cats going to hate me now? Does it make a difference to the way the world is going? Does it matter at all? What would you have done in my place??