From: Rania Masri Subject: summer in lubnan Date: 9 Sep 1994 21:31:20 GMT (with adjustments of march 1996) MaraHeb Whenever a friend of mine would go to Lebanon, I would want to know everything from her/his trip - the details, their feelings, how they were treated, what they saw.... So now, I feel it is my turn - to tell whomever is interested, especially those who are homesick. (There is so much to share, and I am not commenting on all I saw now.) Reje3et 3ala lubnan ba3d 8 seneen bel gherbee ... I went expecting the worst, expecting the people to have truly sectarian views and to act upon them, for there to be a communication gap between myself and the people who had remained in Lebanon. I had expected to be treated as a stranger, gharebee wa jayee ze3ara, el- amercanee, keel hal kalam kent khayfee esam3oonee. And the country - I had expected it to leave me cold. I never thought of the beauty of my land and its possible impact on me. I expected the worst, so as not to be disappointed - and I wasn't. I was over-joyed, surprised by everything. I arrived in Beirut and was greeted with the smells of food - food that i had missed so dearly since coming to the States. ah! el-zaatar, wal shawarma, wal jeij al-meeshwe, wal khebz men al-furn. And the land - Beirut was a mosaic of buildings, some demolished, with only a wall standing, or a roof, others newly built and very modern - but nearly every house/building was occupied. The demolished ones had families living in them, one could see the clothes hung by string from the remains of one wall to another, and their beds and chairs and broken tables inside - all was visible onto the street. I remember looking into one torn-down building and seeing two men on straw chairs drinking their coffee and looking into the street, as if they were sitting on some "ahwee" onlooking the sea. The first week I was in Lebanon, everything I saw seemed to hurt, a reminder of the pain my country had gone through. But seemingly overnight, it changed. I was driving from el-Mreijat (near Zahle') to el-Barouk, and felt in awe of the beauty . The Beqaa was below me - patches of color, the color of wheat and the soft green of "karam al-3nab", and the pine trees all around me, the tall pine trees that seemed to want to stretch and touch the clouds above, and the rocks, the sharpness of the rocks on the slopes .. and those mountains - ah! 3@ jebal lubnan .. There are not words that i know that can describe the beauty of Lebanon. I have never seen a land so filled with beauty, majesty. There are beautiful places all over the world - the lakes in switzerland, for example, but they didn't hold me like "ardh lubnan" did. And the reason is simple: hadee ardhna, bladnah - el-jamal elna. I spent hours, almost 1/2 my summer, with the cedars in jabal-el-barouk, "bein al-arz" (for my research on arz Ain-Zhalta, which i will talk about next time :) Let it suffice to say for now that the cedars are not in as bad a shape as is usually perceived ... Lubnan... keefah bladnah? Fragile. Every day, I would be reminded of the fragility of our country, for every day two Israeli fighter-planes would fly over Lebanon, their sonic boom ehoeing in the valleys, on the mountain tops, a powerful reminder that we truly aren't safe nor at peace. A couple of times, they sent "light bombs down into the valley" - bombs that merely light up the land so that they could clearly see what was going on below (@endna nehna kanet al-kahraba ma'too@h, wa bel wadi taht kanet al-ardh medaw-weyee). And when the Israelis bombed Baalbeck, as they bomb our dear South every day... but you know of that... a day of mourning was declared throughout the country (though not everyone adhered to that; numerous shops in various areas were still open). But what does a day of mourning do? ... And the people - most that I talked with were simply tired of politics and political ideology - they were tired of "al-ahzab" - regardless what the party was. They were more concerned with every-day life - whether the telephones were working today (if so, then where were they working - be Beirut, wala be Zahle...), which roads were operational in Beirut - since the gov't was fixing the roads in Beirut (and thought to fix most of them at the same time). .... The weakness of our government I had known - but the people... An acquaintance in the UNDP (a _Lebanese_ ) summarized our problem as a people clearly. She said that we (el-sha3b al-lubnanee) have two faces, one that we show to ourselves and perhaps to close friends, the one that embodies our ideas, our beliefs - such as the equality between the sexes, the eradication of the double standards, the elimination of sectarianism in our society and our government; and another face - the one that we show to others and, more importantly, the one we act upon - so that our daughters and sisters are still kept under hand and foot while our brothers and sons are free to act as they wish and 'fulfill their desires for they are men', so that we continue to go to the sectarian leader and continue to ask for "wasTahs", etc... We do so all for basically one reason: fear, fear of being the first to non-conform and thus pay the highest price in society. I brought up the issue of double standards for that was the one that caught me the hardest. It is sickening, and deeply offensive to see the differences between the "liberties" allowed to the women and the men. For the eight years that I have lived in the states, I was continuously told that 1 in 4 women is raped and that perhaps the woman sitting next to me in class is a victim of this horrendous crime - but i never met a rape victim (i met assault-victims, but never a rape-victim) - and to go home and meet her in Lubnan!!! ... The victim of rape in Lebanon has nowhere to go. Rape in the old-sense of being kidnapped by a stranger and raped by force and having physical wounds to prove it is less frequent, but date rape - that is not so rare. Where is a woman to go? She had been raped by a man she trusted. She cannot tell her parents that she is no longer a virgin. She cannot tell her brother - for she fears he will kill the bastard and thus destroy his own life. She has no center to go to, no person who will tell her on and on that she is not at fault, that she is not guilty, that she is still as pure as she was before. So, if she dares, she tells a close friend, and then keeps the fury boiling inside her shut in her soul, and this anger and hurt starts to eat her energy and her desire for life and her sense of self. ... I don't know what more to say ... but I do not want to end on this note .... There are problems in our country. You and i know that - we would be lying to eachother to think otherwise - hard problems - inflation, economic instability, an agressor neighbor and an occupied land, societal problems.. but to think of them as just problems, would be to distant one-self from them. For despite all this, there is so much energy in Lebanon, an undercurrent of activity. I am not referring to the rebuilding of Beirut nor the "development" that is going on in the mountains, but to the people, to their energy as individuals. I worked with the environmental movement while I was home Before i went, I hadn't even known we had an environmental movement - but we do, and it is vibrant and strong and resourceful. In contrast to the environmental movement in the States, the movement in Lebanon is composed primarily of engineers, computer scientists, economists, medical doctors, and a few agriculturists. Their uniting bond is their love for the land, the country, and their belief that they can make a difference. For example, the Reforestation Network (known as "el-shabaka"), is a coalition led by The Green Line, an environmental group composed of college graduates and professors, most of them with some ties to the AUB. This network is composed of groups from various areas in Lebanon, men al-jenoob, wal al-beqaa, wa manadTe' kteere men al-jebel, wa men beirut - each group works on reforestation in their geographical area and then they all meet once a month and talk about problems and future goals etc. One such group is based in "el-ramleyee". Several years ago, fires changed the mountain from one filled with trees to one almost barren of trees. One man, Mounir bu Ghanem, wanted to see the mountain restored, so he organized got a small group of people (7 to be exact) from his village, and worked to rally support - first among others in the village (namely the older generations) and then among the politicians (i.e. anyone who would listen) .. They worked, and now, two years later, they have the F.A.O. paying for an italian consultant to work full-time with them for 3 years, and they have a nursery that last year supplied them with 15,000 plants (this year, they planted only 10,000 seeds in their nursery for they lacked the 'people' power to plant all 15,000 in the growing season). All this by the doing of a group in which only one has a degree in an environmental field (agriculture) - mounir is a computer-scientist. This is what is going on in Lebanon - small groups of individuals making big differences, active minorities united by a common belief and love for the land. This is what is desperately needed in Lebanon. At one of the environmental meetings, I met Madame Jaber, the wife of the Lebanese diplomat to Canada. She told me how tired she is of the Lebanese who comes to Lebanon every summer, expecting to have a good time and leave. But, she told me, "our country is not a hotel." Expect problems and work to solve them. No matter what, this is our country - and it is a miracle, "janat 3@ mad al-nazar!" The problems in lebanon just served as a greater reason to convince me to return - for our country is in need. When a loved one is in need, one doesn't turn one's back on him/her. I was treated like a human being - not a mere number, a social security or driver's license number, but a person, from this village, from this family, with these ideas. More importantly, there, our actions will amount to something precious and priceless - the building and strengthening of a home so dear and beloved. Salamat le-ahl beladee -Rania