Amy’s Journal

September 16, 1982 was the day that Christian Phalangists, with the occupying Israeli army’s permission, entered Chatila camp and went on a killing spree. The pretense was that they were going in to find “terrorists”– PLO fighters, but the PLO had been evacuated to Tunisia with Yasser Arafat. Mostly women, children, and elderly remained in the camp. Part of the agreement with Arafat, promised by the United States, was that if the PLO left, the camps would be protected.

They weren’t. The militia men went in and killed whole families in their homes and wherever they could find them. This went on for 3 days. Israeli soldiers watched from a nearby hill, providing flares at night so that the killers could see what they were doing. Some victims were shot, but many were killed with knives. It is believed that this was done so that others would not be alerted to what was going on and therefore could not escape. When I have listened to the stories of survivors, one startling thing is that people didn’t know that it was going on all around them. There were rumors, but many didn’t believe that it could actually be happening. Somewhere between 800-1500 people, mostly Palestinians, were murdered.

We went to a memorial/demonstration on Friday, the 23rd anniversary. We marched to the mass grave and stood on the ground where hundreds of victims are buried. We didn’t understand the speeches, but it felt good to stand with this community, to remember and object to these war crimes, for which no one has been punished.

There was a particularly nasty bomb about 45 minutes ago, across town in Achrafiyeh. A fair amount of destruction, definitely casualties. We are fine- not even close enough to have heard it. I just talked to our friend, who was at the scene and she says it is pretty bad. The footage on TV is fairly apocalyptic.

In other news, we spent the morning at a demonstration/memorial for the anniversary of the Sabra and Chatila massacre. Very interesting, and I hope to post about it later.

Dan and Addie are here, they arrived yesterday afternoon. We sat on the terrace catching up and making loose plans for their (rather short) trip. Later, we went for a drink and then to Cafe Gemmayzeh for some food and music. Recently, I learned that this cafe used to be called Qahwat al-Azaz and was a coffee shop for men only. Today it is one of the few sort of traditional cafes left in Beirut. It’s a fun place at night, the atmosphere is quite lively, usually a few people get up and dance to the oud player’s music. Addie charmed the grumpy waiter and fell in love with argileh, so we are off to a good start.

So, we are still waiting to see what will happen next around here. Detlev Mehlis, head of the UN investigation of Hariri’s assasination, has gone to Syria to question people. There is a rumor going around that the Syrian former head of security in Lebanon has tried to kill himself rather than be questioned or arrested, but apparently it is not true. The UN team should be questioning people very close to President Assad.

President Lahoud has gone ahead to New York for a UN summit, even though President Bush disinvited him to a bunch of receptions. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Siniora refused to attend the summit if Lahoud was going to go, and the Cabinet seems to have decided to stop meeting with the President. Other Christian leaders are hinting around about taking over the presidency. All signs seem to be pointing to Lahoud not being able to hold onto his position.

However, Mehlis has gotten an extension for his report until the end of October, so we may be waiting for awhile yet.

By the way, I finally got sick here (probably a result of having eaten at the nicest restaurant in Aleppo, go figure). The silver lining was that Ethan and I watched almost all of ‘Six Feet Under’ Season 3 over the weekend. Now we just have to patiently wait for Season 4 to arrive at our video store, which could be months. Sigh.

I spent most of last week on yet another trip to Syria, though at least this time it wasn’t just Damascus. Carrie and I headed to Damascus on Tuesday, because she wanted to do a radio story on hakawati- traditional Arabic storytellers. Turns out there is only one left who performs regularly (as in every weeknight), and even he is not so traditional– he reads the stories, rather than having memorized them. It was interesting, even though we couldn’t understand any of it. He performs at a cafe in the old city, and the crowd was a pretty even mix of locals and tourists– the bulk of the latter being a German tour group.

The next day, we woke early and set off for the bus station. After a maddening mix-up with the tickets and the help of a very kindly fellow with a cast on his foot and who kept trying to speak Greek with us, we were on our way to Aleppo.

Aleppo (Halab in Arabic) turned out to be truly fantastic. The souk is amazing.. more real and less shopping mall than the one in Damascus. It is also more overwhelming, and there is much more of people trying to sell you things. We wandered around, sometimes in circles, until we stopped at a very old former mental hospital, built over 600 years ago. It is being restored, and one of the student volunteers involved in the project gave us a tour. He explained the old Islamic method of caring for and rehabilitating mental patients and showed us 4 levels of treatment.. from dangerous psychotics to those nearly well. Elements of light, water, color (blue), and music were used. It was quite interesting, and really a beautiful place with courtyards and fountains. He told us what to look for when buying soap, which was also interesting.

That evening, we had a beer in the hotel bar, a place which counts among its former guests Theodore Roosevelt, Agatha Christie, and Lawrence of Arabia. The bartender was a Kurd who taught us Arabic words and gave us free arak. The bar itself was great, in a spare Communist-style sort of way.

Then we headed to the Armenian/Christian quarter, known as al-Jdeida (or “the new”, because much of it is “only” Ottoman era–15th century or so). We ate dinner in a restored Ottoman house and then walked to a restaurant which according to our guidebook, featured music on Wednesday nights. There was no music and the restaurant was empty, but the owner was there with a few of his friends, and he sat us down with some “hospitality whiskey”. Then he made a phone call. Five minutes later, an oud player sat down at our table and played and sang frenetic but mournful songs for the next few hours.

There were more adventures, and we met many more people, including the owner of a stunning boutique hotel who promised to half his rates when Ethan and I come back to visit (he said he has a weakness for Americans and Greeks). Allepines must be among the most hospitable people on earth. I can’t wait to go back.

I just returned from the gym, and it occurred to me that I haven’t mentioned the gym that I go to here. It was sort of difficult for me to find a gym here- they all seem to be either dumpy but cheap weight lifting places, or state of the art gyms for rich people. Since I wanted more than weights, and since those dumpy little places seemed to be for men only, I ended up with the rich people gym. It is really more gym than I need, and it is much more expensive than my gym in NYC. But it is nice to be able to use a pool and jacuzzi. And to assuage my guilt for spending so much money on a gym membership, I make myself go 5 times a week, so it is probably worth it in the end.

The gym is very, very Americanized. All of the staff are Lebanese, but everyone speaks English, all of the classes are conducted in English, the weights are labeled in pounds and kilos. A lot of ex-pats go there. I either go and do my own thing or else go to a spin class. Now that I am actually writing this post, I realize that my gym is not very interesting- if you have been to a gym in the US, you can picture this one, though it is slightly fancier than most.

However, I do get a real kick out of overhearing women talk in the locker room. The locker room is an excellent venue for hearing a linguistic phenomenon specific to upper-class Lebanese, which is switching between THREE languages fluidly in casual conversation in the space of one spoken sentence. It’s very much like being on the subway in New York and hearing two people interspersing English and Spanish words, but 3 (English, Arabic, and French) is a whole other level.

So… 4 prominent security chiefs in the Lebanese government have been arrested and charged with plotting Hariri’s murder. All are pro-Syrian and one (Hamdan) is sort of the right hand man of President Lahoud. Calls for Lahoud’s resignation have escalated. Many of the anti-Syrians (including Saad Hariri and Walid Joumblatt) have fled to Paris because they fear being assasinated themselves. It seems likely that the UN investigation will find that Syria itself was involved. It is quite the power struggle indeed. Supposedly, UN investigators may soon be allowed to travel to Syria to question some suspects for the first time.

Carrie and I went to the beach today, a quiet one south of Beirut. The waves were too intimidating, and I didn’t end up swimming. I forgot my camera (sorry, Michael), but it was a nice, relaxing spot, though I suspect that the sand was imported.

Russell left for the airport at 6:30 this morning with Mohammed, our favorite taxi driver. I have arranged for Mohammed to head to the airport 7 times in the last 3.5 weeks, so I have given him quite a bit of business.

After Bridget headed home late Sunday night, Russell and I made a quick trip to Damascus. We experimented with transport– instead of shared taxi, we took a minibus there and a big bus back for $5 each way. The minibus was great, but the ride back on the bus was pretty unpleasant. It kept stopping so it took twice as long to get back to Beirut, there was little a/c and the windows didn’t open, the brakes were questionable and squealed and burned all the way down the mountain. There were some funny backpackers on the bus, including a Dutch guy who was incredulous that not only did I not have problems getting into Syria as an American, but that Americans pay less for visas.

At any rate, we had a good time in Damascus- saw the mosque, the souqs, the old city. We tried to go to my favorite restaurant from last time, Zeitouna, but it is now undergoing a major renovation and looks like it will be closed for awhile. We ended up going to Elissar, which is a little bit more upscale, and somehow ended up ordering (beef) fondue (!) which was delicious, but seemed a strange thing to be eating in Syria.

We had spent a fair bit of time over the course of 2 days trying to find the “puppies and snakes” that Ray and Geoff had seen when we were there a few weeks ago. As we were walking back to our hotel to collect my bag before going to the bus station, we finally found them. It’s sort of a live animal souq, with creatures intended as both pets and food mixed together. There were jars full of water snakes writhing around, all sorts of birds (from canaries and songbirds to geese and turkeys), puppies and rabbits. One seller for some reason sold nothing but cats and chickens. The bottom cages housed chickens (some rather fancy) and the top cages held many white cats of various ages. It was feeding time, and each cat, down to the littlest kitten, was chowing down on a chicken leg. Their neighbors below could not have been comfortable with this.

My favorites, though, were the baby tortoises. There were several cages full of them, piled atop each other. I resisted the urge to bring a couple home. They were really cute. But baby tortoises grow up, you know. And I’m not sure if you can bring turtles from Syria to the US without permission. Maybe I will look into that.

Bridget, RJ, and I had a really fantastic trip to Bcharre, a Christian village high above the stunnning Qadisha Valley. We rented a car, which turned out to be fun. I was much more comfortable driving than when I drove here in 2002.

We stayed in the same hotel in which Ethan and I had spent Christmas back in 2002. Mr. Chbat is an excellent host. He looks a bit like Sean Connery and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to hiking in the area. At the end of our stay, he presented us with a huge jar of homemade apricot jam to take home. The hotel itself is sort of a 50s lodge, rather cozy and funky.

We dropped off our belongings and drove to a hermitage down in the valley (narrow road with plenty of blind curves and hairpin turns). The monastery is embedded in a cliff and is utterly peaceful inside.

Afterward, we checked out a grotto with octopus-like stalactites and then wandered among the ancient cedar trees for which Lebanon is famous. Driving back to Bcharre from the Cedars, we stopped to gaze at/photograph the layer of clouds that had rolled in far below us.

I will post again soon, but for the moment I will be out of touch for a few days. Bridget, Russell, and I are making a road trip to Bcharre and The Cedars for some mountain air. I haven’t driven here all summer, which should be interesting. I am drinking a lot of caffeine and punching at the air in anticipation. Putting my bravado on.