Lebanon Round Two #1: Getting nabbed by a polite militia

I'm high up in the mountains now, west of Tripoli, in a little Christian town called Bcharré. Above me is a thousand year-old forest of giant cedars trees, which used to cover these mountains but have now receded into little pockets where no one has built a home yet. Below me is a deep valley that may well plunge to the earth's core, and the old stone-built town center, where poet Khalil Jebran was born and raised. On my computer, the distressed wails of Hossein Alizadeh and his Iranian satar hum from iTunes.

There's a lot to recount over my last month plus here, so I won't talk about any of it except one event.

Leaving work at the office in the newly-constructed and soulless central downtown of Beirut after saying goodbye to my perpetually-calm Lebanese colleagues, I decided to get my camera dirty and go take some photos of the beautifully bullet-riddled civil war-era buildings just blocks away. Stepping out of my building, the humid heat of 5 o'clock hit me like a giant pillow in he face. I pulled my camera from my bag, swung around a corner, and snaked up past the blast walls and soldiers around the UN complex behind us. I wrapped the shoulder strap of my camera around my wrist to secure it, walking behind two stereotypically overly made-up Beiruti women in tight, bright clothes, trying to give them distance so as not to be just another overbearing sexist for them to deal with on the streets. There's plenty of that in this country.

Passing under a highway, then beside a gas station, I crept up a hill quietly opposite an old house turned car repair shop, my head down so as not to attract too much attention. The house's terraces, decaying, held on by metal threads, and its bricks and stones looked like the bones sticking out from a wizened elder. A sweaty guy in flannel shirt sat out front of the haggard car garage reading the newspaper. I snapped a couple of so-so shots, and kept moving up the hill.

Seeing a set of ancient-looking stone steps, I pulled out my camera and aimed it. The steps by themselves were quite dull, so I tried to get a shot of a man crossing in front of them with a bag of groceries. As soon as he saw my point my camera at him, his alarm went off and he started yelling esh shaabb 3amySawwar ("The young guy is taking pictures.") I figured he was just being uptight, so I kept snapping shots of the stairs and the dull building they lead to. The moment I pulled my eye from the viewfinder, a burly, irritated-looking guy with an AK-47 hanging from one hand was just feet away, gesturing at my camera. Without thinking, I started to tell him I was just photographing the stairs, and that I would show him my pictures. In Arabic.

The lesson I've taken from this is don't speak to suspicious militiamen in Arab countries in Arabic, especially not during a period of heightened tensions in the country due to a string of suicide bombings. In his eyes, it was now very likely that I was an Israeli spy. He grabbed the camera from my hands with an air of "Don't struggle dweeb. You'll only make it worse."

Bringing me into the office of his militia, which I learned was just opposite the stairs I was photographing, I entered a tiny new world. Entering the office, which could have been just another apartment in the residential building, other burly middle-aged guys with the classic neatly-trimmed black beards in the Iranian Shia style, all sporting mediocre polo shirts, shuffled to and fro', looking important with documents in their hands. The guard plopped me down on a seat and went into a big room blabbing about the shaabb ("the kid") he just brought in. I spied posters of Shia leaders, probably Iranian Ayatollahs. Their beards and turbans gave them away, along with their stern, wannabe-heroic faces.

A guy came out of the big, nice-looking room, and brought me in. He asked me for my passport, and all my ID info. Grabbing it hungrily from my hand, he lead me back out of the room, and installed me in a giant florescent-lit room lined with couches. Before closing the door, he held out his palm as if to stop a car and told me, "Wait." I sat in the shiny white-blue room looking out the window at the nest of densely-packed apartment buildings next door, playing with my hat, and muttered little complaints and curses to myself in French: "Putaiiin! Qu'est-ce que j'ai fait? Les cons! Qu'est-ce qu'ils veulent?" I looked round at the few posters dotting the walls, mostly of blurry, saintly-looking figures with over-the-top religious rhetoric written in flowing script, which further confirmed my belief that this was the office of a Shia militia of some kind.

I started to doze off a bit when the burly Shiite came back to the door, motioning for me to follow. Back into the big air-conditioned office, where I noticed a yellow Hezbollah flag (You can't miss it--it's got a raised fist holding an AK-47 in it) behind the guy in slick black suit who awaited me. bta7ki 3arabi? he asked. Ey ey ba7kia ("Yes yes I speak Arabic") I shot back. Despite this he carried on in English. "Where are you from?" he asked. "What do you work?" A few humble, lowered-head responses to his curt inquiries, and he gestured to the door. "OK. Just a few minutes please."

Back in my comfy waiting room, I did more looking around and muttering to myself, and over time started to relax and sleep crept up on me from one corner of my brain. But alas, the burly Shiite in polo shirt came to the door and told me to come back to the office, this time more gentle, more polite somehow.

The guy in black suit, who told me nothing of himself looked like he had it more figured out now. "You are a journalist?" "Yes, I'm doing an internship," I told him. He thumbed throufgh my passport, giving sideways glances at the multiple Syria visas I had, and entry stamps for Iraq and Somaliland. I was definitely a spy or a naive American kid travelling between different Al Qaeda branches. He scanned through photos on my camera, looking at my fantastically nonthreatening photos of stairs and blurry shots of mountains I took from a bus. "Where is this?" "Up in the mountains in Bcharré." "Oh," he muttered, and put my camera down disinterestedly.

"Give me a number of your... responsible," the handsome shaved-headed guy said. I scanned through my phone for the number of my bureau chief, and handed him the phone. He pulled out a black iPhone and dialed the number. I heard it the bureau chief's phone ring. Allo? she said. Lebanese James Bond introduced himself as an officer in the mukhabbaraat 3askariye, the military intelligence. "Young guy was taking photos near an office of such-and-such organization. Says he works for you. An intern? That so?" Fuzzy digital Arabic jabber in response. "Ah OK. What is your name? Position? Is this your personal number? Yes? Good. Thank you. No, it's no problem. Sorry to bother you. Yes. Yes. Thank you. We'll be in touch. Thank you. Bye. Bye. OK, bye. Yalla. Yalla, bye."

He hung up the phone and looked up at my from his leather seat. "Well Mr. Sam, we are finished. What is your number, please?" "Ughhhh," I thought. But I gave it to him.

"Look," he said. "We are in a very difficult time. The situation is not normal. You know: bombings and arresting terrorist. So everyone is very afraid of what it will happen. I recommend you not take pictures here."

"In this area of Beirut," he said.

"All of Beirut? What about places like Saida or other cities?"

"I recommend no photos in urban areas at all. You want to take pictures in the mountains, in Bcharré? That's OK. I recommend no photos in cities."

I felt smashed. In a tiny country like Lebanon, not much was left--people-wise--to photograph outside cities.

"We are very very sorry. It seems like everything is fine. Our apologies to you. And, if you need anything, anywhere--like on the rod you have a problem--please let me kow." Very generous. Except I didn't have any way to contact him, or his name. He'd be checking up on me though, I thought, whether I knew it or not.

With a big sour smile, he gestured for the door. "Alright. Bye. Take care." And one of the burly guards lead me out of the yellow-lit office. I said ma3 esselaama ("Goodbye") to one of the otherwise stern guys behind the reception desk. Ma3 esselaama he said with casual chuminess. But as I walked down the steps from the office, I could feel their eyes on my back, making sure I went far away.

Tunis #2: Sexuality and music in the rain

There was a pleasant feeling of serenity in my morning-mind (uncommon when I wake up) as I opened my eyes in the darkened room to the blaring ring of a cell phone. The woman who answered, I., lay under a thick but airy comforter, beside me on the massive bed, as beautiful as iron is heavy and confident too. With the cliché sexiness of her scratchy morning voice, she responded slowly to the almost whiny-sounding American man's voice on the other end. "How aaaaaare you?" he said. "Exhausted." "Whyyyyy?" he worried back. More talk, and as her slender arms dropped the phone back beside her pillow, I pulled her in so that her head was resting in the crook of my neck, her stomach and red bellybutton ring rubbing up against my side, with one of her legs folded up over mine. Her body was firm and smooth, to a degree I almost couldn't bring myself to believe, her skin very lightly toasted in a way that made her look as though she hailed from north of the Mediterranean, not the south. She smelled like sweet and soft things, and though I knew it was the aroma of a rainbow of cremes and perfumes, I breathed it like someone drowning breathes sea air for the first time. Feeling complete (or as close as one can get to that), and fighting off darting thoughts of fear that this moment would not last, I fell back to the blackness where even insecurity cannot reach me.

How unusual this is, I think. This is not the first woman in this country with whom I've shared a bed, but this woman's comfort with herself and her surroundings was new. She didn't seem like she was trying to escape the world's troubles through sleep, as a previous partner had, nor did she seem to see in me her own gentle savior finally arrived, as another had. She was simply trying me out, but in a premeditated way, a way that had taken planning and preparation on her part. I had that to my credit. She had reached out to my roommate, Nicholas, on Facebook, the Tunisian make-friends-hook-up-find-a-spouse-seek-work-contacts all-in-one social network. Apparently it was while I had been away, in the US, and she boldly initiated with him, leading to a long back and forth Facebook chat conversation. Nick, himself no longer a bachelor, showed me their substantive conversation, including topics like photography and molecular biology, and told me I should connect with her, as it was obvious she was searching, as he put it. Not long into my flirt-filled Facebook chats with her she invited me to come see some live music and art at her university, which was supposedly related to my Master's research on local hip hop. Once I asked here where I would stay if and when I came down to visit, in the city of M., south of Tunis, and she said "Well we have our apartments ;-)" I gladly realized Nicholas had been right.

The night before had been a whirr of new. I had never visited M. before, though I had heard plenty of oft-repeated talk of its being the home of the family of a former Tunisian president. Yet, the rare rainfall over the small city, and the chipped and worn 1970's-looking campus that greeted me when I. dropped me off there, was underwhelming. A bunch of young men and women greeted me unsteadily, not sure what language to speak when I. introduced me in English but I greeted them in Tunisian Arabic. As it turned out, I had missed all the art, including a photography and graffiti expo, except for a final batch of bands. Sitting on a plastic folding table in the university's performance hall as the long equipment set-up went on, I chatted with a few young Rastafari-lookers who played in the bands, feeling thrilled by the body and calm presence of I. perched up against me on the table.

The music was good, mostly, prefaced by a one-man-show by a young guy in red face paint who imitated the Devil's voice, but who I couldn't understand at all because of the deafening chatter of the young audience. Three our four acts came to the stage, including a reggae band, some pre-teens and an old man singing "I'll Be There," and a badass rock group with a guitarist who had powerful chops on his instrument. It was all punctuated by I.'s touchiness, resting hands on my shoulder and thigh, and my wondering how to respond. The concert was drowned in covers of American--and Jamaican (Bob Marley)--songs.

When people finished dancing The Twist to Elvis Presley songs and the hall cleared out, we packed into cars and went to the city of M.'s reportedly only clean, almost-affordable, mixed-gender drinking spot. The menu was in French, they served BLTs, and the DJ played mostly really good hip hop, reggae, and local bands. Olives. Croutons. Tunisian beer in green bottles and rosé wine. I. disappeared and I remained seated next to a bunch of her rapidly chatting friends all sucking on cigarettes, me staring at bad Arab music videos on TV. Finally I found I. again at a different table and parked next to her, and her hands landed once more reassuringly on my thighs. Members of the bands--one a powerfully handsome guy with dark beard scruff and pony tail and another a fair-skinned fellow sporting a bowler cap--shot their opinions about good music at me, perforated with English phrases like "the blue note."

Head out, pack seven humans into a car that's only supposed to fit five, and we glode (past tense for glide) through the depressingly empty streets of the seaside city, slick with drizzle and lit here and there by the neon glow of local banks. After a few blocks one of the band members hopped out of the car and popped open the trunk, allowing the only other woman in the car aside from I. to step out and slip smilingly into the side street where she lived. I was nervous by then, not knowing where I would be spending the night, but hoping it would be with I..

"Sharp right here. Now go slowly. Now left. Great, this is me," I. said as the car headlights fell on a naked, bone-colored building with a small gate in the front. I pushed out of the car's back right door to let I. out of the pile of bodies in the back seat. "Whatever man, just take it as it comes. Don't get too attached," I told myself, trying to keep my hopes from climbing too high. The I heard I. say, "O Sam? He's coming with me," to the crew in Tunisian dialect. Excellent.

Mounting the smooth white steps on the front of the building, following I.'s leather jacket which glistened slightly in the rainlight. Into her pale white apartment, clean as a dentist's office, and holding my breath, I readied myself to meet the roommates. As it turned out, incredibly, there were none. I. had the whole fresh-smelling dentist's office to herself. This brings me to a few important points: Tunisian women, despite some appearances to the contrary, are significantly bound by a web of constraints on their personal and sexual freedom, mostly having to do with community and family pressures around ideas of honor and dishonor, womanhood, obedience, and membership in the community (I as an American non-Muslim am not fully part of "the community," a concept we can talk about later). Most young Tunisian women are not free to choose their sexual or romantic partners at will, and many, it seems, don't try overtly to create such relationships. As far as I can see, this is usually out of fear about how their family and the community in which they live will react to premarital sexual relations, which usually involves some degree of at least covert shaming through gossip, with community members subsequently interacting differently with the woman out of a feeling that she doesn't deserve their full respect.

However, Westerners like me, especially after having lived in "more conservative" Arab Muslim countries, are often surprised to observe a greater freedom of expression of physical affection among higher-class Tunisian women (the ones who we tend to spend the most time around) towards men. Further, because of the numerous burdens on women that are lightened the world over by greater financial and material resources, there are less intense pressures on upper-class Tunisian women to submit to societal norms by which their honor tends to be judged; thus having one's own private living space, in a middle-class neighborhood less beholden to conservative gender and sexual norms, and living in a neighborhood or city far removed from one's family (I.'s family lives in Tunis) are all factors which ease the constraints on a Tunisian woman's sexual behavior (by my general and humble estimation). These circumstances set the stage for the rainy night sleepover with a woman I had only met a few hours earlier.

My right hand between her back and the pad of a couch, my left hand under her lightly-toasted neck, I. says "I shouldn't be doing this," with a groan like somebody who was just woken from deep sleep. "Why not?" I ask. "Ughghgh, 'cuz I have a… boyfriend," she said, with eyes squeezed shut as though drawing back from a blow.