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.
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.
