An Evil Cradling (4 page)

And so it was with me, over and over again throughout that long period of captivity. These memories, and many like them, were part of my strategy for breaking free.

Dawn is cruel in Lebanon. Rocket holes have gutted this place As would a blunt and rusted blade In the flesh of a fish. An unkempt forest of rushes sprouts Amid minefields Fed on sewage, watered by years Of unstaunched pipes The ghosts of the night have no place In Lebanon. Here they are masters of the light Made substantial in the sun.

Today,

L’Orient lejour has a headline

‘Decouverte Macabre’.

A record of bodies discovered the previous day Spills out, Like the innards of a disemboweled animal. One dawn, perhaps Such secrets may not be The burdensome fruit Lebanese earth. It’s like sitting in the petals of a poise flower. It’s beautiful, but it kills

Jonathan Broder Chicago Tribune

I arranged my flights from Belfast via London to Beirut, hoping to arrive on the fourth of December. I wanted my first Christmas abroad to mark this new life that I was heading into half unconsciously, yet sure that it was something I needed to do. In the days before catching the flight I spent some time traipsing around the old haunts of Belfast, talking with friends about my plans and what the future might hold for me. But most of those last few days I spent alone.

I suppose I had to take a parting look at the place I was leaving. I remember driving or walking around the back streets of the areas in which I had worked with different community groups. I particularly remember those stark murals, colourful and grotesque, which have come to be part of Belfast, and part of the historic expression of the people and their city. A great lumbering white horse and small rider painted obscurely on a gable wall of some tiny side street: this Dutch king in a foreign land, taking different form and shape from the hands of the naive painters. And always there was that Viking bloody red hand, the symbol of Protestant Ulster..

In the Catholic areas the murals reversed out of a black background.

I remember somewhere a crude copy of Michelangelo’s Pietd, painted against a backdrop of men with Armalites: raised, defiant, clenched fists which declared more rage against God and man, I thought, than any conformity with the politics of nationalism.

Lines from James Joyce came to me as I looked at the murals, those images imprinting something vague, political and half-believed in the minds of the people: ‘Oh Ireland my one and only love where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove …” But the images had become more than just paintings on a wall, more than just a statement of belief. They seemed to have taken on the form of icons, but not icons venerating different gods, more like a loud discordant orchestra of crude images clashing and jarring in the dark; our history, our past and our violent present twisting and kinking out of proportion and out of harmony.

There was no interlacing relationship between these images: what people thought they meant and what relationship they bore to each other was lost in garbled cliches of tribalism. These were the icons thrown up in the collective mind in a kind of epileptic turmoil. And they reflected my own turmoil about the place.

Those nightmare images that so possess us in our sleep had moved out of mind and into time. They had become our reality. On every corner the impress on the mind was reinforced. Underneath the skin of the city there was contagion. A kind of malevolence festered and spread uncontrollably and unseen. Out of a sense of frustration, of fear, of a raging thirst for identity and purpose, it seemed that people were drinking in this poison: some unconsciously, and some by choice until they became intoxicated with rage and despair and helplessness.

Walking through the town looking again at these images and places was for me an expunging, taking a last look so that I could put it all behind me, and go on to whatever Lebanon and the future years held for me.

For years I would not let the dark gods of politics and religion possess me. Unlike many of my age and background, I had made that mythic leap and crossed the Jordan. My Protestant working-class background and all its shibboleths would not contain me. I chose to ask questions and not accept ready made answers. We discover our own answers if we have the will to do so; and if we are not afraid of the confrontation with ourselves that such a journey might entail.

I am grateful for my particular background. I will not call it Protestant or Loyalist or British, for they are terms barely adequate to explain my understanding or perspective. The oft-quoted adage comes to mind: ‘power concedes nothing without a struggle.’ There are those who ‘cross the Jordan’ and seek out truth through a different experience from the one they are born to, and theirs is the greatest struggle. To move from one cultural ethos into another, as I did, and emerge embracing them both demands more of a man than any armed struggle. For here is the real conflict by which we move into manhood and maturity. For unless we know how to embrace the other we are not men and our nationhood is wilful and adolescent. Those who struggle through turbulent Jordan waters have gone beyond the glib definitions of politics or religion. The rest remain standing on either bank firing guns at one another. I had had enough of gunfire, the rhetoric of hate and redundant ideologies.

My last hours in Belfast I spent in my local, The Crown Bar, well

known in the city and a pub that made a mockery of those passionate certainties that move people so much. For here in this city-centre pub everyone socialized peaceably, keeping their beliefs to themselves and enjoying the company of strangers as of friends. It was a convivial place and I always enjoyed the companionship there. However, because these were my last few hours in Belfast, I was there early, just before lunch, and I was the only customer in the bar.

It was quiet. Its elaborate Victoriana, all shiny polished mahogany and glinting brass, seemed to speak out loud. I remember that embossed ceiling, full of reds, browns, blues and gold, heavy and intricate above my head and the gleam of the polished copper accoutrements. And those fabulous cut-glass mirrors and richly coloured Italian glass windows, full of frills and fancies of ivy leaves and bunches of grapes and pineapples. Apart from being grossly elaborate, they were very Mediterranean in their richness. The whole impression I had that day and remember still is of being in a holy place.

Perhaps the silence and the rich ornateness give it the feel of church.

I had a few words with Billy the barman, and told him I was heading off to Beirut. He looked at me in silence and said ‘I’ll give you a pint of the devil’s buttermilk on the house.’ I smiled. The devil’s buttermilk: I wondered how long it would be before I would have another pint of Guinness.

Finishing that last pint, I caught a bus to the airport. Strangely, just as it had been in the Crown, I was the only person on the bus. This lonely trip to the airport was, in retrospect, a kind of figuration in advance of the existential journey I was starting. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, the driver and I. He didn’t know where Beirut was but wished me luck anyway.

Sitting at the airport awaiting my flight to London I met, as one always does at airports, a friend I had not seen for years. He was waiting for his wife. We shared a cup of coffee and a chat. When I told him where I was going he looked at me querulously and said ‘Mmm, Beirut.’ Then, he went off into raptures about the joys of being an expatriate and how he thought he would enjoy such a life. As he continued good-humouredly painting a picture of expatriate pleasures, I listened quietly but certainly not calmly. He continued rhapsodizing and I felt frustration rising into a slow, quiet anger.

Whether it was those last few days spent walking through the town looking at and experiencing that violent intensity, it all came to a head at this, my moment of departure-frustration and anger and loneliness all feeding off one another while I smiled at my friend’s odd picture of living abroad.

It was necessary for me to spend a night in London before catching my connecting flight to Beirut. I had arranged with two friends to stay at their home. I had not seen them for twelve years since working in Brussels with them. It was odd to be seeing them again after so many years, knowing that I would only be spending a few hours with them.

One of my friends, Shelagh, had relations living near the area where I would be staying. We chatted about Beirut. She remembered being there as a young girl. I went for a drink with her husband Mike while Shelagh prepared dinner. ‘A last supper’, we called it. We returned to the meal and exchanged stories of our lives, telling jokes and drinking wine. Shelagh passed me some houmus, a Lebanese speciality, saying ‘You better get used to it, you’re going to be getting plenty of that where you’re going.’ I still laugh at that now and think how true it was.

Early next morning Mike and I exchanged shirts. I don’t know to this day why we did that. Shelagh drove me to the airport. It was early in the morning. Shelagh parked her car, helped me out with my bags, and gave me a parting hug, telling me to enjoy myself. I said I would do my best. She also gave me a warning. ‘Be careful, Brian.’ I answered ‘Shelagh, I come from Belfast, I know how to be careful.’

She looked at me again and said ‘I didn’t mean that.’ I asked her what she meant exactly. She said simply ‘The Lebanese women are more liberated than you think they may be, Brian, so be careful.’ I smiled, quite happy with that knowledge, pleased that, at least, I was not walking into a kind of Middle Eastern backwater where I would not be able to make friends and associate with the people with whom I would be working.

In Terminal Four I went to the check-in desk. A young Lebanese girl took my ticket and baggage and with some surprise asked me was I intending to stay in Lebanon long. I said ‘Yes, for a year or two.’ She seemed even more surprised and told me that not many people were travelling to Beirut any more. I nodded. She asked me was I perhaps a journalist, so I told her I would be teaching there. She smiled, and told me how much I would enjoy Beirut and that Lebanon was ‘a very nice place’. I was somehow encouraged, thanked her and went back to await my flight call.

All around me were Indians, Africans, Pakistanis: a whole tapestry of humanity parading itself in its different costumes with its different habits and its jumble of baggage. Children of different nationalities were sitting close to their mothers. Others, excited by the airport, and perhaps frightened, seemed to be crying louder than I could bear to listen to. I remember feeling strange as I looked around at all these people so differently garbed, talking in so many different languages, each with their own preoccupations. My own Irishness, whatever that was, seemed to be quickly submerged and lost in this mass of humanity.

I had brought some books with me to read on the flight but I was too fascinated by what was going on around me. I occupied myself by trying to recall some of what my friends had told me about Beirut, about places to see, where to live and how to spend my holiday time, visiting places such as the temple of Baal at Baalbek — under which I was to reside for some time with my fellow hostages. But I was seeing too many sights now. My eye was caught by the features of an old Indian gentleman sitting quietly, remote from all the traffic about him. Where was he going? Was he glad to be leaving what was obviously not his home? Suddenly I found myself feeling the kind of inner loneliness that I’m sure so many people experience, passing through that way-station.

I boarded a Middle East Airlines flight and we took off. I remembered the airline clerk’s remark that not many people now travelled to Beirut. The plane was more than half empty. I took some newspapers from the stewardess out of habit, and to pass the time.

Airline flights are always boring for me. I only really enjoy that first moment when the plane travels along the tarmac at speed and then is suddenly airborne. But I remember some of the articles I read.

Flicking through the pages, my eyes homed in on reports from the Middle East. I particularly remember one, because I kept the newspaper and later used the article in my teaching seminars. It was a report on ritual slaughter methods in England. The small piece caught my imagination:

‘Leaders of Jewish and Muslim communities said yesterday that their followers would become vegetarians rather than accept a ban on ritual methods of slaughter.’

The article went on to describe how the religious leaders of both the Jewish and Muslim communities in London had been meeting in conference to formulate some protest against the banning of ritual slaughter. I thinking how I had watched the TV a few days before and seen the rememberse people killing one another in Lebanon; now here they were in London sitting together at a table sharing ideas about the merits of ritual slaughter. I loved the incongruity of it, especially since another column in that day’s paper spoke of how the South Lebanese Army, backed by Israeli military advisors, had made several armed raids into south Lebanese villages, killing five men and taking several more prisoners.

There were other prophetic pieces that I would also remember. They were articles about the film Rambo, which was very popular at the time.

One small column spoke about how the BBC was postponing the showing of the film, saying that it was unsuitable for family viewing.

And another much larger article, entitled ‘Revisionist Rambo’, spoke of how the film had been making huge sales in the Middle East and how it had been dubbed and redubbed to be made suitable and more acceptable to Middle Eastern audiences. The article spoke about how Rambo’s anti-communist antics would not go down well in such places as Syria, which still had close associations with the USSR.

I recalled these articles because later this man, this image of Rambo, was to haunt me for a long time. But the article I most remember and quote at length was about the Lebanese economy by Robert Fisk, one of the best writers on the Middle East, if not the very best.