Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (6 page)

Sidon and Tyre, the two coastal cities of southern Lebanon,
were once the principal towns of ancient Phoenicia and spawned a
mercantile empire from Turkey to Spain. Important archaeological
work has been done in both places, exposing six millennia of
human misbehavior. Lebanon has been overrun in turn by Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Arabs again, Turks, French, more
Arabs, Israelis and occasional U. S. Marines. Perhaps by means of
the past one can begin to comprehend the present. Or learn which
way to run from the future.

I hired a Palestinian Christian driver named Simon and had
him take me twenty-five miles down the lush coast littoral to Tyre.
We passed through ten or a dozen Israeli guard posts. These are
heaps of sandbags with anxious eyes and many gun barrels sticking
over the top. They look down upon a series of "Khomeini gates,"
cement barriers that jut into the road like meshing-gear teeth and
force vehicles to zig-zag slowly between them in single file. If you
stall in the middle of these, you die.

The roadsides all over Lebanon are piled with trash, the coast
road especially so. Beaches and parks are even worse. There's
something about a civil war that brings out the litterbug in people.

Tyre is an awful mess of dirty modern architecture, offal and
the detritus of battle. The Elissa Beach Club hotel, on the south
shore of the Tyre peninsula, may be one of the few oceanside hotels
anyplace where none of the rooms face the sea. But it's clean, the
hot water is not actually cold and the food's passable. Also, there's
nowhere else to stay.

Simon went home for the night, and I was left on the hotel's
roof terrace about a thousand miles from the nearest example of the
Four Freedoms. "I have a cousin in Cincinnati" was the only English anyone could speak. I watched the sun go down behind the
ruins of some previous attempt to bring the rule of law to these
climes.

I'd hoped at least for a good night's sleep. There'd been quite
a few bombs going off in Beirut. I'd heard five the night before,
starting with one at midnight in a bar a few blocks from the
Commodore and winding up with a spectacular attempt on the life
of the minister of education at six A. M. This took windows out for
three blocks around and shook the furniture in my room. The
minister survived but my repose did not. But this night, it turned
out, was the beginning of the Hajj, the Moslem holiday marking the
return of the Mecca pilgrims, and the urchins next door celebrated
with a six-hour firecracker fight in the street. Then at two A. M.
there was a truly horrendous explosion.

No use looking around the next day to see what's been
blasted. Everything has been already.

Later I read in the Beirut newspapers that while I was in the
south there were four sniping attacks on Israeli patrols, the South
Lebanon Army had stormed a section of Sidon, there was a riot at a
Palestinian refugee camp near Jezzine, and the coast road was
heavily shelled. I noticed none of this. On the other hand, no
explosion in Tyre was reported. This illustrates the difficulty, in
Lebanon, of knowing what's happening, even to yourself.

In the morning I visited the principal archaeological digs.
These are all decorated with small blue and white signs saying the
ruins are national treasures protected by the convention of the
Hague of 12 May 1954, and in case of armed conflict notify
UNESCO. I suppose I should have phoned.

The oldest and most extensive excavation, near the ancient
port, has revealed Phoenician house foundations, a Hellenistic
theater, a long, colonnaded walk from Roman times and parts of a
Crusader wall. Some pretense is made of keeping these in order.
They are guarded by one desultory fellow in a fez. After I'd
wandered beyond the palings for an hour, he whistled at me to get
out. Nearby a newer dig has uncovered a Roman temple now being
used as a garbage dump.

Half a mile or so inland is a much larger site, which I couldn't
find mentioned in any guidebooks. Not that there are many Lebanon guidebooks. I couldn't find any in U. S. bookstores. And
the Hachette guide I purchased in Beirut was twenty years old.
Other than this I was relying on a 1876 Baedeker I found in a New
England thrift shop. It was not without useful advice:

The transaction of business in the East always involves an
immense waste of time, and as Orientals attach no value
whatsoever to their time, the European will often find his
patience sorely tried.

Many travelers rejoice in displaying a stock of revolvers and
other arms, which add greatly to their importance in the eyes
of the natives, but are not often brought into actual use.

The larger excavation contains what looks to be an aqueduct,
another theater and a vast Roman necropolis. Simon had come
back to get me at the hotel, and I had him drive me into the middle
of these ruins. Garbage was being dumped here, too, and burned
automobile seats, Pepsi cans and lots of spent ordnance was
mingled on the ground with ancient pot shards and mosaic tile
chips. Simon picked up an amphora handle. "How old you think?"
I told him about two thousand years. He nodded, "Two thousandyears-old garbage."

Antiquity hunters have been at work in Tyre. All the Roman
tombs are broken open, and many of the fracture marks in the
marble are fresh. I peeked inside one grave, and there was a
muddle of antique bones. It was, by sheer chance, the only dead
body I saw in Lebanon.

I'd been given the name of a Lebanese-American, Billy
Hadad, who has a farm on the coast near Sidon. We drove around
looking for him. It's hard to know what your driver is doing when he
talks to the natives. He'll pull up somewhere and make a preliminary oration, which draws five or six people to the car window.
Then each of them speaks in turn. There will be a period of
gesturing, some laughter, much arm clasping and handshaking,
and a long speech by the eldest or most prominent bystander. Then
your driver will deliver an impassioned soliloquy. This will be
answered at length by each member of the audience and anybody else who happens by. Another flurry of arm grabbing, shoulder
slapping and handshakes follows, then a series of protracted and
emotional good-byes.

"What did you ask them?" you'll say to your driver.

"Do they know of your friend?"

"What did they tell you?"

"No."

Eventually, we were directed to an old fortresslike farmhouse
near the shore. There on the terrace was a big American preppie
kid in chino pants and a button-down shirt. He looked at me and
said, "Awesome. Man, I haven't heard English in months!"

The farm near Sidon has been owned by the Hadads since the
time of the Ottoman Turks. Its two hundred and thirty acres are
irrigated by springs and planted in avocados, bananas and other
fruit. The house dates from 600 A.D., with Arab and Turkish
additions. It stands on a rock outcrop above a pool in use since
Phoenician days. Centuries-old Ficus trees grow over the walls,
and flowers bloom all around it.

Billy's father was Druse, his mother from Oregon. They met at
college in California. In the middle of the civil war Mr. Hadad was
killed in, of all things, a skiing accident on Mt. Lebanon. Mrs.
Hadad took the younger children back to America, and Billy, just
graduated from a Connecticut boarding school, came out to
Lebanon to manage the property. He has five families, some thirtyfive people, working for him.

We had lunch with one of his tenants and sat around a low
table under a loggia indulging in Arab table manners. These are
the best in the world or, anyway, the most fun. For the midday meal
there are a dozen large bowls of things-salad; hot peppers; yogurt;
a chick-pea paste called hummus; kubbeh, which is a kind of
meatball; and things I have no idea the names for. You get a flat loaf
of pita bread and make flaps to grab the food. The bread is your
napkin, also your plate. We had too much Arak, the regional
version of absinthe, and drank endless tiny cups of drug-strength coffee. You can smoke in the middle of the meal, and no one
considers it impolite.

The tenant brought out his guns. It's like an Englishwoman
showing you her roses. There was a Soviet AK-47, a Spanish Astra
9mm automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, an old
British military rifle and a very nice Beretta over-and-under shotgun. This is a modest collection. More militant people have mortars and the like. Serious gunmen favor the rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, which is something like a bazooka. It's inaccurate
and tremendously noisy, a perfect Lebanese weapon.

After lunch we went for a swim. This far south of Beirut the
ocean is clean. From out in the water distant rumblings could be
heard. I thought it was artillery in the Chouf. "Dynamite fishing,"
said Billy. (Dynamite is one bait fish always rise to.)

There was a wedding party in a nearby village that night.
Lebanese wedding parties are held on the eve of the marriage.
Thus the groom is given an excuse for looking green at the altar. A
hundred or more chairs had been placed in a circle behind the
bride's house. A few light bulbs were strung in the grapevines and
a huge table had been laid with food, Scotch and Arak. Parties in
Lebanon start slow. Everyone sits primly in the chairs, neither
eating nor drinking, and talking only in low voices. Or they would
usually. In this case the men and boys must all discuss politics with
the American. Every one of them has cousins in Texas.

"Just tell them what you think," said Billy. I couldn't very well
do that. After a week in Lebanon what I thought would hardly make
fit conversation at a wedding feast.

This was a Christian village. "If the Moslems take over," said
a young man (Billy translating), "They'll close the bars during
Ramadan. But we won't make them drink at Christmas if they
really don't want to." A lather of self-justification followed. Justifying the self is the principal form of exercise in Lebanon. The
principal form of exercise for a visitor in Lebanon is justifying
American foreign policy. The Marine incursion was the question of
the hour. Moslems wanted to know why the Marines were sent here.
Christians wanted to know why they left. And Druse wanted to
know why, during the Marines brief stay, they felt compelled to
shell the crap out of the Chouf.

My answer to everyone was that President Reagan wasn't sure
why he sent the Marines to Lebanon. However, he was determined
to keep them here until he figured it out, but then he forgot.

Nobody held it against me personally. The Lebanese never
hold anything against anyone personally. And it's not considered
rude to root for the home team. There were a number of Moslem
guests at the party. The villagers had nothing but affection for the
Druse Billy Hadad, who towered over most of them. One teenager,
summoning all the English at his command, told me, "Billy, it es
... le homme vert, to connais, `Credible Hulk!"' Billy said the
only real trouble he's had with his neighbors and tenants was when
he tried to convince them that professional wrestling is fake. It's
the most popular program on Lebanese TV.

About ten o'clock there was a change in the festivities. Acting
on some signal I couldn't perceive everyone suddenly began to
drink and shout. A little later the bridegroom was carried in on the
shoulders of his friends accompanied by drums, flutes and the
eerie ululation Arab women use to mark every emotional occasion.
Awful tapes were put on a large Rasta box. There was bad Arab
music, worse French rock and roll, and Israeli disco music, which
is the most abominable-sounding thing I've ever heard in my life. A
sister of the bride got in the middle of the circled chairs and did
quite a shocking traditional dance.

There was something of the freshman mixer to the party. The
young men and women held to opposite sides of the crowd, eyeing
each other furtively and being shoved out to dance only after
prolonged giggling and conspiracy among their fellows.

"I haven't been laid since I was in Beirut last June," said
Billy. "Out in the country it's marriage or death."

Good-fellowship in the Middle East can be a bit unnerving.
You'd best get used to being gripped, hugged and even nuzzled. I
was taken aback the first time I saw two fully armed militiamen
walking down the street holding hands. Large amounts of Arak aid
in acclimitization. The sense of affection and solidarity is comforting, actually, when you realize how many of the men throwing their
arms around you have pistols in the waistbands of their pants. A
Mercedesful of gunmen kept watch on the road.

Eventually I was thrust onto the dance floor and matched with a hefty girl who had me do Arab dances. This was, justly, thought
hilarious. But my discotheque dancing made an impression. I
gather the locals are not familiar with the Watusi, the Jerk and the
Mashed Potatoes.

The whole celebration was being videotaped, and every now
and then one of the revelers would use the Sony's quartz-halogen
light to dry the skin on a snareless Arab drum.

Sometime in the early morning Billy and I returned to his
farm. There was protracted questioning from his housekeeper on
the floor above. She wanted to make sure we were us before she
threw down the door keys. We locked ourselves in with five deadbolts.

I never did get to see the historical points of interest in Sidon.

The overland crossing going north was a horror. The Israelis
run Betar and the midpoint interrogation center, and conditions
there are ugly but organized. However, the clumsy and violent
South Lebanon Army has control of the Jezzine checkpoint.

There were about a thousand angry and panicked people in
the small town square when I arrived. Most of them were poor
Shiites, and all of them seemed to have screaming children and
every earthly possession with them. One group of two or three
hundred were fighting with fists to get on a bus. Soldiers ran
through the crowd screaming and firing Uzis in the air. It was only
ten in the morning but already 90 degrees. I looked for Israeli
officers. There were none. I sent Simon into the crowd. He returned in a few minutes.