Saturday, May 16, 2009

Lebanon

I've been real busy with school lately so I havn't been updating the blog as much as I would like, but here I will hopefully be able to fill everybody in on the last real exciting weekend trip of the semester. This focus on the major events is coming at the expense of some of the less immediately impressive trips and incidents in Cairo, which is a shame because I think these paint a good picture of eveyday life here. Hopefully I will remember enough about them to set out the details later.

As noted earlier, Sonja and I had intended to go to Lebanon the weekend after springbreak. Unfortunately, we missed our flight at had to move the trip back one weekend. This time we arrived at the airport well in advance of our flight. Here we picked up some cheap Cuban cigars at the Duty Free store for the simple novelty of having them, since the US obviously still has a trade embargo on Cuba.

The flight was short, barely over an hour, and we arrived in Beirut around 8pm. I was unsure as to what line to get in at customs because no one was working the passport booth selling Lebanese visas. I asked an official where I needed to go to get my visa and he asked me my nationality. I said American, and he responded, "You can stand wherever you like." Americans are positiviely racially profiled in much of the region, sometimes to ironic results. For example, today I went to Midan (Square) Husayn in Islamic Cairo and they had stepped up security since the minor bombing back in February. We were waiting in line while they were checking everyone's bags, but they just waved me, Spencer, and Jim through since we were white tourists, and hence obviously not a threat. Mikey commented on this when we were down there last week, finding it funny how the Egyptian security forces negatively racially profiled their own citizens.

Once through customs, we changed our money into Lebanese Lira (1500 to $1) and grabbed a cab to the American University in Beirut Hostel. The cab charged us an exorbitant fare and we later found out that a cartel runs the cab services from the airport. People have been charged up to $100, but we managed to get the "low" price of $56. This was a shock coming from Cairo where a cab ride from the airport costs 50LE (under $10).

The AUB Hostel was simple and clean and conveniently located just across the street from the main gates of AUB in the heart of West Beirut. We were a little overwhelmed the first night in Beirut. We could handle impoverished, third-world type stuff, but Beirut was modern, bright, clean. It reminded me a lot of Charleston. It was just a brand new city very unlike the one in which I am used to living. Sonja has a friend she met at an academic conference over the summer who works at a TV station on Lebanon's most-watched nightly news program. We met up with him for dinner and let him drives around the city. We felt much better after this. It helped us get oriented with the city and let us know that we had somebody we could call if we needed anything.

Most interesting about this car ride was that Philipe (Sonja's friend) was working his phone in order to get guests for the next days show. But these weren't just any guests; they were the four generals that had just been released from prison that day, arrested for alleged complicity in the assasination of president Rafik Hairi in 2005. We listened in as he called his connections, looking for people who had any way of contacting these generals and getting them on his show. He found the number for one of the general's homes or his wife's cell-phone (I don't know which, I recall only that his wife answered) and put the call on speaker, and we listened as he spoke the general and he agreed to join the next day's show.

In these phone calls, Philipe used a mixture of Arabic, English, and French. This is common throughout much of Lebanon. On all of my previous flights on Egypt air, the safety instructions and cabin announcements were made in both Arabic and Englihs. Only on the flight to Lebanon was French added to this list. The French held Lebanon and Syria as imperial posessions (under the mandate guise) for much of the early twentieth century. The French language has been preserved there since that time. English has now also made its impact. Almost all of Lebanon's upper classes know French, as do the educated youth. The wealthy youth also seem to have a pretty international orientation. We went to a bar one night that reminded me more of a coffeehouse than a pub. It had comfy chairs and shelves full of books, and on the wall an old black and white French film whose main character was involved in mobilizing the laboring classes was being projected. They played a mixture of Arabic, French, and English pop, and while many Egyptian youth try to replicate American and European culture and styles, the Lebanese youth seemed be buying into an authentic copy and rather than cheap imitations here in Cairo.

The first morning we took a cab to Daorra, on the north side of the city I'm assuming, and from there hopped on the bus to Tripoli. The ride took longer than expected because it wasn't direct and stopped frequently, letting people on and off, until we made it out of the city and through the hills over to Tripoli. Tripoli is a fascinating city historically because of the number of different rulers it has had. The area has been controlled by the Ummayed Empire, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the French, and now the Lebanese themselves. A number of the mosques we toured there were built originally as churches and had switched denominations multiple times depending on the changing rulers and demographics until finally becoming mosques.

As soon as we stepped off the bus we were met by an old Tripolian offering to show us around. He had maps and said he was from the Tripoli tourism department. He seemed believable but we are generally pretty wary of people in Egypt, especailly the extremely forward ones, and we carried this attitude over to Lebanon. We had him direct us to a good restaurant and declined his invitation for a guided tour. We decided we could find our way around just fine.

Most of the historically interesting sites in Tripoli are in the Medieval section, making a map almost useless since the streets and alleyways are haphazardly laid out often not even named. However, our first stop was the citadel, which was easy to spot on the hill overlooking the streets below. We found our way up to it and got some great views of the city. We were the only two tourists there until the very end, when two more people showed up. A row of armored Lebanese army vehicles were parked outside the main entrance and there were officers posted throughout the complex. We found no guides or information plaques on the inside, so all I really know about the citadel is that its a castle-looking thing that has a canon on its roof somewhere. And it is presumably centuries old. I'm sure I could look up the information somewhere but that would just take too much effort, wouldn't it?

Leaving the citadel was when the adventure began. The rest of our sites were located in the city below where street names and maps were painfully unhelpful. We wandered around looking for the Great Mosque for twenty minutes when the map showed it being right next to the citadel.. As it turns out, we had walked past it twice. The problem was that its name made it sound a lot greater in appearance than it actually was and we reasoned that the small mosque we kept passing was obviously not the "Great Mosque." While trying to find this mosque we ran into our friend from the bus stop again. Realizing how difficult (and uniformative) it would be getting around Tripoli on our own, we decided to give him a chance. This turned out to be the best part of the trip.

I forget the man's name, but he is listed in the latest Lonely Planet edition for Lebanon. As it turns out he (by his own claim) is the best and most famous tour guide in Tripoli. Just the weekk before he had given a tour to some city offiicial of Venice, Italy. To prove his point, he showed us four business cards left to him by some of his more prominent clients. Today was our lucky day, because we were getting a free tour. It used to be that you would have to call days in advance to schedule a tour with him, but after 9/11 tourism to Lebanon was cut in half. After Hezbollah's increased activity in 2006, tourism was halved again. Instead, he was now staking out the bus stop praying for tourists to show just so he could have somebody to show around. Today we had a free tour for as long as we wanted. He took a lot of pride in his city and just wanted the chance to show it off. I think he was just excited to have some work, especially from Americans, who I'm sure he doesn't get much of a chance to give tours to these days.


Tripoli from the top of the Citadel


Ads for the elections in June

He was wonderful because he helped us get to all the sites we wanted, gave us lots of information on them, and got us into places we never would have been willing or able to enter. At the great mosque he got us access to the hall they were refurbishing, which was supposed to be kept closed to all until its grand reoppening the next month. After this we went to two madrassas (means both school and religious school) and their adjoining mosques. Now you can normally tour most mosques, especially those listed on tourist maps as these were. But this is much easier in Cairo where you are one among 20 or 30 other tourists. In Tripoli, we were the only tourists at these mosques making it a little more awkward. We would have most likely felt too uncomfortable walking around a holy place taking pictures among praying people had we not been accompanied by this well-respected tour guide.


One of the many churhc-turned-mosuqe-turned-church-turned mosques


Proof that the soap was hand made


Sonja in one of the shops making modern use of an old building

In addition to these buildings, he helped us navigate Tripoli's famous souks and took us to the second floor of an old caravanasa where a man operates a shop hand-making and carving olive oil soap. On one of the pillars was an intricately carved Star of David. Our guide emphasized the religious diversity of Tripoli (and Lebanon). He said that Jews should be just as welcome as Christians and Muslims and confessed that his personal beliefs borrowed aspects of all three religious categories. He mentioned the Hezbollah "victory" in Tripoli in 2006, and said that this was no victory at all. They claim they are fighting on behalf of the people but they only divide. He cited the mass exodus of Americans, at the behest of the State Department, following Hezbollah's disturbances in 2006.


Sonja in the reataurant in which we ended our day in Beirut


The day in Tripoli ended at a great Lebanese restuarant. We then caught the bus back to Beirut and took it easy for the night. We had heard that Beirut had incredible night life but we were pretty tired and instead made it an early night. The next day we spent walking around the city of Beirut. After leaving the hostel we made our way to the corniche and walked along the mediterranean until turning back into the city to find the tourist information center. This turned out be more difficult to find than we expected, but we got a good chance to walk around Soldiere. Soldiere is a section central Beirut that was reduced to rubble during the 1975-1990 civil war. The city has initiated a massive redevelopment project to rebuild this section, and today it is almost completely filled with modern glass and steel high rises. Every now and then though we could spot a few buildings yet to be restored. Before we had reached soldiere we passed the blown out skeleton the St. George Hotel and the building facing it across the street. This is where president Rafik Hariri was assasinated in 2005. In the soldiere district we also saw the remains of a church. Some of the older stone building, like churches, still bore the marks of the civil war. A very strong polic/military presence was maintained within this district. They also highly discouraged the taking of pictures. Perhaps they wanted people to get over their violent past, or maybe they felt that if every tourist came back only with picures of building with bullet holes would misrepresent the city. Either way, we'll see whether Beirut, and Lebanon, can keep its past behind it in the upcoming June elections.

The Mediterranean and Beiruti suburbs on the hills behind it


Blast damage from the bomb that killed Rafik Hariri. His son's party would win the June elections.

The brand new mosque, viewed from a church near the new square

We had lunch in an upscale, brand new square near this area. In the center is a stone clocktower and the streets that intersect at this square are lined with outdoor cafes and shops. We then walked from here to a Bay Rock Cafe, a cafe on the west side of the city overlooking the Mediterranean and Pigeon Rocks, two famous rock formations with arches carved through their bases. We rested back at the hostel and managed to make it out that night. This is when we found the bar I was speaking about earlier. East Beirut is supposed to have great clubs, but niether of us were exactly in a clubbing mood and the cab and cover likely would have been pretty expensive.

On our the next and final day we cabbed over to the Musee National de Beyruth (National Museum of Beirut). The place was fascinating. It had Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman artifacts. One of the most interesting parts was a movie about the museum during the war. The small artifacts were all evacuated and the more immobile ones were cased in concrete boxes. It detailed the damage the building experienced during the war and showed the reopening of the concrete boxes. Inside the musuem was also a melted concoction of rock, glass, and metal. This was what the intense heat caused by fires in the museum during the war turned an artifcat into. The day ended back in the same square we were in the previous day. We got lunch and some last-minute souveneirs and then walked back to the AUB hostel. There we picked up our bags and cabbed to the airport. Along the way we saw a number of signs advertising Hezbollah for the upcoming elections. We arrived back in Cairo around 11pm, just in time to do my homework for the weekend.

Just for fun, an excerpt from the State Department travel warning regarding Lebanon, updated two weeks after our trip:

"May 13, 2009
The Department of State continues to urge U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to Lebanon due to current safety and security concerns. Americans presently living and working in Lebanon should understand that they accept risks in remaining and should carefully consider those risks. This supersedes the Travel Warning issued on September 10, 2008 and updates information on security threats and ongoing political violence in Lebanon.

While Lebanon enjoys periods of relative calm, the potential for a spontaneous upsurge in violence is real. Lebanese government authorities are not able to guarantee protection for citizens or visitors to the country should violence erupt suddenly. U.S. Embassy personnel practice strict security precautions at all times. Access to borders and ports can be interrupted with little or no warning. Under such circumstances, travel of U.S. Embassy personnel would likely be restricted further, hindering their ability to reach travelers or provide emergency services.

Clashes in the northern city of Tripoli in 2008 resulted in more than twenty fatalities and numerous injuries. Additionally, a bomb exploded next to a city bus in Tripoli on August 13, 2008, killing fourteen people. The U.S. Embassy recommends that U.S. citizens in Tripoli consider these risks in light of past events.

On May 7, 2008, Hizballah militants blocked the road to Rafiq Hariri International Airport. The action rendered the airport inaccessible and travelers were unable to enter or leave the country via commercial air carriers. Armed Hizballah and other opposition members proceeded to enter areas of Lebanon not traditionally under their control, resulting in heavy fighting and a number of casualties. Full access to the airport was restored on May 21, 2008 when hostilities subsided. However, the United States remains concerned about the potential for violence, with little or no warning.

The threat of anti-Western terrorist activity exists in Lebanon; groups such as Al-Qaeda and Jund al-Sham are present in the country and have issued statements calling for attacks against Western interests in the past.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance continually pose significant dangers throughout southern Lebanon, particularly south of the Litani River, as well as in areas of the country where civil war fighting was intense. More than a dozen civilians have been killed and over 100 injured by unexploded ordnance following the armed conflict in July-August 2006. Travelers should watch for posted landmine warnings and strictly avoid all areas where landmines and unexploded ordnance may be present."

**I worked on this post three different times over the past week because I never had the time to sit and write it all at once. Some information may be repeated, and it is definitely not proof-read.**

2 comments:

Mrs. Wryly said...

Hi Paul,

Wow, you were lucky to have gotten the best tour guide in Tripoli. Fascinating!

Your "just for fun" reprint of the travel warning is enough to stop any mother's heart. What a way to end the story of your trip of a lifetime.

After all of your potentially harrowing adventures, I wish you a very safe trip back to the States!

Celeste said...

Yeah, that warning was a lot of fun.