Lebanon - "Fucking Amazing" for Who?
Two weeks ago, Michael and I spent five days in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.
Lebanon is a tiny, multi-ethnic, socially progressive Arab country that sits on the Mediterranean Sea between Israel and Syria. Over the last 7,000 years it has been ruled by the Phoenicians, then part of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and finally a French protectorate before asserting independence in 1943. Its modern history has been rocked by conflict, including a devastating civil war between Lebanon’s Christians and Muslims, which started in 1975 and ended in 1990.
Beirut’s strategic location, close ties to the Arab and European worlds, renowned food and wine, and a tolerant, fun-loving culture have positioned it as a tourist destination (though this has waned due to instability in neighboring Syria) and a financial and business center.
Watching impeccably dressed families stroll the Corniche, browsing jewelry and clothing boutiques along Monot Street, hitting the bars and restaurants in Mar Mikhail, Beirut reminded me most of Buenos Aires. The food – as expected – was uniformly delicious, a dizzying array of spiced salads, steaming pita, grilled meats, and rose water laden desserts. The vibrant music, fashion, and street art made me vow to return.
But all that is well documented and well trodden. I wanted to write about something subtler – a dynamic I don’t fully grasp, but was fascinated by during my short stay. It’s part politics, part history, part mindset… it was very much in your face but at the same time hard to put your finger on. An undercurrent that underscored the complexity of this place.
I’ll try to explain it by juxtaposing two anecdotes.
The first is a bit of graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall of the American University of Beirut, a lush college campus overlooking Beirut’s Corniche and the Mediterranean Sea:
And the second is a recollection relayed to me by a Lebanese friend who now lives in the U.S. This friend, who is Christian, described watching the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war unfold from his home in a hillside neighborhood above Beirut. To paraphrase:
“I would be walking my dog, watching the Israelis bomb Hezbollah down the hill, and even though it was only a few km away, I was 100% sure that I was safe.”
The first anecdote cuts to the heart of Lebanon’s reputation: of resilient Beirutis dancing as bombs fell around them. Come what may, we will drink, we will dance, we will marry, we will have children, because today we are alive. As another Lebanese acquaintance once told me: “It was war, but what were we gonna do? So fuck it, we hit the clubs.”
But the second anecdote puts a bit of nuance behind the stereotype, and begs the question: “everything is gonna be FUCKING AMAZING” for who?
At the risk of screwing this up - the Middle East is complicated, and Lebanon may be the most confounding country of the bunch - here is my hot take. It's cobbled together from spending a week in Beirut and surrounding areas, quizzing bloggers, taxi drivers, aid workers, and others who have worked or lived here, so take it for what it's worth: a traveler's first impression.
So with that: FUCKING AMAZING for who? No, I’m not trotting out the “problems only affect the poor” trope, though there’s certainly some of that. The reality here is more nuanced, and more tribal.
On my last day in Beirut, I met a Lebanese writer for coffee, at the suggestion of a mutual friend. She looked to be in her 40's, stylish, cosmopolitan, and acid tongued. I immediately liked her, and she immediately put her finger on the dissonance between “Fucking Amazing” and watching bombs drop on your country.
As she explained over tea and cappuccinos: these concepts are not in as much conflict as you would think, because a Lebanese national identity does not exist. Instead, Lebanese people are, in her words, “alley-ized": their in-group is relatively small and insular. This group may be “Maronite Christians” or perhaps “Shia Muslims but not the Hezbollah ones” or “Beirutis but not the ones in the Southern suburbs.”
But never is it “Lebanese people” (with one exception - my writer friend cited the 2015 garbage crisis and subsequent “You Stink” protests as the single moment in her recollection where Lebanon came together as a nation).
So, bombs falling on Lebanese Hezbollah two kilometers away may not be perceived by a Lebanese Christian, or a Lebanese Sunni Muslim, as an attack on them, their identity, their nationality, or even their country. In fact, leaked State Department cables dating back to Israel’s 2006 bombing campaign, which killed 1,200 Lebanese and displaced more than a million, confirm as much:
This lack of solidarity between different Lebanese sects isn’t so surprising, given the country’s history and composition. For an Arab nation, Lebanon is staggeringly diverse, with 18 different religions formally recognized. The country is approximately 40% Christian (largely Maronite, a branch of Catholicism); 27% Shia Muslim; 27% Sunni Muslim; and 6% Druze (I had never heard of this religion before visiting Lebanon – it grew out of Islam but is so distinct that Druze do not consider themselves Muslims).
After Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, it attempted to quell religious and sectarian discord by setting up a “confessionalist” power sharing structure that continues to this day: the President would always be Christian; the Prime Minister would always be Sunni Muslim; and the Speaker of Parliament would always be Shia Muslim.
Yet, this power sharing structure did not account for shifting demographics in favor of Muslims, meddling by regional and global powers, and most recently a staggering refugee crisis that has flooded more than 2 million foreigners into a country of only 6 million.
In 1975, increasing tensions between Christians and Muslims culminated in the15-year civil war. In the midst of the war, the twin catalysts of the 1979 Iranian revolution and Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982 created a radical Shia Muslim group called Hezbollah; by all accounts Hezbollah is extremely powerful in today’s Lebanon, and continues to gain seats in Parliament as well as control over land areas.
Recently, the growth of Hezbollah and the influx of Palestinian and Syrian refugees is further re-defining Lebanese alliances. The taxi driver who took us out to the Chouf region of Lebanon, a beautiful area dotted with cedar forests and Druze palaces, was game to break it down for me:
In his words - the Sunnis are aligned with the Christians, mostly because they’re pissed off about Shia extremists Hezbollah. The Sunnis used to tolerate the Palestinians (there are more than 500,000 mostly-Sunni Palestinians living in Lebanon) but have grown increasingly impatient at what they see as a drain on national resources, as well as the penchant for Palestinians to use Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks into Israel, bringing swift and far reaching reprisals. Syrian refugees seemed to garner initial sympathy, but their sheer number (more than 1.5 million, comprising over a quarter of Lebanon’s population) is leading to increased hostility. And Hezbollah, while disliked, seems to be treated with a growing sense of inevitability (they are gaining in parliament and transitioning from 24/7 jihad to setting up schools and clinics) and a grudging sense of respect (“can you believe the balls on Hezbollah, to have attacked Israel?”).
Meanwhile, the Lebanese state remains weak, and the various religious/political parties continue to be controlled by foreign powers, whom my writer friend referred to as "patrons". As she puts it: Lebanese politicians and parties never stand on their own, they are sponsored and controlled by rich outside interests – always have been, since the Ottomans and the French backed the Christians. Currently: the Shia are sponsored by Iran, and the Sunnis are sponsored by Saudi Arabia (which explains the bizarre resignation address of Lebanon's PM, delivered from an undisclosed Saudi location, back in November). I didn’t ask who sponsors the Christians but it appears a mix of Israel (yep), Europeans, U.S., and others.
So where does all of this leave us?
"A failed state", my writer friend concluded with an eye roll. Not just a failed state, but a corresponding cynicism and lack of reliance on any sort of concept of Lebanon. Government is weak, dynamics keep shifting, and the Lebanese keep adjusting, perhaps growing more desensitized to what happens outside their circle.
So – back to that hillside, where my Lebanese friend was walking his dog and watching Israel rain fury on his fellow Lebanese. This friend is fiercely loyal to his family and friends; I am sure that if anyone close to him were in harms way, he would be devastated. But to him – and perhaps I am putting words in his mouth but this is the sense I got – the Hezbollah neighborhoods down the hill may as well have been located in another country. His identity, and his in-group, did not include them. I am sure he felt sympathy and concern, in the way that we feel when we see news of war in Iraq and Syria, but it did not halt his daily life.
Equally, I would not be surprised if a Shia Muslim living in South Beirut would express a similar attitude in the case that Lebanese Christians were under attack. In the same way, I’m not sure how much Beirutis care about instability in Tripoli, a city in Northern Lebanon, or how much the 2 million refugees living within Lebanon care about the concerns or fates of Lebanese citizens.
So, where is the truth? The Carpe Diem resilience I saw scrolled on the bathroom wall, or the tribalism observed by my writer friend? What I came away with is that these concepts are not mutually exclusive, and in fact complementary. When your circle is smaller, it is easier to put the blinders on. When you live in perpetual instability, blinders are a crucial self-preservation mechanism. So perhaps it all makes sense, after all.
