The Day’s Weather and Bombing Reports

It’s been raining the past few days and that makes everyone happy. There is a general belief that drones and artillery don’t function well in heavy rain so a downpour protects us from attack. Not sure I believe that.

*WhatsApp posts distinguishing between strikes and thunder.*

Still, we check weather reports before heading out from home. Sometimes it’s hard to know if we’re hearing thunder, bomber planes, sonic booms from Israeli jets, or an explosion. I’ve learned that the sound of a blast doesn’t travel very far if the wind is against it although last night I heard three loud cracks which friends tell me was the sound of a roadside assassination audible for tens of kilometers. I hear Israeli bombers as they fly low and, of course, the sonic boom of Israeli jets serving to remind us that they own the skies. The bombing of a building would involve multiple sounds – a boom, screams, and falling rubble. I have yet to hear such a sequence of sounds. Drones, on the other hand, are so ubiquitous that they are background noise now, like diesel generators and traffic.

*A warning from the Israelis to evacuate prior to an attack.*

After the weather report, we check the bombing report. These are amply provided by the media and messaging apps. The Israelis generally give a few minutes of warning before striking buildings. Supposedly they are destroying Hezbollah infrastructure but not everyone is convinced that their targets really are that at all. There is no advance warning for assassinations, which could involve all or part of a building if the person is inside.

My decision to stay here has been a matter of political geography. The Israelis are attacking the Shi’a, the sectarian underclass of Lebanon from which sprang Hezbollah. To a lesser extent they are also attacking their old foe, the Palestinians. My part of town contains two American universities and an American hospital. It’s predominantly Lebanese Sunni and Christian. The general feeling here is that an Israeli strike is unlikely here because the Saudis are protecting the Sunnis and the Americans are protecting the Christians. Needless to say, Iran’s protection of the Shi’a doesn’t cut much ice with Israel, Saudi, or the U.S.

*Yellow Hezbollah flags interspersed with Lebanese flags on a bridge in Beirut last year. They are no longer there but I won’t let taxis take me home through this territory.*

I do leave the neighborhood every day to the hospital to see my stricken friend, Imad. That neighborhood is almost entirely Christian. Historically, some of the Maronites who live there have been part of the local Falange which sided with Israel against their common foe, the Palestinians, during the proxy war known as the “Lebanese Civil War”. I insist that the taxis take a particular route to the hospital so I can avoid the Shi’a neighborhoods that stand between mine and the hospital’s. Those areas have been hit a few times of late.

Up to a few days ago, this political geography served me well. But now Israel and the U.S. have started striking universities in Iran, including those of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. The devastating hit on the girls’ school in Minrab is increasingly looking like a deliberate strike, according to the latest reports in the press. The message here is that the legal prohibition against hitting civilians or civilian infrastructure has been cast aside in favor of barbarity and terror. In return, Iran has announced it will permit itself to strike American universities in the region. In my neighborhood, the American University in Beirut and the Lebanese American University have gone to online instruction. Friends here say Iran is unlikely to hit these institutions as they have so many Shi’a as students and staff.

Two nights ago I heard two loud booms. I messaged my landlord and he reassured me that it was thunder. It motivated me to pack a “go bag” and send it along with Imad’s family so I can stay with them outside the city should need arise. I have already done so once when Israel announced major strikes and we were concerned about falling glass near the hospital. Nothing happened.

My policy remains: when my Lebanese friends in the neighborhood get nervous, I will get nervous. Right now I am focusing on Imad’s recovery and that’s quite enough. When I do leave, I’ll make sure to fly straight to Europe as I don’t trust anyone not to shoot down a commercial flight in this lawless environment, certainly not when schools and universities are fair game.

The gracious campuses of the American universities in Beirut. Left: Lebanese American University; right: American University of Beirut. Iran reports that 21 of their universities have been hit in the current conflict.

The Opposite of Diplomacy is Death

*Equipment in the ICU coming from USAID.*

Four weeks ago my dear friend Imad suffered a massive stroke. What kept him alive is medical equipment given to the hospital by the American people through USAID.

That program of soft power was abruptly terminated a year ago by the white supremacist Elon Musk acting on behalf of the white supremacist Donald Trump.

Noticing the USAID tag on the medical equipment, Imad’s son remarked: “The US used to be our benevolent overlords. Now they’re just our overlords and future stroke victims will just die.”

It was not just medical equipment that USAID used to grant institutions around the world but also scholarships and educational opportunities, in addition to other means of economic development. It was a savvy way to court the next generation of leaders and to develop the purchasing power of a trading partner. In Lebanon, the loss of these educational opportunities has led to a reduction in students and staff at the universities.

High quality education provides Lebanon with its stock in trade: a multi-lingual workforce of skilled professionals, mostly in the medical and engineering spheres. Many work in the Gulf and in Europe and send home remittances. Some stay in Lebanon, making it a regional medical center with a robust medical tourism trade. Their salaries make Lebanon a market for the manufactures of the West.

Soft power like USAID brought the USA world admiration when it instituted the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, allies and former foes alike, after the destruction of WWII. The lessons from WWI were clear – humiliating and impoverishing an enemy population would lead to another war. Maybe it sticks in Trump’s craw that General Marshall received the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Other countries are still using their soft power here effectively. Norway restored traffic lights in key intersections here after the bankrupt Lebanese government could no longer afford this basic road safety measure. European countries still offer scholarships for study. The European Union supports an array of humanitarian and economic development projects here.

*A notice for a presentation on studying in Russia at Russian House in Beirut.*

Russia, too, exercises its soft power in Lebanon. It has long projected itself as the protector of the Orthodox Christians and, by extension, all Christians: Imad’s grandparents kept a picture of the Tsar and Tsarina on their living room wall even after they became Protestants. Russia established schools here, now run by the Greek Orthodox Church. Russia has helped with rebuilding after wars and the port explosion. It donates wheat and fuel to Lebanon. It contributes to cultural life. It offers scholarships to study in Russia. Russia has thousands of Lebanese graduates of its universities to present the Russian viewpoint on events. Imad is one of them.

Now Lebanon is suffering a far more consequential collapse of American soft power than the elimination of USAID: the immoral and incoherent war with Iran. President Obama’s diplomatic triumph, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2016, prevented Iran from manufacturing weapons grade nuclear power by a system of verification through the International Atomic Energy Agency. Verification is done by water testing. It is nearly foolproof.

President Trump tore up the agreement in 2018, to the delight of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. This cost Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani, the centrist president of Iran who promoted the nuclear deal, his political future after his term ended . Thereafter, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an authoritarian who sold off state property in the manner of American Republicans and British Tories, ensured that the Iranian political class hewed to his agenda. His diplomatic efforts were towards Russia and China.

Was scuttling the JCPOA a set-up or what?

*The hospital window opened against shattering*.

We’ve been done this road before. President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice attacked Iraq citing false information about its nuclear program. The IAEA found no evidence of a weapons grade nuclear program in Iraq and were proven, belatedly, correct. The IAEA is saying the same thing about Iran now, to no avail.

We’re dealing with the consequences of this diplomatic calamity here in Lebanon and in the wider region. In response to Khamenei’s assassination by Israel, Hezbollah fired three rockets into Israel. Just the excuse Netanyahu needed to start bombing Lebanon’s Shi’a again up and down the country again.

Here in the hospital we feel the attacks when the waiting room window rattles at bomb blast a few miles to the South or the nurses rush in to open the windows of the ICU in case glass shatters. The country is straining to absorb the internally displaced, a pitiful sight.

Imad is now out of the ICU, partly thanks to the American people and USAID. His new room gives us a view of smoke rising from Israel’s bombing of Beirut’s Shi’a neighborhoods. Salamtak, Imad, get well soon. Salamtik, America, get well soon.

*The view from the hospital window of smoke rising from an Israeli airstrike* *yesterday*.

Hezbollah and Chopin

*A poster of Hassan Nasrallah, “Our hearts’ beloved”.*

The funeral of Hassan Nasrallah and his lieutenant was a somber and stately affair. The crowd wore black against which the yellow flags of Hezbollah flickered brightly. There was little evidence of the Lebanese national flag but the Iranian national flag was prominent. For this there was much criticism, notably including a member of Amal, the rival Shi’a party. It was a Shi’a family affair. Neither the Lebanese president nor the prime minister attended.

Nasrallah and the party have always been matters of ambivalence and controversy in Lebanese life but even those who opposed Nasrallah begrudgingly admired him. His command of formal Arabic was much appreciated for its eloquence: this, in a culture where poetry, not painting, is the supreme art form. So too, was his policy of tolerance for other religious cultures. While Hezbollah regularly disputes territory with its neighbors, especially the Maronites, and their own ways reflect the strictures of Iranian religious authorities, there has generally been a live-and-let-live policy towards others. I would like to think that this is an expression of their Lebanese origins.

What struck me most forcefully watching the funeral from the hospital was hearing Chopin’s Marche Funèbre played by the Hezbollah orchestra. Hezbollah and Chopin? It seemed a perfect example of an observation by Robert Fisk about arriving in Lebanon: that when approached from the East, one thinks one has arrived in the West; when approached from the West, one thinks one has arrived in the East.

But I have to admit, I think my surprise also sprang from the same roots as the jitteriness of the Christians and Sunnis about the possibility of violence on the day of the funeral. I think I had absorbed their othering of the Shi’as as the underclass. It is much like the fear white Americans have for their Black compatriots, a projection that fears retribution. In fact, the city was very quiet that day, a peace only broken by Israeli jets flying low and breaking the sound barrier. They bombed other parts of the country.

During their invasion of southern Lebanon last fall, the Israelis were also reported to have been surprised at the presence of pianos and other evidence of Western high culture in the homes they invaded, looted, and trashed. It is an area where Shi’a who have made their fortunes abroad come home to retire in well appointed villas. The realization that the despised other has achieved the same cultural attainments we value has the potential to restore their humanity, at least for an instance. One thinks of William Jennings Bryant as Secretary of State being surprised that the Haitians could speak French. One appreciates all the more the wisdom of Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim in establishing an orchestra for the youth of Israel, Palestine, and other Arab countries. This West-Eastern Divan Orchestra travels the world bearing witness to the healing and elevating qualities of music across human manufactured divisions.

Last night I attended an organ concert, part of a week’s festival of organ music here. This was its tenth year and has been sponsored by various embassies and cultural institutes. Last night we heard a varied program from an organist flown in from Avila, Spain. His last offering was by a Lebanese composer, Naji Hakim, who first encountered the majesty of this instrument as a child in Beirut before the war.

Here is where we Westerners would say the Lebanese are so cosmopolitan, their cultural so liminal between East and West. But I think in fact that this region dissolves the dichotomy altogether. The organ has been here all along throughout the centuries. This is the land of the organ and the oud, the land of polyglots where the educated quote Shakespeare in addition to Abu Nuwas. I am beginning to wonder if what we consider Western Civilization isn’t just a diffuse subset of Middle Eastern, or, as is now expressed, Western Asian Civilization, however much we try to own it and keep it apart.

Bunking Down

*Bedding appears for patients’ families as they arrive.*

These past two weeks I’ve been part of a particular encampment, that of family member at the hospital. I am here at the Orthodox Hospital with my elderly friend who has had two major surgeries in a week.

Sickness and childbirth are family occasions here, requiring not just spouses but children, parents, siblings, and cousins to gather at the hospital to wait for results and attend to the patient once back in a regular room.

The custom provides an important segment of the tourism economy. In days when I was staying at an apartment-hotel, it seemed that half of their business came from Iraqi families attending family members at the American hospital.

At night the hospital provides bed and bedding for those staying over in the patients’ rooms. It’s not quite a pajama party but we do wear track suits and other loose clothing as we shuffle wild-haired and bleary-eyed to the nurses’ station to ask for their ministrations at 3 a.m. There are call buttons but this is more polite.

Mostly our job is to comfort, entertain, and encourage the patient. Here is a system that understands the psycho-social dimensions of healing. One sees it in the affectionate way the nursing staff tends my elderly friend, calling her endearments, patting her hand, stroking her cheek, and adjusting her bedding. Every day they bathe her, usually in the shower but sometimes by sponge bath. It’s a far cry from the New York hospital where my aged mother-in-law for weeks slept in a chair by her 92-year old husband while he was in the hospital. Or the strictly business approach of American nurses with their patients. I think of another friend who has had a number of hospitalizations in Philadelphia over the past few years who rarely got bathed and only at the sink and never shampooed. In a supposedly premier nursing facility she was recently left to lie on a urine soaked pad for seven hours. Our hospitals strip us of our humanity.

The nurses here were thrilled when they saw the German last name of my friend. They made sure she got a nurse who spoke German. In fact, my friend doesn’t speak German but speaks the same three languages the rest of them do – Arabic, English, and French. Her German last name reflects a fascinating history of Irish Presbyterians converting German and Syrian Jews in the mid-19^th century. Her great-grandfather was one such German and came to Damascus with the Irish mission, married and settled there.

The nurses have also been very curious about me, the American lady. My friend’s family is mostly in North America, with only the son of a second cousin here in Lebanon. He and I are taking care of her during the day and I stay the night. I have told the nurses the truth about my relationship to the patient – we’re friends from church. But my friend felt that my continued presence would never be believed as mere friendship or Christian duty and instead the nurses would consider it a cover story for a lesbian relationship. She told them I was a relative. I hope when I am 94-years old I will think anyone cares what my sexuality is.

*St. George Hospital, known as the “Orthodox Hospital”, with its sturdy gates.*

This weekend the hospital is also going to be my bunker. Christian friends have advised me not to go out tomorrow as it is Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral. They fear that overwrought Shi’a might rampage Sunni and Christian areas. There is also concern that Israel won’t be able to resist attacking this gathering of Hezbollah and its supporters. They buzzed the city about a week ago. Two days ago we had another day of them spoofing the navigational systems here. I was only in a taxi, not an airplane (Thank God!) but my driver was going way off course until I figured out what was happening.

My elderly friend complains of my snoring. (Moi???) I have provided her with a wooden spoon so now she bangs the bedrails to wake me up from my barnyard noises. This is how I swim to consciousness these days.

Anxiety and Loss

*A storefront hit in my neighborhood, understood as lethal political theater for this mostly Sunni neighborhood.*

A photograph of my neighborhood in Beirut would show a place little changed by the events of the past few months. True, those begging on the street are mostly Lebanese Shi’a rather than Syrian Sunnis of previous years but the vast wave of Shi’a from the South has returned to their towns and villages if not their actual homes. If anything, the streets seem a little desolate at times as if the city were permanently stuck at 7 a.m.. Drivers are again going the wrong direction on one-way streets as there is often so little traffic.

But step into this photograph and one immediately senses the change. The menacing hum of Israeli drones is a continuing reminder that Lebanon, having no air force, is completely exposed. This is a violation of the ceasefire but what country is going to enforce that? The humming sound alters how one hears airplane flights overhead – are they Middle Eastern Airlines planes coming in to land or are they Israeli bombers reminding us of who controls the skies? So far, my windows haven’t rattled so I think it’s just been MEA.

The Lebanese themselves seem at the breaking point. My pharmacist said that he can’t keep up with the demand for Prozac and other psychopharmaceuticals. He takes them himself. Friends who previously coped by gardening or hiking tell me that they are just drinking. I put one friend in touch with AA and Al-Anon. Unlike in America, where war is a video game called “Shock and Awe”, here war is felt in the gut. A lawyer friend lost his sister when she was mortally wounded while taking dinner to their 95-year old aunt – the missile that killed her was aiming for a man who was running in her direction. The local hospital had been hit and shuttered. By the time the UN had negotiated with the Israelis for permission to transport her to a hospital in Nabatieh, it was too late. A journalist friend lost three colleagues in an Israeli attack that injured four others where they had been housed for weeks as they reported on the war in the south. As Israel has a long history of targeting journalists no one seriously thinks this was anything but another war crime accorded impunity by the West. Relatives of a friend, a Christian family north of Beirut, bravely rented their family house in the village to an extended family of internally displaced Shi’a only to have it pancaked by an Israeli missile. Two survived.

But the war has other, less visible effects, like the children whose education was once again interrupted because of security concerns on the roads or the use of school buildings as shelters. Or take my elderly friend from church, a woman in her nineties in general good health. For months she was unable to find green leafy vegetables at the market as they come from the agricultural areas of the besieged south. Her intestinal issues became so severe that she now has a prolapsed rectum. Today I took her to the hospital for surgery tomorrow — a partial colectomy and an exterior bag. Our church is praying for her survival.

Lebanese society has also taken a gut punch. The million internally displaced fleeing to Beirut and north were mostly Shi’a seeking shelter in Christian and Sunni areas. Many refused to rent to them, fearing an Israeli strike or for reasons of general antipathy. The ghosts of the civil war were roused with a fury when the militias like the one down the street from me began breaking into apartments to make them available to those who faced sleeping in their cars or on the street. This is what it looks like when there is no effective government. The Shi’a have suffered greatly from this war only to have lost power and prestige. They are feared and resented, they are angry and distraught. Rubbing salt into the wounds, here is a link to the messages the Israelis left on two surviving homes in the South: https://today.lorientlejour.com/multimedia/1446252/in-images-provations-stars-of-david-soldiers-names-in-khiam-the-israelis-scrawled-messages-on-walls.html

There is an ominous Schadenfreude among some Lebanese over the recent fate of the Shi’a and Hezbollah. But they have not been spared: Israel hit areas it generally doesn’t strike to the tell the Lebanese that they will suffer a collective punishment if they don’t rid themselves of Hezbollah. That isn’t going to happen.

The so-called ceasefire has been extended although Lebanese trying to return to their homes in the South have been shot at and killed. Like everyone here, I just try to go about my business as there is nothing to be done. Nasrallah’s funeral is Sunday the 23^rd in South Beirut. Might be a good day to stay home. We’ll see.

A Few Simple Stories

I don’t know where to begin. The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah is just mind-boggling. So I will just tell some simple stories.

*A datura, the flower that brought on tears*.

This morning a Lebanese friend sent me a photo of a flower blossoming in his weekend home in the mountains, a place he and his wife bought just to rescue their money while the banks were collapsing a few years ago. The photo was accompanied by an uncharacteristically poetic message as he described the white flower as a radiant bride, a testament to love against the hideousness of war. He wrote that tears streamed down his cheeks when he noticed this flower at breakfast. This is a man who returned to Lebanon at the height of its civil war to take care of his elderly parents who had fled the fascist allies of Israel operating in the South. He’s been through so much with wars and currency collapses. He has witnessed terrible things as a man and as a doctor. And now a flower undoes him.

I also received a phone call also from an elderly friend from my Beirut church whose apartment overlooks a main street in Hamra, two neighborhoods away from Dahiyeh where Israel has been wreaking destruction. She said the streets are thronged with the internally displaced, children everywhere, some of whom are sleeping on the streets. She feels guilty for her lovely home with its plant-filled balcony but what can a 91-year old do? Before I left in April I bought her two weeks of canned provisions and yesterday her nephew bought her more just before the bombardment. She expressed apprehension that the supermarkets and shops would close for fear of looting. With the decimation of the top three levels of Hezbollah leadership, no one knows how to access their usually well organized humanitarian aid.

I received a call, too, from a couple who came to the States for two weeks to do some business in the academic world and visit his aging father in Pennsylvania. They are borrowing my car because they can’t rent a car in the States as Lebanese credit cards are worthless. They called to say that they are not going back to Lebanon until there is a cease-fire and even then they plan on relocating permanently. The Lebanese wife is afraid her American husband will be attacked in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s death. Last week he lost a former student, a relief worker living in the Bekka, when Israeli artillery hit her home. Her young son died as well.

And then there are the messages on the WhatsApp of our Beirut church. Scattered between the prayer requests and calls for volunteers for the Sunday service was a spat between a Lebanese and an African member over Christian Zionism. Zionism was initially a Christian idea that Theodore Herzl took over for his Jewish nationalism project. Lord Balfour espoused Christian Zionism as he facilitated the establishment of a Jewish homeland in British Mandate Palestine. President Biden calls himself a Christian Zionist as he channels munitions to Israel. Arab Christians reject Christian Zionism as a false teaching, as do mainstream American denominations, including my own. But it is embraced by many of the evangelical churches of the American South and is spreading worldwide. Hence, the African proponent in a Beirut church challenging her Lebanese sister to bless Israel.

The Lebanese are so tired. They are trying to rebuild their levels after so many catastrophes in the past five years. And now they fear their country is about to become another Gaza. No wonder a flower can bring a doctor to tears.

*A billboard in Beirut erected this summer: it says “Enough….we are exhausted. Lebanon does not want war.*“

Why I Am Back Again in Beirut

For the past several years, each time I leave Beirut in the spring, I worry that the security situation will prevent me from coming back. One year, I was so convinced that it would that I gave my friends little keepsakes with forget-me-nots on them when I left.

Lebanon is level four (“do not travel”) on the State Department travel advisory list, same as Yemen. But it is not Yemen. True, there is shelling at the southern border, but that is only an intensification of what has been going on, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee style, for years. Yes, there was an assassination of a Hamas official in a Shi’a neighborhood in the south of Beirut, but the technology of assassination has sharpened and only those in a particular apartment were killed. There is the occasional kidnapping but unless I’ve missed something, these are extortion attempts within families. There are clashes between rival militias within the Palestinian camps but I don’t live anywhere near one and have no need to visit one.

In September, when I was visiting the State Department in DC with a Presbyterian group, the Syria Lebanon Partnership Network, I told officials there that their travel advisories for Lebanon did not reflect reality. The hysterics writing these things need to get out of the American compound more.

And where is Israel on the travel advisory list? It’s at level three (“reconsider travel”). The State Department further refines its wisdom by designating Gaza a “do not travel” area but advises that families traveling there should bring baby wipes.

Time to put on one’s own thinking cap.

In terms of Lebanon, there is no question that this place is falling apart. Last week Global Positioning Specialists, a tracking service, published a study saying that Lebanon was the #1 worst place in the world to be a driver based on road deaths and car thefts. The roads are in terrible shape, so drivers weave in and out of lanes to avoid potholes; the economic collapse has resulted in an explosion of motor cycles whose drivers evince powerful death wishes on the highways and murderous instincts on the city streets, even driving along sidewalks; cars lack functioning headlights, taillights, and safety belts; traffic lights have all but disappeared so intersections are a terrifying game of chicken; street and tunnel lights have gone dark so those cars without headlights are driving blind; drainage systems are so clogged with trash that roads and streets become flooded and impassible.

Scenes of flooding between Beirut and surrounding areas

I was relieved to read this study. I was afraid that my terror of the roads here was exaggerated. But this week even men here have told me that the roads terrify them and that they only take less traveled routes or forgo car ownership in favor of car services and the back seat. Women have told me that they have insisted that their families get larger, more crash-resistant cars. Everyone seems to have a theory about the safest times of day and week to travel and all agree that the afternoons of Ramadan are no-go times as the Muslims are fasting and are driving insanely with low blood sugar.

In the end, it all boils down to reasonable risk assessment. I feel safe enough coming here but I avoid particular risks. I take car services but only on weekends during daylight and only in the Beirut environs. I don’t take street taxis because they are not supervised by dispatchers and once I took a cab from the airport only to end up in an unfamiliar neighborhood while the driver passed me on to another, probably unlicensed, driver. I used to visit friends in south Lebanon but hostilities there have made that unwise and I won’t take long trips anyway unless I am in a large vehicle like a bus although I would prefer a Sherman tank. I am more cautious on the street at night as 150,000 displaced persons leaving the south can’t have improved security on the streets here. I know I can’t pass for Lebanese but I also know that I am around the corner from a police pill box guarding an embassy. I reckon the Syrian militia down the street would come to my aid if I screamed if only to relieve the tedium of sitting at their post.

But just in case, I have packed an emergency bag. It contains clothes, money, my passport, and a book. I must remember to get some playing cards. If the balloon goes up, I’ll dash down the street to collect an elderly friend and take her to her nephew’s in the mountains. I’m sure we could find a fourth for bridge.

What Time is It?

For about ten days asking the time around here was to utter fighting words. That is because the prime minister, Najib Mikati, with the connivance of the speaker, Nabih Berri, decided to postpone daylight savings for a month. The stated reason was so that Muslims could break their Ramadan fast at 6:00 p.m. and not 7:00 p.m.

Mikati, a Sunni who looks like he’s never missed a meal in his life, should know that it is not the clock that establishes the end of the day for those fasting but the setting of the sun. Moreover, Ramadan is a period where Muslims detach from regular business hours and routines. Their fast is broken by long, convivial meals followed by a few hours sleep. An hour or two before dawn they often wake up and eat something to carry them through the daylight hours, and then go back to sleep. In olden days, Muslim neighborhoods would be roused in time for this predawn meal by a man called — guess what! — a mikati. Mornings are very quiet during Ramadan as Muslims often sleep late. The roads are empty and many stores don’t open until noon. There is a feeling of lassitude throughout the day. Of course, getting through until sunset is tough but changing the clocks doesn’t lighten the burden.

So what was really going on? There are two main theories. The first is that this was a sectarian gesture to show that the government is now solidly in the hands of Muslims. Mikati is viewed with deep suspicion by the Christians as he announced a study showing that Christians are only 19% of the population. No census was taken but presumably some demographer has come up with this figure. I understand that the Shi’a are now referring to the Christians as “the nineteen percent”. Christians account for over a third of the registered voters.

The second theory is that the decision was a diversionary tactic to avert public attention from a contract awarded to renovate and expand the airport. If that was the case, it failed, as there was a hue and cry and the contract was cancelled.

Chaos abounded while the time issue got sorted out. Christians didn’t know when their church services were – at my suggestion, my church sent out an hourly countdown on Sunday morning because we didn’t even know what to call our regular 10 a.m. service. Private schools sent out notices to parents about which time they were adopting, leaving some parents to cope with dropping off children at different times and managing to get to work at whatever time was chosen there. Any appointment had to be confirmed by asking which time had been selected. Hospitals, the airport, and some newspapers chose to proceed with daylight savings time because their computers were updating to that time. It came to be called “international time” in official announcements but it was also called “Christian time”. The other time was called “government time”, “Muslim time”, and “Berri-Mikati time”. We were living in a weird, slightly menacing time warp.

*My tablet and phone showed different times*

Mikati had to have known that the last minute time announcement delaying daylight savings would throw computers, phones, and the like into chaos as he made his billions in telecommunications. L’Orient Today reported that it could take months to develop the software to re-synchronize everything. Indeed, at one point last week my phone was confusing New York City time with Beirut time. A clock at the airport was shown to have one time on one side and the other time on the other side.

In the end, the delay in daylight savings was cancelled. Ask nearly any Lebanese and you’ll get told that it is time for the political class to go.

*A demonstration in my neighborhood: banging on the doors of the banks with sticks and tire burning.*

No Bottom in Sight

*There is constant business outside of currency exchanges as people shed lira for dollars.*

I flew back to Beirut with my usual luggage overages fulfilling wish lists from friends. These included a washing machine belt, Crest toothpaste, compression hose, and vitamins, all of which can be difficult to find now. American products are too expensive for most Lebanese now and shelves are now stocked with mostly inferior goods from Turkey, Bangladesh, India, and Ukraine. Replacement parts for appliances are at a premium because so many firms have pulled out of Lebanon.

The lira breached 60,000 LL to the U.S. dollar last week, a precipitous decline from 1,500 LL of four years ago. I asked people what bad news had preceded this latest 20% drop in three weeks and most people mentioned Parliament’s gridlock in selecting a president but some opined that the banks were playing currency games. I discounted this second opinion until I read in L’Orient Le Jour that in December the banks had encouraged deposits of lira by offering a very favorable withdrawal rate of these deposits in dollars. Of course there was a stampede to make deposits and a few weeks later the rules changed and people have to content themselves with getting their now devalued lira back. This is the only country in the world where people hold up banks to get their own money – and have a depositors union helping them.

These days the Lebanese are buying only what they absolutely need if they can afford it at all. Their cars, shoes, cellphones, and appliances are falling apart. A friend who is a doctor told me his shoe had become detached from its sole as he was walking to the hospital and he had to duct tape it to get through the afternoon. He said he can’t afford a new pair of shoes and will be wearing his sneakers to work now. His sister, married to a doctor, can’t afford to replace her defunct cellphone.

*The price differential of American versus Indian peanut butter.* *Those were last week’s* *prices. On Friday the prices rose to 403,999LL and 69,999LL* *(as if there were coin money anymore.)*

This family is fortunate as they have skills to barter. The doctor bartered his skills with a colleague to have his sister’s fractured arm set and put into a cast. The sister barters her teaching skills for dinner at the end of the day.

I ask everyone how they and others are managing to survive. The answer I invariably get is “with outside help”. The Lebanese diaspora in the West and the Gulf is sending money home not just to their extended families but also to friends. The U.S. government recognizes the dangers of desperation for recruitment to ISIS and other groups and is sending monthly bonuses to members of the securities services as their monthly salary has fallen to about $80/month. Shi’a friends tell me that Hezbollah is under enormous pressure to focus on helping its constituency rather than fighting as their constituents are the least likely to have relatives sending them money from outside.

People’s greatest fear here is a major health emergency like the heart valve replacement required by a friend’s mother, a retired nurse. She has to go before a government panel to argue her case, as if anyone undergoes this procedure recreationally. The family will have to sell their home if her petition is denied. Civil servants can no longer expect their health insurance plan to cover anything but a fraction of their health care needs.

Everyone is angry at the political class. They are seen not only to have robbed the country of its wealth and sent it abroad but now can’t even function enough to elect a new president so the nation can sign loan agreements. Of course, those loan agreements would contain anti-corruption measures, so one appreciates the impasse.

*Ukrainian cornflakes strangely taste of wheat*, *or is it cardboard?*

Next Wednesday the country will be shut down by strikes. Many public employees are no longer showing up to their jobs anyway. The public schools are shut, pending labor negotiations. Lebanese University, which didn’t have light or heat last year, this year didn’t even open in the fall as the teachers can’t afford the gas to get to their jobs. The post office is threatening to go on strike and the transport sector, such as it is, is going on strike along with public hospital employees.

It will just be venting. The political class isn’t budging. People speak longingly of army coups, revolution, and even invasion. One friend wants some Western billionaire to buy the country for its debts and set it on the straight path. Another friend, a Christian, says she wishes Hezbollah were in charge of the government because they know how to take care of people. In a normal country, a revolution or a coup would be conceivable but in Lebanon it would just set off another civil war. The fault lines here are so deep that even the families of the 2020 port explosion are divided and the judge and prosecutor are canceling each other out.

But everyone knows that things could be worse. They know what civil war looks like. They have friends and relatives in Syria where the ravages of war and Western economic sanctions have eviscerated the country. People there are not just hungry but becoming malnourished. A Syrian friend told me a high school classmate is losing teeth to malnutrition. A Shi’a family who had lived as refugees for years in Beirut returned to Syria two years ago to take care of aging relatives have told us they now wish to return to Lebanon as there is no work, electricity, medicine, or education for their children where they are in Kurdish controlled Syria. (I know them from a local church where they allow their children to attend Sunday School but that’s another story).

No one can predict the future, good or bad. And so the Lebanese endure. Living day by day. Anxious, angry, and trying to be grateful for getting through another day. Dreaming of dictators.

Election Day in Lebanon

Tomorrow is when Lebanese in Lebanon go to the polls, or, at least, that’s the theory. I’ve only found one person who is actually going to cast a ballot and it will be a spoiled or “white ballot” at that. He won’t actually vote for any “list” or fixed combination of candidates. He just wants to show that he was there, furious at the system, and take his ballot away from anyone wanting to use an unused ballot for their preferred list.

This man has some shops in Hamra. Today he closed them early so he could go to his ancestral village before the roadblocks and other impediments crop up to make travel to the polls difficult. Decades of residence in Beirut is not enough to qualify to vote in Beirut. Men and single women go to their ancestral village and married women to their husbands’. The system insists on keeping people parochial rather than forming the kind of progressive political force that cities tend to produce. Church-going Christians find it especially onerous to go back to the village on Sundays and several have voiced their view to me that Sunday was especially chosen to dampen Christian voting participation.

I’ve pressed people on why they aren’t bothering to vote and the answer is a firm belief that the elections are corrupt and a foregone conclusion. I certainly remember hearing that the cost of selling one’s ballot in 2018 was about $500. This year, people tell me the price is much cheaper as so many Lebanese are desperate. “They can be bought for a bag of bread”, an elderly woman told me. The dead who vote don’t expect anything at all.

Still, the phones ring constantly urging people to vote for a particular party and its list. Friends tell me it is driving them crazy. There is a lot of money sloshing around political campaigns in Lebanon. No one questions that there is a lot at stake: the banking system, the economy, the Iran versus Saudi alignment, Hezbollah and its continued use of arms, to name a few of the issues.

But the system is set up for stasis. A person votes first for a set list of candidates and then may indicate the preferred candidate. Each candidate’s religious affiliation is listed along with the party. Each electoral district has an assigned number of Muslim and Christian seats. It boils down to a contest between preferred candidates of winning lists getting slotted into these sectarian seats. These people go on to determine who the President will be (Maronite), Prime Minister (Sunni), Speaker (Shi’a). The ministries are similarly horse traded. The system is designed to perpetuate sectarian politics, not transcend it.

It doesn’t help that those wishing to institute real reform in Lebanon have not organized into one party and list for each district. About a third of the candidates running tomorrow are opposition candidates — over twice as many as in the 2018 election. The revolution or “thawra” was always internally divided between the incrementalists and the revolutionaries. In some districts, the opposition groups are running against each other.

The one significant change in the make-up of the lists and candidates is that the party of former prime ministers Hariri, father and son, is not participating in this election. The Future Party consolidated Sunni votes and now these votes are up for grabs. It is expected that Hezbollah will end up the winner here but it is nonetheless an opportunity for the opposition.

For the last several years the Lebanese government has made efforts to get expatriate Lebanese to participate in the elections. In fact, it has encouraged people of Lebanese ancestry through the male line to claim Lebanese citizenship and vote. This was part of an effort to get expats to invest in Lebanon, to be the country’s white knights. A total of 244,442 Lebanese abroad registered to vote this year, over twice the number for the 2018 election. This increase may reflect the estimated 300,000 Lebanese who emigrated in the past two years. Expat voting occurs a week before the Lebanese elections so it is now known that only 60% of those registered expats actually cast a ballot. Here again, the pessimism of the Lebanese about their system comes through: expat ballot boxes come through the airport, Hezbollah territory.

People seem to be holding their breath until the elections are past. There is concern about violence like that which occurred in the south a few weeks ago when a rally for Shi’a candidates running in opposition to Hezbollah was disrupted by gunfire. Some of my now expat friends abroad do not want to return to Lebanon until the election is over and things appear safe. There is concern that entrenched parties may destabilize the country by delaying the formation of the parliament or resorting to violence.

Maybe the gloominess about the election is justified and voting really just ratifies a corrupt and broken system. I don’t know. But I do know that this general distrust of the electoral system is closing off an avenue for change in Lebanon just as surely as the myth of “The Big Steal” is doing so in America. If citizens see their elections as dirty, what is Plan B?