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.

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.