Not on the news

This is where we tried to sleep tonight: between the bedroom wall and the hallway, with our heads against the toilet. There were rounds of heavy shooting in our street and the streets surrounding us, shrapnel ricocheting off fences and balconies, and big explosions that made the windows rattle. We stayed between the walls, with the windows slightly ajar and the curtains closed, as we were told to do by many civil war-veterans (our friends’ parents).

Yet Hamra is not mentioned on the news. I think no-one really expected much fighting here. ‘If anything happens, come to me!’ I would tell my friends from areas that would obviously be battlegrounds. ‘Don’t worry,’ my friends would tell me in return, ‘you live in Hamra, it’s safe.’ Well, not as safe as we thought. I knew it last night when the janitor of the building told me that the two men who came to check the roof the night before were not Lebanese Army, but from the Future Movement (pro-government Sunni). And when I saw two armed men on the abandoned building across the street.

In the middle of the night we woke up by particularly heavy rumbling. Explosions? Bombings? This sounded too heavy, too close. Then we saw lightning and rain, and we were strangely relieved. Maybe, if they get really wet, the fighters will give up for the night? ‘When I was little,’ I told my friends, ‘I used to think a storm meant that God was angry with the people. He must be really pissed off now!’ ‘Well of course he is! I mean, of course he’s very patient, – after all, it’s God – but come on, he’s dealing with the Lebanese here!’

View from the balcony

Here we go

And so it is war. I just left my 8th floor (rooftop) apartment when I saw two armed men on the abandoned building across the street, pointing their weapons to the road, and when I realised there is not one room in the house without windows. The people who were outside were running across the intersections, staying close to the walls and closed shops.

In the afternoon, I went to the supermarket and saw people with panic-stricken faces, throwing 20 packets of one-minute noodles in their shopping carts. There were no vegetables left, no bread, no eggs even. In a half-hearted attempt to follow their example I bought some cans of beans and a pack of toilet paper, which are now sitting on the table in an empty house.

After Nasrallah’s speech, in which he didn’t say he would tell his people to stop fighting, this side of Beirut went crazy: incessant gunfire, the sound of explosions so close that the windows were shaking, people screaming at each other to GET OFF THE STREETS! I am now with some friends who live on the second floor around the corner. We have closed the curtains and cracked open the windows in case the fighting gets closer and the glass breaks.

The government is meeting to decide whether they will declare a state of emergency. Meanwhile, we are doing our cardio-exercises sitting on the couch: our hearts are racing at an unimaginable speed, and we smile crazily at each other every time the explosions seem to come closer. No reason to panic, if it’s not even a state of emergency yet.

Where are the women?

First, I followed today’s news on the internet: ‘Roads to Airport and Kuwaiti embassy closed with rubble and burning tires’, ‘protestors smash shop-windows on Corniche Mazraa’, ‘hand-grenade thrown at protestors’. When the reporting became delayed, I went to friends with a TV, to actually see what was going on. Streets blocked by burning tires and garbage containers upside down, the blazing contents giving off thick clouds of black smoke. Throngs of young men on scooters, going this way or that, trying to find out where to go to join the fight. Small groups of soldiers from the Lebanese Army trying to push back the protestors without using force. Sounds of gunshots, images of broken windows, the firemen in t-shirts trying to extinguish cars set on fire. Young men on both sides of the street, screaming, burning each other’s flags. When the mosque sang, they stopped the chanting and the running back and forth to bend down and pray on the sidewalk. Sounds of small grenades and explosions, rattling of gunshots.

For whatever political reasons, the army didn’t crack down on the protestors, nor on the people they encountered so violently. It seemed there was a certain space for these men to express their anger, to contain what apparently can’t be avoided.

I walked towards the areas of unrest, to a friend’s house in Bourj Abi Haidar. The streets were empty, except for small groups of men hanging on street corners, or sitting on doorsteps. Every once in a while there would be a garbage can upside down, or some other construction of scrap metal and junk, with the smoldering rests of fires and tires. Shops were closed, the metal shutters down, and if I remembered to look up, I saw people peeking down between the sunshades on the balconies, keeping themselves inside. Whenever I would see someone going in the opposite direction, I would ask them if there was ‘anything up there’. No, there was nothing and no-one, except for broken bricks blocking the road. It felt, strangely enough, like the aftermath of a big football match, or a large festival; everyone has gone home, all that rests is cleaning up.

And then I saw him. He was casually leaning against the wall, brand-new sunglasses on his nose, wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. And he had a Kalashnikov at his waist and a string of ammunition around his neck. There was no doubt about it: this corner of the street was his, and his alone. He was the one to determine what was allowed to pass and what wasn’t. He didn’t hide it, he was just standing there, as if he finally had received what had been his all along.

And then I knew: it’s not another riot. It’s war. On the way back I saw two others had claimed their own corners, typical militia-style: sitting with one leg stretched out behind a small wall, just low enough to shoot over, just high enough to hide behind.

When I came home, the doorbell rang. ‘Lebanese Army. Don’t worry, it’s not your apartment we are after, but we would like to have a look at the streets from your rooftop-terrace.’

Bad advice (or, Parking lot romance - part 2)

for part 1 of this story, click here. So A. had passed his little not to C., and then the waiting began. He didn’t quite know how to proceed. What if she walked by the parking lot without looking at him? What if she would try to talk to him but he would be too busy to reply? He wanted to send her another note, asking her to clarify the details of their relationship, but because he didn’t really know if that would be a good idea, he asked my roommate for advice.

Hadi told him he should play it cool. Don’t be too eager. Let her come to you, if she likes you. Don’t go running after her. A. took the advice and applied it the next time C. walked past. He gave her a barely noticeable nod of the head – so barely noticeable, in fact, that she didn’t see it and thought he was ignoring her. The result? Silence on her side. No note to answer his last one, no smile when they happened to cross each other on the street. The relationship seemed doomed to fail.

A. then decided to ignore Hadi’s advice, and he asked a regular customer of the parking lot to write another note. C. accepted the message: they are speaking to each other again.

Luckily, A. doesn’t blame us for giving him advice that had almost cost him his only hope for a bit of romance. When we moved out of the apartment last week, he came to me and shyly said ‘You know, I will miss you guys. Really, I will miss you.’ I will miss him too. But I’m still within walking distance of the parking lot, so who knows – maybe I’ll go say hi one day, and hang around long enough to hear how the story continues…