Between the criminals

A friend of mine works as a psycho-therapist with the people in Roumieh prison. A large part of them are serving time for drug-use, but there are also those who are convicted for much more severe crimes. He says it’s not always easy work, and sometimes he has to forget about all the psycho-analytical theories he has learned to be able to deal with the prisoners, but it does give him some good stories. For example when one of the prisoners came to him one day and asked: What did I do wrong? I didn’t insult religion, I didn’t lie, I didn’t steal… The guy insulted my mother so I killed him. Now why am I locked up with the criminals? Honestly, how can you answer this?

And the Resistance can even cure cancer!

Last Monday was Liberation Day, and to celebrate the end of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in 2000 we went to Bir Hassan to see the movie ‘Ahl el wafa’ (‘the loyal people’). It’s the story of a Resistance operation in 1994 against the Israeli army and their collaborators (the South Lebanese Army) in the valley of Nabatiyeh, as directed by the famous Syrian director Najdat Anzour. A group of fighters from the Resistance (the name of their party is never specified) is smuggled into an old house in an occupied village, from where they attack an Israeli convoy that is patrolling the road below Beaufort Castle. We knew the movie was coming because we happened to be in Beaufort Castle on the day they were training for the special effects, and we expected quite a bit of it because they had flown in a stunt-team from the USA – and those people know how to make dead bodies fly around, after all.

We were not disappointed in the flying bodies department. There was plenty of blood, explosions, burning soldiers and throwing of handgrenades. The fighting scenes, preceded by lots of crawling around in the bushes to get to the desired destination unseen, were supported by upliftingly ballistic music known from the promotional videos of Hezbollah on Al Manar TV.

The acting, however, was worse than a Mexican soap-opera. On top of that, there was a second storyline about a girl whose nagging mother suffers from cancer and cannot get the right medication because of the occupation, and the girl is harassed by a member of the South Lebanese Army who doesn’t care that she’s already married – he wants her, and he and his evil grin just pretend that her wounded husband doesn’t exist.

The girl is obviously added to show human dilemma: she discovers the group of Resistance fighters hiding in her (grand)parents’ abandoned house, but they trust her and let her go when she promises she won’t tell anybody. The girl is torn; if she tells the Israelis about her find, she can get money to help her mother! Or get the SLA-guy to stop harassing her! It’s so hard to decide what to do! But she doesn’t rat on the Resistance fighters, and is rewarded for her loyalty by the fact that the evil SLA-guy is among those who die in the attack on the convoy, and the Resistance transfers her mother to a beautiful hospital where she suddenly stops nagging.

They added one more scene – in the end, she offers the Resistance the key to the house, a not so subtle invocation of the Palestinian symbolism of carrying with them the keys to their old houses as the last proof that the places were really theirs, and here she voluntarily gives it to the Resistance… a fitting ending to a beautiful piece of propaganda ideological movie. Go see it if you have a chance.

They did it; They did it not; They did it...?

I heard a lot of fireworks and shooting in the air tonight, so I thought one politician or another must have given yet another brilliant speech and I checked the news to see who it was. There was no mention of a speech – instead I found this: apparently there is evidence that Hezbollah was behind the murder of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.

If that’s true, things might get ugly very, very soon.

Multi-cultureel gekrakeel: in de olie

De Nederlandse ambassade organiseert deze week een ‘Holland Week’ in een van de duurste hotels van Beirut, en heeft wat chefkoks van het Amstel Hotel laten invliegen om ons stamppot, bitterballen en haring voor te schotelen. Lekker hoor, en zo origineel! Ik geloof dat er ook een paar klompenmakers zitten om aan alle belangstellenden dit waardige ambacht te onderwijzen. Het zal je niet verbazen dat het eten niet bovenaan mijn lijstje staat van dingen die ik mis uit Nederland. Het is maar goed ook dat ik het wel kan vinden met de Libanese keuken, want de verdeling bij ons in huis is zó dat Walid voor het eten zorgt – en dat betekent weinig pasta, maar heel veel bonen en aubergine. En heel, heel veel olijfolie.

Je raadt het al: een ander heikel punt in onze multi-culti relatie; onvertaalbare grapjes zijn niet het enige obstakel. Het feit dat ik geleefd heb in een tijd waarin het normaal was om alles, maar dan ook alles in boter te braden, en dat de sla met zonnebloemolie aangemaakt werd, is voor Walid onbegrijpelijk. Ik heb de transitie naar olijfolie bewust meegemaakt, terwijl hij zo ongeveer geboren is in de olijfolie; kleinzoon van een man met olijfboomgaarden die de dag begint met een eetlepel olie.

Goed, we bakken en braden in olijfolie dus – ik ben heus overtuigd van de kwaliteiten ervan. Het enige probleem is wanneer ik Walid vraag eens wat anders te koken dan Libanees – een Thaise groenteschotel met rijst, bijvoorbeeld. Ik snap dat het moeilijk is de olijfolie te laten staan als je gaat roerbakken, zelfs als er in het recept aangegeven staat dat er geen olie nodig is. Maar is het werkelijk nodig de rijstkorrels eerst te frituren voordat je ze in het water kookt? Ik vrees dat het weer zo’n gewoonte is die we nooit van elkaar zullen begrijpen – en dat ik zelf de keuken maar in moet als ik olie-loze rijst wil eten...

I hadn't heard that one before

“When there are elections in Holland, who do you vote for? I mean, why?” asked my slightly inebriated friend.“I usually vote for the party with the best program,” I said, “and then I chose the candidate I prefer.” “Ah yes…” he sighed, “that’s probably how it’s supposed to be right? Well, maybe we’ll get there in a hundred years….”

I’m playing a game of trying to find out which candidates people are going to vote for. This is not a neutral question, so most will not volunteer this information, and I have to throw in a bit of the ‘clueless foreigner-thing’ to get my answers. I usually start by asking where they will vote. The country is divided into districts, and you can only vote for the candidates from your district. Then I ask what their options are, and if they have made their choice yet.

Many of my friends vote in the third district of Beirut, which means they have to chose 10 people out of a total of 41: five Sunni seats, one Orthodox, one Druze, one Shia, one Anglican and one Minority. Some will chose one or two candidates they can get behind and leave the rest of the ballot empty, but most of them are utterly disgusted with the choice they have and say they will drop a white ballot in the box, or not vote at all; to them, the difference between candidates from the ‘majority’ and ‘opposition’ is negligible.

There are also many people who have to go to their (grand-)parents’ village because they are registered to vote there, like a friend of mine who is supposed to go to Bint Jbeil to cast her ballot. She will not go, however. Knowing that the ballots in the South often come with even less variation than those in Beirut, I was wondering if the lack of choice was preventing her from voting, but that wasn’t the case. She told me: “We don’t vote unless we know the candidate really, really well. Imagine you vote for someone who is going to stay for four years, and in that time he does something that’s bad for the people – what would you say to God? How would you answer the question why you chose him when you get to heaven?” Now that’s taking voter-responsibility to a whole new level…