Far from disillusioned

I feel empty, like the streets of the city I live in.Betrayed, by the promise to withdraw all gunmen from my neighborhood, whereas in reality the building across the street is still the base of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the guys waving their guns at the army patrol passing by. Defeated, by the accusations of friends that I have been brainwashed because I have a different opinion than they do– friends from both sides of the political and sectarian divide. You are either with us or against us. Drained, trying not to lose faith in people; the people I know, and the people I don’t know. Empty like the streets of the city I live in.

In the media, the past few days have, yet again, been classified as ‘the worst violence since the 1975-1990 Civil War’. How many times can something be ‘the worst violence since…’ until it becomes the new civil war? How many rockets need to be shot from one apartment into another until we call it a civil war? How many masked gunmen on streetcorners, how many houses burned, how many people kidnapped or stabbed to death with knives?

On Thursday everyone said: it will be over by tomorrow night. On Friday everyone said: Saturday it will be over, at the latest. Saturday, everyone was convinced it wouldn’t last another day. It is now Sunday night. The fighting has moved from Beirut to Tripoli, to Choueifat, to Aley…

I have heard enough stories about the beginning of the war in 1975 that I don’t need to add ‘disillusioned’ to the list above, should the current situation last another year. Or fifteen.

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.’