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.

Found and Lost

One of the things I love about Beirut is the insane amount of street cats, especially in and around AUB (American University of Beirut). The open garbage-collecting system ensures a never-ending supply of food, so they roam around the streets of Hamra just like the rest of us. There is also a happy bunch of cats living down at the Corniche, lying on the beach in the sun all day and coming up to the road every once in a while to find something to eat. There is a big red-head with half an ear missing that sits in the middle of the sidewalk and moves for no-one, and there used to be a tiny one that would climb up the side of my leg to get some attention. I resisted the urge to take that home because it seemed to be doing quite well on its own, however cute it was. Not so with the little one we found Saturday night in Qoreitem. Crawling around underneath a parked car, it kept turning in circles and then falling over, rolling around helplessly on its back. It was so tiny it could comfortably lie on the DVD-cover I took it home on.

After a rigorous bath we discovered it could not straighten its neck, and the little bit of water it managed to take in with its head wobbling into the bowl did nothing to strengthen the kitten. The only way to make her stop meowing in pain was to hold her with two hands, pressing her head to one side. Yesterday the people of Animals Lebanon and the vet decided there was nothing that could be done to save her, and she was put to sleep.

(Here she is still alive. I named her Unlucky.) Animals Lebanon is working hard to rescue cats and other animals in need in Lebanon, and to spay/neuter those who are living on the street to control the population of wild cats. If you live in Lebanon and have space in your home, please consider adopting one of the more than 50 cats they rescued that are currently waiting in their shelter (all clean and vaccinated). I mean, I adopted this one last year, but one of these can be all yours!

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.

One week late? Or sixty-one years?

Last week was the commemoration of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was in full swing – more than 400 villages were destroyed, 700.000 people were made refugees and thousands of acres of land were confiscated. Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, wants us all to forget what happened 61 years ago, so he has proposed a law to criminalize public remembrance of the anniversary of the Nakba. In January this year, I saw the following image at a demonstration against the war on Gaza:

(Palestinian land: red; Israeli land: grey.)

Already I have no words for this situation, and know even less what to say when people are no longer even allowed to remember how it came to this. I suggest you visit here and here and here and read stories like this, to know and not to forget.

If anybody has good links or suggestions for books and articles; please leave them in the comments.

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...