Daar gaan we dan!

Aanstaande zondag zijn de parlementsverkiezingen hier in Libanon. We worden al wekenlang doodgegooid met verkiezingsposters van elke partij, de één nog ‘creatiever’ dan de andere. Partij-programma’s zijn er nauwelijks, het gaat er alleen om iedereen te laten geloven dat jij ‘goed’ bent, dus de ander ‘fout’ – of alleen dat de ander ‘fout’ is, want dat jij goed bent staat buiten kijf. Het lijkt op dit moment een nek-aan-nek race te gaan worden: in de peilingen staan ‘overheid’ en ‘oppositie’ ieder op ongeveer 65 zetels. Iedereen moet stemmen in het district waar hij of zij geregistreerd staat, wat voor velen betekent dat ze terug moeten naar het geboortedorp van hun vader (of hun man), waar ze soms nauwelijks een idee hebben wie de kandidaten zijn.

Kandidaten kunnen zich maar in één district verkiesbaar stellen, en elk district heeft een bepaalde hoeveelheid zetels te kiezen (die dan weer onderverdeeld zijn in verschillende religieuze stromingen). Zo moet Walid bijvoorbeeld stemmen in het Derde district van Beirut, en hij moet 5 Sunnieten aankruisen op de lijst, 1 Druze, 1 ‘minderheid’, 1 Sji’iet, en 1 Grieks-Orthodox en 1 Evangelisch Christen. Hij kiest dus in totaal 10 mensen.

Het leuke is dat je je eigen stembiljet mee mag brengen. Dit is natuurlijk heerlijk fraude-gevoelig, en er staan dan ook mensen van elke partij voor het stembureau om je een voorgedrukte lijst met al hun kandidaten in handen te drukken. Of, als het eruit ziet dat je toch voor de tegenpartij gaat stemmen, de lijst me kandidaten van de tegenpartij waartussen de meest kansrijke van de eigen partij verstopt is, zodat de onoplettende kiezer die de hele lijst aankruist per ongeluk ook hun kandidaat het parlement in stemt.

Er zijn ook andere manieren om aan stemmen te komen: in sommige districten is de competitie moordend en is elke stem geld waard. Er zijn zo’n 20.000 Libanezen (dat is 700 vliegtuigen vol) uit het buitenland overgevlogen om deel te nemen aan de verkiezingen – en de meesten daarvan hebben niet voor hun eigen ticket hoeven betalen. Een vriend uit Saida (zuidelijk Libanon) zegt dat hij op Saniora (de huidige premier) gaat stemmen, omdat die het ticket van zijn broer uit Canada betaald heeft. Een andere vriend die graag oppositie wil stemmen maar in geldnood zit, zegt dat een paar honderd dollar hem daar wel vanaf kan brengen: dan gooit hij een wit papier in de stembus, of een mooie tekening.

Het belooft in ieder geval een spannende strijd te worden, en een overwinning van de ene of de andere partij zal ongetwijfeld gepaard gaan met een hele hoop geweerschoten – in de lucht van vreugde of op elkaar gericht van frustratie. We hebben in elk geval van zaterdag ochtend tot waarschijnlijk maandagavond (afhankelijk van wanneer alle stemmen geteld zijn) een curfew opgelegd gekregen, en samenscholen is verboden. Mijn lerares Arabisch raadde me aan een stapel boeken en films en een grote hoeveelheid junkfood in huis te halen om de dagen door te komen. Dat zullen we maar doen dan.

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?

Marginalization and Mobilization of Youth in the Near East

“…More than other groups, [Youth in the Near East] have to face situations in which the cultural scripts, messages and codes of the various agencies of socialization are often inconsistent and irreconcilable. Just witness the disparate and conflicting messages they are being subjected to: religious authority, state, national or secular ideologies, family and kinship groups, peer subculture, popular and cyber culture and, as of late, all the seductive appeals of global commodified consumerism, virtual images and life styles. Arab youth today are consequently caught between a poignant and unsettling predicament: traditional vectors of stability and loyalty (family and state) are being undermined, while the modern alternative sources of education, employment, security, public opinion have proved unable to fill the void. The young are also afflicted by another dissonant reality. They are often conceived and celebrated as the “hopes and builders of the future,” yet stigmatized and feared as disruptive and parasitic forces.”

I’ll be speaking at this two-day conference at the American University of Beirut tomorrow afternoon. Come join us if you have the chance! The program can be found here.

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!