Beirut, Beirut

by Sonallah Ibrahim

  “People are desperate for bread, cigarettes and chickens, and put up with epidemics, noise and hypocrisy. Every morning, an Egyptian is flung about into several hundred pieces and he is unable to put himself back together again in the evening. Even national dignity no longer means anything to them. But what do you expect? Nasser killed off in them any capacity for working for a common cause.”

  The Libyans stood up, expressing their desire to leave. Randa got up with them and turned to escort them out.

  I announced my desire to leave as well, but Safwan begged me to stay. He wanted to fill my glass, but I objected.

  “I have to work in the morning,” I explained.

  He addressed his wife: “Can you drive him home? I don’t think I can drive after all I’ve had to drink.”

  “Why do you drink when you have someone you want to drive home?”

  “I’ll drive him,” the brother interjected.

  I got up, and everyone stood. Safwan’s wife approached his brother and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s still early. Stay the night at our place.”

  “I can take a taxi,” I offered.

  “At this time of night?” the brother asked. “I have to be leaving now because I’m traveling to Damascus early tomorrow morning. Lead the way.”

  I walked ahead of him toward the door. Safwan and his wife followed us in silence.

  Chapter 7

  I stayed at the house for the next two days, devoting all my time to the books and documents that Antoinette had supplied me with. At first, I found that I was lost among the meanings of events, and the significance of names and places. The various points of view, and their contradictory nature, multiplied my confusion as I read. Likewise, they were all armed with an arsenal of decisive proof and justifications. But soon the benefit of that became clear when I managed to take a comparative approach among different opinions. Wadia helped me with his memories and observations, and soon I was making my way with some – by no means easy – effort.

  Previously, I had had a foggy idea about the Lebanese Civil War, the gist of which was that it was a war between progressives and reactionaries set in motion by colonialism, and that the majority of progressives were Muslims, just as the majority of reactionaries were Christians. But I realized now that the matter went much deeper than that. The Lebanese problem seemed like an enormous quilt of multicolored strands that were entangled with each other, so that separating them out became an impossible task.

  Whenever I followed one of the threads, it brought me to the complete sectarian divide that made Lebanon unique among Arab countries. The Lebanese, whose population has never grown beyond 3 million, are divided into nearly twenty sects, beginning with the Shiites, Sunnis and Druze, then the Maronites, Catholics and Greek Orthodox, and the Armenians and Syriacs (Catholic and Orthodox), then the Protestants, Assyrians and Jews. Dominating these sects is a limited group of clans and families whose influence is handed down generation after generation. It’s as though Lebanon were a country frozen in the Middle Ages.

  Seen in the light of history, the civil war – which flared up in April 1975, and in which 75,000 have been killed and 140,000 wounded (not one of them carrying the name of one of the families that started the fight and that profits from the victims) – seemed like one link in a long series of conflicts and wars. As for how the war began, it had two origins: the moment the extended clans in the region fighting each other discovered that Mount Lebanon made an ideal refuge that could protect them from their enemies, and the moment that the ships of the invading Crusaders dropped anchor at the foot of the venerable mountain.

  These first colonizers, who came from Europe raising aloft the holy banners of Christ, strove to establish special relationships with some of the religious minorities in the region. And they achieved their aim in an eastern Christian community that traced its founding to Saint Mar Maron. This community lived in relative comfort as a result of its monopoly on silk production. For its part, the Maronite community saw in European support protection for, and consolidation of, their economic interests.

  The Turks applied the same policy when they occupied the Levant in the year 1516 in the name of Islam. They proceeded to embrace the Sunni Muslim community at the expense of the rest of the Muslim and Christian minorities. The Egyptians that Muhammad Ali sent to the Levant after 1833 abolished all the public dress and other symbols the Turks imposed on Christians to distinguish them by their clothing, and opened up government positions to them. The entire eastern Arab world seemed to be poised on the threshold of a new period that would bring it from the darkness of the Middle Ages to the broad horizons of the modern era.

  But colonial forces were lying in wait for Muhammad Ali: the struggle between the French and British in the region ignited the well-known strife in the year 1840 between the Druze and Maronites. The former – Muslims who consider the Shiite Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-amr Allah divine – followed the example of the Maronites and established a special relationship with Great Britain, as a counterweight to the Maronites’ special relationship with France.

  Five years later, the conflict widened when the Orthodox, Sunnis and Shia joined the side of the Druze. Conflict broke out again in 1860 when the Maronite peasants rose up against their feudal lords. Just as the attempts at an agreement were on the verge of succeeding, a band of Christians from the Matn region attacked Druze villages, and the Druze raided Maronite villages. The affair turned into a war between Muslims and Christians, and ended with the intervention of European nations, and the entry of the French Army into Beirut.

  Historians attribute to Napoleon III a role in provoking this strife. During his reign, France had entered into a new era of rising expectations, and the emperor wanted to be seen as the defender of the rights of Christians in the Orient.

  But France’s hopes were realized only after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One. The British and French divided the eastern half of the Arab world between themselves, and defeated the forces of the Emir Feisal, who was on the way to founding a unified Arab state out of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

  France was entrusted with mandate authority over the regions of Syria and Lebanon; it preserved the confessional system and buttressed the position of the Maronites by giving them a number of special privileges and bestowing French culture on their children – something that gave them social opportunities unavailable to others.

  The hope of a united Arab state emerged again in 1925, with the breakout of an uprising that had been started by the Druze under the leadership of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, calling for the unification of Syrian territories (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine), and their independence. But the French suppressed the Syrian uprising militarily, and they doused the torch of Arab unity by establishing a separate nation for Mount Lebanon.

  In 1926, France announced the establishment of the Lebanese Republic, giving it a flag identical to the French flag but with the addition of a cedar tree. Some Maronites dubbed the new nation “Little France”.

  After eighteen years, the French mandate over Lebanon came to an end, and it became an independent republic. With that, the Maronites realized that the era of the French empire had passed, so they gravitated towards making alliances with the British. Along with elements from the Sunni, Shia and Druze, it formed what was known in Lebanon’s political history as “the Constitutional Bloc”.

  The entity known as Lebanon was effectively born in the embrace of the English in 1943, according to a formula agreed upon between Bishara al-Khouri (Maronite Christian) and Riad al-Solh (Sunni Muslim) that specified that Christians would relinquish their desire to seek protection from “the merciful mother” – as they called France – and emerge from their isolation in order to enter the Arab League. In return, the Muslims would relinquish their aspiration for annexation to Syria or any larger Arab unity.

  And according to this unwritten covenant, it was agreed that the chief state positions would
be distributed equitably by religious community, and that there would be a ratio of six Christians in parliament to five Muslims. This agreement guaranteed that the president of the republic would be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister would be a Sunni Muslim, and the leader of parliament would be a Shiite Muslim. This arrangement was given the name “the Lebanese equilibrium”.

  However, from the beginning, the agreement carried within it the potential for an explosion. For one thing, it wasn’t only a balance of religious communities; at the same time, it was a regional equilibrium, a balancing act among large families, clans and institutions. For another thing, the prominent position the French gave to the Maronites allowed them to flourish. With the arrival of the agreement, it gave them the nation’s five main official positions: president of the republic, head of the army, president of the Deuxième Bureau intelligence office, director general of the National Bank of Lebanon, and director of public security.

  Naturally, the upper social classes from the other religious communities, Muslim and Christian, felt cheated, especially the Sunnis, who formed the majority of the population of Beirut, and who from ancient times had worked in business. After their numbers noticeably increased, they also began to sense that they were no longer in the minority.

  Thus, the confessional balancing was not a stage on the way to nationhood, but instead was a postponement of it. The nation had become the religious community, or to be more specific, the struggle between religious communities.

  Personal status laws proliferated as a result of this situation, until most matters pertaining to the individual came to fall under the jurisdiction of the religious community. Every religious community became a nation within the nation, enjoying a legally recognized status and the right to legislate and to rule on questions of personal status for its members. If an individual wasn’t classified in one of the religious communities, he was deprived of the right to live within the personal status system, and was consequently forbidden from getting married on Lebanese soil.

  In this way, Lebanon acquired the character it is known for. Its economic structure has never been based on the foundation of a production economy in the true sense of the word, with the exception of hashish and opium farms. Rather, it is based on a service economy, which represents 70 percent of the national income. Lebanon is known as the ideal market for low-price European products.

  Arab oil money flooded Lebanon’s banks, invigorating the finance and banking markets, which consist of foreign and partly-Lebanese-owned banks whose function is to move Arab funds to international markets. A new class of bankers, businessmen, managers, administrators and accountants appeared, suited to work for the oil companies of Arab countries whose main offices were located in Beirut.

  This led to a tourism boom, and Beirut became a center for services of all kinds, including leisure services. Getting rich quick – in any way, shape or form – became the goal, even if it was done at the expense of moral values, or even national ones. Beirut turned into a center for political conspiracy and espionage, and a haven for the white slave trade.

  By virtue of the confessional system, by which positions of political leadership and government posts, along with wealth, moved from fathers to sons, fortunes in real estate – built-on, unbuilt, industrial and commercial – piled up in the hands of a few, who profited from a weak central authority and the poverty of the majority of the citizens. Half of the population ended up earning 18 percent of the gross national income, while the other half earned 82 percent. The greatest share of that 82 percent went to the top 5 percent of the population.

  Thus a new component – the social component – was added to the religious-confessional struggle which was about to develop into a national struggle over Lebanese identity. But just as the nationalist struggle continued to be dominated by sectarianism, the social struggle also remained within this framework. Coalitions and political parties – however much they assumed the guise of political or social ideologies – continued to be façades for religious communities, and sometimes for families and clans.

  The spread of nationalism that swept over the Arab peoples at the beginning of the 1950s, under the twin banners of complete independence from colonialism and Arab unity, had the effect of stoking the fires of the nationalist struggle over Lebanese identity. The Arab nationalist movement reached its peak with the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution, and the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Gamal Abdel Nasser. When Great Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt in 1956, the Maronites and Camille Chamoun, president of the Republic of Lebanon, didn’t conceal their sympathy for the attack; the Phalangist Party newspaper applauded it.

  Naturally, the victory of the Arab nationalist movement, with the failure of the tripartite aggression, led to a strengthening of the position of the front hostile to the Maronites. It also led to the United States playing a primary role on the Arab stage.

  According to Jonathan Randal, a reporter for the Washington Post, “A former American ambassador years later remarked of that period [the 1950s], ‘We were buying people wholesale. I would not be surprised to discover that everyone important in Lebanon was on the CIA payroll . . .’”

  And so, no sooner had the United States launched its operation to take the place of Great Britain and France in the Arab Middle East, via the Eisenhower Doctrine in 1957, than Lebanon became the only Arab country that ventured to make public its acceptance of it.

  But Arab nationalism continued to spread: Jordan cancelled its treaty with Great Britain, in February 1958 the union of Egypt and Syria was announced, and collectively, Arab emotions ran high. Thousands of Lebanese poured into Damascus to catch a glimpse of “their Nasser”.

  Taking a cue from Gamal Abdel Nasser and Arab nationalism, Sunni and Shiite leaders – chief of whom were the two Sunnis Saeb Salam (the Saudis’ top man in Lebanon) and Rashid Karami, and the Shiite Kamil al-As’ad (also with ties to Saudi Arabia) – found that the time was right to take a bigger slice of the pie, of which the Maronites had taken the lion’s share, in response to the secret assassination squads formed by Camille Chamoun (who in the early 1970s was exposed as having been in the pay of the British intelligence service). So, in cooperation with Kamal Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze, Chamoun’s former ally and his rival for the leadership of the Chouf district, they ignited what was later known as the “revolt” of 1958, relying on the nationalist enthusiasm of the Arab street. The Muslims resorted to arms, raising aloft photos of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  July 14, 1958 was the high-water mark for Arab nationalism, when the monarchy fell in Iraq, and in seconds, the Baghdad Pact collapsed. Full Arab unity appeared to be on the horizon. Nasser flew across the Mediterranean to Moscow, in preparation for a full confrontation with colonial powers old and new. At this point, Chamoun sought the help of the American, British and French ambassadors. The response from Washington reached him in the early hours of the following day, and at 3 pm that same day – July 15 – around 2,000 khaki-clad US marines landed, about 5 miles south of Beirut, ostensibly to protect Lebanon from Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the following days, the total number of American forces in Lebanon reached around 15,000 combatants.

  The “revolt” ended with an Egyptian–American agreement to choose General Fu’ad Chehab as a new president for the Republic. As a result, the US marines withdrew. But the Phalangist Party rebelled against the agreement. The Phalangist Party was founded by the Maronite leader Pierre Gemayel in 1939 on the model of (and taking its name from) the Spanish fascist Falange Party, following Gemayel’s participation in the notorious 1936 Berlin Olympics. He bestowed on it the meaningful motto: “God, the nation, and the family”. Members of the party began kidnapping allies of Saeb Salam and branding their bodies with the mark of a cross. Salam’s allies, in turn, responded in kind. The discord only came to an end once Pierre Gemayel joined the new government as a minister.

  With Gemayel’s ascension to the ministry the bloody phase began, which his family started in
order to keep their monopoly on the leadership of the Maronite community and maintain their seizure of power. In reality, until that time, the Lebanese hadn’t taken seriously that athlete-pharmacist of erect bearing, with his white hair plastered to his skull, and his ridiculous militias. They derisively called him “Pierre Condom”, a nickname given to him because he ran a pharmacy in Martyrs’ Square, a few steps from Beirut’s red-light district.

  But Gemayel’s appointment to the ministry meant something equally significant: it was tantamount to the adoption of the slogan coined by the Havana-cigar-smoking Muslim leader Saeb al-Salam, the underlying idea of which was: “No winner and no loser.” That meant that all the violence and victims no longer mattered. The past had to be forgotten, and everything should go back to what it was before, on the premise that neither side gained a victory over the other, and consequentially, neither one obtained any special privileges. This slogan became the basis for what is now happening in Lebanon.

  The following years marked the apogee of Lebanon’s prosperity. Society’s “socialist” orientation, achieved by the Arab nationalist movement in the wake of Nasser’s well-known nationalization programs, caused the rich in various Arab countries to quake in fear of their own people, and they deposited their wealth in Lebanon’s banks, or invested in its public projects.

  On the other hand, the authoritarian, military character that colored governments, both Arab nationalist and reactionary alike, made Beirut the sole free space for political refugees and opponents of different governments, as well as a public arena for conflicts between these regimes, conflicts between them and Israel, and internal conflicts within Israel itself.

  With their traditional business acumen, the Lebanese realized that they could benefit enormously from this state of affairs. A black market in all kinds of goods flourished, from books to prostitution, and all of Lebanon became an open marketplace for ideas and commodities. Dozens of newspapers were published, financed by different factions – or rather, political parties and organizations were formed, financed by the different factions.