This column was published on Sunday March 29, 1987, on page A1. We republish it without altering the words that the author used at the time.
Not a tuable, life. Lebanon has been demonstrating it every day for 12 years. This is my greatest astonishment: I was going to see war, but the event in Beirut is life. Life despite everything. Ordinary life, the daily life of little people, not so far from the train that we know here, but which becomes, under bombs, pure subversion, admirable refusal of political, religious and military constraints …
To this daily life of the little people, never refers the learned press which nevertheless counted with great concern for accuracy each death, each shell, each abduction (especially when it is a Western who is removed). However, precisely, after two or three days in Beirut-Est, what strikes, if I dare say, these are not the traces that war left, but exactly the opposite: the extraordinary health, the incredible solidity of the social fabric after 12 years of total warrior madness.
We can speak of a miracle. Twelve years of war, the paralyzed state apparatus, tens of thousands of refugees and displaced, no services: mail, communications, transport, public health, everything is disturbed, no regular garbage collection, electricity failures that sometimes last several days, and yet everything works anyway! Do not ask anyone why and how, nobody understands, but it is a fact: in the heart of Beirut a hundred times bombarded, life continues almost without clashes, children go to school, people go to their work, do their shopping, and learn what is happening in Lebanon, like you and me, and almost at the same time: by the newspaper and TV!
It looks crazy to say, but we circulate safely in Beirut, including night. Unless bombing, obviously … when I left the restaurant very late the other evening, I met ladies who walked alone, and a couple of old people who went to small steps while walking their dog.
One morning, I went to get lost in the earth alleys, smashed by the rains, from the popular district of Nabaa where no one speaks French, only Arabic and Armenian. I played football with children, I tasted skewers that brown outside and brush with garlic paste before driving them in pancakes … I was not let me out of a pistachio before I tried all nuts and almonds and, of course, I couldn’t pay … ten times we offered to help me. I was accompanied by a way. Canadian ? They were very happy that I was Canadian, they would have been just as much if I had been Swedish, Greek or Papou … In their shrinking space, foreigners open windows to them more and more inaccessible …
-And what do we think of Lebanon in Canada, sir?
– Nothing, I think …
It was at the glass coffee, in the old souks district, a way of tavern where the old gentlemen will play jacquet, smoking their hookah and drinking a black and horrible coffee…
– Nothing is good! It’s better than bad! There are so many worlds who believe that we are the bad Christians who wage war on the good Muslims …
– While it’s the opposite, of course!
Sarcasm did not escape him.
– I guess you are a journalist since there are no other foreigners in town at the moment … You will write what you like, that does not look at me, but if you could at least establish a point, only one, you would make more for this country than the majority of your colleagues who wrote subtle analyzes on our conflict. This point here it is: say well, emphasize very hard, that it is because of the war that Muslims and Christians hate each other and shoot themselves today, and not the opposite …
– The opposite?
– Just because they hated themselves that they waged war. They did not hate each other at all, everyone prayed the god he wanted, but a war came from elsewhere, who poisoned everything by standing against each other …
-Besides, say. But where?
– You have the choice. Of America and USSR, from Syria and in addition, now, from Iran. And of course of Israel. Especially Israel …
As all the Lebanese in public (Muslims and Christians) do, the old gentleman bore his rosary while speaking …
So I did not dare to add that, in my opinion, this war came a little as from heaven where Allah and God are baking to know which one is the greatest.
If it’s beautiful? No, Lebanon is not very beautiful. And it’s not a beautiful city, Beirut. But hush, it should not be said, even less say that the magnificent surrounding mountain is miserably ransacked by tape-to-is-to-make constructions, and peesters with condos all in height …
It is not the rubble or the holes that make Beirut’s ugliness, it is not its ruins, it is rather the horrible square boxes of concrete that we built on it. It smells with a nose of real estate, it smells like the money quickly done on the still fresh cement …
Precisely, let’s talk about it.
A large chicken like that for 2 US $ 2, the bread wand at 7 sous and the large bottle of coke at 15 sous… Ah! For that yes, in American dollars, it’s Pasha’s life in Beirut!
But in Lebanese books, it may be a little less economical … Let’s first say that the minimum wage (which has just been increased by 40 %!) Is 3,200 Lebanese pounds per month, that is to say 50 of our Canadian dollars … A secondary teacher affects $ 65 per month. As for Juliette Khouri, who is a saleswoman in a shoe store, Place Sassine, she wins the minimum wage, 3,200 pounds …
– Before I also won the minimum wage, but before, when the dollar was worth three pounds instead of 107 as today, before, I could buy a little gold every month … I could sell my car, today, exactly ten times the price I paid three years ago. Except that today I can no longer afford to buy tires … Before, in addition, I went out a lot, I got dressed, finished all that …
Not quite. Not finished, finished. Not yet. It remains for Juliet to melt the gold she bought every month …
The whole Lebanese middle class is there: to draw on its very comfortable reserves. What she does frantically elsewhere. There is a rage in the air to buy, a compulsive need to consume. Pride to want to appear until the end, but also the player who plays his carpet … The lines lie down at the door of good restaurants like retro, ” OS, and the old neighborhood. The traffic is heavy with Mercedes and BMW (I have never seen, even in Germany, so many Mercedes in my life).
Decadence and Dolce Vita in the boxes of Joûnié where the chrome youth leads a large train. People, especially women, are super well dressed, Paris look, New York look … I was walking in the street with a militiaman who had just explained to me that a Kalashnikov ball is worth 5 $: “It’s expensive yes, but you see by reselling the rags that this one carries on her ass, we could shoot all night …”
Of course, there are some for a long time. Mountain refugees, displaced, and even the very small bourgeoisie who can no longer pay himself the essential, neither the bread, nor the doctor. But there either, it is not yet great great hunger (except in the Palestinian camps, but it is another story that I will talk about). The country is lavish despite everything. Oranges, avocados, vegetables, strawberries grow between the towers of the suburbs of Beirut.
No, it’s not great hunger yet. It is only, for the moment, the very great shame. Proud as he is (and loving to amaze), the Lebanese can not bear to be devalued …
And it could well be the start of the end of the miracle. What the shells have not succeeded – destroy everyday life – the crisis will do it.
The worst is coming.
When they are used to lacking anything, men are more readily martyrs than poor.