Party Lines

A postscript on our trip to the Crusader's castle in Tripoli. I forgot to include this impression. As we walked into the ruins of the castle we were surrounded by dueling calls to prayer (adhan) from the many mosques surrounding us. I love the sound, which we also heard in Turkey, of the muezzin's reverberating lyrical song echoing off the hillsides, several of them at once, not exactly in sync. I was amused at the irony of the live calls wafting through the Crusader's ruins.

All of us BE'rs are getting tired. We have had two to three meetings with religious, political, media or academic figures each day. Some of them involve climbing on and off buses, and frequently grabbing food on the fly. I can tell you -- Lebanese "fast food", sandwiches and the like tastes great! Take the shawarma for example. The cook takes big soft pita-type bread, adds fresh lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and french fries, tops it with hot grilled chicken and a liberal squirt of aioli, rolls it up and wraps it in paper. As he hands it to me he collects 4,000 LL, or $2.66, and I have a fabulous lunch. Day after day of this, however, no matter how interesting the meetings are, is becoming wearing. Martha had a private beginning Arabic lesson this morning. Tomorrow is our last day, and we'll be going strong until the end. Nicholas has created an incredible forum for us to experience a broad cross-section of the Lebanese, and by extension, Middle Eastern political and religious landscape. I'm ready, however, to stop filling my brain with all of this information and chew on it for awhile. I am left with more questions than answers, partly because I don't have background to put all I've heard in accurate context, and also because there are not answers for a lot of my questions.

This morning we met with the Phalange party, affiliated with 14 March Alliance. The key sects in Lebanon are Christians, Sunni, Shi'a (Hezbollah), and Druze. The Phalange party is pro-Western Christian. We met with Sami Gemayel, a newly elected member of Parliament (MP), and one of the long time political families. He is very well spoken, reasonable and clear in his positions. Last night we traveled up the mountain overlooking Beirut to the fortress compound of another Christian (14 Mar) political clan, the Geageas. We met with Sethrida Geagea, a 42 year old "fashion model" of an MP of the Lebanese Forces Party. She has legitimate political chops, but also had a phalanx of young female hangers on -- members of the Lebanese Forces Student Association, all wearing her uniform of revealing clothes and extremely high heels. When her husband was in jail for 12 years, she held the party together. You can Google her and see what I mean. We were subject to tight security -- needing to take our belts off to get through the security screen. Frequently we must leave our cameras and cell phones on the bus, but here we couldn't even take in pens to write with.

The mountaintop probably was 2000+ feet above the bay. It was much cooler up there and the view was breathtaking. About two thirds of the way up we passed Harissa-Our Lady of Lebanon, a huge statue of the Virgin and a big church. It overlooks the bay of Jounieh. On our way down, at 10pm at night, we toured the statue which is open until midnight. A funicular goes from the sea up to the shrine during the daylight hours. One could walk the circular ramp all the way to the statue which was probably two stories tall. It provided a 360 degree view of the area. It wasn't as kitschy as many of these tourist spots are, but it had a huge and blindingly bright flat screen digital billboard. I felt really sorry for the neighbors up on the mountain, with a gorgeous view of city lights down on the sea, whose interior walls flashed with the promotional messages of the tourist site. It doesn't seem that Beirut has a lot of zoning laws.

The issues here in Lebanon and the Middle East are very challenging. With the exception of the fat fanatic in Tripoli, however, everyone from all sides has been reasonable, forthcoming, educated and earnest. It has been easy to see why the various parties believe what they do, and how difficult it is to resolve the issues.