Independence Day

And sometimes, there is no time to turn to a distant citadel. With a phone call here and there and a little time, impatiently waited out, it suddenly seems as if Lebanon is on your side. Then, you hear the impossible words the Editor loved your article and you have more commissions and are organising phone interviews while hiding in the bogs during overtime at work. Then, on the way to Arabic class, you spy a very second-hand Kawasaki Estrella 250 outside a mechanic’s shop in Dora. It speaks of a few more months’ poverty and possible unpleasant death, but also of freedom and madness and the open road.

And so it happens that on the Saturday of Independence Day weekend you are being driven into Beyrouth by Bernard from the design department, whose tattoos and swagger suggest that he is a man with whom a motorcycle salesman will not trifle. The roads are lined with flags, fluttering from lampposts and from bridges and from bunting strung across alleyways. They declare in cloth and ink the strength of the nation after independence from France in 1943, declare the worth of the country’s leaders and the value of all those dead men. Such a strong clean flag, Lebanon’s – red for the blood spilled in war, white for peace and for the snow-capped mountains that gave the country its name, and the dark green of the strong, faithful cedar tree. But it would not be Lebanon if the story ended there, and if the declarations were not dissipated by cynicism and venality. Behind and below and beside those flags are posters and graffiti-ed logos of the real Lebanon, the Lebanon that everyone knows only too well. It is a fractured state, squabbled over by political parties defined by their religious confession, known by their acts of violence and greed and by the names of their leaders, who dominate the stories of war since before the time of occupation – Chamoun, Aoun, Franjieh, Jumblatt, Gea’gea. Hariri II, now heading the supposed governing coalition, is a brand new dynasty in comparison, but shows no sign of combating the old ways. Indeed, he has overseen the latest resurgence of influence from Syria, whose military and mukhabarat spy networks were largely driven out during 2005's independence intifada, inspired by the murder of Hariri I. The flag flies for an idea that is empty, and that no one pretends to believe.

Through fluttering flags, then, drives Bernard. “You are not afraid to ride the motorbike?” he asks. Obviously not. “How about guns?” He pulls his out of the glove compartment and I produce the required high-pitched reaction. No one cares about Independence Day, he assures me, except for the day off from work that comes with it. “How long will you stay in Lebanon?” he asks. “When will you leave – before the war, or after the war?” He is certain that spring 2010 will bring Israeli bombs. I wouldn’t know what to think, except that I have read the same thing in the press, based on reports from the French. The flags around us dance in mockery – there is not a patch of Hezbollah yellow to be seen in this part of Lebanon, but they are the real power and peril, whatever you think of their politics. As Iran ferments, all eyes are on the regime’s proxies in Lebanon, more powerful than the Lebanese state as they are. The suspicion is that Israel will not much longer stand for the militia’s presence against empty Lebanese government talk of making them comply with the 2005 UN resolution ordering them to disarm.

Is this talk the frenetic ticking of a jammed clock, or the sinister progress of a countdown? Stuck in traffic in Dora, deafening horns and men driving bikes hung about with handbag-shaped kaak sesame bread or pushing carts between the cars loaded with bright goldfish swimming in their glass globes, people living their lives, war seems impossible – but Lebanon has already known it, known it well, and is philosophical about knowing it again.

***

Bike deposit paid, independence-themed party partied, two girls meet up in Downtown on Sunday to observe the military parade sardonically through their red wine hangovers. 11am in Martyr’s Square, they were told – but the streets are dead and blocked by soldiers, who make you turn back without bothering to explain what is going on or how you might otherwise reach your destination. Soviet-era tanks and trucks roar off in the opposite direction, and after five different conspiratorial brush-offs a soldier deigns to explain – though not without later contradictory evidence – that the parade ran from 6am to 10.30 in another part of town. Whatever Independence Day is meant for, it is not for the people to celebrate, nor for anyone to believe in the happy unity of the nation or in its military power, which is far outstripped by that of privately-funded militias.

And so it happens, that Independence Sunday in Beyrouth, that two girls with Lebanon in their hearts and minds find that Dunkin Donuts is the only coffee house open. So they take it with cream and sugar and glazed pastries, and they sit outside in the late November sun in the middle of the Orientalist-fronted business project that is Downtown, and they laugh it off and they talk about boys. Somehow, it seems appropriate.

***

Later that week, yet another service driver unintentionally underscores the depressing outlook. “You like Lebanon?” he asks. Yes, there is a lot of variety – Trablous, Beyrouth, Sour ... “Tchah! Trablous, no good. Beyrouth, no good. Jounieh, Kaslik, anywhere Christians live, good. Trablous, West Beyrouth – fuck them.”

It is horrible, and I am pathetic. “You are Christian?” he asks, and I barely bother to review my options before lying yes. Who am I to judge his – Lebanon's – entrenched bigotry, when I cannot even stand up for secularism against Claude the taxi driver? And Claude at least has decades of war on his side. In parliament today, there is empty talk of combating political sectarianism. While the Claudes of this world still breathe and vote and fight with all their belligerent simplicity, the old ways will persist, one way or another.