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This was so painless to make in comparison to the previous pages... Details I really like: the free-for-all in class (naturally based on reality), the lit windows, and that hill! Beirut is not just hilly, it's wedged between the sea and the mountain, so this is what our horizon looks like by night.

"Shu heyda" = "What's this??"

May is the month of gardenia in Lebanon. This fragrant, fleshy white blossom is our sweetest herald of the spring. The Lebanese don't talk much about gardenia, not the way they may tell and re-tell other customs. One day, suddenly, the flowers are just there, and then you wonder just how many people around the city quietly grow beloved gardenia bushes, because the blossoms are in every living room (they stay fresh for several days if floated in a cup of water), in people's cars, on their clothes. Women can wear them in their hair and men keep them in hand without looking odd. These bushes are generous, bursting with buds that tun into several flowers ready to be picked a day, and they are too lovely and ephemereal to be hoarded: I know of no other flower or thing that is given away so actively, for no ritual or social reason, but purely out of a desire to share this movingly delicate beauty. As children, we (and others) brought our daily pick to school to share them with students and teachers, who always tolerated the presence of the blossoms on the otherwise strictly-business school desks. As grown-ups, we take them to work, or elsewhere – I met up with a friend at a café and she had brought one for me. The day I walked around defaced Hamra, looking somber, a security guard pulled one out of thin air as I passed by and put it in my hand. The giving a gardenia is done without comment, without bringing attention to itself, just as if we had all agreed in advance that in May, gardenia blossoms would go out into the world with their scented magic, and we would all just be the messengers.

(I have two tiny bushes myself, the first plants I requested for the new house, and they are yielding their first blossoms with great zeal and enthusiasm)

M was in Morocco when it all happened, and had to go to Berlin and wait there for the airport to open again. Fortunately he only had one week to wait, during which he experienced some of the restlessness and homesickness I knew while I was in Berlin!

The Prof's Syrian helper was visiting his family in Damascus and was stuck there. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, fearing he wouldn't be able to get back, and I suspect he was the first on the road when they opened the crossing yesterday.
He was around the workshop today and someone suggested allt he leaders should be locked into a room and left to fight it out. But then we decided that nasrallah being the fattest would probably win just by sitting on the rest.

My friends M and R, who live across the street from each other in Mazraa, were trapped at home for 5 whole days. The Amal gunmen were using R's building as a base to shoot in M's direction. She felt incongruously guilty about it.

My colleagues who live next to Future TV had an instinct to leave the area before it was too late and are still exiled in the hills above Beirut, because the neighborhood still feels very uncomfortable. They have started looking for a new home in a "less sectarian" part of town.

Many of us are avoiding those of our friends who supported the opposition before this happened, for fear that one misplaced word from them would make the dam (and the friendship) break. I think my mom, of all people, already sent a friend to hell after she started whining about "what the Americans and Sanyora are doing to us".

The Prof's cleaning lady, who hails from the South and lives in Dahieh, was only able to return to work on Wednesday. She snapped at a hizby in her area: "If you're going to force us to stay home, at least pay us for it!" "There's an idea. We'll suggest it to the sayyed..." Insolence or simple mind? Either way I hope more people in Dahieh are angry at the right people for their losses.

Today the people of Hamra look like they're gratefully waking up from a nightmare. With the roads open overnight, Beirut returned to life as suddenly as blossoms spring up when it rains in the desert – stocking up on cheerfulness till the next crisis, is the subtext. The dance show that was scheduled to premiere yesterday didn't, of course, but the organizers announced "Back to work!!" before the sand was even cleared from the streets, and I'm really looking forward to it/ The dancers were rehearsing where I had my dance class, so I had a sneak preview (incidentally I was able to go to dance class because my teacher is himself in the show and so it was permissible for me to miss Wushu... so we were both dancing instead, except I'm a rank amateur and he's so good it made me cry.)

I am hyper and eager to see people as if I'd been kept away from them for much longer than a week – and might be again.

The Arab Ministerial Committee is giving its press conference and it doesn't sound as bad as I thought:

Sheikh Hamad: We adopt the Arab initiative … and based on the Lebanese constitution and Taif Accord, we agreed on:
1) Things must return to what they were before May 5, 2008: the government must respond to the Army Command statement and hand the two decisions over to the army; All arms must be withdrawn from the streets and all roads, the Rafik Hariri International Airport and the Beirut Seaport reopened; and the Lebanese army must take charge of national security and civil peace.
2) There must be agreement on returning to dialogue on the national-unity government and electoral law. This agreement must be crowned by the end of the sit-in the eve Army Commander General Michel Sleiman is announced as a consensus candidate for presidency.
3) The (Lebanese) dialogue will begin as soon as the clause 1 is implemented, on Friday May 16, 2008 in Doha.
4) All parties must promise to refrain from returning to arms or violence to achieve political ends.
5) The dialogue is to reinforce the rule of the Lebanese government on all Lebanese lands … for the security of the state and its citizens.
6) Political leaders will end their use of political and sectarian incitement and accusations of treachery at once.


I don't see anything in there the gov't wasn't asking for or willing to discuss before... I hope I'm reading this right.

Ignore that last one. Hard to think positive right now.

Shortly past 11 yesterday night a wild crackling of machine guns started again down the street, at the blocked Tayyouneh round about. It took a few mn for the online news to post a one-liner: "11:16pm Lebanese government revokes it two measures concerning Hizbullah telecommunications network and the reassignment of the head of the airport security."
Sounded depressing as hell, but I needed more details as to how and why. It's 6 am and there hasn't been news updates since, but Mustapha ref'ed his readers to Across the Bay for an analysis that offers more details. Extract (with my emphasis):

"All the idiotic commentators, from Paul Salem onwards, who talked about a different "political balance" as a result of the fighting, don't and never did know what they're talking about. This is political suicide for Hezbollah, who has already made contacts with Hariri through a third party informing him that they're looking for an exit. They know they're in a jam.

Not just that, now the government is in a position to leverage rescinding its decisions -- which it could never implement to begin with! -- and we're already seeing M14 and government sources expressing that.

For one, all M14 officials -- including Hariri who made a powerful, uncompromising speech yesterday -- are now unanimous about placing the fate of Hezbollah's weapons as the first item on any "dialogue" agenda. Gone are the days of the "sanctity" of the weapons of the "resistance." Minister Joe Sarkis has added that any rescinding of the decisions has to be met by not just a withdrawal of armed men from the streets and the reopening of all roads, but also the evacuation of the tent city in downtown Beirut.

The mere fact that M14 and the government are bartering the rescinding of a decision that was never going to be implemented (and if the government was illegitimate, according to Hezbollah, then why even bother focusing on its decisions and thereby affirm its legitimacy?) suggests, regardless of outcome, that they know that there's no "new balance" advantageous to Hezbollah that forces them to capitulate.

Army Commander Suleiman is now under tons of pressure. Hariri himself criticized the Army's performance, and we know that 40 senior officers submitted their resignation (which would've split the Army) in protest of Suleiman's handling of the situation (and we also know that criminal pro-Aounist officers were particularly egregious during the crisis). Saudi outlets have even criticized the Army's performance, putting more pressure on Suleiman to get his act together if he wants to become president (especially now that any gambit about Hezbollah tilting the balance has failed). The US, which also has leverage through its aid to the Army might also do the same. These kinds of pressures, domestic, regional and international, and Suleiman's susceptibility to them, is why Syria won't take a chance with him. Anyone who doesn't fall and lick Bashar's boots without hesitation at a moment's notice cannot be trusted as far as the murderer of Damascus is concerned, and it's why Syria knows that it must return militarily to Lebanon in order to rule it. Even doing it by proxy, through Hezbollah, hasn't worked.

This is far from over. In fact, this has only just begun."

For the full post: http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/2008/05/hezbollahs-third-botched-coup-attempt.html

What happens in the near future (tent city disappearing, the discussion of HA weapons) will show who really won this round and who simply finally found a face-saving exit.

I forgot to post the previous one here so you get 2 at once:

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Whether that last entry I linked to is the whole truth or not, there was a new spring in my step as I went to my acrobatics class. I've been listing the HA allies and their status in my mind. From what I've read so far, and pending correction by better informed sources, here's the rundown:

HA: Masterminding the whole thing plus actual fighting, and all is not going well on all fronts.
Amal: Doing most of HA's dirty work, as usual, but Berri's not acting terribly smug.
SSNP: Knocking themselves out, as we've seen.
FPM: Aoun is barking himself into apoplexia, but his followers have been making themselves very scarce.
Marada: Being vewy vewy quiet.
Arslan's boys: Divided, for the little they were worth, with some joining forces against HA.
Wi'am Wahhab: He's insignificant, I never even heard of him before that entry, but he's cleared out with his boys. Not so confident his friends are going to come out on top?
Baath, in the north: getting their arses whipped.
Tashnak: The only thing I've heard from them since this started was a call to stop the fighting. I saw no sign at all of any kind of rousing in the Tashnak stronghold where I circulate, either.

Now let's just hope Israel leadership has the brains not to provide HA with a justification for their existence. They're committing suicide so please, for God's sake, let them.


Errata:
A new reader pointed out that the SSNP symbol represents a hurricane and is not meant to have any connection to the nazi swastika. Unfortunately in Lebanon that symbol will never be seen as anything less threatening and loathsome.
It was also pointed out to me that the SSNP motto is "long live Syria" (tahya Souriya) where I had read "tahyan" (Greeting; see picture a few posts up). But that same picture has the word Syria tagged twice with different spellings (as in one of them is misspelled), so my uncertainty as to the intended grammar can be understood. Dunces.

Anyone curious about Aoun may be interested in this .pdf report put together by NOWlebanon.com, which is brief but very informative in showing a) how rotten the man is and b) how his supposed popularity is nothing but hot wind.

It seems the focused coverage of the Beirut battles is making the hizb look more successful than it actually is, with them encountering severe resistance elsewhere and effectually losing their allies:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/05/jumblatts-men-s.php

Reposted from http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=42276

Beyond repair
NOW Staff , May 11, 2008



“Iza nkassar, nkassar.” If it’s broken, it’s broken. And there’s no fixing it.

Reputations, as many a mother has warned, are as fragile as a crystal vase.

Over the past week, Hezbollah has been revealed for what it truly is. And one thing it is clearly not is a parliamentary opposition.

Let’s no longer refer to March 8 and its allies in Change and Reform (if, indeed that relationship itself survives this ordeal) as such. The “opposition” in a parliamentary system is a political grouping that keeps the ruling majority in check through debate and legislation – not, for example, by mobilizing militiamen to occupy the capital and beyond, nor by ransacking, torching, closing down the ruling majority’s media outlets.

Indeed, this alliance ceased to be an “opposition” the day one of its own leaders, Speaker Nabih Berri, locked parliament shut a year and half ago. Let us not grant them the legitimacy the term “opposition” denotes.

Likewise, it would be a mistake, from now on, to refer to March 14 as the “ruling” majority. They may be the majority and they may be officially in power, but it’s difficult to imagine that, in the coming phase, after Hezbollah brings this disastrous campaign to an end, they will be permitted to genuinely rule. After all, how can they rule the country if they are being held at gunpoint by their opponents, unable to defend their own interests – let alone those of the people and the global community?

Now that Hezbollah’s supposed “purity” as a resistance movement has been defiled, now that those guns have been pointed inward, we must all expect the party to hesitate even less next time. Hezbollah cares little for the will of the Lebanese people and even less for their elected leaders: it will never represent anyone beyond its own leadership and foreign patrons.

Lebanon already had no president, no parliament; after Hezbollah’s current performance, it no longer has a political system. Instead, Lebanon has an armed gang, which will continue to allow a pretense of democracy to persist – as long as it is on Hezbollah’s terms.

The events of the past few days have effectively disenfranchised the entire nation.

Hezbollah must know that this is no real victory. They may emerge from the chaos with more power, but the scars left by this conflict will never heal for many Lebanese. By late Sunday afternoon, nearly fifty people had been killed in the fighting, a number that will undoubtedly continue to rise. Among the first victims were a mother and her son in Ras al-Nabaa, killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their apartment during Thursday night’s fierce gun battles. If Hezbollah was resented before, today it is despised, making any system with Hezbollah even unofficially at the top of the pyramid untenable beyond the short-term. This is only a single round in the ongoing struggle for sovereignty and authority between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah. We do not know how long it may last, this systematic targeting of one region after another by Hezbollah and its allies. But even if calm returns to the country tomorrow morning, something has fundamentally changed over the past few days.

Once it’s broken, it’s broken permanently. Any lingering positive, national image of Hezbollah has been dashed. Most Lebanese never doubted that Hezbollah would in theory turn its “resistance” weapons on the Lebanese, but knowing something and actually having such horrors play out in front of you are very different. With black moods all around, it is difficult to not to feel frustrated with the government for stepping back first. But we must resist this urge, or at least, attempt to understand what is happening. The government is trying to act responsibly as a body entrusted with the Lebanese people’s security. With half of Beirut occupied by March 8 militiamen on Saturday, the government did not have the luxury of putting principles above safety. The reality today is that Hezbollah can and, crucially, will outgun the rest of the country.

But it should provide no small amount of reassurance – particularly considering Lebanon’s past, and the pasts of many of the players involved – that we have a government unwilling to let the Lebanese people be slaughtered just to prove a point: and that is perhaps the only reason this situation may not escalate into full-fledged civil war. The government has put its people’s security ahead of its pride.

If only we could say the same for the other side. But if Hezbollah has taught us one thing over the years, it’s that the party will never flinch at triggering death and devastation at home while in pursuit of divinity.

First I went to play football, which was a good thing because it vented most of my pent-up aggravation, which stopped me from doing something rash in Hamra.
I couldn't sit still after my shower: I had to try and reach Hamra. It's my city for crying out loud, I will not be prevented from moving around.
I went to Barbir and drove down towards Sodeco just in case the army, who's supposed to have taken over everything, had opened the road. It was not just still closed, there were fresh new mounds of earth sealing the passage and I have to wonder why the f***ing army is spineless to the point of not clearing unmanned road blocks that are essentially keeping ordinary citizens hostage.
I made a U-turn and swerved into a small street into Basta. I drove straight across the city through streets I had never seen before, and somehow ended up on Mar Elias and Snayeh. I didn't recognize it at first because of all the Amal flags – the area is usually covered in Hariri posters. The flags stood as a signature for the militia's handiwork. Charred cars. Smashed shop windows, the owners trying to clean up. Fresh bullet holes all over the place.
Hamra was worse. I've never seen the street so dead. Is it because the pople are afraid to open their shops? That they just can't get to them from elsewhere in town? That they don't think it's worth it because customers can't get to them? That they don't trust that things may not flare up again? Maybe all of the above. On the entirety of Hamra street, I counted 3 places open: Malik el Batata (where I grabbed a sandwich and they said I was the first customer today), Napoletana (where I found the owner of my usual café, which was closed) and oddly enough, Vera Moda.
I met up with a friend of a friend who works for the UN: on thursday evening she had been trapped at de Prague and then evacuated by UN officers, walking past the gunmen, of whom she got a really good look. It is to the same de Prague we walked together (the only other place I saw open), and past these same men that we walked – unarmed this time, but she recognized them. The dirty punks, none of which looked like he had hit the 20s, were putting up SSNP posters in broad daylight. My blood was already boiling from the sight of SS

NP flags all over Hamra, and ther logo tagged on the walls with the caption: SYRIAN GREETING". I wanted to punch in the teeth of people who still claim that Syria has nothing to do with the opposition.

<

"Syrian greeting".



I can't imagine where they got the inspiration for this logo from, can you? And the color scheme of their flag, never seen that before:

Oh, right, for a moment there I forgot it's called the syrian social-nationalist party.



Geniuses as always. Betcha they had no idea what they were signing over.



This street saw fighting, but my picture of the damaged shops didn't turn out (I was using my phone camrea). This is a detail – poor lock!
I picked up the building's number from the floor. I'm going to clean it and return it.


So, we had coffee; she received news updates to her phone and so we heard that there was serious fighting in the mountain, at the limit of the Druze territory. I know the area, a sprinkiling of villages that are alternatively Christian, Druze and Hizbi-Shia. So the hizbies are bombing druze villages. Fabulous. How the hell they justify it I don't know, I haven't heard them bother to justify it.
After we left, we walked all around Hamra and down to the AUB. Pedestrians, but no other sign of life, just more SNNP punks, all in their teens. We ran simultaneously into an AUB friend on foot, and another in her car, and we were greatful for each other's news. Was the Ring still closed, they asked? Yeah, I said, and they actually added sand to it – and actual cement blocks to the airport road.
My friend got an sms saying she had to pack. The UN would take her out of Hamra in an hour. She asked for advice as to what to pack and then we parted. I didn't tarry because I was not sure at all that I'd still find a way to get back to my side. I did without too much difficulties though, getting a close look at the still-smoking block on the Ring and taking a few more roads the wrong way. The soldiers are invariably courteous, but I just want to slap them for being such limp noodles. I wonder what would happen if a bunch of women took shovels to the road blocks.

The Mountain is still on fire. I'm absolutely disgusted. Fuck it, I don't want Sleimane for president. Whether the gov't miscalculated or not when it took those resolutions, at least it had the balls to make a stand and not back down.

I'm back from Hamra and feeling murderous. Account with pictures shortly.

This video, reposted from a show yesterday night on LBC, made my day: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sfCkdbANYlE

I can't translate it all, but Sahar el Khatib is a journalist for Future TV that was forced off the studio premises before they were torched by the opposition people. She's absolutely pissed off at the army that watched impassively as the vandalism took place, despite previous assurances that they would protect the journalists. And more than that, she's in a towering rage at the opposition, whom she represented on TV, despite the frictions that caused with her circles, as a conscientious journalist keen on representing all voices in Lebanon: (mind you I'm paraphrasing a bit)

"After speaking for you for a year and a half, for every one of you in Dahie, in the South, in Baalbek, in the FPM, in the opposition, who is speaking for me today? For the Beirutis? For the people you threw out of their homes? For the people you martyred – and WHY were you MASKED in the streets of Beirut today? The man who is proud of what he's doing DOESN'T WEAR A MASK. This voice you're trying to shut up is not going to be quiet, and I have more to scream at you. I don't want to talk to parties today, I want to talk to the people. The people whose voice I represented personally. HOW THE HELL CAN YOU DO THIS to the people of Beirut who took you in during the '06 war, opened their hearts, made food for you and defended you? We named each of your martyrs name for name. I cried over each of your martyrs as I named them. The Beirutis who died today, is any of you naming them? Answer me, does any one of you even know the names of those who fell today? Whose is their blood?? You made me regret ever speaking for you."

"You are defying God. In the human body there are two things nobody has a right to touch – the soul, and the voice. Did you actually think of what you're doing? You didn't just exit the law, you exited the hearts of the people, people who honestly loved you and made food for you with their own hands, which you have now thrown on the ground and for what? I don't understand!"

"And as they wanted to leave Future I said no, we are staying, and we are letting the cameras run so that the world can see what they are doing to us. How are you going to fix that picture?"

I love her.

I really didn't relish the idea of spending another day indoor, so I went to shop for groceries in Achrafieh and then decided to find out if I could get to West Beirut. At the Ring, no chance, the Army still closed it off and there was a big group of civilians there for some reason I couldn't make out. (It could be related to this newsflash though: 11:19 Journalists and media personnel have started gathering at the Bourj Al-Ghazal Tower in Tabaris to express their rejection of yesterday’s forced closure of media institutions by opposition factions.) At Sodeco, it was not possible to cross into Basta either. I asked a soldier if one could get to Hamra today and he said he didn't know if the road was closed or not (by other parties). At Barbir, to my surprise, I was able to cross and go quite far on Corniche el-Mazraa – until a massive army block diverted me into the streets to the left, so that I returned by ways of Tariq Jdide. I tried to head for the Tayyouneh roundabout from Qasqas but the road was blocked (by mounds of sand. Why haven't they been cleared? There's nobody manning them) so that I had to turn into the wrong side of the highway, like other cars before me, and go around and through the remains of burned tires. Finally arriving at Tayyouneh, I found it thoroughly blocked as well, but by getting into side streets the wrong way I was able to make it home. It was quiet through all the areas I crossed, save for street life and certain signs that all is not normal (cameras, people talking to journalists, gatherings). But I couldn't get to West Beirut, and I don't know the situation there. If the militiamen had all left, surely the roads would be open again?

I'll go out again this afternoon, maybe go train somewhere. And check up on my flatmates. M is on his way to Berlin because he was in Moroccoadn ue to return tonight, which is not happening. As for S... He'd been in Damascus for 2 weeks waiting for a paper, and returned Wednesday morning, but told his office he'd come back Thursday (thus gaining a day off). But on Thursday morning the road to Syria was closed! So he is here but officially he's stuck in Damascus until God knows when!

Hariri's pics taken down and replaced with...



To those who still want to believe the opposition has nothing to do with Syria– up yours.

According to this I am in the occupied area, but I'm actually just on the verge of it, so it's a rough map. Still worse than I thought.
Now what? As the government made it clear it wouldn't back down on the 2 resolutions it adopted, I doubt all these hooligans are just going to hand over the city to the army and go home. But it can't maintain an armed occupation of Beirut. So, what's next?
The silver lining is that a lot of opposition supporters (I don't have statistics but it seems to be significant) are horrified at what, they believed, was not part of the deal.

A rundown by the Economist (that oddly insists on Nasrallah's insurances that he will not use weapons against Lebanese parties, but omits to mention that in the same speech he said he would chop off the hand that tries to touch the communication network, and that they would use weapons to defend their weapons), and an editorial from NOWLebanon.com

I just don't know what to say right now. They've taken hamra. They've destroyed or crippled offices of March 14 TVs and newspapers. Qoraitem's been bombed and the Serail is under siege. West Beirut is once again under militia control. HA's unmasked itself and nobody can do anything about it.

Two or 3 times this year, armed street fighting has erupted between punks from Amal and Mustaqbal, and each time, the fighting was cut short by a sudden storm. I was telling a friend yesterday it was too bad the season for storms had passed.
And then in the middle of the night the sound of thunder drowned out the AKs and a hell of an angry storm swept everything!! In MAY!
Get the picture, punks!