Holidays in Hell Page 4

  The transaction of business in the East always involves an immense waste of time, and as Orientals attach no value whatsoever to their time, the European will often find his patience sorely tried.

  Many travelers rejoice in displaying a stock of revolvers and other arms, which add greatly to their importance in the eyes of the natives, but are not often brought into actual use.

  The larger excavation contains what looks to be an aqueduct, another theater and a vast Roman necropolis. Simon had come back to get me at the hotel, and I had him drive me into the middle of these ruins. Garbage was being dumped here, too, and burned automobile seats, Pepsi cans and lots of spent ordnance was mingled on the ground with ancient pot shards and mosaic tile chips. Simon picked up an amphora handle. "How old you think?" I told him about two thousand years. He nodded, "Two thousandyears-old garbage."

  Antiquity hunters have been at work in Tyre. All the Roman tombs are broken open, and many of the fracture marks in the marble are fresh. I peeked inside one grave, and there was a muddle of antique bones. It was, by sheer chance, the only dead body I saw in Lebanon.

  I'd been given the name of a Lebanese-American, Billy Hadad, who has a farm on the coast near Sidon. We drove around looking for him. It's hard to know what your driver is doing when he talks to the natives. He'll pull up somewhere and make a preliminary oration, which draws five or six people to the car window. Then each of them speaks in turn. There will be a period of gesturing, some laughter, much arm clasping and handshaking, and a long speech by the eldest or most prominent bystander. Then your driver will deliver an impassioned soliloquy. This will be answered at length by each member of the audience and anybody else who happens by. Another flurry of arm grabbing, shoulder slapping and handshakes follows, then a series of protracted and emotional good-byes.

  "What did you ask them?" you'll say to your driver.

  "Do they know of your friend?"

  "What did they tell you?"

  "No."

  Eventually, we were directed to an old fortresslike farmhouse near the shore. There on the terrace was a big American preppie kid in chino pants and a button-down shirt. He looked at me and said, "Awesome. Man, I haven't heard English in months!"

  The farm near Sidon has been owned by the Hadads since the time of the Ottoman Turks. Its two hundred and thirty acres are irrigated by springs and planted in avocados, bananas and other fruit. The house dates from 600 A.D., with Arab and Turkish additions. It stands on a rock outcrop above a pool in use since Phoenician days. Centuries-old Ficus trees grow over the walls, and flowers bloom all around it.

  Billy's father was Druse, his mother from Oregon. They met at college in California. In the middle of the civil war Mr. Hadad was killed in, of all things, a skiing accident on Mt. Lebanon. Mrs. Hadad took the younger children back to America, and Billy, just graduated from a Connecticut boarding school, came out to Lebanon to manage the property. He has five families, some thirtyfive people, working for him.

  We had lunch with one of his tenants and sat around a low table under a loggia indulging in Arab table manners. These are the best in the world or, anyway, the most fun. For the midday meal there are a dozen large bowls of things-salad; hot peppers; yogurt; a chick-pea paste called hummus; kubbeh, which is a kind of meatball; and things I have no idea the names for. You get a flat loaf of pita bread and make flaps to grab the food. The bread is your napkin, also your plate. We had too much Arak, the regional version of absinthe, and drank endless tiny cups of drug-strength coffee. You can smoke in the middle of the meal, and no one considers it impolite.

  The tenant brought out his guns. It's like an Englishwoman showing you her roses. There was a Soviet AK-47, a Spanish Astra 9mm automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, an old British military rifle and a very nice Beretta over-and-under shotgun. This is a modest collection. More militant people have mortars and the like. Serious gunmen favor the rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, which is something like a bazooka. It's inaccurate and tremendously noisy, a perfect Lebanese weapon.

  After lunch we went for a swim. This far south of Beirut the ocean is clean. From out in the water distant rumblings could be heard. I thought it was artillery in the Chouf. "Dynamite fishing," said Billy. (Dynamite is one bait fish always rise to.)

  There was a wedding party in a nearby village that night. Lebanese wedding parties are held on the eve of the marriage. Thus the groom is given an excuse for looking green at the altar. A hundred or more chairs had been placed in a circle behind the bride's house. A few light bulbs were strung in the grapevines and a huge table had been laid with food, Scotch and Arak. Parties in Lebanon start slow. Everyone sits primly in the chairs, neither eating nor drinking, and talking only in low voices. Or they would usually. In this case the men and boys must all discuss politics with the American. Every one of them has cousins in Texas.

  "Just tell them what you think," said Billy. I couldn't very well do that. After a week in Lebanon what I thought would hardly make fit conversation at a wedding feast.

  This was a Christian village. "If the Moslems take over," said a young man (Billy translating), "They'll close the bars during Ramadan. But we won't make them drink at Christmas if they really don't want to." A lather of self-justification followed. Justifying the self is the principal form of exercise in Lebanon. The principal form of exercise for a visitor in Lebanon is justifying American foreign policy. The Marine incursion was the question of the hour. Moslems wanted to know why the Marines were sent here. Christians wanted to know why they left. And Druse wanted to know why, during the Marines brief stay, they felt compelled to shell the crap out of the Chouf.

  My answer to everyone was that President Reagan wasn't sure why he sent the Marines to Lebanon. However, he was determined to keep them here until he figured it out, but then he forgot.

  Nobody held it against me personally. The Lebanese never hold anything against anyone personally. And it's not considered rude to root for the home team. There were a number of Moslem guests at the party. The villagers had nothing but affection for the Druse Billy Hadad, who towered over most of them. One teenager, summoning all the English at his command, told me, "Billy, it es ... le homme vert, to connais, `Credible Hulk!"' Billy said the only real trouble he's had with his neighbors and tenants was when he tried to convince them that professional wrestling is fake. It's the most popular program on Lebanese TV.

  About ten o'clock there was a change in the festivities. Acting on some signal I couldn't perceive everyone suddenly began to drink and shout. A little later the bridegroom was carried in on the shoulders of his friends accompanied by drums, flutes and the eerie ululation Arab women use to mark every emotional occasion. Awful tapes were put on a large Rasta box. There was bad Arab music, worse French rock and roll, and Israeli disco music, which is the most abominable-sounding thing I've ever heard in my life. A sister of the bride got in the middle of the circled chairs and did quite a shocking traditional dance.

  There was something of the freshman mixer to the party. The young men and women held to opposite sides of the crowd, eyeing each other furtively and being shoved out to dance only after prolonged giggling and conspiracy among their fellows.

  "I haven't been laid since I was in Beirut last June," said Billy. "Out in the country it's marriage or death."

  Good-fellowship in the Middle East can be a bit unnerving. You'd best get used to being gripped, hugged and even nuzzled. I was taken aback the first time I saw two fully armed militiamen walking down the street holding hands. Large amounts of Arak aid in acclimitization. The sense of affection and solidarity is comforting, actually, when you realize how many of the men throwing their arms around you have pistols in the waistbands of their pants. A Mercedesful of gunmen kept watch on the road.

  Eventually I was thrust onto the dance floor and matched with a hefty girl who had me do Arab dances. This was, justly, thought hilarious. But my discotheque dancing made an impression. I gather the locals are not familiar with
the Watusi, the Jerk and the Mashed Potatoes.

  The whole celebration was being videotaped, and every now and then one of the revelers would use the Sony's quartz-halogen light to dry the skin on a snareless Arab drum.

  Sometime in the early morning Billy and I returned to his farm. There was protracted questioning from his housekeeper on the floor above. She wanted to make sure we were us before she threw down the door keys. We locked ourselves in with five deadbolts.

  I never did get to see the historical points of interest in Sidon.

  The overland crossing going north was a horror. The Israelis run Betar and the midpoint interrogation center, and conditions there are ugly but organized. However, the clumsy and violent South Lebanon Army has control of the Jezzine checkpoint.

  There were about a thousand angry and panicked people in the small town square when I arrived. Most of them were poor Shiites, and all of them seemed to have screaming children and every earthly possession with them. One group of two or three hundred were fighting with fists to get on a bus. Soldiers ran through the crowd screaming and firing Uzis in the air. It was only ten in the morning but already 90 degrees. I looked for Israeli officers. There were none. I sent Simon into the crowd. He returned in a few minutes.

  "No ways but bus across," he said.

  "How do I get on it?"

  "You can not."

  I paid him off and sent him home. I was sick with the dysentery every foreigner in Lebanon suffers. My head ached from the wedding party Arak. There was, it appeared, a man with a gun selling bus tickets. But every time he tried to sell one a crowd of three hundred would rush him like a rugby scrum. The man fired his pistol directly over the people's heads. Bullets smacked into nearby masonry. The crowd quailed and ran backward, trampling each other. Then they gathered themselves and rushed the ticket seller again. He grew purple with shouting, reloaded, fired again. The crowd moved away and back like surf. Then with one great surge they chased him on top of a truck.

  Most of these people had been camping at Jezzine, if that's the word for sleeping in the streets for days with your children and no food. They were desperate and fully insane. The crowd began running against itself, into walls, up the sides of buildings.

  I was at a loss. I might be at Jezzine still if my arm hadn't been grabbed by someone who said, "I ken you're new here." It was a magnificent Scotswoman, tall, thin and ramrod straight. With her was a gentle-looking Lebanese girl. The woman was Leslie Phillips, head of the nursing school at a medical center near Sidon. She was on her way to get textbooks in Beirut. The girl was named Amal, the same as the militia. It means "hope." She was headed to America for-college.-

  Miss Phillips placed us in a protected corner and said, "I'm going to speak to the man with the gun. I always go straight for the man with the gun. It's the only way you get anywhere in this country." She vanished into the melee. The crowd went into a frenzy again and made right for Amal and me. I suppose I would have been filled with pity if I'd been in a second-story window. As it was I was filled with desire to kick people and I gave in to it.

  Miss Phillips was gone for two hours. She emerged from the donnybrook perfectly composed and holding three bus tickets. I asked her what all the shooting was about. "Oh," she said. "that's just Lebanese for `please queue up."' An ancient horrible Mexican-looking bus pulled into the crowd smacking people and punting them aside. Amal was carrying a co-ed's full complement of baggage in two immense suitcases. I handed my kit bag to Miss Phillips, grabbed these and made for the bus. Or tried to. Three steps put me at the bottom of a clawing, screeching pile-up, a pyramid of human frenzy. I heard Miss Phillipss voice behind me. "Don't be shy," she said, "it's not rude to give a wee shove to the Lebanese." I took a breath, tightened my grip on the suitcases and began lashing with Samsonite bludgeons at the crowd of women, old men and children. If you ask me, it was pretty rude, but it was that or winter in South Lebanon. I fought my way to the side of the bus. There was a man on top loading luggage and kicking would-be roof rack stowaways in the head, knocking them back on top of the crowd. I hoisted one of Amal's fifty-pound suitcases onto my head, waved a fistful of Lebanese money at the loader, kept hold of Amal with my other hand and fended off the mob with both feet. This doesn't sound physiologically possible, but it was an extreme situation.

  I got both suitcases on top at last. Then we had to scrimmage our way to the bus door in a flying wedge, Miss Phillips leading the way. Just as we were getting aboard, a worse brawl yet broke loose in the throng. One of the South Lebanon Army guards leapt into the middle of it and began beating people in the face with the butt of his pistol. The crowd exploded. Miss Phillips was heaved inside. I was squashed against the bus door and lost hold of Amal, who was sucked into the maw of the Lebanese. Miss Phillips reached out the bus window and tapped the pistol-whipping soldier on the arm. "Pardon me, lad," she said, "but those two are with me."

  The soldier left off his beating for a moment, pushed me into the bus and fished Amal out of the crowd. I pulled her inside, and the soldier went back to hitting people. Everyone in the crowd was yelling. I asked Amal what they said. "They're all claiming to be someone's cousin," she sighed.

  About two hundred people were packed inside the bus, which was built to carry fifty. More kept wiggling in through the windows. It was well over 100 degrees in there. Every now and then a soldier would get in and climb across the top of people to beat one of the illegal passengers. There was more shooting outside. I found myself in a full body press with a Shiite girl. She was rather nicely built but over the top from claustrophobia and shrieking like a ruptured cow. "What's Arabic for `calm down'?" I yelled.

  "As far as I can tell," said Miss Phillips, "there's no such word."

  We did eventually get under way, the bus backing over people then swaying horribly in blinding dust on the half-lane-wide mountain road. We were only stopped, unloaded, searched, interrogated and held at gunpoint several times.

  Fortunately, the Lebanese are a clean people, even the very poor ones. It wasn't like being packed into a bus on a sweltering day with a bunch of French or anything.

  Akbar was waiting at Bater. I found out later he'd also come up from the city the day before and waited all afternoon in case I got thrown out or evacuated or tried to get back to Beirut on foot.

  Travel to the North is less arduous. George Moll, the video editor at ABC-TV's Beirut bureau, and I went on a trip to the Bsherri Cedars. Traffic on the coast road north of the city is stalled by checkpoints. Amazing what a few guys standing around with guns can do to create gridlock. "I G Lebanon" bumper stickers are popular with the motorists. "Kill them all-Let God sort them out" T-shirts are popular with the militias.

  It's important to remember, when dealing with these militias, that the gunmen are mostly just kids and they're getting a big kick out of the whole thing. I suppose this is only natural when young people lack proper recreational facilities and well-supervised activities to keep them out of mischief. They need sympathy and understanding. Or a sixteen-inch shell from the battleship New Jersey.

  I wanted to visit the gorge of the Nahr el Kelb, the River of the Dog, a strategic point on the Lebanese coast just north of Beirut where for more than three thousand years invading armies have carved stelae commemorating their passage. A tunnel for the coast highway now cuts through the gorge wall, and the carvings are reached via a ramp above the traffic. The cuneiform characters of Nebuchadnezzar II, the stela of the Pharaoh Ramses, the Assyrian has reliefs, a Latin inscription from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Greek carvings from the Seleucid empire-they've all been completely effaced by air pollution.

  Don't go to the famous Jeita Grottoes at the source of the Dog River, either. These have been turned into a military training base. Although what kind of military training goes on among a bunch of stalactites lit by colored spotlamps, I can't tell you.

  A few miles north of Nahr el Kleb is the Casino de Liban on Juniye Bay. This was pre-war Lebanon's attempt at Monte Carl
o and used to have elaborate floor shows featuring plump blondes who were out of work in Europe. You can still gamble there, though just being in this part of the world is a gamble enough for most people. The blondes are gone.

  On up the coast road, twenty-four miles from Beirut, is Byblos. Since the Christians were run out of the Beirut airport, the Phalange has taken to landing planes on the highway here. Expect another traffic jam. Byblos was considered by the ancients to be the oldest city in the world. In fact, it has been an established metropolis for at least six thousand years. Main Street, however, looks most like the oldest part of Fort Lauderdale.

  By the seaport, however, is an Arab fortification atop a Frankish castle constructed with chunks of Roman temples which had been built over a Phoenician town that was established on the foundations of a Neolithic village-quite a pile of historic vandalism.

  The war has not touched Byblos except to keep anyone from coming here. We found one consumptive tour guide playing solitaire in a shack by the entrance to the ruins. He took us through the deserted remains spieling, with pauses only to cough, a litany of emperors, catastrophes and dimensions.

  The Lebanese are chock-full of knowledge about their past. Those who do learn history apparently get to repeat it of their own free will. The whole business filled me with inchoate emotions and a desire for lunch.

  The Byblos Fishing Club at the base of the Crusader seawall has wonderful food and no other customers. They don't speak English anymore so I went back to the kitchen and picked out what I wanted. Seafood got with dynamite fishing is very tender, it seems. On the wall of the Fishing Club are dusty photos of better days-Ray Milland, Ann-Margret, David Niven, Jean-Paul Belmondo. "Now this," said George, "is archaeology."

  There's a very good hotel in Byblos, the Byblos-Sur-Mer, whose owner hadn't seen anyone in so long he bought us drinks when we stopped to use the pay phone.

  You can proceed to Tripoli on the coast road, but shouldn't. The Arab Democratic Party, which supports Islamic unification, is having a big fight there with the Islamic Unification Party, which is in favor of Arab democracy. And the Syrians are shooting at both of them.