[Mb-civic] Lebanon, My Lebanon - Anthony Shadid - Washington Post Outlook

[William Swiggard]

Lebanon, My Lebanon
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By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Sunday Outlook
Sunday, April 16, 2006; B01

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon

There are not too many addresses in Lebanon, in the precise, ZIP Code 
sense of the United States; they tend to be anecdotal, albeit spoken 
with authority. Such were the directions to Jdeidet, Marjayoun, a small 
Christian village tucked in a rugged corner of Lebanon, nestled between 
the improbable borders of Syria and Israel.

Go right at the larger-than-life portrait of Hasan Nasrallah, the leader 
of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, I was told by my friend Hikmat 
Farha. At the picture of Musa Sadr, an iconic Shiite leader, turn left, 
he said. Then pass the posters -- and there are many -- of Shiite 
militiamen killed while fighting Israel. A checkpoint, Hikmat said, and 
from there you enter the stretch of Lebanon once occupied by Israel.

The Israeli occupation that ended here in 2000 cost lives. It forged 
myths that propelled the fight and created divisions that linger in its 
wake. In this part of the country, locking the region in the past, 
isolating it, the occupation preserved the spectacular vistas that 
elsewhere in Lebanon suffer from relentless quarrying and the scourge of 
cheap concrete.

There is nothing masculine about the beauty here. It neither shouts nor 
declares. It is graceful and gentle -- hills rounded by age and terraces 
crumbling with time. Olive trees unfurl like a carpet through the wadis, 
and the Litani River waters sheer valleys. No peak is higher than the 
other; none is too proud or imposing.

Jdeidet, Marjayoun sits at the end of one of those wadis, its stone 
houses, roofed with red tile, climbing a hillside.

"Marjayoun is beautiful," resident Nabil Samara told me after I arrived 
that winter day, "but it needs people."

He could have been more blunt. Picturesque as it is, Marjayoun is dying.

In this forgotten corner of Lebanon, that wouldn't matter much. Not that 
many people have even heard of the town. It probably wouldn't matter to 
me, either, except it was once the home of my grandparents, and I 
suspect my grandchildren will never see it.

As Marjayoun withers, so does a part of the Middle East. In a way, the 
village no longer makes sense, succumbing to the inevitability of 
urbanization and, more worrisome in the Arab world, the fading of its 
diversity as identity becomes defined by sect and ethnicity. Once brash, 
Marjayoun is now lonely; once confident, the village now contemplates 
its demise.

The House of Shadid

A green folder sits in my file cabinet. "Family records," it reads. 
There are citizenship and marriage certificates; discharge orders; the 
story of my grandmother's arrival in Oklahoma, written by one of her 
daughters; and an account of my grandfather's journey from Beirut to 
Boston aboard a ship called the Latso. They are the tangible records of 
a century-long wave of migration that has left millions more Lebanese as 
emigrants than residents of their homeland, populating the world from 
the Americas to Australia.

Less certain are the occasional family stories passed down to my 
generation from Marjayoun. More dreamlike than descriptive, those 
memories are like the Arabic literature I read when I began studying the 
language in Cairo 15 years ago. Everything felt hazy back then, probably 
because I was understanding every fifth word of the text.

But now I was in Marjayoun, for the first time, with a month to spend. I 
hoped to turn distant recollections into experience.

Jabal al-Sheik, known as Mount Hermon in English, was one of those names 
that had flitted across time, and as I encountered it that first day, I 
realized it deserved its place in memory. Like a sentry, its snowy peaks 
keep vigil over the town. On a clear day, they are imposing and vivid, 
as though you could walk out your door and sit at their foot. On 
cloudier days, they become more distant, like a mirage. On this day, the 
peaks reminded me of an old man, the valleys of his face speaking to 
age, perhaps wisdom.

Time is a constant in conversation in Marjayoun. It is often expressed 
through families, known as houses, that casually chart their histories 
back centuries, sometimes millennia. The houses whose names end in 
vowels -- Bayt Farha, Bayt Gholmia and Bayt Samara, the family of my 
grandmother -- trace their origins to the Houran in southern Syria. They 
are called Hawarna. The families whose names end in consonants -- Bayt 
Shadid, Bayt Tayyar -- are known as Baladiyya, or local, having been 
here when the Hawarna arrived 400 or so years ago. Some say they, too, 
came from the Houran, only earlier. Others point to their origin as 
Homs, in western Syria. Taken together, both Hawarna and Baladiyya claim 
descent from Bani Ghassan, an ancient Christian Arab tribe that predates 
Islam.

Bayt Shadid was once such a presence in the town that a neighborhood had 
taken its name from the family, Hayy al-Shadadni. There was an Anis 
Shadid who was mayor of the town a generation ago. Like most of my 
family, he was short. He wore a tarbush, the once-popular Ottoman-style 
hat, and lustily appreciated the water pipe. But now many of the Shadids 
have left, for Brazil, France and the United States. Their greatest 
presence today in Marjayoun is in the cemetery I visited soon after 
arriving.

No one insults another's family here, at least in their presence. But 
the Shadids have an unusual reputation. Smart, people would tell me time 
and again, and they would cite examples of their intellect.

Then, after befriending me in those first days, they would smile and 
offer a little more detail. Crazy, they would say, especially so as they 
got older. They would smile again and offer more -- foul, foul tempers.

Hikmat, knitting his brow, offered this advice: Don't cross a Shadid.

Battlefield Amid the Springs

In Arabic, Marjayoun means "field of springs," and they are plentiful. 
Al-ain al-kabira is next to the house where I was staying, and al-ain 
al-saghira is a short distance away. The field below Marjayoun watered 
by those springs is fertile, even in winter, and the town itself was 
long prosperous. Farming was frowned upon; wealth came through land or 
professions. When Beirut was a provincial capital at the turn of the 
century, Marjayoun was said to rival it in size. It once had four 
newspapers, and its schools -- with instruction in English and French -- 
remain the region's envy. For much of its history, it looked beyond 
modern-day Lebanon to Palestine, Jordan and Syria. Beirut was an 
afterthought; life revolved around trading with less-remote towns such 
as Haifa, Damascus and Quneitra nestled in the Golan Heights.

Dictated by the French in 1923, Lebanon's modern-day borders changed 
that. Even more disruptive was the creation of Israel in 1948. New 
borders were drawn with Syria's loss of the Golan Heights to Israel in 
1967. Centuries-old trade routes were severed, and land holdings were 
arbitrarily partitioned. During Lebanon's civil war, which began in 
1975, Marjayoun was run by a local militia, somewhat vaingloriously 
named the South Lebanon Army; Israel later occupied it, turning it into 
a battlefield with Hezbollah.

Perhaps 800 people live here today, a shadow of the more than 10,000 who 
once called it home. Work is scarce -- the young go to Beirut or abroad. 
House after house is abandoned, including my grandmother's, with two 
ancient olive trees at its doorstep. Even by Lebanon's standards, 
Marjayoun is neglected, so much so that many of its remaining Christian 
residents have a certain nostalgia for the occupation. Not for the 
Israelis themselves, but for the money they brought.

Raah al-shekel wa ijit al-mushakil , one friend told me. "The shekel 
went, and the problems came."

'Sandbags for the West'

Life in a village, even without money, has a certain ease. Lunches last 
hours -- replete with spectacular dishes such as lamb, wild spinach and 
pickled green tomatoes. Marjayoun has a reputation for drinking -- arak, 
an anise-flavored liquor, most of all. (One villager was reputed to have 
finished a gallon of arak when his wife left for a weekend. He started 
with a glass of olive oil, to brace his stomach.)

In these days, I held my own. It was during one of those sessions that a 
friend joked about being tambal , a bum. The story: Someone sprawls out 
under a date palm. To eat, he opens his mouth. If the date falls on his 
nose, he misses his meal. If it tumbles near his ear, he goes hungry. He 
sits, waits, until the date finds its mark.

Nimr Musallam told me the story. With Hikmat Farha and Fahima, the 
elderly woman I stayed with, they became my closest friends. Nimr and 
Hikmat were lifelong khushbush , buddies, even if their politics were as 
divergent as they could be.

Nimr spent the 1970s in Oklahoma, with my relatives. He left a part of 
himself there, and part of Marjayoun has left him behind. A 
predominantly Greek Orthodox village, Marjayoun in the past mirrored the 
politics that defined the sect. Before the civil war in 1975, virtually 
everyone was a leftist, either communist or an adherent of a pan-Syrian 
group known as the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The divisions were 
fierce; especially after a few drinks, rival partisans sometimes slugged 
it out in the streets. These days, as elsewhere in the Arab world, 
ideology has faded; most of the old party cadres have passed away or 
given up politics.

Instead, people in Marjayoun now identify themselves in more primordial 
terms. They are simply Christian, reinforcing their minority status, and 
for many Christians here, their leader is a former general named Michel 
Aoun.

Nimr himself is not politically active, but, a rare exception, he 
retains the anti-sectarianism of the past.

As we sat at lunch, he talked about his admiration for Mohammed Hussein 
Fadlallah, the senior Shiite Muslim cleric in Lebanon.

"His goodness reflects Jesus Christ," he told me. "I see Jesus Christ in 
him. If there's a football game and Fadlallah on television, I'll watch 
Fadlallah."

Hikmat is a strapping, proud man. "You must be the tallest man in 
Marjayoun," I said when I first met him. "The second-tallest," he 
corrected me. He identified himself forcefully as a Christian, but as an 
Arab, too, and he is very much an Arab man.

"I'd never shake your hand and ask you for something," he once told me.

And in Marjayoun's twilight, the future worried him. The Christians, he 
said, were disappearing, especially from his village.

"We are the sandbags for the West," he said.

We Are All Muslims

It is Ashura, one of the holiest times of the Shiite calendar, 
commemorating the death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson in a battle 
14 centuries ago. There are no Shiites in Jdeidet, Marjayoun itself, but 
the chants, soft and rhythmic, drift through the window from neighboring 
villages. It is a chorus, in a way, a refrain of the region's 
complexity, of that diversity now disappearing.

Jdeidet, Marjayoun has one Sunni mosque, and a church for each Christian 
sect: Orthodox, Maronite Catholic, Greek Catholic and Protestant. Next 
door is Dibin, a mainly Shiite village. So are nearby Blatt and Khiam, 
across the valley and home to a once-notorious Israeli-run prison. Kfar 
Shoba, climbing Jabal al-Sheik, is Sunni, as is Kfar Hammam and Shebaa. 
Rashayya Fukhar, a long walk, is Orthodox and Maronite. Further away is 
Hasbaya with its Druze, Muslim and Christian inhabitants.

Sectarianism tempers everything. Like the chants, it shadows life, a 
legacy of civil war and more ancient affiliations.

Nimr told me a story of a Protestant friend whose car was stopped at a 
Muslim checkpoint during the war. The young militiaman looked at his 
identification and his religious affiliation. He grew confused.

"What is a Protestant?" he asked his commander. "Should we kill him?"

"No, no, let him go," his commander answered. "They're killing Catholics 
in Ireland."

Ghassan Tueni, a Lebanese journalist and politician, once told me a line 
that I found memorable. Every Oriental Christian -- by which he meant 
those living in the Middle East -- has a part of Islam in him. On that, 
Nimr and Hikmat were in rare agreement.

"If you cut me, you see Lebanon," Hikmat told me. Almost as if on cue, 
the call to prayer from the Sunni mosque began. "You see the prophet 
Muhammad, you see Imam Ali, you see the cedars. You see everybody in my 
country in my heart."

He refilled our scotch glasses and grabbed a piece of paper. Three sons 
had inherited 17 camels from their father, Hikmat told me. The eldest 
son was to receive half, the second son a third and the youngest a 
ninth. The inheritance was indivisible. The sons fought, then took their 
dispute to Imam Ali, whom Shiites consider the successor to Muhammad. To 
solve their dispute, Ali gave them one of his own camels, making 18. The 
oldest son then received nine, the second son six and the youngest two 
-- in all, 17 camels.

"Now give me my camel back," Ali told them.

"How can you not respect such a man?" Hikmat asked me.

Nimr shook his head. "Imam Ali was a great man," he said, and he quoted 
two lines in Arabic from Nahj al-Balagha, the collection of Ali's 
sayings, sermons and speeches, amounting to some of the most eloquent 
expressions of the Arabic language.

"This happened 14 centuries ago," Hikmat said.

A Tree Grows in Marjayoun

There are two olive trees in front of my grandmother's house, deserted 
but still beautiful. Both are ancient, no doubt the same ones my 
grandmother glanced at before she left in the 1920s for Beirut, then 
America. The most ancient olive trees have enormous trunks, like loosely 
bundled ropes. Part is covered in bark, the rest is smooth like a scar.

After a few feet, it ascends into a ball, spreading its branches low to 
the ground. The leaves are green with a silver tint, almost shiny. 
They're long and thin, like a feather. Before the eye, they look dull. 
 From a distance, they reflect, as though giving off light. In a land of 
graceful beauty, the olive tree is the most elegant. Its height never 
speaks to its age. It is more modest. Its trunk suggests its years by 
its features, the same furrows of Jabal al-Sheik.

"This tree is a blessed tree," Nimr said.

He shrugged, at a loss for words, as though he were asked to explain faith.

I turned to the task at hand. With a borrowed shovel, I started digging. 
The soil was old and crusty on top, ravaged today by the elements around 
it. As I dug further, the rocks turned to pebbles, and even deeper, the 
soil became rich and fertile. The olive tree cost me $4, and I probably 
overpaid. Its trunk was no thicker than a pen, and its branches arched 
no higher than my chest. But set in the hole, 10 feet from the trees my 
grandmother once knew, I suspected it would speak the same language someday.

It would stay humble in its age, a vestige of another time.

I sat in silence afterward on her porch, the snowy peaks on the horizon 
reflecting the languid Lebanese sun. In the distance I heard birds, then 
the sound of distant voices. It was a reminder, fleeting no doubt, that 
Jdeidet, Marjayoun was still alive.

shadida at washpost.com <mailto:shadida at washpost.com>

Anthony Shadid is a Washington Post foreign correspondent based in Beirut.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401910.html
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