“Have you been following the news?” the text message said.
I had not been following the news.
“Most roads now are blocked by the demonstrations. Be careful on the way to my place.”
I’d heard there’d been a protest the previous day against the Lebanese government’s plan to charge a tax on WhatsApp users, but I assumed that it would be over in an hour or two, like most protests, and that everything would go back to normal. People would grumble about how corrupt and incompetent Lebanese politicians were, but they would get on with their day-to-day lives, interrupted by the occasional gun fight or car bomb—just like always.
Another text message came in from Ziad. “I am not sure there are any taxis at the airport.”
* * *
I have dim memories of watching news reports about the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and 80s. Up to one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand people, about 5% of the population, were killed. Many more were injured or displaced by the fighting, or left altogether. Even since the end of the war in 1990, Lebanon has been rocked by occasional political violence. In 2005, for example, the country’s first post-war Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, famed around the world for rebuilding downtown Beirut, was killed by a car bomb.
In 2018, I saw a Lebanese movie called The Insult, about an escalating conflict between two stubborn men in present-day Beirut. The true nature of the conflict caught my attention. It wasn’t personal, it was about what the men represented to each other—rich versus poor, Christian versus Muslim, citizen versus refugee. History. Even with the limited understanding of Lebanon I had at the time, I suspected that many people there would have similar prejudices, and prejudice has always been fascinating to me. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the bits of sunny, palm-treed Beirut I saw in the background looked very nice.
About a year later, I was chewing on a shawarma wrap while Arabic-language music videos blared on the TV in a restaurant in Toronto when the idea of doing the same in an actual Arab country suddenly seemed romantic to me.
My first thought was that I would go to Jordan. Jordan has specific attractions, like Petra and Wadi Rum, after all. It also has a reputation for peacefulness and stability. But the more I read about mountainous, green, tortured Lebanon, the more I found myself wanting to go there.
I was skittish about it. I mean, the governments of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia all said the same thing about Lebanon: avoid all but essential travel. But after several months of painstaking research, I was convinced that I could go, enjoy myself and probably even come back alive.
Of course, this was assuming that a new civil war wouldn’t start on the day before my arrival.
When I first started looking at flights between Amman and Beirut, 230km straight as the crow flies, I noticed there was a big difference in flight durations between the two different carriers: Royal Jordanian flights were two hours long; Middle East Airlines flights were one hour long. Since flying is the least enjoyable part of any trip, I planned to go with the quickest option. But there was something about the situation that nagged me. Why would two different non-stop flights between the same two points have such different flying times? And how could a 230km flight possibly take two hours?
I dug a little bit, which is when I learned that Royal Jordanian, like almost every other airline in the world, does not fly over Syria because Syria is at war with itself (with the generous help of the rest of the world). Middle East Airlines, on the other hand, has no qualms about flying over an active warzone. I booked my flight with Royal Jordanian.
While on the plane, I tracked the flight path with the GPS on my phone, which I had only recently learned is always on, even when it is not connected to the internet, and, as it turned out, even when the phone is in airplane mode. I watched in puzzlement as the plane flew south along the border between Jordan and Israel, in the opposite direction of Lebanon, for an hour. Only when Israel was behind us and the plane entered Egyptian airspace did it bank west toward the Mediterranean and thereafter north to Lebanon.
Jordan and Israel are at peace, so I don’t understand why the flight didn’t cross Israeli airspace. My guess is that since Lebanon doesn’t recognize the existence of Israel, perhaps Israel doesn’t recognize the existence of flights to Lebanon. But I’m still not sure.
Anyway, the two-hour flight gave me a lot of time to think about where I was going. I thought about the civil war, when the militias dragged enemy combatants through the streets behind their vehicles. I thought about the jihadist gunman who’d killed two police officers and two soldiers in northern Lebanon just a few weeks before. I thought about Ziad’s text messages. And I worried.
Shortly before we were about to land in Beirut, the young Montrealer in the seat next to me asked me if it was my first time going to Lebanon. I said it was. “Well, be careful,” he warned grimly. “It’s not the top quality vodka they use. Even if the bottle says Absolut or Grey Goose or whatever.”
* * *
After landing, I watched with a deepening sense of dread as the bags circulated on the carousel again and again without mine among them. “We will put a trace on it,” an airport employee told me. “If it arrives, you will have to come in to pick it up.”
Pick it up?!? Pick it up?!? I didn’t forget to put the goddamned thing on the plane! Your guys did! I was outraged, but I kept it to myself. I was relieved to have found someone fluent in English and didn’t want to do anything to alienate them.
“Hey,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “Do you know if there are any taxis out there? I heard there may not be any taxis.” His mouth said that he wasn’t sure, but his body said that he had very grave doubts indeed.
“Well,” I continued, desperate to cling to any human connection, however tenuous, “What’s a fair price to Mar Mikhael if I do find a taxi? Would twenty or twenty-five dollars be okay?”
Without raising his head from his paperwork, his eyes met mine with a look of pity. “You will not see that price tonight,” he said.
My heart sank further as I stepped through the doors into the arrivals area and found it filled with people standing around, holding onto their luggage and looking bewildered. I knew that if the taxis were running, if the roads were open, these people wouldn’t be there. I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I walked through the crowd and toward the exit.
“Taxi?” asked a fat man with bristles for hair. “I can take you on a motorcycle.”
Oh… Uh … I wasn’t expecting that. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “How much to Armenia Street in Mar Mikhael?” “One hundred dollars,” he said almost before I’d finished speaking. I shook my head and slipped back into the crowd.
I was ready to admit that we were all stranded there, but I needed to know more–like, how long were we going to be stranded there? And was somebody working on finding a solution to the problem? And who, exactly, was in charge?
I wandered around looking for an information booth, or at least someone who looked official, but there was nothing and no one obvious. Eventually, my eyes set upon handsome, young man in a beige, zippered jacket with an official-looking patch on it. “What is going on?” I asked, simply assuming that he would speak English.
“The roads are blocked,” he said. “Tires are burning everywhere. The only way out is on a motorcycle.”
There was a brief pause, then he asked if I needed a ride. “Yes,” I said, my voice cracking like a pubescent boy.
We discussed prices. I started low and stayed there. There were almost certainly several ATMs in the terminal, so I could have withdrawn almost any amount necessary, but I was trying to put him off. The thought of riding into the city on the back of a random stranger’s motorcycle terrified me. I imagined him taking me to a dark corner, telling me to get off and leaving with my carry-on bag and wallet. I would be at the mercy of the locals, who might be thirsty for American blood and not quite fluent enough in English to understand what it means when a man yelps: “I’m from Canada! Canada!”
The whole time, the warnings of the government websites I’d consulted earlier played on a loop in my mind: the road to the airport is safe, but do not under any circumstances leave the road to the airport until you are north of the stadium.
“It isn’t easy for me,” the young man said. “It costs me money to have my guys here. Even I had to park my car far away and come in on a motorcycle.” His intense hazel eyes drilled into mine. “The roads are closed,” he repeated. “Tires are burning everywhere.”
Sensing my distrust, he pulled out a piece of photo ID and waved it in front of me. “See? I am licensed,” he said. “You can even take a photo of my ID.”
Of course, I wouldn’t have recognized a legitimate Lebanese taxi license if I saw one. For all I knew, it might have been government-issued ID attesting to the fact that he was a sociopath that should be avoided at any price.
But I really, really wanted to get to my apartment and into bed, so I offered him all the money in my wallet, a mix of American and Jordanian bills worth about USD$53. He surprised me by agreeing and led me out through the doors to the taxi stand where he summoned a lean, wiry compatriot in a tight, dark t-shirt and dirty jeans. The two talked briefly then he turned to me and said, “Muhammad will take you to Mar Mikhael,” then walked away.
I felt betrayed. I had believed that I would be travelling with a man who had shown me his ID, a man who actually had ID. But Muhammad? I didn’t know anything about Muhammad…
Fortunately, Muhammad solved that problem immediately. “Don’t fear,” he said. “Muhammad is a good driver.”
He swung my bag onto the scooter floorboard in front of him and I climbed on the back. Still, I was filled with misgivings. I was afraid that I was being led into certain peril, but I was even more afraid that I would hurt Muhammad’s feelings if I questioned his intent. So, I looked for an excuse to back out of the deal. There didn’t seem to be much keeping me on the bike, for example, so what if we hit a bump, and—. We lurched forward and I put my arms around his waist. Loosely.
“That money was for the airport,” he announced as we gained speed. “You must pay Muhammad, too.”
A minute later we arrived at our first intersection. Four-wheeled, steel garbage bins were turned over on their sides blocking most of the road. Car tires burned in the spaces between them, lending an orange glow to the billowing smoke and the night sky above. A few young men, less than a dozen, stood around watching over the scene. They didn’t seem to be angry. For the most part they weren’t even shouting. It was like they were idly tending a campfire and lost in their thoughts.
Swarms of other young men on motor scooters buzzed this way and that, skirting the roadblock by mounting the curb and riding a short distance on the sidewalk before bouncing back down onto the road. Muhammad gestured for me to cover my nose and mouth and we did the same.
For the next five minutes or so, this happened at every major intersection. I wouldn’t say that I began to relax, exactly, but I did get into the rhythm of the thing and was a little more open to experiencing the sultry October night as it was—bitter smell of melting rubber, fear of death and all.
Shouting in his ear to be heard above the noise of the scooter, I asked Muhammad what was going on. “We want them out!” he shouted back.
“Who?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“The government!” he replied. “We want them out!”
Mindful of the history of politics as blood sport in Lebanon, I listed the key government figures aloud, one by one, so that I could determine Muhammad’s bias and, thus forewarned, take care not to offend him.
“What about Hariri?” I shouted, referring to Saad, son of Rafic, a Sunni Muslim and the Prime Minister.
“Out!” he replied.
“OK. What about Aoun?” (The Maronite Christian President.)
“Out!”
“Berri?” (The Shia Muslim Speaker.)
“He’s the worst one!” Muhammad shouted.
At this point, I noticed that the sign over our lane said Chatila. Chatila is a Palestinian refugee camp where nominally-Christian Lebanese militiamen killed hundreds and possibly thousands of civilians in 1982 while the Israeli Defence Force, lurking nearby, set off flares to light their way. Somehow Muhammad must have read my mind because he told me he wanted the Israelis to come back. “It would be better,” he said.
I was shocked to hear him say this, but didn’t say anything in response. Israel is an extra sensitive subject in Lebanon, which refuses entry to anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport. I was worried about what might happen to me if anyone noticed that I was able to say the word “Israel” without spitting in disgust.
Shortly thereafter, our surroundings changed from grimy, low-rent highway commercial to something cleaner, more upscale and urban, and the roadblocks started to thin out. Some had even been deserted. At one, the flames on the rightmost tires were only a couple inches high, so Muhammad decided to skirt around it without bothering to mount the sidewalk. I squirmed in my seat. “Don’t fear,” he said and I leaned right, looked away and winced as we rode by.
A few minutes after that, things started to look familiar, like something I might have seen during my research about Lebanon. We actually seemed to be heading in the right direction and getting close to my host’s neighbourhood. I pulled the t-shirt down off my face.
Muhammad announced that we’d arrived at Armenia Street, the main street in Mar Mikhael. There’d clearly been a roadblock there earlier as piles of burnt garbage were scattered by the sides of the road, but there was no one around and the road was open, so we motored onward past an auto repair shop (shuttered), a grocery store (open?!?) and several restaurants and bars (busy!!!). There were people on the sidewalks going about what appeared to be normal nighttime activities, seemingly unruffled by the chaos just a few kilometres away.
“I told you Muhammad is a good driver,” Muhammad said. “Now you must pay. Muhammad needs a drink.”
Surprised at having made it that far in one piece and feeling a little cocky, I said I’d thought Muslims didn’t drink. “Muhammad is not that kind of Muslim,” he replied.
As we stopped at a bank machine so that I could withdraw money, my anxieties came flooding back. Yes, of course, this was his plan all along… As soon as I got off the bike, he would speed away with my bag. Somehow, Muhammad must have read my mind because as I got off his bike, he handed me his phone. He had something of mine and now I had something of his. It was mutual assured disruption if either of us did anything untoward.
I walked into the bank vestibule and punched-in a request to withdraw 100,000 Lira, then about a hundred dollars Canadian. The machine whirred and beeped and spat out in two 50,000 Lira bills. Shit, I cursed under my breath.
We rolled the last two blocks to my host’s apartment building and I got off. Muhammad slid my bag from the floorboard of his bike and placed it on the narrow sidewalk in front of me. “Do you have change for this?” I asked him while waving a 50,000 Lira bill in his face. He brought his eyebrows together in a frown, looked at me like I was out of my mind, and said that, no, he did not have change. I gave him the money, shook his hand and thanked him, and he ducked into the bar next door.
I used the opportunity to WhatsApp my host, who came down and let me into his building.
* * *
You can read more about my adventures in Lebanon at Someplace Nice.