Bomb threat in London

Voltaire says at the end of Candide, after his hero has traveled the world and witnessed what, for the most part are miseries, that one should focus in life on cultivating his or her own garden.
Now that I was to leave today for a "holiday" while trying to get a grip with what is happening in Lebanon, I heard on the 830 morning news that there was a huge bomb threat on the UK. Heathrow airport was turning into mayhem, with thousands of passengers unsure whether they were to leave or not, carry on luggage was banned and mother's were oblidged to taste baby milk before boarding a plane. From the TV it looked really grim.

This meant I had to go once again on full alert mode. Call taxi companies, air companies, and wait to see what to do next. Bags were packed in hurry and a decision to leave the laptop behind had to be made fast (a painful one I might say).

I had breakfast with my sister, for a bit of a cheering up and what do we do next session (she is also supposed to leave soon). I was eating out of nervousness, at the same time, my body was refusing to digest. As they say in French, "j'avais le ventre noué". Seeing people turning the page on frightful pictures in Lebanon, while thinking whether I should just cancel everything made me disgusted with it all.

I tend to be of the lazy kind who first gets depressed, starts to wonder "why me", before someone or myself, wakes me up of my torpor and puts me on adrenaline/"I will fight back" mode. Besides it's not about me, even though I was also supposed to fly to Boston on September 11.

What plane to take, how to get out of the UK, is there any room on Eurostar, how much more will we have to pay... Agitation, agitation, agitationn. In the midst of this, I receive two news alert on my cell phone. Beirut's old lighthouse is being bombed (located in the center of Beirut, next to the American University of Beirut), as well as the national radio's antenna on the northern coastal town of Amshit. Why Israel needs to bomb the old lighthouse as well as the radio antenna escapes me. Soon, every bark of Lebanon's trees will be deemed a communication tool used by the Hizbollah.

Ahh, and in London, the media is going crazy as well as the authorities, scaring people and building a sense of panic. (Poor Mr. Blair must hav just e just arrived to his holiday desitination).

Of course, no news of Lebanon on the televisionn, as if that part of the world no longer exists. My hint is that the terrorist threat of bombing 9, 10 planes in the air flying between the UK and the USA, is a way for al Qaeda to steal back the show from Hizbollah, who was definitely getting all the attention these days.

It's as if they were saying, gee these guys are standing up toIsrael, while we are doing nothing. People in the Arab world are going to look up to them instead of us. We must do something really big, really soon. And so, al Qaeda called up its cronies in the UK and told them to activate a plan that had probably been dormant for a while.

When I say the world is going crazy I really mean it. True, as a Lebanese I might be more exposed to it than the people at breakfast this morning perusing their morning paper and drinking lattes as if everything was alright. They haven't left a war zone a few weeks ago, nor were they boarding a plane today.

Well I may go on vacation orI may not. All I know is that I don't really want to muster the strength to wait with crowds in an airport, going through long security checks, etc.

Aghr!

I just switched the TV on, to hear Seniora cry out to our Arab brothers...Seniora is really the only man we can be proud of, who has shown the world another face of our poor country than that of Hizbollah. It took a month for the Arab foreign ministers to make it to Beirut.

Meanwhile my aunt in Ashrafieh, says the bombs last night were horribly loud and that there is practically no food left in their beloved Monoprix... 40 more people died in new raids on Tyr and Saida.

bridges, beaches and magazines

Well, my parents are more or less severed from Beirut, although Lebanese ingenuity being what it is, people are finding creative ways to circumvent the bombed out bridges and roads. They are also trying hard not to worry us. Each time we call, we hear a faint rather sad voice, when my dad or mom realizes it's us, the voice dramatically changes to an unnaturally cheerful one. It sounds like we are interrupting a barbecue fest they are having with their other steadfast neighbors. My mom insists, everything is fine, and she is preparing a little cocktail for no less than 18 people tonight, although, she isn't t sure they will all turn up. Meanwhile, my dad is invariably queuing for gas when I call, and the dry cleaner down the road has emigrated to Venezuela. The maintenance people who work in the area, mostly Egyptians, have also left, after witnessing last Friday's orgy of bridge bombing across the Lebanese coast.

In all these question marks that has become the lot for most Lebanese, I received an email from Time Out Beirut, one of the magazines I work for, saying they weren't expecting us to run until January. January! That sure is a pessimistic view on things. But then again what can we report on? Fun activities for kid refugees in the Beirut area? Free meals in Hamra ? Prayer time for those who still believe in God, gadgets for the Hizbollah?

The interruption is really brutal. Less than a couple of months ago, I had driven across Lebanon's coast, from south to north, to rate Lebanon's top 20 beaches. There are no more Pangias, Bamboo beaches, Oceanas or Eddé Sands to write about now. It still hasn't quite sunken in for me. Let alone imagine that these places have become the sites of ecological disasters and refugee meeting points. The Tyr Rest House and its public beach for instance, are the backdrop for Jim Muir's news reports for the BBC . When I was writing my beach review, I was inviting readers to imagine the potential of Tyr's long stretch of white sand. It could have become a Lebanese take on California's Venice beach: pretty woman rollerblading on the nearby sidewalk , supertannedd lifeguards checking out the scene, beach goers dancing on the latest MTV tune. Sure, it was a bit of an americanized take on things, that might not suit everyone, but it is was better than this! As for the pristine white and chic Orchid beach that tried so hard to emulate St Tropez' s Nikki beach on its first weeks of opening, it must now be slathered with oil and dead fish.

I'm relieved ELLE Middle East is still planning to roll out it's next issue, that would only be number 2, albeit with a month's delay. We are also planning to print a special issue "women and war". It's a sad beginning for our magazine.

Working on issue number two , led me to write about Kate Hudson's new film (You, Me and Dupree) and making sure we receive the pictures in due time. This proved unnerving. Asking people at Universal Pictures in Lebanon for photos of Kate Hudson at a time when our country is being blown up, requires nerves, and a sensof humor. The request has been unsuccessfull because of downloading problems. Which meant I randomly called up Universal in Hollywood, only to be faced with incomprehension and no tangible help.

Which reminds me of the Guggenheimm Museum press service , writing last week from New York to ask me if I could send them a couple of copies of our first issue, which features a snippet on their current exhibition and an interview with Zaha Hadid. Huh, yes, I would love to send you some copies, unfortunately, our airport has been bombed, same goes for the main roads out of the country, and our port is currently under a blockade enforced by Israeli warships. As soon as the situation gets better though, I will be more than happy to send you some copies. People...

Did you say koala ?

Waiting for the bombing to end in a different country can very much feel like landing in a Becket play. Everything seems absurd. Mini motorbike drivers will be fined if they do not follow the rules in Britain and bare breasts are illegal at Paris Plage. Listening to the news outside of what is going on in Lebanon increases the bubble feeling. A bubble only fellow Lebanese, Palestinians, Kurds and some disenfranchised Iranians and Sudanese can relate to. As for the rest, you might be talking to them, mingling with them, having drinks with them, but you are more or less speaking another language. Your language relates to what is going on in the homeland period. This, I'm sure must bore the majority of people who don't have any sort of link to Lebanon. In the same way, hearing about koalas, as I did yesterday, seemed a bit too out there for me right now.

I am a closed toad , waiting to have a normal summer like everybody else. But until Olmert and Bush continue waging a senseless war (there goes all hopes of a joint Israeli-Lebanese club Med venture south of Tyre), than conversation topics and mind focusing activities will concentrate on Lebanon. As my dad told me over the phone yesterday, it's a bit hard to try and read a book these days.

Be that as it may, I find it interesting to see Lebanese are still divided on Hizbollah. Sensitive souls that for most part, do not share Hizbollah ideas, have nevertheless rallied, by sheer anger against the level of destruction caused by the Israelis. Some people, with a tougher carapace, still believe despite the huge cost inflicted on the country, that eliminating Hizbollah is a necessary evil.

Well for all my fluctuating opinion is worth, I would tend to believe that Hezbollah will not be silenced through the arms, and that sending in an international force (Meraba!) will not solve anything. UNIFIL has not been much use (except bringing in money to the bars of Gemmeyze) and the last time we did have an international force to evacuate Arafat and co, that was a real fiasco.

Bravado no more

Now that any kind of bravado has disappeared, can I say it? I envy my French, British, Greek, you name it, friends who have never had to bother about war in their country.

Loud silence

Every week you hope will be the last . You call your parents, who keep saying the same thing. We're sick of coming and going. We're sick of playing the refugees. This time we're staying. They always end with the habitual, let's see what happens next week.

Meanwhile, Olmert is asking for another 10-15 days. As I read on another blog, it almost seems like souk style haggling. Come on Mr. Bush, give me another 10 days...Sure Ehud, and you know what, because you are such a good customer, I'll add another 5 days.

The road to Faraya was bombed yesterday. Faraya is the glitzy ski resort where all the wealthy Lebanese are waiting for the nightmare to end. The winter chalets have been reopened, the poor Filipinos have been brought to take care of the kids, and a long holiday of waiting has settled in.

The violence has been so fierce that even the most moderate of Lebanese are starting to hate Israel. And this is coming from someone who was hoping Lebanon could soon sign a peace treaty with our southern neighbor and get on with business. After all, that's what we are both supposed to be good at. That won't be that easy now. Imagine shaking the hand of a business partner and wondering whether he had a hand in bombing Cana...

I'm surprised the Israelis miscalculated their actions so badly. First, how did they not know Hizbollah has been rearming so efficiently in the past few years. Secondly, how could they possibly think that bombing Lebanon's civilian population and infrastructure was not going to breed more hatred towards Israel?

Bombing the same city twice in a decade, both times in the most gruesome of ways is staggering.
No wonder people are angry. Of course, showing people yelling, breaking into the beautiful UN building in Beirut, will just make us look like barbarians. Makes it easier to bomb us later.

Don't ask me what I m going to do next

I might have been closer to the bombings while in Lebanon, but things haven't really changed now that I'm in London. My country is still being torn to pieces.

No CNN on the TV I'm watching, only the BBC. This in theory should be a good thing, CNN after all, is the McDonald's of information - (as my dad would say), still, I miss being able to flick from one news channel to the other.

We still haven't seen one Hizbollah soldier. Is this the invisible army? Feels a bit like Vietnam. The analogy is not that far fetched as the 1982 military operation in Lebanon is considered by many Israelis to be their own Vietnam war.

Hizbollah might be invisible, but the Israeli army's press service is definitely not stingy in showing its tanks and soldiers in their pre- attack maneuvers. One cameraman caught an Israeli soldier eating a bag of chips, sitting under a tree. For me, seeing a soldier eating a bag of chips before he goes on to firing rockets and killing people is just very off. I'm sure that bag will end up being trashed somewhere in Lebanon, or the wind will take it that far, contributing to the appalling level of pollution in Lebanon. Bombing the oil and fuel tanks has apparently led to spills, making the sea look black. As for all the bombing, the country is now filled with a thick layer of dust.

People keep asking me. Usually getting closer, creating a bit of that "between you and me feel". "So, what are you going to do now?" What do you mean, what am I going to do now? Wait until the bombing ends and then return to Lebanon. From there, participate in the reconstruction, go on with my work, help get the next issues of the magazines I work for going, that sort of thing. I hate that question because to me at least, it feels loaded with negativity. As if to say, but who says you will ever be able to get back to Lebanon dear?

I just called my aunt, who did the opposite trip to everybody else: she returned to Lebanon on one the repatriations boats. She said there were about ten other Lebanese people, in the midst of the humanitarian workers. It reminds me of a man on the boat I was on who once he arrived in Cyprus, after 13 hours of travel, said he wanted to go back. My aunt then went on to tell me about how the elevator in her building was broken and how amazed she was to see the maintenace people show up in less than an hour. This impressed her. Maybe we' re good at the small things, at providing services, but really, when will we apply some of that efficiency to the political realm?

Je reste calme

aghr! Israeli warships just barred a French ship filled with medical supplies from getting to Lebanon

Invaded by a Bible Studies website

I am now writing from London, having been repatriated on one of the last British chartered boats leaving Beirut port. But more on that later.

I have been trying to log onto my blog, and for some reason, a Bible Study page kept coming up instead, with a big picture of Jerusalem. Not exactly what I want to see right now.

This is my second day in London. The first day was pretty hard. As Godard said in one of his movies, sometimes the body travels faster than the mind. My mind was still very much in Beirut yesterday. Today, I'm trying to adapt. Watching David Hasselhorf (sp?) on morning TV promoting his latest movie or TV show is just surreal. Life goes on everywhere else. I kind of want to be surrounded by other Lebanese, people who have gone through the emotional shock we have just gone through.

Leaving was of course very difficult. Until the very last minute I was torn about leaving. Knowing someone was waiting for me in London and expecting me to do everything I could to leave was the main incentive to finally get on the boat. Feeling a bit like a spoilt brat that just leaves when things turn bad though. Les rats quittent le navire ! as my dad keeps saying, and I'm one of them.

The British army was incredible. The day Lebanon gets such a civilized army, then we will really have made it from third world to developed world. The trip was gruelling in the Greek ship chartered by the army. A lot of waiting, especially once we arrived in Cyprus. The Cypriot authorities had dispatched two custom officials to stamp dual citizens' passports - namely everybody on the boat. We embarked at 3pm, we left at 7pm, we arrived at 1am in Cyprus, and then waited three hours standing in the hot and smelly corridors for a mean Cyrpriot custom official to stamp our passports. At this point we had become cattle. Cypriot behavior doesn't seem to have changed much since the last war. Babies were crying non stop, often leading me to wonder how a baby could cry so loudly and for so long. Next to me, waiting in line was a little girl, maybe three years old having a nervous fit. She couldn't stand waiting any longer. It was 4 am and she had to wait in line. In these situations, people become on edge, as people in front refused to let women with babies - perhaps because there were so many - pass in front. Two Swiss students (?), young and trendy looking were huffing and puffing, quite unhappy to have to wait in line with the rest of us Lebanese. They refused to let the women and infants pass in front and then cut through the lines themselves. Super les suisses!

Once in Cyprus, I talked to my "country" representative who seemed more concerned in handing out Oreo cookies than helping me find a way out of Cyprus. I headed to Larnaca airport, along with three other Lebanese. The group included a fairly old couple who were going to Trinidad and Tobaggo, the place they had left in 2000 to return to the homeland, and a 23 LAU hotel management graduate, very upset that his summer plans and his country were being destroyed by a bunch of fanatics, operating on both sides of the border . "It was going to be a great summer you know..." Yes, I know, rooftop bars, beaches, weddings, parties, lots of tourists...

A nicer Cyprus airways hostess tells us, we were lucky to arrive today and not the day before. Apparently, 1000 Indians were sleeping in the airport, before being repatriated to India in two
jombo jets. Another surreal scene I'm sure.

Just got a text: Condi is deeply concerned about what the Lebanese people are going through.

Getting lessons on my country from foreign journalists who think I shouldn't be saying the things I say. Well tough luck. Right now I hate the Hizbollah - and their way of life - just as much as the Israelis.

Luck was on my side in Larnaca airport as there was still room on the direct London flight, to my huge surprise. It was difficult being in that airport with British, French and Italian tourists on holiday wearing very short shorts and colorful t-shirts. Russian travelers hovering at the airport bar next to me, ordered double Whiskey shots. It was not even 8am yet. None of these people had a clue of what was happening only 15 minutes away by plane.

The flight was difficult. The guy in front had pushed his seat real back and my seat didn't go back because of the exit row just behind me. I was tired and on edge. Two loud British girls were gossiping, singing. Just after landing, I got a texto saying the Israelis had bombed the cell phone networks as well as the LBC international antenna, killing with it the head of the station. The station is perhaps 2 km from where my family was staying. Why exactly did they bomb LBC, it's really a very mainstream and harmless station. I guess it was just doing a bit too much of a good job reporting what was going on. And the cell phones? Our freaking livelihood.

Started to cry in front of the Pakistani custom official who patted my hand and called her supervisor. He in turn comforted me, said he read Robert Fisk's articles and seemed to now Lebanon's geography quite well.

While I complain about Cyprus Airways' seats and buy some fresh t-shirts at Gap, people continue to be killed - what am I saying - hunted down by the Israeli army, as the heart breaking photo published by the Guardian and the Independent remind me.