A color television screen showing an advertisement for men’s underwear. The underwear is worn by young men with smooth, hairless bodies.
Another ad for a new men’s skin cream. A title fills the screen: Take care of your skin the way you take care of your car.
A number of young men gather in a circle around books and magazines spread out on the sidewalk. A tabloid-size newspaper with a large photo of a half-naked girl. From the paper’s headline the word “rape” appears.
Crooked alleys that pass through old Ottoman-era souqs. They also lead to the red-light district. Martyrs’ Square. Taxi stands for Mercedes service cars heading to Tripoli, Amman and Aleppo. Sahat al-Burj Square in the evening. Crowds in front of the modest façades of clothing and shoe stores. Falafel restaurants and sweets shops. Piles of mamul and baraziq sesame cookies, and trays of baklava behind the glass windows. The crowd multiplies in front of the narrow entrance to a movie theater. A wide billboard carries the half-naked image of the American movie star Raquel Welch.
Inside the theater during the show. Thick clouds of cigarette smoke. Raquel Welch is on the screen in threadbare rags that reveal her legs. Shouts and whistles from the audience.
Part of the crimes and accidents news from a daily newspaper:
Burj Hamoud Crime
Badariyya Muhammad Taha had unmarried relations with an unidentified person. She sought refuge in the Good Shepherd monastery where she bore a child. A month and a half ago, her family took her back after pledging to the office of the prosecutor general that they would not repudiate her. Ten days ago, they married her to Kamil Karam Taha, a former employee of the municipality of Beirut. He brought her to the capital, and they resided at his home in the Burj Hamoud district. Five days later, she was found murdered: she had been shot not long before by two bullets to the head and chest, fired at a close distance. The husband vanished.
Assault on a Child
Wadia Z. (age 17) lured the child, Rajaa, to his private room and tore off her clothes, then attempted to assault her.
Hamra Street by day. The Wimpy Café. The Mövenpick. The Horseshoe. The Modka. Café de la Paix. In the middle of the street, a demonstration by young men in chic clothes. The demonstrators hold up placards in English and French, bearing leftist slogans in defense of the lower classes.
Fiery slogans and posters on the walls.
On a wall, a sketch done in oil paint of Gamal Abdel Nasser, and beneath it, his famous expression: “What was taken by force can only be restored by force.”
A number of young men surround one of their own who is sitting at a table opposite the camera. He is wearing an open shirt that reveals thick chest hair and a gold chain. He is talking into a microphone in fiery tones: “The Zionist-imperialist movement in the Arab region has come to form a dangerous and direct threat to the gains made by the Arab revolution, its defiant masses, and its nationalist, socialist, democratic, progressive and pro-unification aspirations…”
Fairuz in the final, stirring section of the song “Jerusalem, Flower Among Cities”:
The radiant wrath is coming
The radiant wrath is coming, I believe with all my heart
From every direction it is coming.
A row of television, video and other equipment. An elegant young man smiles at the camera and points at the equipment: “More than forty video games, all of them fun and exciting.”
Another ad for similar technology above a television screen. A voice from behind the screen: “Now! A new world of three-color viewing. Watch and record five-hour video tapes! Search for the image you want, pause it, and be in control of the whole system from the comfort of your chair!”
A poster carrying these words above a background of snow-covered mountain peaks:
Lebanon
Land of Welcome and Tolerance
Crossroads of Civilizations
Young men in black military outfits and large caps of the same color march in unison on a street while shouting: “Han duwa, han duwa” (“One, two” in French as spoken on the Lebanese street).
Posters of different sizes with photographs of Lebanese leaders.
A title fills the screen:
The Commanders of Lebanon
Fairuz’s voice in the song “Oh Me Oh My”. Note to self: The song’s melody is taken from a symphony by Mozart.
The camera flashes photos of Camille Chamoun, Suleiman Frangieh, Pierre Gemayel, Father Charbel Qassis, Patriarch Khuraysh, Raymond Eddé, Saeb Salam, Mufti Hasan Khalid, Kamel Assaad, Imam Musa al-Sadr, Rashid Karami, Elias Sarkis.
The camera paused on the image of Kamal Jumblatt.
Title card:
Kamal Jumblatt inherited from his father substantial religious and feudal authority among the Druze community. But his wide-ranging cultural education and travels led him to Gandhi and Marx. He became a devout Sufi who practiced yoga and became a vegetarian. That didn’t prevent him from actively participating in the game of Lebanese politics and playing by its rules, such that he has been described as a presidential kingmaker and head of shadow governments. He has often complained that the Druze — according to the confessional balancing agreement — don’t have the right to anything more than a ministerial post. He formed the Socialist Progressive Party. Before he left his position as minister of the interior in the early 1970s, he allowed the Communist Party to operate openly. He won the Lenin Peace Prize. In recent years, he has been a leader of the urban poor against the scions of the major families.
A round table around which sit the leaders of the Nasserist, Baathist and Communist organizations, at the center of which is Kamal Jumblatt. Among those seated are George Hawi, Muhsin Ibrahim, Ibrahim Qalilat, Bashir Obayd, Inaam Raad and Kamal Shatila.
The French song “Coupable”. The melody was borrowed for Fairuz’s famous song “I Loved You in the Summer”.
The city of Nabatieh in the south. A religious festival in commemoration of Ashura, celebrated every year by the Shia on the 10th of the Islamic month of Muharram. A parade of Mercedes cars and mopeds bearing aloft portraits of Khomeini and Musa al-Sadr. The latter’s portrait carries these words: “My role is defined by God, my nation’s history, my religion and my umma.” On top of the lead car sit two young men, one of whom wears a white shirt saying “I am yours to command, Hussein”. The other one wears a black shirt with “Allahu Akbar” painted on it. Both of them wear black headbands that nearly cover their eyes.
A public square in the middle of the city. Dozens of young men standing in circles beat their shaved heads with their hands. Some of them use the edges of swords instead of their hands, and continue striking their heads until blood flows. (The tradition is an expression of the Shias’ remorse over their ancestors’ stance more than 1,000 years ago, when they abandoned Hussein, the son of the Imam Ali, and let him be slaughtered at the hands of his enemies.)
Latin religious prayers.
Inside a deserted, dimly lit church. A priest ascends the pulpit and opens the Holy Book. He reads aloud: “Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarers’ lodging place; that I might leave my people and go from them! For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.”