I spread out the newspaper and looking up at me in the middle of the page was a large headline that read: “Decisive resolutions for a ceasefire in West Beirut”. I looked for the date, and found it was November 7, 1980 — today’s. I went back to the news item and read: “In the last few hours, firm decisions have been taken to clamp down on the clashes that have taken place in the last two days in West Beirut, following a series of calls between leaders of Lebanese parties and groups, Palestinian organizations and Syrian authorities.”
Below that I read the full details of the events it referred to. They had begun when the car belonging to the president of the greengrocers’ syndicate in West Beirut (whose name was Munir Fatiha) was at an intersection and tried to pass in front of another car driven by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The two drivers exchanged curses, then both pulled out guns and aimed them at each other. The driver of the second car fired first and shot the syndicate president, killing him, then fled.
As soon as the victim’s son — who was one of the leaders of the Nasserist organization known as the Mourabitoun (“the Sentinels”) — learned what had happened, he assembled a military team and attacked the house of Bashir Ubayd, one of the leaders of the SSNP. There the attackers found another party leader, the poet Kamal Khayrbek and his young niece Nahiya Bijani, and killed all three of them. Clashes broke out between members of the two parties immediately afterwards.
I searched all over the paper for new details, but only found a reference to a lead article in the Lebanese paper al-Safeer, which said that armed militias in West Beirut — who were followers or allies of the Lebanese National Movement, the Palestinian resistance or the Syrian government, or who were (to use the newspaper’s expression) “operating on their own account” — were responsible for the security vacuum and the chaos, as well as the crimes and lawlessness that take place under those conditions, from murder and armed assault to extortion, illegal appropriation of apartments and buildings, and the piling up of uncollected trash.
I put the newspaper to one side and spread out the American paper. It had yesterday’s date. At the bottom of the first page I spotted a small article with the title “The war that doesn’t want to end”. My eyes quickly scanned:
The armed clashes that took place yesterday in West Beirut offer a highly indicative picture of the state of affairs in Lebanon since the civil war broke out in 1975 among the people of this beautiful country. (Its 3 million inhabitants before the war have been reduced to 2.5 million now.)
Officially, this war ended in 1977, once Arab peacekeeping forces, primarily made up of Syrian troops, assumed control. But the various conflicts between the two sides have not definitively come to an end. Mostly that is because recently these clashes have centered on internecine fights within each side, reminiscent of Chicago’s gang wars in the 1920s and 30s, or bloody fights between Mafia families.
This past July 7, Bashir Gemayel (age 33), the young military leader of the Maronite Phalangist militia, and de facto ruler of East Beirut, led a campaign of elimination against the strongholds of his partner in the Maronite front, Camille Chamoun. He cynically called it the “corrective movement” and in a few hours killed more than 500 men from the “Tigers” militia, who were followers of Chamoun. As a result, a submissive Chamoun agreed to participate in the meetings of the military council of “Lebanese forces” under the command of Bashir Gemayel, in exchange for his continuing to get his share of the profits from Dbaiyeh harbor, in addition to a million dollars cash.
Four months before the massacre of the Tigers, an explosive charge, operated by remote control, went off in Bashir Gemayel’s car. It took the life of his daughter Maya (age 3), who had been born the night before another attack her father organized against the summer palace of the previous president Suleiman Frangieh, in the village of Ehden. Among the victims were Frangieh’s oldest son Tony (age 36), his wife Vera (age 32) and their daughter Jihan (age 3).
These massacres accompanied the rise of Bashir Gemayel, and his ambition to impose his leadership on the Maronite front, or the “Lebanese front”, as it calls itself. It is composed of the forces of Pierre Gemayel (the Phalangists), Chamoun (the Tigers), and Frangieh (the Giants), not to mention Charbel Qassis (the Permanent Congress of Lebanese Monastic Orders) and Etienne Saqr (Guardians of the Cedars).
On the other side of the Green Line that separates the two halves of the Lebanese capital, similar battles take place between the various forces that make up the opposing front — sometimes called the Islamic front, and other times, the Nationalist, Progressive or Leftist front.
In addition to the Palestinian organizations, some of which have ties to Arab countries that are at each other’s throats, such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya, this front is made up of Nasserist parties whose allegiance is divided among Iraq, Syria and Libya, and two Baathist organizations, one of which follows the Iraq line, while the other falls in behind Syrian leadership. Others are Communist groups that fly the flag of Marx and Lenin, a socialist party that is considered the liberal wing of the Druze sect, and scattered Islamist factions, some of which represent local leadership for Sunnis and Shia. These are semi-feudal leadership positions bound by firm ties to monarchies in the Arab world, whereas others represent new forms of leadership for these two religious communities, some of which enjoy the support of Khomeini, while others are in Gaddafi’s good graces.
Discord can easily flare up among these widely-differing groups, as a reflection of existing struggles among Arab regimes, or because of struggles over spheres of influence, in the same way that the trivial dispute in the street could lead to a wide-ranging mêlée. Every individual, one way or another, follows an organization or a party. Tribal thinking holds sway: the parties he follows must leap to his aid, whether right or wrong, using one dominant idiom — that of the gun.
The newspaper concluded its editorial by stating: “The coming few hours will reveal whether it is possible to cordon off the clashes and impose order, or whether the country will continue its slide into a seemingly bottomless chasm.”
The Saudi was reading his newspaper with interest as he nervously looked up at me from time to time, trying to get a fix on my reaction. I let my face stay frozen until I finished reading, then I turned to him.
“Obviously, we’ve arrived at just the right time,” I said.
Chapter 2
I took my passport from the bored passport officer, and put it in the bag hanging on my shoulder. Then I picked up my suitcase in my right hand, and the duty-free bag in my left, and crossed the passport control barrier to the small airport arrivals hall, without anyone bothering to inspect me, even from the customs area.
I walked to the bank window and exchanged fifty dollars at the rate of four lira per dollar. Then I headed to the airport exit, a few steps away. There was a row of taxis directly outside the door, overseen by a policeman carrying a notebook. I noticed the Saudi standing beside one of the taxis, and I heard him ask the driver to take him to East Beirut.