The Real Thing

Documentaries, Associated Press photographs, breaking news…they all aim to give one a sense of being there, of understanding. But nothing comes close to the real thing.

The Palestinian Refugee Camp: I drove by it, nothing more. The walls were high and lined with spirals of barbed wire. A small orchard of citrus trees buffered the wall on the inside. The entrance was blockaded with sand bags and soldiers. Inside acres of homes – permanent homes reminded me that thee were much more than camps, but after decades of use had morphed into neighborhoods. My mind raced with excitement and curiosity. My imagination saw children kicking balls in the street, mothers washing clothes and laboring over the stove. It saw fanatic congregation around a dining room table. I “saw” Iranian money and Western fear. I saw 18 years of Israeli occupation and the children going inside. I saw a world I could never completely imagine or comprehend. Then we were past – on to new neighborhoods in the relaxed beach town of Saida. Ones that didn’t have the history, the tensions and the propaganda to fuel my spinning stories or created the knotted feeling in my gut out of brick, mortar and orange trees.

The Beeka Valley: Where Hezbollah is the people’s party in the Beeka Valley, grown out of social services and good works. In the West we tend to think of it only as an extremist group of terrorists and fanatical Muslims. In America, they are labeled terrorists. In Lebanon they are, to some, heroes – the teachers, the food banks, the advocates for the needs of the common man (yes, man, Hezbollah isn’t quite ready for “person” yet). The truth is somewhere in between. I knew this as we drove out of Beirut towards the ruins of Balbeck, but wasn’t prepared for the emotions and spinning thoughts that joined me on the road. Every 25 meters of road a light pole rose from the center divide for 4km down a main of road. Two banners hang on each – one yellow, one green, both bearing Hezbollah’s iconic symbol. Below hung banners of different political martyrs or leaders. Seemingly calling for unity of this selfless front. I all of a sudden became very self conscious driving my little blue rental car into the belly of a political movement that hates everything that has shaped me as a person…okay, not everything, but as I looked into the faces of the selfless men who died for the cause on the passing banners, I felt small contemplating the passion behind this foreign and fanatical belief system.

The feelings I had driving around Lebanon may not have been fact checked, they may have been driven by emotion and influenced by Western propaganda and/or “framing,” but it was more intense and interesting than hitting play on a DVD or picking up the morning paper over coffee.