Beirut Day Two – Images by Jamie McDonald
Photo Gallery from a day wandering from Gemayzeh, through Downtown, onto Hamra and the Corniche. Off to see the Beirut Marathon this morning and then the hippodrome to see the weekly horse racing event.
Beirut Day Two – Images by Jamie McDonald
Photo Gallery from a day wandering from Gemayzeh, through Downtown, onto Hamra and the Corniche. Off to see the Beirut Marathon this morning and then the hippodrome to see the weekly horse racing event.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to my loyal readers (you don’t really exist do you?) that I’m writing this blog update at the same time as my previous post is languishing away in my drafts folder.
I’m on Malev Flight number 241 from London Gatwick to Budapest, hoping to make it to my Beirut connection but it is looking more and more hopeful than realistic. London too is more an aberration than realistic for Gatwick. Seriously, I live in Fulham, not 35 minutes from Heathrow on the Tube; that my readers is a London airport. I caught a bus (20 minutes) from my house to Putney, unwilling to carry my 40 odd kilograms by foot to the train to catch the train to Clapham Junction (10 minutes) to then go onto Gatwick (40 minutes).
Despite the odd trip or two with a roller case or a suit bag I’m a backpacker, and not too precious, but I also like to get where I’m going with a minimum of fuss, so when I’m labouring down the stairs at Clapham Junction with far more weight on my arms, shoulders and back than my airline would care to know I need not be called a dickhead by someone who couldn’t get past me. Seriously jerkoff, you try and carry 3 bags downstairs next to the old lady having a cuppa and NOT be in your way. Allegedly he missed his train to Brighton because I didn’t yield for him. I hope that it he missed his next four connections. Really I do. I hope that he was hoping to get to Africa the long way and I really screwed it up for him.
As the aforementioned backpacker though, it’s bloody nice to be sitting in seat 2D on Malev’s 737-700, a seat that yields not only supreme service as it is in FRONT of the iron curtain, but because at 6’1″ I can actually completely stretch out my legs with no fear of an angry citizen yelling at me for kicking their chair. The other perk of getting a bump to Business Class is the fact that a flight departing 60 minutes later than planned is instead of an inconvenience, an excuse to help yourself to either another Gin or Peroni from the lounge bar. OK, so it’s an excuse to go both, but hey, I’m normally in 245D, not 2D so I’m going to lap it up.
I leave London for Beirut with mixed emotions. I was last there in March 2006, a time that was inconsequential until just three months later when a conflict erupted between the Iranian backed Shia militia group Hezbollah and their arch enemy Israel. I had the opportunity to visit border towns, the southern cities of Tyre and Sidon, have a small run-in with Hezbollah for filming their locations, and then make my way back to Beirut in time for a beer in the Wellington bar at the Mayflower Hotel. I had no idea at the time of what I was witnessing; that it is entirely possible that the members of Hezbollah that scrubbed my video tape of their whereabouts were involved with the beginning of a war with their southern neighbour. Wary of the past, I want to be confident of the future for Lebanon, but with so much talk from both sides about another conflict next year it seems this is the time to visit Beirut, before it all goes to shit again.
With a heavy heart yet one that is full of hope I head back, now, in 2010 to see what has happened to this beautiful country. Too many articles to matter now have written fondly of Beirut and its ascendancy to the ‘must-do’ or ‘bucket list’ for travel. I have read if not all, then many of them. None mention the misery of the Southern Lebanese, nor the residents of West Beirut who suffered most from the bombs dropped by Israel in 2006 (not to mention those dropped in 1982, nor 1978.) Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948, and then more in 1967 spend their days in poverty in Beirut and surrounding cities, along with their generations of children. Seriously; Refugees have had children who have had children, some of whom have had children. None possess a passport of any relevance. Lebanon doesn’t grant them citizenship as they see them purely as overstaying refugees who are rightly Palestinian and should live in the non-existent state of Palestine. There are still passports kicking around the refugee camps that bear the insignia of the United Kingdom.
A long expired British Mandate Palestinian Passport says much more about the past than it can ever do for their future. Recently mauled by mid-term elections the political capital that the Democrat President Obama has staked in Middle East peace is all but gone. Conservative politics in Washington is much at the forefront of the agenda for the next two years, and the meddling of a recalcitrant Israeli government and fractured Palestinian Authority, with Hamas excluded is doomed to the annuls of history. The only hope for the refugees of Palestine living in Lebanon is that the government gets real about offering them the opportunity to work, study and play as equals. As an Australian living in the United Kingdom I often complain of the pressure to perform at work and to maintain a good record so that I can maintain my visa. How then must Palestinians who have no home to return to feel when they are not granted even the chance to go to a Lebanese high school, despite spending every minute of their lives in the country?
When I first spoke with my boss’ boss about going to Lebanon to shoot an essay he and I were on very different pages. I was (and am) interested in the plight of refugees both Lebanese and Palestinian, but he was keen to get an essay shot on the changing fabric of Lebanon; the haves, and the have nots. If there was a clash of poverty clashing with pure hedonism then it is Beirut. I remember feeling slightly ill in 2006 when I caught a cab from Sabra refugee camp and not 2 minutes later found myself in a traffic jam with a new mercedes to my left, a jag to my right and we were stuck right behind a hummer. I too am excited now about this project as I hope it portrays all that Lebanon has to offer, and I’m pretty keen to duck over the border to Syria for a day or two.
I mean come on; the road to Damascus? Who wouldn’t take it? Who knows what will come of it?
OK, so as soon as I get some net I will post this, and then get to work on the much neglected Morocco post that is languishing in drafts!
For those that wonder or care – soundtrack from London to Budapest has been a great mix of Warren Zevon, Devendra Barnhardt, Clash and the classic Australian band, Hunters and Collectors.
Jamie
