Ramblings of a Wanderer Part III: Sabra and Shatila

The Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps just outside Beirut have been infamous since they were the site of a 1982 massacre carried out by Israeli-allied Christian Phalangist militias, under the supervision of the Israeli army. The Kahan Commission, set up by the Israeli government to investigate what went on (viewed by many to be a whitewash), found Ariel Sharon "personally responsible" for the massacre, in which hundreds of Palestinians (the victims have never been accurately counted) were slaughtered execution-style. After securing the area around the camps, the Israeli forces sent in the Christian executioners, who slaughtered the Palestinians for 48 consecutive hours while the IDF stood watch, launching flares at night to ensure that the killing could carry on round the clock, as efficiently as possible. There is also significant evidence to suggest that even after the Phalangists were called out of the camps and the IDF moved in, the Israeli military continued handing Palestinian victims over to the Phalangists, who carried out further executions in the nearby Cite Sportif stadium.

When the first international journalists entered the camps in the days after the massacre, they were shocked at what they found. Corpses were strewn everywhere, many half-buried under the rubble from the heavy Israeli bombing which had preceded the slaughter, a bombing which has been compared to the horrific 2009 bombing of Gaza for its brutal and indiscriminant nature. As a result, much of the camp had been reduced to ruins and untold numbers killed before the Phalangists ever entered the camps, an important fact which you will not find any mention of in the new film "Waltz with Bashir," for one example. (In case it's not obvious, I did not take any of this first group of pictures. The rest are mine. -SM)

It is for these reasons that my passion for the Palestinian cause drew me to the camps on my recent visit to Lebanon, along with my equally impassioned and driven travel companion, Ivy. We hailed a cab outside of our hotel, boarded, and after a little trouble communicating with the driver we were on our way. We rode most of the way in silence, having no idea what to expect. Sure, we had visited Palestinian refugee camps many times in the past, but this was somehow different. For one thing, we were in Lebanon, where the Palestinian refugee population is notoriously poor and deprived, as the Lebanese government has cut off the residents from most forms of employment without special, hard-to-obtain permits, meanwhile providing only meagher resources for the upkeep and maintenance of the impoverished, partially-destroyed camps. For another, the mere fact that this was Sabra and Shatila we were heading towards, site not only of the above-discussed massacre, but also a legendary hotbed of resistance and conflict during the Lebanese civil war, a base from which Yassir Arafat and the PLO were able to establish de facto control of a large portion of Lebanon, forming a "state within a state" there until the Israeli invasion in 1978, and again in 1982 drove them out to Tunisia.

When the cab stopped, and the driver motioned for us to get out, we were a bit surprised. The camp was not really separated from Beirut at all - no walls to cordon it off from the rest of the city, not even any UNRWA or Lebanese Army outpost to monitor who is entering and exiting the camp, as we had experienced at other camps in southern Lebanon. It merely looked like an impoverished, half-wrecked neighborhood of Beirut, itself a sprawling metropolis. As we walked deeper into the camp, however, and the conditions worsened, it sunk in where we were, and how much different it was from the "rest" of the city. The broken-up, unmaintained pavement quickly gave way to dirt roads, and the conditons around us were rapdily reduced to squalor. Hamas flags flew everywhere, alongside pictures of Yassir Arafat and Hugo Chavez; pictures of the Dome of the Rock and other signs of yearning for the Palestinian homeland were all around. The camp was terribly crowded, and aboslutely filthy.

Everything had such a permanence about it; somehow from walking through this camp, it was easy to see that no one, least of all the Palestinian refugees themselves, expected the "refugee problem" to be solved any time soon. This was not a camp, but a full-fledged neighborhood, a city within a city. It was a desperately poor urban slum, and these Palestinians were simply second-class Lebanese. My heart broke as I thought of how there was little chance any of these people would ever see their families' property inside of what is now Israel; most of the children living in the camp had been born there, along with many of their parents. They were so remote from their roots, so far removed from the idyllic, rolling Palestinian landscapes that their ancestors had once cultivated so dutifully. The brutal Israeli ethnic cleansing of 1948 - the Palestinian Nakba - had separated these families from their roots and traditional lifestyle, from their people and homeland. In that year, the advancing, marauding Israeli army committed massacres, burned and demolished villages, and brought what had been a rising tide of terror and dispossession against the native people to its shocking climax. When the Zionists were finally forced to stop, having shrugged off American and other international calls for the campaign to end, 70% of the indigenous population had been uprooted and driven out, and Arab society was crushed and in chaos.

Since that time, Israel has stood in defiance of countless UN resolutions insisting that the cleansing was unjust, and that the refugees be permitted to return to their homes and to their land which their families had lived on for generations. As part of the Oslo "peace process," in reality a sickening fraud, the great Palestinian hero Yassir Arafat turned his back on the refugees, essentially giving up on the right of return, recognizing that Israel was "right" in 1948, and leaving his dispossessed people to their fates; with no Israeli acknowlegement of the awful, generations-long crime perpetrated against them, no compensation for what was done. Arafat appeared before the world as its now-repentant assailant, a man who had realized he had been wrong to struggle for Palestinian rights all these years, but had now seen the error of his ways, brought to "see the light," and thus permitted to participate in the disgusting display on the White House lawn in which he shook hands with his "friends," Bill Clinton and Yitzakh Rabin, themselves unrepentant mass murders of the people he was supposed to lead.

Unlike the blind optimism I felt in other camps I visited, there was a feeling of darkness all around. Perhaps it was all in my head, but I felt suspicious, almost hostile gazes focused on me from all sides, peering out of dark corners and throgh dirty windows. My skin crawled; I nervously snapped photos of my surroundings, without paying much attention to what I was photographing. Everything was so alien, so remote, that it seemed no matter what I took pictures of I would catch something of interest. I wanted to somehow capture the entirety of this place, to take it with me so I could open it later, when I was ready to absorb it; now I was in a state of shock and near terror, unable to understand or digest what was happening around me. Of course this was impossible; but I continued clicking away, hoping to get something worthwhile.

After we had walked down the main, busy street and emerged onto Beirut city streets on the other side, a large man on a small scooter stopped and asked us if we needed any help. "No," I quickly answered, already walking away before he introduced himself as an officer in the Lebanese army. "Be careful here," he said, a stern look in his eye, "it's not a safe area." We nodded to show him that we knew this, and he asked if we needed anything further. Ivy asked him where the Shatila camp was, since we had just walked through Sabra. He pointed us in the direction, and we thanked him as he drove off. Walking down the street to the adjoining Shatila camp, people nodded to us as we slunk by, some greeting us with a cheerful "Marhaba," others with a solmen "Salaamu Alaikum." As we approached the left turn which the soldier had indicated we should take, I looked up the street with trepidation. It was a narrow, back-alley kind of street which wound its way back into the camp. Before I could turn around to ask Ivy if she thought we should take this street, she was already ahead of me, her head dissapearing into the shadows of the small street. Somewhat apprehensively, I followed her.

On the other side, we encountered a small man who stopped us with a smile, and asked us where we were from in Arabic. "Amriki" we answered, indicated we were from the United States. The man had an ID badge, and seemed to be better dressed than the other men with whom he was conversing over coffee and sheesha, leading me to wonder if he was Palestinian. "Enta Filistiny?" I asked. He shook his head no, informing us that he worked with a Lebanese political party, and was there to help out with the work at the camp. We nodded our heads in approval as he stood up from his coffee, nodded to his companion, and motioned us to follow him. "Don't walk this far back," he said, "you could have problems; someone might rob you or hurt you," he said with caution. "Walk back up this way, and stay in the front of the camp," he pointed down another narrow street which we were to follow. Already jittery and nervous, none of this did anything to relax me.

As we walked down the narrow winding streets, waving and nodding hello to curious passersby, I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be here with Israeli bombs raining down overhead, or with the vicious Phalangist militias roaming about, executing family and friends mercilessly; I could almost hear the screams and wails. It was unimaginable, it was inhuman. As it was, the camp had a thick air of deep collective trauma, it was as if we had somehow crossed through the looking glass into another world, a wretched, awful, irredeemable place. There is no way to put in words nor show with pictures the feeling in the air of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Soon, we had made it back on to the main road from which we entered and I began to recognize my surroundings as we made our way out of the camp, back toward the city of Beirut, back toward the real world, the world I knew where I could think and breathe. I needed oxygen, I needed to think; I felt confused, angry, and more than a little frightened. I felt ashamed to be an American, embarrassed to be so wealthy. I felt that I was somehow responsible for all this, and that I somehow could and must make it right.


As we emerged from the camp and hailed a cab, I began to feel guilty that I had been so afraid. Perhaps I was merely afraid to face the wicked reality of the world and the awful position of so many in it, perhaps the hostility had been all in my mind (not that I could blame the residents of Sabra and Chatila camps if it was not). I turned to Ivy, and hugged her silently as I looked back at the camp from the streets of Beirut before climbing into the cab.


It wasn't until we were in the cab, with the ruins and slums of the camp fading behind us, that I really made sense of it all. Indeed, I was responsible, not just as a human being but as an American. My country is of prime importance to the continued suffering of the Palestinian people; it was the chief sponsor of the Sabra and Chatila attacks in 1982, just as it was in Gaza in 2009. Thus I am responsible, and furthermore, as a member of the most privileged group in the world, it is my obligation to do all I can to make this right, whatever small contribution that amounts to in the end. It is a thankless and lonely task to be sure, but it is the bare minimum which is required of me in view of my nationality and privilege. As Albert Camus put it in his classic The Plague, all that is needed to stop a horrible epidemic from consuming the entire community is "a little common decency." Just as Camus' heroes may not have been able to stop or even slow a plague, it was their duty to their fellow humans to try, even if that meant simply cleaning the streets, counting and burying corpses, and treating the symptoms of those certain to die. I knew as the cab drove us back to our hotel in Beirut's downtown Hamra district that I would spend a good portion of the rest of my life standing up to the plague of violence, oppression, suffering and injustice, no matter where in the world it was found. Like those facing an unstoppable plague, my efforts may not amount to much, as the forces at play are significantly beyond my command. The fact is, I simply have no other choice.

Ramblings of a Wanderer - Part II

The rain had just started to clear as we stepped out into the crisp Lebanese air. It didn't take long for us to grab a cab, and we loaded our bags into the trunk with surprising enthusiasm in light of our trying journey. We gave the driver the address of the hotel we had booked, the Embassy Hotel in the Hamra district on Rue Makdassi. For some reason, this seemingly simple street name proved nearly impossible communicate to a series of Lebanese cab drivers. We would try to pronounce it, just as it appears, only to receive puzzled looks and vacant stares. After repeating it often 30 or 40 times, or receiving help from a passerby, eventually the driver's face would light up, and he would repeat the name back to us excitedly "Makdassi, Makdassi!" often subsequently accompanied by some statement akin to "why didn't you just say so?" Ivy and I both remain puzzled over the difference between their pronunciation and ours.

Once we were loaded into the cab, we set off on the highway toward central Beirut. Pointing out the window at a vast colony of crumbling, crowded buildings, some little more than piles of rubble, the driver said "Shi'a there," a simple sentence which we nonetheless had a difficult time understanding through his accent. It wasn't until he told us that it was one of the Hizballah-controlled neighborhoods of Beirut that we really understood what he was saying, and truly realized where we were. As we continued on the highway away from the airport, signs of warfare were everywhere. This had been the site of some of the heaviest fighting during the Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982, and had no doubt seen combat during the 20-year occupation and subsequent incursions, including recently in 2006, leaving aside the brutal and bloody Lebanese civil war which lasted more than a decade. It was rare that we spotted a building that remained undamaged by large-caliber shells, or bear the marks of bombardment and gunfire. As we drove deeper into the city, we saw fewer signs of violence and less poverty, yet even there it was rare to find a building which did not have at least a few scars. The ride to the hotel passed silently as we absorbed our new surroundings, interrupted only by the cab driver occasionally offering his welcome. Before long, we had arrived at the hotel, paid the driver, and walked inside.

Click on the photos for hi-res versions!!!

The hotel was nice, considering the cheap rate, and was in a decent area of town. As we waited for our key and paid for the 4 nights we would be staying, we looked around at the gawdy 1970s-era furniture, gathered in a sort of living room style arrangement, complete with couches and a television. "Follow me," the woman working at the counter said, and lead us up a short staircase and into the most interesting elevator I have ever ridden. Rather than parting in the middle and opening mechanically, the door was simply on a hinge, as any normal door to a room or a home. Once inside, the door would close and you would select your floor, and the tiny elevator - no larger than a small closet - would begin to move. The truly interesting thing about this setup is that there is no door on the inside of the elevator; the hinged door is attached to the wall on each floor, so as the elevator moves the front is open, leaving the occupants to watch the floors and doors pass by in front of them. Once the elevator arrives at its destination, it is up to the passenger to open the door and step out. More than a few times Ivy and I remained in the elevator once it had stopped moving, waiting for the door to open, only to realize later that it was not going to open, laugh at ourselves, and step into the hall.

We walked down the hallway behind the attendant to our room, which was a bit small, but comfortable. I was immediately enamoured by the balcony, from which the breeze gently blew through the open windows, the light curtains gently fluttering, followed by the now-shining afternoon sun. After ensuring that the television worked (there was no cable, but we were still able to receive Al Jazeera English), the attendant left us and Ivy decided that she would take a shower and perhaps a siesta before we went out for the night to explore the infamous Beirut nightlife. It didn't take long, and she reported the shower worked well, although it sprayed salt water which proved a bit discomforting until we became accustomed to it. She walked over to the window and lit a cigarette, gazing outside as an almost imperceptible smile crept across her lips, the sun pleasantly illuminating every feature of her face. The startling contrast between the shadowy room and the brightness of the outside, penetrating the darkness and ornamenting Ivy's gentle features created a placid, romantic, and almost dream-like scene. I felt so pleased at that moment that I could have exploded.
We layed down for a nap, awaking a few hours later in search of fun. We began by getting pizza and a bottle of wine at a place down the street where we could sit out on the sidewalk and absorb the ambience of busy downtown Beirut. The pizza was remarkably delicious - perhaps among the best I have ever had. After we finished, we moved on to a small bar across the street from our hotel, which we were alone at apart from what seemed like some kind of family gathering. Unsatisfied, yet undaunted, we pressed on. We got directions to downtown, where we assumed many of the restaraunts and bars must be, and set off on foot. Downtown had been one of the sights of the most intense conflict during the civil war, but it had been rebuilt (at tremendous cost) by the recently-assassinated President Rafiq Hariri in stunning nouveau-Ottoman style. It has a very different feel from the rest of Beirut, but the astonishing architecture, with its Ottoman arches and vivid yellow-browns, housing small cafes separated by stone streets closed to all but foot traffic, somehow does not feel out of place.
When we arrived, however, we found the place largely deserted, and mostly dark (the power goes out in Beirut with great regularity, so much so that by the time we left we barely noticed when walking through the city at night and it would suddeny become pitch dark for a few minutes). Nonetheless, many of the small cafes were open, and we took a seat at the first one we found. While we were sitting out on the street, the tables were covered by a tarpaulin roof and plastic sides, probably in reaction to the recent rain showers. As we sat down, we quickly discovered the cafe did not have any food, so we decided to order some sheesha and relax, after which we would try to find some food and head back to the hotel. Not long after our sheesha arrived, the sky broke out into a downpour, torrents of rain streaming from the sky onto the pavement just beyond the clear plastic sides. Soon, Ivy also noticed fairly large hailstones bouncing off the street as well, which struck the tarpaulin roof with loud thuds, causing us to raise our voices significantly in order to speak. We finished our sheesha, paid, and moved to the cafe directly next door which had a similar seating arrangement (temporary roof / siding with tables on the street) and ordered some lebneh, pita, and kebob while the rain, hail, thunder, and lighting battered the street outside. There was something charming and even exciting about this setting, but nonetheless it was good that it slowed a bit before we had to get up to go back to the hotel, allowing us to stay somewhat dry on our walk back. Disappointed but not dismayed, we vowed to try again the next night, and settled in for a much-deserved night's sleep.

We did not get it. We were awoken the next morning at the crack of dawn by the shouting, hammering, drilling, sawing, and other loud activity typical of a construction site directly outside our window, just beyond the balcony. There was construction going on all across the city, rebuilding the parts that had been destroyed by the Israeli bombing in 2006, cleaning out dilapidated and destroyed structures and repairing those which were still viable. I walked out onto the balcony, and saw that there was a large team of workers already assembled there. After a few days, I was not as dismayed at the damaging effect of the construction on my own ability to get sleep as I was shocked by the hours that the laborers worked. They arrived everyday a little past 6 am, and continued all day, not going home until 7 pm or even later. Ivy soon joined me on the balcony to enjoy the morning air (as best we could), and lit a cigarette while we decided what we would do for the day. In the end, somehow I was tasked with searching through our Lonely Planet book for entertainment while she took a shower, and I soon identified an interesting place for breakfast and settled for a stroll through the city to get our bearings. She seemed agreeable once out of the shower, and so it was decided.

The breakfast place, which we had some trouble finding, was called Al Kahwa, and we ended up enjoying it so much that we eagerly returned each day and ordered the same meals, the Lebanese breakfast, and a cup of Turkish coffee. Right across from the American University Beirut, with large windows looking onto the street, the cafe had a laid-back feel which we both appreciated, and the food was simply excellent. The Lebanese breakfast consisted of two large pieces of pita-style bread, some Lebneh, eggs and potatoes mashed together, two stick-like pieces of fried cheese, and some fresh slices of tomatoes and cucumbers. It did not take long for us to settle into the routine of heading to Al Kahwa every day, always with the same order, so that when by the time we left we were greeted at the door with smiles and welcomes, and the food was brought out for us without the need to order.
We walked out of the restaurant toward the campus of American University Beirut (AUB) the architectural beauty of which lured us to explore a bit before proceeding toward the downtown area. After a short walk through the campus, we reemerged onto the street, and both of us were struck by the European feel of the city. It felt as if I had stepped out of the Middle East and into Belgium, or Prague. Most people sported western-style dress, and the society was clearly more liberal than what we were used to in other places in the Middle East. The hijab was rare; the abaya rarer still. Occasionally, we would see a man walking with a woman covered from head to toe in a black abaya, including over her face, and wonder what it must feel like to wear such an outfit in a place like this, where it was so uncommon, thus making it impossible to hide behind conformity.

Yet in the midst of this charming place, the signs of destruction from the Israeli attack and the civil war were omnipresent, and the wealth and pomp of the more developed Christian areas contrasted sharply with the poverty of the Islamic sections. The most beautiful old colonial houses which dot the city have fallen into disrepair, and are perhaps most revealing of Beirut's troubled past, their wounds and long history mirroring those of Lebanon and its diverse peoples and religions. For this reason, I was most fascinated by these homes, photographing them regularly and trying to listen as closely as I could to the story they told.


We continued our walk toward what we thought was the downtown area, but as we walked deeper into what was increasingly obviously the Islamic part of the city (nowhere near downtown) we stopped and asked directions of a woman passing by, who laughed and told us that we had walked in quite the wrong direction, and needed to hail a cab if we wanted to head downtown. We did so, and told the driver to stop once we saw the startlingly blue domes and soaring minarets of the Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque, which soars majestically over the downtown area. We approached the mosque and asked the attendant outside if it was ok for us to enter. "Men only," he answered. Ivy's dissapointment immediately showed on her face, and she threw me a spiteful look. "I hate you," she said jokingly, as she walked over to sit down on the steps of the mosque and light a cigarette to wait for me. "I'm sorry, I won't be long" I said as I entered the mosque.

The beauty of the mosque was indescribable. Ornately decorated with old-style arabic script, chandeliers and large windows which allowed enough natural light to keep it remarkably bright inside, the high ceilings were crowned by a staggering, inimitable dome; which, perfectly lit by windows which run the circumference, seemingly glowed, revealing an astonishing and almost psychedelic array of colors and patterns. Al-Amin mosque might be one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in, and I immediately felt sorry that Ivy had to miss out. The mosque was practically empty since it was not prayer time, and so I was able to photograph the interior of the mosque undisturbed. Once I finished, I hurried back outside to where Ivy was waiting patiently and tried to tell her what it was like, but found myself unable to describe the heavenly elegance of the interior. As soon as I showed her the photos I had taken, her frustration at the chauvinism of Arab, and particularly Muslim, culture clearly grew, betrayed by the expression on her face as she looked over the photos.

I strongly reccomend clicking on the photos of the dome, below, to see the high-resolution versions!

We left the haram and walked around the corner, where there was an Orthodox church which, while beautiful and ornate, was dwarfed by the Al-Amin mosque which I had just walked out of. We decided to head back to the downtown area where we had been the previous night, to see if we could find a place to have a drink and relax. As we entered the downtown, seeing the lovely Ottoman-style architecture for the first time in daylight, the sun began to peek through the clouds and it suddenly became a very nice day. A host for one of the outdoor cafes, now stripped of their plastic siding yet with the temporary rooves still erected, encouraged us to sit down at the first place we came to, and we picked a table on the outside nearest the street to enjoy its charming ambience. Unfortunately, as we soon discovered, the place we had chosen did not offer alchohalic drinks, dashing my hopes of relaxing with a glass of wine, for which the nargila pipe and fruit juice cocktail which we ordered were a poor substitute.

After we sat for a bit, we decided to get up and get moving if we were to make it to the waterfront area, called Corniche, in time to catch the sunset over the Mediterranean. The closer we walked to the water, the more the damage from the Israeli bombing in 2006 was evident. Apart from one towering skyscraper that was completely bombed out, many of the smaller buildings around the waterfront were partially or totally destroyed, and the waterfront hotels that lined the shoreline were clearly either brand new or had been repaired in the two years since the bombing, and many of them were still being worked on. One thing was clear, however: Beirut was well on its way to bouncing back from the assault.

The effect of the Hizballah takeover of much of Beirut some seven months or so ago is still certainly being felt throughout the city, by contrast. The streets are carefully watched by large numbers of soldiers, accompanied by a fair allotment of tanks and other heavy artillery. I tried to photograph some of the tanks and other military equipment and personnel, but each time I was confronted by a soldier who forced me to delete the photos. It was, however, without question the most militarized situation I have ever been in outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

It didn't take long at all for us to reach the lovely Corniche, where we strolled for a few hours down its wide promenade along the waterfront. True to her character, Ivy's eyes lit up exuberantly as soon as she saw the water, and a staircase leading down in front of the sea wall proved too much for her to resist. She descended the steps eagerly, in hopes of touching or maybe just being near the water. Realizing that this was a bad idea, I followed her to about the halfway point of the staircase, taking a few photos of the enchanting waterfront area while she ran ahead. Suddenly, I heard the loud woosh of a large wave followed by a shriek, and looked down from my camera just in time to see Ivy charging back to the staircase, soaking wet. I couldn't help but laugh, and, ever the good sport, she chimed right in, walked back onto the promenade and sat on the nearest bench to ring out her socks and light a cigarette.

Before long, we were walking again, walking down the Corniche in search of a nice place to eat with a view of the water. After walking a significant distance, up a steep hill past some army fortifications, we were confronted with Pigeon Rock, an extremely oddly shaped rock (like an upside-down "u," forming a kind of tunnel in its center). After pausing a moment to view this Lebanese landmark, we continued on until we found a place with a large outdoor patio overlooking the entire bay, including a great view of Pigeon Rock, aptly named "Bay Rock Cafe." We sat at a table near the water, ordered a bottle of wine, kicked back, and watched out over the bay as the sun began to decline behind Pigeon Rock, and the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean beyond. It was a beautiful end to a fabulous day.

The buzz from the day continued through the night, when we went to Gemayzeh Cafe, a small kitchen-style cafe across town which features live Arabic music every night. One man played the Oud, one the Tabla, and the whole place came alive to the music. People were dancing, cheering, laughing, clapping, drinking. I looked over at Ivy to see her face lit up with a smile, and couldn't help feeling the same. The band was great; I enjoyed myself thoroughly, had more than a few glasses of Almaza (Lebanese beer), and walked away with a feeling of deep satisfaction and contentment. After a long cab ride through the packed Lebanese streets (they are in total gridlock most of the day), Ivy passed out nearly as soon as we walked in the door. I laid in bed for awhile, thinking about life, the universe, and everything, and wondering what else this fabulous adventure had in store for us.

TO BE CONTINUED...