last notes and ptsd

The other night, I woke up to a large "booming" sound. I briefly thought that there was another bomb. The wrath-of-God-like thunderstorms for which Lebanon is host to don't really help my cause, haha. I guess I'm carrying a bit of ptsd around with me. Since I've been here, there have been three bombs, of which not one of the plethora of activist groups with interests in Lebanon have owned up to. The latest was aimed at eliminating a key Lebanese anti-terrorist specialist. The one not long before that targeted a U.S. Embassy car and the first one since I was here killed a top general who was next-in-command in the Lebanese army.

LAST NOTES
So, my time in Lebanon is coming to an end and, even though I'm in the midst of lots of work (aren't we all?), I thought I'd give some initial reflections for folks wondering what's been running around the noodle in my head. My time here has been more impacting than I imagined and in ways that I hadn't anticipated (but isn't it always like that?). I made such good friends at N.E.S.T. (Near East School of Theology) -- with people from many different countries and cultures. I have also learned so much, especially with regards to how the things we hear in the news play out in reality. I've also learned a lot about Islam and Muslims although, ironically, I never really got to know any Muslims while I was here (being in a seminary and all). It has, however, really given me some insight and interest in the Muslim experience in the U.S.


Anyhow, I've packed a lot more in four months than I ever thought I would -- Beirut marathon, trekking through the mountains, traveling through Syria and Jordan taking classes and then, of course, just getting to know people in general. I really couldn't have asked for more...except, perhaps, more time. Oh, and better food. Boy, cafeteria food is cafeteria food wherever you are in the world! haha

I've also come to realize what an absolute mess it is here, politically. Lebanon, in particular, is in a unique situation because of its political, ethnic and religious mix. But, it is absolutely tragic how it seems this land has had no rest and peace...seemingly ever! And, I am so heartbroken that my own country is contributing to the instability. Not just with Iraq but with Israel in particular. I understand that some folks see the U.S. in a role to be a broker for positive influence but, the influence exerted has often been more harmful than helpful, from the vantage point of this side anyway. People see how they are being portrayed on the media -- Muslims in particular -- and are confused and hurt by the images being painted. More than once, when I've revealed my citizenship, people have told me, "We are not like what your news makes us look like." It's strong insight into the powers at work which try to depict people in a particular way for the purpose of supporting agendas. We all do it to some extent but the degree to how its done in the U.S. elicits a sense of shame on my part. I know that we (Americans and America) can do better than this but no one seems to care enough to change things...or have enough power to do so. It's a strange sense of disempowerment and hopelessness. But, there's always January 20, 2009 to look forward to!

Anyhow, I hope that gives you a bit more insight as to how my time here has been. Above all, I've learned just how much I don't know. Such is the tragic irony of learning, no?

Saturday, Bloody Saturday

This past Saturday (19 Jan) marked the Shi'ite memorial festival of 'Ashura. Meaning simply "tenth," 'Ashura is celebrated on the 10th day of Muharram and remembers the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who died in the Battle of Karbala. He is considered the third Shia Imam. This is where the Sunni/Shia split happens in Islamic history. The Shia's believed that Husayn was the rightful successor of the caliphate and not Yazid Ibn Muawiyah, who was in power. He called for justice and a reinstatement of the true caliph (himself). He was vastly outnumbered and, to make a long story short, he lost the battle. There are a few dimensions to the remembrance worth noting:
1) The remembrance usually takes the form of a procession through the city or village with participants beating themselves on the chest and reciting poems or stories that commemorate the event. Some of the more extreme forms of commemoration include beating oneself with chains or chains that have blades attached in order to draw blood.

2) The battle between Husayn and Yazid is considered, on a cosmological level, to be a battle between good(Husayn) and evil(Yazid). Over time, it has taken on the dimension of being a battle between the oppressed(Shi'ites) and the oppressor(traditionally the Sunnis, but now the oppressor is more considered to be the west and particularly the United States). Because of this greater message of the oppressed battling the oppressor, Shi'ites consider their message to be one for all who are oppressed.



A few students and I traveled to the town of Nabatiya in Southern Lebanon to observe the festival there. The Shi'ites who take part in the celebration there tend to lean on the more extreme side of remembrance and, as you can observe in the slide show, it was a rather bloody affair. (A Christian equivalent would be the extreme versions of the Stations of the Cross during Passion Week. Lot's of self-flagellation, wailing, etc.) The atmosphere was interesting -- a mixture of excitement and mourning. The smell of blood was strong and the air was electrified with emotion. The stranger thing of it was that you could see young boys who were also taking part in the blood-drawing self-beating. It was disturbing, to say the least. Yet, there were plenty of women and children observing showing little concern for the red puddles everywhere. Needless to say, it was a rather interesting experience that I may not likely see again anytime soon.

Ahlan Wah-Sahlan

“Ahlan wah-sahlan.” This is an often extended greeting when entering one's shop, home or even after inquiries as to where one is from. Simply, it means “welcome” but truly, it means something like “be as family; we will make your path easy.” It is a warm, kind and generous extension of hospitality that is almost always sincerely extended. It was this phrase that I heard and experienced consistently and often as I traveled through Syria and Jordan during my two weeks of Christmas holiday vacation. And, more often than not, it was gratefully, humbly received as Uli, my companion and I arrived at various places tired, unshowered and hungry! Suffice it to say, I had a fantastic time of travels, not a small part of which included coming to fully understand the meaning of “ahlan wah-sahlan.”

ALEPPO
Uli (Ulrike, a fellow student at N.E.S.T.) and I began our trip by going to Aleppo, Syria. I, the lucky American, had the pleasure of holding the group back at the small border in the north, due to the U.S.'s excellent relations with Syria. The Syrian government has decided to treat Americans applying for visas as America treats Syrians applying for visas. (Free and immediate processing of visas for North Koreans!) This means waiting anywhere from 3 to 12 hours at the border. Okay, so not so much “ahlan wah-sahlan” from the Syrian government, but the guards were slightly compassionate...lMy seemingly infinitely patient companions (Elias, Lilit and Uli) cheerfully passed the time chatting and trying to stand in the sun for warmth while I, struck by some minor version of the flu, tried to sleep a bit on the dirty bench in the border office. We were in luck, it seemed, as the visa came through in a mere 4 hours. Wahoo! And so, we were off. Elias negotiated a minibus ride to Homs, where we would then catch a bus to Aleppo. 3ish hours later, we arrived at night in the unbelievably cold air. After the temperate weather in Beirut, my skin was thin! We made our way to the guesthouse of a church which is pastored by a N.E.S.T. graduate, Rev. Bcharra. He gave us an old mobile phone to use so that we could call if we had any problems. “I hate having guests in the winter,” he said. Why? Well, because the guest apartment had no heat! Oy vey! After numerous cups of tea and a few layers of clothes, we were sufficiently warm to fall asleep.

We visited the Old City and its ancient souq (market), where we had the novel (to us anyway) experience of seeing a goat slaughtered in the narrow walkway (see pictures). We discovered that, in this society whose media is significantly censored by its government, nearly every apartment has a large satellite dish (see again, pictures). It looks like people are communicating with outer space! We met a schoolteacher, Assan, who, in his quest to improve his English (which he in turn teaches his students, along with many other subjects), takes it upon himself to speak to any foreigner he comes across. We were lost and looking for a restaurant and he offered to show us the way and, in the process of doing so, took out a script he'd painstakingly written that shared how Islam is a religion of peace and those called “terrorists” are not true Muslims. It really wrenched my heart to listen to this man take every opportunity he could to portray his religion more accurately to any and all non-Muslims he could come in contact with. I admired him for his devotion and desire to do as much as he could to contribute toward better and more peaceful relations between worlds which are so often portrayed in opposition.


We also visited the remains of Simon the Stylite's ascetic lifestyle. One of the first ascetics to become well-known, Simon the Stylite built a tall pillar on top of which he stood in an effort to remove himself from the world. People from far away would visit him for his wise contemplations and, eventually, a monastery and church were built around the remains of his pillar. Our taxi driver never came to pick us up and so we ended up hitching a ride on the back of a truck to the nearest village. We had a good time watching the world go by at 40 mph with the wind whipping our faces!
Our time in Aleppo was mainly filled by time spent with friends. Attending a Christmas concert at Elias' church and Christmas with his family were definitely among the highlights. We were treated to a delicious meal and met many people in the process. At the end of the day, Uli and I parted from our friends and took a night bus to Amman, where we would begin the next segment of our holiday adventure.

AMMAN
We arrived in Amman tired and regretting the decision of the night bus (my bad!). We awaited our host (friend Ashraf's cousin) and, initially wondered how he would be able to know who we are. We were worried, that is, until we realized that 1) We were the only non-Arab looking people and 2) We were the only women not covered from head to toe in fabric. As it was, Hanna had no trouble picking us out and introduced himself to us. We returned to his apartment where we met his wife, Manal and their beautiful 8-month-old daughter Nuha. They fed us breakfast, let us shower and left us to make up for our short night of sleep, but not before giving us a mobile phone for communication and telling us how we might visit our first destination, Mt. Nebo, a short distance from Amman. We took a nap and afterwards, set out to see the promised land from Moses' vantage point.

PETRA
The next day, Hanna brought us to the bus station and we headed off for Petra, the famed city carved from rock. Wow! It's amazing what one can do with a hammer, a chisel and some persistence! We met many people in shops who extended hospitality in the form of tea and conversation. Whether we purchased something or not wasn't so much the issue. This became a recurring theme in our travels. We met so many people. There was the man who had worked as a cook for the U.S. Army in Baghdad; Muhammad, the man who was maxed out on his allowed 4 wives (Islam only permits 4) but wished for more; the two men who tried to get us to go for a sunset barbecue in a deserted part of town (”Oh! yeah, sure! That sounds really great and not at all sketchy!”); the couple from Seattle (!) who were traveling around the world, and; 'Ali, the bedouin father who gave us the “local price” on a can of tahineh and spoke proudly of his 4 children in college. All in all, it was a fun journey, despite the touts and lack of student discount at the entrance.

After Petra, we made our way down to Wadi Rum (Rum Desert), where we rode camels for two days and spent a night with the bedouins. Wow! It was pretty cool to be traversing the desert on a camel. If one ignored the 4x4 jeeps going by full of tourists snapping photographs, one could almost imagine what it was like to be a *real* bedouin. Let me tell you something though: 5 hours of riding on a camel isn't all it's cracked up to be, but the scenery is pretty nice (Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that one could see the same thing in Nevada but, hey, I was on a CAMEL in ARABIA! COOL!). We learned special camel talk that consisted of making a kind of “khhh” sound in the back of one's throat, mixed in with the occasional “echoo!” In the process, I met a South African couple who have their doubts about the ending of apartheid and a man from San Francisco who could play the oud. The end of our trip found us back at Rum village, our starting point, nearly 3 hours later than anticipated. This wouldn't really bother me, except that we were planning on hitching a ride back to Amman from the highway (as there is little to know regular traffic between the two locations) and the sun would be setting in about an hour and a half. Yikes! We high-tailed it to the highway where we were befriended by curious boys selling potatoes. One of them, about 14 years old, insisted on giving me his phone number so that I could call him once I reached Amman. (Uh, okay, I could, in some societies, be his mother). They helped us to write “Amman” in Arabic on the back of Uli's notebook in the hopes of letting passersby know where we were trying to go. We eventually flagged down a truck, whose driver, Ibrahim, agreed to take us along. While we could have chosen a speedier vehicle (it took us about 5 hours to make the normally 2 hour trip, due to the 45,300kg of sugar we were hauling), we were sufficiently delivered to our destination after learning about Ibrahim's marital problems and penchant for collecting strange videos on his phone.

DEAD SEA
We had planned on leaving Jordan the next day but Hanna insisted that we spend a day with the family. The next day was Manal's birthday and we spent it at the Dead Sea. Wow! It's really salty! We gave our legs mud masks with the valuable clay formed on the beach and waved hello to Jericho on the other side. It's only a half-hour's swim to the other side but it's hard to make it, for the bullets that would come at you from the Israelis.
That night was New Years and we had a nice celebration with the family, dancing with Nuha (okay, just me) and generally enjoying one another's company. We had a great time together, ringing in 2008.
All in all, our trip to Jordan was even richer than I expected. The sites were wonderful, but also, we were so lucky to have such nice people taking care of us. Without even knowing who we were, Hanna and Manal opened their home and lives to us. We left Jordan, saying goodbye to new friends who taught me a lot about hospitality.

DAMASCUS


Our trip back to Syria was preceded by yet another wait at the border for my visa. We spent the 6 hours of waiting at a nearby café, playing cribbage and recounting our experiences. We were both surprised at the noticeable difference in atmosphere between Syria and Jordan. In Syria, there are pictures of the president everywhere, like Big Brother watching over you and, indeed, I've heard from travelers that they'd been followed as they toured the country. The people were not as readily friendly -- that is, until you began to talk, after which you would be invited for some coffee and, almost always told “ahlan wah-sahlan”. The atmosphere, overall, was laced with tension which one Syrian friend told me was fear. The society, generally, lives with a sense of oppression -- it's natural when the last “election” carried one name on the ballot and you could either choose “yes” or “no” (and, with the computerized system, sometimes the “no” button didn't work!). As I said, we didn't really notice it until we went to Jordan, where people smiled much more easily and were almost always helpful without asking anything in return. Overall, their was a greater sense of stability. I extend kudos to this country, which has absorbed so many Palestinian refugees that they now make up 40% of the populations.

So, Damascus found us roaming the Old City streets once again. The narrow, winding walkways made it easy to get lost but one didn't mind for the magic of the environment. In the city where the Apostle Paul began his new calling and Islamic scholars formed a significant community, the city oozes history. Our two days did not do it justice. While there, though, we met an Iraqi family at the monastery where we stayed. They had just received their visa (after 5 years) and were emigrating to Toronto. That is, after they return to Baghdad (”insha 'Allah!”) to gather their belongings. A gentle and friendly couple, please join with me in praying that their reception and resettlement would be a respite from what has been, no doubt, an unpredictable and insecure life.
We left Damascus on the morning of the 4th, thinking we were home-free for Beirut. We thought so, that is, until our bus broke down 35km outside of Beirut. Of course, this was in stormy, rainy and windy weather! Fortunately, as they were unloading the luggage and everyone was trying to figure out a plan B, minibuses started showing up. We boarded one and headed toward Beirut, along with a Dutch woman and another American guy from Michigan.

BEIRUT
We finally arrived, unpacked, washed our things and have settled back into scholastic life. It's hard to believe I have just over 3 weeks before returning to Chicago. How can it be?? Between now and then, I have a rather horrifying amount of school work to complete -- so that I can return 4 days before the next semester at McCormick begins with a clean slate! Until then, though, I will keep having those sweet conversations and experiences that remind me how imaginative God is when creating humans and piecing together our lives.