“What is the profession that got hit most severely in the current war in Leba-
non?”
“Dentists. Everyone’s afraid to put a bridge, because Israel might blow it
up!”
95% of all Lebanese bridges have been bombed. 80% of the highways. It is
easy to lie with statistics, I know, but it is easier to lie without them. Still, I
am being told the magnitude of the damage is beyond the scope of imagina-
tion. “Nothing will prepare you for what you are going to see.”
I was a consultant on a project that led me to work in Dahiya, the southern
suburb of Beirut and the stronghold of the Hizbollah. It is a haphazardly
urbanized area, with quite a bit of paranoia in it, street vendors, narrow
streets with sewers overflooding them, buildings with too little privacy, and
men who think that the etiology of all diseases lie in women. All women are
treacherous, except of course, for theirs. Because only them know how to
satisfy a woman and keep her off the streets.
Lebanese have a slang term for the Shi’a Moslems, “metwali” they call them.
It is of popular belief that the term originated from the days of the Crusad-
ers, only one of many invaders of Lebanon, and stems from the French “Met
toi au Lit” (Go to bed – not in the tone of a mother scolding a son, but in the
suave accent of a man inviting a woman to intercourse). Everybody thinks it
is derogative to use the term, but then again, a lot of Shi’as have been blessed
with a fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes (Characteristics hardly emanating
from the Arab background).
But of course, that’s assuming Lebanon is Arab at all… Because the debate
rages on if Lebanese are Arabs or Phoenicians. Well, normally, if you are
Moslem Specifically, Sunni), you’d tend to think of Lebanon as Arab. All
the pan-Arab nationalism of Abdel Nasser must add up to something, right?
If you are a Christian, likelihood is that you will deny the Arab heritage and
go back farther into history to be a Phoenician. Not that Phoenicians were
Christians or anything, but that makes you un-Arab to claim such a historic
heritage.

All the buildings, houses, barracks, streets, and everything built in the Dahiya
does not exist on any governmental map. It was simply squatting, reclaiming
a land, building on it, and hoping to be paid a handsome amount of money
for relocation. Some Shi’a political parties, particularly Amal, were at one
point paying people to just build one roof knowing that when the runway
extension of the airport will show up, generous compensation will be in
order. Whereas Amal chose the runway that was closer to the sea, Hezbollah
preferred the part with no sea-views.
Illegal houses were so close to the airport, separated by a mere mesh wire
fence that when I was working as an engineer at the civil aviation with an of-
fice at the airport, I was called upon many times to actually clear the chicken
that got loose from the backyard of houses into the runway. “Hello. We have
the chicken situation again and a Lufthansa plane taking off in 15 minutes. Is
there something you could do about it?”
So yes, for four years, I was a bureaucrat. I did everything to simplify the red
tape and make things more accessible, but eventually the system won. And I
resigned. Problem is, working for the government despite the ridiculous pay
is one of the most coveted professions in Lebanon, so much that everyone
though I was truly nuts to leave.
Actually, it seems no one had resigned before because the ministry I was
working at didn’t even have a copy of the resignation official form, so we
had to ask for it from the Ministry of the Environment where someone –
probably as nuts as I was – actually quit, immigrating to Canada.
Now the new airport, which to say the truth was no so practical to work in
(The very ones who did not have sardine boxes for offices, had a small win-
dow which most of the time gave onto a brick wall for a view), was “new”
for about two weeks. Then it became dirty, tarnished, and started to resemble
a Kafkaesque nightmare.
One of the most important lessons I have learned working there was to carry
a spare underwear, shirt, and pair of socks in my backpack because of the
luggage loss. Whenever I’d be in the terminal and the announcer would
celebrate the landing of some British Airways or KLM (Keep Luggage Miss-
ing) plane, I knew that the office I worked in – which was adjacent to the lost
luggage claim – would be soon full of passengers. So I make my way before
the stampede started.

I pitied all those people who had to go to “the second office on the right”
or “the fourth office on the left, after you turn left when you reach the blue
sign,” and three of fours other places to collect signatures that would enable
them to get their luggage back. They looked anywhere between aging hippie
fans asking Bob Dylan for an authograph and a bunch of literary enthusiasts
standing politely in line waiting for their book to be signed.
If you expected your luggage returned to your residence or hotel along with
an apologetic bouquet of flowers offered by a dressed-up airline representa-
tive, then you’d better lose your luggage in Geneva or Paris (Not the Paris of
the Middle East, as sometimes Beirut is called).
The only time I was glad someone actually lost their bag, and took them for-
ever to recover it (Actually, several days) was when I was coming back from
one of my trips. I used to have trouble sleeping in the airplane and so often
asked for the window seat to have something to entertain myself with.
When I go to my seat, I politely asked the person next to me, a young man
with hair died platinum, a groovy seventies-printed shirt, and phosphoric
orange cargo pants if he would lend me his seat due to my sleeping problems.
He looked at me with the contempt of a clubber who has just heard someone
order “beer” rather than some hip named cocktail, and said: “no.”
While having dinner – which could have been the fish, the chicken, or the
beef (Because in airplane food they all taste alike, and look alike) - I ordered
wine thinking it might help sooth my nerves a little. As I was sipping through
my glass, his elbow collided with my forearm and a wine was spilled on his
fluorescent orange cargo. The stain that resulted left a lot of speculation as to
the activity that led to it, and I was sort of pleased of my momentary vic-
tory. My pleasure intensified as I saw the platinum-haired man showing up
repeatedly at the airport, with a stained pant, to ask for his bag that somehow
ended up in Prague. He’d look at me, behind that computer placed right at the
entrance of the office, and I’d smile dryly to him – As dry as a bottle of red
wine in which the saccharine matter and the fermentation have neutralized
one another.