Stars and Bars

My favorite saying about the Southern U.S. refers specifically to Florida: “The further north you go, the further south you get.”

Last weekend, we finally made the trip down South with George, the Lebanese journalist that Amy met when she was downtown a few weeks ago observing the hoopla following George Hawi’s funeral. He had postponed last weekend due to some troubles down there, but then was somewhat discontinuous and evasive all week leading up to this weekend. I think that Amy and I were both expecting it not to happen.

So, as we were finally in a taxi to Cola (a big intersection in Beirut where you catch buses) to make our rendez-vous with George, a singular thought rattled around in my head: are we stupid? Seriously, were we being completely idiotic? Amy had just met this fellow, had spoken to him for a sum total of about five minutes, his journalistic credentials were unchecked, and for some reason he wanted to take us to a place that we were warned was dangerous and not to be travelled by foreigners unattended. Now, the last time we were here, we rented a car and drove all over the South unattended. It wasn’t without its hassles (especially of the non-english-speaking soldier variety), but maybe our lack of real hardship on that trip had made us brazen and incautious this time around. I was resolved to keep my guard up, but when we met George and his friend Aruba, I was a little relieved.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have been so relieved. We were led to believe that the whole intent of going down South was to see the Marjeoun and learn a little more about the town, the history, and the people However, we ended up spending almost all of our time on purposeless meanderings through the outlying areas. Well, I shouldn’t say our wanderings were entirely without purpose. George seemed very intent on impressing us with all the people he knew in the town. He also seemed intent on impressing the same people with the presence of his American friends. He would make introductions in arabic, but they would be peppered with english such as “freelance journalist” and “New York Times.” When George first met Amy, he thought she was an American journalist and apparently wasn’t ready to give up the dream. Despite Amy’s protestations, he kept talking about how they had “a job to do” and how they would co-write an article about the town and sell it to the Daily Star. It was almost as if he had this fantasy about collaborating with an American journalist and was deluding himself with the notion that Amy was the one.

On the bright side, Amy got to have an apparently interesting interview with the mayor and some other older Lebanese intellectuals. I disposed of an hour and a half sitting by the hotel pool watching a young girl choke on the high-dive, drinking beer, playing Othello on my cellphone, and listening to “Careless Whisper” in muzak.

The whole experience, while not terrible, kind of brought to the fore something that I’d heard several Lebanese say comparing Lebanese and Americans. [DISCLAIMER: I am in no way endorsing the following viewpoint, merely reproducing it in the context of my experience.] A few people have told us that they like Americans because they’re “honest” and that Lebanese people (and I’m paraphrasing here) lie and bullshit to try to impress you or get you to like them. This sentiment has more than once been brought up referring to people driving expensive cars but being broke. I wouldn’t say that that has been my experience in general, but our experience with George definitely fell squarely into this category.

On the way back, we were passing through a checkpoint and George leaned to Amy and said, “See how they just let us right through. That’s because they know me.” Amy replied, “No, it’s because we’re leaving.” She’d had it, too.

Now my Christian sensibilities are trying to make me write something now like “but he was a nice guy…not a malicious bone in his body…and it was really nice of him to put us up….” etc. but I just can’t do it. As I said, it was not a terrible experience, but it certainly was a bogus one in every sense of the word.