marjeyoun square

soldiers in the south

Over the weekend, we went to Marjeyoun, a Christian village in South Lebanon. It’s a quaint mountain town with Ottoman houses and is small enough that everyone knows everyone else. We went with a couple of Lebanese journalists, George, who is from Marjeyoun, and Aruba, whose family left around the time she was born. She had never been (and where you are from is VERY important to Lebanese) so she was pretty excited.

The trip itself was annoying in many ways, and it seemed that most of our time was spent being led around the village with little description given and being proudly introduced to people as Americans. As it turns out, a lot of the villagers are big George Bush fans. This might seem surprising (Arabs in the Middle East embracing GW?), but these are Christians in Hezbollah country and GW has taken a stand against Hezbollah. His stance on this issue alone makes him a hero – with some, at least. One guy even told me, “You are not good,” when I admitted that I don’t like Bush. This is probably the first truly rude thing anyone has said to me here.

The highlight of the trip (for me, not for Ethan) was when George thrust me into this faux interview with the mayor of Maryejoun and a few council members. These were fascinating men, devoted to their town and country and extremely well-spoken (with perhaps a better command of English than I have), and they gave me all kinds of insight about South Lebanon, living under Israeli occupation, how the economy has faltered with the Israelis gone, and what they hope for from the future.

We also got a lift from a couple of soldiers at one point.

We made it back to Beirut via service taxi and a cramped mini-bus (2 hours travel for under $5) and settled into an afternoon of Ethan working, me reading and cooking, and the electricity being off about 10% of the time.