It has been raining all week, persistent drizzle unlike the brief downpours that are more typical of Beirut. The city is slumbering. El-Zein am staying with his parents. His father goes out less often. His mother is snuggled under the blankets. She hopes the war won’t happen. The kettle is boiling like a purring cat. The house is quiet. Rain is the soporific of cities.Australia Council, La Trobe University, National Library of Australia, Holding Redlich, Arts Victori

El-Zein, Abbas

Flinders Academic Commons

2 4     A U S T R A L I A N  B O O K  R E V I E W  M A Y  2 0 0 3L E T T E R  F R O M  B E I R U TIT HAS BEEN RAINING ALL WEEK, persistent drizzleunlike the brief downpours that are more typical of Beirut.The city is slumbering. I am staying with my parents.My father goes out less often. My mother is snuggled underthe blankets. She hopes the war won’t happen. The kettleis boiling like a purring cat. The house is quiet. Rain is thesoporific of cities.A man strapped with dynamite walks into the HSBC bankin Hamra Street. Terrified staff hand over the money withoutdelay. The robber then declares that he has stormed the bankto protest at the impending invasion of Iraq. The bank iswidely known as the British Bank. The Minister of Interiorarrives on the scene and negotiates. A few minutes later, therobber releases his hostages in return for a press conference.The Minister of Interior takes the opportunity to explain tojournalists the robber’s motivations. The robber is later foundto be deranged. Anti-colonialism has gone berserk. Conspiracytheorists claim that the robbery has been staged to make theMinister of Interior look good.Alexander Downer beams on television for five memora-ble seconds. There is every chance, says Downer, that thewar will start on Thursday. My brother-in-law asks me howcome our ‘plump Minister of Exterior’ knows. I say Australiais part of the Coalition. He asks me how many soldiersAustralia is contributing. I say two thousand. He bursts outlaughing. He thinks it’s a joke.A friend of mine says he has come up with the idealscenario for the war: the Americans swiftly invade; the Iraqisresist so hard that the Americans are soundly defeated; GeorgeW. Bush loses the next election; the Iraqi régime, weakenedby the American assault, collapses, to be swiftly replaced bya pluralistic system of government modelled on Sweden.I compliment my friend on his vision. But why all this swift-ness, I ask. ‘In order to minimise civilian casualties,’ he says.I shake my head. The Turks have killed more Kurds thanSaddam Hussein ever dreamt of. The Israelis have enoughnuclear bombs to kill all the Arabs and Jews of the MiddleEast. Saddam has a drone airplane incapable of droppingpropaganda leaflets on the Kurds. The Americans willliberate the Iraqis whether they like it or not. The Iraqis willbe liberated, wishing all the while someone other than thedisreputable Americans would do the job.THE RAIN HAS STOPPED. A soft winter sun shinesover the Mediterranean. Snow covers the hills aroundBeirut. My father is at his office. The kettle is boilingagain. My mother is about to go out. She asks me if war willbreak out after all. I say, undoubtedly. She disagrees. She hasa feeling it won’t.Letter from BeirutAbbas El-ZeinArchived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.auA U S T R A L I A N  B O O K  R E V I E W  M A Y  2 0 0 3     2 5The city is overrun with rumours about devil worship-pers. They are said to kidnap children, kill them and drink theirblood. They listen to certain kinds of music. They dig upcorpses and arrange orgies. They take drugs and push eachother to suicide. Like your average married couple, I pointout to my worried sister. They come, we are told, from allgeographical areas and sectarian backgrounds. They cannot,therefore, be used as an excuse for starting a civil war. Parentsanxiously watch their children. Tattoos are viewed with suspi-cion. Minor television clerics reveal that devil worshippersare good at hiding their real identities. They are not the sameon the inside as on the outside. Unlike George W. Bush andAlexander Downer. A mother reports her daughter to thepolice because she found a letter containing references todevil worshipping in the teenager’s drawer. The girl claims theletter is a trap she set for her cousin whom she suspects ofbeing a devil worshipper herself. And so it goes. Conspiracytheorists have never had it this good. Lebanese social neuro-ses are at work. East meets West in Lebanon every day, andthe middle classes spend much energy consuming Westernproducts while weeding out undesired aspects of Westernculture, from open homosexuality, to drugs and rap music, allof which is described as un-Lebanese behaviour. Not unlikethe un-Australianness of some Australian crimes. The Minis-ter of Interior goes on television to reassure the Lebanese thatthe rumours are false and that parents should watch out.Australia’s Minister of Exterior performs the same logicalacrobatics that his British counterpart has shown himselfcapable of a few days earlier. Hence: the French threat ofvetoing war made war more likely, and the Iraqis did not provethat they had no weapons of mass destruction. I have alwaysbeen told that using two negatives in a sentence is to beavoided. It takes a war to make me understand how seriousthe problem is. Does the Australian Exterior include theBritish Interior or are Australians really British on the inside,albeit with a built-in time delay?Up to seventy individuals suspected of devil worship-ping have been investigated throughout Lebanon, but only adozen have been detained. The General Prosecutor says hecannot charge someone just because he wears ugly tattooson his shoulders. And why not, says our neighbour. Alexan-der Downer has a strange look on his face. My parents’ maidthinks twice before going out. I tell her Beirut is one of thesafest cities I have ever been to. She giggles and probablythinks I am a fool. A poet publishes an article in a major dailyaddressed to God himself. If God is as good as He claims, howcome He has created George W. Bush? Religious and politicalleaders in the conservative city of Tripoli are outraged. Godshould not be addressed in those terms, they insist. The nextday the newspaper is banned from Tripoli. I go to theAmerican University of Beirut. Given the latest turn in fash-ion, lecturers can now tell the colour of the underpants ofmany of their students. Other students wear headscarves,and I cannot tell the colour of their hair. Anti-war marcheshappen each day. Some classes are suspended. My parents’maid is still worried. I check the rates of sexual crimes on theInterpol website. In 2000 you were nine times more likely tobe sexually assaulted in Australia than in Lebanon.WAR HAS STARTED. Lebanon is dealing with anew deluge and its aftermath. It has rained non-stop for days. Landslides and drowned villages.Emergency procedures are activated. The army is called out.Severed heads and amputated limbs on Al Jazeera. The Arabstreet is boiling. My mother asks me to turn off the kettle.Thank God for Al Jazeera. My father is channel-hopping. Mymother calls my sister on the phone to find out how longthe war will last and whether parsley can be used with curry.The Americans complain about Al Jazeera. They see theexpression of anti-Western sentiment as anti-democratic.How convincing. Thank God for Al Jazeera. Does it outweighGeorge W. Bush? We’ll find out on Judgment Day. But willGod be judged, and by whom? If things keep going this way,perhaps by Bush? I won’t be going to Tripoli soon. A bombexplodes at a McDonalds restaurant in Dawra on the mainroad to Tripoli. Small bombs have been going off occasionallyat American-brand food outlets at night, leaving no casual-ties. This one is different. A Bali-style set-up, with one bombinside and one outside, and the two are not the same. A fewgrams of explosives in the toilet to be followed by fiftykilograms of TNT in the car park. But the delay mechanism ofthe big one did not function. Alexander Downer fails torepeat Jack Straw’s speech from three days ago. Edward Saidspeaks to a packed amphitheatre. He has grown a beard andlooks like a tired Che Guevara. He is as eloquent as ever,despite his leukaemia. He wants us to save Humanism fromthe onslaught of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Onwhich side is Donald Rumsfeld, I wonder. Conspiracytheorists are interviewed by Al Jazeera. Osama bin Laden’srecruitment officers are said to be having a field day withmore converts than Iraqi POWs. History is in the making —a guaranteed supply of corpses for the next fifty years.I take a stroll in the beautifully restored old city of Beirut.Dark thoughts keep me company. Will all this be destroyedagain? War does not seem to have affected the Lebaneseeconomy. The underclass — foreign workers from Sri Lanka,Ethiopia and Syria — is as over-exploited as ever. The oldconstruction sites are still abandoned by their bankruptowners. Valet parking is thriving, still absorbing a goodportion of the workforce. Child beggars are active at majorroad junctions and entertainment centres. The trendyrestaurants of Monot are packed. The nightclubs arepreparing for the evening. The streets are full of potentialdevil worshippers.I walk home after sunset. I savour the hushed livelinessof the backstreets, emanating from the charming seven- andeight-storey buildings. This is the Arab street that I knowand love — in Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad — and there isnothing revolutionary about it. I get home. Al Jazeera says theArab world is changing. My niece has strained her left ankle.My mother thinks the war is a lie. I am reading Baudrillard.My father wants his tea. Some things will never change.L E T T E R  F R O M  B E I R U TArchived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au

Letter From Beirut.

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Letter From Beirut.

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