The war's over

The Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire took effect Monday, Lebanese troops deployed to the south on Wednesday and displaced Lebanese returned to their homes in droves all week. But in my mind the five-week war wasn't officially over until Friday morning, when the Starbucks and Body Shop stores in Beirut's Hamra district reopened. They were the last of the chain stores to reopen in one of Beirut's major commercial districts.

It seemed the right day for me to leave Lebanon. Two colleagues are staying, so we'll have people in place in case the ceasefire doesn't hold - and people in Beirut are betting that it won't. Since Monday, I've been asking people whether they're relieved that the fighting is over. Almost uniformly, the response is that they're happy for a reprieve from the destruction and uncertainty, but they know it's only temporary. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah came close to accomplishing their goals during the nasty, short conflict. So the feeling is that it's just a matter of months or weeks before things flare up again, and it shows on the faces of people throughout the city.

It's painful to see, because - as I've been telling everyone who asks about our safety, comfort, etc. - Beirut is an amazing city. You rarely see in one city such a vibrant mixture of history, cultural diversity, natural beauty and flat-out bacchanalian excess. As a Lebanese guy I knew in Cambridge wrote in an e-mail: "Lebanese have their own way of dealing with stress and bad days, and that is with partying." It shows in the attention to detail: There are multi-story clubs designed by world-class architects and bars with massive pieces of plane fuselage adorning the interior.

We had dinner with a few other journalists on Friday, my last night, at a great restaurant called Abdel Wahab, which serves traditional Lebanese fare on a beautiful terrace overlooking the Ashrafieh district, with its old, narrow streets and shiny new bars and restaurants. Over mezze and good Lebanese wine we traded stories of our favorite war souvenirs (morbid, but true) - who'd been able to snag the Israeli leaflet featuring Hassan Nasrallah as a snake, or the poster of Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiling next to each other, or (jackpot) a Hezbollah flag.

We also talked about Hezbollah's political coup of the day - covered extensively on CNN - of handing out $12,000 lump-sum payments to people who'd lost their homes in the war Hezbollah triggered. It was a bold move, financed by Iran in crisp American $100 bills, but with Hezbollah written all over it. This group takes care of its own. In the days since the ceasefire took hold, they've cemented their support among Lebanon's Shiite community and further angered those who think Hezbollah usurps the power of the Lebanese government.

During the war, you didn't often hear people speak ill of Hezbollah, because they were fighting the Israeli enemy, and even the Sunnis and Christians who despise the group for its militancy said, at least in public, that they hoped Hezbollah would deal Israel a blow. Now that the war is over and its cost is becoming clear, you hear some of those same people wishing that Israel had finished Hezbollah off, i.e., assassinated Nasrallah, who's becoming a legendary figure in the region. The country seems, to many, more polarized now than at the beginning of the war, which doesn't bode well at all.

It was a tragic and incredibly interesting time to be here, and part of me will miss the place, the people and the chance to work on such a big and important story. But it's time to get back to Africa, after nearly five weeks away. While I was gone, Darfur got worse, Congo had its first free elections since 1960 and Somalia continued teetering toward civil war - I have some catching up to do.

A fragile truce

The ceasefire in Lebanon has been in effect for about seven hours, and so far so good. News reports from both sides of the border say - in the overwrought militaryspeak that journalists tend to trot out in wartime - the guns have gone quiet. The Hamra district of Beirut where I've been staying for much of the past three weeks is more vibrant today - there are more people on the streets, more cars, more conversations, more life. The contrast is palpable. It's still early, and plenty of things can go wrong, but it's clear that people are hopeful that the truce will hold.

 

I've obviously waited far too long to post. My only excuse is that it's been terribly busy here, with lots of long hours and late nights and days running together. The war is now in its fifth week and today is my 29th consecutive day of work, starting from the day I traveled to the Middle East from Nairobi.

 

But there are other ways I know I've been here a long time. I've tried nearly everything on the room service menu - the best thing, surprisingly, is a Mexican salad - and I've had to go shopping to replenish notebooks and razorblades. I have favorite coffee shops and favorite restaurants. I've made friends and I've appeared on at least one local blog. In many ways, I now feel like I live here and not in Nairobi, where over the last 12 weeks I've spent about two.

 

Part of this feeling is a product of the Lebanese people, who have almost uniformly been warm and welcoming. The brief looks of disappointment that flash on their faces when they realize I don't speak Arabic quickly disappear - and they don't even return when I tell them I'm American. Many people here feel profoundly betrayed by the Bush administration's almost unquestioning support for Israel in this war. Caricatures of Condi Rice looking like the devil-woman or carrying a purseful of missiles are plastered all over town. But the Lebanese tend not to share those feelings with you unless you ask.

 

I can't say the same for Yatin, who had to cut his vacation in Africa short because I'm still here covering the war and don't know when I'll be back home. In his most recent blog post, Yatin, who I have to say is becoming quite the little writer, described me as "an ass-kissing glory hog who can only say no to his girlfriend and his friends, but not his boss." For the record, I prefer the term "brown-nosing," for obvious reasons. (I was somewhat relieved to read on Seth's blog that he, too, has had to leave visiting friends in the dust because of a news story - see, it's not just me.)

 

I've now been in Lebanon for 2 1/2 weeks. I spent four days last week in southern Lebanon, but due to the travel restrictions I've spent most of the time in Beirut. Despite the massive damage to the southern suburbs and the exodus of thousands of people to safety either overseas or in the mountains to the north, which I think has given people in the West the impression that Beirut is crumbling, most of the city is functioning normally. 

 

The south of the country is a different story. In Tyre, the base for journalists covering the region, electricity last week was spotty and most of the city was deserted. Driving anywhere outside the city is risky, so most cars have the giant letters "TV" taped all over them in the hopes of convincing Israeli jets not to use them for target practice. (Naturally, it didn't take long for Lebanese to start using this tactic on their cars too.)

 

In our trip along the border, we did the same, but we had bigger problems - our car actually broke down. I mean completely crapped out. The radiator busted and scalding hot water gushed into the front passenger seat and directly onto my foot, giving me a first-degree burn. Then the car stopped moving altogether and the strong smell of smoke emanated from the engine.

 

I suppose it could have been worse. Where we broke down was right in front of the U.N. base, which is probably the safest place you can be if you have to be stuck on the border. Naturally, the U.N., which had a mechanic on staff inside the base, said it couldn't help us (no further comment on that, but the word "metaphor" comes to mind). There were about five families still living in the town, and fortunately we found a 15-year-old in flip-flops who got under the car and tweaked something well enough that we could get moving again. So yeah - I love the Lebanese.

The Bei Area

Full disclosure: I can't take credit for "Bei Area" - that brilliance comes from my brother Preetesh, aka Pree Diddy, better known to readers of the comments section of the blog as Baby Bengali.

The road from Damascus to Beirut - once a pretty much straight shot past the nominal border, over mountains and down a steep decline to the modern skyline of the city with the deep blue ocean beyond - is no longer passable. Just past the border checkpoint the road is closed and you can see a massive bomb crater left by the Israeli military. So to travel to Beirut now you take a pretty long detour to the north, through the Bekaa Valley, up into the mountains, through winding, scenic roads and past a series of posh but deserted hill towns, then down to the city. The original road took maybe 2 hours and the detour takes less than 3 - a much longer route made bearable by the scenery and the fact that there are almost no other cars on the road.

I left with a driver at about 7 a.m. Friday in a sturdy if dusty Crown Vic, and once we passed the border into Lebanon he started to point out the sights. First there was the crater in the road. Then there was a succession of bombed out buses and passenger cars, struck by the Israelis, now simply charred husks of twisted metal on the side of the road. There was little traffic in the Bekaa. The IDF has clearly targeted trucks delivering vegetables and other staples to make life as difficult as possible, but we saw a lot of passenger cars that had been bombed too - a fact that made my Syrian driver, who makes the journey several times a week, noticeably angry. (It wasn't until later, when I reached Beirut, that I heard that the IDF had heavily bombed Bekaa overnight. I would have been much more nervous.)

In some of the towns there were a few people sitting outside their homes, some shops opening, some children playing. But generally it felt like early in the morning of a holiday - everyone sleeping late, activity at a minimum. The vistas from some of the hill towns to the green valleys and towns below were stunning - and we passed a number of unfinished hilltop homes belonging, my driver explained, to Lebanon's postwar nouveau riche. Who knows when they'll return to finish those homes.

When we finally reached Beirut itself, life seemed pretty normal in the city center and in the commercial district of Hamra, where I'm staying. People were out shopping, cars clogged the road, the Radio Shack was open so I could get myself an electrical adapter. Look closely, however, and you see that a lot of shops are closed. The Starbucks outlet on Hamra Street has been shut since the fighting began (now 17 days ago) but fortunately there's no shortage of good coffee in the neighborhood.

After setting up shop in the hotel - there was a Time Out Beirut in my room, which I thought was cool, if optimistic - I went down to the city center for the Lebanese government's daily press briefing. Downtown Beirut looked like downtown L.A. on a Sunday afternoon - no one around, huge high-rises looking absolutely deserted, the few cars around driving at breakneck speed. The briefing was uneventful and there were only three other foreign journalists there - perhaps because it had been pushed back from its regular time due to an official visit by an EU delegation.

I went back to my hotel, conferred by e-mail with our colleagues in the region (two in Israel, one in southern Lebanon, one traveling with Secretary Rice in Malaysia, plus our editors in Washington), and we decided I should write the daily news story wrapping up the events of the day. The others were all working on separate stories, and "anchoring the daily" is a necessary but time-consuming job that's best given to someone who has nothing else going that day. It was after 1 a.m. when I finally fell asleep, with "Meet the Fockers" playing on TV.

Today I called Nairobi, where my friends Peter and Yat, visiting from Honolulu and L.A., were on their way to a game reserve in Lake Naivasha. It was a trip I was supposed to have been on, along with next week's trip to Kilimanjaro, and I'm still really disappointed to be missing all of that. Plus I feel pretty terrible that two close friends have flown halfway around the world to visit me in Africa and work has called me away for an indefinite amount of time. (There's also the little matter of a precious bottle of Scotch that Yat imported from Scotland that isn't going to be there when I get back.) But that's the reality of this job, I guess. This is still the biggest story in the world at the moment, it's not going to be over anytime soon, and we have a lot of work to do.

On the road in Damascus

I've been in Syria for the past several days covering this side of the conflict in Lebanon (Syria is one of the key backers of Hezbollah and one of the Bush administration's least favorite regimes, plus it's hosting more than 150,000 Lebanese refugees). Damascus, the capital, is the world's oldest continuously inhabited city, although for the first few days here I didn't see that much of it. The story in Lebanon was moving fast and my work days were long.

Language has been a bit of a struggle for me. I don't speak Arabic, but I guess to Syrians I look like I should. People have tended to get 3-4 sentences deep into a conversation with me before realizing that I have no idea what they're saying.

Fortunately, I've had the help of translators for nearly all my interviews. On my first day here I arranged a trip to the Lebanese border to meet refugees fleeing the Israeli attacks. At the appointed time, the translator called my hotel room to say he was in the lobby, wearing a green sweater. I went downstairs and looked around for several minutes, but found no one wearing a green sweater (or any sweater, really, as it was nearly 100 degrees outside). Finally I approached a guy in a green t-shirt; it was him.

Hmm. Sweater, t-shirt? It was kind of a basic mistake for a translator, but I shrugged it off. We went outside to wait for the car. He asked me how I was enjoying Syria. I said I'd only been here about 12 hours, but everyone in the hotel was really nice. "Well," he said, "Syrians are known for their hostility."

Hmm. What was I more worried about? That my well-paid translator didn't know the difference between "hostility" and "hospitality" - or that he did?

Actually, the people here have been very cool. Not that many Americans come to Syria - getting a visa is very difficult - so I've had the feeling of being someplace cut off in many ways from the western world. You can't assume that anyone - shopkeepers, government officials, hotel staff - speaks English, and I'm told that until a year or two ago even Coke was exotic. It's also illegal to convert Syrian pounds into foreign currency, for whatever reason.

Damascus seems to be changing fast, although the Old City is still a trip back into another era - labrynthine streets, centuries-old mosques, throngs of people in covered markets, shops selling everything you can think of. There are also amazing cafes, nargileh bars and even boutique hotels tucked behind unassuming stone doors. Some pictures are below.

Now - although I was scooped by Yat - I'm off to Beirut to join our team covering the conflict. My long-awaited Kilimanjaro climb is off (I was going to hold Yat and Peter up anyway) but my colleagues in Israel and Lebanon have also had vacations and trips home cancelled for this story, so I can't complain too much. It's the nature of the job. Who knows how long I'll be there; the one thing that seems certain is that this thing shows no signs of ending quickly, or smoothly.

Damascus' old city

A market in the Old City

Courtyard of the Omayyad Mosque, a stunning mix of Christian and Muslim architecture

Some of the rooms in the mosque have a very specific purpose

A family leaves the mosque following afternoon prayers

'New' Damascus - the view from my hotel room

A common sight in Damascus - a poster featuring Syrian President Assad alongside Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in the rear window of a public bus

Sent to the Middle East

I've been dispatched to the Middle East to help with our coverage of the crisis in Lebanon. This was sudden - I got a call from Washington Sunday night and, thanks to some magic from my travel agent, found myself on a plane to the region the next night, leaving my apartment in the care of Yatin, which seemed only slightly less dangerous than where I was headed.

For the next 24 hours, I felt like I was speed-dating the airports of the Middle East - Nairobi to Dubai (great duty free shopping; bought some shades), Dubai to Cairo (met my Egypt-based colleagues, got a shotgun tour of the city via cab), Cairo to Amman (excellent VIP transfer service by Royal Jordanian ensured I made my 45-minute connection), Amman to Cyprus.

Cyprus - tourism slogan: "The Island for All Seasons," assuming those seasons are "muggy," "stuffy" and "humidifier" - is sort of like Jamaica for European tourists. The town where I've landed, Larnaca, is also a bit of Miami - a long seafront lined with hotels and uber-chic cafes with expansive patios, all apparently vying for a spot in an interior-design magazine while not actually catering to any customers. That's because everyone is on the beach - everyone, including people who look too old to be sunbathing topless. This is not a feature of the American beach vacation. (Naturally, I've camped out inside the Starbucks, since I thought I might be going to a war and didn't pack for the beach.)

Well, in the past week, Cyprus has gone from Eurobreak '06 to ground zero for foreigners fleeing the violence in Lebanon. They expect that more than 10,000 evacuees will pass through this tiny island before it's all over, and combined with the standard holiday rush of tourists, finding a hotel room here is a task for military intelligence. On this, my third night, I'll sleep in my third different hotel - and I got this room after going door-to-door for nearly two hours and finally persuading a woman that I wouldn't take the room until after 9 pm. (It wasn't an act of charity on her part - she's already got a guest paying full price for the afternoon, so she'll rent the room twice today.)

Yesterday was a long, hot day waiting for the first wave of American evacuees to reach here. It was about 2 a.m. before the passengers disembarked, after a seven-hour voyage in the dark, when they were greeted by...a phalanx of journalists from an alphabet soup of wire services and TV networks. Everyone from the U.S. was on severe deadline - it was nearing drop-dead time for stories for papers on the East Coast - so the reporters yelled at the disembarking passengers to come over and chat before boarding buses to the immigration terminal. The big-name-network producers held up notepads with the network's name printed in bold, and several of the passengers came over and obliged our questions.

The result was that about 20 journalists interviewed one passenger at once, so if you read multiple stories about the American evacuation, you'll see the same person quoted multiple times. I couldn't stay and wait for them to be processed through immigration - I had a deadline, so I raced back to my hotel room to file an update to our story. It was 4 a.m. before I was done, and I crashed. I was up at 10 and from there it was a scramble to check out of my hotel, find a new one, secure a plane ticket out of here (another task requiring MacGyveresque skills) and, oh yeah, file an update on the evacuation. It all finally got sorted out late this afternoon, and I'm going to spend the rest of the day looking at the ocean - from inside the air-conditioned Starbucks.

- Read our story on the evacuation
- See pictures