Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998, Pages 37, 113

Letter From Lebanon

Lebanese Fast Forward Back to the Gold Old Days, With Disco Dancing, Fast Foods and Bungee Jumping

By Marilyn Raschka

"The Red Cross took away three bodies," a friend said in reviewing his night out in Beirut. Violence? A slip back to the days of the civil war? A serious car accident? None of the above. The event was the fourth assemblage of rock fans and bands called Beat Machine 4, held in the Beirut Forum, a new, huge hall devoted to such events.

The bodies were in fact over-excited teenagers who had gathered to shout and dance and carry on from midnight to dawn. The bodies recovered.

Back in Beirut only a day, I realized I had much territory to cover to catch up over a year's absence. A friend's 13-year-old helped. She had been at the Forum and could answer my questions.

No alcohol. Pepsi had sponsored the event and therefore had the soft drink concession.

No chairs. This kind of concert didn't need them. Parents delivered and picked up the kids. The acoustic level was fine, according to the 13-year-old. My teacher friend, who had attended at the invitation of his young students, defined it as deafening.

Lebanon's youth, no longer confined to their homes by fear, are hungry for action—including bungee jumping from construction cranes on Sundays.

Everyone's on the move. And at all hours.

Beirut is a safe city. And it appears that, as in the prewar period, it doesn't sleep.

I compare the difference between Lebanese strolling the streets now and Lebanese venturing outside during the war years as a country that now is constantly talking to one that once was constantly listening.

The Lebanese used to walk around with portable radios practically glued to their ears, straining to hear the latest bad news in order to take prudent action accordingly.

The radios are gone, replaced by cell phones. Arranging nights out at discos now is as common as arranging business deals.

Youth is very in. They have taken over. I heard a story about a 23-year-old whose favorite disco was so frequented by teenagers that she announced she felt too old to go there anymore.

Many discos don't open until midnight—a situation which may have as much to do with the chaotic state of traffic as with the state of being "in."

In my year's absence certain bottlenecks have been eased. Others worsened.

State-of-the-art tunnels have been bored into the rocky earth. Flyovers span congested intersections. The government also has purchased hundreds of buses which cruise the city, even halting between designated stops in hopes of picking up passengers. Although cheap, LL500 (33 cents U.S.), there are few takers. They must compete with the existing choices of taxis, shared taxis, privately owned microbuses and, of course, private cars.

ROAD RAGE HAPPENS wouldn't be a bad bumper sticker to try out in Beirut. The American term pops up regularly in the local English-language press, which describes incidents of this phenomenon. I found my own one day as I was stuck behind a Range Rover. The driver had his own version of my proposed bumper sticker: The metal letter 'N' in RANGE was missing.

I spent a day with a friend's American niece, she on her first trip to Lebanon, me on my annual return. As we drove around she took notes: Black and Decker, Micro Word, Donald Duck. She couldn't believe all the American products and connections. Her favorite was the Al Pacino chicken restaurant. The connection between Pacino and chicken is one of Lebanon's little mysteries. For me, the TGI Fridays and Hard Rock Café (Beirut has two "Rocks") were new additions since my last visit, but no mysteries. American is in.

My Beirut stay covered the same period of time as the Iraq crisis. A foreign journalist friend of mine was covering the event from Beirut. He ate and breathed the crisis with the help of CNN. It consumed him. I took my cue from the Lebanese, who seemed genuinely bored by someone else's politics. Caught between Iraq and a Hard Rock Place, like most Lebanese, I opted for the café rather than CNN.

The tragedy of the Luxor massacre had much more impact here. I heard about it as I was walking to my travel agent. I was the bearer of bad news.

The three agents turned grim. "We'll have cancellations," they predicted. And right they were. By the following day most of their Christmas tours—once fully booked—were emptying. Luxor plus Iraq proved too much for a group of American doctors who were scheduled to give the keynote addresses at an upcoming medical conference at the American University of Beirut. They canceled.

Good news seemed to come in smaller packages than the bad. On Nov. 12 it was announced that the U.S. had deleted Lebanon from its list of narcotic-producing countries, a further indication—at least in U.S. eyes—that Lebanon is cleaning up its own act. Another small bit of good news was the choice of Beirut as the venue for the 2001 meeting of Francophone nations, held this year in Hanoi.

Getting the Lebanese to talk politics was futile. But when asked about the economy the groans began. I groaned along with them. Life here has become much more expensive. An average meal out cannot be had for less than $15. Last year, the same food at the same restaurant was $10.

The down-and-outs are still there and the numbers are growing. Many war-displaced are still displaced—a situation blamed on a lack of government funds.

A friend complained about an abandoned car just across the street from her house. She couldn't understand why someone hadn't hauled the wreck away. Then one morning she discovered why. The car had a human occupant.

Relief organization personnel told me about a similar situation they had come across. Hardly new to these cases, they told a pathetic story about a 67-year-old man who lost his wife and four children to one shell in the war. For the last few years he had been living in an abandoned beach house. The government bought the land for a project. Forced to leave, he now "lives" in an abandoned car, taking handouts and help from a church and people in the neighborhood. An operation for throat cancer has left him literally speechless.

When Lebanese President Elias Hrawi gave his Independence Day address Nov. 22 he underlined the need for the country to find a way to heal the wounds of the civil war. Trying to find a shared point of reference between the bungee-jumping, disco- dancing generation of Lebanon and its tired and poor won't be easy.

Tunnels and cell phones aren't the answer. Life in the fast lane won't give much access to those living in the derelict cars parked along the way.