Rage and Incongruity: Hezbollah Funeral for Victims of Israeli Raid

By Marilyn Raschka

The funeral procession was headed by scores of angry young men jostling for the privilege of carrying seven flag-draped coffins. At its tail end was the incongruous sight of a man pushing a colorful cart of cotton candy. In between were hundreds of chador-clad women and thousands of chanting young males. There also were dozens of very young boys, struggling under the weight of large yellow flags with the green logo of Hezbollah, the Party of God.

The coffins-to-cotton-candy theme was repeated in a hundred different ways during the three hours that Hezbollah supporters in Beirut's predominently Shi'i southern suburbs spent eulogizing and burying local youths among the 26 persons killed in the June 2 Israeli air attack on a Hezbollah training camp in the Bekaa valley.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed that the victims were between the ages of 13 and 17 and that the facilities bombed and rocketed were more akin to a Boy Scout camp than a military training base. Similar funeral processions took place in Baalbek and Tyre and the other home towns of the dead.

Hezbollah funerals and rallies have become set pieces, predictable in their rhetoric, physical make-up and even processional route. You can count on statements such as the one made in June by Hezbollah's chief mentor, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah: "Every bullet Israel fires on the oppressed is American, every shell Israel fires on the Lebanese is American and every attacking jet is American."

But everywhere you look there are incongruities. The women wear high heels, or sports shoes and jeans, underneath their black chadors. Many carry English-language textbooks. Young mothers bring their children along because there is no one at home to look after them. The children seem to enjoy their stroller rides and the treats their moms buy them along the way. Occasionally a woman steps from the funeral procession to buy a kilo of tomatoes from a vegetable cart—after all, there is lunch to prepare after the ceremony is over.

The young men appeared more credible than the women, but even their chants and ritualized rage faded in the heat along the two-mile route from the mosque to the cemetery. "America and Israel are the biggest evil and the worst devils" is repeated until it loses much of its sting.

Alongside the procession route are carts selling various iced juices, Lebanese bread snacks and that well-known product of the devil, Pepsi.

The men have no special garb, unless Chicago Bulls T-shirts count as such. A quick tally revealed that the Bulls led the Los Angeles Lakers in the T-shirts department, with surfer shirts as serious contenders.

Red head-bands with an Islamic invocation set the serious demonstrators apart from others along the route. A young boy of perhaps eight wearing such a band struggled to keep his flag—four times his size—upright. When I took aim with my camera he froze in place and face. After the "click" he broke into a wide smile and said, "Merci." Then I noticed his SURFER WORLD T-shirt.

Marching On

On they marched past Play Boy Photo, Patisserie Happy Days and a Dollar Store—the latest rage in Lebanon. Above them were balconies festooned with the flags of countries participating in the World Cup. Germany's yellow, red and black flag dominated. Meanwhile, Abdul-Hadi Hamadeh, a Lebanese Shi'a with Hezbollah connections, languishes in a German jail where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of a U.S. navy diver on the hijacked TWA plane in Beirut in 1985. Even in Beirut's southern suburbs, once off limits to foreigners except American hostages, soccer takes precedence over politics.

Suddenly a young man left the march with two friends to approach me. In Mid-western-accented English he asked, "Where are you from?" I rounded off my answer to "Chicago." When he said he was born in Detroit, however, I told him the truth, that I was from the Milwaukee area. When I asked his name he hesitated, then chose "Michel."

After passing the jewelry shop called Diamonds Are Forever, the procession turned more somber—the cemetery was just ahead. Loudspeakers were in place and a crowd variously estimated by the media at 15,000 to 20,000 gathered to hear the eulogies, which grew into further condemnations of America and Israel. It was Friday and the mid-day prayer on Islam's holy day came out over the loudspeakers at painful decibels. Four young men walked through the crowds, each holding a corner of a large Hezbollah flag—"a collection plate" which quickly filled.

Heat and fatigue drove many of the people to take seats on the cemetery graves. The flat monuments, many with flowers and plants surrounding them, disappeared under the voluminous black chadors or under collections of small children who squirmed and teased each other out of boredom.

The mixed motif theme again came into view. Just a few gravestones away was a young man with a serious nature—but his T-shirt displayed the logo of the World Cup, complete with its stylized American flag and the initials USA emblazoned on top.

As the sermon ended, many of the people—especially the women—headed home with their children, bags of tomatoes and blistered feet. The hard core remained behind to bury the dead. Coffins, simple wooden boxes, were carried in by jeans-clad pallbearers. The grave had been dug. All seven were to be buried together.

Some dozen photographers were lined up on one edge of the grave, forcing the families of the fallen to scramble for a place on the other side. As the shrouded bodies were lifted from their coffins and placed directly in the ground as is the Islamic custom, the women mourners shrieked and writhed. Waves of people pushed in closer to the mass grave. Hezbollahis raised their hefty guns menacingly, and suddenly order was restored.

Outside the cemetery stood numerous members of the Lebanese Security Forces. The Hezbollah militiamen were breaking Lebanese law by carrying guns. "See no evil" was the order of the day, however, and no one interfered with the Party of God's funeral.

Back at the newsroom, the TV was churning out classical music as it always does when the government designates a day of official mourning. I wondered if any of Hezbollah's leadership were watching. One station's classical music video showed a blonde soprano wearing a dress that didn't begin till the breastbone. Another station ran a video of an orchestra and choir. The conductor looked like ex-hostage Terry Waite and the selection being performed was the "Messiah."

The following day a small unsigned editorial appeared in a local French-language newspaper complaining that classical music was getting a bad name through such repeated association with death and sadness. And besides, the editorial said, the full day of mourning meant that the French Tennis

Open—scheduled to be televised live—had to be cancelled and that was simply too much.

A few days later I saw the movie "Philadelphia," which deals sensitively with the scourge of AIDS—a long way in place and subject from Beirut's southern suburbs. Or so I thought. At the same time, however, certain Shi'i sheikhs were speaking out on the subject of Ashura, the Shi'i "Good Friday" during which thousands of young men cut their heads with knives and beat themselves bloody with ropes and chains to commemorate the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammed.

This year, however, the sheikhs felt compelled to add a timely warning to their sermons. They counseled believers against sharing a common sword to make the initial cuts because of the danger of the dreaded disease AIDS—another devil associated in their minds with the West.

Marilyn Raschka is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut.