The Hospitality of Ruins: An unguided tour through the war-ravaged lands of Lebanon and Syria.
Photos and text by Benjamin Granby

BEIRUT —When the music changed from a selection of Arabic pop to "It's Raining Men," I cringed. But the other patrons at Geenie's just kept on dancing. It really didn't faze me too badly; after all, this wasn't Wisconsin where I could yell at the DJ to avoid disco music. All I had to do was peer out the door across Rue Monot to see a row of completely bombed out buildings to regain my senses. Beirut, 10 years after the war: they could dance to whatever they wanted.

"The war wasn't that bad," the bartender told me. "I mean, it was bad for some people, but it was interesting to live through." He gave an indignant smirk. "It certainly wasn't the 'danger zone'!" The scars of the city told a different story, but I trusted the man's assertion, even though he had fled to Europe for most of the 1980s.

For the most part, Beirut is marked by two things, bullet holes and the yellow flags of Hizbollah, the guerilla force that fought against 18 years of Israeli occupation in the south of Lebanon. Their flags, distinct with a fist thrusting a Kalishnakov rifle in the air, even dotted the highway median on the way from the airport. The roads to the south were more elaborate, sporting fake missile batteries and profiles of martyred militants.

A battle-scarred building in downtown Beirut.

As we stepped off the minibus at the taxi stand in the ancient port city of Tyre, our appearance quickly gave us away. A few young adults surrounded us, but any nervousness we felt was quickly dispelled when it became apparent that they were just curious about us. In a flurry of hand gestures and calls, we found ourselves offered schwarma sandwiches of chicken and vegetables and Cokes. One young man, delighted to hear we were American, told us about his brother living in L.A.. Before we knew it, they rushed us into a cab and we found ourselves at a wonderful seaside restaurant that had a few guest rooms available. Our window facing the sea featured a few scattered remains of Roman pillars littered along the beach.

We innocently began a tourist walk around Tyre's Roman ruins, pausing only to watch UN soldiers doing the same. I had never seen UN vehicles before, especially not in an armed capacity and I mused to my friend, "I feel like we are on CNN." She only laughed at my naive statement and we continued on. With the bright Middle Eastern sun bearing on us, we stopped at a sunglass shop where I could pick up a pair of sunglasses.

As the man at the counter assisted us, the shop owner em erged, having heard us speak English. He introduced himself as Mohammed. In broken English, he asked where we were from. When we told him "America" his reply was what was to become a standard line, "Oh ... American ... Nothing against you, but your government is not good." I tried to express that I understood his position, but he didn't seem interested in pursuing the topic anymore. His taste in sunglasses wasn't very helpful either, but my friend and I each found a pair to purchase.

Just as we were about to leave, Mohammed invited us to stay for tea and cookies. Naturally we did, and most of the conversation revolved around where we were from and what we did. I found it easier to describe myself as a college student, despite having graduated two years previously. I figured it allowed me to say that I was studying the region. So, when I told him I studied history he seemed quite pleased. He invited us to visit his family at home and we obliged.

It was only on the walk to his home that I realized what we were in for. I asked Mohammed where he was from and he said "Jaffa, which is in Palestine." He had been a refugee since the age of three. After taking a few winding turns away from the center of town we wound up in the El-Buss Palestinian Refugee Camp. At first glance, the buildings did not look any more dilapidated than the rest of run-down Tyre. The streets seemed a little dirtier and many more children were playing among the sporadic traffic. Older children would speed by on scooters, doing laps around the blocks. Mohammed seemed to know everyone in the camp of 7,000, joking in Arabic to the kids we passed. Most of them stopped and with a giant grin waved to us with a "Hallo!" or "Welcome!" When I finally caught glances of the interiors of some of the homes it was more apparent that beyond the facade, there was little substance. Most homes were basically cinder-block shacks with few amenities.

We first stopped inside the open-air shack of an aged Palestinian couple. Mohammed explained that the man inside was an old refugee who had learned fluent English while living under British rule in the 1930s and taught it to others in the camp, Crippled by fibromyalgia or some similar joint disease, he still managed to shake my hand as he sat behind a cluttered desk. Unfortunately, despite his fluent English, his condition made it very hard to understand his words, so Mohammed took the opportunity to tell a little of the man's history. The man had learned to speak English, French, along with his native Arabic — and also some Hebrew.

"Why Hebrew?" Mohammed asked him, seemingly on our behalf.

"So I know it when the Jews take over Lebanon," was his presumably logical reply. He went on to demonstrate how closely related many words in Arabic and Hebrew are, something I didn't realize. We moved on to meet Mohammed's parents who were in remarkably good condition, and then we met his immediate family at his home next door. Mohammed had been married three times and had several grown children. But here we met his latest wife and their four girls and baby boy. The whole family was full of smiles and delight with the guests Mohammed had brought home. They treated us to a dinner of tiny baked fish, bread, tabbouleh, and potatoes. I had read some about the customs of eating at an Arab's home, including the removal of shoes and the eating on a floor. Unlike what I had read, women and men were not separated while dining, and Mohammed treated me like an old friend.

I soon found myself reclining in a room that featured the home's one modern appliance: satellite television. Mohammed struggled with his children who clamored for cartoons, but finally was able to treat his guests to one of Lebanon's unique features: Al-Manar TV. Al-Manar is the voice of the "Islamic Revolution" in Lebanon as promoted since Hizbollah obtained a broadcast license in 1997. The professional quality of the station was indicative of the group's ample funding. At first glance, the only defining difference between Al-Manar and other stations with Arabic soaps were the martyr profiles of dead guerillas that served as commercial breaks.

Watching Al-Manar turned Mohammed's chipper persona into one of stolid brooding. He began to speak more about what his people had gone through.

His people.

I don't have a people. I didn't live with such an identity. I called myself ethnically Jewish only if the subject of ethnic backgrounds came up, usually when drunkenly relating to the Irish at a bar. But because of my sheltered American upbringing, I'd never had reason to speak in such honest melancholy over what the Jews endured in the past. I had always felt it shallow for me to equate my life with my race. But Mohammed had suffered, and certainly his people had too.

Mohammed generously offered us an overnight stay, and his children relished the idea. We had to explain that we had a room already paid for, but promised to return the next morning to his store to visit the magnificent nearby Roman ruins. He walked us part way there, but not before first sharing some Turkish coffee with us at a local meeting hall. Turkish coffee has a knack for putting me to sleep, so I nearly dozed as Mohammed showed us a speech by Hizbollah's spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, on Al-Manar. He made a point of showing how the Sheikh's speech and prayer were more of a dirge for the people of Lebanon.

The next morning we shared tea at the optics store again and Mohammed introduced us to a Dr. Yousef, another aged refugee. Dr. Yousef pulled out a book, which he gave me, that detailed his experience as a refugee and how he remembered his childhood home, which was in northern Israel in the now destroyed village of Dayr Al-Qasi.

"When I go to the border," Dr. Yousef explained, "I can see my home on the hills. My home. But I cannot ever go back there." The back of his book featured countless British-controlled- Palestine era revenue tax receipts, ID cards, farming licenses and even an animal enumeration file which proved the family's property ownership. An impressionistic painting of his village adorned the cover.

One third of Tyre was flattened in the 1982 Israeli assault. The UN Relief and Works Agency estimated that the Israelis also leveled 50% of the houses in El-Buss, Mohammed's refugee camp. Within the first week of the invasion, which preceded the Israeli Defense Force's attack on Beirut, the Red Cross estimated that there were some 10,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians dead.

I asked what it was like in Tyre when the IDF invaded in 1982. Mohammed's face turned despondent and then he stood and told his story in an animated fashion. He explained that he had been taken from his home because Israeli soldiers found a hunting rifle there. He was placed in a small room with another man and forced to remain standing for two days. When he requested to go to the bathroom the reply was a kick in the balls.

Mohammed had briefly stepped out, and before I knew it, he returned with a planned excursion for us. The Palestinians of Tyre seemed able to drop everything to help show us around. Mohammed ushered us into a car that was owned by a couple heading south. They drove us to Qana, the village where Jesus was supposed to have turned water into wine, about a 10-minute ride from Tyre, and dropped us off at the Qana massacre site. The site is modest, and apart from a large concrete modern art memorial erected by the Syrian Government, it would be unnoticeable. But Qana itself is very small, primarily consisting of one winding road that cuts through the village. The first thing we encountered was an old Soviet era T-60 tank adorned with the flags of AMAL and children playing on the turret. It was hard to tell if the tank was still usable or not as it was parked just next to a run down UN compound.

Mohammed led us into an open-air tent where rows of elongated marble sarcophagi lay next to each other amidst numerous political flags and slogans. These were the dead of the Qana Massacre, 106 civilians killed by Israeli shells during the 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath invasion. The building was full of activity as people set up chairs for what looked like a speech. Everyone slain was a martyr. The workers paid the American tourists to their revered massacre site no mind. At the head of each tomb was a spattering of family portraits of those who were killed. Each sarcophagus varied in length, depending on the number of family members contained within. Mohammed pointed us to a billboard adorned with photographs from the massacre. I had seen many before, but the one of the headless infant displayed at the site still sticks with me.

Sarcophagi of some of the victims of the Qana Massacre lie at rest. The AMAL logo is on the wall in the background.

We then went outside where Mohammed pointed us to a large shack, enclosed by glass. "This is untouched, from the shelling," he explained. I had the feeling that he had visited this site many times. Behind the glass were twisted heaps of metal and other articles, supposedly left untouched from after the bodies were removed. Just next to it and over a fence was the UN compound, where a sign in front read in Arabic, English and French, "The New Holocaust, Qana April 16, 1996."

The Qana massacre was not a holocaust, but one must understand the perception that the Palestinians have of such an event. The civilians, fearing shelling, had taken shelter in a wooden structure at the UNIFIL base. Huddled together, they made for easy targets. As the United Nations determined in subsequent reports, it was likely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of "gross technical and/or procedural errors." I can only imagine what Mohammed and others like him felt.

We left the site with few other words. I really didn't know what I could say. Mohammed took us to the monument donated by the Syrians. "Syria likes to think it is protector of the Palestinians," Mohammed explained, rather indignantly. I later found this to be quite true — throughout Syria, the Palestinian flag is flown with everything official. Then again, Syria doesn't recognize Lebanon's existence and maintains about 35,000 soldiers around the small nation.

After a tour of the impressive Roman Hippodrome ruins that lay literally in Mohammed's backyard, it was time for us to leave. Mohammed urged us to come back when we could, and we assured him we would. As we boarded the microbus that was to take us to other corners of Lebanon, he solemnly looked at us and said, "I feel that when you leave Tyre, part of my heart goes too." It is hard to imagine such honest compassion in the United States.

Next: Onward to Syria