At the end of the performance, we posed for photos with the group and were embraced by all of the performers. As the hall emptied and we headed back outside, a door to an office opened. A man appeared and ushered us inside. We took a seat on a leather couch in a small office, which bore the obligatory giant photograph of Hafez Assad. We found ourselves holding small cups of Arabic espresso as an older man in a suit asked questions from behind a desk: Where are you from? What hotel are you at? How long are you staying?
With the questions answered and having had a good taste of Syrian state control, we were led back into the hall. We returned to the crowd of performers, and they invited us to journey with them on their bus back to their UN-maintained refugee camp. We got on board and again others stood so that we might sit.
Along the way, an older Palestinian with presumably the best English of the group befriended us. His name was Ahmed, and he explained that the purpose of the performance was to maintain awareness of Palestinian culture and the plight of the refugees that live right on the fringe of the Syrian city. Explaining the camp, he told us, "I have no home. As a Palestinian, I have no home. Here in Syria we are guests, so we fight to return." There was one difference between these refugees and the benign ones I had met in Lebanon: These were revolutionaries.
They took us to their political office about a block into the camp. Ahmed showed me a large depiction of Palestine painted on the wall of the concrete office. The wall also sported lists of names of members of their group who had been killed in Israel, including one of his nephews. "I think the revolution will fight until victory," Ahmed assured us as we moved on.
He led us into an adjoining room with lawnchairs and benches. Younger men brought in tea for us as we gazed upon more pictures in this room. A large portrait of Che Guevara hung in the window. Beyond that, other posters featured images of the recent Palestinian uprising. Ahmed pointed to one that adorned a calendar, featuring a young boy throwing a rock at an Israeli tank, which I had seen before. "With a stone, he attacked a tank. He's a hero. I think so," Ahmed said with clear admiration.
Other portraits of young Arabic men were scattered about featuring others that had been killed, as Ahmed explained. I spied one small card with the same red star logo I had seen at the hall. It included in English, "Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP]." I asked Ahmed the name of their political party. "We are the Revolutionary Movement to Stop the Jews," he said, but I could tell that he was making up a translation as he went.
Although the DFLP is listed on the US State Department's list of international terrorist organizations, there have been no recorded attacks since 1988. The DFLP primarily operated by infiltrating Israeli territory with armed bands. So I was sipping flower tea at a branch office of a terrorist organization? Most of those with us were older men, long past any revolutionary prime. They had more of the markings of some elderly men debating heavily while feasting on cigarettes in front of a general store than any terrorist group.
As people around the room asked my friend and I questions, Ahmed translated. Once the usual questions about where in America we lived and what we did for a living passed, the topic turned to Palestine. It was only days after the United States vetoed a UN measure to have peacekeepers act as a buffer in the Occupied Territories and many in the room were still angry with that. "What can we do?" Ahmed begged. Another gentleman reminded me of something I knew all too well, "the papers and television give the wrong views of Palestinians." I told them that they were correct; the US media heavily favored the Israeli point of view and rarely gave accounts of the suffering of Palestinian refugees.
They understood how lobbying in America works and knew full well that President Clinton and Al Gore bowed to the whims of the pro-Israeli lobby. They thought Bush might be different, but understood that all politicians in the United States must treat that sector well. Then they asked us whom we had voted for. "Neither Gore nor Bush, I don't like either," I replied to a room of astonished faces. They had never heard the name Ralph Nader, but I assured them that he was not so pro-Israeli. The looks of shock turned to glee.
"How many are like you in America?" one man inquired, eagerly leaning forward in his plastic chair. I said probably a few million and once Ahmed translated the room became abuzz of people talking to each other. They urged us to speak about their situation "all over the world," and fetched us some 7UP as our tea cups went dry.
More stories were told, including one of the 1978 Israeli attack on South Lebanon where Ahmed was at the time. Another man in the room had been taken prisoner by the Israelis in the early '80s. They also told their view of how the Israelis came to take the land they had been born in. "Who gave them these things?" Ahmed questioned, mocking the Jewish claim of a divine right to the Holy Land. "Did God give them these things? No. It was taken by force."
As we were again assured that Ahmed's party would "fight until victory" people began to leave for home. Ahmed invited us to his house only a few blocks away. There we met his wife and daughter, who was studying for exams in school. We downed several glasses of tea over more stories about the Palestinian situation. While Ahmed's rotund figure didn't speak of physical deprivation, his psychological woes ran deep.
He explained that the factory where he worked was the best job he could obtain, even though his skills extended beyond it. He intended for his daughter to attend a university abroad, but wasn't sure anyone would take a Palestinian. As refugees, the Palestinians have specific passports that many Western nations won't accept. We were told about a niece who was getting married to a British man, yet Ahmed and his family were denied a visit to the United Kingdom for their wedding. Above all, he hoped to visit the United States, though he doubted it would happen.
My friend did most of the conversing with Ahmed and his daughter. Perhaps it was the caffeine again oddly making me tired, but I couldn't help but feel guilty. I had little to worry about; few comparable concerns and definitely no traumatic memories that I could laugh away like Mohammed or Ahmed. I constantly struggled to keep my video camera hidden, not out of fear of theft, but out of shame of owning something they probably never would. Is my birthplace all that separates me from them?
On the afternoon of my departure, I waited for my delayed flight to Paris at the Beirut Airport. This was the infamous airport where the US Marines engaged in artillery duels with Shi'ite militias 17 years before. While waiting around near a large contingent of overweight UN soldiers returning to their homes in Ghana, loud thumps resounded off the windows. Everyone in the gate turned their view to outside and many rushed to the window. This was the response of a population used to warfare. In what turned out to be nothing more than an oncoming storm front, I had an opportunity to see a little of the fear and curiosity that now pervades the Lebanese psyche.
Exactly two weeks later, such paranoia proved accurate as Israeli warplanes struck Syrian positions in central Lebanon in retaliation for Hizbollah attacks. This was the sort of escalation the people of Lebanon feared from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. A large part of me wishes I had been there to see the reaction to airstrikes, which hit right along the Beirut-Damascus highway on which I had traveled.
On my return, I endured a layover in Paris. The city seemed dry, sterile and devoid of life compared to where I had just been. I have since had the feeling that the trauma of war and flight also has the benefit of adding more earnest vitality to those who make it through.
Benjamin Granby can be reached at sarin@devo.com.
