Barrage Reopens Wounds of a Fractured Beirut

Anthony Shadid reports from Lebanon: Barrage Reopens Wounds of a Fractured Beirut.

from the 80-year-old scion of a traditionally prominent Sunni family: "It's sad for Beirut, it's sad for all Lebanon," he said, sitting on the patio of his 176-year-old house, a fan lazily churning. "The situation reflects the whole fragile constitution of the country itself. The saddest part is its fragmentation."

Politics in Lebanon, a country of 18 religious sects, is a tenuous arrangement. The Christian minority is protected by equal representation in parliament. The president, though weak, is a Maronite Catholic. The prime minister is Sunni. The parliament speaker, almost as powerful, is Shiite. In a region where minorities have often suffered, it ensures representation. But that representation means decisions must come through consensus among Shiites, Sunnis and different factions of Christians. Reaching a consensus on Hezbollah's weapons has proved the most elusive task of a government still trying to define itself in the wake of Syria's troop withdrawal last year after a 29-year military presence.

Tonight the sadness caught up with me. I've been fending it off in the adrenaline of keeping up with the news, blogging, alternating with tending to my children and family. Now it's hitting me. Commenters ask why such outrage, such pain (as if so much death and destruction should be met with no emotion).

For the second time in my life Lebanon falls apart in front of my eyes. We knew she was fragile but there had been so much hope in the last fifteen years, since the end of the civil war. Now something is broken. The Lebanese will endure, but this seems like a death blow to the hopes for knitting together the country, for economic progress, for being part of the community of viable nations.

It's not just that people in my village are suffering and frightened. It's not just that the roads and bridges around the country are destroyed, the ports blockaded, the airport runways demolished. It's that the lights have gone out on the reconstruction of Beirut. Yes she will survive. All of Lebanon's cities have been razed and rebuilt numerous times in the last several millenia.

We just had so much hope. Gone.

As an American, what is most painful is the level of contempt expressed by my government and many of my fellow citizens. When the terrorists attacked the World Trade Towers, Lebanese turned out in the streets with candles, demonstrating in solidarity with the brave people of New York. Now while the cities of Lebanon suffer under relentless barrage of bombing, people post messages dripping with vitriol for me, for this blog, for anyone who expresses pain or sadness.

My white, Jewish, American husband has been bewildered at the nastiness. And that the president and the UN ambassador turn their faces away, assert that the deaths and destruction are regrettable but nothing can be done...

And add that to what we have done in Iraq, and what we condone in Palestine...

Through my mother, my roots in America go back three hundred and eighty years. I may be a daughter of Lebanon but I am also a daughter of Virginia, of the Revolutionary War, of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The ideals in our organizing documents matter to me. I cling to them as the kernel of truth and justice at the heart of America the nation. I believe these ideals are living ones that each generation can use for good. My mother used them to help tear down the walls of segregation in the South of 1960. Her fight was part of my childhood mythology of what it means to be an American.

Today it seems that my country has betrayed its best principles, not just once but over and over again.

Yes, my heart is broken, for Lebanon, but also for America.

Comments

[badgervan]

I ask you to disregard the sub-human rants of the idiots and the haters. Many of us are learning much more about the middle east because of honest writers like yourself. If you have the truth on your side, do not worry about the blatherings of the whackjobs. There are two sides to the situation in the mideast - something which our doofus of a "president" will never understand.
Keep on writing/teaching. You do it well. We need to know all of the facts - not just one side's version. Wise leaders possess this knowledge. The U.S. presently lacks one of those wise leaders, sad to say - just when we need one the most.

[Leila]

Badgervan - I recognize your "handle" - you have been around before, but long ago I think.

Thanks so much for your kind words.