Beirut, Mission: Dionysios Skliris
“You are as resilient as its cedars” was his farewell message at the airport in front of Christian Maronite President Joseph Aoun. “The Pope chooses his words carefully,” observes Fadi, our Lebanese interlocutor in a teahouse in the Sunni district of Hamra. “He talks about ‘resilience’ in order to avoid talking about ‘resistance’. His ideal is people who can stand to stay in their place, but without taking up arms.”
Many saw , a call to disarm the unnamed Hezbollah. After landing, however, at Beirut airport, the pope had passed through the Shiite southern districts of Dahiya in the “popemobile”, while Hezbollah had lined up al-Mahdi scouts to greet him on both sides of the road, paying respect.
First Lebanon-Israel talks in four decades
However, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Emmanuel Macron’s envoy, was also in Beirut to present a road map for the evaluation of disarmament, in view of a meeting between officials of the European Union and Lebanon in Brussels on December 15. The EU intends to assist Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces so that the Lebanese army can focus on disarming the Shiite organization.
insisted that the mechanism to ensure that the truce with Israel is being observed is just as important, even if that means the presence of US and French troops on the ground. This mechanism signals the . Pro-Western Prime Minister Salam is pushing for normalization of relations, including Israel’s complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
For his part, Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem says the Shiite organization reserves the right to respond to the killing of Haitham Ali Tabatabai, its chief of military staff, by Israel on November 23 in the Dahiya neighborhood of southern Beirut.
The Christian president Aoun emphasized, however, that there will be no turning back on the path of negotiations with Israel, as the goal is to avoid a major war. The intentions of the pro-Western political duo Aun-Salam include an agreement between Lebanon and Cyprus, which will take over the rotating presidency of the EU on 1or January, promoting the disbursement of a billion euros of previously announced European aid. More ambitious is the electrical interconnection design with Cyprus.
Lost and found
For the residents of Beirut, however, the buzz of Israeli drones is a more immediate experience than the plans for Mediterranean energy inclusion. In Hamra’s haunts, an obsession with a material culture of affluence and cordial intimacy (“we’re being watched and jealous that we insist on having a good time” is a signature line) coexists with a sense that the pope’s departure marks the beginning of a pre-war period.
Leo prayed and celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the port of Beirut, the site of the chemical explosion of 4her August 2020, which left behind at least 218 dead. One of the women who lost everything in that chemical explosion of 4her August 2020 is Naila Saab, who told us her story.
Health problems led her to create a wellness center in al-Jamia, that is, the “university area” that owes its name to the American University of Beirut. The area in question was among the most affected by the explosion. The center was destroyed and Naila, who didn’t get a single dollar in compensation, had to start all over again.
Today she is the owner of the most famous “waibadico” in Beirut, in a place where the architecture and interior design are carefully designed to send the most suitable “vibes” to the patrons. He called it ‘Lost and Found’, as its concept is personal growth and achieving better versions of oneself through suffering and loss. It is more than a restaurant and club. A community has been created where participants communicate their traumas in relevant workshops. For Naila, the symbol of resilience is not the cedar, but the cactus that dominates the decoration, along with zebras and the ubiquitous “third eye” (Ājñā Chakra) of Hinduism.
All patrons are asked to fill out a paper with questions about what was the most important thing they lost and found in their lives. There are answers that come back often. Many tell how the separation from the love of their life paved the way for a more permanent companionship. Others about how breaking a professional partnership helped them land a job and make more authentic calls in unexpected ways.
“The most important things in life, like love, come as a gift when you don’t look for them,” Naila tells us. However, it is not easy for people to document the death of a loved one, something that often happens in Lebanon of explosions and drones. “There are losses that cannot be replaced,” observes Naila. A mother who lost her child, someone who lost their partner. And yet, the most remarkable initiatives in Lebanon, such as NGOs, have come from similar people who developed themselves through extreme loss. A change of perspective is capable of showing the growth latent in a failure. “It’s all a matter of perspective,” Naila insists.
The danger of civil war
For matters of perspective we will discuss again at Taht el-Shajra, a restaurant with the most refined Lebanese cuisine, whose owner also has a shop in Exarchia. The decoration is dominated by international political themes from Iraq to the Sahel and Cuba. Professors and students from the nearby American University of Beirut frequent here. Among them is Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, professor of Political Anthropology. The issues of perspective that occupied us were those of the dilemmas facing Lebanon.
“Strikes like the one that killed Haitham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, and four other fighters,” says Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, “are just the tip of the iceberg among many strikes that fly under the media’s radar. Many are targeting reconstruction workers in southern Lebanon so that a dead zone is established. The “front cliff and back stream” dilemma facing Lebanon is the extortion of “Hezbollah disarmament or war”, which, given the circumstances, could also be phrased as “civil war or war”.
Lebanon since its founding by French colonialism has by definition been a country without a strong military. During the 1975-1990 civil war, militias and other armed groups played a leading role. After the end of the civil war, the only one allowed to bear arms was Hezbollah. Disarming it is not an easy task. US special envoys Morgan Ortagus and Tom Barak are putting diplomatic and financial pressure on the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah. “This effort is likely to lead to a kind of slow, destructive civil war, similar to what we saw in Syria.”
How does Lebanese society react to the prospect of disarming Hezbollah? “Society is divided because of the dilemmas. One part wishes for the disarmament of Hizbullah, so that peace can come, which, however, looks like a “cemetery peace”. Another party sees in Hezbollah the “resistance” or, at least, the deterrent, due to the constitutional weakness of the official army. Abroad, Muslim feelings about Hezbollah are determined by two factors. During the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah was seen by some as an instrument of Shiite Iran in defense of Assad and viewed with caution, while by others as resisting the danger of a version of radical Islamism taking hold in Syria. The fact that he was “beheaded” by Israel as a byproduct of the war in Gaza resulted in him gaining the sympathy of the Muslim world, including Sunnis.”
In the meantime, the daily life of the residents of Beirut is spent in a constant buzz of drones flying in its skies to collect information. “Military technology has drastically changed Lebanese society. In the past, organizations such as Hezbollah relied on the support of local populations, especially Shiites, into whom the insurgents could “lose”. Today these populations are becoming “inadvertent informants” because of their cell phones that are vulnerable to surveillance. Some may also be willing informants because of extreme poverty, although most people bear poverty with an attitude of resistant dignity. The surveillance, however, has influenced the public debate. Many self-censor in a spirit of fear, with the result that the feeling of a people is unknown, which certainly presents a wide range of reactions.”
In the “Utopia” of Beirut
There is, however, one resident of Beirut who made “Memento Mori” (“memory of death”) his motto long before ubiquitous drones made it commonplace. He is Michel Eleftheriadis, owner of the iconic “Music Hall”. His great-grandfather was the brother of the ethnic martyr Chrysostomos of Smyrna. He had been saved from execution when a Turk intervened saying that it was not worth wasting a bullet for a man dying of typhus. As a refugee he restarted a new life in Beirut, instilling in his family the value of creativity that comes from the vision of death.
Grandson Michel experienced the same feeling many times, often risking his life in the Lebanese civil war, an experience that later defined his risk-taking ethos as an entrepreneur. In “Music Hall”, Beirut’s emblematic club, he unites different sounds and sets up his personal utopia which he calls “Nowheristan” and of which he is the self-crowned emperor. Noam Chomsky was invited to write its language, while Michel Honfre was a fellow traveler of a Phoenician neo-Epicurean philosophy of life.
The “Utopian” has however become autonomous from its monarch and is governed by a senate of philosophers who do not desire power, according to the Platonic model, but have proven their worth in other spheres of life. One of the most dangerous missions of the creator of “Utopia” was to set up the first mixed club, where the intercourse of men and women is allowed, in Saudi Arabia, at the invitation of Mohammed bin Salman.
The “philosopher king” of Utopianism had, however, the experience of one of his favorite places becoming literally “th place”. The Waterfront club was destroyed in the explosion of 2020. It was found a hundred meters away from its location; the army found 100% destruction, which financially meant a loss of 3.5 million euros for which there was no compensation. “I wish I could say I am a phoenix rising from its ashes. But I’m just a Sisyphus who has to lift the rock up to the top again and again, like all the modern Phoenixes of Lebanon.”
