After more than two months here, I leave my Lebanese home for Jordan on Wednesday. Most of the kids in my program have gone and most of the full time AUB students have left as well since summer classes are out. My squadron of Abdullah, Abdal Aziz (Azooz), and Amanj are still here. Outside of class, I’ve spent most of my summer with these guys. We’ve spent hours playing basketball and cards, watching movies (The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Risky Business, Green Street Hooligans, Get Smart), talking politics, going to the beach, eating zatar, tawough wraps, and crepe, and practicing Arabic (Azooz has sort of been like a private Arabic tutor). Abdallah, Azooz, and a couple others have taught me how to play likha. It is by far the hardest card game I’ve ever tried to learn but definitely the most strategic and fun. My friends tell me that it’s more a Levantine card game so I’m wondering if any of my Arab friends back at home know how to play.
Anyway, Azooz is from Saudi, Abdallah from Iraq, and Amanj is from Iraqi Kurdistan. Yesterday, Azooz and I went to the southern Lebanese city of Sour (Tyre) and had a ball under the sun. Today, however, Azooz departs for Saudi for a short summer vacation and I’m wondering if I’ll ever see these guys again. I hope so. It is these guys and not the political slogans, the ancient Roman ruins, or the Lebanese party scene that came to define my summer and my Lebanese experience.
We live worlds apart, but this summer, a Saudi, an Iranian from the US, and two Iraqis, one from Baghdad and one from Kurdistan, lived as brothers in Lebanon of all places, where ethnic, religious, and national divisions destroy lives.
nice article,
this is what i call real life….the rest is all meaningless. FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, PEACE, AND FREEDOM. i think that all life should be about. it is been centuries that we did not get any good from politics or all those religious issues. LONG LIVE FRIENDSHIP
Say hi to the King and his brutal mukhabarat for me.
The “Real Lifeâ€â€¦
What we do as visitors to Beirut, Palestine, Egypt, etc. as a part of our studies to gain a PhD from Harvard has nothing to do with what Heritage Foundation, the Enterprise Institute, the Rand Corporation and other “Think Tanks†are doing when they formulate the American Foreign Policy.
You can go forever into Palestinian refugee camps, visit the Hezbollah, the Hamas, and scream your heart out about the injustice. But as a scholar, you may want to infiltrate the likes of PNAC, AIPAC, DIA, etc. to really make a difference and enlighten us. Please study the US Foreign Policy, rather than becoming a visitor to a bunch of Imam Hossein followers, screaming and beating their chest, using “ghameh to split their brainâ€, to prove what? Shouldn’t every Muslim’s Qoran be replaced by Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusionâ€? (As well as every Bible and every Torah?)
You PhD student at Harvard should really concentrate on the real evil (Dick Cheney?!) and the true source of problems on this planet, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, rather than trying to find reality in the back streets of Beirut and Palestine.
The American Foreign Policy is written around “Capitalism†– what Israel digs. There is nothing wrong with Capitalism as exercised in Sweden by SAAB, Volvo, and Ericson. They make a profit – and that is OK. But Capitalism in Europe is merely one political party among many. Unfortunately, in the US, we only have one political party, the Capitalist Party, the Republicans and Democrats being two wings of the same party.
And you know what happens to a country with only one political party (like the Rastaakhiz Party under the Shah of Iran), it becomes a fascist country, like the Nazis in Germany.
I don’t know who is paying for your PhD studies in Harvard. But the truth about the calamity in the Middle East is not found in the refugee camps in Jordan – it is found in the back corners of the White House, and the oil moguls and the giant defense companies in the US. As Eisenhower said: Watch out for the military-industrial complex.
Sorry Pouya. While I admire your innocent quest for answers in the middle east (as a part of your professor’s curriculum), I suggest you concentrate on the US foreign policy (the Greed Theory) to explain what is really happening to the middle east.