Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [84]
“All the world is witnessing your great movement of conscience. Lebanon’s future belongs in your hands and, by your courage, Lebanon’s future will be in your hands. The American people are on your side. Millions across the earth are on your side. The momentum of freedom is on your side, and freedom will prevail in Lebanon.”
His enthusiasm was understandable. It was a hard winter, and getting harder. Close to 1,500 U.S. soldiers were dead in Iraq; insurgents beheaded their hostages on television and the United States had recently acknowledged losing track of almost $9 billion intended for the Iraqi government. There was no hope of peace talks in Jerusalem. The Taliban was rearing back to life in Afghanistan.
And then came sleepy little Lebanon, like manna from some neoconservative heaven. There were beautiful Muslims and Christians who lived in cosmopolitan seaside towns and spoke plausible English, so committed to their independence, to democracy, that they slept out under the stars. Here was the villain: Syria, irascible outlaw among a field of compliant Arab dictators. The American ambassador in Damascus went stomping back to Washington in protest the day after Hariri died. Democracy was on the march.
“Any who doubt the appeal of freedom in the Middle East can look to Lebanon, where the Lebanese people are demanding a free and independent nation,” Bush said. “Democracy is knocking at the door of this country and, if it’s successful in Lebanon, it is going to ring the doors of every Arab regime.”
Lebanese basked eagerly in the attention. “All the world is now worried about Lebanon,” marveled a middle-aged Christian lawyer. “President Bush, every day he talks about us.”
One night in early March, the other shoe came clattering to earth, dropped from on high by the Party of God. Hezbollah chief Sayed Hassan Nasrallah stared from television screens and ordered his followers into the streets. These anti-Syria demonstrators were the handiwork of Israel and America, he said. All the talk of international law was a thin disguise; they’d come to meddle in Lebanese affairs, to disarm Hezbollah on behalf of the Zionists. When Nasrallah talks on television, bustling Beirut streets freeze—hotel lobbies, cafés, and electronics shops fall silent as people clump together and watch. When Nasrallah issued his order, the Shiites obeyed.
The day of Hezbollah’s rally dawned gritty and gray. The Mediterranean stretched like steel, breathing a stinging wind over town. Hiking down the hill from the Hamra district, I turned a corner and stood staring at a livid, teeming human blanket. I thought the other crowds had been tremendously big. I thought I’d never see so many people packed into the streets and plazas of Beirut. But Hezbollah’s crowd dwarfed all that had come before, smothering gardens, overpasses, and tunnels. The other Lebanon had arrived, ready to declare itself to the world in a show of loyalty to Syria. The original demonstrators, the ones who hollered for Syria to get out, stood just down the hill, holding their ground at Martyrs’ Square. Lines of Lebanese soldiers kept the groups separated. Once again, the city was split in two.
The Hezbollah demonstrators were mostly farmers and workers from the south and the Bekaa Valley, people who’d suffered the Israeli occupation. They came in rattletrap buses, with dirt under their fingernails, and walked the streets with the weary patience of people accustomed to waiting at the back of the line: men in work clothes and sensible boots; women swathed in head scarves, moving silently along behind their husbands. They didn’t have Hummers and Pierre Cardin and Sri Lankan housemaids. They didn’t jump around or snap photos of themselves or sway to patriotic music. They stood grimly, carrying posters that said, “Bush, we hate you,” “All our disasters come from America,” and “America is the source of all our terrorism.”
A passing woman grabbed my arm. “Are you a journalist?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well.” She squared