Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals (7 page)

I was at one of the world's most notoriously dangerous borders, one of the hotspots in the ongoing conflict between Muslims and Jews. But my friend and tour guide made it sound as if we were just taking a ride through Disney's Small World attraction.

“On the right-hand side, you'll notice the Israeli bunkers, the mounds of earth on the horizon, and on the left, don't forget to snap a photo of the Hezbollah flag.”

He was right—a real black and yellow Hezbollah flag was waving in the wind right in front of me. I couldn't believe my eyes. I wanted to grab the flag and take it home, the ultimate travel souvenir, but contented myself with snapping a quick photo.

As Peter sped up the car and drove on through the dust, I wondered if my friend was right—maybe this was no big deal. Maybe there was nothing to be afraid of.

“And coming up ahead,” Peter continued, “those men with camouflage gear and machine guns—those would have to be soldiers.”

I knew from all my reading that a Hezbollah soldier encountering an American basically took one of three actions: (1) killed the American, (2) kidnapped the American, or (3) screamed,“Welcome to my country. Would you like some coffee?” In Lebanon, you really had no idea which of these actions was most likely to take place, because guerrilla logic on the subject seemed to be open to some debate. Some felt that Americans were Israeli allies and therefore the enemy. Others thought that since the United States was generally considered a Christian country, it should be left out of this religious bickering. And then there was the ever-popular international view that Americans were to blame for all the world's problems.

Maybe this excursion hadn't been such a good idea after all. The men up ahead were brandishing huge firearms. Just the sight of these weapons terrified me.

We stopped in front of a barbed-wire fence that had been strung across the road and a grim-faced soldier peered into Peter's car. I held my breath and tried to look as Muslim as possible.

“You speak English?” he asked in a strange accent.

Peter nodded.

“That's a real spot of luck. We do too. We're from Ireland,” the soldier said.

These were not Hezbollah guerrillas; they were UN troops and this was one of their checkpoints. This didn't quite put us in the clear. After all, we were in the country illegally. What did the United Nations have to say about that?

“Welcome to Lebanon!” the soldier said, extending his hand for Peter to shake. Then they cheerily raised the bar blocking the road and waved us on through.

I spent the rest of the day awed and amazed. We steadily made our way through a barren and monotonous landscape with few people, few structures, and very little to see. Had this been the Sonoran Desert, I would have been apathetic and bored, but this was Lebanon. I was driving through thousands of years of history; not only that, my life was in peril. Nothing of note was going on outside, but there was the constant threat that this calm could be disrupted at any moment. In Lebanon, life could be changed in an instant.

Visit a friend abroad and it's nearly a given that at some point you will take part in an expatriate gathering. This highly ritualized event consists of you sitting in a room with lots of alcohol with people who all grew up speaking English (although most of them speak it with a funny-sounding foreign accent). The conversation always includes the same three topics: (1) international politics, (2) sex, and (3) boy, you sure got the wrong end of the deal when you had to be born an American.

The night always starts out with Topic Number 3. The first thing all the Brits have to do (believe me, there will always be at least one or two Brits) is imitate your accent. “Golly gee whiz guys” and “like totally awesome” are the two phrases that invariably will be chosen to demonstrate the fact you do not speak English, you speak American.

After you've cleared this hurdle, they will ask if you have ever met any movie stars and, if so, do you have any gossip to tell? After racking your brain for sordid tales about the people you watch on the screens in dark movie theaters and brush elbows with occasionally as they're walking down the streets of Los Angeles, your host Michael (well, he won't always be named Michael) will then top your stories with “real dirt.” For instance, if you come up with a story about a famous male artist who has sex with boyish looking twenty-year-olds while they're wearing football uniforms, Michael will give you an in-the-know, step-by-step, detailed account of the sex act in question, right down to the number on the uniform.

Then it's on to international politics, which tends to overlap a bit with the “America sure is a lousy country” category. We begin with “America sure has a lousy foreign policy,” move on to “America sure has a lousy president,” and top the topic off with “Americans sure have a lousy knowledge of other countries' affairs.” Which is just the point you've been waiting for all evening. Now is your chance to strike.

You dazzle the guests by quoting verbatim from the latest tome by Chomsky, drone on intelligently about a recent editorial in the New York Times, and roll off subjects like Sinn Fein peace talks and the possible opening up of Cuba when the room becomes encompassed in an awe-filled silence. After paying their respects, your host Michael (he won't always be named Michael) will inevitably break the quiet with the following compliment: “Wow. You really aren't dumb like most Americans.”

By this point in the conversation, the Brits will have gotten pretty drunk (and the Americans will have gotten pretty offended), so it's time to move back to the subject of sex. On this particular evening five days into my visit to Beirut, sitting in the comfortable and cozy living room of Peter's friend Michael (okay, so it's possible that he
will
always be named Michael), the category is dominated primarily by Giles, who has an awful lot to say on the subject of orgasms, especially for a person who doesn't have them. This is because orgasms are unhealthy, he informs us. He has embarked on the Taoist journey, which encompasses many beliefs none of us really wants to hear about; we want to talk about Giles' not having orgasms.

It's not that he doesn't ever do the dirty, he explains. In fact, he does it rather well. He goes for hours, but he just doesn't finish the job. Not for himself anyway. Penetration is fine, he tells us, it's just the loss of those vital fluids—wouldn't want to sap his psychic energy, you know. I tell him I completely understand and quietly slip him my phone number under the table.

This segues brilliantly into our next topic of conversation: the fact that Michael's sister strategically places bowls of water in her hallways to help the cosmic energy flow more evenly throughout the house.

At this point, I decide it's really about time to be hanging out with some more Lebanese.

Five days of my ten-day trip had already been eaten up, and Peter felt terrible about having to go into work. As we ate a breakfast of flatbread, yogurt, and fresh fruit on his balcony, I tried to convince him that I'd be fine in his absence.

“Are you sure? I promise we'll go out for dinner this evening,” he said.

“Of course, I'll be okay,” I insisted, stuffing a fig in my mouth.

Peter had mentioned his job to me once over the phone. I remembered that it had something to do with journalism. What was it exactly?

“I'm the anchor for the English news.”

No, that wasn't it. He wrote some kind of newsletter or something. What was it?

“That was my old job. Now I'm on TV every night. I sit in a studio in front of a live camera and read off the teleprompter.”

This information came as kind of a shock. The man who used to measure out tequila as if it were NyQuil, handing it to me with the concerned look of a mother tending to her sick child, now put on a suit and tie and provided the nation's international citizens with their daily dose of news. I had never imagined seeing Peter on the news before—in the same way that I hadn't counted on opening up my closet and running into Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. There were people you saw on television and there were people you saw in your closet. When these lines got blurred, the whole world stopped making sense.

However, Peter explained to me that this was the job he had always wanted: He got to apply his vast knowledge of Middle Eastern politics, he put his journalism experience to use, and no one was trying to kill him. At his last job, on his first day, the coffee boy had come up and introduced himself to Peter by saying, “You American? I hate American. I kill American. New Jersey kill my brother.” It had not been an auspicious start to his new position (but on the bright side, it was the excuse Peter needed to finally give up that nasty addiction to coffee).

“You can watch me tonight,” Peter explained. “When you and Hadi get home.”

Hadi was Peter's roommate, a good-natured Beiruti who seemed excited at the prospect of playing tour guide for an American visitor. Later that morning, he began tirelessly dragging me from one attraction to another.

While I was amazed at the devastation that surrounded us, Hadi was determined to show me the best the city had to offer. As we headed toward downtown in his tiny dinged-up car, Arabic music blaring out of the radio (to my embarrassment, the one song I chose to compliment turned out to be an advertising jingle), I pointed to a five-story structure that had been gutted out by bombs, and to my surprise, Hadi acted as if he was embarrassed. He tried to distract my attention by motioning toward the building next door, a beautiful marble high-rise in the final stages of construction.

The rest of the ride, our conversation centered around the same basic theme. “Wow, Hadi, check out the death and destruction on the left!” I would enthusiastically remark, which would cause my well-meaning tour guide to defensively respond, “Yes, but look at the life and renovation on the other side of the street.”

What he didn't understand—and what I hadn't realized either until that point—was that it was the death and destruction that I had come to see. Part of the allure of going to a foreign place is that even the problems are foreign. The hollowed-out buildings all around us didn't apply to me. If I was going to continue traveling, it wasn't going to be Club Med, the kind of place that allowed you to forget your worries for a week. No, I needed to head to the dark corners of the world, where my problems would seem insignificant by comparison.

Hadi parked the car and turned off the engine. As we exited the vehicle, I was baffled when we suddenly began walking toward one of the decaying structures that Hadi had made such an effort to shield me from. As I stared up at the top stories of the building that had been destroyed, true to form, Hadi drew my attention to the ground floor, which I hadn't noticed before. It had been completely preserved. Painted titanium white and garnished with shiny brass trim, this was where we were headed.

Just minutes ago, we had been driving through a maze of traffic, surrounded by the remnants of devastation and swirling dust and suddenly we had entered a spotless café, where a white-suited waiter was accompanying us to a table with a smile and a menu.

“Where's the no-smoking section?” I asked Hadi as we were suddenly engulfed by a thick black haze.

“That would be East Beirut.”

I had initially assumed that religion was what separated the two sectors of the city, but talking to Hadi, I began to understand that it was more a matter of vices. In Christian East Beirut, drinking was the pastime of choice. However, in West Beirut, where Mohammed's advice was heeded in place of the surgeon general's, alcohol was a big no-no. The Koran had issued strict admonitions against the dangers of wine, tequila, and peach schnapps—though it had neglected to insert that little warning about nicotine, birth defects, reproductive harm, and so forth. So in West Beirut, they went about smoking anything they could set fire to.

I had never heard of a hookah (this was before they became trendy), so as I gazed around the room, I became convinced that we had walked into an opium den. I tried to be as self-possessed as possible and ignore the fact that nearly every table was equipped with a sophisticated-looking bong adding smoke to the black haze that already engulfed the room.

“Do you want to try?” Hadi asked, as I tried to make myself comfortable at the table.

Hell, I'd been to college. “Sure,” I said.

Hadi called the waiter over to the table and ordered something in Arabic that sounded horribly menacing. I wasn't sure I really wanted to know what it was, but I timidly asked him anyway.

“Strawberry,” he replied.

This sounded like what you'd order at an ice-cream parlor instead of an opium den. “No, I meant the bong thing.”

“The
nargeileh.”

“Yeah. Did you order us one of those?”

“Yes. Strawberry.”

This had to be code for something.

“Hadi, strawberry opium?”

“It's not opium. Whoever heard of strawberry opium? This is normal, everyday strawberry-flavored tobacco.”

I felt rather foolish at my mistake, but things only got worse when the waiter returned with our order. He was carrying the
nargeileh,
a vase-shaped glass filled with water and equipped with a three-foot-long hose. He skillfully plugged the upper end of the gadget with a metal tray, added a chunk of tobacco, and placed a disk of red-hot charcoal on top. The tobacco began to burn and Hadi handed me the hose, gallantly insisting that I begin.

I wasn't sure exactly how to maneuver this apparatus. Normally, whenever I found myself in any awkward social situation, I watched the other people at my table to figure out which fork I was supposed to be wielding, but here I was in the land of Middle Eastern hospitality, where the Lebanese graciously waited for you to start, insisting that guests always go first.

Pete had already told me about the difficult situation this same custom had once placed him in at an elegant party in Beirut when the hostess bounded upon him with a tray full of roasted pigeon. Pete was not really in the mood for roasted pigeon and never had been, but a refusal would have been seen as a grave insult to the woman of the house, who had devoted hours to basting and cooking the birds, not to mention the amount of time she must have spent rounding them up at the park. He was going to have to eat one and what was worse, he was the center of attention; they were all waiting for the guest to begin, and he didn't know whether you picked pigeon up with your fingers chicken style or used a fork. He timidly reached for a small bird and plopped it into his mouth, crunching on the tiny bones and trying to swallow it out of his life as quickly as possible.