a storm is brewing...

8 May 2008, 1 pm

In six months of living in Beirut, I have come to feel that there exists and uncanny symbiotic relationship between the political and environmental climates in this country. It is very Shakespearean, in a chain-of-consequence way, where the heavens and the earth are so intimately connected, that troubles in one provoke tumult in the other. And as the psychological degradation of King Lear was manifested in the blustery winds that battered him in that infamous storm scene, so the natural elements are aggravated and magnified in times of Lebanese social strife.

My first experience of this occurred in late January 2008, on the Sunday that saw clashes between Amal supporters and the army, which resulted in 7 people losing their lives. That night, a monstrous winter storm shook this fragile peninsula, with heavy rains and hell-raising bouts of thunder that shook the glass in the window pains and amplified the fears of those who anxiously sat behind them. Similarly, on 14 February, the third anniversary of Rafik Hariri’s assassination, the weather complemented the mood, and the thousands of mourners were soaked in torrential rain.

Now, strong winds follow yesterday’s strike and fighting, ominously forshadow Hassan Nasrallah’s much-anticipated speech at 4 pm today.

7:30 pm

The sky has clouded over; could be the first rain for over a month. Under the growing cumulonimbus, increasingly frequent bouts of rifle and machine gun fire, interspersed with the nerve-shattering booms of rocket propelled grenades, reverberate amongst Beirut’s buildings.

Various Lebanese news channels have graced my t.v. screen throughout the day, and I have tried in vain to understand the numerous young, wide eyed reporters in flack jackets, as they perform minute-by-minute updates of the unfolding events. I understand isolated words, mostly in the lexical set of conflict (“tensions”, “gun battles”, “civil war”) and the names of the political parties, but, despite 4 years of intensive Arabic training and a current job as a translator, the speed with which the information is conveyed sometimes still passes right over my head.

Perhaps it is my linguistic inadequacies, but I found it more informative to just sit there and listen to those sharp, rattling and dull explosions. They are so imbued with onomatopoeic meaning, no context need be given in order to understand them. In a way, it does not matter who I fighting against whom.

What matters is that this city knows these sounds too well. It knows, by heart, the symphonies of gunfire that have lulled them to sleep for over fifteen years. It knows that these hollow blasts and detonations are the opening scene to a tragedy whose acts they have memorized, whose suffering has exceeded catharsis and become the fabric of their haunted past.

10 pm

The shooting has somewhat died down, although, like a love-sick witch, its cackles still waft through the placid night air.

The first two victims of this stubborn conflict have just been announced: a woman and her son, their house struck by a stray RPG. Predictable. Most of those that so nobly take to the streets with baklavas and assault rifles will not bear the burdens of this city’s turf wars. It will be those like us, who huddle behind their shutters and try to drown out the noise by watching crap television comedies on near-deafening sound levels, that are destined to lose the most.

As always in any conflict, the blood of the innocent, the passive, is heavier than that of the combatants. Because they have not gambled. They have not desired glory, nor have they sought to exchange the humility of a simple existence for the lofty promises of ideology. And yet their lack of political passion is not enough to keep them safe. No one is safe anymore.