Piecework

by Pete Hamill

  “The present economy,” he says, “which is called a free-enterprise economy, is actually a planned economy, but it’s planned in favor of the small minority who control the wealth.”

  He says charges that Sinn Fein and the IRA plan to create “another Cuba” in Ireland at the point of a gun, or institute some sort of totalitarian government on the Eastern European model, are absurd. The IRA gunmen are here for the moment, Adams says, “but once independence is secured, armed struggle is finito. Sinn Fein would then figure in an Irish democracy — which is denied us at present — for the things we want. But it would be up to the Irish people to say yea or nay. If the people accept it, fair enough. If they accept part of it, fair enough. If they reject it, fair enough.”

  Adams doesn’t believe that such independence will come easily. The British, in his analysis, will not leave the North of Ireland quietly because “many of the reasons why Britain colonized in the first place still stand.”

  One major reason, in Adams’ view, was national security. “She was always concerned that her opponents like France and Spain would form an alliance with the Irish and come in through the back door. That still comes up with NATO, still comes up with some of the right-wing Tories.” Adams believes there was also an ideological reason for the initial British conquest; Britain at the time was a feudal society, while Ireland was decentralized, somewhat radical, with communal ownership of lands and sharing of labor.

  “That’s what they fear now,” Adams says. “A victory for Irish freedom, if it led to the radicalization of Ireland, would have an effect on Britain itself. You can see what the Tories are afraid of in the way they’re treating their miners. They would just have nightmares if people like me had something to say about the way this country is governed.”

  In addition, there is British jingoism and racism. “We are the first and the last colony of Britain. And there is almost a racist attitude about Ireland. It probably would be simpler if we were black. We’re only 20 miles from their shores at some points. If we were in Cyprus, or Rhodesia, or Hong Kong, it would be much easier. And finally, although everybody doubts it, I believe there’s an economic factor, too. We are a market for their goods. Whatever industry is here is still majority-owned by the British. All the clothes I wear, the wallpaper on the walls, the tea I drink, everything comes from Britain.”

  But what about the Protestants in the North? They represent at least 60 per cent of the population of the six counties, and their leaders have vowed to fight if they are forced into a union with the South. If the British pulled out tomorrow, as the Belgians once pulled out of the Congo, wouldn’t there be a bloodbath?

  “I think there’d be a violent reaction, for understandable reasons, from some of the loyalists,” Adams says. “The reaction from loyalist paramilitaries, or what we call unofficial paramilitaries, would be fairly minimal, because they are small forces. The hard reaction would come from the official paramilitaries: the RUC and the Ulster Defense Regiment, which is kind of militia. We maintain that they are actually British forces, and it would be the British responsibility to disarm and disband them.”

  Adams says it is crucial for Irish nationalists to assure the loyalists that they want them as part of the united Ireland, with full civil and religious liberties. But a separate Northern Ireland state, or statelet, independent of both Britain and Ireland, is “no go.”

  “I think, at the end of the day, that people only fight, and only use physical force, when they think they are going to win, and when they have something very meaningful to fight for,” Adams says. “That’s what sustains the republicans. The Unionists, too, think they are going to win, and they think they have something very worthwhile to fight for. But they’d be fighting to persuade a power [the British] that’s withdrawing, not to withdraw. And what would they be fighting for? A 21A-county statelet?”

  In June 1983, Adams said: “The ordinary Protestant needs reassurances and full guarantees of civil and religious liberties. But they cannot be expected to move away from their position of marginal privilege while there is no reason to do so. The British prop is what maintains this privileged position. It is the prop which created and maintains the sectarian division. Only when that prop is removed will Protestant, Catholic and dissenter be able to sit down and work out their own destiny.”

  Adams obviously believes that the old dream of a united Ireland will come to pass, perhaps not soon, certainly not easily. But eventually. On this winter afternoon, he lights a small cigar, glances about the cramped cold room in Connolly House, and smiles.

  “It’ll come,” he says. “I might not see it. You might not see it. But a united Ireland will come.” He pauses. “Would you like some tea?”

  NEW YORK POST,

  August 12, 1971, and February 4, 16, and 17, 1972 (parts I-FV);

  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS,

  March 17, 1985 (part V)

  LEBANON

  I.

  BEIRUT, LEBANON

  The apartment house was on the Avenue du Gen. Charles de Gaulle, on a cliff at the edge of the sea and its whitewashed facade was stained by the cold steady rain. I asked the cabdriver to come in with me, but he glanced out at the sea, and puffed on a cigarette and said he would wait in the cab. He turned off the lights of the 1971 Impala and kept the motor running. It was very dark.

  The entrance to the 10-story building was around to the side, and more apartment houses climbed away behind it, each positioned for a clear view of the sea. There were lights showing in some of the windows, with wooden screens pulled down to the floor of the balconies. A few blocks away was the ruin of the St. George’s Hotel, destroyed two years ago in the civil war.

  In the old days, this was one of the wealthiest sections of the city, with apartments renting for as much as $2,000 a month. But then the civil war happened and, when it ended, not many people wanted apartments in Beirut. So the owners kept them off the market rather than rent for less than the accustomed price. Then Israel invaded southern Lebanon and almost 265,000 refugees began making their way to Beirut. Some of them had guns.

  One of them was standing right inside the door as I walked into the lobby. He was about 19, with a dark face gullied by acne. He was wearing a dirty dark-green uniform, and he was holding a submachine gun.

  He said something in Arabic, barking out the words, and looking menacing. I smiled and slowly put my hands up.

  “Press,” I said. “Reporter. I’m an American reporter.” He was very nervous and so was I. Then he shouted something over his shoulder, and another young man came out of the shadows from where the elevators must have been. His boots made a clacking sound on the marble floors. The first kid put the nose of his machine gun against my belly.

  “What do you want?” the second one said, in faulty English.

  “I am a reporter,” I said, as quietly as possible. “I want to talk to some refugees.”

  “Reporter?” he said.

  The first one took the tip of the gun away and started searching me. He found my wallet. There was a press card inside.

  “For a newspaper,” I said to the second one. “In New York. Here’s my press card.”

  “In New York?” he said. “Are you Jew?”

  “Irish,” I said. He blinked.

  Then the first one found my money clip. It contained some Lebanese pounds, some Italian lire, some dollars: a perfect roll for a spy. He showed it to the second one. They spoke quickly in Arabic.

  “If you want to see migrants, you need to help them,” the second one said.

  “With money?” I said. My hands were at my side now.

  “Yes. Money,” the second one said. A huge truck groaned along the boulevard and the first man stepped to the front of the lobby and looked out. He kept moving the machine gun from one hand to the other.

  “Of course,” I said, nodding at the money. “Take all of it.”

  The second one had slung his gun over his shoulder, with the barrel pointing at the floor. He seemed reli
eved that he wouldn’t have to take a shot to get the money. He jerked his head, indicating I should follow. He said something to the first young man, who went back into the shadows. The elevators weren’t working, so we walked up two flights. He produced a flashlight from some where.

  “You’re Palestinian?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you in the south during the fighting?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like?”

  He shrugged. “Soon we go back.”

  We stopped on the second floor and he led the way down the hall. He knocked on a door: bop-bop, bop-bop, bop. Something heavy scraped on the tile floor behind the door and then it opened. I could smell dampness and human beings and babies. The door frame was shredded where it had been smashed open. A chain hung from a sprung lock.

  I couldn’t see anything in the apartment, but the young man said something in Arabic and a small oil lamp was lit.

  “No electric,” he said to me. “They stopped all electric.”

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light, and then there seemed to be people everywhere. An old man, with a beaked nose, a dirty white shirt, and a dark vest came forward. Behind him was a girl about 18, a woman in her 60s, and others: two boys about 10, a boy about 14. Somewhere in another room a baby was crying.

  “Ask them how long they’ve been here,” I said.

  “Three days,” the young man said, without asking. He said something in Arabic, apparently explaining who I was. They all started talking at once. I could see now that we were in a living room area, and people were asleep on two couches and on the floor.

  “They want you to write about them,” the young man said. “They have been in a bad time for a week. They come from Burj al Shemali. They were bombed by airplanes. The Jews destroyed all their homes.”

  Yes, there were some PLO commandos in the village, but they had all left for the south the night before the bombing. The Israelis bombed them a second time and four people were killed, including the husband of the teenage girl. That was when they decided to leave. No, they were not all related. They had joined the other refugees on the main highway for the north, and crossed the Litani River. It took them two days to walk to Beirut. They had left everything behind, cows, clothes, food. On the way north, they lived on oranges taken from plantations.

  The old man said something, a long and complicated complaint, and the young man with the machine gun nodded.

  “He said that when they came here there is no house to stay in. Too many people everywhere. He said that it was so cold here and they were all afraid because there was shooting in the street. He said that is why he came to this building.”

  The young man looked around the dimly lit apartment.

  “We took this place for them,” he said proudly. “Why is it empty when people are cold? So we come here and took it. The rich don’t care if people die.”

  I asked if the people here would be going back to Burj al Shemali. The teenager started shouting, getting nearly hysterical, then suddenly kicked at a glass-topped table. It tipped over and glasses fell to the floor and smashed.

  “She says that there is no more Burj al Shemali.”

  Then he turned to me. “Are you finished?” The girl was crying now and the young machine gunner seemed embarrassed. I offered him a cigarette.

  “No, you go now,” he said. “Not safe. You go.”

  I said goodnight to the people in the room and followed the young man to the door with the baby still crying behind me. In the lobby, the first kid came over, more jittery than ever. His hands were on the gun and he pointed it at me, saying something in high-pitched, rapid Arabic, the barrel of the gun bobbing as he emphasized his points. The second one made a disparaging expression and casually touched the barrel, pushing me aside slightly, and tapping me on the back in the same motion. He was saying goodnight, and telling me to go while the going was good.

  The cabdriver was still there and seemed surprised to see me. The rain fell steadily. I got in the back and lit a cigaret and tried to control the shaking of my hands.

  II.

  TYRE, LEBANON

  We left in the morning, heading south along the coast. Men climbed telephone poles near the refugee camp of Ouzai, repairing lines wrecked in the Israeli bombing. A woman picked through the ruins of a house. The road was an inch deep in mud from two days of steady rain and the skies were a sullen gray.

  But yesterday, as the first United Nations troops moved south to create a buffer zone between Israel and those Palestinians who live in Lebanon, the first signs of peace appeared. A man with his face wrapped in a faded blue kaffiyeh herding sheep along the edge of the road; farmers with dark sun-scorched faces selling lettuce and lemons; a young girl smiling and waving plastic sacks of oranges at the passing cars. The Syrian soldiers at the first roadblock were relaxed and pleasant, waving us on without a check.

  But the aftermath of the brief week of war was everywhere. Trucks loaded with furniture, bedding and human beings still moved north, the contents piled impossibly high, held together with ropes and wires. In Doha, refugees squatted listlessly along the sides of the road, or moved into old abandoned luxury hotels with names such as Hawaii Beach Club, Milio’s and Kangaroo Beach. On the hotel balconies, I could see uniformed young soldiers of the Palestine Liberation Organization, watching the roads, cradling their Kalashnikov assault rifles.

  “Everybody here from before went away in the civil war,” the cabdriver said. “Nobody came back. Now it is for the refugees. They just take it.”

  A PLO armed personnel carrier went by in the other lane, a mustached young man in a blue sports shirt standing up as if posing for a poster, his hands on the grips of mounted twin .50-caliber machine guns. He was followed by two truckloads of bananas, being hurried north to market in the interval of peace. Another truckload of refugees, another checkpoint, and then we were in Damour.

  Some of the most ferocious righting of the civil war took place here. Every building in sight had been demolished or hit. There were mounds of broken bricks everywhere, twisted steel girders, caved-in rooftops. A small grove of olive trees withered in the spaces between two damaged buildings. After all the previous destruction, the Israelis had bombed it again last week. Damour made the South Bronx look like 57th St. And still people were living there: Two men in a makeshift grocery store, listening to a syrupy ballad on the radio and arguing in Arabic; a man alone in an improvised liquor store set up in a shed; six Arab women in brightly dyed gowns pounding laundry in flat pans, living in a garage.

  “Most of them are from Tal al Zaatar,” the driver said, shaking his head. “Now they have to live in these places.”

  He was referring to the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Beirut that was under siege for 17 months before falling to the Phalangists in August 1976. Between 1,400 and 2,000 of the refugees were massacred then.

  “That was terrible,” the driver said. “I was not involved in the war. I am Muslim. I want people to live together, Christian, Jew, whatever. But Tal al Zaatar, that was criminal.”

  There was a traffic jam outside Sidon, as eight huge diesel trucks unloaded supplies that had been driven from Iraq. In the main street, kids played pinball in a place called the Morison Club, and others lined up at a small moviehouse to see “MacKenna’s Gold,” with Gregory Peck. Spray-canned political graffiti covered all the walls. For the first time we saw refugees heading south, instead of north.

  “We want to go home before the Christians steal everything from our homes,” said a man driving a tractor, upon which were piled his family and seven black plastic bags full of clothing and food. “We left when the fighting started. Now the radio says the fighting is over. So we are going home.”

  We passed the last Syrian checkpoint into PLO territory. Cypress trees lined the road. PLO fedayeen were everywhere, all of them carrying guns, a number of them young women. Some were hidden in trees, others walked in twos and threes along the road. They had their ow
n checkpoints, announced in advance by rows of truck tires in the center of the two-lane road.

  “The Israelis are over there,” one young PLO officer said, pointing to the rocky hills about three kilometers away. “They have not come any closer. The UN is supposed to go up there today and get them out.”

  Outside Aadlun, we saw the shot-up hulk of a maroon Mercedes taxicab, one of two ancient cabs into which 16 members of two Lebanese families had piled to escape the Israeli shelling of Tyre. They left in the early hours of March 17, heading for Beirut. But they were stopped by a group of Israeli commandos who had come ashore looking for a Palestinian leader. The commandos opened fire on the cabs. Fourteen people, including four children under age 5, were killed. At dawn, when reporters reached the site, the two cars were still jammed with corpses. Now the cabs lay like the shells of strange giant beetles, picked clean by ants.

  The driver moved along more slowly now. We went through lemon and orange groves, and suddenly we were at the bridge over the Litani River. Lebanese soldiers waved us on. A dead horse lay at the side of the road, its neck jerked back at a right angle. It was beginning to swell.

  Then we could see the long low curve of Tyre, with minarets sticking up against the sky. I counted 15 ships, from freighters to fishing boats, sunk in the harbor. We went up Ramel Road, where five apartment houses had been hit by Israeli shelling. Two Arab teenagers came over to see us when we stopped, one of them holding the rusting case of a hand grenade.

  “They were out in the water and kept shooting,” said the first boy, who lived in a six-story apartment house with blue trim and white walls. He spoke in a mixture of English and Arabic. “Then the airplanes came from the other side, shooting.” He went around to the back of the house where he had lived, and showed us huge holes in the building’s wall. Blue Venetian blinds rattled in the wind off the harbor. The building was abandoned.