Rock and Hard Places

by Andrew Mueller

  The political billboards increase in number as the road unfurls, Lebanon’s uncountable rival factions seeking to outdo each other for volume and position. A few honour one of the country’s survivors—Nabih Berri, former Amal warlord, now speaker of Lebanon’s parliament. Many more are shrines to Berri’s less fortunate rivals and colleagues, graphic reminders that Lebanese politics is, as a pastime, at least as hazardous as driving on Lebanese roads: Rafik Hariri, blasted all over Beirut’s seafront; George Hawi, the communist party leader killed by a car bomb in June 2005; Gebran Tueni, the journalist and MP killed by a car bomb in December 2005; Pierre Gemayel, Minister for Industry—and nephew of an assassinated Lebanese president—gunned down in November 2006; Walid Eido, the member of parliament blown up in June 2007. “Martyrs for Justice,” says the slogan beneath the portrait of Eido, and his son, who died in the same blast.

  We get our first glimpse of the Bekaa Valley from the top of a vertiginous winding road. The flat green sward of the Bekaa is infamous for secreting the camps of organisations unbeloved by the United States, and better liked for its fabulous wines and dairy produce. When we reach Chtaura, it’s time for lunch, and Sheila, unlike bemusing numbers of Lebanese, disdains the options of Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s, instead directing us to the Jarjoura laiterie—a purveyor of the Bekaa’s local specialties of yoghurt and cheese. The proprietor, Antoine, a forty-seven-year veteran of the store, labours beneath a black and white portrait of his utterly identical father, who founded the shop in 1922. As he tots up the bill for our lunch of (fantastic) haloumi cheese wrapped in rolls of salty flat bread, I ask him how business has been.

  “Not great,” he says. “But, thank God, better than last year.”

  Apparently, people fleeing bombardment tend not to stop for sandwiches.

  In downtown Chtaura, we ask Peter to pull his air-conditioned Volvo into the taxi station, so we can see how the locals travel. The cars that ply the route between here and Damascus, for around US$5 per person each way, are yellow-painted, battered, rusty, backfiring American sedans, mostly Dodges and Pontiacs dating from the 1970s. Given that they are, by definition, being driven by Arabs who don’t speak much English, Chtaura is at least this evocative of New York. Stalls around the garages sell cheap watches, dodgy electronica, dubious cosmetics, including “breast-firming cream” and “sex appeal gel,” and Saddam Hussein lighters. Sheila picks up some jasmine oil for her hair.

  Chtaura offers little but the practicalities of travel—food, transport, repairs. For this reason, I’m attracted to a shop whose window is stacked with rainbows of multi-coloured glass hookah pipes. The young proprietor is reluctant to give his name but happy enough to chat. He says he sells to Lebanese, but not to locals—rather, to the diaspora when they return for brief visits to the old country. Since last summer, though, they’re staying put, and if business doesn’t pick up soon, he’s going to join them, in Canada or Paraguay.

  “The Israelis bombed a bridge 300 metres away,” he says, gesturing back up the street. “I was scared they’d hit that one,” he continues, pointing directly out his window at the canal covering we’ve just driven across. “I don’t want to live like this.”

  I ask if he fears another war.

  “Who knows?” he shrugs. “It’s nothing to do with Lebanon. It’s all between Israel and Hezbollah.”

  On one wall of the shop hangs a portrait of Saddam Hussein, superimposed on a view of Jerusalem.

  THE LEBANESE BORDER crossing is an astonishing, infuriating shambles, the failure of which to escalate into riotous violence is unbeatable testament to the extraordinary patience and courtesy that define day-to-day interactions in the Middle East. Unless, of course, the chaos is a consequence of the same philosophical good humour—after a few hours’ wait in the crowd and heat and noise and exhaust fumes, I can’t help feeling that the surly, slothful soldiers running the place would buck their ideas up considerably under the threat of spontaneous lynchings. Cris asks someone in uniform if he can photograph the mess, and Peter brandishes our Lebanese press credentials. This elicits mirthless laughter, and the promise that, if we’re contemplating trying our luck anyway, plainclothes spotters are lurking. I pass the time by calling the Syrian Ministry of Information in Damascus, seeking assurance that we’ll be allowed to take pictures once across the border, if we ever get across the border. A typically circular Middle Eastern conversation ensues.

  “You will need accreditation from us.”

  It’s the kind of thing the Syrian embassy in London might have mentioned when we applied for press visas. How do we get that?

  “From here in Damascus.”

  A bit late now, but out of academic interest, is there any other way?

  “No.”

  But we want to take pictures on the way. It’s kind of the point.

  “Yes, you will need accreditation from us.”

  In Damascus.

  “Yes.”

  Sensing that this discussion could occupy us both until the sun collapses on itself, extinguishing all human life and reducing our planet to a dead ball of frozen carbon, I ask how the functionary how he rates our chances of making it to Damascus unarrested so long as we don’t photograph anything that looks military.

  “You will need accreditation from us here in Damascus.”

  I’m gnawing gaily on my phone when Peter tugs on my sleeve, having somehow negotiated the impenetrable queue on our behalf.

  “I have found some friends here,” he grins, “we can go.”

  For two countries so close together, and with so intertwined a history, Lebanon and Syria do their best to keep their distance. Between the two frontiers is seven kilometres of black asphalt ribbon winding through rocky red jebels, lined with trucks awaiting permission to cross. There’s one immense—and startling—landmark in this no-man’s land: a huge, gleaming duty free mall, like an extension to Singapore’s Changi airport that got delivered to the wrong address, complete with a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise. The Syrian border itself is marked by faded stone arches bearing the portraits of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for thirty years from 1970, and Bashar al-Assad, the young British-educated ophthalmologist who inherited the family business upon his father’s death in 2000. Bashar was never supposed to become president—the heir was always his elder brother Basel, who forfeited his place in the succession when he crashed his Mercedes-Benz in Damascus in 1994, with fatal consequences. As if to banish any doubts about who is in charge now, the road beyond the border is punctuated at approximately ten-metre intervals with images of Bashar overlaid with a fingerprint in the colours of the Syrian flag, above the dedication, “We love you.” With only a few gaps, these continue all the way into Damascus.

  Peter pulls into a petrol station, the forecourt of which is plastered with posters of Assad Jr. and Nasrallah (since last summer’s war, perceived throughout the Arab world as a victory for Hezbollah and a humiliation for Israel, Hezbollah’s clenched-fist-and-Kalashnikov logo has also begun to appear in Syria with a frequency that can only be officially encouraged). The petrol is cheaper here, Peter explains—twenty litres costs US$15 in Lebanon, $11 in Syria. Once on the road, he slams his foot down, the identical Assads lining the central reservation whipping by in a blur like an extremely low budget animation. I ask him if he’s just taking advantage of the better road.

  “Partly that,” translates Sheila. “But also because here you can fix anything with money.”

  (A couple of days later, we’ll see the truth of this when Peter, having collected us from Damascus, eases our surprisingly unharassed progress back into Lebanon by palming a quantity of notes to Syrian border guards).

  It gradually becomes clear that there’s another, more fundamental reason for Peter’s haste: he doesn’t really want to be in Syria, especially not with a journalist and a photographer who still don’t have the proper credentials from Damascus. Most of Cris’s requests to stop the car so he can take pictures meet a flat, “No. Not
here,” and when Peter does pull up by some roadside fruit stalls, near the town of Dimas, the extravagant greetings of the fourteen-year-old proprietor, Bilal—“Welcome in Syria!”—do little to calm him. Peter’s agitation is initially a little difficult to take seriously. I’ve travelled in many police states, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the fear can seem part of the weather, as tangible as sunshine or rain. Syria doesn’t feel like that to me—the only soldier we see in the short rush from the border to Damascus waves to us—but it certainly does to Peter.

  “You have to understand,” Peter says, “they won’t just take the cameras. They will take you to the police station.”

  He’s also asking me to understand that while the probable worst that could befall myself and Cris would be a recital of the Riot Act and deportation, matters might be much less amusing for a Lebanese citizen accused of ferrying foreign spies. Back in the car, even though Cris resigns himself to photographing on the move, his every click of the shutter provokes winces from Peter and exclamations of, “Oh my God. Forget about it,” from Sheila, especially as we pass through the area that harbours the now closed but still fearful Mezze prison.

  The geography has become less hospitable, as well. Lebanon is green, fertile and hilly, much more reminiscent of Italy or Greece than of any preconceptions of Arabia. Syria is desert, a beige sea of sand, and while the view as we hurtle to Damascus has a certain rugged grandeur, it’s hard to enjoy it properly for the inescapable gaze of the president, staring peevishly from hundreds of posters. Peter and Sheila only cheer up once, upon noticing that one silver Mercedes, which briefly pulls up alongside us before disappearing at hilarious speed, contains Nancy Ajram, the Lebanese pop starlet, whom we’ve already seen, back on the other side of the border, pouting from dozens of Coca-Cola billboards.

  SAUL OF TARSUS’S journey to Damascus ended at an address on the Street which is called Straight (Acts 9:11), and so does ours—at least after a diversion via Syria’s Ministry of Information where, with the aid of a wall-sized panoramic photograph of Damascus, the press officer who issues our accreditation outlines which parts of the city we are permitted to take pictures of.

  In Damascus, the world’s oldest continually inhabited city, the New Testament is almost a street directory, and the Street which is called Straight is now the main artery of the Old City’s bustling souk. Somewhere along here, at the home of a man named Judas, Saul received baptism and salvation from a disciple called Ananias. All I got was a scoop of the fabulous local ice cream from the famous Bakdash cafe, and a camel-hair rug for the hall (still, as Saul/Paul would later write to Timothy: “And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content”—1 Timothy 6:8). The deal for the carpet is sealed after the traditional hour’s worth of tea, amiable bickering over the price, and survey of Middle Eastern politics.

  “We’re actually pretty busy,” says the young shopkeeper, in impeccable English. “It’s still a surprise to me. After 9/11, we started getting more Americans coming here—they seem to want to find out more about the Middle East.”

  Angling for a neat validation of the Road to Damascus metaphor, I ask if he thinks any of them have left his shop, or his country, with their minds changed about anything.

  “I don’t think so,” he grins. “They still don’t understand us, and we still don’t understand them. But it’s nice that they try.”

  20

  CALIFORNIA SCREAMING

  Courtney Love in Los Angeles

  OCTOBER 1991

  THIS IS THE oldest story in this book, and very arguably the proverbial oldest story in the book: of a determined young woman with a dream descending upon Hollywood. Courtney Love—for it is she—is a name that will now be known to most readers, which is, I suppose, in the way of these things, what she would have desired when she first determined to fling herself upon the mercy of Tinseltown. While revisiting this piece, I spent some time perusing Courtney’s audaciously punctuated postings on various websites, attempting to determine whether she sounded like someone who’d got what she wanted or—and this is always the more difficult trick—wanted what she’d got. Given that Courtney now chooses to communicate in a dialect similar to that of a relative newcomer to the English language on mushrooms undertaking an elementary typing module on a trawler adrift in a typhoon while a stoned kitten staggers back and forth across her keyboard, gleaning definitive insights proved difficult.

  That said, I’d still advise skimming through this story until you get to the bits in quotation marks. My first-timer’s observations of Los Angeles are trying rather too hard—though I’ve not warmed to the place overmuch on subsequent visits—but Courtney’s thoughts, when laid out correctly spelled and punctuated, are interesting and perceptive. I think she already understood that the notoriety she craved was likely to prove more a poisoned chalice than a holy grail—and this, remember, was at a time when her “fame” barely extended further than two clubs in Hollywood and one pub in Camden Town, and pretty much the only publication taking much interest in Courtney was the one that had sent me to interview her.

  That publication was Melody Maker, which had been first aboard the Courtney Love bandwagon thanks to my predecessor as the paper’s reviews editor, Everett True. I’m dedicating this chapter to ET, now virtually resident at everetttrue.wordpress.com, and actually resident in Brisbane, Australia, for two reasons. First and foremost, by way of gratitude for printing in Melody Maker an unsolicited review of Straitjacket Fits at Sydney’s Lansdowne Hotel in 1989, which I posted to him on spec from the old country when the idea of writing for Melody Maker was, for me, what the idea of being a globally famous rock star was for Courtney at around the time I met her. Had Everett not approved my scribblings for print, the last twenty years of my life would, I suspect, have been altogether less entertaining (it’s also possible that, somewhere back home, there’s some girl I never met who’ll never know what a debt she owes him). Second, and more pertinently to this story, I’d like to thank Everett for offering what is still the wisest advice I’ve ever been given before embarking on an assignment. “For the love of all that is wonderful,” counseled the great man, the day before I left, “do not give that woman your home phone number.”

  “PEOPLE WANT ME to be evil,” shrugs Courtney Love. She yawns, again. Her blonde hair is so intricately and exuberantly tangled that it almost looks like the rest of her is but a life support system for the extravagant thatch on top. “People want me to be evil because of how I come across on stage and on record. People really, really do want me to be evil. And I’m really kind of not.”

  She doesn’t seem especially evil so far. She’s been making sure my glass is full, worrying that the noise of Nirvana soundchecking upstairs is going to sod up the interview tape, harassing someone from Nirvana’s crew about getting a friend of mine on the guest list for tonight’s show and telling me that we can do all this later if I’d rather go back to my hotel and have a nap, because I really do look very tired. I’ve come to Los Angeles to meet rock’n’roll’s new screaming witch vixen harpy she-devil, and I feel like I’m having tea with someone’s aunt.

  We’re in a dressing room backstage at the Palace Theatre in Hollywood. Tonight, Courtney Love’s band, Hole, will open here for Nirvana. Somewhere above and behind us, Nirvana’s soundcheck continues, the usual formless racket of clonking drums, squawking guitars and amplified mumbling about monitors. The other three members of Hole are also in the room, sitting on plastic chairs or the floor. Jill Emery, who never says anything at all, plays bass. Eric Erlandson, who is the least assuming lead guitarist—and possibly the least assuming human being—I’ve ever met, doesn’t say anything either. Carolyn Rue, who has a stud in her chin and plays drums, says things only when Courtney’s mouth is otherwise occupied drinking or eating, and then mostly says things about Courtney.

  “She’s not evil, no,” says Carolyn. “She’s . . . not impossible, but she’s difficult. Difficult because she’s got something in her mind
that’s going this fast, and for someone else to pick it up, they’ve got to be thinking just as fast, because then she’s onto the next thing, and if you’re not keeping up, you get lost really quickly.”

  I’m beginning to get the idea. Courtney has a knack of answering questions before they’re asked, accepting compliments before they’re offered, spotting every gambit from six moves away.

  “Don’t jaywalk on Hollywood Boulevard,” says Courtney, apropos of nothing. “The cops hang around on the corners busting tourists to make up their quotas. I’m serious.”

  LOS ANGELES—BASICALLY Tehran with film studios—is horrible. It’s ugly and it smells bad and contains a greater density of humourless and desperately stupid people than anywhere on earth. When the big earthquake finally comes, it will cause billions of dollars’ worth of improvements.

  Los Angeles is annoying in all the ways you knew it was going to be annoying, and that’s kind of annoying in itself. People really do tell you to have a nice day. Restaurant staff do actually say, “Hi, I’m Wayne, and I’ll be your waiter.” And they still smile pleasantly and vapidly at you if you respond, “G’day, I’m Andrew, and I’ll be your customer,” or, “Cool! Can I meet the bloke who washes the dishes, as well?” or even, “Mate, I don’t care what your name is, as long as you keep your thumb out of my soup.”

  But Los Angeles is, as advertised, a city where miracles happen. On my first afternoon in Hollywood, as I’m walking, jetlagged and blinking, along Sunset Strip, a car screeches to a tyre-scorching halt on the road next to me. For a second, I wonder if I’ve just been discovered or if I’m about to get shot. Then Barry gets out of the car. Barry is a friend of mine from Sydney who was staying with me in London three months ago before going off to drive round America. He is possibly the only person in the entire North American continent who’d recognise me. When he left my flat, he forgot his leather jacket, which I have been borrowing regularly since. In fact, I realise, as he walks towards me looking like someone who’s just found a pterodactyl in his broom closet, I’m wearing it right now.