In the spirit of following in Mark Twain’s footsteps I think it would be amusing to contact the current US incumbent in Beirut, to invite her to enjoy a light lunch together and see what records, if any, remain about Jeremiah Augustus Johnson or even his notes about his meeting with Mark Twain. But, as an early indicator of the troubled times in which we live, my early efforts are discouraged, and later efforts rebuffed. One starts by calling the American Embassy switchboard, explaining what one wants to do, being put through to the Public Diplomacy Department, explaining it all again, being referred to the Press Desk, explaining it all over again, being asked to apply in writing explaining it all again and to “allow at least five working days for State to reply”. The request goes to Washington? “We don’t vet here.” You need to vet me? I’m British. “Sir, we need to vet the request, so yes.”
After a week there is no reply from State, so trying not to think about the cell phone bill for the next half hour I call again. Yes, there has been some internal “traffic”: “there is no record of correspondence to or from Mark Twain during that period.” Fine - I know that already and had not asked if there had been, but what about my offer of lunch with the ambassador? “Due to security assessments... non-essential activities... in principle, not treating with third party nationals... no, sir, I know you are British... there’s no need to take that attitude... what do you mean by guff?”
Luckily there is no such nonsense with the British Embassy, and I have a most enjoyable and informative lunch with Piers Cazalet, the Deputy Head of Mission. He has some sympathy for the American diplomats, who know that working in a fortress on a hill in a far-flung suburb is not the ideal way to pursue diplomacy; in fact they know it’s totally counterproductive, as they would put it, “hearts and minds-wise”.
“They are not even allowed out of their compound without a bodyguard, so there would have been three at lunch anyway,” he tells me.
“After all the kerfuffle I was so curious about the American Embassy so I took a taxi out there. It’s a kind of scaled down version of one of the crusader castles one finds hereabouts,” I suggest.
“But don’t forget they had the worst terrorist attack on an embassy ever here in Beirut,” he replies. “In 1983 a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed sixty diplomats and marines. It was one of Hezbollah’s first acts. So there is a fortress mentality.”
“Exactly as Hezbollah intended. And what of Hezbollah now?”
“Stronger than ever,” Piers replies, “they have fifteen seats in parliament and a vetoing balance in the cabinet - but actually their support is far greater than that.”
“How so?”
“Constituency boundaries, in some Shia - so Hezbollah - seats there are maybe 100,000 voters, in some Christian ones only 10,000. It’s a very fluid mix.”
“High octane fluid.”
“Just so. Also, don’t forget Israel can never defeat Hezbollah like it has defeated the Arabs. It can only hope to hold onto its gains and limit its losses.”
When the French Mandate ended and Lebanon was penciled-in as a country in the mid-1920s the population was largely Maronite - an eastern Christian sect which nominally, sometimes highly nominally, offers allegiance to Rome - and Druze - a sort of esoteric Shia spin-off who believe that the schizophrenic Caliph al-Hakim was God after all and that he never died but was taken straight to heaven. By the time of independence from France, in 1943, a significant Sunni presence had evolved and the founding constitution of that year reflected the religious and political divide: the president was to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker a Druze, or Shia Muslim.
The Maronites are an interesting religious and political sect, and worth a quick visit. Originally they were followers of St. Maron, a particularly extreme ascetic sixth-century Byzantine monk. When he died he must have cast a spell over his future followers, as no sooner had he succumbed than the first of many Lebanese civil wars broke out among them on how to deal with his remains.
The Maronites were later declared heretics by the Byzantine Church over their stance supporting the esoteric doctrine of Monothelitism, proclaiming that Jesus Christ had two natures (divine and human) yet only one - combined - will. Persecuted for this schism they fled to the range of Mount Lebanon where, left alone, they prospered. When the crusades arrived four hundred years later the Maronites deemed it politic to ally themselves with Rome, with whom they have been allied, somewhat loosely, ever since. When the French inherited greater Syria from the defeated Ottomans in 1920, they soon found themselves in league with their co-religionists, and at the Maronites’ request formed the “State of Greater Lebanon” so that they, the Maronites, could have their own Christian country.
Still today the Maronite ties to France remain magnetic. Like Mark Twain, we arrived in Beirut by boat, in our case on Vasco da Gama. I am writing this where we are moored, in the delightfully oasis of the Automobile et Touring Club du Liban in Jounieh, some twelve miles north of the mayhem that is Beirut. We could be in a five star sports resort in Antibes. Everyone, except the Filipino chauffeurs and nannies, speaks French, and only French. They all have French names, many have French cars. This week the 2010 football World Cup is playing in South Africa, and French flags fly from radio aerials and rear windows. The tennis courts resound to claims of quarante quinze. The bar rejoices to shouts of trois bières. Even the swimming pool squeals to Maman! Maman!
On enquiring about a taxi to a nearby Shia area, Gillian was told not to go because of the “dirty Arabs - dangerous Muslim area.” Of course they are just as much Arab as any local Muslim, yet armed partly with a much better education than the Muslim Arabs and partly with an adopted hauteur, they have invented themselves a faux-Phoenician historical identity and a faux- French cultural identity. As we shall see, their militia, a kind of faux-Foreign Legion doubling up as faux-Crusaders, played a particularly vicious role as Israel’s proxy in the 1980s civil war. One forsakes to be judgmental about other people’s beliefs, but with the best will in the world it is hard to see anything very much actually Christian - as originally intended by Jesus or Paul or anyone else - in the Maronite sect.
Since 1943 the population mix has blended, whereas the constitution has remained fixed, and one can feel the politico-religious tectonic plates looking for relief again, just as they did before the civil war broke out in 1975. The Christians now represent only about 25 per cent of the population, an acceler- ating reduction caused by the much-vaunted “brain drain” and lower population growth, and also a feeling among them that the Christian game in the Middle East is up, that this last pocket of resistance is a fin de race. They see that elsewhere in Asia Minor the Christian population has all but vanished in the last century as Islam has become less tolerant politically and religiously. There need no longer be a Turkish genocide, as against the Armenians, or a Turkish massacre, as against the Greeks, or a Syrian slaughter of the Christian Arabs, or an Israeli cleansing of Palestinian Christians to discourage the Maronites from staying; the Christian feet are doing the voting for the Muslim fundamentalists, who conveniently forget that Byzantine Christianity was prevalent in Asia Minor for many centuries before Islam arrived, that Islam shares so much with Christianity that for many centuries in remote areas the two congregations prayed alongside each other.
I ask Piers if it is more than a gross oversimplification to say that socially and economically one can grade Lebanon as having prosperous and educated Christians at the top table, followed by worthy Sunnis as a buffer to the Shia rabble making up the numbers. “A very gross oversimplification,” he agrees, “but some sort of snapshot. But there are other complications.”
“Such as?” I ask.
“Politics is religious. Religion5 is political. There are eighteen official religions, twelve of them Christian. Most of them have political ties too, so there are no political parties as we know them but loose allianc
es based around religious sects, or around personalities or extended families. Proportional representation stirs it up. No one party has ever won more than 12.5 per cent of the vote, and no coalition can rely on more than a third of the MPs.
Likewise the law. In theory the Napoleonic Code is supreme but in practice localized religious law is what is recognized.”
“And militias?”
“For now back in their basements, but Hezbollah has never disarmed, in fact their logo is a Koran and a Kalashnikov. The Phalange are still well armed.”
Well-armed and trigger ready, I would not be surprised. Inspired by a visit to the Waffen SS in 1936, in the 1980s civil war the Maronite militia took on an anti-Islamic Crusader identity, complete with Holy Cross or Madonna motifs on their uniforms and armaments. They gave themselves crusader names too: the Wood of the Cross, the Knights of the Holy Virgin, the Phalanx (hence Phalange) of St. Maron. They distinguished themselves in the Sabra, Chatila, Tel el-Za’atar and Ein Helweh refugee camp massacres, where they were allowed - some say encouraged - to run rampant by Israel’s General Sharon and where as many as two thousand Palestinian refugees were slaughtered. Leaving aside the vile irony of the Israelis teaming up with the fascists, and however much one may blanch at the Hezbollah flag adorned with the Koran and a Kalashnikov, today’s Shia militia are merely following the Maronite lead: the Phalange flag has a cross and sword in flames motif and the wholesome motto: “It is the Duty of every Lebanese to kill at least one Palestinian.”
After lunch, and impressed as always by the quality and nous of our diplomats, I research the religious mix to which Piers referred. It’s likely that the official estimate of twelve Christian sects6 is an under-estimate. Apart from the ruling Maronites, there are Greek Catholics and Greek Orthodox, and Syriac Catholics and Syriac Orthodox - Jacobite and non-Jacobite, Armenian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Apolistic. Then we find the Assyrian Church of the East, the Nestorians, the Ancient Church of the East, the Assyrian Catholics and Assyrian Pentecostals, the Chaldean Catholics and the Melkites. More familiarly there are Latin Catholics, and some Protestants, called Evangelics here, Lutherans and Baptists. Amongst the Muslims there are the usual Sunni and Shia sects, plus the spin-offs: the Druze, the Alawites, the Sufis and the Alevis. No-one knows the Muslim Shia/Sunni mix in Lebanon as there is no mechanism to gauge it, but most estimates suggest 55 per cent Shia to 45 per cent Sunni, this shift complicated by “second hand” Palestinian Sunni refugees from Jordan and the considerably higher Shia birth rate.
We’ll come across the Sunni and Shia split down the road apiece, so it’s worth taking a paragraph to remind ourselves as to why they too are at each other’s throats.
When Mohammed died his followers needed a successor, a caliph, to carry on the good work. The Shia hold that Mohammed pronounced his son-in-law and cousin Ali to be that man, and thereafter Ali’s direct male descendents to follow in his footsteps. The Sunnis can find no evidence of this divine appoint- ment and prefer to follow the lead of the first four caliphs and descend from there. Taking sides is not recommended, neither is an air of disbelief or laissez- faire. Shia are big in Iran andYemen, smoldering in Turkey and, as we’ve seen, increasingly virulent in Lebanon, but persecuted by the Sunnis elsewhere, notably in Iraq, pre- and post- the Bush/Blair invasion, as well as by theTaliban in Afghanistan where persecution tends to mean Turkish-style elimination. An added twist is that the majority of Lebanon-based Palestinian refugees are Sunni, but their cause has been taken up, to great effect, by Iran-backed Shia group Hezbollah.
As an aside to matters religious, the South Africa World Cup continues during my stay in Beirut. The Lebanese are enthusiastic followers of the event, and flags of the competing countries hang from balconies and car aerials and rear windows. We are moored in the faux-French Maronite Christian area and the flags are mixed - mostly French, but then a lot of Brazilian and Argentinian ones, some American, and then from elsewhere in Europe a cross section of Italian, German and, heaven help us, English. But driving to the airport, through the Muslim areas, the flags are predominantly German. In an airport hotel lounge with a big flat TV I have the humiliation of watching Germany beat England 4-1; I am the only Brit and find myself surrounded by German-supporting Lebanese Sunni Muslims going wild with excitement every time Germany scores, in other words fairly frequently. After the fourth goal, when my neighbor finishes kissing the German crest on his German kit shirt, I ask him: “Why?” “Germany good.” “Mmm, maybe, but why?” “Germany Israel boosh!” “Ah.” “Yeah, Germany Jew-man boosh!”
***
In Mark Twain’s time there were none of these complications as what few local tribesmen he came across, and these overwhelming Bedouin, were Sunni Muslim. In Jerusalem he found a Christian community, but in a state of multi-sect civil war between the Latin Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and the various Armenian and Syrian sects and sub-sects. In Jerusalem he found Jews too, living without obvious persecution; in fact tolerance of other patriarchal Abrahamic religions was a hallmark of the Ottoman Empire; tolerance tolerated for a price, another hallmark of the Ottoman Empire.
Mark Twain spent only a day and a half sightseeing in Beirut before leaving for Baalbek. While he and been busy communing with the American consul and admiring the “bright, new houses nestled among a wilderness of green shrubbery”, the business end of his group had been organizing their caravan- serai. And what a splendid and proper caravanserai it was! Led by a Maltese dragoman, Abraham, assisted by his deputy dragoman, Mohammed from Alexandria, it contained no fewer than twelve horses for the eight Americans and the dragomen, nineteen porters, bearers and waiters, all on foot, and twenty six pack-mules and camels7 laden with all the paraphernalia of a deep desert camping expedition. Abraham was to stay as Ferguson-in-chief through- out the Holy Land tour but never really drew the Excursionists’ admiration.
If Mark Twain was impressed by the size of the caravanserai he was less enthused by its shape. The horses in particular were “the hardest lot I ever did come across. One brute had an eye out; another had his tail sawed off close, like a rabbit, and was proud of it; another had a bony ridge running from his neck to his tail, and had a neck on him like a bowsprit; they all limped, and had sore backs, and likewise raw places and old scales scattered about their persons like brass nails in a hair trunk; their gaits were marvelous to contemplate, and replete with variety under way the procession looked like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful.”
In compensation the Daily Alta California would not have quibbled about the expenses: five dollars in gold a day each, all in. Mark Twain packed “a blanket and a shawl to sleep in, pipes and tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a portfolio, a guide-book, and a Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake of soap, to inspire respect in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in disguise.”
They spent the first night en route to Baalbek at Temnin-al-Faouqa, then as now on a “breezy summit of a shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much about.” Temnin-al-Faouqa is now another sprawling eyesore; the breezy summit and shapely mountain remain but the handsome valley has gone the way of the Phoenicians - in fact there’s so much smog one cannot even see the sea let alone the Phoenicians, faux or real.
The caravanserai was equipped for three weeks camping, and if the going was to be rough and thirsty across the bone dry scrub and desert in the day, the group could always look forward to the evening’s Bed & Breakfast, when the twenty beasts of burden desaddled their cargo and the nineteen bearers set up camp. Mark Twain had been used to camping out in his mineral prospecting days in Nevada and California, and simple and rough camping it was too. When he first heard of camping caravanserai-style he was plainly suspicious: “They said we would lie as well as at a hotel. I had read something like that before, and did not shame my judgment by believing a word of it.
” But that first night at Temnin-al-Faouqa had him dumbfounded and, as he himself said, speechless: “Five stately circus tents were up - tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the center-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels - one set for each man. Then came the finishing touch - they spread carpets on the floor!”
Soon night fell and the tents became candlelit, with “candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks”. When the dinner gong sounded they all repaired to the dining tent, “high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and very handsome and clean and bright-colored within”.
Dinner arrived, served on starched white tablecloths and laid next to starched white napkins. The nineteen porters had become waiters, and “those stately fellows in baggy trousers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while.”
Breakfast was no less splendid. The porters had taken down the side flaps of the dining tent, leaving only the roof as shade and allowing the dawn breeze in from “the open panorama” to cool them. While the Excursionists had slept, the Arabs had been preparing a breakfast of “hot mutton chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee - all excellent. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced over my shoulder, and behold our white village was gone - the splendid tents had vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs had ‘folded their tents’; and it was wonderful, also, how quickly they had gathered the thousand odds and ends of the camp together and disappeared with them.”
Innocence and War Page 7