.
Showing posts with label Sidon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sidon. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2020
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Next Month in Jerusalem!
As published at Unz Review and TruthSeeker, 11/24/20:
Traveling is not just a shifting of the body, but a reorientation of the mind, so here in Lebanon, I can’t help but think about Islam, because I’m surrounded by Muslims, and the fajr call to prayer wakes me each dawn.
Iran’s most advanced missiles are called Fajr, by the way, a mere coincidence, I’m sure. Dispatched to Hezbollah, they have been used to rouse Jews.
Before Lebanon, I was in North Macedonia, and there, my friend Alex would refer to Muslim calls to prayer as “Tarzan five times a day.” As a Christian, Alex resents Muslim encroachment onto his physical or mental space. There is a turf war there, with churches and mosques springing up to assert each camp’s territories. Some old churches are even marked by new giant crosses to declare, “We’re still here.”
In 2016, Israel banned three East Jerusalem mosques from broadcasting their fajr calls to prayer. Netanyahu explained, “I cannot count the times—they are simply too numerous—that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused to them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer.”
Being in Lebanon forces me to think even harder about Israel, naturally, and not just because Jewish jets fly over my head several times a day. For two generations already, Lebanon has been warped and menaced by Jews, when not outright destroyed by them, with its cities bombed and civilians massacred. In every village or neighborhood, there are public portraits of men, mostly young, who died fighting Jews, and the closer you get to Occupied Palestine, the more numerous these faces appear.
Once the jewel of the Middle East, Beirut is still dynamic, incredibly, though much battered, with Beirutshima the latest assault against it. Gloating over their likely handiwork, Jews rejoiced at that calamity. As with the Holocaust and 9/11, the truth will come out, because it can’t be smothered forever by Jews with their meaningless charge of “anti-Semitism.”
There is no buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon, just a concrete wall or, even more incredibly, a wire fence. From Lebanon, I can see Jewish farms, orchards and houses, but no soldiers, or even people, just a yellow tractor moving in the distance.
At these dicey settlements, the laborers tend to be dark Ethiopians and Yemenis, for Ashkenazim just aren’t desperate enough, though they will be soon, God willing. With a second passport, many are already prepared to become your neighbors.
On the Lebanese side, houses, shops and cafes rush right up to the border. As Jews keep out of sight, Lebanese go on with life.
The border wall is filled with murals and graffiti, with several depictions of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, and there’s even a model of it at a traffic circle, next to the wall. A smoking tank painted by “Sara” is accompanied by this taunt, “Merkava / Pride of Israel.” There’s a portrait of a saluting Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. In southern Lebanon, this Shiite Party of God is the de facto government.
In Aadaysit Marjaayoun, there’s a billboard showing the Iraqi Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iranian Qasem Soleimani and the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh. The first two were assassinated by the USA, the last by Israel. The Jewish state is a stone’s throw away.
Even standing on tiptoes, I can’t see Jerusalem. I’m heartbroken. I came to Lebanon primarily to board a cheap van from Sidon to Jerusalem, and inshallah, perhaps that can still happen, and not next year but by Christmas.
In 621, Mohammed was carried from Mecca to Jerusalem by a buraq, a winged animal that’s smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey. As if that isn’t cool enough, that same night Mohammed also met Adam, Idris, Moses, Jesus, Abraham and Allah Himself, on different tiers of heaven. (God was on the 7th floor.)
Mosh’s conduct is most fascinating. When Mohammed told Moses that Allah had commanded 50 daily prayers for Islam, the Jew boss urged the first Muslim to haggle it down to 25, then five, but even that was deemed too onerous, so go back and Jew Allah some more, Mosh urged. Mohammed couldn’t do it, “Now I feel shy of asking my Lord again.”
*
In Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky mentions an Ivan Kramskoi painting, “The Contemplator,” with its solitary figure standing in the cold, transfixed.
The master then riffs, “If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both.”
After endless contemplation, and a lifetime of hoarding impressions, the thoughtful man springs into action by destroying his past and going to Jerusalem, where he will be saved, or so he thinks. According to the Midrash, God Himself must go there before entering heaven, “I will not come into the city of Jerusalem that is above until I first come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.” Is there a greater geographical idée fixe?
After trekking 2,000 miles, 13,000 Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099. After an eight-day siege, they entered it to slaughter roughly 40,000 Muslims, Jews and even Christians. Kill them all and so forth.
Among the invaders was Raymond d’Aguilers, “But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.”
A year earlier in Ma’arra, Syria, Crusaders gorged on human flesh, by their own admissions. Radulph of Caen, “Our troops boiled pagan adults whole in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.” The quest for Jerusalem, then, can fling open the gate of hell, but it doesn’t have to. When Saladin conquered it in 1187, all he demanded of the vanquished was an exit fee, not unlike what’s required at some shitty airports, still.
This forgiving arrangement clearly irritated many of his followers. Ibn al-Athir, “The Patriarch of the Franks left with a large amount, which God alone could grasp, of the wealth of the churches, such as the [Dome of] the Rock, the Aqsa, the Holy Sepulchre and others. He himself had a comparable amount but Saladin did not trouble him. It was suggested to him that he should seize what he had to strength the Muslims’ cause but he said, ‘I will not act treacherously towards him,’ and all he took from him was ten dinars.”
The Mongols’ surge into the Levant has been dubbed La Croisade Jaune, but joking aside, it’s truer to tag Crusaders as The White Horde, for terrorizing all, they looted, murdered and raped their way to the Holy Land. Going home, though, they brought enough knowledge, wisdom and techniques from the East to revive a dark and slumbering Europe, resulting, eventually, in the Renaissance. Not a bad deal.
*
Before entering the White House, Trump promised to build a border wall, bring outsourced jobs back, drain the fetid Beltway swamp and even prosecute Hillary Clinton. Unsurprisingly, at least to this observer, Trump has done none of that.
As expected, ordinary Americans are hung out to dry, again. More economically hamstrung than ever, they’re also stoked daily, by the Jewish-controlled media, into screaming at, sucker punching or even shooting each other. Though American elections have been rigged for decades, the last one was transparently obscene, so as to trigger left, right and centrist Americans into a battle royale, as they sit back and watch, laughing. Blindfolded, you swing.
Subservient, the American President has only kept his promises to Jews. Iran’s economy is strangled and its top general murdered, the US embassy is in Jerusalem, illegal settlements are kosher and the Golan Heights belongs to Israel. Leaving, Trump has dispatched top officials to Israel to make sure there’s a smooth transition to the next puppets, not that Jews are sweating over that.
They’re only losing sleep over my neighbors, the farmers, petty merchants and mechanics, etc., that make up Hezbollah.
Borrowing from Jews, Hezbollah fighters also wish each other, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Undoubtedly, this is also an acknowledgment, wink, wink, of Islam’s Abrahamic roots.
It’s time for a reconciliation of the Semites, which means the latest white invaders must leave, just like the Crusaders.
Even more benevolent than Saladin, Hezbollah won’t even squeeze a dinar from them.
[for more on Hezbollah, check out Taxi's "Hezbollah the Beautiful"]
Traveling is not just a shifting of the body, but a reorientation of the mind, so here in Lebanon, I can’t help but think about Islam, because I’m surrounded by Muslims, and the fajr call to prayer wakes me each dawn.
Iran’s most advanced missiles are called Fajr, by the way, a mere coincidence, I’m sure. Dispatched to Hezbollah, they have been used to rouse Jews.
Before Lebanon, I was in North Macedonia, and there, my friend Alex would refer to Muslim calls to prayer as “Tarzan five times a day.” As a Christian, Alex resents Muslim encroachment onto his physical or mental space. There is a turf war there, with churches and mosques springing up to assert each camp’s territories. Some old churches are even marked by new giant crosses to declare, “We’re still here.”
In 2016, Israel banned three East Jerusalem mosques from broadcasting their fajr calls to prayer. Netanyahu explained, “I cannot count the times—they are simply too numerous—that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused to them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer.”
Being in Lebanon forces me to think even harder about Israel, naturally, and not just because Jewish jets fly over my head several times a day. For two generations already, Lebanon has been warped and menaced by Jews, when not outright destroyed by them, with its cities bombed and civilians massacred. In every village or neighborhood, there are public portraits of men, mostly young, who died fighting Jews, and the closer you get to Occupied Palestine, the more numerous these faces appear.
Once the jewel of the Middle East, Beirut is still dynamic, incredibly, though much battered, with Beirutshima the latest assault against it. Gloating over their likely handiwork, Jews rejoiced at that calamity. As with the Holocaust and 9/11, the truth will come out, because it can’t be smothered forever by Jews with their meaningless charge of “anti-Semitism.”
There is no buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon, just a concrete wall or, even more incredibly, a wire fence. From Lebanon, I can see Jewish farms, orchards and houses, but no soldiers, or even people, just a yellow tractor moving in the distance.
At these dicey settlements, the laborers tend to be dark Ethiopians and Yemenis, for Ashkenazim just aren’t desperate enough, though they will be soon, God willing. With a second passport, many are already prepared to become your neighbors.
On the Lebanese side, houses, shops and cafes rush right up to the border. As Jews keep out of sight, Lebanese go on with life.
The border wall is filled with murals and graffiti, with several depictions of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, and there’s even a model of it at a traffic circle, next to the wall. A smoking tank painted by “Sara” is accompanied by this taunt, “Merkava / Pride of Israel.” There’s a portrait of a saluting Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. In southern Lebanon, this Shiite Party of God is the de facto government.
In Aadaysit Marjaayoun, there’s a billboard showing the Iraqi Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iranian Qasem Soleimani and the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh. The first two were assassinated by the USA, the last by Israel. The Jewish state is a stone’s throw away.
Even standing on tiptoes, I can’t see Jerusalem. I’m heartbroken. I came to Lebanon primarily to board a cheap van from Sidon to Jerusalem, and inshallah, perhaps that can still happen, and not next year but by Christmas.
In 621, Mohammed was carried from Mecca to Jerusalem by a buraq, a winged animal that’s smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey. As if that isn’t cool enough, that same night Mohammed also met Adam, Idris, Moses, Jesus, Abraham and Allah Himself, on different tiers of heaven. (God was on the 7th floor.)
Mosh’s conduct is most fascinating. When Mohammed told Moses that Allah had commanded 50 daily prayers for Islam, the Jew boss urged the first Muslim to haggle it down to 25, then five, but even that was deemed too onerous, so go back and Jew Allah some more, Mosh urged. Mohammed couldn’t do it, “Now I feel shy of asking my Lord again.”
*
In Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky mentions an Ivan Kramskoi painting, “The Contemplator,” with its solitary figure standing in the cold, transfixed.
The master then riffs, “If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both.”
After endless contemplation, and a lifetime of hoarding impressions, the thoughtful man springs into action by destroying his past and going to Jerusalem, where he will be saved, or so he thinks. According to the Midrash, God Himself must go there before entering heaven, “I will not come into the city of Jerusalem that is above until I first come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.” Is there a greater geographical idée fixe?
After trekking 2,000 miles, 13,000 Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099. After an eight-day siege, they entered it to slaughter roughly 40,000 Muslims, Jews and even Christians. Kill them all and so forth.
Among the invaders was Raymond d’Aguilers, “But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.”
A year earlier in Ma’arra, Syria, Crusaders gorged on human flesh, by their own admissions. Radulph of Caen, “Our troops boiled pagan adults whole in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.” The quest for Jerusalem, then, can fling open the gate of hell, but it doesn’t have to. When Saladin conquered it in 1187, all he demanded of the vanquished was an exit fee, not unlike what’s required at some shitty airports, still.
This forgiving arrangement clearly irritated many of his followers. Ibn al-Athir, “The Patriarch of the Franks left with a large amount, which God alone could grasp, of the wealth of the churches, such as the [Dome of] the Rock, the Aqsa, the Holy Sepulchre and others. He himself had a comparable amount but Saladin did not trouble him. It was suggested to him that he should seize what he had to strength the Muslims’ cause but he said, ‘I will not act treacherously towards him,’ and all he took from him was ten dinars.”
The Mongols’ surge into the Levant has been dubbed La Croisade Jaune, but joking aside, it’s truer to tag Crusaders as The White Horde, for terrorizing all, they looted, murdered and raped their way to the Holy Land. Going home, though, they brought enough knowledge, wisdom and techniques from the East to revive a dark and slumbering Europe, resulting, eventually, in the Renaissance. Not a bad deal.
*
Before entering the White House, Trump promised to build a border wall, bring outsourced jobs back, drain the fetid Beltway swamp and even prosecute Hillary Clinton. Unsurprisingly, at least to this observer, Trump has done none of that.
As expected, ordinary Americans are hung out to dry, again. More economically hamstrung than ever, they’re also stoked daily, by the Jewish-controlled media, into screaming at, sucker punching or even shooting each other. Though American elections have been rigged for decades, the last one was transparently obscene, so as to trigger left, right and centrist Americans into a battle royale, as they sit back and watch, laughing. Blindfolded, you swing.
Subservient, the American President has only kept his promises to Jews. Iran’s economy is strangled and its top general murdered, the US embassy is in Jerusalem, illegal settlements are kosher and the Golan Heights belongs to Israel. Leaving, Trump has dispatched top officials to Israel to make sure there’s a smooth transition to the next puppets, not that Jews are sweating over that.
They’re only losing sleep over my neighbors, the farmers, petty merchants and mechanics, etc., that make up Hezbollah.
Borrowing from Jews, Hezbollah fighters also wish each other, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Undoubtedly, this is also an acknowledgment, wink, wink, of Islam’s Abrahamic roots.
It’s time for a reconciliation of the Semites, which means the latest white invaders must leave, just like the Crusaders.
Even more benevolent than Saladin, Hezbollah won’t even squeeze a dinar from them.
[for more on Hezbollah, check out Taxi's "Hezbollah the Beautiful"]
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Battered But Unbroken Lebanon
As published at Unz Review, 11/17/20:
From this elevated village, you can see the ocean on clear days. So close, it’s only three hours away by foot. For millennia, traders passed by that ridge, right there, on their journey from Sidon to Damascus.
Sidon’s souq is gloriously intact. Once entered, it’s impossible to not get lost for hours, and maybe even permanently. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that citizens of every country have been swallowed by this ancient warren, but don’t worry, they’re fine, if not home. It’s an Italo Calvino’s kind of a maze.
The souq’s winding passages often darken and shrink to accommodate only wide-eyed shorties. Wandering past, over and under centuries-old stone blocks, you are cushily embraced by the mother of all wombs or tombs, history itself.
Under multiple arches, a brightly hijabed woman steps into sunlight. Two girls, one in pajamas, stand on tiptoes to peek inside a 17th century mosque’s barred window. With so much bending over, women shouldn’t pray near men, it is reasoned.
Inside hovel-sized shops are clothing, furniture, nuts, vegetables, meat, potato chips and sodas, but no Almaza, Beirut Beer, arak or any other alcohol. Men cut hair beneath hushed TVs. Boys shoot pool or sit, zombielike, in front of video games. Eateries dish up tabbouleh, hummus, falafel, bulgur or pizza. Ambling, a coffee seller makes castanets-like sounds with his metal clappers.
Images of a smiling Yasser Arafat, often young and movie-star dashing, dot this souq. For all his missteps and ultimate failure, Arafat is an enduring symbol of Palestinian resistance to Jews, so he’s reverently displayed on many Sidon walls, fridges and coolers.
Lest you think Sidon is all historical and picturesque, I should stress that much of it is banal, modern and even crass. There are two McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Hardee’s, a KFC and a Popeye’s Fried Chicken. At the last, I learnt that “The Trinity” is no eternal mystery but merely “a Cajun combination of bell pepper, celery and onion […] used in Popeye’s gravy, gumbo and jambalaya.”
There are more Mercedes Benzes in Lebanon than just about anywhere else, but they’re not gleaming and spiffy. Decades-old, some are just puttied and duct-taped junks over stubbornly functioning engines.
*
After three weeks in southern Lebanon, I’ve only walked through Sidon twice. Al hamdullilah, I am a country boy, if only temporarily.
Tonight, there’s a wedding in the next village, on the opposite hill. Can’t you hear the tabla, tambourine, flute and violin? Open your window to let that communal, surging joy flush away your misery and bitterness. Notice how nearly all their houses are dark? The entire village is at that wedding, naturally.
In their lurid and sequined abayas, girls on high heels will totter home to change outfits all evening long, so they can reappear, again and again, even more beautiful. Weddings are about the only occasions where maidens can showcase themselves to potential suitors. The young men, too, are resplendent.
(Yes, I’m way too klutzy for the dabke. Tripping over myself, I’d drag the whole line down. With my arms and legs flailing, I’d kick both bride and groom.)
Old enough, surely you remember the Saturday night dances in all these villages? They were canceled by the war and haven’t returned. Alcohol in public places disappeared, too. Personally, I think it’s a shame.
Not everything is lost. There’s still poetry, though more often, it’s declaimed on television and not at a village cafe. At least there’s no Snoop Doggy Dogg blaring from passing cars.
It’s quiet here. Now and then, there are gunshots, but it’s only a hunter, targeting birds. A few times daily, Jewish jets may thunder above the clouds. Stray dogs in heat bark before dawn, and as pale light washes over the sky, the first prayer call wakes and soothes us all.
This morning, we also hear the muezzin announcing a neighbor has just died. Diagnosed with stomach cancer just a month ago, Aleyna was only forty-years-old. Yesterday, she sounded and looked perfectly fine, but such is life. She never married.
In case you’re wondering why women are banned from this village’s funerals, it’s because they had the jarring habit of tearing their clothes off before hurling themselves into the burial pit. Enough, it was sensibly decided. When the deceased is safely interred, women can wail away at the grave.
With running water and washing machines, women are getting soft, we can agree. Only half a century ago, they had no problem walking half a mile down the hill to fetch water from the well, then trudge back up, with a heavy jar on their head, their back military straight, lips smiling, with barely a grunt escaping. When it’s time to give birth, they just squat.
Water is a painful subject around here. After Jews stole the Golan Heights, they diverted much of its water to themselves, thus crippling scores of Arab villages in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
In Occupied Palestine, Jews have destroyed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive trees. Palestinians harvesting olives are shot at by Jews with impunity. Jews wreck goyim’s livelihood and heritage, when not uprooting or slaughtering them. Honed on genocide, they can’t help it. Just look out your window.
*
Three weeks in Lebanon and I’ve already been to Beirut more times than half the people in this village. Consider Soheil, for example. With a wife and five children, this 36-year-old gardener has seven mouths to feed daily, so why would he go anywhere? He’s visited Beirut maybe twice.
A woman of roughly the same age was hired to clean an apartment in Beirut, so she went there for the first time. Coming and going, she looked but didn’t say much. Was there anything she wanted to see? The airport, she mousily answered, so fine, she was driven there. Seeing airplanes landing, taking off or just parked was so delightful, she was even emboldened afterwards to ask for music on the car radio.
Though I’ve spoken often of being grounded, they simply are, so who’s better equipped moving forward? Who’s more content? Do you have a village to speak of? Do you want one?
Like me, your next village may be your first, if you can reach it.
*
Founded by Phoenicians, Sidon has been ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Egyptians, Syrians, Arabs and Frenchmen. After a 47-day siege in 1110, it was conquered by Crusaders, with King Sigurd of Norway leading the sea assault. Even Mongols showed up in 1260 to sack it, on their way to Gaza.
Sidon’s treasures have mostly been burnt, shattered, pulverized or carted off, with the Eshmunazar II Sarcophagus squirreled in the Louvre, and the Alexander Sarcophagus sitting in Istanbul.
Although Crusaders controlled Sidon for over a century, all that’s left of their presence is a broken castle, jutting into the sea, and here and there, a freckled face with brownish or red hair.
As the latest invaders of this region, Jews, too, will fade away.
From this elevated village, you can see the ocean on clear days. So close, it’s only three hours away by foot. For millennia, traders passed by that ridge, right there, on their journey from Sidon to Damascus.
Sidon’s souq is gloriously intact. Once entered, it’s impossible to not get lost for hours, and maybe even permanently. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that citizens of every country have been swallowed by this ancient warren, but don’t worry, they’re fine, if not home. It’s an Italo Calvino’s kind of a maze.
The souq’s winding passages often darken and shrink to accommodate only wide-eyed shorties. Wandering past, over and under centuries-old stone blocks, you are cushily embraced by the mother of all wombs or tombs, history itself.
Under multiple arches, a brightly hijabed woman steps into sunlight. Two girls, one in pajamas, stand on tiptoes to peek inside a 17th century mosque’s barred window. With so much bending over, women shouldn’t pray near men, it is reasoned.
Inside hovel-sized shops are clothing, furniture, nuts, vegetables, meat, potato chips and sodas, but no Almaza, Beirut Beer, arak or any other alcohol. Men cut hair beneath hushed TVs. Boys shoot pool or sit, zombielike, in front of video games. Eateries dish up tabbouleh, hummus, falafel, bulgur or pizza. Ambling, a coffee seller makes castanets-like sounds with his metal clappers.
Images of a smiling Yasser Arafat, often young and movie-star dashing, dot this souq. For all his missteps and ultimate failure, Arafat is an enduring symbol of Palestinian resistance to Jews, so he’s reverently displayed on many Sidon walls, fridges and coolers.
Lest you think Sidon is all historical and picturesque, I should stress that much of it is banal, modern and even crass. There are two McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Hardee’s, a KFC and a Popeye’s Fried Chicken. At the last, I learnt that “The Trinity” is no eternal mystery but merely “a Cajun combination of bell pepper, celery and onion […] used in Popeye’s gravy, gumbo and jambalaya.”
There are more Mercedes Benzes in Lebanon than just about anywhere else, but they’re not gleaming and spiffy. Decades-old, some are just puttied and duct-taped junks over stubbornly functioning engines.
*
After three weeks in southern Lebanon, I’ve only walked through Sidon twice. Al hamdullilah, I am a country boy, if only temporarily.
Tonight, there’s a wedding in the next village, on the opposite hill. Can’t you hear the tabla, tambourine, flute and violin? Open your window to let that communal, surging joy flush away your misery and bitterness. Notice how nearly all their houses are dark? The entire village is at that wedding, naturally.
In their lurid and sequined abayas, girls on high heels will totter home to change outfits all evening long, so they can reappear, again and again, even more beautiful. Weddings are about the only occasions where maidens can showcase themselves to potential suitors. The young men, too, are resplendent.
(Yes, I’m way too klutzy for the dabke. Tripping over myself, I’d drag the whole line down. With my arms and legs flailing, I’d kick both bride and groom.)
Old enough, surely you remember the Saturday night dances in all these villages? They were canceled by the war and haven’t returned. Alcohol in public places disappeared, too. Personally, I think it’s a shame.
Not everything is lost. There’s still poetry, though more often, it’s declaimed on television and not at a village cafe. At least there’s no Snoop Doggy Dogg blaring from passing cars.
It’s quiet here. Now and then, there are gunshots, but it’s only a hunter, targeting birds. A few times daily, Jewish jets may thunder above the clouds. Stray dogs in heat bark before dawn, and as pale light washes over the sky, the first prayer call wakes and soothes us all.
This morning, we also hear the muezzin announcing a neighbor has just died. Diagnosed with stomach cancer just a month ago, Aleyna was only forty-years-old. Yesterday, she sounded and looked perfectly fine, but such is life. She never married.
In case you’re wondering why women are banned from this village’s funerals, it’s because they had the jarring habit of tearing their clothes off before hurling themselves into the burial pit. Enough, it was sensibly decided. When the deceased is safely interred, women can wail away at the grave.
With running water and washing machines, women are getting soft, we can agree. Only half a century ago, they had no problem walking half a mile down the hill to fetch water from the well, then trudge back up, with a heavy jar on their head, their back military straight, lips smiling, with barely a grunt escaping. When it’s time to give birth, they just squat.
Water is a painful subject around here. After Jews stole the Golan Heights, they diverted much of its water to themselves, thus crippling scores of Arab villages in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
In Occupied Palestine, Jews have destroyed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive trees. Palestinians harvesting olives are shot at by Jews with impunity. Jews wreck goyim’s livelihood and heritage, when not uprooting or slaughtering them. Honed on genocide, they can’t help it. Just look out your window.
*
Three weeks in Lebanon and I’ve already been to Beirut more times than half the people in this village. Consider Soheil, for example. With a wife and five children, this 36-year-old gardener has seven mouths to feed daily, so why would he go anywhere? He’s visited Beirut maybe twice.
A woman of roughly the same age was hired to clean an apartment in Beirut, so she went there for the first time. Coming and going, she looked but didn’t say much. Was there anything she wanted to see? The airport, she mousily answered, so fine, she was driven there. Seeing airplanes landing, taking off or just parked was so delightful, she was even emboldened afterwards to ask for music on the car radio.
Though I’ve spoken often of being grounded, they simply are, so who’s better equipped moving forward? Who’s more content? Do you have a village to speak of? Do you want one?
Like me, your next village may be your first, if you can reach it.
*
Founded by Phoenicians, Sidon has been ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Egyptians, Syrians, Arabs and Frenchmen. After a 47-day siege in 1110, it was conquered by Crusaders, with King Sigurd of Norway leading the sea assault. Even Mongols showed up in 1260 to sack it, on their way to Gaza.
Sidon’s treasures have mostly been burnt, shattered, pulverized or carted off, with the Eshmunazar II Sarcophagus squirreled in the Louvre, and the Alexander Sarcophagus sitting in Istanbul.
Although Crusaders controlled Sidon for over a century, all that’s left of their presence is a broken castle, jutting into the sea, and here and there, a freckled face with brownish or red hair.
As the latest invaders of this region, Jews, too, will fade away.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
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