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Israel/Lebanon Memories of living in Beirut 1981 - 1985

One day I had to deliver gas bottles to the Pepsi building – all heating and cooking was done on bottled gas and the school had a regular delivery from the distributor but it was my job to ensure that the boarding houses and indeed the school kitchen always had spares for when one ran out. The school rented the ground floor of the Pepsi building and a the family that owned the building lived upstairs. I pulled off the highway and parked in the drive, there were some boys playing in the garden and something made me go and look at them. They were playing with an unexploded 81mm mortar. The nose cap had broken off and the whole thing was painted white. It had been fired, quite apart from the broken nose cone there were scratches on the body where it had landed heavily. To be honest I was less concerned about the boys playing with it but I didn't want it to detonate and injure any girls in the boarding house, I also didn't particularly want to do anything with it myself but I knew that if I told the boys to stop playing with it they would just laugh so I delivered the gas as quickly as possible not telling anyone in the boarding house what was happening outside or they would have come out to look. Then I took the mortar from the boys and wrapped it in a blanket in the back of the bus and gingerly drove it off to a nearby stream and placed it as gently as I could in the deepest part I could find. (In 2008 chatting to an EOD tech I discovered that it would have been an illumination round rather than HE but it would still have made a mess of people's day so I did what seemed the least worst option available at the time.)

Fighting in our area slackened off so it was decided to replace the windows lost over the previous few months. I got quite good at glazing and cutting larger bits of broken glass down to fit smaller windows but I screwed up royally when asked to measure the windows and order the glass for the Avedian building. This had large sliding windows and I got the dimensions spot on, what it got wrong was the thickness of the glass, I ordered 6mm instead of 4mm. Oops. It was all cut and delivered then we tried to fit it....

I went back to the UK for Christmas 1984, the situation was good enough to fly from Beirut airport, I arranged for a trainee teacher to give me a lift to the airport on the morning of my flight. He didn't turn up on time so I tried to call his family home but there was a problem somewhere on the line. I called a local taxi company and they agreed to come and get me. Then the teacher turned up with a friend, I left some money for the taxi driver and we set off. We drove down to Hazmiyeh and turned left towards Galerie Semaan with Chiah beyond. This was a long and straight road which led to a roundabout that would take us left to the airport. The crossing from east to west was completely open, no checkpoint of any kind and as we crossed over Habib, the trainee teacher, reached under his seat and produced an automatic pistol, checked the magazine and cocked the weapon. I suspect this was mostly posturing but it didn't fill me with confidence. Anyhow, they delivered me and must have got back OK as he was still at the school when I got back in early January 1985.

as well as other duties I was now housefather to the older boys who lived in the school and slept on foldaway beds in the main playroom which was used when it was too wet to go outside, this was on the top floor under the roof which was corrugated asbestos. Most evenings there was shelling in the hills above the school and if it came close I would move the boys downstairs to either the teachers sitting room which faced Beirut and away from the hills or into chapel. This seemed to be necessary once or twice a week.
 
In late January I was issued a work permit which even as a volunteer I needed. I showed it to Mr. Samir and he laughed. Apparently it says I own the school. On the strength of getting the work permit I can apply for a residents permit, funnily enough there didn't appear to be long queues applying for either when I went to get mine. The first came from the Ministry of Labour in Chiah and the second from the Surete at the far end of Furn el Chebbek. When I'd gone to the Ministry of Labour I'd parked in a side street nearby. When I had the permit I went back to the bus and was about to turn onto the main street when shots cracked past both up and down the road. I went back to the school a different way.

Back in September 1983 I'd had to take another way back to the school other than the one I'd intended. I was in the south of west Beirut in the afternoon and it was Ashoura, the day Shiite Muslims commemorate the martyrdom of Hussein in 680 at Kerbala in Iraq. Processions, often dressed in black or white march along, beating themselves with chains to draw blood.

The Shiites of south Beirut are particularly demonstrative as I was about to find out. I was driving slowly down a side street intending to turn onto the main road and head home. I was going slowly because of the number of pedestrians, as yet I was unaware of anything special going on. I stopped at the junction, I had to anyway as there was a crowd lining the road with their backs to me. Looking past them I saw the procession. Adolescents and young men were marching along many with a stone wrapped in cloth which they were beating against their foreheads, the intention being that blood would run down as far as their belts.

Most of them were successful but for those that weren't there were men on the edge of the crowd who would pull a lad out of the procession and tap him on the forehead two or three times with a straight edged razor, just light taps but it did the job. Nobody minded or said anything. I'd never understood the phrase about feeling your blood run cold but that is the best way I can describe how I felt then. I backed up as quietly as I could as I felt that whilst nobody was hostile I could as easily be torn to pieces as not. I shared no values with the marchers and at no point could our lives compare. I witnessed Ashoura in south Tehran in 1991 and it was like a carnival compared to what I'd just seen. I drove back a different way.

I was issued my Residence Permit a couple of weeks later. The next day I was aback down in Beirut collecting 395 boxes of tins of milk, each box contained 6 large tins so I must have made several journeys, the next day I had awful backache. At the moment when I'm not driving they have got me typing up kids case histories to submit to a western charity for funding. I'm much happier driving than typing so drag Beirut tasks out as much as possible.

The woman who represents Save the Children took me to lunch in Beirut with Lady Roberts, wife of the British Ambassador. God knows what I'm doing in such exalted company. I was given two messages. Firstly, if I'm ever stuck in the West I'm not to walk over any more earth barriers but check into an hotel at SCF's expense, secondly, how much longer do I see myself as a volunteer at the school and what might I do when I do leave. Interesting and thought provoking.

According to my diary I spent several days clearing blocked drains round the school, they may have blocked as we are using less water. When the municipal water is flowing it comes at a certain time each day and then goes off. I have discovered that deaf children will turn on a tap and if nothing comes out they wander off leaving the tap open, then, when the water does come it flows straight out of the tap and we still have no water. As a result of this I have been changing as many taps as possible to ones you push on and which then turn off automatically.

In early March on one particular day I had to drive to Beirut three times, twice to the airport because the first flight was Father Andy leaving to Holland and Father Andrew who ran the Jordan school had to fly back in the early afternoon and then I had to drop someone in west Beirut who visited the school late in the afternoon. The boys bedtime was 2200 but as I was very tired they agreed to sort themselves out and I went to be early. Next morning I went downstairs to fine some of the furniture moved about in the teacher's sitting room. I went back upstairs and asked the boys if they had been down in the night? Yes, they said, the shelling woke them and was coming closer so they went downstairs but didn't wake me as they knew how tired I was. I explained that in such a situation it didn't matter how tired I was and they have promised to wake me next time.

By late March Mr. Samir was starting to get worried that I might be kidnapped in west Beirut. Inexplicably on Wednesday of the following week I was asked to go to west Beirut The next Sunday was palm Sunday and fifty deaf adults came to lunch at the school. One of them then stole the school dog! On the following Wednesday we took the kids in a coach to Faraya in the mountains for a day in the snow. During the day the school dog was returned....

Beirut loved cease fires, they had hundreds while I was there. Many were simply ignored and fighting didn't stop at all but my favourite cease fire began at midday one day, the shelling in town stopped and everyone took a breath. It lasted 6 minutes before the shelling started again.

Fighting was on and off all Spring. We closed for an Easter break and then reopened with few kids coming. Father Andy is away as is Mr. Samir at the moment. There is a long weekend coming and the teachers are asking me (ME!) if we should reopen after the long weekend. I called Mr. Samuel, the only committee member I could get hold of and he said do what you think best, great, thanks for that support then. The upshot is the from Monday 6th. May we'll close for a week and see what happens. Deep down the teachers are all afraid of Father Andy, he's not even here. Mr. Samir came back on Thursday, naturally this week has been quiet so in fact we could have been open, you just can never tell.

Father Andy returned in early June and has asked me to stay next year as well. I'm not sure, I can't go to west Beirut, I can't go very far south and I can't got to the Bekaa valley. My world is getting smaller almost by the day. Apart from west Beirut I rarely went to the Bekaa or the south but it is just knowing that I can't is weighing on my mind. Father Andy left again on the 11th. of June I suspect he wants me to stay to keep him up to date with what the teachers are saying and doing. I'm not interested in that.

Yet again some kids will go to Holland for the summer, this time I don't have to find any of them but I will accompany them to Holland via Jordan and then hop on a ferry back to the UK.

Making bookings in Beirut is always a lottery, on several occasions I have flown to Jordan on Alia and gone to get a connecting flight to Europe only to find that the onward flight doesn't actually exist, not it's full, it doesn't exist. The Jordanians must be sick of the Lebanese travel agents doing this to them. They were always good to me and put me on other airline's flights to get me to where I wanted to be with the shortest delay and the least hassle. So, I went to a different travel agent this time and made bookings for myself and the kids to fly to Amman and then on to Holland the next day with an overnight in the transit hotel at the airport. Once the booking is made you had to keep going back to get confirmation and the tickets. Phoning was no good even if you could get a line, you had to look them in the eye and get a yes or no for best results. I got confirmation of the bookings and the tickets on Saturday 13 June. I must have been more stressed than I realised as when the lady put the tickets in my hand I burst into tears. Very un-Lebanese where machismo is the order of the day. I then had to find out how to get to the airport as it was in not only west Beirut but the south of west Beirut, Hezbollah territory, Amal territory, Islamic Jihad, well you get the idea. There is a bus, I am informed that leaves from east Beirut and doesn't stop until it gets to the airport.

On 14 June TWA flight 847 was hijacked flying out of Athens after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing it landed in Beirut. Eventually most of the hostages were freed and the hijackers just went home. In the meantime the US and UK banned Middle East Airlines (MEA) from flying to their countries in an effort to put pressure on the Lebanese to beef up security at the airport. The Lebanese President promised that from now one no suitcase would go un-searched. Nobody would evade a frisking on arrival at the airport. Mending the huge gaps in the perimeter fence would have been a good move too.


Beirut Airport, Hijacked TWA, 22 July 1985.jpg

TWA 847 on an otherwise pretty deserted airport Apron. Beirut June 1985.

Sunday 21st June, we boarded the bus in east Beirut bound for the airport. I felt a little like Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man I'd been asking so many people if it was safe? We were taking back roads to the airport rather than the main highways, we came to a Christian militia checkpoint and were waved through without stopping. We came to a Lebanese army checkpoint and were waved through. We came to a Muslim militia checkpoint and were stopped.

Two gunmen got on board and looked at the passengers. I was the only one who looked foreign. “Oum.” they said, “Up.” I stood up they gestured for me to put my hands up, I did. They mad me turn around so that they could see if I had a pistol in the small of my back. I didn't. “Intu Fransawi?” “Are you French?” they asked. I pretended not to understand and EVERYONE else on the bus agreed that I was, indeed, French. They got of the bus and we carried on. Apparently they had been looking from Brits or Americans because our governments had banned MEA.

At the airport we loaded our suitcases onto two trolleys and approached the newly beefed up customs and security. They took one look at the cases piled high and waved us straight through. The airport was pretty empty but functioned well enough. We checked onto the flight and waited to board, the flight to Amman was 40 minutes only. After landing the flight was taken to a remote part of the airport and surrounded by Jordanian army, we were allowed off the flight one by one to identify our luggage and have it searched with a fine tooth comb. I had a beer with my supper in the privacy of my room in the transit hotel and the next day without incident we flew to Amsterdam.
 
Great insight into a time and a place I knew little about other than through news reports.
what is amazing is how quickly what in normal times would be a terrifying and high risk experience is normalised and adjusted too.
I had sat through and found fascinating a presentation from one of American the on site investigators of the usmc bombing. That gave a flavour of the city you were living in but distilled through the eyes of an outside investigator brought in and then left after his job was done.
these reminiscences are very readable and fascinating
thank you.
 
Great insight into a time and a place I knew little about other than through news reports.
what is amazing is how quickly what in normal times would be a terrifying and high risk experience is normalised and adjusted too.
I had sat through and found fascinating a presentation from one of American the on site investigators of the usmc bombing. That gave a flavour of the city you were living in but distilled through the eyes of an outside investigator brought in and then left after his job was done.
these reminiscences are very readable and fascinating
thank you.
It is frightening what you can get used to and adapt to, also the invincibility of youth helped a lot, a bit of bravado plus it was exciting to be in the midst of someone else's war, I knew this didn't insulate me from death or injury but I was always there by choice. I had a British passport and could have bailed out whenever I chose. In the end of course I did just that and I didn't go back for fourteen years. Some of my strongest and most enduring friendships date from that period of my life.

Lebanon creeps up on people, the Americans had planned for many eventualities but not the sheer size and audacity of the Marine barracks explosion. The fact that the French were hit simultaneously was a sign that nobody had grasped the abilities of their potential enemies. People saw what they knew and not what might be but also they saw from their own perspective, nobody else's.

Terry Waite, for example, saw the expediency of getting helicopter rides from Cyprus to Beirut with Col. North and apparently failed to envisage that others might interpret his actions differently from the way he did.
 
I went many times to Lebanon between 1999 and 2009 for mostly for work, mostly meetings but for a large part of 2008 and into early 2009 I lived and worked there again. The strangest time was the first half of 2008 when I was based in west Beirut. My staff always laughed when I called it that but initially I found it very strange walking about Hamra after dark, I'd only been on the west side two or three times in the evening in the years I'd lived there before. Then in May Hassan Nasrullah made a speech late one afternoon. A colleague called me straight away to warn me to be careful. I popped to the office and got body armour and a helmet then to a supermarket to get a couple of days food. when I came out there were men in black balaclavas with AKs taking up firing positions metres from where I was staying. I had to pass them to get back and I had to assure them that I wasn't a journalist... they were Hezbollah and they took over large parts of west Beirut in support of their parties political aims.

Due to the organisation being very risk averse I was pulled out, ironically I could only leave after the fighting had stopped and had to take a taxi to Damascus and fly to the office I was working for in Cairo from there. I stayed there a few days and flew to Erbil to do an assessment of the work we were doing there and to advise on whether we should continue or not.

I'd spent the 2003 Iraq war based in Damascus which was still a beautiful city then, I'd been lucky enough to have a colleague also based there whose spouse was with the Austrian embassy and they had a spare vehicle with diplomatic plates which I tried not to abuse, honestly. At the end of the war I went to the Iraqi embassy to ask for a visa, there was a large courtyard absolutely full with your fighting age males when I got there. The crowd parted down the middle and I was ushered to a desk at the front and asked in a slightly truculent tone what I wanted. A visa, I said. To fight or as a journalist, he countered. Neither, I said, to work for an NGO. **** off, he said, so I did. Shortly after that I was helping an NGO into Basra from Kuwait without needing a visa for Iraq. Having got the agency settled in Basra after one or two recces and some nights in an hotel whose name I never knew but which was distinguished by a big banner stating that “The hotel is open” I moved north to Baghdad and took over an NGO office there. That didn't last long with attacks on the UN and on agencies which had years worth of contacts in the local community already happening it was pretty clear which way the wind was blowing so I had to shut down the recently opened office and move back to a relatively safe Erbil.

Anyhow, back to 2008, in early October I was phoned by a French NGO asking if I would go as interim manager for a a UXO project in north Lebanon. Being at a loose end I jumped at the opportunity. We were tasked with removal of UXO from a Palestinian camp which had been destroyed in fighting in the summer of 2007. we had been hired by UNRWA and there was a local company contracted to remove the rubble from the site, they had been contracted by UNDP, we were paid monthly until the job was signed finished and Al Jihad (the rubble removal company) would be paid on completion of the task. From the beginning, therefore, there was a lot of tension and politics as we needed to be painstaking and Al Jihad (AJ) needed to be quick. AJ wanted to flood the area with heavy equipment none of which was armoured whilst initially we had very quickly from scratch trained two search teams which we were later able to expand to four. I was lucky to have two good EOD techs. The Lebanese army with whom we were supposed to cooperate didn't always give us the whole picture and wouldn't always say what type of munitions had been used. After four months the long term manager was able to come out and take up the position.
 
I am cracking up at this.

(Presumably this was the place taken over by Al-Qa'ida around that time and retaken after a weeks long siege by the Lebanese army?)
Something like that except I was led to believe the siege was longer than a week, several months I understood.

Al Jihad made a name for themselves removing rubble from south Beirut after the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah war. they also carried off several large air dropped munitions and would show us the photos when we stopped them working because a measly mortar had been found and needed to be blown in situ.
 
I'm sure they would have done if they humanly could have done. If nothing else Lebanon is the land of the conspiracy theory.

As I have no doubt you know.

As is Afghanistan and Iran and all middle eastern countries (The Iranians do have a point, considering what the UK and US did to the Mossadeq government).
 
As is Afghanistan and Iran and all middle eastern countries (The Iranians do have a point, considering what the UK and US did to the Mossadeq government).
Those borders don't draw themselves you know.

Yes, we have a pretty shabby (to say the least) history throughout the Near and Middle East and in parts of Central Asia.

Iran was great, Every time I went to a new government office I was harangued for between 20 to 40 minutes on British history and our role in Iran in particular and supporting the Shah. Meeting Iranians not in government generally involved a run down on British history and our role in Iran including not supporting the Shah enough.
 
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