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.
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.