Helen Benedict’s novel Wolf Season describes how old wounds from the Iraq War linger on in the lives of three women.
Priya Malhotra
Wolf Season By Helen Benedict
Bellevue Literary Press. 320 pages.
In her latest novel Wolf Season, Helen Benedict tells the stories of three women in a small town in upstate New York coping with the trauma of war—not just the direct experience of violence and death, but also the collateral damage it inflicts on loved ones. Rin is a rape-scarred Iraq War veteran who has returned to her hometown of Huntsville. Naema is an Iraqi refugee who lost her husband during the conflict and now works in the town as a doctor. Beth is a military wife dealing with an abusive husband and a troubled child.
Women and girls march through the village of Derbesi to celebrate International Women’s Day 2016.
A few years ago, I began hearing remarkable stories about a social movement in northern Syria. Not far from the wreckage of Aleppo, a society founded on principles of direct democracy and women’s rights has taken root in the predominantly Kurdish region known as Rojava. There, in defiance of the Islamic State’s brutal patriarchy, women are leading the way in political decision-making and fighting on the frontlines in their own battalions.
Jo Magpie Jo Magpie is a freelance journalist, travel writer, and long-term wanderer currently based in Granada, Spain. Blog: agirlandherthumb.wordpress.com
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It’s the late morning, and my wife Mardena and I are headed back to our hostel in Antalya, a city on Anatolia’s southwestern coast. We’ve just returned from a trip to the archeological museum, where we saw a stunning display of Roman mosaics set out under clear glass walkways. As we duck out of the 111-degree heat and into the hostel’s lobby, we come upon a young man, probably in his early twenties, standing with his head craned forward and eyes fixed on a TV mounted high on the wall. A Turkish news report is discussing the war raging in neighboring Syria. The camera footage shows smoke, rubble, and bombed-out buildings, but I have no idea what the reporter is saying. I ask the young man what is happening. “Assad is bombing Homs,” he says, his eyes still on the screen.
The civil war in Syria forced her to leave her home for another in Armenia, her ancestral homeland. Three years later, the war rages on, and the situation in the refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere remains grim.
Four years of a raging civil war in Syria have displaced more than eleven million people, ushering in the largest exodus since World War II. Of those forced from their homes, four million have fled the country. While the crisis has now reached Europe in a very visible way, the majority of Syrian refugees are not (yet) risking the hazardous journey to its shores. Instead, they are staying in countries not far from Syria’s borders: Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and—most noticeably—Lebanon, where an estimated one in three people is now Syrian.
Anahid, an ethnic Armenian woman from Aleppo, escaped Syria in 2012, soon after the country was engulfed in fighting between President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime and various rebel factions. She fled to Yerevan, the capital of her ancestral homeland, which borders Turkey. Later, Anahid moved to Lebanon, where she has relatives. There, she worked with Syrian refugees in their overcrowded camps. Last year, she traveled back to Syria with her British husband, Joseph Bailey, and witnessed the country’s presidential election. (Anahid is an alias. She has asked that her real name not be used because her father is still in Syria.)
The Highway of Death in Damascus, as viewed from the top floor of the house where Anahid and her husband Joseph Bailey stayed. “It’s the highway of the airport, but they call it the Highway of Death because one side is the rebel-held area and the other side is the government’s, so they keep shooting each other, especially when there are military buses or cars passing through.” The neighborhood on the left—the Free Syrian Army’s side—is completely destroyed; on the right is the government’s territory, where the buildings are still intact.
A vivacious woman in her late twenties, Anahid studied tourism in Aleppo but currently works as a freelance translator. When the war broke out, she and other Syrian Armenians were able to find refuge in Armenia because the government recognized them as citizens. Nevertheless, some of the Armenians already there did not welcome them at first, Anahid says. Culturally, the two groups are distinct. The modern Republic of Armenia, a Soviet state for eighty years, has developed a Russian-influenced dialect that is very different from the Armenian spoken in Syria. Most of those who are now “repatriating” to Armenia are descended from the Armenians who were relocated during the 1915 Armenian genocide, which took place in what is now modern Turkey and involved the killing, forced migration, and starvation of an estimated 1.5 million men, women, and children. (Anahid’s grandfather was one of the survivors: a young boy when he left Anatolia on his own, he was adopted by a Kurdish family in Aleppo and never learned what happened to his family back home.)
Aleppo until recently had an ethnic Armenian population of 60,000—one of the largest in the Middle East. Today, the city’s Armenian district is a fraction of its former size, with only a handful of hangers-on. Located inside a government-controlled area, it continues to be bombed by rebel forces.
Unlike Anahid, many ethnic Armenians and other Christian minorities in Syria supported the country’s secular socialist regime even before the conflict, believing that Assad offered them a degree of protection against Islamic extremism. Recently, Russia joined the conflict on the side of the government, providing air cover for a massive, ongoing push to retake rebel-held areas of Aleppo. While its actions have rankled Washington, Russia’s support of the Assad regime is seen more positively by some Syrian Armenians, who fear that the Islamic State, and not the US-backed rebels, will control the country once Assad falls. If that happens, there may not be a home for them to return to.
In The Fray contributing writer Jo Magpie interviewed Anahid about the events that drove her to leave Aleppo, her life as a “repatriate” in Armenia, and the refugee camps that she worked in while living in Lebanon—whose desperate conditions are pushing some Syrians to brave a perilous overseas journey to Europe.
Aerial shot of the Bekaa refugee camp.
When did you leave your home in Aleppo, and how easy was it to get out?
I left in 2012, in the last week of June. It wasn’t as bad as now, it was just the beginning of the problems in Aleppo. There had already been three big explosions before I left. The first one was on a Sunday. Me and my friend went to have breakfast near our house, and the minute we got out, there was this huge explosion. We didn’t know it was an explosion, so we started looking around. Then we saw that the building right in front of us was full of dust, and the glass was falling. People were running, and ambulances started to come.
A week later we were like, “Okay, everything looks safe, the city is calm, let’s go and have breakfast in front of the Citadel.” After fifteen minutes, while we were waiting for food, a protest started nearby in the Umayyad Mosque, and they [the government forces] started shooting at them. [The mosque’s famed minaret was destroyed in fighting in 2013. —ed.] We just had to run. My friend had to carry me because I was too scared to move. We just took the first bus that was getting out of there.
We didn’t plan to leave Aleppo. We were going to go back, but we heard that it was getting worse there.
How was your reception in Armenia? Was it easy to settle in?
It was more difficult for Syrians to be accepted here at that time. When I got a university scholarship, a group of kids would come to me at breaks and say, “You shouldn’t be studying here. Our parents save up money for years so that we can come to university, and you guys came like a month ago, and now you can come here for free.”
If you knew a local, people would accept you more. But if you were on your own, it was very hard. First the language barrier, and second that they were not feeling comfortable that people from another country were coming, and they thought their government was helping the Syrians—which was not true.
What’s your impression of how Yerevan has changed due to Syrian Armenians coming?
It’s helped the economy here a lot. They opened businesses that the locals weren’t able to, which means hiring more people. So the change is not bad, it’s mostly good—leaving aside the racism. A really small number of locals still consider us Arabs, or consider us to have betrayed the country—[we] left while the genocide happened and never came back. “You’re only here now that your country is in a war,” and stuff like that. But most people are very warm here now. They aren’t like they used to be three years ago.
You spent some time visiting refugee camps in Lebanon. What happened?
We moved from Armenia to Lebanon because my mum’s parents are there, and we thought we would have an easier life. It’s closer to Syria, a lot more aid organizations and the UN are there. I worked for a nongovernmental organization for three weeks as a volunteer. We would go to the camps and talk with women, to see how they were coping with life. When I stopped volunteering with the NGO, I decided that I wanted to go and visit with my friends sometimes. We would take candies or toys for the kids.
From the day we left Syria, me and a group of friends would always collect clothes and ship them to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan. Some Syrian musician friends did a benefit concert, and they made $5,000. It was very cold in the camps, so the title was “A Bag of Wood.” The donations and the ticket money made enough for 300 families—for wood to burn in the winter—and we bought some extra stuff, like rain boots for the kids. Me and Joseph decided to do some crowdfunding to make more money for blankets, and collected almost the same amount.
The tents of Syrian refugees in the camp in Lebanon.
What was the situation like in the camps you visited?
Back then I would always get shocked, but now it’s normal for me. The tents are basically a few pieces of wood. Sticks. And then big plastic sheets that the UN gives to them. Some use paper sheets from the billboards. They basically steal them, so they can cover more, because the UN only gives them six or eight sticks and three or four pieces of plastic, which is not enough to make a tent big enough for a family. There was this one woman who has nine kids, without her husband, because he was killed. Then she has her mum, dad, brothers, sisters, their families—they live in one tent.
Some of [the refugees] have heaters inside. Some of them have water, some don’t. In every camp there is one person who has a car, and most of the time this person becomes the leader of the camp. He goes to get water, and they bring barrels and fill them. The water containers that the UN gives to them are very small. It’s not enough for a family.
[The UN] would give them $30 a month for bread. Then they made it $28. They give you some flour, some rice. They would tell them that their kids can go to schools, but the schools are very far away. Nobody can drive them, and they cannot afford to take them, so they stay there.
They don’t have bathrooms. Each camp has one or two bathroom spaces outside somewhere, where they have made tents with these plastic things. This one camp had 100 or 150 families, and I didn’t see more than six or seven bathrooms.
There are unrecognized [private] camps. The owners often make demands, like “I want rent for the floor that you’re putting in your tent.” You can register for a UN-recognized camp, but some of [the refugees] are scared to go there. Some of them want to be closer to the city or to places where they can have a chance to work in a factory—but for a quarter of the wages a local would get.
It’s hard in Lebanon. Syrians are not very accepted there. The last few months I was there it was even more difficult for Syrians to find a job. Even if you can afford to rent a flat, you can’t afford to go to school.
Do you think that’s because of the amount of people that are coming now?
That has a very big influence. A lot of people say, “When there was war in Lebanon, Lebanese people also came to Syria.” But Lebanon is like four million [people]. [Including refugees, Lebanon’s population is now estimated to be six million. —ed.] If half of them came to Syria, Syria is big and it’s not so noticeable. But now half of Syria came to Lebanon. Lebanon is like a quarter of Syria’s size. They don’t have space. Cities were already overcrowded. It was already difficult for Lebanese people to have a job. Now Syrians are also looking for jobs, so that makes them a bit defensive.
How is the situation out of the camps—like, in Beirut, the capital?
In the city center you see a lot of Syrians who regret leaving [the camps]. They leave with the hope of moving to the city to find jobs and have a better life, but they end up homeless there, and nobody helps them.
Most of them are kids. At the end of the day, when they finish what they’re doing on the street—begging, selling flowers, or whatever—they go and sleep in the buildings. I would see one of them every day. He would sleep in a cardboard box with his little brother. They’re not older than twelve years old. During the day they sell flowers, and they sleep in the same spot.
We would ask [the homeless] where they’re from in Syria, to make sure they’re Syrians, and we would give them some money. Some of them were so excited that they didn’t believe it. We were in the car because we didn’t want a pile of people climbing on us when we were giving money. One of them took the money and ran away, then started running back, saying “You gave me too much!” He expected us to take it back.
The view from the balcony of the house where Anahid and Joseph stayed in Damascus. “I thought it would be scary for Joseph, but he kept insisting to sleep on the balcony on the top floor. We would watch the rockets every night.” During their stay one of those rockets hit the building right across from their room.
You went back to back to Syria recently. How was that?
I didn’t go to Aleppo. It wasn’t safe, especially when I have my husband, a foreigner, in Syria.
We stayed in Damascus for a few weeks, and it was normal, but right in front of [the house] was the ruined neighborhood. And then you have the Highway of Death. It’s the highway of the airport, but they call it the Highway of Death because one side is the rebel-held area and the other side is the government’s, so they keep shooting each other, especially when there are military buses or cars passing through.
We got there on the day of the Syrian election results. [Assad was reelected by a wide margin in 2014, but the opposition and many Western leaders called the election a sham. —ed.] There were celebrations, because we were in a government-controlled area, but you could see rockets flying to the other side.
I was used to it. I thought it would be scary for Joseph, but he kept insisting to sleep on the balcony on the top floor. We would watch the rockets every night.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Jo Magpie Jo Magpie is a freelance journalist, travel writer, and long-term wanderer currently based in Granada, Spain. Blog: agirlandherthumb.wordpress.com
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Best of In The Fray 2015. The Troubles are gone, but the anger and suspicion remain in Northern Ireland—especially in working-class Protestant communities left behind by the peace process.
Chris Schumerth
Twelfth of July, Donegall Street, Belfast, 2013. Dominic Bryan, via Flickr
A few years ago, I found myself in a very Protestant part of Belfast trying to convince neighborhood kids that they should be nice to Catholics. I was working for a nonprofit, driving all over Northern Ireland to direct sports programs that bussed groups of children back and forth between Protestant and Catholic enclaves. Americans would probably describe the work we did as “peace-building,” but locals in Belfast called it “community relations.”
My colleague Joanne, a Catholic, had come with me to east Belfast to talk to kids who were part of a soccer program there. Programs like this are often funded by foundation grants that mandate a community-relations component. The danger is that the participants sometimes felt duped. They were there to play soccer but found out they had to listen to our spiel first. Challenging the convictions they’d grown up with invited resentment, too, especially when the hosting adults didn’t really buy in. And that’s the exact scenario Joanne and I ran into.
A sixtyish man named John (a pseudonym) greeted us. The conversation started out friendly enough, but then he informed us that our allotted time had been cut in half. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “The boys really just want to play football.”
To cut our time was a breach of contract, but I wasn’t about to bring that up. John wasn’t done talking, anyway. He had another request: could we please refrain from mentioning Gaelic football tonight? (In Northern Ireland, Protestants play rugby and Catholics play Gaelic football, but we made a point of talking to our kids about both sports.) Gaelic football is a sectarian game, John insisted. He doesn’t want to be friends with any of those Catholics anyway. Buncha terrorists. Besides, he knows some of them, and they wouldn’t go near a rugby pitch. And don’t even get him started on those Lithuanians who keep coming in and stealing his people’s jobs.
Neither Joanne nor I really knew what to say. To be honest, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. There were other adults from the soccer club around, and they seemed embarrassed. They awkwardly pulled us away and led us to a room with window views of the pitch. For the rest of the evening, teenagers circulated through the room to participate in our activities. We talked about Gaelic football. We said that anybody should be able to play sports because they’re fun and a good way to bring people from different backgrounds together.
One boy was not so sure. “I know one person around here who would disagree with all that,” he said.
The boys sat up straight when John entered the room and sat ominously at the end of the table. I let Joanne do as much of the talking as possible, and she handled it like a pro. She’d been working in community relations for years. To my surprise, John stayed quiet, and I wondered if someone had told him to ease up on us for the rest of the evening.
Northern Ireland may have originated as a legal entity in 1921, when the British Parliament split Ireland in two, but its history of nationalist conflict stretches back to when King Henry II of England first landed in 1171 and took control of the island. Much later, from 1919 to 1921, the Irish Republican Army fought British forces in a war for Ireland’s independence. It was during those years of conflict that the infamous episode known as “Bloody Sunday” occurred. On November 21, 1920, the IRA assassinated fourteen British operatives in Dublin. Later that day, an occupational police force known as the Royal Irish Constabulary retaliated at a football match, killing fourteen civilians.
After Ireland was partitioned, the southern part of the island became independent. A sizable Irish Catholic community lived in Northern Ireland as well, and the Irish nationalists, or republicans, wanted to join the new nation. But Northern Ireland’s population was mostly unionists, or loyalists, who wanted to stay a part of Great Britain. The tensions between the two sides culminated in the Troubles, a conflict from 1968 to 1998 that led to more than 3,600 deaths. As many as 50,000 were injured, sometimes from gruesome practices like kneecapping.
When I arrived in Belfast for my job, I barely knew the distinction between Northern Ireland and its tourist-friendly neighbor to the south. Back in the United States, my father’s family are practicing Catholics, and my mother comes from a family of Protestants. I thought this background would help me understand Northern Ireland, but I was completely wrong. To call the dispute there a religious conflict is almost a misnomer. Sure, there are Protestant and Catholic churches that subscribe—with differing levels of rigidity—to conflicting beliefs about God. But the most salient identities in Northern Ireland nowadays seem to have little to do with disagreements about, say, transubstantiation. Instead, they have to do with culture—and also, to some degree, class.
Furthermore, the conflict today is played out in often hidden ways. As my coworkers warned me, questions about which school you attended or what part of the city you live in or what sport you play are often subtle attempts to peg allegiances. They are about figuring out what side you are on—what flag you fly in a war over national pride and cultural dignity that has never really ended.
A few weeks after my encounter with John, I was near the city center, driving home from work. I stopped at a red light. Before the light changed, a mob of people holding British flags rushed into the intersection. They planted themselves there, chanting. I tried to slide over to the right lane to make a turn. Several protesters anticipated my move and ran over to block the way. I wanted to keep driving, but I didn’t need any legal troubles, especially as a foreigner. So I stopped and waited. The demonstration backed up more and more traffic behind me, but the crowd was in no hurry.
This was my first experience with the demonstrations that were happening all over the city, every night for weeks, in response to a Belfast city council decision that the Union Jack would only be flown at city hall on specific holidays rather than every day. On a few occasions, Protestant disgust with the decision had turned violent, with young men burning cars and throwing bricks and petrol bombs at police officers, and explosive devices winding up in cars and in the mail.
My coworkers and friends in Belfast—many of them educated, liberal, and middle-class—were impatient with the protesters. “It’s just a flag,” they would say. Or, “It’s just a few crazies. I don’t understand how people can be so ignorant.”
As I sat in my car waiting for the protesters to disperse, it was easy to sympathize with that attitude. But the more time I spent in Northern Ireland, the more that I realized that things were complicated. For instance, there was a socioeconomic component that hardly anyone mentioned. Many of the protesters came from the neighborhoods where I worked. I knew what the housing looked like there, what the children wore. They were working class. The most embittered among them seemed to be men with few prospects, whose best option to make money was either applying for welfare or joining the military. I could understand the appeal of simply drinking one’s life away in a pub with other rowdy and angry men, instead of dealing with a hopeless future. On top of all the pressures these working-class men and women faced in their day-to-day lives, now politicians were stripping away their very identity: first their political power, and now their national dignity.
Through work, I met Will Maloney, a documentary filmmaker who had worked extensively with low-income Protestants in Belfast. He was well-connected and had even gotten to know a few men with paramilitary backgrounds, guys with terrifying pasts. “Most unionist parties didn’t come from the working class,” he told me. “They were considered parties of the State. So some Protestants in Northern Ireland have a history of underrepresentation.”
After I got trapped in that street demonstration, I wanted to learn more about what Protestants thought about the flag. I attended a panel discussion with representatives from all of the country’s major political parties save Sinn Féin (the highly nationalistic Irish Catholic party). As an American, it was interesting to watch a real multiparty debate. In addition to the Protestant/Catholic split, there were varying conservative and liberal perspectives under those two broad religious banners. I trusted one panelist in particular: Trevor Ringland, a former rugby star with a Protestant background. Sometime after his playing days ended, he had transitioned into politics. He seemed to genuinely want what was good for all sides.
Northern Ireland, Ringland said, had moved from violent conflict to a cold war—and now, to a “cold peace.” The next step, he argued, had to be a “constructive peace,” which would require more from the Northern Irish than living in separate neighborhoods and attending separate schools. It would require integration. It would require feeling, seeing, and healing old wounds.
I was moved by his speech, but I also could not help but notice that Ringland’s political moderation came from a privileged perspective. Yes, he had lived through the Troubles, but he had also been a professional athlete—and not just any rugby player, but the player on Ireland’s team who had scored the “Try of the Century” against the Scots to win them the Five Nations Championship in 1985. He was a local hero who had lived a good life, and so it was possible for him to believe in a good life.
Not everyone in the room had that luxury. Although the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace accord brokered by US president Bill Clinton, had aimed to bring about a more equal and just society in Northern Ireland, one Protestant panelist called the peace process “incomplete.” Among those left behind were certain Protestant communities—specifically, the least educated, least employed ones.
The conversation got tense during the audience Q&A. Someone asked why, if the nationalist community was really interested in a “shared future,” did a park in Newry get named after a “terrorist”? Others accused loyalist protests of hurting the Northern Irish economy and its international reputation. Tempers flared, audience members interrupted speakers, and tears flowed.
I went home thinking about how the Northern Irish weren’t really that different from Americans. They chose segregation not because it’s better, but because it’s easier.
I had been hearing about the Twelfth of July ever since I arrived in Northern Ireland. The holiday commemorates the Battle of the Boyne. In that decisive encounter in 1690, Protestant forces led by King William defeated King James’s Catholics near the Boyne River, some thirty miles from Dublin. Many Protestants practically live for the day, while some Catholics hate it so much they leave town. The Twelfth has become so fraught with emotion that there is a government agency—the Parades Commission—charged with keeping the celebration safe. That year, a controversial ruling by the commission prohibited marchers from taking a return route through Ardoyne, a feisty Catholic area in north Belfast.
I was determined to experience at least part of the holiday, so I headed downtown to the celebrations. After parking my car, I walked in the direction of piping flutes and banging drums. A crowd of thousands stood on each side of the street, watching band after band march through. I saw blue football jerseys for the Glasgow Rangers in every direction, and the Union Jack used in all sorts of creative ways: as a shirt, skirt, even a hat.
Before, a friend had told me that what is so disturbing about the Twelfth is that its uniting force—what is actually celebrated—is hatred of a particular demographic. Watching the parade, I detected a certain triumphalism in the way some people were celebrating. But it seemed to be only part of the story. I mostly saw smiles. There were angry men there, but there were also old ladies, mothers, and children. People shared their food. Musicians played their tunes. Marchers tossed their poles. I felt myself getting in step with the martial beat of the drums, just like I’d done years ago as a cadet in military school.
My own best guess is that any real shared future in Northern Ireland will find a place for the Twelfth of July commemoration. I don’t think working-class Protestants—or any of us, for that matter—can entirely shed such a potent part of their identity, even in pursuit of peace. By the same token, extinguishing the hatreds and distrust that give that celebration a bad name will require taking seriously the sometimes inconvenient voices of this sizable group.
The more disconcerting part of the Twelfth of July celebration took place the night before. Protestants all over the city gathered around bonfires after dark. A few of my friends took me around to see them, though my friend Paddy warned me—or maybe “begged” is more accurate—not to call out his name. When I heard “bonfires,” I thought of quaint little gatherings: roasting marshmallows, singing Kumbaya. Not so. In Protestant neighborhoods the partygoers lit pallets stacked with wood, their flames reaching as high as three stories. The heat was so intense that we had to stand hundreds of feet away. I was surprised the practice was legal.
Children ran around, while parents danced to blaring music. The beer flowed, and some people were clearly drunk. The police presence seemed minimal and indifferent.
Just off Shankill Road in north Belfast, I spotted a tent where a woman was selling cheap beer out of a cooler. I walked over and ordered a drink. A man behind me heard my American accent.
“Where ya from?” he asked.
“I’m from the States,” I said, uneasily. Other people were turning to listen to us. “I’ve been here for almost a year.”
“What are you here for?” he asked.
“My job,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask what my job was.
“What part of town do you live in?”
“Lower Ormeau Road,” I said, thankful that I lived in a neighborhood that wasn’t predominantly Catholic.
“Who are they?” he asked, pointing at my friends.
Maybe I was paranoid, but by then, I was almost certain this man was really only interested in one thing: Was I Catholic?Did I have Catholic sympathies? Was this all a big joke to me, peeking in on the Protestants?
I doubted that continuing the conversation would lead to anything good. It was time to end this little dance. “It was nice to meet you,” I said, excusing myself.
I chugged my beer and tossed the bottle in a trashcan. Then my friends and I got back in our car and drove away.
Chris Schumerth is a writer who lives in Indianapolis. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of South Carolina. His writing has appeared in Salon, the Miami Herald, Relevant Magazine, and Punchnel’s, among other publications. Twitter: @ChrisSchumerth | Blog: chrisschumerth.com
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Best of In The Fray 2014. Through photography, journalism, and social media, Onnik Krikorian is chipping away at the cross-border hatreds that once escalated into a vicious war between Armenia and Azerbaijan—one that has never really ended. Over the years he has seen little progress toward peace at the highest levels of government, but at the grassroots and among the young, he says, there is hope for change.
When the Soviet Union began to crumble a quarter-century ago, more than a dozen of its former republics gained their independence. But in the South Caucasus—that much troubled limb of land that, depending on your perspective, either connects or divides the Eurasian continent—the withering of Soviet rule meant the escalation of war. In the early nineties, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous, landlocked region inhabited mainly by ethnic Armenians but recognized by the United Nations as part of Azerbaijan. The conflict left as many as 25,000 dead and a million displaced from their homes.
Since then, attempts to broker a lasting peace between the two countries have failed. Ethnic hatreds go far back, entangled as they are with Armenian hostility toward Turkic people and anti-Armenian sentiment that fuelled the Armenian genocide conducted a century ago in the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire. Although Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire in 1994, dozens continue to die each year in frontline skirmishes. And the situation has worsened in the past few months, with the fighting intensifying and the threat of a large-scale conflict becoming more palpable. “We expect war every day,” said the commander of Karabakh’s defense forces, Movses Hakobyan, in a recent interview. “And the goal of our army is to stand ready for it.”
Onnik Krikorian is a British-born journalist, photographer, and media consultant who has worked for years to promote peace between the two countries. His independent-media platform Conflict Voices brings together grassroots activists, bloggers, and citizen journalists from around the region, who use social media to challenge stereotypes and encourage dialogue between ordinary citizens of both countries.
“There was this horrible hostel in Yerevan, and this beautiful little kid in rags. I ask to take a picture and her mother says, ‘No, no, no!’ And she drags the kid away, takes her into the only other room, and then emerges with her in this clean, immaculate dress. I’ve got a picture of the mother with the kid sitting on her lap, brushing her hair, and she’s dressed beautifully, because they’ve got pride still.”
Normally, Azerbaijanis and Armenians have very limited contact. Armenia is an oligarchy, rife with electoral fraud and poverty; Azerbaijan is a dictatorship. Each country routinely demonizes the other in the media. Krikorian, whose ethnic surname comes from his Greek Armenian father, emphasizes the need for an alternative view of the conflict, one not swayed by the propaganda on either side. Through his work with Conflict Voices, his role as a consultant and trainer, and his own writing and photography, Krikorian has sought to build that “third narrative” piece by piece, documenting life in communities where ethnic Azeris and Armenians still live and work together peacefully.
Nowadays Krikorian is based in Georgia—a country he describes as something of a neutral ground between its two warring neighbors. He has reported extensively on his city of Tbilisi, including recent pieces on the lives of its street kids and an environmental protest camp in Vake Park devoted to stopping the construction of a hotel. Yet his work as a journalist has also taken him to the farthest corners of the region. His photography tells the stories of the forgotten people of the South Caucasus: those living in remote villages, foraging landfills, or dwelling in institutions.
In The Fray spoke with Krikorian about his days toiling on Web 1.0 websites, his first awkward but breakthrough meeting with young Azerbaijani bloggers, his hopeful pragmatism about the ongoing conflict, and why he thinks photojournalism is, at its heart, about empathy.
How did you first get into photography, and what was the process that led you to the South Caucasus, doing the kind of work that you do?
When I was in my early teens I saw the work of Don McCullin, a British war photographer, and Dorothea Lange, who photographed poverty in the Dust Bowl in the United States in the 1930s. It just blew me away. These images for me represented what the power of photography was. They weren’t just of foreign wars, they were also of poverty in the United Kingdom, for example, and it had a major effect on me. That was what really pushed me into photography.
I started at the Bristol Evening Post doing paste-up and sub-editing. Eventually I decided to move to London. I got a job at the Independent newspaper, but again on the production side of things. It was then that I got to the South Caucasus. The ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh had just been signed, so I went to the picture editor and said, “Listen, there’s a humanitarian-aid flight going to Nagorno-Karabakh. Let me go.” And the guy said, “Sure, okay.”
When I came back, Mosaic—the web browser that popularized the Internet—had been released. I took a look at this web browser and thought, Wow, I understand where this is heading, and I need to do this. So in 1994, I set up my first Internet site, on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. I also became involved with the Kurdish Human Rights Project, following a chance meeting with some Kurdish activists in London.
In 1998 they asked if I’d like to go to Armenia to research the human rights situation of the Yezidis, the largest minority in Armenia [a Kurdish religious group now in the news because of their persecution in ISIS-dominated Iraq —ed.], and while there it was obvious that there was very little reliable information coming out of the country. I was struck by the poverty, the corruption, and other issues that no one was really reporting on. So that’s when I decided to write. Because ultimately, I felt that these issues need to get out there. I was offered a job with the United Nations Development Programme and moved to Armenia in 1998. That’s when the sort of work I do now started.
What languages do you speak?
I speak English and some Armenian. I learned Armenian when I was in Armenia. While my dad is ethnic Armenian from Greece, my mum is English. My parents divorced when I was about a year old, so I was never brought up by Armenians, and I never had any contact with Armenians until I was about twenty-one, when I got in touch with my father again. I don’t know what that really says. Maybe I have a different view of how identity works.
This concept of ethnicity in the South Caucasus is a concerning thing. People relate to each other here based on their ethnic group, rather than, you know, “You’ve got the same biological makeup as me.”
Children pose in an abandoned van in Stepanakert, the capital of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, soon after the ceasefire was signed in 1994.
How did Conflict Voices come into being?
In 2007 I was Caucasus regional editor for an organization in the United States called Global Voices. I would put together posts about issues that were underrepresented in the regional and international media from the South Caucasus—for example, about gay rights, women’s rights, or the flawed process of elections in the region. But in 2008, Facebook started to emerge in the region, and then things really got interesting. You could basically form relationships across borders online.
I was still based in Yerevan, Armenia. As the regional editor for Global Voices, how could I do anything referring to Azerbaijan without knowing what was really happening there, or without even being in contact with any Azerbaijanis? It’s just not professional, and it’s definitely not possible to have a clear view of the region if you don’t speak to people from the other countries. So I ventured up to Tbilisi and made contact with some Azerbaijani bloggers at a BarCamp. It was very interesting. You had the Armenian contingent, who would be standing about twenty meters away from the Azerbaijani contingent. They were just totally separate. I thought, Well, this is bloody stupid! So I decided to approach the Azerbaijanis. I had my camera on me. They thought, This looks like a photographer, let’s give him our cameras and ask him to take pictures of us together.
I handed them their cameras, and they said, “Thanks very much, where are you from?” I said. “I’m from England.” They said, “What’s your name?” I said, “Onnik Krikorian.” Deathly silence. But people are people, and there’s always that initial thing when you have stereotypes and whatever. You don’t know how to react in such a situation. After ten seconds, they say, “Thanks, stay in touch. Could you send some of the images you took with your camera?” So I found them on Facebook and made contact with them. Suddenly, a world in Azerbaijan through young Azerbaijanis was opened up to me. And not surprisingly, they weren’t very different from Armenian youth.
They’re not totally preoccupied with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and they have the same interests as any young person does—mainly posting about music, films, university, or whatever. I saw the potential of social media to break down stereotypes and thought, if only a young Armenian in Armenia could see what a young Azerbaijani is doing. They would see that actually each side is not a monster, each side is not perpetually thinking about armed conflict. In that sense, social media was incredibly revolutionary.
I had a foot in the door of Azerbaijani social networks. And as a journalist, the more they saw my work, the more I think they understood that I wasn’t a threat. Trust and relationships were built, and my material was shared. I thought, okay, something really has to be done now, something proper, because this is a very wonderful, personal tool for connecting people.
Has this affected your view of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?
Yes, it’s changed my view of the conflict. Don’t get me wrong—it’s also a really depressing situation, with no solution anywhere in sight. In 1994, when I returned to London from Nagorno-Karabakh, analysts were telling me, “In twenty years, the conflict will be solved.” Well, it’s now twenty years since then, and the conflict is nowhere even close to being solved. I’m not even sure it’ll be close to being resolved in another twenty years.
So do you just envision a continuing standoff, or do you think something else is going to happen?
I think the standoff continuing is, unfortunately, a safe bet. What some are concerned about, however, is whether hostilities will resume. I think the consensus is that no side will start a new war, but that there’s a danger of an accidental war when a skirmish on the border spirals out of control. But despite how depressing the situation looks, I can at least see in the interactions I have with Azerbaijanis and Armenians, that there is a—albeit small—group of progressive, open-minded people on both sides.
They communicate with each other, and some meet face-to-face. In Georgia, of course, you have ethnic Armenians and Azeris who have absolutely no problem with each other at all.
You have now been based in Georgia for two years. Was this a tactical decision?
Georgia is very different from Armenia. There’s a more liberal and freer environment here. I’d been visiting since 1999, and even then—when it was a failed state, when it was criminal, when there were problems with electricity—there was something about Tbilisi that I really loved. Yes, I knew all the problems, and it was inconceivable that the Rose Revolution would happen and things would start going in the right direction. There was something I liked about the place, and I always knew I’d probably end up here. My Armenia-Azerbaijan work is another reason. This is the center of the South Caucasus, the place where everyone can intermingle.
It’s difficult for Azerbaijanis from Azerbaijan to get into Armenia, and it’s even harder for Armenians to go to Azerbaijan. It’s a horrible conflict and people don’t mix. People-to-people contact is an incredibly important—if not the most important—component of reconciling differences and finding a peaceful solution. And it’s the one thing that the citizens of both countries are prevented from doing—except in Georgia. There are Armenians from Armenia and Azerbaijanis from Azerbaijan mixing here. Not thousands, but it does happen.
I think this is the strength of Georgia. It’s always been the heart and soul of the South Caucasus.
Ethnic Armenians in the Georgian village of Tsopi. Situated close to the country’s border with Armenia and Azerbaijan, the village is 70 percent ethnic Azeri. The rest of the villagers are ethnic Armenian. Integrated villages like Tsopi challenge the notion that the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is merely an ethnic one.
You know, you have this in Georgia. But when you have really intense nationalism and propaganda in Armenia and Azerbaijan, both sides cannot see eye to eye or find any common ground. Some would argue this is by design. Both governments have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, because it allows them to cling onto power. They’ve come to power on the back of the Karabakh conflict, and presidents have lost power on the back of it, too. These are the things that have defined the leadership in both countries. But there are alternative voices emerging, and that’s the most important thing for me. Ten years ago these alternative voices didn’t have a space, online or off, but now you have alternative media outlets in both countries. I would even argue that despite there being more anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan than anti-Azeri sentiment in Armenia, there’s an even larger group of alternative young Azeris who are more open-minded than their counterparts in Armenia.
There could be very many reasons for this. It could be because there’s a more oppressive regime there. But the youth movements, the alternative voices in Azerbaijan are incredibly impressive—and they face the greatest risks in the entire South Caucasus for what they’re doing.
I stumble upon something and see there’s something wrong and that no one is covering it. Actually, the problem of vulnerable children in residential care started in Armenia, as part of a big project I did on poverty in Armenia. There’s a lot of poverty. I saw this and I was very shocked by it. I worked with organisations like Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders], and that took me into the issue of the institutionalization of children. In 2007 I came to Georgia to look at the situation here. They had the process of de-institutionalization, so it was an interesting contrast.
Vake Park was an impressive display of a non-politically partisan social movement that managed to attract the involvement of everyone. I’m used to movements in Armenia being politicized, and for me that’s not the way you achieve social change. Maybe it’s a part of it, but you need grassroots nonpoliticized movements. Vake Park is still going on, the hotel has not been constructed, and they’ve still got their camp. It was a pleasure to document something like that, as well as an interesting story.
The street kids project is ongoing. There’s a lot of kids on the streets of Tbilisi. These kids are not necessarily sleeping on the streets. The majority do have homes, but are from poor families. They’ve got no choice but to beg on the street from early morning until late at night. The street is not a safe place for a kid. Under UNICEF’s definition, they are still street kids. They’re great kids. I really enjoy hanging out with them.
It seemed that you had a strong rapport with those kids—and, in other stories, with the people who live by salvaging from landfill sites, or who live in small villages like Tsopi and Sissian. How do you create a level of trust that allows you to take such intimate portraits?
You don’t necessarily try to gain their trust. You either have empathy with them, or you don’t. A lot of photojournalism is about empathy with a subject. Unless, of course, it’s a battle raging around you, or police beating protesters—then you don’t really have empathy with the policeman—but for those sorts of social issues, you need empathy. You can tell if someone’s being open with you or not. Also, it takes a lot of work. In some cases you have to spend days for them to get to know you. There were times documenting poverty in Armenia and especially at the landfill sites that I wouldn’t take any photographs, because they didn’t want pictures taken. Why would someone who’s taking rubbish off a landfill want their picture taken? Why would someone who’s living in extreme poverty want their picture taken? Of course they don’t want their picture taken. There was this horrible hostel in Yerevan, and this beautiful little kid in rags. I ask to take a picture and her mother says, “No, no, no!” And she drags the kid away, takes her into the only other room, and then emerges with her in this clean, immaculate dress. I’ve got a picture of the mother with the kid sitting on her lap, brushing her hair, and she’s dressed beautifully, because they’ve got pride still. Maybe that picture works because it shows that. I can’t go into someone’s home and intervene in their lives, then just walk out. I would also go back many times, to see if their lives had improved.
Have there been any improvements?
A family living in a run-down hostel in the Erebuni district of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. The little girl, Isabella, sits on her mother’s lap. She died a week later, after falling seven floors in an unsafe stairwell.
The poor people, no. There is the building of the homeless shelter, but that’s not really a major success story, because the government, being the Armenian government, decided to build the homeless shelter right on the outskirts of the city, where no homeless person can actually get to. Homeless people stay around markets, and there’s a reason for this, and that’s because homeless people go through the bins later looking for discarded stuff. And buses won’t take homeless people. And taxis, even if they could pay, don’t take homeless people. So it seemed like a success, but in reality it didn’t really do much to achieve a solution.
I guess the main success story for me is the number of Armenians and Azerbaijanis that I’ve managed to connect who would never have done so without me acting as a bridge. You need someone to break the ice and to bridge that divide. I think that’s the most successful thing I’ve managed to do. Of course, the conflict is nowhere near resolution, and however many people I manage to connect, it’s still not a critical mass. I was recently at a closed meeting on Nagorno-Karabakh, and a very bright guy from Azerbaijan simply noted, “There’s no peace movement. There’s no demand for peace. And NGOs, it’s time for you to stop sitting around, patting yourselves on the back, talking about the projects that you’ve done, because they’re really not changing much. There really is no genuine grassroots peace movement in the South Caucasus, and especially Armenia and Azerbaijan, and now you guys need to work on creating one.”
Maybe that’s what I hope I can contribute to. To try and make this bigger. Obviously I can’t do it on my own, but maybe as part of a bigger process that can finally sort out the mess that is the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict. It’s a major obstacle to the development of both countries. The conflict will be over one day. It cannot last forever, and so I’d like to think that my work can be part of the process that brings that day sooner. Of course, whether I’ll see it in my lifetime is still unclear.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Jo Magpie Jo Magpie is a freelance journalist, travel writer, and long-term wanderer currently based in Granada, Spain. Blog: agirlandherthumb.wordpress.com
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Best of In The Fray 2014. Last year I visited Saur-Mogila, a burial mound in eastern Ukraine that commemorates the Soviet soldiers who died driving back the Nazis during World War II. Today it is a battleground for a new war, as separatists fight for independence and Russia moves its troops into the lands it once liberated.
Michael Long Photos by Sergei Kopylov
In the frigid autumn sunlight I climbed the stone steps of Saur-Mogila. The burial mound, located atop a bluff encircled by the bronzed steppe, covers the bones of Soviet soldiers killed during the Second World War. More than 23,000 died fighting the Germans for this hilltop along the eastern edge of Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. The panoramic view from the summit is coveted for reasons both aesthetic and strategic, and I could easily see why. At 277 meters, Saur-Mogila is the highest point in the region.
The Heart of Everything That Is tells the little-known story of Red Cloud, a ruthless Lakota chief who brought together the warring tribes of the Great Plains to fight the US government and halt its relentless westward expansion.
The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend By Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
Simon & Schuster. 432 pages.
For nearly three hundred years, white settlers and American Indians engaged in mutually destructive warfare. The bloodshed followed the path of white Western migration—from the first English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, where colonists coming ashore in 1607 were met with a volley of the Powhatan’s arrows, to far Western lands like the Montana territory, where General Custer and his soldiers made their last stand in 1876, overrun by Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors on the banks of the Little Bighorn River.
Their stunning victory in the Battle of the Little Bighorn immortalized the names of great Indian chiefs like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. But in The Heart of Everything That Is, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin make the case that a relatively obscure Oglala Lakota chief called Red Cloud was actually the era’s most fearsome and effective Indian leader, a brilliant tactician of guerrilla warfare who a decade before Little Bighorn had beaten the US Army in a bloody conflict known as “Red Cloud’s War.”
People warned me not to go. Government advisories declared “avoid all travel.” But I ran off and fell in love with Lebanon anyway.
Story and photos by Alexis Lai
The Bekaa Valley and the shelters of Syrians (not necessarily refugees) who work in the adjoining fields.
Please, please, please cancel your ticket. It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” implored the beefy man serving our table at a local Lebanese restaurant in Hong Kong. “If you want to eat Lebanese food, just come here.”
I had just told him I was embarking on a two-week trip to his native country at the end of September — a revelation that seemed to have triggered in him the beginnings of a heart attack.
“But I want to go to Lebanon,” I said.
“There are snipers!” he insisted, aghast.
“What snipers?” I asked.
“Hezbollah! My friend in Byblos is afraid to leave his house!” I also risked being kidnapped by desperate Syrian refugees, he warned.
The next day, I woke up to reports that the US State Department had ordered its nonessential diplomats to evacuate Lebanon. The Obama administration and Congress were weighing punitive military strikes on neighboring Syria for using chemical weapons. The US had already slapped the country with an “avoid all nonessential travel” warning, which was later upgraded to “avoid all travel.” In the Lebanon sections of online travel forums, numerous threads were devoted to variations of the same question: “Is it safe to visit?”
I wondered if I was being reckless, but I was committed to my trip — not only financially, but emotionally. I had lived and traveled widely in North America, Europe, and Asia, but I had never visited the Middle East. Now in my late twenties, I thought it was time to change that. Surely, there had to be more to the Middle East than the dominant narrative in news reports of a dangerous, war-torn region, ridden with sectarian conflict, a bomb or bullet just around the corner.
With only two weeks of vacation, I thought visiting Lebanon, a relatively small country, would give me the chance to see a lot. I also felt a certain affinity for Lebanon that I didn’t for other places in the Middle East. Perhaps it had started with the delicious moudardara I’d discovered a decade ago in Toronto. I wanted to experience a culture celebrated for its sophistication, and see its storied capital, Beirut.
Lebanon has not shaken the violent image it acquired from its bloody 1975-1990 civil war between Christian and Muslim militias, which drew in various outside groups, including the armed forces of Israel and Syria. More recently, Beirut was devastated by a month-long war in 2006 between Lebanon’s Shia militant group Hezbollah and the Israeli military.
Tourism had recovered quickly in the years after the Israel-Hezbollah War, reaching a peak of more than two million visitors in 2010, according to the ministry of tourism. The New York Times hailed Beirut as one of the top places to visit in the world: “The capital of Lebanon is poised to reclaim its title as the Paris of the Middle East.” Yet 2011 brought another calamity: the civil war in Syria, a country that shares deep ties and a porous border with Lebanon. The number of visitors has since plummeted — and was falling further when I arrived last September.
I knew from news reports that the Syrian civil war had spilled over into Lebanon, in the form of hundreds of thousands of refugees and bombs targeting both the pro-Syria Hezbollah movement and its critics. (The internal situation in Lebanon has long been influenced by its neighbor: Syrian armed forces occupied Lebanon during and after its civil war, and were only ousted by the Cedar Revolution triggered by the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.) I had an eye out for all these dangers.
Children leaving a mosque in Tyre. They pleaded for a photo, posed earnestly, and then examined the result carefully before scampering away.
But I ended up not thinking as much about my personal safety as I’d thought I would. I found myself dwelling instead on the beauty around me. I immediately fell in love with the country’s signature palette of colors. Verdant fields carpeted the Bekaa Valley that borders Syria, brimming with apples, wine grapes, and cannabis. Majestic homes constructed with yellow-white stones gleamed in the affluent south-central village of Deir el Qamar. Sun-faded red roofs dotted the rugged mountains of the Qadisha Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Most striking was Lebanon’s gorgeous shade of blue. I saw it time and time again in the Mediterranean Sea, most memorably from my hotel balcony in the venerable port city of Byblos, where the waters shimmered brilliantly in the sunlight, the shore silent except for the crashing of the waves. I saw it in the sky, too — during my trip to the Roman ruins of the eastern city of Baalbek, it was the glorious backdrop to the six restored pillars of the Temple of Jupiter. There I sat down on a rock and savored the view.
The six restored pillars of the Temple of Jupiter in the ancient Romans ruins of Baalbek.
Reputed to be a Hezbollah stronghold, Baalbek was singled out for an “avoid all travel” warning in advisories issued by the UK and Canada. But I did not run into problems there or anywhere else along the clockwise loop I made around Lebanon. In fact, aside from clusters of soldiers outfitted in berets and camouflage in some parts of the country — most visibly in downtown Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and the southern coastal city of Tyre — nothing I saw on my trip suggested that Lebanon was facing any kind of threat.
Children play around the Place de l’Étoile in downtown Beirut.
In Beirut, life seemed to go on as usual. Children played with toys around the clock tower in the Place de l’Étoile downtown. Joggers lined the Corniche waterfront promenade. The fashionable set congregated at cafes along Zaitunay Bay. Students, with their arms wrapped around textbooks, strolled along the streets near the American University of Beirut campus.
Even the security checkpoints set up throughout the Bekaa Valley were essentially speed bumps: soldiers usually waved my driver past without a word. I had to show my passport only once.
I was surprised to be the only traveler at most of the major tourist attractions I visited and the homestays and hotels where I roomed. I enjoyed having museums, ancient ruins, and wineries all to myself, but it was sobering to think what the deserted places meant for the many people whose livelihoods depended on tourism. Following a huge drop in visitors during the summer season, hotels in the Beirut area laid off a quarter of their employees last year, the As-Safir newspaper reported. Seasonal hotel workers were hit even harder, with more than 70 percent of them — 14,000 people, most of them college students — losing their jobs.
In the eastern town of Zahlé, along the famous Berdawni Valley strip, strings of lights twinkled in vain, the many outdoor cafés bereft of diners and full of idle waiters in bow ties. As I ate breakfast alone at my hotel, the staff dutifully laid out silverware at the dozens of empty tables in the restaurant, their labor an empty exercise.
As I traveled around Lebanon, I unwittingly became a celebrity of sorts, drawing surprise and appreciation from locals baffled as to why a young Chinese woman would choose to visit at this time — let alone on her own. People would often go out of their way to help me, eager to make sure I had a pleasant experience in their country.
“Thank you for visiting Lebanon. Thank you for visiting our museum,” the curator of the Beirut National Museum said to me. The staff had referred me to her when I asked in English for directions to my next destination. She was shocked to learn I was visiting the country for fun and didn’t know a single person. She insisted on walking out with me to help me flag a shared taxi. “I don’t want you to have a bad experience and get ripped off,” she explained, proceeding to give the driver stern instructions in Arabic.
On a couple occasions, complete strangers went out of their way to drive me around. When I walked into a donut shop in Beirut asking for directions, a friendly university student offered me a ride home in her car. We ended up meeting for dinner a few days later, both of us eager to swap thoughts and impressions about Lebanon. Later on, I found myself in a teeming crowd at the headquarters of a cell-phone service provider, waiting to register my phone for a local SIM card but utterly confused about what I needed to do. The well-manicured middle-aged woman standing next to me took me under her wing. She explained the process, helped me cut the line, and then drove me across town to my next stop.
South of Beirut, in the ancient coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, I also depended on the kindness of strangers to help me find my way. Whether it was a small boy at a shop where I bought a bottle of water, a sunglasses vendor, or a shabbily dressed man with a bicycle, the locals I approached would drop what they were doing and walk me to my destination.
When I jaywalked — unavoidable in the big cities — normally aggressive drivers would slow down when they spotted me. And the drivers of shared taxis seemed to know about my existence before I had even stepped foot in their cars. “I’ve seen you before walking around,” they told me on more than one occasion.
“I’ve become ‘famous’ in Lebanon,” I joked to Jamil, my elderly homestay host in Beirut, when I called him from the airport to say goodbye.
The Mediterranean Sea, as seen from the coastal city of Tyre.
My story is not intended to minimize the real crisis that Syrians and their neighbors in the Middle East are facing. According to the United Nations, there are now 2.3 million Syrian refugees in the region. The largest group — more than 800,000 — are in Lebanon. Recent bombings in Beirut and Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, are widely seen as retribution for Hezbollah’s support of the Syrian government. Attacks have also been directed at those opposed to Hezbollah: last month, a car bomb killed the former Lebanese finance minister Mohamad Chatah and six others in downtown Beirut. Chatah was a fierce critic of the Syrian government and Hezbollah.
Yet it’s easy to let stories of violence reported in the media narrow our view of a place. In Lebanon, there is incredible beauty and tranquility to be found, even if conflict smolders around it. And there are people eager to share that beauty, as I learned from the generous locals I met.
It is also worth remembering how far Lebanon has come since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and the civil war that ended just over twenty years ago. Given its troubled history, it is surprising just how many tourists the country was drawing before the Syrian civil war began. Feted in the Western press, Lebanon seemed on the path to becoming a cultural and economic hub of the Middle East once again.
Hiking in the Qannoubine Valley. Photo by Rami Al Semaani
That is the renaissance that locals like Jamil hope will bloom once the latest proxy crisis ends. Jamil has lived through all of Lebanon’s recent travails, including the civil war. The violence has exacted a price from his family: in the living room of his home is a photo of a slain nephew, a rose placed before the frame. Yet Jamil remains a staunch advocate of visiting Lebanon, waving off any security concerns. He dismissed the dangers that the waiter in Hong Kong had warned me about, furious at what he viewed as foolish and irresponsible remarks by a fellow countryman. When I told him I planned to visit Baalbek, he told me not to worry: “The closest you’ll get to Hezbollah is someone trying to sell you a T-shirt.”
Then and now, when I think of Lebanon, I don’t think of war. What comes to my mind is that beautiful shade of Mediterranean blue, the pristine silence of the mountains, the delicious apple I picked from a tree while camping with some new friends above the village of Hasroun. In a country renowned for war, I found peace.
Alexis Lai is a journalist based in Hong Kong. Her work has been published by CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal, and Radio Television Hong Kong, among others. Raised in Canada, she has lived in six countries and traveled in more than twenty. Twitter: @alexisklai Site: http://www.about.me/alexislai
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The Global Peace Index, which ranks 120 nations according to their relative peacefulness, has just released the 2007 rankings. The index is put out by Vision of Humanity, a website that was just launched in support of the index.
Unsurprisingly and unfortunately, many of the lowest-ranking countries are from MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Iraq, of course, falls into last place (121), while Israel, Lebanon, Algeria, and Iran are all pretty low (although Iran practically tied with the United States — they are ranked in the 96th and 97th places).
Morocco (48), on the other hand, was in the top 50, along with MENA friends Kuwait (46), UAE (38), and Qatar (30). Oman was the highest-ranking MENA country, falling into 22nd place.
Indicators used in the index include the number of internal and external wars fought, relations with neighboring countries, political instability, level of distrust of fellow citizens, and the number of arms per 100,000 people, among other things.
Summer has arrived, and along with what has become the standard increase in gasoline prices, the greasy scents of funnel cake and hot dogs permeate the air. Today, I am celebrating the "official" start of summer, Memorial Day weekend, at a local water park. The weather is perfect — mid 80s, low humidity with a gentle breeze. From the look of the small crowd, it appears that the traffic person on the local news was correct in his prediction that most folks would be hitting the beaches instead.
Thinking about the crowds that have headed towards the Jersey Shore reminds me of another beach, one named Omaha. Why a landlocked midwestern city was selected as the code name of one of the five landing points during the Normandy invasion of World War II was something never discussed in my American history classes. As a matter of fact, what little I know about the United States' most expensive and possibly most supported war was learned from my father or on after-school specials.
It was from television that I learned about the internment of U.S.-born Japanese Americans in response to Pearl Harbor and America's formal entrance into the war. I can still feel the shock that assaulted my childish senses when I realized that my beloved country was capable of such an act. This betrayal was further intensified when taken in the context of the unity presented during the war. My father often spoke of the rationing, how children saved every bit of scrap metal they could find. Our recycling efforts now must seem so, well, tame by comparison. That is why a headline like "War Costs Money. Why Can't Politicians Say So?" in last week's Washington Post's Weekly Edition reminds me once again of how far from the reality of war that most of us reside.
While we could lay the blame on a president and political leaders who have chosen to pay for a war without raising taxes or requiring Americans to tighten the purse strings in other ways, the bottom line is that as a whole we have found it easier to follow the leader rather than strike out on our own. Common sense tells us that eventually we will have to pay for a war financed through loans. A huge deficit stares us full in the face and yet the party continues.
There was a lot I didn't learn in high school or at my parents' knee, such as how to truly participate in the political process, that one voice can indeed make a difference, and why truth is the basis for accountability. I try not to make the same mistakes with my own children. Errands are run based on location to avoid duplicate journeys, replacing a broken washer becomes a lesson on energy efficiency, walking is strongly encouraged. So when my son points out the fuel consumption of a Humvee, though hopeful, my heart doesn't race like it used to when my dad told of neighborhood ladies saving sugar coupons to make a birthday cake or the bravery of his uncle, who when separated from his fellow soldiers, endured days of freezing solitude broken only by the German voices that surrounded him. I guess it should be no surprise that sacrifices to support this war are not high on the agenda; after all, for many of us, working for the common good has never been considered as important as honoring the individual.
Here at the water park, the water is warm, the lemonade is fresh, and the sunscreen is plentiful. Another Memorial Day weekend, fun in the sun, the cashiers ringing up the orders. As I watch my two sons frolic in the waves, I remember something else they never taught us in high school — exactly how did the Roman Empire fall? I think a little research is in order.
Right now I am teaching a seven-day creative writing program at a public elementary school in Buffalo, New York. On the second day I had the students write collaborative stories: One child wrote a fictional story's beginning, another wrote the middle, and a third penned the conclusion. Most of them struggled with this. Exchanging papers was an ordeal, and many were not happy with the stories they were expected to add onto. Girls did not want to write the plot for a story about football; others thought the people with whom they were supposed to trade papers were icky. But some rose to the occasion and collaborated to produce solid stories.
One in particular caught my eye. It was about someone serving in Iraq. Here's what the students wrote:
Once there was a man named John. He was going to Iraq. He was going to fight for our lives. But then he got a little scared because he was thinking of what might happen to him. But then he was feeling sad because he missed his family. Then he went to Iraq, and when he got there, he felt really better. So he got a popsicle, then he said, “I am going to write a letter to my parents.” He got another popsicle, then he went back to war. This time he was not scared, so he got all the stuff he needed. He got the best gun he could. He wanted to see his parents.
Say what you will about the popsicles and the fact that John ceases to be scared when he gets to Iraq, there is some real awareness here about the dangers of war.
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, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin make the case that a relatively obscure Oglala Lakota chief called Red Cloud was actually the era’s most fearsome and effective Indian leader, a brilliant tactician of guerrilla warfare who a decade before Little Bighorn had beaten the US Army in a bloody conflict known as “Red Cloud’s War.”
