LEBANON: Country of dichotomies

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By Noha El-Hennawy in Beirut

Carrying the preconceived baggage of many Arabs, I traveled to Lebanon: A beautiful country with a Westernized population and beaches flecked with bikinis not far from bars where men and women mingle freely. Reality, however, turned out to be more dizzying and complex. After a week of shuttling between the North, South, East and West of Lebanon, my Egyptian sensibilities realized that despite its small size, it’s hard to believe this exceptionally diverse land is actually one country.

EAST BEIRUT: In a nutshell, it is quiet, clean and cosmopolitan. You may think the country’s official language is French as you hardly hear the neighborhood’s Christian residents speak Arabic. Even houses are built and renovated according to European architecture. Blond women walk around in tight blouses showing cleavage; they seek posh malls and Western baubles. On weekends, nightclubs on the famous Gammayze Street are packed with young couples who cruise with hip-hop music thumping from luxurious cars. This is but one, intriguing window into Lebanon.

THE SOUTHERN SUBURB OR THE DAHYA: Being a Hezbollah stronghold, there is not an exposed cleavage to be gazed. The first thing that hits you as soon as you wander into Haret Hreik (Hreik Alley) is the huge al-Hassanein mosque, where prominent Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah lives.

Most women are veiled, but you can see a few modestly dressed, their hair uncovered. It seems a Third World city, a place where European architecture and mood have no resonance. People live in tight blocks and shop in stores that promote “the Islamic dress.” Unlike East Beirut, the suburb is engulfed by the roar of car horns and the clatter of reconstruction.

Billboards here advertise clerics and martyrs; the public space is decidedly politicized. The Dahya is more of an exhibit of pictures, a kind of flowing scrapbook of radicalism featuring Musa El-Sadr, Hassan Nasrallah, Emad Moghneyya and Hezbullah fighters. You hardly find a street lantern that does not carry a picture of a slain Hezbullah warrior.

TRIPOLI: Roaming around the northern coastal city with a Lebanese journalist was illuminating. The Sunni Islamist influence is very much sensed in the city. “We have no bars here. Even coffee shops and restaurants are too scared to serve alcohol. You can only find alcohol in restaurants overlooking Tripoli port.” You don’t find any East Beirut woman here. Even young girls here wear the veil. There seems to be more adherence to strict traditions. The contrast was quite shocking. Yet nothing was more startling than the scene of two women in black wearing the Niqab standing with a bearded man at the corner in an Old Tripoli alley.

You end up feeling the country cannot be one entity; it is the playground, often a battleground, of dichotomous cultures and divergent political forces. This feeling is not only reinforced by dress codes or religious symbols but also by political icons. The influence of external forces and opposite ideologies can be easily sensed through the war of posters that sweeps Lebanon’s streets. A drive to the South shows the clout the Iranian leverage, as Ayatollah Khomeini’s pictures hang everywhere. Three hours to the north in Tripoli, a promenade shows that the Baathist party still has a following among Sunni Lebanese who have raised Saddam Hussein’s pictures on tops of buildings. And a drive across Beirut proves that some Lebanese are even inspired by failed pan-Arabic dream of former Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. While Nasser’s pictures are rarely glimpsed in Egyptian streets, they are posted on walls and bridges in many of Beirut’s streets.

Photos, from top: A billboard with a bikini-clad blond model in Beirut (Raed Rafei), a billboard with the pictures of Musa El-Sadr and Nabih Berri in the Southern Qana Province (Noha El-Hennawy), picture of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser hanging in Beirut (Raed Rafei)

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