Changing Lanes dvd (This article was first published in Living Well
magazine of Jordan in December 2006)
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Yet again, I disappoint my ever forbearing editor. Contrary to my promise – and despite her friendly instructions to turn off the serious tone, if only for the merry season – I find myself compulsively tapping the wrong buttons on the keyboard. Despite my solemn pledge to don a white beard and write a joyous Christmas carol, my hands have declared mutiny and are disobeying orders from the central command of my better judgment.
Santa is nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, the alphabets have joined the revolt, pulling my fingertips towards sentences that can’t wait to be written. As I surrender to their gravity, I find myself itching to tell this story, I even feel it’s my responsibility to do so. To tell you the truth, the historic document I’m about to share with you has restored my faith in the basic goodness of the human race, the mere thought of which brings warmth to my heart, more joy than any Father Christmas could muster.
The story goes like this. During the latest war on Lebanon, uninvited, a group of Hizbullah fighters took shelter for a few days in an empty house on the outskirts of the village of Shihabiya, north of Tyre. The uninhabited house belonged to the family of the late Ahmad Hamzeh, who fled their home when the bombing started. After their short tenancy ended, the unlikely squatters delivered a hand-written note to the owners of this house. This fascinating letter beggars belief and should be displayed in the ‘Museum of Lebanese Wars’, if such a thing was ever to be built. Why? After apologizing for the severe circumstances that forced them to enter the house, these fighters went through the trouble of producing a meticulous inventory of all the items that they had consumed during their stay, asking the absent landlords for understanding and forgiveness.
But what are the perished valuables that compelled these warriors to put pen to paper under the deafening hellfire raining on their heads? What kind of loot are we talking about here? Here is a translation of the main contents of this list. Ready for this? The Hizbullah fighters used “… three sprinkles of spice… fifteen hairs of saffron… four cloves of garlic… half a packet of matches… six medium spoons of cough syrup… three pieces of lemon… half a bottle of shampoo (the bottle is still there)… three small tea glasses of olive oil… two packets of tissues… two cans of corn… four to six drops of perfume (Escada, found on the fridge)… a quarter of a tube of toothpaste…”.
The letter goes on to list three appliances that were broken whilst cleaning them, namely, “a tea pot containing ground coffee, a small cup of tea, and a plastic tray (marked Al Baba Sweets)”. The letter also states that they have disposed of meats and foodstuffs that went off in the fridge. Finally, they concluded by stating that they might have used other items but may have inadvertently failed to record them.
Letter from Hizbullah fighters to the family of the late Ahmad Hamzeh
Itemized lists left by Hizbullah fighters detailing all items used during their stay at the house.
Are these people for real? I’m no propagandist for Hizbullah, but neither is Khader Hamzeh, the friend who accidentally loaned me this piece of paper. He is the son of Ahmad Hamza, the late owner of the house whose family still live there today. Although a Shiite from the south of Lebanon, my friend had no special affection for Hizbullah before he had read this letter. In fact, before entrusting me with it one night in Geneva, he first showed me a bullet wound he sustained in the 1980’s while fighting for the Amal movement against the splinter group that had broken ranks with them, a then newly formed militia that was brazen enough to name itself after the Almighty Himself. Against the advise of his friends, this young man dashed back to Beirut via Amman in July to try to reach his family in Shihabiya. This guy is as secular as they come, believe me. He does not believe in miracles nor anything of that sort, but still he could not believe his eyes when he saw this letter.
He described the Israeli aerial shelling of the south as an “unrelenting thunderstorm of bombs” that did not pause for families to bury their dead. Yet he was astonished beyond words at how, in the middle of the carnage, these men were apparently troubled with recording the amount of soap they used to wash his dishes. He didn’t know what to make of the guests in his house, but had to confess that they were nothing short of saints.
download Dirty Harry dvd He never could have imagined, nor did he expect for a second, that the defenders of his village, the brave men who offered their lives to protect his people, would take the time and effort to count the cups of rice they borrowed while treating his home with the sanctity that no regular army in the world is expected to display under the unforgiving harshness of war. He insisted that these people must have come from another planet, because he knew too well that the hallmark of all of Lebanon’s wars had been the wanton cruelty to civilians and the callous pillaging of their livelihoods by all sorts of mercenaries and lords of war. To his absolute incredulity, these people turned out to be a different breed of men altogether.
Khader Hamzeh and his young nephews outside the house used by Hizbullah fighters
Indeed, ever wondered why a Christian Lebanese artist such as Julia Boutros would sell out stadiums in Dubai last month, naming the tour dedicated to these fighters “My Beloved”, with audiences chanting along every word of her lyrics? Ever asked yourselves how these selfless soldiers captured the hearts and minds of the entire Lebanese nation regardless of creed or sect?
The American journalist and writer, Charles Glass, who was himself kidnapped for two months by Shiite militias during Lebanon’s civil war, wrote a telling article after the latest war, revealing part of the secret for this appeal. Glass begins his piece by going back to liberated France at the end of World War II, describing how American and British forces tolerated the local acts of vengeance against French collaborators with the Nazi occupiers, of whom around ten thousand were summarily executed in the streets by mobs of angry Frenchmen.
He quotes Albert Camus who described this campaign of revenge as “human justice with all its defects”. Glass then reminds us of a piece of history that many people have either forgotten or willfully chose to ignore. When Israel suddenly pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, they, too, left behind an army of mercenaries who tormented the Lebanese people for decades on behalf of Israel. As Hizbullah moved into liberated areas, the whole world held its breath, expecting an unpreventable bloodbath, a natural outcome in such situations, especially after the discovery of the horrific torture dungeons at Al Khiyam, an infamous concentration camp run by the South Lebanon Army (SLA). However, as Glass puts it, the weirdest thing that happened next was that nothing happened at all. Not a single member of the SLA was murdered. Those suspected of atrocities against their fellow Lebanese citizens were all handed over by Hizbullah to the Lebanese Government. Now who’s exactly afraid of these guerrilla fighters?
So why am I telling this story these days instead of singing a merry jingle? Simply because this testimony needs to be communicated at a time when many people are portraying Hizbullah and its weapons as some kind of danger to the Lebanese people. Ladies and Gentlemen, these legendary warriors don’t merely have more integrity than their counterparts; they are actually obsessed with integrity to an unprecedented extent unknown in the history of Lebanon and the entire region.
For God’s sake, when the skies of Lebanon flared up in fireworks that indiscriminately smothered its people, these men were tallying the sprinkles of spice they used to season their battle food. Do these people really scare you? No one wants to dig in the past or open old wounds, but how can the same leaders of the militias that once used their long range heavy artillery to obliterate at close range the homes of Ashrafiyyeh and elsewhere in Mount Lebanon and the Chouf come out today and claim that Hizbullah’s fighters are a danger to Lebanon? Did the people of the three sprinkles of spice ever massacre their fellow Lebanese citizens or ever destroy one brick of a building in Beirut? Did they ever murder defenseless women and children in Damour, Tel Za’atar, Karantina, or Sabra and Chatila?
I personally feel that Lebanon is very safe with the men who were remembering the number of spoons of sugar in their tea while teaching the brutal Israeli war machine an unforgettable lesson. These simple villagers have proved that the inherent instinct of benevolence in mankind can actually triumph over the seemingly overwhelming guns of evil. This letter in my hands is truly the stuff that legends are made of. Within its lines, more confidence in the future of Lebanon can be found than in a million Security Council resolutions. Good ol’ Papa Noel is not a fictional character, it turns out. His beard is not white, his robe is not red, and he certainly does not enter people’s houses through chimneys.