…though they would probably charge me for it, cos they are CUNTS. Don’t want to bore you with the history of my slow descent into hating what is, on the face of it, only a high-speed train company but right now as I try to book my train ticket to WOMAD the cheap ones’ link says that there is a problem and the train migth be full, but the expensive tickets…. Are still available and with no technical cock up. Bastards.
But anyway, today, Saturday, I am tired, and things seem worse than they are. Been working my arse off since Wednesday serving tea and pints of Tetleys to old people at Scarborough cricket club. Quite nice actually but tiring. It was Yorkshire vs. Warwickshire and Yorkshire won it with an innings to spare, with a 18 year old spin bowler called Rashid getting 6 wickets on his debut. Not very interesting apart from the massive amounts of racism among Yorkshire supporters (where Rashid was the ‘surprising little nigger’ and even Australians are not Australians but ‘foreigners’.) and watching them being slowly but undeniably won over. I guess at headingly this was dealt with 20 years ago (after all, there must be shiploads of good Indian cricketers in Leeds) but Scarborough, as with everything, has not quite caught up yet. Soon they will all die though
Got a new job aswell! As a traffic warden. Yeah I know. Crazy stuff, but I get to be outside all day, fuck over car owners and walk around the seafront a lot. Hannah accused me of being a tool of the state but I responded that in an anarchic non-state a)there wouldn’t be as many cars and b)those that there were would understand that you need to park where you aren’t interfering with others and so there wouldn’t need to be any traffic wardens (or, if you look at it the other way, everyone would be their own traffic warden. Collective responsibility.)
But working so much (yesterday I worked 930 am till 10pm) has hindered my clarinet stuff.
I feel like I am waffling a bit in the way that people who work to hard do, so the remainder of this blog will be a post from my friend Jess, from South London, who has just got back from Lebanon (hope you don’t mind jess)…
When the israelis first invaded i was on a beach in the middle of a huge banana plantation south of Beirut near Sidon. i was fried at three in the afternoon on almaza beer etc as i saw the Palestinian refugee camps in and around Sidon burn from a distance. Black smoke coursed into the feverishly blue sky as jefferson airplane played white rabbit from my friend's car. The heat was creating those anxious waves of tension in the air, quavering and panicky. But at first it all seemed routine. My Lebanese friends were so crushingly used to bombings and suffering. Israel, Hezbollah, Syria; all carry out their dirty wars on Lebanese soil, all have their own agenda and interests to further. This is what they do. Who asked Hezbollah to drag the people of Lebanon into a bombardment that would cost over 300 of them (and counting) their lives, families and homes? The Israelis systematically slaughtered the Lebanese and Palestians during the civil war and since that time have periodically slammed the country up against the wall, just to remind it of it's place in the grand scheme of things. There are hundreds of Arab prisoners currently languishing in Israeli jails, and countless more have been butchered by the fortress state. But of course, it is impossible, UNTHINKABLE, for mainstream media coverage and intellectual opinion to concieve of Israeli state terrorism and outright aggression as anything other than "retribution", "retalitation" or "self-defence" in the face of a cruel and all but overpowering Arab attack, triggered not by political oppression and genocide, but by some inherent defect in the Arab nature. Palestinans, Lebanese and the Arab world in general are portrayed as possessing an inexplicable and inexcusable predeliction toward senseless violence against their benevolent and peace-loving neighbour, "the beautiful Israel". To me, that this view is so widely and unquestioningly held seems an example of Western propaganda at its most sophisticated.
after a couple of days, the majority of my friends and people on the course decided to go and stay at the University campus in Jbail (Byblos), about a twenty minute drive north of Beirut in the mountains. That night I stayed in Beirut with Laila and Tynan. Despite being the fourth most powerful military force on the globe (i believe), Israel rarely strike during daylight. Their preferred time for carnage and destruction (generally in the dead of night rather than in the open sun) goes hand in hand with the cowardice they display in their preferred choice of targets, cosily referred to as "soft": ie civilians, homes, schools and clinics. On Friday however, they started hitting while the sun was still in the sky, around 7pm. The bombs were louder than I'd heard before, closer and deeper. The window of Laila's room was open and through it we smelled (and even tasted I think) the nearby bombs. A rumour started circulating that one of the bombs had killed Sheikh Nasrallah. When the truth came that he was still alive there were men shouting "allahu ahkbar" (god is great) from cars in Beirut's otherwise completely deserted streets. From then on, me and Laila stayed in her room knocking back microwaved cups in instant coffee from the sample packets of Nescafe I'd had the foresight and bad taste to nick from the university lounge that morning (stolen sample packets Hannah, I assure you, promise have not actively bought any nescafe!) We kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. At 3am we started to worry. The Israelis's hadn't hit so what were they planning? Would they send in troops? It was worse to hear nothing. When a wasp gets into your bedroom at night, it is always more reassuring to be able to see it right in front of you than have it's furious, spiteful rage near you undetected. At four am the call to prayer started. We were situated in West Beirut, right in between two mosques. five times a day, the mosques would boom out the call to prayer, the two voices running together to create a sound of indescribable, quavering melancholy. They started bombing at four, during the call to prayer. I was in the kitchen making another cup of coffee. the window was jammed open and through it flowed the words of the Quran together with the sounds of the Israeli bombardment. afterwards, they put a message out over the city, by the same person who put out the call to prayer. They told Beirut in Arabic that the Israelis had come, to fight them. the word israel in arabic sounds deeply malevolent. all i can hear in my mind now is that word being sung out over my ghost city...."iz raaaaaa eeeeel....iz raaaaaa eeeeel". The flourescent hospital lights in the kitched flickered on and off. Four hours later we packed up our things and took a bus to Jbail, where we stayed till we were evacuated.
That night Laila and I both, on seperate occaissions when writing about the situation, referred to the Israeli state as "the basilisk". Quelle chance.
After that we stayed in the mountains, binge eating nutella and biscotti. Each day we would hear the media ponderings as to whether the poor, innocent Americans and British could survive the horrors of the war, armed only with their Western passports, influential governments and rich daddies. Barbaric violence against the Lebanese is not only condoned, it seems not even to be considered. Over the weekend one of my friends went back into Beirut to collect her things. While she was there she found one of the flyers the Israelis drop on the areas they are about to bomb. Roughly translated from Arabic, the flyer reads:
"It is said that those who sleep between the graves will have nightmares. Israel is a powerful nation and will do whatever is necessary to ensure the safety of its citizens."
Once the Americans and Europeans have left, the Israeli poets of death will really begin to embark on their grotesque designs for the people of Lebanon in true earnest.
It is the end of July, high summer in Beirut, but the sun hasn't shone since the Israelis invaded. From my balcony In Jbail we had a view of the whole coastline; those teetering tower blocks, the ocean stretching out into mist and haze, shimmering like heat on a mirror. at first I thought it was clouds that had stopped the sun from beating down on the glassy panorama. But clouds have definition, form, an faint but nevertheless discernable anatomy. This was murk, gloom, the soup of nothingness, a grey veil draped over the Lebanese coastline. Next to our campus was an old, deteriorating hotel. That double sided cross, sign of the Lebanese forces, was emblazoned on the door. The sign fixed atop the hotel proclaimed it be "The Comfort Zone".
> From Friday to Thursday there were constant rumours that the British and
Americans would be coming. In the end, it was the Americans who came first. Almost all the Americans at the University left suddenly, in a rush. After watching them get loaded into the busses, I went back to my room and found your note Laila. Thank you. My sentiments exactly.
On Thursday I went down to the ports with the three British girls from the programme, Ellie, Layla F. and Angela (ehup guys!). We waited for eight hours, but in the end it took too long to get everyone on the boats. The Israelis said our window of opportunity had gone, they wanted to start their air strikes again. So we went home
The next day we managed to get out. We were flown by helicopter (the spit of those ones from Apocalyse Now, sorry for the pop-cult vulgarity, but it's gotta be done) to the warship HMS Illustrious. We went round in circles in the Meditteranean for five hours, while the helicopters picked up more people from the ports. From their they 'copptered us to Cyprus, from there a flight to Manchester, train to London, tube to Victoria and then train to Brighton. And now, after a few hours drinking tea and smoking, here i sit before the computer screen.
I didn't want to go, I really didn't. It's so much more painful to watch Beirut burn from a distance than it would have been to stay there with it. I think that's everything.
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