Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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The smell of gardenias

By Randa Shaath

Images keep flashing through my head, so fast I cannot keep to one line of thought for more than a few seconds.

It is a cold early morning in December of 1975. Our suitcases are packed and piled on the car that is taking the family to the airport. In the same front yard, our neighbours are packing their car to drive to Syria. The air is dense, thick with apprehension. We are in Beirut. The civil war started a few months ago. People are unable to go to work, and children are unable to go to school. My parents have decided we should not miss out on the rest of the school year, so we are going to Egypt to finish the year.

My sweetheart is looking at me from a distance. I wonder anxiously whether I should give him our address in Cairo or not. Should I risk the embarrassment of talking to him in front of all our parents? I am 12, Saleh is 14. I start jotting down the address with trembling hands on a small piece of paper: 8 Salamlek St., Garden Ci... Their car is moving away.

Beirut in summer smells of gardenias. The flowers and the city cannot be dissociated. I have kept that piece of paper, together with a ring he once gave me, in a small box decorated with gardenia flowers, for 25 years.

Images, voices, smells, and shadows from my childhood flashed through my head during the hour-long flight to Beirut. The newspaper had sent me to photograph the liberated south, and my husband decided to accompany me on this very special trip.

The Mekdashis, old friends of our family, met us at the airport. They refused to let us go to a hotel, and insisted on taking us to their apartment in Hamra.

VOYAGE TO LIBERATION: We decided to join one of the many trips that Lebanese families from Beirut are organising to visit the liberated south. The occupation lasted over 20 years, so most of the young generations have never seen this part of their country. Many want to set foot on it, to reclaim it as theirs. The trip started at 7.00am. The bus was waiting for us in the Beirut Arab University area. There were 30 people of various ages: aunts, uncles, cousins... Once the bus started moving, fresh homemade sandwiches appeared; once they were consumed and Arabic coffee distributed, the singing began. The repertoire started with romantic songs of famous pop singers, many of them Egyptian, such as Amr Diab and Ihab Tawfiq. Umm Kulthoum came later, after we had eaten some of the baklava and fresh pistachios for which Lebanon is famous. The women danced joyfully as the bus drove towards Sidon. Leila had a map of Lebanon and on the microphone she explained to the crowd the itinerary of our trip. We would pass Tyre first, then drive on to Nabatiyeh.

Top, Our Lady of Lebanon, in Harissa; Midan Al-Burj in downtown Beirut, after restoration, the Sabra refugee camp

The bus was moving so quickly that we suddenly realised we had already passed the first liberated village. Once we realised we were actually in the liberated south, in Kifr Riman, everybody started singing the Lebanese national anthem with great enthusiasm. Everyone on the bus rushed to the windows to take in the view. "Look how beautiful our land is," Jumana commented. Flags decorated the roads, Hizbullah and Lebanese flags. We went through the hills, and our first stop was Qal'at Shaqif (Beaufort Castle) in Arnoun. A Crusader castle protected by Palestinian fighters until 1982, it was taken over the Israeli army as a lookout point, since it stands on the highest spot in the area. The Israelis destroyed great parts of it, and built bunkers before they evacuated.

The bus driver announced that we were approaching Khiam prison. This is where the resistance fighters and supporters were detained and tortured, some for as long as 12 years. The singing stopped abruptly. We stepped out of the bus in silence. We were guided through the prison by one of the many former detainees who have made it their duty to tell visitors their stories, the torture they endured, who occupied which cell, and how they were freed. Our guide was detained for seven years. He told us about the prisoners' panic on the day of the Israeli evacuation. They did not know the news of liberation. They heard loud noises but did not know what was going on. They thought they were going to be killed by the SLA. After long minutes of tension, they discovered that the villagers were coming to liberate them, bearing kitchen utensils and farming tools. When the SLA prison guards fled to Israel as the army evacuated, they took the keys to the cells with them, so the villagers had to break down the doors.

The cells were small, dark, and humid. It was impossible to stay inside more than a few minutes because of the horrible odour of human waste that filled the prison. Two women were crying near a small cell: this is where their brother died. We went back to the bus slowly. Even the children were quiet for a while.

Along the road, different signs and banners had been raised to mark where fighters had fallen. They were inscribed with the names and the dates of their martyrdom. We took a rest in Rmeish, were we had ice cream and shisha. Tobacco was hung out to dry on lines, like clothes. The mountains and valleys were green. Only a few houses still stood there: for two decades, the whole area was occupied and many people had to flee their villages. Now, the farmers have returned to their land. Near the Litani River, one of them waved to me, raising his hand in a sign of victory. He was beaming, and explained that this year, the wheat crop was not burned by the troops.

We resumed our trip towards Kfar Kila. Twelve-year-old Alaa came and sat next to me. He told me he had never seen an Israeli, but he was happy never to hear Israeli planes over Beirut's skies again. The noise used to scare him. We arrived at Fatma's Gate, the last gate into Israel (now closed), with difficulty. There was a huge traffic jam. The area was crowded with sightseers. A recently released music cassette celebrating Hizbullah and the liberation, Wedding of Victory, was playing loudly, over and over. People were walking along the barbed wire marking the border. Clothes of traitors, Lahad's soldiers, clung to the wires. They had thrown them away as they crossed over into Israel a few weeks ago, since they were not allowed to carry much of anything with them. People had their photographs taken at the gate, where we could see Israeli soldiers hiding behind an elevated tower. Children ritually threw stones and eggs at them, and teenage Beiruti girls swore at them in English. The Israelis had proclaimed their side a closed military area so the hundreds of Palestinians who rushed from the West Bank and other parts of Palestine in the first few days of liberation were no longer able to meet family members at the gate. A Lebanese woman from Beirut, wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt, asked one of Hizbullah men guiding the tours why there were no Lebanese flags on the borderline, only Hizbullah and Amal flags decorating the passage. I was amazed to see him apologise with a smile. He assured her that they had been fighting for Lebanon all these years.

On our way back to Beirut, we passed UN carriers driving through the south to make sure that the Israeli withdrawal was complete. Everyone waved from the windows. The last stop was Qana, where we paid tribute to the victims of the massacre. In April 1996, Israeli planes bombed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians who had sought refuge at the UN headquarters there. They killed 150 people, including women and children. The site of the massacre was left untouched; only a glass partition has been erected to preserve one of the rooms. Blankets, a little girl's hair clip, a baby's pacifier: these and other items belonging to the dead are still strewn across the floor.

MEMORIES, AND BEIRUT TODAY: I wanted to see everything. Everything I knew as a child. I wanted to reattach my childhood, weave new images back into the missing years of my life. For 25 years I was unable to see childhood friends, the apartment we lived in, the front yard I played in with other neighbourhood children, where I learned to ride my bike, my school, picnic areas we enjoyed every Sunday. We left abruptly in 1975, planning to come back right after the end of the school year. The civil war lasted for years and we never went back. It took longer than anyone could have expected. We took nothing with us. I remember my late mother talking about the carpets, the china and the paintings. I missed my toys, books and photos. I entered school in Egypt with no proof of an earlier life.

THE AHLIEH SCHOOL, FOUNDED 1916: I stopped a taxi and asked him to take me to Wadi Abu Jamil. He smiled and pulled out into Beirut's crazy traffic of speeding cars and motorcycles driving in all directions. He tried to explain that he would take me to the Starco area, since the wadi does not exist anymore. I wanted to go to the Ahlieh School, I insisted, next to a pastry shop called Arlequin. When we arrived, I quickly saw what he meant. The whole area was totally devastated. There was no valley, no houses, no shops: just a huge bare area dotted with a few trees and some skeletons of what were once beautiful houses. Miraculously, my school had survived.

I asked for Ms Himmadeh, the headmistress. As I was guided in, students were cheering enthusiastically at the final basketball match in the playground. Tears filled my eyes uncontrollably. I went into the office where the highly respected former headmistress, the late Mrs Qurtas, had honoured me as one of the outstanding students. My grandmother was also honoured there, as she attended the same school between 1922 and 1926.

Clock wise from top: visitig the site of the Qana massacre; Khaim prison; children throwing stones at Israeli troops from behind Fatma's gate; UN tanks checking that Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon is complete; on the Mekdashi bus, travelling toward the liberated South ; a larger-than-life cardboard cutout of Khomeini on an Israeli tank

I was unable to explain why I was crying. My husband had to speak for me, and told the headmistress that I attended school there a few years ago. I asked to see the assembly hall and was astounded by how small it seemed. When I was a student I thought it was huge. I was terrified by the "masses" that attended our Christmas play, in which I had the role of an elf. I know now that it accommodates a hundred people at most.

My school lies above the downtown area, right in the battlefield, and everything was damaged. A big part of it now is being restored and renovated. The Solidaire Company, led by former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, has been collecting documents to guide the restoration of even the tiniest details. During the month of June, an upscale flea market (Souq Al-Barghout), temporarily takes over the completed streets. Since the legal documents needed for renting the apartments and shops are not ready yet, Solidaire rents the street-level shops by the month. Every evening, the area hosts a lively outdoor festival. Restaurants offer live music, refreshments, and shisha to the eager crowds of Beirutis. A single horse-drawn carriage takes people up and down the cobblestone streets. Families line up to get in the carriage and have their picture taken, reminiscing about the beautiful old days of Beirut.

THE MOUNTAIN: When I was growing up in Lebanon between 1969 and 1975, every Sunday we would go on a picnic. The ritual was interrupted only on rainy winter Sundays, when my father would drop my brother and me at the Embassy Cinema Theatre in Ashrafieh to watch a Tarzan film. In summer, Beirut was hot and very humid. The mountain was the best escape. My father's uncles spent all summer in Behamdoun and Shanay, and we were welcome to spend the weekends with them. Passing through Shiyyah, then Baabda, we reached the big church of Kahalleh. The church signified the change of weather. My father would tell us all to stick our hands out the window to bid Beirut's humidity farewell and welcome the mountain's cool, dry breeze.

That ritual stopped the last few times we went to visit Shanay. Right before the church, my father got very tense and ordered us to roll up the windows. One time, he even let his cousin, who was with us in the car, to drive instead of him. I never understood then why my father had suddenly become hostile to the cool wind. Many years later, I understood that the Phalangist headquarters were right after the church and, for the few months of civil war we witnessed, they had set up a checkpoint right there where they stopped people or harassed them, depending on their identity cards.

After the long years of war and destruction, the Lebanese do not discuss the civil war. They speak no more of green lines or of East and West Beirut; every area is called by its own name.

On Sunday 11 June 2000, our host drives me to Shanay. His brother, too, had a house there. We drive by the church, and I insist on getting out to take a photo. There are no checkpoints; only the huge number of beautiful summer houses all the way through Alleh and Behamdoun, totally destroyed and deserted during the war.

SABRA, SHATILA: We left in 1975. Many Palestinians were forced to evacuate in 1982. There are still 350,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, scattered around Beirut, the South and the North in around seven camps. I wanted to visit Sabra and Shatila, now merged into one camp. My mother used to volunteer at the camp library and sometimes I used to go along with her. In 1982, I lost two friends in the massacres carried out by the Phalangists and the Israelis

The stink of garbage marked the entrance to the camp, which is desperately poor and overcrowded. Piles and piles of it created a border. For Palestinians in Lebanese camps, it is almost impossible to obtain a visa to any country in the world with their refugee documents. Once they leave, they are denied a re-entry visa into Lebanon. They are not allowed to build or live outside the boundaries of the camp. They are prohibited from working at any of 120 jobs, including that of taxi driver, on Lebanese territory, even if they are educated. Many could not tell me what jobs they are actually allowed to perform.

Abu Rabi' accompanied me on my walk through the camp. He invited me to have a cup of coffee with his family in his one-room apartment, where 11 people live. "We lead a miserable life here, we survive on money sent to us from a relative who works in the Gulf. Some manage to work illegally as house servants or manual labourers for sympathetic Lebanese."

UNRWA, the UN Relief Works Agency, is short of funds for schools and health care programmes they used to finance. Israel refuses to allow the displaced back into Palestine, even in the areas under Palestinian Authority control, because they became refugees in 1948, and are therefore not covered by the negotiations.

"We cannot go on this way," says Abu Rabi'. "Things have to change."

FAREWELL, BEIRUT: My last day in Beirut, I spent with family. I visited my father's uncle; his children, with whom I played when we were children, are now married and have their own children. They all gathered at Uncle Mahmoud's apartment and the best Lebanese food was served. After lunch we all started singing the songs we used to sing on our Sunday picnics. They were the songs of Omar Ze'enny, a Lebanese satirist and singer of the '20s and the '30s.

My cousin Samar had a little surprise for me. She had kept a few things from our apartment before the landlords reclaimed it because the tenants (us) were missing. She gave me four boxes of slides that my father had taken of our family after my siblings and I were born. The most precious items, however, were two texts I had written when I was 11. One was titled "The Palestinian Cause." The other was "When I Become a Mother," and was annotated with my own mother's comments.

That evening, Ranwa, the Weekly's Lebanon correspondent, took me to Abu Eli, a small friendly bar. The owner, a war veteran and a communist, opened it when the war ended, mainly to provide a place for his friends to meet. The entrance is nondescript, and would not entice a stranger to come in. Inside, there is a bar and four tables; the lighting is dim, and the walls are covered with pictures of Che Guevara, Pablo Neruda, Kamal Junblat, Ziad Rahbani, Fayrouz, Marcel Khalifeh, Sheikh Imam and Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Abu Eli offers home-cooked food and a warm friendly atmosphere to regular customers.

I would miss my family, Beirut and Ranwa. I hate the distances that separate family and friends, but this visit to the city of my childhood has shown me that relationships transcend borders, of time as well as place.

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