The Creation of Lebanon 2.0, 2019
By: Lorcan Owens
Tags: Revolution, Lebanese Politics, Lebanon, Middle East

I first visited Lebanon in 2015, when I was working in Kuwait. I had heard so much about it from Lebanese colleagues and friends that I decided I had to see it for myself. The only direct experience of Lebanese culture I had encountered had been at a Maronite mass and the sense of history and identity intrigued me. I knew it was comparatively liberal country compared to Kuwait (which wasn’t hard). I knew it had a long history of sectarianism and conflict, similar to Northern Ireland. I knew there were many Irish Peace Keepers present there from hearing about it on the news at home. But in terms of specifics and its very complex history, I arrived in Lebanon that March with an open mind and ready to suss it out for myself.

My immediate impressions at the airport were that the place was a bit dodgy. ‘You want hashish, beautiful Lebanese ladies?’, the taxi driver asked me at the airport. It turned out that he had a lot of contacts. I had arrived with no hotel booked (I hadn’t even heard of Airbnb in 2015). He brought me to a decent one in Hamra, then there were intense discussions about what I’d be charged, what cut he would take for bringing me here. It all seemed… dodgy.

I didn’t do much that weekend. I walked around Beirut, I tried to learn as much about the history of the city as possible and I got drunk. I returned to Kuwait annoyed that I hadn’t planned the weekend properly and vowed to return.

Return I did in May 2015 and this was when I really got a sense of its history and vibrant culture. I travelled to Wadi Qadisha, the Holy Valley, dotted with Maronite monasteries, ancient villages with red rooftops and mountains still faintly capped with snow. My tour guide was Druze, a term I had never heard of. He explained that his religion was largely unknown to him, that only the sheikhs of his faith had true knowledge of their beliefs. ‘We drink but we don’t eat pork, we’ve always lived here, we live for Lebanon. The Druze in Syria, they’d die for Syria. Even in Israel, they are Arab but the Druze of Israel, they love Israel.’ I was perplexed.

However, it was his take on Lebanese politics that really opened my mind to the complexities of this Levantine nation on the Eastern Mediterranean. ‘In Lebanon, we need dictator. One man to say ‘do this’ or ‘do that’. Not if he’s Shia, or Sunnah, or Christian — no. This is how it is here and we have war, our children leave, even now we have no war, but we have Cold War in parliament’.

I was astounded by his blunt honesty. It was refreshing to hear someone speak so freely about political issues, something which didn’t happen in the Gulf. Coming as a bored expat from Kuwait, I sensed Lebanon had freedoms unheard of in the Arab World, a parliament, a European-style nightlife, a huge media industry. It was more akin to other Mediterranean countries than the Arab World. But then I spoke to ordinary Lebanese people, and I began to understand: The war may have ended in 1990 but its legacy was evident in everyday life. Why was the water unsafe to drink in Beirut? Why was there rubbish starting to pile up on the streets? How come all of the young people I spoke to aspired to get another passport as soon as possible? Why were suburbs and villages brandished with posters of invariably old men with a cross, Islamic quote or religious icon next to them?

I met a woman selling religious souvenirs in the mountains whose son was in Australia. She spoke about how much she missed him, how she prayed to Mother Mary for his happiness. She wanted him to come home but her head told her he was better off abroad. As an Irishman, with a recession still in full swing at home, it felt like I could be having this conversation at home with an Irish woman whose children had emigrated, as I myself was doing. ‘We have politicians and they do nothing, they still live in the war’. I was starting to join the dots.