Heroes are Ordinary People and War is Everywhere

"You are heroes!"

We were outside our family houses in southern Lebanon and walking away from a relative as she exclaimed this after us. My dad, my cousin and I looked at each other and then looked back at her.

"What?" I called.

"Well, you are here," she gesticulated, in barely accented English.

We smiled and headed upstairs, to my grandmother's house where my mom and aunts were waiting. We were decidedly not heroes, we agreed, walking up the stone steps I've walked up on visits here my whole life.

Towards the end of May, fighting broke out between the Lebanese Army and militants in the northern Palestinian refugee camp, Nahr al-Bared. The incidents continue into the present and the most current headline I can find online states, "At Least 14 Die in Lebanon Clash."

And three (or is it four?) bombs went off in or near Beirut in the few days before I got here--one in a prominent shopping district that I often go to, even. No one died.

And Hezbollah protesters have been camped in front of Rafik al-Hariri's mosque and grave for weeks, and that whole area of downtown, which I remember two years ago as being rather open and vibrant, has turned into a maze of barbed wire and quiet cafes where uniformed men insist on searching your purse every 100 meters or so.

Finally the other day, in celebration of some anniversary of something, the stretch of road that has been closed since Rafik al-Hariri was killed more than three years ago has been reopened, and a contingency of the Lebanese government is insisting that international findings regarding that murder be presented to an international judicial body, much to the chagrin of Syria and Hezbollah.

The situation here isn't good, everyone seems to agree. From drivers and shopkeepers, I've heard: bad, mixed, sad, hard.

Our first few nights in Lebanon this time around, there was no one out in Beirut at night. Walking from my aunt's apartment down to Hamra Street was like walking through a ghost town. We are talking about Beirut, a city, that doesn't sleep, or, at least, stays up very, very late, partying. And sidewalks of main streets are blocked off with yellow plastic tape which reads, "No Parking."

And driving to different parts of the country in the last week, we've seen a number of bridges destroyed by last year's war, reminders of that bizarre and brief atrocity. In places, wooden platforms have simply been placed over the damaged parts, or slipshod roads have been paved around them. Most dramatic was a bridge going over a substantial gorge that was missing half of it, bent metal rods extending from it's center and out into the air. We all looked out the windows of the car then and up, silent.

I'm having trouble getting at what I'm trying to say about all this.

There has been a little bird on my shoulder telling me that it's not a big deal, that I personally have nothing to be scared of and everything to learn from, that these things ebb and flow here.

I just went to buy a notebook from the bookstore under my aunt's building, and the lady who sold it to me struck up a conversation, asked how long I'd be here. I told her I was leaving in a few days. "Before the war comes," she responded. She was almost casual, but a curtain fell in her eyes, as she said it.