SUNDAY: RELIGION CAN'T HOLD ME

One of the hardest things for me to understand and accept as a journalist reporting on the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon was its sharp contradictions. I found it really curious that I could return to my four star hotel, The Commodore, in the centre of Beirut after having spent the day amongst the ruins of what used to be people’s lives, bodies, homes which had been shelled or bombarded the night before. For some bizarre reason I went in there with an expectation that normal life as I understood it would stop, and everyone would be focused on the war itself. But Beirut was not like that.

It was my first time

War unlike natural disasters such as floods, Tsunamis and earth quakes which can be indiscriminate, is well thought out it's planned. People in Beirut who lived in the “safe” zones, would go about life as if there was no war at all happening. Workers went to work, and businesses opened, the hotel lobby played beautiful music. I took my clothes to the laundromat. Life seemed to continue with a determined vengeance.

Stories were not hard to find.

Israeli helicopters would circle overhead almost daily throwing pamphlets warning people to evacuate the next areas targeted for bombing which included curfews which often started around 4pm in the afternoon. Aljazeera would often be the first on any scene. Its reporters had no filter, they followed the wounded everywhere into hospital wards, interviewing them as they were about to be operated. CNN’s Jim Clancy strolled casually out to do a live crossing somewhere not too far from the hotel surrounded by a production crew of five people. The elders were weary of war but seemed to accept it as a normality and continued to smoke their pipes on pavements, young people like Wael our fixer wanted desperately to do something to change, protest, and fight. But they were also very angry with foreign journalist like me who did not have encyclopaedic knowledge of the entire history of Lebanon.

But I digress.

I was both inspired and surprised by the Lebanese stoicism. Many families who’d lost relatives spoke of them as martyrs, others said they were also ready and willing to die. It seemed with each shelling or bombing religious belief in Allah – the almighty’s will was re-enforced. Inshallah – God willing. But what if it was not God’s will for them to die? What if it was a humans’ will, what if it was a decision made by a living human being, a person, to attack and kill? People fly the machines, people carry the guns, someone, somewhere pulls the trigger yet another one higher up makes the Order. But even then, as I also trusted in God for protection, I understood that in times of war you need to believe in something. One does need to have a way of explaining why human beings would willingly make a decision to hurt another on purpose, repeatedly over and over again regardless of the outcome. Why people would plan to kill you, to destroy your home and make life absolutely miserable for you. They must be possessed by some evil. A devil must exist. Nobody in their right mind would choose war, right?

Intimacy can also mean, in to me see.

I never realized just how hard it was for me to be emotionally intimate with people. I mean my younger sister would repeatedly tell me that I have never opened up to anyone especially the ones I was romantically involved with after yet another failed relationship went down the drain. “You’ve never let anyone in” she would say to my loud protests because I never understood what she meant. I thought I was open enough, maybe even too open as my mom would say. But she could see into me. I always find a story to mask my real feelings, to not say what I want to say to you. I always try to hide behind a story – because a story is safer, with a story I won’t risk my heart. I tell myself a story. I tell you a story about the war in Lebanon because I don’t want you to see into me. Many, many wars have happened since the war in Lebanon. Millions and millions of people have been killed and displaced. The media continues to report, people continue to take pictures on their smart mobile phones sharing them on Instagram, twitter and Facebook. We’ve all somehow continued to live, inshallah. Our hearts are still beating. In July of 2006 I witnessed something incredible. But nothing as poignant as that story I often tell of the man we ‘found” walking along a deserted street on his own. But this old man was not always alone, in fact just a few hours ago, he told us, he had been partaking in a daily ritual, drinking coffee on the balcony with his entire family when shelling happened. Killing all of them. Somehow he was the only survivor. All of his children, his grandchildren, his wife, in laws, were now dead. He said in an interview he was prepared to join Hezbollah fighters now. He’d found no reason to join their cause before. I cried for the first time. It all happened in a blink of an eye. I called my father twice during that trip, first as we were driving through Syria to Lebanon then again when shelling was so close to where I lived that I could feel the building I was to sleep in that night shaking from its foundations. I wanted him to know that I was thinking of my family. That I loved them.

War can make one fearless.

Because that has always been my fear you see, my fear is not that you will find some deep dark secret in my heart. NO. My greatest fear is actually the opposite, that if I let you in, and let you see just how deep my love is for you, just how much my heart is full, brimming, overflowing and running over with love for you, if you could actually see how much I love you, how much I care, how much I am willing to do and be just about anything for you, you could just as easily, destroy me. Shell me. If you could truly understand for a moment that my love for you knows no bounds, that the ocean is not wide enough nor deep enough. If you could get a glimpse into my heart of hearts and understand that there is nothing in this world, nothing you could do which could diminish or dent my love for you. I fear that you will use this against me. Take advantage of me. Ask me to do things you could never ask another. That’s my greatest fear. Because I am not interested in becoming a martyr nor a slave to any cause nor any religion. Loving you is enough. I practice my religion with every single beat of my heart. Which is how I know that religion simply can’t hold me, like you do.

#conflict #love