DISPATCHES FROM BEIRUT
Mary Nersessian, CTV.ca News

CTV.ca, Canada
Aug. 16, 2006

After more than a month of conflict between Israeli troops and
Hezbollah mlitants, the residents of Lebanon are trying to rebuild
their lives in the relative calm of a tenuous United Nations-brokered
ceasefire.

Following are first-hand accounts from those who remained in or near
the Lebanese capital throughout the month-long bombardment.

They share with CTV.ca their stories of life under siege and their
concerns for the future as the UN prepares to deploy thousands of
troops on the ground in Lebanon.

Marc J. Sirois, managing editor of the English-language Daily Star
newspaper

The conflict left Beirut largely deserted, although it was not what
he would call a "total ghost town," Sirois told CTV.ca.

Air strikes started every night at around 1 or 2 a.m. and kept up
for the next five to six hours, he recounted.

It was impossible to shut the windows, to block out some of the noise,
he said because they would shatter from the pressure, if kept closed.

"Like many other people, technically I am displaced," he told CTV.ca
in a telephone interview from Beirut days before the ceasefire came
into effect.

He was forced to sleep at a co-worker’s home because taxi drivers
refused to drive into his neighbourhood at night.

"I’m still staying with a coworker close to my office (which is located
in the east Beirut neighbourhood of Gemaizeh), largely because I
moved everything in and haven’t had a chance to move it back," he
told CTV.ca in the days following the introduction of the ceasefire.

He found the conflict stressful as the managing editor of a newspaper
because he has a responsibility to dozens of people, he said.

It was impossible for him to ignore the fact that he could be sending
his staff into danger when he sent them to cover a story.

He found it even harder, he said, to assign reporters who had evacuated
their homes in the southern suburbs to cover stories that could put
them at risk.

"I’ve tried to err on the side of caution, the last thing I want
to feel is that burden, I don’t think I could live with myself,"
he said in the days before the ceasefire was introduced.

"It’s a Catch-22, you want to cover the story, but by the same token
the danger is enormous," he said.

Though the ceasefire is in effect, life has not returned to normal,
he said.

"The blockade is still in place, there is a serious gasoline shortage,
and the power is only on for about 12 hours a day at best.

It’s better than it was last week, but serious problems remain —
and while the ceasefire has largely held thus far, it’s very fragile,"
he said.

Now it is time to rebuild Lebanon’s devastated infrastructure.

"Entire towns in the South have been levelled. Every single bridge or
overpass of any size (about 80 in all) in the country has been knocked
down or badly damaged. 100,000 (approximately) are homeless," he said.

"Hezbollah is more influential among its constituents than ever,
especially since the government has yet again failed to help them in
any way."

Despite the tremendous sense of dread weighing on his shoulders while
the conflict was ongoing, it wasn’t his time to leave the country
where he has made his home for most of the past decade.

"My children are safe, they’re in Canada," said the father of three.

His oldest 14-year-old daughter lives with her mother in Edmundston,
New Brunswick. His current wife and their twins, who will be five in
September have evacuated to Moncton.

"But I really have no interest in having them grow up without
a father. If I thought I was going to leave my children without a
father, I would leave."

Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian, Haigazian University president

With the ceasefire in effect, the university president is hopeful
that life will gradually return to some semblance of normality.

"Right now, many Lebanese from Beirut are in the mountains or outside
the country. Some areas were crowded only because dozens of thousands
of displaced people from the south or the southern suburbs of Beirut
had come closer to the center," he told CTV.ca from Beirut.

During the conflict, most businesses and stores closed their doors
to the Lebanese, he recounts.

"Note that I am not even referring to certain villages in the South,
where the ill have no access to medical care, and the hungry have
no access to food stores. These types of villages are increasing by
number every day," wrote the president, who is of Armenian origin,
in a letter to friends on July 19 which was posted on a website read
by the Armenian diaspora.

"Until last week, the Haigazian neighborhood and downtown Beirut were
busy with tourists, students, and businessmen. Now, the whole area
has turned into a relatively safe haven for displaced people from
Southern Beirut and South Lebanon."

Although supermarkets remained open during the air strike offensives,
their shelves "were being emptied day after day. The well-known brands
of things disappeared first. The shortage of fuel, gas, etc. was the
hardest," Haidostian told CTV.ca.

"It was deserted throughout. You would see more journalists than
anyone else."

Even now, after the tenuous ceasefire has taken hold, Haidostian has
encountered only an ice cream shop and a cafe with their doors open.

As the president of a university which suspended his fall semester
until further notice, he is unable to resume his normal routine.

"I am personally in my office every day with some others from the
Haigazian University staff. I have not done most of the normal things,
though. It has been crisis management, communicating with the outside
world, interpreting the situation, encouraging people," he said.

"Imagine to be a university president and be preoccupied with who
has reported to work and when, whether the four Haigazian University
cars have gas, whether our electricity generators have diesel fuel to
provide energy, whether faculty members are still in the country, etc."

Despite the ensuing chaos in the days and weeks after the conflict
began, he couldn’t fathom the thought of deserting the city or
his staff.

"It was very clear to me that people in my position cannot and should
not leave. I did not really struggle with the issue. First I am also
a pastor, even though in educational work now," he said.

"Then I am responsible for a significant institution in the community,
and in uncertain days more leadership is needed than in normal days."

In a letter to friends dated July 28, Haidostian remarks that the
war’s most dangerous consequences are being observed on the political
landscape.

"This war has created a shift of the Lebanese, Middle Eastern, and
generally Muslim political centre, wherever it existed, to radical
positions. The centrists have found their arguments to be obsolete
and unattractive, while the radicals have found their fundamentalist
reading of the ‘enemy’ and the ‘world’ to be both attractive and
justified," he writes.

Though the physical landscape of Beirut shows the marks of its
devastation, there are signs of hope.

"The good news of these days comes to us on the billboards of Beirut.

One local bank lists six different times when Lebanon was destroyed
in the past 30 years and says, ‘Those of us who have built before,
will build again!’ Another bank announcement says, ‘Surely the clouds
will give way to sunshine!’" Haidostian writes on August 7.

For his part, Haidostian is cautiously optimistic that the UN-brokered
ceasefire will last.

"It is not the best resolution I would have wanted to see. It is better
than nothing. At least it stopped the bombs as most people would say,
but not much more," he tells CTV.ca.

Nabil Faris, land developer

The dust has settled but unanswered questions linger in the air,
Faris tells CTV.ca in a telephone interview.

"There is some sort of hidden feeling — where are we heading to? Is
this really peace?" said Faris, from the Aley district of Mount
Lebanon, which overlooks the city of Beirut.

"Everything has been affected, our lifestyle, our work, our family
ties. I had to send my family back to Canada around three weeks ago,"
he said.

Faris, who once lived in Vancouver, returned to Lebanon in 1996 to
launch a land development company.

Whether he will summon his family to return will depend on the
developments in the coming weeks, he said.

Signs of civil unrest within the country have begun to emerge.

"Inside Lebanon, people have become more attached to what they believe
is called resistance, or against occupation, and it seems that neither
the Americans nor the Israelis knew how the handle the situation,"
he said.

In the meantime, the focus is on rebuilding homes and repairing
infrastructure.

"The major problem is with the infrastructure where Israelis tended
to hit," he says, adding that the bridges were targeted.

Faris recounts a joke that has been making the rounds in Lebanon:
"Anybody that has been to a dentist shouldn’t open his mouth when he
laughs because the Israelis might hit those bridges."

On a more sombre note, however, Faris says what appeared to be a road
toward democracy before the war began has now been derailed.

"What has been done to us lately is something far from anything that
can be called democratic or even humane," he said.

/CTVNews/20060816/lebanon_voices_060816/20060816/

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress