Elections In Beirut

Today was the first day of the parliamentary elections. Elections for the 128 seats take place over four consecutive Sundays, the first one being today in Beirut. It is pretty obvious who is going to win in Beirut, as this is Hariri’s town. Saad, his son, will get his seat. I did not cover the elections, it doesn’t get interesting until the third week, when it will be know if he can gather the required seats (80, I believe) to make it to prime-minister ship. I think he can make it.
We, as you can see, spent it at the Riviera Beach. This is Hana in the pool, with her floaters.

Mom in Action

Hana & SIetske

Adrian dives

Obi, Adrian and Hana in the pool

Artikel in Trouw

Dit is het verhaal dat ik maakte voor Trouw afgelopen zondag toen ik in Damascus zat. Ik had de link voor trouw (www.trouw.nl) kunnen plakken, maar dit is een stuk waarvoor je een gebruikersnaam nodig hebt, dus als je geen lid van trouw bent, kun je er ook niet inkomen. Vandaar dit keer het hele stuk.


Wereld, vrijdag 27 mei 2005

Oppositie wordt tot zwijgen gebracht met gratis Mercedes
door Sietske Galama

Sinds de moord op de anti-Syrische politicus Tarik Hariri in Libanon in februari, staat buurland Syrië onder grote druk. Even leek het politieke klimaat wat vrijer te worden, maar schijn bedriegt.

,,Hervormingen? Dat werd ons vijf jaar geleden al beloofd'', zegt de schrijver Ammar Abdoelhamid (37), een van de meest uitgesproken critici in Syrië. Hij spuit zijn kritiek vooral op zijn Engelstalige weblog. ,,Dit land stuurt regelrecht af op een catastrofe. We worden door incompetente idioten bestuurd. Maar Syriërs lezen de kranten, kijken tv, en we zien hoe men in het buitenland leeft.''

Abdoelhamid denkt dat het partijcongres van de regerende Baath-partij volgende maand het einde zal inluiden voor president Basjar Al-Assad. ,,De zogenaamde hervormingen die dan worden aangekondigd zullen geen echte hervormingen blijken te zijn.''
Hij is niet bang opgepakt te worden. ,,Ik ben al een paar keer op het matje geroepen. Toen moest ik de politie uitleggen wat ik nou precies bedoelde en wilde. Ze kennen alleen werk in het Arabisch.''

,,Iedereen wil veranderingen'', meent de Amerikaanse professor Josh Landis, Midden-Oostendeskundige die een jaar in Damascus woont. ,,Dat wordt sinds kort ook openlijk gezegd. Kritiek op de regering is, sinds de dood van Hariri, heel gewoon. Men is minder bang om te zeggen waar het op staat.''

In Syrië kun je nog steeds voor het minste opgepakt worden, en voor jaren verdwijnen. Dat men minder bang is geworden, komt volgens Landis door de Libanezen. ,,In Libanon gingen de media tekeer tegen de Syriërs: Basjar al-Assad werd een moordenaar genoemd, een mafioso; de regering een stelletje corrupte imbecielen en dieven. De Syriërs wisten niet wat ze overkwam. Zulke taal over hun president hadden de Syriërs nog nooit gehoord. Sindsdien veroorlooft de pers hier zich ook veel meer.''

Basjar is niet bang voor de oppositie, meent Landis. ,,Die is niet georganiseerd. Hij laat oppositieleden oppakken, zet ze een paar dagen onder druk -heel netjes, geen martelingen meer- en laat ze dan weer gaan. Zo iemand is dan wel weer even stil.''
Volgens Landis staan mensen als Ammar Abdoelhammid in hun eentje. Het regime weet dat de doorsnee-Syriër nog nooit achter een computer heeft gezeten, laat staan dat ze Engelse webpagina's op het internet lezen. De oppositie is verbrokkeld, zegt hij, die krijgt nog geen vijfhonderd man bij elkaar. ,,Zo'n nationalistische beweging als die je in Libanon zag, hoef je in Syrië voorlopig niet te verwachten.''

Basjar heeft ook een groot deel van de oppositie gewoon afgekocht. Hij gaf ze een partij-bureau, een huis, een mooie zwarte Mercedes -en zo zijn er veel opposanten die geen bedreiging meer vormen. Mensenrechtenactivisten doen dat blijkbaar wel: zij werden de afgelopen week massaal van hun bed gelicht.

Wil Basjar hervormen? Volgens Landis is het niet een kwestie van willen, maar van kunnen. Het systeem in Syrië zakt in elkaar als je grootscheepse hervormingen invoert. Hij voorspelt dan ook dat Basjar hier en daar een beetje sleutelt. Hij zal bijvoorbeeld de rond vijfhonderd politieke gevangenen vrijlaten: iedereen weer even blij. ,,Hij heeft ook net de invoerbelasting op auto's verlaagd; dus nu is iedereen bezig een auto te kopen. Dat houdt ze weer een paar maanden rustig.''

Abdoelhammid meent dat het volk dat niet zal accepteren, Landis denkt van wel. ,,Syriërs willen veranderingen. Maar ze willen ook stabiliteit. Iedereen heeft gezien wat er in Irak is gebeurd'', meent Landis. ,,Dus Basjar mag blijven, maar veranderingen moeten plaatsvinden.'' Dat dat niet samengaat, ontgaat de Syriërs vooralsnog.

En de Amerikanen? ,,Wat kunnen ze doen? Binnenvallen, zoals in Irak? Die les hebben hebben ze wel geleerd'', denkt Landis. ,,De verandering zal van binnenuit moeten komen. Een staatsgreep is een mogelijkheid, maar ik zie dat niet gebeuren.'' Hij verwacht dat Basjar in het zadel blijft. ,,De komende vijf jaar zeker.''
Copyright: Galema, Sietske

Adrian's Outdoor Education Day in the mountains

Today we had Outdoor Education. I’m not quite sure what the objectives of the program are, other than that we take the kids outdoors and teach them things. We’ve done camping this year in the Beqaa Valley, visited a bird reserve, we went skiing for a week, have done some glass blowing recently, visited ruins in Byblos (yesterday actually), and today was Outdoor Games. Basically, the kids are divided in 8 groups, and they have to run a sort of obstacle course. Some are easy games, where they need teamwork in order to succeed. Others involve physical work. Adrian did archery (and he learned why the V-sign symbolizes victory. In the Middle Ages, next to the knights, archers were your main combatants. So if you had lost the battle, and subsequently be caught by the enemy, they would cut of you index and middle finger, because then you couldn’t screw your bow to the sticking point anymore. So if you had won the battle, that signaled victory, and you showed that by showing that you still had your arching fingers, he climbed a wall, had to cross several rope type of games, and the day ended with swimming. Most of the kids fell asleep on the bus back to school. We still have a cave to go (Jeita; one of the biggest in the world), and then there is of course the beach trip, which signals the end of the year, but that one isn’t considered educational.

Hana & Adrian going to school. At the parking lot, 7:30 A.M.

And this is then the famous Crusader Castle. 

Adrian with his class and Mr. Pellerin, his teacher. 

Adrian at the Byblos port 

Byblos

Had a fieldtrip today to Byblos. Seems like the only thing we do these days is going on fieldtrips. Tomorrow we are going to a forest to teach the children climbing and rappelling or abseilen. I personally like the verb ‘klettern’, but that would be a Dutch joke. And sometime next week we have to visit a cave as well. Today we went to Byblos, a site already inhabited for a good 5,000 years, or even more. Place where the alphabet was invented apparently. It has Neolithic ruins, Persian and Assyrian stuff (although I could not locate that), an obelisk temple, a Roman nymphaeum, a Roman colonnade, Egyptian temple, Phoenician burial grounds, and the most impressive, a crusader castle from somewhere around 1140 AD. Anyway, interesting enough, so we spent the day there. It’s beautiful, right on the sea, and you can pretty much walk anywhere.

On the way back to Beirut; fog in the montains.

A passport photographer. You should zoom in on the portraits; definitely 60's!

This is the ladies section; scarves at the bottom, bras on top.

These are two spice & herb merchants. Each souq sells a specific type of produce. So this is the spice market. They sell like 5 different types of 'zaatar' (thyme), 9 different sorts of pepper etc.

The nicest part of Damascus is the old market (souq). They have all these little shops of 2 square meters that sell the strangest stuff. This one sold 'mou lazam', which means 'unnecessary' in Arabic. Looked like witchcraft to me. Dried lizzards and all.

Damascus

Damascus was hot, dry, dusty and smoggy. Whenever I get back from Damascus, I've got a headache. Beirut and Damascus are worlds apart. Beirut is colorful, fresh, modern. Damascus is old, and grayish, poor. But some people love it there; oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. One of these people is Josh Landis. I had an interview with him about the future of Basjaar el-Assad ( http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/). Josh predicts Basjaar is going to ride the storm, and will make it at least until 2007. A friend of his, a Syrian poet and a very vocal critic of Basjaar, predicts that this guy is going down, and going down hard. He can't say why, not before June, when this much-discussed Baath Party Congress is taking place. He's got a very critical blog http://amarji.blogspot.com/), but it seems that since the Hariri murder in February, and the US condemnation, the government in Damascus has been very lenient towards opposing voices in the country. A really funny one, although you'd have to be very much aware of the local situation otherwise you don't understand half of what he is saying, is a blog by a guy named Karfan. He is absolutely brutal when it comes to the Assad clan, and leaders in Syria. He does not publish under his own name, and I wouldn't either if I were him. ( http://syriaexposed.blogspot.com/).Ammar doesn't worry about this, even though the Mougabarat (secret police) has pulled him in for interrogation. He said that he noticed that they only knew about the stuff that has been published in Arabic, and since his blog(s) are in English, he doesn't think anything will happen. I'll write the story today, it should be published in Trouw sometime this week.

Anyway, the work in Damascus was good. Syrians do not like chaos. That's why Landis thinks Basjaar is going to stay. Syrians are mortified that the same thing as in Iraq might happen to them. They could not stand that mess! If you want to cross busy streets, you can only do this at certain points, such as the corners. And in order to make sure you do not break that rule, they've placed chest high fences in those areas where they think people might cross anyways even though it's not at the corner of the street. So you have to walk all the way to the end of the street, cross, and walk back on the other side if you want to visit a shop you see on the other side. That?s Syria for you.
The place is also incredibly cheap. A ride through town in a cab will cost you $2 at the most (but you have to take the continuously begging cab driver for granted). If you take a mini-van, it?ll cost only 25 Syrian liras, which is like 50 cents or even less. Sandwiches go for 50 cents, clothes cost (If you do not mind wearing fashion from the 80?s) next to nothing. $2 a T-shirt and such.

The ride from Beirut to Damascus is a mere $10 with the shared cab system. Not bad, although you usually get to share your cab with five chain smokers (+ driver. Yes, 6 people do fit in a family car for a 3 hour drive). On the way back I got stuck with a fervent Hezbollah fan. After half an hour I couldn't stand his fucked-up peasant rhetoric anymore, and we insulted each other politely the rest of the way. As a real Hezbollah, you are not allowed to listen to singing, be it male or female voices. The only things allowed are speeches, Koran prayers, or the Hezbollah repertoire, which is some sort of men's choir that belch out marching type of war songs about how they will squash the Jews, march to Jerusalem and how god is with them. Walid said that "that's what you get if you want to be cheap and not rent a whole cab for yourself." A whole cab is $50, but then you get the whole vehicle for yourself, and you don't have to spend your time with assholes like these. But more often than not, these cab rides are great fun, because usually the people you share the cab with have all these funny life stories. I?ve got a few cab experiences in story form, maybe I'll publish them here one day.

Glass Ornaments at the Glass Factory 

The glass blower 

Glass Factory

Yesterday I went on a fieldtrip with school. We visited a glassblowing factory in Sarafand. Factory is too much of a word; it’s basically a shed with a couple of guys who run one little furnace 24 hours a day, and they do that for a whole week, and then one week rest. So once the oven gets going, they go in 4 shifts of 8 hours each. And they blow glasses, pitchers, bubbles and all kinds of artisanat work. They do good business; they sell to all the souvenir and artisanat shops in Lebanon. It’s pretty cheap; 3,000 pounds for a wineglass, 2,000 for a water glass, 6,000 for a pitcher etc. $1 = $1,500 Lebanese pounds, so you have a nice glass for $2. It’s hand blown, so none of the glasses are the same. Some are a little lob-sided, which shows it’s handiwork, but it’s very nice.

Glassblowing is a tradition over here, dating back to the Phoenicians (who invented glass blowing but not glass making). The kids got to blow their own bubble, which got them immensely excited because they thought they could take them home, but the glassblower said they needed four hours to cool off, and besides, they had all blown too hard, so the bubbles were too thin and would burst once you touched them. Talking about ‘bursting a bubble’.

We also visited a pre-historic cave, inhabited by Cro-Magnon some 55,000 years ago. They found stone tools when they excavated the cave; my students found garbage and shit. But they were pretty excited about the sheep bones that were laying all over the place. “Look Miss, a fossil!” Around it are some graves hewn into the rock, with little benches inside.

Still preparing fro my Syrian bloggers story; am going there on Sunday. Since March 2005 (I’ve checked it, about 75% of Syrian bloggers started in March), when Bush started to come down on Assad and company, Syrian blogs have been mushrooming like crazy. I think it indicates that they finally feel they can criticize, or at least speak up against the current regime. If you ask me, Assad’s days are numbered. I think he knows that too, or at least his inner circle, because I heard his family and cronies are shifting funds to banks abroad.

Fumigate the Buggers II

"Fumigate the Buggers!"

This morning I was just in time.

At 6:30 A.M. the fumigators passed by the road up ahead.

I had to take it from far, so it looks a little puny.

It is a little vehicle, that passes by and spread smoke.

To do what? We do not know. Only in summer.

Crash Barriers in Lebanon 

Crash Barriers in Lebanon

I was in the South today, Sarafand to be exactly – the ancient Sarepta of Phoenician times - to see a glassblower, and while I drove back to Beirut, I decided to shoot some pictures of our national crash barrier system on the side of the road. The Lebanese have understood it well; it is a crash barrier, and therefore you should crash into it, which they do frequently and vigorously. It’s all in a name. Just like a traffic police causes traffic. So this is a stretch of road right between Sidon and Beirut, about 37 kilometers long. I only took picture of the really serious crashes, because if I would have taken shots off all the ‘hit and runs’, I would have filled my 512 MB card in no time. I gave up after ten minutes, there were just too many of them. Lebanese are very assertive drivers. There are very few accidents (no, you don’t say!), because everybody expects everybody else to screw up, so you look out for yourself and the other guys. But when they crash, it is always lethal. The crashes I have seen, transformed Mercedes sedans into little sardine cans, broke entire vehicles in two, sheered the entire top of and made the steering column end up in the trunk. People like car pulling here, not for any ecological reason but for reasons of finance, so when a car crashes, you read in the paper; The occupants of vehicle B (Mohammad S, Fatimah R., Saleh B,. Marwan B., Elham S., Mustafa L., Khaled R. and Salwah R.) died instantly.

Sunday I have to drive to Damascus for a coupe of interviews. On the way from Beirut to Damascus there are no carsh barriers like these; too expensive. There they use concrete barriers. Not as bouncy, cheaper, and easier to maintain.

Sunday Morning in Beirut

Hana and Adrian at the computer. She likes watching him play pinball.

The bottom picture is the breakfast table this morning, Sunday, at 9:00. Adrian had two friends over for a sleep-over; Michael and Rand. They decided to all sleep together on the carpet. (Adrian has a fuzzy carpet in his room).

Fumigate the Buggers!

I was at work today, standing in front of the school building at 5:00, waiting for Adrian to get out of judo class, when a vile little car, a little pick up truck, came around the corner. In the trunk stood some kind of generator, or exhaust pipe, that emitted an incredible dense cloud of thick, white smoke. So as this car, with this incredible noisy apparatus in the trunk slowly drove by, it literally fumigated the entire street. There were a group of kids standing in front of the high school building, and they were all chased off the street. Coughing and retching they all ran back into the building. The guards were upset, because after all these attacks, no car are allowed into the streets unless they have some business at the school. But they had to run for the smoke as well. And what was it all about? This is how the Municipality of Beirut gets rid of its bugs during summer. Go figure. The guards said it was to kill the mosquitos, but I do not see what harm mosquitos can do, so maybe it is to get rid of the rodents or the cockroaches or something. Whatever it was, it got rid of us too. Wonder what is in this disinfectant? I can just imagine this happening in Holland. There’d be parliementary questions about it. Here we just spray the streets. Fumigate the buggers!
And I am trying ot get my links right, but haven’t figured out how yet.

Adrian doing his homework 

Puling up his pants, running around with an opponents' tag. 

Adrian had Fieldday (Sportdag) today at his school. Here he is in a game called 'Robbersnest', where they have to capture the flag of the opponent, and tackle any opponent entering their territory.  

Hana in the hallway, between the flowers from Syria. Will plant them as soon as my back allows it. 

Adrian's Poem

For lack of anything interesting, I post Adrian’s senses Poem. It was like pulling teeth, but he finally did it, with the help of a rhyming dictionary.

Senses
Adrian 5D

My eyes are brown
And they can see
They can spot anything
Small like a flea

My nose is like a triangle
Its in the middle of my face
My nose can smell
And food it can trace.

My ears are soft
Are made to hear.
I have two on my head.
They are tuned nice and clear.

My tongue is long
And it is very pink
It is in my mouth
Which can drink.

I also have fingers
I have 10 of those
They can pick up things
And also Oreos.

The roses I bought in the Beqaa. The saleman at the fourth nursery told us that we had been screwed by the first nursery. "You paid more money for roses that come from Syrian than I ask my Italian roses." Well, I figured that with Syrian roses, you rest assured that they will last. At least 30 years.  

Beqaa Valley and General Aoun

We went to the Beqaa Valley today (about 50 kilometers from Beirut) to buy plants for the garden (balcony). Certain things are cheaper in the Beqaa than in Beirut. Drugs is one thing, plants are another. Somehow just about anything grows over there. They have these nurseries on both sides of the road, all the way to the border with Syria. We bought a conifer, some roses, a jasmine and a gardenia from one guy. It’s quite a feat to buy things, because here are two foreign looking girls, talking a very poor Arabic, conversing in French. The dollar signs are in our eyes, as far as these guys is concerned. So we have to wait, walk a round the place a little, wait till a Lebanese enters, wait till (s)he asks for a price, listen in, and then a little later we ask for the price of the same plant, just to make sure they’re not screwing us. Well, we did this, but afterwards, he gave us two white roses (plants) as a present. We knew. we had been had when he did that. Which turned out to be true down the road, when another guys priced everything at about half the price as we had bought it. “And you see, you bought Syrian trees, mine are from abroad,” he said. Syria does not seem to be abroad, and as far as I could see, the conifers looked just the same. “Noooo, madam, this one is from Italy.” He had said that about the roses as well, that they were from Holland. So here I am from Holland, in Lebanon, buying trees from Syria.

On our way back we got stuck in traffic, because general Aoun, after 12 years of absence, is coming back tonight, and giving a speech at Martyr’s Square. Orange seems to be his color, the Dutch queen would have been jealous at the mass of orange T-shirts, hats and scarves. I’ll be going out later, join the manifestation and see what he’s got to say. The Christians are pretty excited about this guy. So excited, they blew up something in Jounieh (a Christian town above Beirut) last night. Of course the police blocked all the roads, so I couldn’t even get to West-Beirut anymore, which is where my house is. The police has the tendency to block roads at the end of a road, never at the beginning. So you drive all the way into this road, and just there where you want to get onto another road, they block the street. So now you have to drive backwards the whole kilometer, as there is no place to turn, and all the other 36 cars behind you will start honking, as they do not understand why you would be going backwards on a one way street, just as they are trying to get to the end of it. They do not know it is blocked either, so confusion and honking and yelling and on and on. Everyone giving you advice as to how and why and where you should drive. “Not very well though of, hey, to block it here at the end,” I told the police man. “Mam, I am not here to think, I am here to execute orders.”

I had to pick up Adrian from a birthday party at four. I finally reached there at 5 o'clock.

And here you see them both. I bought the other one to keep the first one company. They've been around now for some three years now. They eat all kinds of nuts, corn, fresh almonds and the likes.They attract all kinds of birds that eat the food they throw out of their cage. 

While I'm at it, might as well post a picture of one of my squirrels. Got one from an Iranian family that asked if we could take care of it while they went on a holiday, and they never came back . Turned out they had moved. Good way of getting rid of your pets over the holidays. 

My Syrian roses. It's still a little empty, will plant more once I can stand straight up again and get in and out of the car. 

My Back

For months now, or more accurate, a couple of years now, I knew I had to change the soil in the planter on the balcony, because it was too ‘saline’ (as I was told is the accurate terminology). Now it’s a planter of 8.6 x 0.55 x 0.50, which is about 2.5 cubic meter of soil. I know from previous gardening experiences that once you are done with gardening, you are walking bent over for the next week due to serious back pain. So this year I decided – just when the Syrians leave the country, so it’s difficult to hire hands – to have it done by someone else, in order to avoid this back pain. All I had to do is supervise. In a weird twist of fate however, the gods decided to punish me for my supervisory role in this gardening expedition, and decided to give me back pain anyway. I have had to roll in and out of the bed for the past three days. I am walking around the house as if I am 12 months pregnant, Walid has to tie my shoelaces, I cannot get my underwear on, and I survive thanks to the pharmaceutical industries. Last night I was seeing stars. Bruphen 400 is good, but it seems there's Bruphen 800 on the market as well.
I would love to show the lovely red roses that are in my ‘new’ planter, red roses from Syria, cost only $10 a piece, and quite long, but I have to get out and make a picture, and my entire right arm is numb due to this back pain, so the picture will have to come later.
My brother has started a log as well (http://www.galama.net/b2evolution/blogs/index.php?blog=2).

Hana, Yasmine, Arian, Obi, Sarah-Lynne, Joseph and Boeff (the dog) in fron of their treasures; goat skulls and ram horns.

The kids poking in a rock cistern. Beautiful landscape. Somwehere on the road between Bois de Boulongne and Hamana.

Queen's Day

Koninginnedag 2005.

Hana is getting a flower on her cheeck from a 'Dutch Farm girl'. (Hana was not in her best mood, as you can see)