February 20, 2008

On Hezbollah, Bees & Colony Collapse Disorder

Hubbie came home yesterday with an invitation for a book presentation at the American University of Beirut by Rami Ollaik.
Rami Ollaik will be signing his book ‘The Route of Bees’, the invitation read.

He had ‘picked’ it up somewhere, hubbie said.
Now he is not the least interested in bees, books and/or political lectures, and most definitely not when these take place after 18:00. So I was kind of surprised why he would actually take the invitation home, instead of throwing it in the bin right away.
Well, the guy used to be in Hezbollah, and now he’s into bees. I thought that might interest you.”
My interest was tweaked indeed.

AUB College Hall at night

I have a thing for bees. Mighty small insects, yet without bees, there wouldn’t be much food on this planet for us. A couple of months ago there was this scare that a mysterious disease was creating havoc in the world’s bee population. It even got a name; ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ CCD). Entire colonies disappeared from the face of the Earth within a matter of weeks. We know now that there is a probable link between CCD and (I am not making this up) Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV). This will undoubtedly add to the conspiracy theories this is already rife with.

Some people have this dream to make a trip around the world. My dream is to one day have a bee colony.

A bee got me good this summer. Stung me right under my ‘buttocks’ (think Forrest Gump). The right buttock, of considerable size to begin with, according to my son, swelled to almost alien proportions, this to great hilarity of my children. My daughter would point out to total strangers - while lifting my skirt to make her point - that ‘my mom got bitten in the butt by a bee.’ Thank god this took place in France, where the population does not speak my daughter’s kind of English, and where lifted skirts do not cause much of an uproar anyway.

AUB College Hall at night

How would I know that the man in question, Rami Ollaik’, was an ex-Hezbollah member? Because with the invitation (which was in English, by the way), came a four page biography of him (in English), detailing his life, and his long journey through the Party of God and back to AUB, this time as a non-Hezbollah member. I am sure that there was a point somewhere, but it was lost on me.

The Hebzollahs (actual members of the party, not supporters) I know are diehard members. ‘Lifers’, so to speak. I had not yet heard of one who identifies himself as someone who has actually ‘left’ the party because of disagreement with the party line. Those that will tell you they were once ‘big shots’ with the party, but left, are usually the Hezbollah ‘wannabees’, that never got accepted within the inner circles due to their perceived oddity by the party.
But this man, currently an instructor at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, is the ‘real deal’. I checked around, and he was indeed for years heavily involved in Hezbollah, and organized the party within AUB.

So to see a ‘reformed’ Hezbollah therefore, giving a talk about bees, is something of a double whammy. All of this sounds mighty interesting of course, and you may wonder what he had to say.

Well, I don’t know.
I was quite excited, and I did go tonight. But although the invitation to the American University, and the enclosed biography were in English, the movie, the introduction and the speech were in Arabic. Mea culpa, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

He did not look much like a Hezbollah though. No Iranian style beard and hairdo, pink collared shirt under a suit (real Hezbollahs do not wear the western type shirts under their suits), and he even smiled.

Definitely reformed.
(What we need know is some type of Colony Collapse Disorder within the ranks of all Lebanese politicians. That would make all of us smile.)

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

great. Who found who?? More tips??
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Anonymous said...

The real clue that he has truely left hizballah is not the suit and the pink shirt, but the fact that he was wearing a tie.
Iranian diehards never wear ties, it's taken as a sign of too much western influence upon their culture.
I wonder why he left, very interesting!

Leila Abu-Saba said...

The link to Mr. Ollaik's talk does not include a listing of his talk. ???

You have some interesting people at the faculty of agriculture. Do you read Land and People blog, by professor Rami Zurayk? He edits the "Alternatives" page at Al-Akhbar, too. He covers food, food politics, traditional food, and the environment. Really a must-read if you don't know the blog.

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