Monumental Hope and Grinding Despair
by Jon B. Alterman
Thursday, August 3, 2006
The Washington Post
We often think of American history in terms of turning points. We are attacked, we fight back, and the world often changes as a result. These turning points are few and far between: 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. We often build memorials in quiet, grassy places that invite contemplation. With the luxury of distance, we ponder how to remember both our suffering and our triumphs, and we imagine our future.
The Middle East has been battered so many times in the last century, there is not one site of mourning but many; everywhere is sacred ground. Running through the national narratives of Israelis, Lebanese, Palestinians and others are streams of suffering and victimhood that have few landmarks. Each attack and each death simply flows into those streams, dynamic yet permanent parts of the slowly undulating landscape.
The Middle East is now perched on the edge of chaos. Violence in Iraq has only grown more dire, Gaza is under seige, and Lebanon is once again in flames. Iran brandishes venomous anti-Semitism while playing coy on its nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice solemnly proclaims "The birth pangs of a new Middle East." The administration hopes that the current violence will not be in vain, but instead helps mark a departure from the region's oppressive past to a more optimistic future. The administration hopes to be constructing a monument. The signs are not auspicious.
Several years ago in Beirut, I met a young columnist named Samir Kassir. Samir was brilliant, outspoken, and dynamic, and in later years he emerged as Lebanon's boldest critic of Syria's presence in his country. When Lebanese took to the streets in March 2005 to demand independence from Syrian influence, Samir electrified the crowd of more than a million gathered in Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut.
Two and a half months later, Samir got into his white Alfa Romeo and started it up. A bomb exploded under the front seat, killing him instantly. Two of weeks later, I went to visit his widow in their apartment. "Where did it happen?" I asked. "Just there, on the street, next to the grocery store," she said. I looked out the window, and except for a missing awning there was no sign of the blast. All I saw was an unusually heavy cluster of posters of Samir's confident face, which I had seen scattered around East Beirut. The posters contained no name, just the caption, "Martyr of the Intifada of Independence." No other caption was necessary. Everyone knew who he was, and people were all too familiar with the idea of martyrdom.
Samir was not a martyr in the tradition of Hezbollah or Hamas. He was a writer, and a Christian. He did not carry a gun. His weapons were his keen intellect and his persistent optimism; in that way, he was armed to the teeth.
The region does not need more martyrs, but it is getting more of them -- men, women and children, cut down in all-too-familiar rounds of violence and counterattack. People do not worship history here; there is too much of it, and more is made every day. History is not something that is studied or revered; it is a tool that is shaped to steel the next generation for its own rounds of suffering.
We all know that current violence will end, and people will return to their lives. On bright clear days, it will be hard to imagine not only the rubble and waste, but the fear that now grips people.
That fear is not what is debilitating for people in the Middle East right now. People have certainly felt it before.
What is debilitating is the idea that their current suffering will not produce change that it will all be in vain. They fear that they will not build monuments out of the rubble, but instead their nightmares will only be small drops in the streams of suffering that run through their nations' lives.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
The Washington Post
We often think of American history in terms of turning points. We are attacked, we fight back, and the world often changes as a result. These turning points are few and far between: 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. We often build memorials in quiet, grassy places that invite contemplation. With the luxury of distance, we ponder how to remember both our suffering and our triumphs, and we imagine our future.
The Middle East has been battered so many times in the last century, there is not one site of mourning but many; everywhere is sacred ground. Running through the national narratives of Israelis, Lebanese, Palestinians and others are streams of suffering and victimhood that have few landmarks. Each attack and each death simply flows into those streams, dynamic yet permanent parts of the slowly undulating landscape.
The Middle East is now perched on the edge of chaos. Violence in Iraq has only grown more dire, Gaza is under seige, and Lebanon is once again in flames. Iran brandishes venomous anti-Semitism while playing coy on its nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice solemnly proclaims "The birth pangs of a new Middle East." The administration hopes that the current violence will not be in vain, but instead helps mark a departure from the region's oppressive past to a more optimistic future. The administration hopes to be constructing a monument. The signs are not auspicious.
Several years ago in Beirut, I met a young columnist named Samir Kassir. Samir was brilliant, outspoken, and dynamic, and in later years he emerged as Lebanon's boldest critic of Syria's presence in his country. When Lebanese took to the streets in March 2005 to demand independence from Syrian influence, Samir electrified the crowd of more than a million gathered in Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut.
Two and a half months later, Samir got into his white Alfa Romeo and started it up. A bomb exploded under the front seat, killing him instantly. Two of weeks later, I went to visit his widow in their apartment. "Where did it happen?" I asked. "Just there, on the street, next to the grocery store," she said. I looked out the window, and except for a missing awning there was no sign of the blast. All I saw was an unusually heavy cluster of posters of Samir's confident face, which I had seen scattered around East Beirut. The posters contained no name, just the caption, "Martyr of the Intifada of Independence." No other caption was necessary. Everyone knew who he was, and people were all too familiar with the idea of martyrdom.
Samir was not a martyr in the tradition of Hezbollah or Hamas. He was a writer, and a Christian. He did not carry a gun. His weapons were his keen intellect and his persistent optimism; in that way, he was armed to the teeth.
The region does not need more martyrs, but it is getting more of them -- men, women and children, cut down in all-too-familiar rounds of violence and counterattack. People do not worship history here; there is too much of it, and more is made every day. History is not something that is studied or revered; it is a tool that is shaped to steel the next generation for its own rounds of suffering.
We all know that current violence will end, and people will return to their lives. On bright clear days, it will be hard to imagine not only the rubble and waste, but the fear that now grips people.
That fear is not what is debilitating for people in the Middle East right now. People have certainly felt it before.
What is debilitating is the idea that their current suffering will not produce change that it will all be in vain. They fear that they will not build monuments out of the rubble, but instead their nightmares will only be small drops in the streams of suffering that run through their nations' lives.
posted by machiavelli at 6:02 PM
