Lebanon

Tomorrow I am off to Beirut to attend a conference on disabled Palestinian children in the refugee camps in Lebanon. This is my fifth visit to this fascinating place. Why am I so taken with Lebanon?
Lebanon is an interface to several cultures and lifestyles. It is multi-flavoured. There is the flavour of Arab culture, language, foods; there is the flavour of French savoir vivre, very European; and there is the flavour of an international, English language and culture style.
Robert Fisk, one of my favorite writers and journalists, expresses his view about the flavours of Lebanon in the following way:
“When I arrived in Beirut from Europe, I felt the oppressive, damp heat, saw unkempt palm trees and smelt the Arabic coffee, the fruit stalls and the over-spiced meat. It was the beginning of the Orient. And when I flew back to Beirut from Iran, I could pick up the British papers, ask for a gin and tonic at any bar, choose a French, Italian or German restaurant for dinner. It was the beginning of the West. All things to all people, the Lebanese rarely questioned their own identity.” (Fisk, Robert: Pity the Nation, p. 163).
Lebanon is also one of the cradles of civilization: Byblos, called Jbail today, 37 km north of Beirut, was to celebrate 7000 years of ‘continuously inhabited city’ in 2006, when Israel wrought war on Lebanon and bombed the country and its infrastructure to bits. To no one’s surprise hardly any tourists came to celebrate.
Unlike the American army in Iraq, the Israeli ‘Defense’ Forces did not destroy any ancient sites this time around. So Byblos and Baalbek can still be visited and admired by tourists today.
The more recent history of the country is very mixed, if not to say tortured. War after war after war have come down on Lebanon during the last few decades. As soon as there is some semblance of reconstruction and normalization of life, the next conflict is waiting around the corner. At the moment though it looks pretty stable politically, despite elections looming on 7 June.
Coming from Switzerland, a mono-cultural country with mostly Caucasian inhabitants, Malaysia and Lebanon are the epitome of cultural mix. Lebanon officially recognizes eighteen religious communities within the country, and its political system reflects these communities. Malaysia also has different ethnic and religious communities which are reflected in the political parties.
Some 20 years ago, standing at one of Zurich’s busiest places, the Bellevue-Platz, waiting for the tram with my two kids, my elder son suddenly said: “ There are so many different people here.” What he expressed was the following: Coming from Malaysia, where you could easily identify the different ethnic groups by their clothes, in mono-cultural Switzerland people expressed their individuality in a thousand different ways, resulting in a variety that did not allow to identify anybody with a particular ethnic or religious group.
In Lebanon, I am still learning about the different groups.