Escape from LA - Lebanon edit
Trip Start
Apr 21, 2008
1
5
7
Trip End
May 2009
Halba, Lebanon
Thursday, May 8, 2008
I'd booked a transfer to Amman airport from the hotel to make life easier and was joined by a very cute Yeman-based Canadian guy which was a lovely start to the day. The transfer driver asked where we were going and when I told him Lebanon, he asked if I watched the news. I reassured him I was staying in the north of Lebanon, all of the problems were in the south, near the Israel border. He didn't seem to like my answer too much, but didn't have the English to tell me any different. That should really have been a hint that the day would not go to plan. Also, he was very busy spruiking his tour services on the side...
Amman airport is a close second to Melbourne in terms of security. I was passport checked, x-rayed, patted down then allowed to the Emirates desk to check in. They have two sets of machines, so the men and women queue separately and are patted down by a person of their own gender. Then I went through immigration where EVERY page of my passport was meticulously checked and I was allowed to go through. My Canadian friend tried to get me into the Royal Jordanian Lounge, but they would not let him take in guests (Thanks. Seriously Royal Jordanian. Help a girl out here!) so I sat outside, had my first latte in 2 weeks and read my Lebanon and Syria Lonely Planet. When the flight was called, I was x-rayed, metal detected and patted down again and allowed into the gate lounge.
Flight to Dubai was easy, uneventful and smooth. At this stage, my day was going to plan. In Dubai, I set off the metal detectors AGAIN! (I swear the Dubai airport staff just like frisking me!) and headed to the extensive assortment of duty free shops to pick up some gifts. Rawda sent me a text to check my progress and asked me to text her when we took off so they could start the drive to Beirut. So far, no problems. Flight got called, passport again got checked (if you've got an Israel stamp in your passport you can't enter into Lebanon, so they check it very thorougly).
In the gate lounge, an announcement came over the speakers "Emirates will be operating flight EK954 to Beirut, Lebanon this afternoon. However, owing to the general strike in Lebanon, Emirates takes no responsbility for any inconvience experienced in Beirut". This should have been a second hint...
We boarded the plane and sat for quite a while. The pilot let us know that some people had chosen not to take the flight to Beirut due to the strike so their baggage needed to be unloaded. I sent Rawda a text about the strike messages and the delay and she came back with "It's OK, you should be OK just let me know as soon as the plane is about to take off". We waited a little more (and I tried to find Tetris on the entertainment channels to no avail) and got this very alarming text "Hey bec i'm sure you will get this when you switch your phone on..We might be a little late cuz the raod to the airport is closed apparantly heaps of people are waiting to get out". I sent her back a text thanking her for letting me know, but the plane hadn't taken off yet. She texted back for an ETA, which I couldn't give her (the 10 minutes to unload baggage had taken about 40 so far...). Our pilot eventually said all of the baggage had been unloaded (after a good hour's delay!) and the plane started taxi-ing. I sent Rawda a text, thouroughly confident that she might be a little late, but we'd catch up in a couple of hours to compare notes and photos about Egypt. The flight was pretty uneventful, except that I chose the Iranian Lamb casserole for dinner, which was not a bright move. DO NOT EAT THE IRANIAN LAMB!
The flight arrived at Beirut International Aiport and I turned the mobile back on to the following text message: "Hey bec we got sent back half way the roads are closed and they are not letting anyone through to Beirut we are gonna try again, don't worry too much". This was not the most reassuring thing to see on my phone on arriving in a country where I do not speak the language! I lined up at passport control and there were armed guards absolutely everywhere in the airport. It almost seemed like there was at least one uniformed guy carrying a semi-automatic weapon for each civillian milling around. I slowly worked my way to the front of the line and got another text from Rawda "Text me and tell me when you are able to talk and near a policeman so my uncle can speak to him..We are trying to get down there but we are stuck :(".
I got through passport control (yep, still no signs of Israel stamps in my passport!) and went out to the baggage claim area in search of a policeman, or at least a semi friendly looking armed guy. I approached one that looked like he had a bit of seniority and called Rawda. I gestured with my phone that I would like him to talk on it and he took it and said hello very suspiciously. He then had a brief chat with Rawda's uncle on the other end, then gave my phone to a helpful lingerer, who at least spoke English. He also had a chat to Rawda's uncle and he then gave me back the phone and told me that the only way out of the airport would be to catch a taxi up north. Rawda got back on the phone and asked if I could find another army guy. I found a slightly friendlier looking one and gave him the phone. He spoke to Rawda's uncle at some length, then hung up the phone. He waved at me to get my backpack from the luggage rack and said "See outside". I ran and snared my backpack from the carousel and walked up to the customs area, where they were baggage screening. I got another text from Rawda saying the army guy would help me get to a certain point and Rawda and her family would meet me there to pick me up. There was another guy doing passport checks, but I seemed to slip through with a couple that had just come in from "Roma" and I was on my way out of immigration control. I walked into the arrivals hall and there were people everywhere, looking like they were bunking in for the night. Lying on the floor, sitting in huddled groups in corners, everywhere...
I raced out the doors to try and find my knight in shining armour (well, sand fatigues...)and saw him having an animated discussion with a taxi driver. As a side note, while I do like the sound of Arabic spoken at normal volume, loud animated Arabic always seems to be really agressive and upset to me. Even more so, since I was starting to get a little stressed at this point in time. The army guy waved at my phone, so I called Rawda and gave the phone to him and he gave the phone to the taxi driver. They spoke for a while in very angry sounding Arabic and the army guy opened the door for me and waved me into the car. I threw in the big back pack and got in. The driver kept arguing with Rawda's uncle on my phone, then he gave it back to me. Rawda said that he had agreed to take me to Tripoli for $100 US. In the mean time, the driver had gone up to my army guy and was gesturing wildly and speaking in animated Arabic. He then opened my door and motioned me out saying "can't do, can't do, get out".
I got my stuff together as quickly as I could and scrambled out of the back of the taxi. I called Rawda again and told her that the taxi driver wouldn't do it. I found the army guy again, who this time was being badgered by an older couple. He took my phone and strode off to the other side of the road with it, in deep discourse with Rawda's uncle again. I was on the verge of kissing my new Nokia N95 goodbye (and with that my hopes of escaping the airport) when he rematerialised next to me with a couple of other army guys. One of them smiled at me and pointed out the extra stars on his shoulder and said "Lieutenant" tapped his chest and smiled. Then "Welcome to Lebanon - tomorrow, not like this". My original sand fatigued hero in the mean time had found a mini van and waved for me to come up to it. The older couple were also with him. I was hearing the word "Trablous" being thrown around, which was a good sign, since I remembered that Trablous was the Arabic name for Tripoli, a city close to Rawda's family's home.
Myself and the older people stowed our bags in the minivan and I put Rawda on the phone to the driver and all was starting to feel a little calmer. I was still on the phone to Rawda, when a guy appeared at my window and said "Baksheesh?". I asked Rawda if I had to pay now or when I arrived and she said on arrival, so I waved the guy away and hung up the phone. The guy reappeared and asked for Baksheesh again, saying he was the head of airport taxis and should be tipped for helping me. By this stage I was too tired to argue (and really wanted out of there) so I gave him US$5 and he went away.
The minivan took off up the driveway of the airport and swept around a bend towards the exit. Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, the minivan jarred to a holt and turned off. The driver motioned all of us to get out. We'd come across a group of kids (kids being used to describe anyone roughly between the ages of 15 and younger than me) and a few scattered adults among them. The kids started to grab all of the bags out of the minivan and push them into the back of a small sedan that was parked nearby. There was absolutely no way that the bags were going to fit into the boot of this car. I put my backpack on and tried to work out what the crap had happened to my day.
A guy was walking around with two walkie talkies and the kids seemed to be showing him some respect, so I called Rawda again, explained the situation and put on the guy with the walkie talkies. He spoke to them in a calmer and much more moderate volume of Arabic and came back to me and said "Do you speak English?" I answered that I did and he asked where I was from. I said I had just arrived from Jordan, but I was Australian and he smiled and said his brothers were living in Canada.
He assured me that everything would be OK and offered up the now ubiquitous "Welcome to Lebanon. It won't be like this tomorrow!". He asked me and the older couple to wait for 10 minutes while he sorted out what was going to happen next. He walked off into the darkness (why are there never streetlights at these dramatic junctions in the story?) and I waited. The elderly lady seemed to feel very sorry for me and was trying to talk to me, but I couln't seem to pronounce my "I don't speak any Arabic" correctly, so she resorted to patting my arm reassuringly. Walkie-talkie guy returned and said that a guy had agreed to take us and it would be US$70 each. He asked if I could pay that, I said I could and he said we needed to walk up to the car that was going to take us. I picked up my backpack (ignoring the friendly kids offering to do it for me - I'd already had enough of a day without some kid on a scooter making off with all my clothes) and started walking. We walked for about 15 minutes, then crossed a patch of road covered in smouldering ash. It looked like someone had been burning matteresses, since there were little metal wires all mixed in with the ash.
We walked about another 10 minutes with the kids darting in and around us on scooters, or walking alongside us and chatting. One kid wandered by to stare at us, carring a giant sheesha (or hookah or nargieleh depending on where you're from, another kid carrying a drum and another about 5 minutes later with the coals for the sheesha, which all struck me as being very random for a protest rally.
We reached what I remember as a mid 1980's Nissan bluebird (car purists can keep their opinions to themselves, I was not paying attention to the details at this point) and loaded in all of the luggage of the older couple. Since the boot wouldn't close, some kids produced a blue rope and the boot was tied so the luggage didn't fall out. My backpack went into the back with me and the older lady and we were in a vehicle at least.
We started the drive out of the airport and followed a few other cars past mounds of smoking ash and piles of dirt. We came up to the end of the airport road and it was completely blocked by a 1.5 metre blockade of stuff. The driver U-turned and went back to the original parking area and spoke to the kids on scooters who pointed him in another direction. We drove up to another blockade, but there was a convienient car-sized gap in the blockade and cars were slowly edging through. Just as it was our turn to go through, a taxi driven by what I swear was a 10 year old darted out in front of us and blocked the gap.
The driver U turned very hard and turned down a dark alley. He stopped about 4 or 5 times to ask directions, turning down tiny little back streets where I could have reached out either side of the taxi and shook people's hands. After 20 minutes stuck in the mouth of an alley (some people were trying to get into the airport and the streets could not take 2 cars!) the sreets became slightly wider and I started to notice more of my surroundings. We passed buildings where you could see where bullets had been fired into the concrete, another that had maybe been shelled (half the building was still standing) and lots of people on balconies looking tired and scared. Having said that, I probably looked pretty similar myself.
Rawda sent me a text asking where I was. By this stage I was on a three lane bridge and there were some lit up mountains in front of me. I also made some comment on the lack of road rules in Beirut and compared it to Cairo. Rawda assured me that Cairo was nothing compared to the lack of road rules in Lebanon!
We drove alongside the ocean for most of the trip to Tripoli. You could see the Mediterranian Sea reflecting the moon and the lights along the shore and it just looked magnificent. On the other side were the mountains rising steeply up in sharp contrast to the still sea. What was not magnificent was my car. It was not in the best mechanical shape, the brakes were squealing every time the driver touched the pedals and every time we went over a bump there was an alarming metal on metal shriek. Rawda texted to ask if I knew where I was and I could just see the "Casino de Liban" so I let her know. She texted back to say that I would be in Tripoli in under 40 minutes. It was the most beautiful thing that I had seen all day.
We drove on, I texted Rawda when I saw signs that said how far I was from Tripoli. At about the half hour mark, the elderly lady motioned to my phone, so I called Rawda again and put the elderly lady on the phone. They apparantly organised a meeting point. We drove into a city (I only know this since street lights suddenly appeared) and I saw the sign for the Tripoli hospital. Shortly afterwards the car pulled up to a sudden stop and I looked out to see Rawda, her mum and another man standing on a street corner. I got out of the car my knee (see the Mt Sinai entry) had totally siezed up at this stage and I could barely stand. I warned Rawda about the heavy backpack and hugged her and her mother. I was incredibly happy and relieved. I also had the imprint of the aforementioned Nokia N95 on the fingers of my left hand.
In the car on the way back to Rawda's parent's place, Rawda and her mother filled me in on what had happened. There had been a general strike called by the unions to protest about a low cost of living adjustment to wages and the protest had been hijacked for some political purposes. Rawda's family had known about the strike the day before, but as they were watching the news unfold this morning, they were getting more and more alarmed about how to get me out of the airport. They had called pretty much everyone (from emergency services right through to the army and the airport authority) and the advice from them all was I would need to wait it out in the airport, it was too dangerous to come into Beirut and they would be turned back at road blocks if they attemped to come down. They did make a few attempts, but were turned away at the military checkpoints. One of the miliatary guys at the checkpoint suggested that I get a taxi from the airport to the first checkpoint, change to a second taxi, get the the second checkpoint and so on. Rawda's uncle suggested that this might be a little difficult since 1. I didn't know where I was going and 2 - I didn't speak any Arabic! The checkpoint guy then suggested that a taxi coming OUT of Beirut probably wouldn't have too many problems, so the plan was set.
So I'm now safely at Rawda's parent's place. With that kind of dramatic entry to Lebanon, I'm sure it'll be an interesting trip!
