Over coffee a few weeks after they'd settled into their new apartment, she told me about a hilarious email her husband had received from a colleague who was based in South America. The colleague had a friend who was in the international calling card business, and he had a client in Beirut who was waiting for a shipment of cards. The colleague wanted to know if my friend's husband could take the cards with him when he flew to South America the following week, then drive up to Beirut after he returned to Tel Aviv and deliver the merchandise. That way, the colleague said, his friend could avoid potential problems with Lebanese customs. The colleague had taken a look at a map, concluded that Beirut was a mere three-hour drive from Tel Aviv, and that the trip would no doubt be an easy weekend jaunt.
When my friend finished telling her tale of the email, we both snorted into our cappuccinos. We couldn't believe that there were educated people in this world who thought it was possible to drive from Tel Aviv to Beirut. Ha!
Then we reminded one another that the "dream" had seemed like imminent reality only a few years previously, before the Oslo Spring skipped summer and went straight into the Autumn of our Despair - practically overnight.
This friend is descended from a very old Sephardic family that used to have branches all over the Middle East - in Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem, Jaffa and...Beirut. Her grandparents still speak to her in Ladino. Today most of the family lives in Israel, 'though some members scattered to Paris and New York in the decade or two following 1948. She told me that one of her great-aunts who had been born in Jaffa had studied at the American University of Beirut during the late 1930s, and that she used to travel between between the two cities via train.
We both thought this sounded very glamorous and cosmopolitan. On the other hand, a three-hour commute by inter-urban train from Long Island to a job in Manhattan did not sound glamorous at all. But a lot of people make that three-hour journey quite regularly, without thinking much of it.
Photo: Salwa Ghaly
This is a photograph of the Magen Avraham Synagogue in Beirut (I think some of the damage was caused by the Israeli air bombardment in 1982). I found the photograph on this blog, and followed the link to more photographs here.
I'm discovering a lot of wonderful Lebanese bloggers lately, for obvious reasons. Actually, I guess we're discovering each other. Here's an excerpt from a post Laila wrote a few days ago:
Did you know that for people (nations) to co-exist under the same roof (sky) they need to smile in the morning, or else everyone will have a shitty day and dread coming home in the evening? Or that they might even start destroying the furniture in one of their routine rage fits?
Did you know how many amazing Israeli bloggers are out there? People just like us, all they want is peace and quiet, a "normal" life so to speak.
And did you know that so much communication and rational discussions are going on between Arab and Israeli bloggers? Between Syrian and Lebanese bloggers? And that if this evolved and expanded we might actually have a chance to co-exist in the not so distant future?
I would love to drive up to Lebanon with a bunch of Israeli friends, cross the border using our Israeli passports, hang out at a bar in Beirut with Laila, the Perpetual Refugee and Lebanon.Profile and attend a performance at the Baalbeck Festival. It'd be a lot more fun than flying alone from Tel Aviv to Cyprus, leave all evidence of my Israeli citizenship there, and then, with my Canadian passport, continue on to Lebanon - where I would have to keep my south-of-the-border residence a secret from most people.
It's hard to believe, now, that once - not so long ago - that was all possible. It seems that we've been going backward.
Perhaps we can use the internet - that wonderful tool - to rebuild connections, understanding and community...and start going forward. Again.
Actually, I think we're off to an
