A Foreign Journalist’s Blunt Account

British Journalist comes to Lebanon and chronicles his day-by-day impressions. Unvarnished, almost comedic impressions of the coutry and its people ensue.

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs, from his visit to the LF.

We park outside the local LF headquarters. On top of the buildings are two immense crosses. There is an urgency to Christianity here; I feel as if Christ died a few weeks ago and the word is spreading.

“This is the border.” A tattooed man guarding the door points to the end of the street. A giant wall painting of Nabih Berry, the Shia speaker of Parliament and an ally of Hizbullah, stares back at me. We can hear the call to prayer. “There are the Shia.”

[..]

Lebanese food is almost never bad, but the conversation makes for a strange meal. At one moment my companion is laughing about how he doesn’t like the dirty, stupid, smelly Shia Muslims who live over the road. Ten minutes later he is earnestly telling me how he has many good friends among them and it’s only the leadership he doesn’t like.

He begins what seems like a rant against Israel, which ends up with him announcing his respect for the Israeli army and how he expects Israeli troops to be operating in Beirut very shortly. His frequent toilet breaks allow me to gather my thoughts. It seems the long-standing identity conflict of the Lebanese Christians continue in the minds of even the most committed LF supporters. Then he turns the conversation turns to that traveller’s classic: “Don’t you think my country has the best girls?”

Read the entire thing..