Dude, are you like Lebanese? Pinch me. Arn't we in Mexico?

While As-Salibi and The Rooster are at work, I, Abu G, have been on vacation and trying to surf as much as I can. For the most part, I have been going anywhere between San Diego and Santa Barbara, CA.

But as some of you know, I did a three-day trip down into Baja, Mexico last weekend. Indeed, loads of fun. In fact my friend cut his foot on a rock while surfing and we had to venture to a Mexican doctor because he would not trust my "skills" with a bottle of Tequila and some dental floss. (Haha.) What a coward. How I miss the rugged land of Baja...

(A Spanish-style Catholic church in Baja, Mexico. This is one of those constants in all of Baja's small towns.)

While we were sitting in the Doc's office I foolhardily read his name out loud: Dr. Perrie Yousef Azzi. "Umm, ahhh, sir... Are you like, a Maronite? I mean, umm, a Christian from Lebanon?"

He was. And he was in shock that someone in rural Baja--most Mexicans see Baja like most Americans see Alaska--could pick him out as being Lebanese. He must have thought: How can this gringo tell than I am not Mexican? We were both bewildered. What was this Semite doing in a land of Latins? How did he get here? I just had to know.

His story was slow to leak, but it eventually sounded something like this: He left Lebanon during the Civil War (1975-90), went to medical school in Canada, and then met a Mexican woman who happened to live in this small, small town just south of Ensenada, in the Mexican state of Baja Norte.

He chatted us up for a while--me in Arabic, my friend in Spanish while he numbed his flesh, cleaned it and stitched it back together. Oh, how he missed Lebanon... He kept telling stories about picnics in the tall grassy mountains of the Lebanese Mediterranean. He was from the Chouf--a mountain range south east of Beirut where mostly Druze and Maronites live. I told him how I often had traveled through the Chouf and had once even met with Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze. He was not so impressed by this fact, however. There is a lot of tension between these two kin’s, both old (late 19-century) and new (period of Israeli occupation during the Lebanese Civil War).

(Nice waves in Baja, Mexico. This is from this last trip and not too far from the spot where my buddy cut his foot. Epic[ly] beautiful.

I share this quick story of running into this lonely Lebanese Doc to fill in the readership of what old Abu G does now that he is not patrolling Hezbollah controlled south Lebanon with a surfboard (the article on this will come out next month in The Surfers Journal).

To Finnish, I think it is fair to say that the Lebanese Civil War did a lot to many. One of the things it did was to turn the Lebanese into a people of the globe. And so on almost every far off corner they continue to live.

Until next time Doc. I will make sure to take you up on that cup of Lebanese-style coffee you promised.

From a living room in Chatila: the camps of south Beirut

The following is an interview I did with a Palestinian man in the Chatila refugee last August. It was edited out of an article I wrote for the Ma'an news agency. So, I thought I'd share it here on The Casbah:

And so Sabra and Chatila exists: abnormally chaotic, jerry-rigged, and in a semi-permanent state of neglect and confusion.

I tagged alongside a local NGO that had prearranged an interview, and got a chance to talk with an elderly Palestine man who was born into the British Mandate of Palestine. He warmly took us into his modestly furnished apartment, sat us down and began without cue: “It was between 1936 and 1948 when they [the Zionists] started to get radical. They took over and the British built a wall in the north, much like near Jerusalem today. We left in fear and came to Lebanon.”

The man picked up an old hatchet from his coffee table and continued in a weathered tone: “They [the Zionists] chased us and hit us on the head with these. I left my small village near Akko because of it.”

A fellow from the NGO muttered a follow-up question from the back of the room. The old man replied: “Sure I would support Obama’s plan,” for a two-state solution. “But what kind of solution is it? I have nothing in this West Bank… it would make me a foreigner in my own land… I would only go back to my village. And I don’t even know what is there now.”

Picking up on the man’s anguish, it seemed like our time was over. An American girl asked with a degree of naïveté, “Can I take a picture of you? You know, so I can remember?”

The old man’s eyes softened. He slowly stood up and crept over to a black and white picture of a woman on the mantle. Pausing, placing his hand on the frame, his thoughts came to words, “I never let my wife take pictures of me. She is dead. What would she say if I allowed you to now?”

So rarely in life, I thought, are things so clear: The world has forgotten about those still living in Sabra and Chatila.

David Rohde's, The Majlis, Qifa Nabki, Ronen Bergman and my Beiruti surf report

Sometimes a first person account of an event is exactly what is called for. And it was my very own mother who called yesterday to alert me of David Rohde's three-part series in the New York Times on his Taliban kidnapping. Alarming. Terrifying. Enthralling. This dude has a story to tell. He does it well.

In other news, I was reading The Majlis this morning and read their most recent post on how Lebanon is 19 weeks without a government. In an email to Lebanese expert and often my Beiruti surf report, Qifa Nabki is quoted writing, "I've stopped paying attention; wake me when something interesting happens." No kidding. Egos and feudal friction have left Lebanon without leadership. Again.

Lastly, have a read of Ronen Bergman's piece on Hezbollah, Israel and the war to come. (I think we don't need to kid ourselves with putting the word "possible" in front of "war to come," right?) He thinks that all these "random" explosions in southern Lebanon are part of a clandestine conflict between the two actors. And personally, I think he's right.

Update: Great post by our very own Bethlehem correspondent As-Salibi, eh? I can’t wait to keep reading his reflections on the Goldstone report. May God bless him as he digs though that big fat mother.

Update II: Old Stephen Walt has a nice list of what 2012 will look like: a collection of missed Obama goals.... check it out... Agree with guru Walt?

Update III: This post has turned into a lot of tangents, yes I know. But one last one article to read. In fact, an epic. Dovish Jews? They love Israel? Oh, do they? Bradley Burston gives it in this article. With attitude.