DAY 9, 10, 11 PAKISTAN & LEBANON- EID CELEBRATION
Hello Friends and Family,
Sorry for the silence the last few days, we were enjoying the Pakistani holiday season with the Siddiqui family who warmly opened their homes and families to us to celebtrate Eid with them…Zach, Saira, Ali, Ali Raza and myself spent the entire day together first driving up to their uncle’s house in Hedarabad which was two hours away. Saira lent me a gorgeous pair of jade bangles and earrings for the occasion to match the green shalwar that Ali had picked out the night before…Zach donned an incredible cream colored shalwar with gold trim and a copper scarf and looked like Pakistani royalty (with blond hair and blue eyes). Once again we set off with police vehicles and a motorcade of security guards sandwiching the black SUVs (as Zach and I learned was for us–they don’t normally travel with such heavy security–but Ali, again a gracious host wanted to make doubly sure that we’d be okay, not that there was any need for it given how safe we felt in Karachi….)
We get to their Uncle’s house which was on University grounds, a gorgeuos sprawling property with peacocks, chickens, cats and goats meandering about (the latter for the sacrifice that would later take place)…and we got a tour of the grounds before the sacrifice would take place. I had never witnessed the killing of an animal before so I was visible shaken by the event. Saira asked me o nnumerous occasions if I wanted to go inside but I watched as a spotted goat, adorable and terrified was led to the area that it would be sacrificed. Ali explained that they slit the thrat of the goat which was the most humane way to kill it and that it would die within 30 seconds…Long story short, saw the first sacrifice, and would learn that every single piece of the goat would be used or eaten so there would be no waste….
After greeting his huge family (they have 42 first cousins!) and having a delicious meal, we all headed outside to the garden where a ferocious game of family cricket would take place complete with yelling and argument between each point (I chuckled as this custom of inter- family arguments crossed all cultures…:)) Saira coached me and explained to us the rules as I learned how to swing a cricket bat for the first time and would play in my first cricket match with Zach as all the men played and the women watched…So much fun…
We left their uncle’s house to head to a shrine 45 minues away where we visited a shrine that had 24 hours of traditioanl music being played seven days a week all year long…aside from the beggars that circled us, it was a beautiful place…
We headed back to the Sheraton thereafter and had our final dinner with Ali, Saira and Ali where we laughed, told stories and realized we were really going to miss eachother…I cant wait for them to come to New York to meet everyone!
We left at 3am for the airport and landed in Beirut at 10am after a layover in Doha, Qatar…Sleepy eyed, we made our way to the hotel and took in our first impressions of Beirut. If you’ve ever been to Montreal, it’s downtown Montreal on the Mediteranean Sea. High end shops every where you looked, and cobble stoned streets (but with the newer slate tiles), it’s a gorgeous city, sunny and clean with people of all denominations walking along the streets. It’s where east meets west , they say…Along the Mediteranean Sea, it reminds me of Los Angeles with Palm trees lining the streets. If you turned and looked toward the hills, it reminded me of San Francisco with white houses peppering the landscape with a haze around it. The neatest part about Beirut were the different religions that were represented in the architecture–there were Churches right next to mosques, huge Christmas trees right outside a mosque, and blonde haired women with belly shirts walking hand in hand with women with hijabs (head covering)…The traffic this time of year in Beirut is horrendous though, with a jump of a million tourists and Lebanese coming to Lebanon for the new year…Keep in mind there are only 4 million people in the whole country–with 14 million living abroad (one of the few countries whose national representation is higher outside the country than in the country itself)…The government works very differently here as well, with religions dictating who would hold which seat in the government–for example, the president HAS to be a Christian in Lebanon…crazy right? And people here seem to be happy with Hezbollah represented in government as well…
anyway, we met with Lena, our fixer, a mother of two and a hard-hitting journalist herself, who would set up our appointments for us as she knew her way around the academics and government officials of Beirut. We sat in an outdoor cafe sipping our four dollar tea (you can pay with dollar here as well as the Lira) and discussed the project, and her thoughts about democracy in Lebanon, whether it worked, and her thoughts on American foreign policy in Lebanon. She suggested we meet with those she was setting us up with before teinting our views…:) Turns out we’re meeting with Robert Fisk on Sunday which is HUGE news as he is the critically acclaimed journalist who had covered the middle east for the last thrity years and had interviewed Osama Bin Laden many many times starting with his first meeting with him in 1993! She also brought us to the Hezbollah office where we submitted our press credentials and application to interview some of the Hezbollah who were in government positions…We find out monday if we get approved. Fingers crossed! Regardless, it was amazing to be in the Hezbollah office at all!
We ended up falling asleep as soon as we got back to the hotel. And now we’re at today. 
(feels good to be caught up)
Zach, Andrew and I drove around this morning getting some B-roll shots of the gorgeous landscape, the Mediteranean sea and the churches and mosques side by side and we shook our heads thinking about the city as a war zone just a decade earlier. The Marine Barracks that were bombed in 1983 was now a car park with any memory of it on the walls at the American Embassy…amazing how some things people never forget and others just a distant memory…
WE then went to the American University of Beirut (AUB) where we did a man-on-the-street segment interviewing students on the campus about whether they were happy Obama was elected and what that meant to them…the overwhelming majority, unlike Pakistanis who were far more optimistic about Obama, thought that he was just another man in a slow-moving government with too many layers to change…My thoughts flew back to our meeting with Jugnu Mohsun, the famous editor in Pakistan who said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Cynicism is a luxury for the privileged. We have no choice but to be hopeful and optimistic. Otherwise we would all die.” And looking at the expensive cars students were driving and the sprawling campus with perfectly manicured soccer fields right on the Mediteranean, I couldn’t help but remember her words. What I did remark was how well versed on foreign policy and the knowledge these seventeen to twenty year olds posessed on these world subjects…. Again it reminded me that their way of life is threatened every day and that they knew about what was going on because they had no choice…
One last remark I wanted to note was what one female student said about her wearing the hijab (head scarf). She said, “When I wear this scarf, it gives me power. Men don’t see me as a woman or an object. They see me as an equal since I’ve taken away my looks to teint their judgement of me.” I thought that was very interesting.
Anyway, I’m at the world’s smokiest internet cafe and now that my lungs are filled with second hand smoke, I need to go and take a long bath…Thank the lord for the US laws that ban smoke in establishments, I’m just not used to it anymore!:) It’s Friday night in Lebanon and it’s supposed to be a big “going out” night, but Zach and I bought two books by Robert Fisk (“The Great War for Civilization”, and “The Age of the Warrior”) and we’re doing some homework before we meet this journalist giant. Maybe dancing in Jamaizi (an apparently “happening” area) tomorrow night?
Missing the holiday season and all the Christmas parties I’m hearing about via email even more seeing the Christmas trees and holiday lights around Beirut. It feels like we’ve been gone forever…
Love and misses,
Radha
