Melissa Chen@MsMelChen
The first time I was flying to Beirut, the desk officer at London Heathrow asked before checking us in, “have you been to Israel?”
We had rehearsed the answer to this question before. But Winston can't lie, so he said yes. I gave him the dirty look. There goes our vacation!
"Well, you don't have the stamp on your passports so just make sure you tell the officer in Beirut that you haven't," she intoned.
I was stressed out for the next 5 hours, and even more so when we had to face the border officer who, by the grace of God, did not ask us THE question (even though he took our passports to a secondary office for extra checks).
Spending time in Beirut, you realize that it's the same Mediterranean light that bathes Tel Aviv; the sea is the same shade of shimmering blue because... well, it's the same sea.
In both places, young people spill out of clubs at sunrise, the bass still thumping from rooftops that overlook the same ancient coastline. Both cities pulse with the same Levantine hunger for life: the clink of arak glasses, endless plates of hummus swirled with olive oil, the sudden eruption of dabke or house music that pulls strangers into a circle. Parties start on the rooftops of Gemmayze in Beirut and tumble down into Mar Mikhael’s narrow alleys; in Tel Aviv they begin on the sand at Gordon Beach and migrate to the warehouses of the Florentin district. These are both stylish people who love life, and who love to party. The energy is truly infectious. The accents may differ but something about this weird combination along with a deep sense of rootedness in community and the extended family really underscore how similar they were.
And yet, there's been a wall between these two peoples. There are no flights stitching the 45 min hop across the water. No commercial trucks rumbling between the ports. Lebanese law forbids its citizens - inside the country or in the diaspora - from so much as speaking to an Israeli, a rule so absolute that some Lebanese friends of mine who live in Europe still glance over their shoulders before typing a reply to any Israeli even outside the country, whether for business or pleasure.
I spent evenings in Beirut listening to Lebanese friends speak of Israelis not as the enemy but as people caught in the same endless loop of fear and longing.
Decades of Hezbollah’s shadow have hollowed out parts of Lebanon, turning the south into a garrison and the economy into a ruin. Yet in the cafés of Achrafieh and the mountain villages above the city you hear it more and more: a quiet, exhausted recognition that the real hostage-takers are not across the border but inside it.
I keep imagining the day the question at Beirut airport changes. I keep picturing the first flight from Rafic Harari to Ben Gurion. One day the music will be louder than the fear. One day the Lebanese and the Israelis will throw the party the rest of the world has been waiting for.
I hope this is the first step:
