June 5, 2007 11:31

Failed Field Trip to Southern Lebanon

Hizballah monument in Bint Jbail

When covering a big story -- like the Fatah al Islam uprising in north Lebanon -- one standard journalistic technique is to break away from the press pack once the main action stalls, and go fishing for a related story somewhere else. That was the theory behind my field trip to southern Lebanon today with my friend Thomas Erdbrink, a Dutch journalist normally based in Teheran. While the Lebanese army is bogged down in the battle for Nahr al Bared, we thought we would see what Hizballah -- the Lebanese anti- Israeli militia and Shia Muslin political party -- is doing down on its home turf along the Israeli border.

Unfortunately, after a spending nearly all day in the south, we still have no real clue. That's because the roads and bridges destroyed by last summer's war between Israel and Hizballah are still in such a state of disrepair that it was two o'clock in the afternoon by the time we made it to our destination -- the town of Bint Jbail -- and apparently Hizballah keeps banker's hours, so no party officials were around to speak with us.

We did however have the pleasure of meeting two brothers -- Hassan and Hussein -- who own a restaurant called Liberation, which refers to Bint Jbeil's symbolic status as the capital of anti-Israeli resistance in Lebanon. The town was the scene of celebrations marking the end of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 2000, and of heavy fighting last summer. But Hassan and Hussein aren't particularly hard-core Hizballah supporters: they spend much of their time in New York, where they used to sell tie-dye T-shirts and bongs to Dead Heads in Greenwich Village. "People told us that 'Liberation' would attract customers," said Hassan. "It's just marketing." Apparently opening a bong shop in Bint Jbail was out of the question.

On our way back to Beirut, we salvaged the day with a quick stop at the Tyre waterfront to buy beach gear on the cheap. Swimming in the Mediterranean under the setting sun, I became philosophical about our journalistic crap-shoot: sometimes you win, sometimes you loose, and sometimes you end up in a two-dollar floral-pattern bathing suit.

Boys fishing in Tyre

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut