Nerves in Ramadan
Charles Glass
Beirut No siren sounds, no bell rings the all- clear in the capital of Lebanon. When people go down to the relative safety of their basements, they do not know when to come out. At dawn? At sunset? One hun- dred or more people died in Beirut on `bloody Monday', as the local press has dubbed this week's particularly heavy and brutal bombardment. The massacre was, according to the Phalange Party's Voice of Lebanon radio, merely part of Lebanon's `political game'.
While the exchanges between Christian East and Muslim West Beirut prolong Lebanon's war of attrition, people on each side of the city attempt in vain to lead their lives without interference. In East Beirut, the Christian Lebanese Forces militia main- tain order with a ruthless diligence which many people in West Beirut can only envy. If there were trains in East Beirut, they would damn well run on time.
West Beirut used to be the freer half of the city, where many Christians remain, where most foreigners felt at home and where any ideology or creed was, for the most part, tolerated. For the moment, that calm is being interrupted by a wave of fear of an intolerant form of Islam which is con- demned by Beirut's more respectable Muslim religious and secular leaders. This fear, which is by no means irrational, led the American Embassy to move its staff to living quarters in East Beirut. The United States will maintain the fiction of an 'em- bassy' in West Beirut, but will handle most matters at an `annex' in the East. The Americans, like so many other people here, are afraid of Iran and its local agents. Developments in the Gulf are felt here.
The depth of the fear of Islam became most apparent when, two weeks ago, the holy month of fasting, Ramadan, began. Rumours, most of them fed by the Voice of Lebanon in East Beirut, hit the city as hard as mortar rounds, insisting that extremist Shi'ite Muslims were closing all the bars, preventing restaurateurs from serving wine, prohibiting mixed bathing and forcing women to cover themselves from head to toe. The rumours were outright lies, but they had their effect.
The leader of the main Shi'ite militia, Amal, went on Lebanese television at the beginning of Ramadan to reassure West Beirutis that he wanted life to go on as nor- mal (whatever that is). Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, regarded as the most ex- treme Shi'ite cleric on the public stage in Beirut, echoed the Amal leader in saying that Islam condemned intolerance. If peo- ple wanted to drink, he said, that was their own affair. The bars closed anyway, with their owners displaying large hand-lettered signs saying 'Closed for holy Ramadan'. I asked the owner of one of Beirut's best bars whether he would feel safe opening even after Ramadan, since Islam prohibits drink- ing alcohol at all times of the year. He had not decided. Even though Amal promised him protection, he was not sure that his establishment could avoid being bombed by fanatics who listen to neither Amal nor the clerics in Beirut.
Most West Beirut restaurants still serve apéritifs, wine and beer. But one fish restaurant proprietor put an advertisement in the newspapers proudly declaring that he would be serving his food without wine, which is made in abundance in Lebanon, or arak, the national aniseed drink. They say his food is not so good without something to help digest it. On Monday night, I went with a friend to the Bristol Hotel in West Beirut. My friend is a Shi'ite from South Lebanon who is fluent in three languages and has a doctorate in economics from the LSE. The Bristol still serves drinks with food, but we were advised by the waiter to wait until some people at the next table left, devout Muslims eating their even- ing meal sans alcool after the day's fast. My
at the next table were armed, so we wailed before having arak with our Lebanese food.
The Koran prohibits drinking in the uft" quoted passages: 'Thou shalt not pray while drunk', and: 'Drinking and gambling are two actions inspired by Satan.' The ques- tion for local theology is whether the believers, who now have power in West Beirut, have the right to prevent non_ believers from drinking, gambling or anything else. The Amal leaders say ae. The clerics in Tehran, who have t adherents here, say yes. The question has yet to be resolved to anyone's satisfaction:• The problem appears to have been resole` ed in Tripoli, the country's second !ages' city, which is surrounded by the Syrian arai my in the North. Readers may recall this PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made his PLO departure from Tripoli hasf December, leaving the city in the hands ° the Sunni Muslim Islamic United Organisa- tion headed by Sheikh Said Chahar'. Chaban recently told the Nouvealle Magazine, an East Beirut weekly, `Threrr will be justice for the believer and force at criminals.' Chaban has enforced a inedievid kind of orthodox Islam on Tripoli. He toie Nouveau Magazine: 'Islam does not OP°, the wearing of the chador.' This does sal; however, mean Tripoli's womenfolk ai.r free to choose what clothing they ,w,e,e; `But it requires that a woman cover al' her body except face and hands. And this ,or preserve her social relations, to remove het from vice and to permit her to fulfill .1c1 a,11 role: occupying herself with the house —her children.' Sheikh Said does not say whet- he has met Mrs Thatcher. No one has managed to control Beirlithas effectively as Sheikh Said Chaban vat Tripoli. There are just too trianY tihe though ostensibly allied organisations in t.a, West: Amal, the Druze Progressive Su c.1„„ list Militia of Walid Jumblatt, the SYr.IsTs Socialist Nationalist Party, the cominurilir. and, apparently, some of the Palestiniani82. inge groups who evacuated Beirut in 17,ite What West Beirut has as much as Stine' 1., fundamentalism is chaos. One newsPa..,'' ay admittedly pro-Syrian, said the only nap out of the morass was through a SYrari are military intervention. The Syrians iin waiting for the Lebanese President, Men, Gemayel, to make the request before stall ding their army back in. The Syrian rie;rap, would, as in 1976, require tacit Israe°
proval, That far is lacking.
Those whoso fear that the Shilre ifir; damentalist spirit has taken a firm hm of West Beirut should recall the Revolutiundes 1976, when rich people hid their Merci-e That in garages and their jewels in safes. 'pe ended with the Syrian entry into Beirut' Iranian form of Islam could disaPPe'. '
as quickly if the Syrians returned. apd In the meantime, bar-owners nlY , American Embassy staff are not the ' of people in West Beirut to feel the feaijoo intolerance. Christians, secular Musare and the educated classes in ge...,,ner3, the
w unhappy with the state of affairs. ''
school term ends in two weeks, there will be a mass exodus of middle-class technocrats and professional people from Beirut. Thousands of people will take their children away for the summer, and many will not return. They simply cannot stand the violence and the fanaticism on both sides of town. After nine years of war, they have uhod enough. 'Lebanon is like a ship sinking wly Walid Jumblatt said this week. Lerie day, if this trend continues,
banon will simply disappear.' Theirs was a generation raised on the ideas of secularism, nationalism and pro- gress preached by Nasser. The goals of Arab nationalism, Arab unity and liber- ation of Palestine were never achieved. And Lebanon's war made a joke of these. They watch in horror as Lebanon's youth turn to Maronite Christian tribalism and Islamic fanaticism, the very things they had turned their backs on. In a while, 1 plan to go with my neighbours and their children into our basement. We may never come out.
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