Seen on the Beirut Art Fair.
Unfortunately we did not write the name of the artist.
We are back
in Antioch after several weeks of absence. Our last stop before returning to
Antakya was Beirut, a place as close to the Syrian conflict as is Antakya, but
a totally different experience.
We met
several Syrians who had fled to Lebanon because of the war. Not surprisingly
they were sad and upset. One had fled Aleppo in the middle of the night as the
fighting spread to his street. He told us that some of his friends are living
in a quarter of town that is surrounded by forces fighting the Syrian army.
They cannot get out and it is difficult to get in. He himself is trying to find
work in Lebanon, but he told us that in spite of his qualifications he finds it
difficult to find work because the Lebanese can hear on his language that he is
a Syrian.
The atmosphere
in Beirut was relaxed. In the Shiite quarter close to the airport, though, the
control was tight, both by the Lebanese army and by Hizbullah, as a bomb had
killed a number of people a some of weeks earlier. The extremist Islamists who
are fighting in Syria have been blamed for the bombing.
Nevertheless,
we were in for a surprise. A Syrian friend of ours gave a banquet to our
honour. The people he invited were Syrians and Lebanese alike. Some of the
Syrian guests started to arrive about 8 PM. We were amazed to learn that they
came directly from Damascus. We were even more astonished when we realised that
they were going back to Damascus after the party the same night. They told us that
the situation there was relatively quiet, but people had been frightened by the
threat of American bombing.
No, it is not a cake,but stuffed vine leaves
This
information made us happy as we had been worried about the safety of our
friends in Damascus. However, the situation of our friends in Aleppo still gives
us ample reason for concern.
Another picture from the Beirut Art Fair
. . . . .
Living in
the Middle East and at the same time following the stories in the press is an
interesting experience. You somehow feel sorry for people who only have the television
news and newspaper stories to rely on. This, in fact, is one of the problems of
democracy. How are people going to make the right decisions when the
journalists only tell them what they think people want to hear! Of course, this
is nothing new. The same bias is seen in most countries when the press deals
with unpopular religious minorities.
This does
not mean that all journalists just tell stories. If you want to read fairly reliable
news about the Middle East, go to www.al-monitor.com.
Also the articles of Robert Fisk are recommendable (http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/robert-fisk).
A new post about
interpretation has been on my blog http://antiochene.wordpress.com/
