I wake with a start as the bus halts suddenly. "Where am I? Shit, I think I missed my stop. There's a tank pointing at me. What the hell?"
I've fallen asleep on buses before of course.
When I'm incredibly drunk, a kind of reflexive self-preservation instinct takes over, and despite being almost unconscious, I somehow manage to stagger to the night bus stop on Tottenham Court Road, from where my alcohol-sozzled mind knows with absolute certainty the bus, any bus, will take me home to Islington. A cab would never work - only a bus will do. Any bus. Of course this is not strictly correct - only one of the buses goes to Islington - and in any case I haven't actually lived in Islington for three years. No matter. I inevitably fall asleep and wake up some hours later in a remote, and inevitably hostile, corner of the capital, from where I will battle my way back home through the mean streets of north/east/south/west London.
Despite these early hours experiences of locations as unfriendly as Walthamstow, Wood Green, and Leytonstone, however, I've never found myself confronted with a mobile artillery piece. Not even in West Ham. Things get worse when I notice the sign by the side of the road. "Trablous, 1km". Great, I missed my stop in Byblos. I'm in Tripoli.
I wasn't intending on visiting Tripoli at all. Lebanon's second city is supposedly off-limits to tourists since the recent, well-publicised violent hostilities between the army and Sunni militants in a Palestinian refugee camp to the north of the city. Indeed, the ever-cautious British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who currently "advise against all but essential travel" to Lebanon as a whole, specifically recommends avoiding "war-torn" Tripoli. Still, as I'm here...
In the event, the FCO were probably correct about Tripoli. Not on the grounds of safety or security of course - aside from tanks and roadblocks on the outskirts, Tripoli seemed less edgy than Beirut even - but because it's mostly quite dull. The contrast with Beirut, especially the upscale areas, is quite staggering. A wonderful medieval souq, a Crusader castle, a mostly conservative Sunni Muslim population. No Chanel boutiques, cleavages, or cafe lattes here: visiting Tripoli was like taking a daytrip back to the Middle East.
After passing a pleasant, though unremarkable afternoon wandeing the labyrnthine alleyways of the old city, I picked up a share taxi for the 90 minute drive back to Beirut. And from here my transport difficulties began once more. As the aging Mercedes cruised along the seafront highway into Beirut, a beautiful sunset dying the sky a verdant crimson, my driver asked where I wanted to be dropped off. The conversation clearly did not go as well as I thought - minutes later I found myself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood in South Beirut. No matter - this would afford me the opportunity to explore some more of the city - if I walked long enough in roughly the right direction, surely I'd find my way eventually?
An hour later, it is now pitch dark. There are no neon lights on this street, no Lebanese Army checkpoints, no German sportscars parked outside plush apartments. There are, however, hundreds of posters of a dimly familiar, bearded, bespectacled face, and countless yellow and green flags bearing a logo with a Kalashnikov. I've seen that flag before. I struggle to read the Arabic inscription on one of the many banners. "Hiz...Hizb...Hizba...Ah. I know what it says. 'Hizballah'." At this point I must admit to feeling a little nervous. I'm lost, after dark, in a Hizballah neighbourhood in south Beirut. While I'm not at all convinced by the Western media's oversimplified demonisation of Nasrallah and his army as Iranian-sponsored terrorists, while I know they are a respected political party as well as a highly effective guerilla army, while I know all about their hugely effective social and community work among the poorest of Lebanon's citizens, still...
Suddenly there is a huge bang and a bright flash of light. A rocket screeches into the air just in front of me. For a moment I am totally transfixed with fear. Just for a second I come very close to losing control of vital bodily functions. Then I hear the children's laughter. I look to my left, from where the missile just launched. In place of the cadre of keffiyeh-wearing, AK-47-toting mujahideen I fully expect to see, three small boys argue over who will light the next firework. Yes, that's right. A firework.
Just as I'm digesting this revelation, I am tapped on the shoulder. My still slightly nervous Arabic greeting "salaam aleikum" is met by a smiling response. "wa leikum a'salaam". Five minutes later I am sitting in a taxi, conjured from thin air as if by magic by a couple of charming men who simply couldn't do enough to help the lost foreigner. Not for the first time I feel more than a little guilt about my misplaced assumptions.
Fifteen minutes after that I sit in a pizza restaurant in the upmarket suburb of Hamra, listening to the excited English chatter of fashionably-dressed students from the nearby American university of Beirut, sipping an ice-cold beer and munching some excellent bruschetta. 20 minutes ago I was dodging Hizballah "rockets"; three hours ago I was wandering a four hundred year old souq.
Just another normal day in Lebanon.
