Well, so if you don’t already know this about me, now you know that I’m a terrible procrastinator. And the farther I get behind, the more I procrastinate. I started out with a half-written post about Thanksgiving, didn’t finish it, and then right after that came Ashura, and right after that came Christmas, and then New Year, and each holiday was one more big post I needed to write, and pretty soon it became easier to pretend I didn’t have a blog.
I’m receiving too many requests, however, for blog updates to keep on ignoring it, so I’m going to try to sum up all the holidays briefly in this and the following post, and then move on to other things.
For Thanksgiving, we had some Lebanese friends of my host family over and introduced them to traditional American dishes. The best was the pumpkin pie–made from scratch, since there’s no canned pumpkin available here. We also had cranberry sauce, brought in cans from the last trip back to the U.S., and a turkey, because the stores were just starting to stock turkeys for Christmas. And David had miraculously managed to find some yams somewhere–a rarity here, and too pricey to eat much even when they do show up. Imported foods in general are rare here, and especially any kind of produce. (Speaking of which, we recently found four boxes of macaroni and cheese at the tiny little supermarket across the street. Bonanza!!!) We told the story of Thanksgiving for the guests (and for Tommy’s general education) and played cards and generally had a good, if quiet, day. Oh, and I should mention that this was all actually the Saturday _before_ Thanksgiving, since the guests were unavailable that Thursday.
Not long after Thanksgiving came the ten-day Shiite holiday of Ashura, a sort of Muslim version of Lent, during which Shiites (and only Shiites) mourn the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. If you’re not familiar with the succession disputes which followed Mohammad’s death (and which led directly to the Sunni-Shiite split,) it’s worth looking it up on Wikipedia, because it’s history of vital importance to the Muslim world (and if recent history has taught Americans anything, it’s that we need to know a lot more about that world.) For those ten days, most people wear black and refrain from listening to music, laughing loudly, and often from other kinds of entertainment as well. Out of respect, we also tried to abide by these rules of decorum. This was very difficult for me because of its falling during the Christmas season, when I really just wanted to be singing Christmas carols and wearing bright colors and putting up decorations and generally celebrating life, and I’ll admit I was pretty depressed for most of that time. (On the other hand, we had the interesting experience of getting one taxi driver who had cranked his music up really loud and sang along with it, as if daring anyone to suggest he should turn it off. “Well, that’s one guy who doesn’t care who he offends,” I thought. Then I noticed a Palestinian flag hanging from his rearview mirror. Palestinians are mostly Sunni, and they’re not exactly made very welcome here in Lebanon, so I’m guessing he may have been giving vent to a chipped shoulder. I hope it was therapeutic for him–anything to keep the peace around here!)
On the last day of Ashura there was a procession through downtown Tyre–many long lines of men and boys (including, it seemed, every Boy Scout troupe from miles around–yes, they have Scouting here,) dressed in black and beating their chests, followed by a few lines of women dressed in black and some walking barefoot (in imitation of the women in Hussein’s family being led away as prisoners after the battle in which he was killed.)
Then, at the end of the whole thing, there was an ambulance and a couple of nurses with empty wheelchairs, all keeping a close watch on the last group in the procession, composed of (mostly young and, it appeared, very macho-feeling) men who’d decided to go with the more radical tradition of self-flagellation and head-cutting. Fortunately nobody appeared to have collapsed. (Most of them also seemed to be in a very good mood, considering they were supposed to be mourning. Of course, when you’re seventeen and have just shown the world what a big tough man you are by parading around covered in your own blood, what else can you do?) It was a bit disturbing, realizing I was looking at actual blood from self-inflicted wounds, and not some kind of stage makeup. Maybe not as disturbing as it should have been, but I’ll never forget the sight of dried blood-drops on the sidewalk afterwards. I mentioned this later to an older Lebanese gentleman–one of my students–and he seemed pretty disgusted by the whole display, and was very quick to assure me that the cutting is actually very rare, (except in the village of Nabatiyeh, which is rather infamous for its Ashura commemorations.) From this (and others’ reactions as well) I gather that it’s not a very popular tradition.
I followed the procession down most of the parade route, taking pictures–as many seemed to be doing. The marchers were in mourning but most of the spectators seemed to be enjoying the spectacle and the holiday more than anything else. At the end of the procession there was a bandstand with speakers and some sheikh (a religious scholar) preaching a sermon, at which point most of the spectators sort of melted away. I was actually very curious about what he was saying, but it was in Arabic, so I melted away too. A bit later, however, I was walking down the quay that runs all around the peninsula on which Tyre is located, and I saw a girl standing on the rocks, waving a flag with a picture of Hussein (a very popular Ashura decoration,) and I thought it would make a great picture. So I asked her if I could pull out my camera, and she said yes, and then she turned out to speak English pretty well, so we talked a bit.
She asked me if I knew the story behind Ashura, and I said yes, and she asked me what I thought of it. This actually wasn’t the first time I’d been asked–they seemed to be everyone’s first two questions–and by now I was getting the feeling that they were looking for some sort of specific answer, but I could never come up with anything better than, “It’s very sad.” I mean, it’s your classic tragedy; what else is there to say, right? Not being a Shiite, I don’t exactly have deep emotional or cultural connections to the story, myself. But she explained that there were many lessons to be drawn from Hussein’s death. Naturally I asked her for an example, so she told me that a big one is the example he set in choosing to fight a battle he was clearly going to lose (being vastly outnumbered,) rather than surrender–even knowing it would surely cost him his life. “We are not like those, what is the word, the people who blow themselves up,” she clarified. “We value our lives. But we will still fight, if anyone attacks us, not to give up, no matter what.” She didn’t exactly say who “we” were, or who might be going to attack, but I think I can make an educated guess, or perhaps three educated guesses (which may have all been intended simultaneously): 1.) Shiites, against persecution from Sunnis or any other powerful religious group, 2.) Lebanese, against all outside invasions (the 2006 war still hangs heavy in everyone’s mind–I hear it mentioned at least once a week, just in the normal course of conversation,) or 3.) Arabs, against invasions from even further outside. That last may just be me, as an American, reading a little too much into things–but her comments definitely shed some light on, for example, the reaction to the American invasion in Iraq. (I always thought that we seemed to expect a repeat of Germany’s capitulation in WWII, and this is just one more little illustration of how–and maybe why–you can’t expect an Arab country to act like a European country, duh.)
Okay, so there’s Part I–next up, Christmas and New Year’s. And then some reflections on my experiences in the classroom and on the street…
