Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" Read Online Free PDF Page A

vile.

    The Commodore also has restaurants. These are recommended during fighting. The Commodore always manages to get
food delivered no matter what the situation outdoors.
    Nightlife begins late in Beirut. Cocktail hour at the Commodore is eight P.M., when U.S. editors and network executives
are safely at lunch (there's a seven-hour time difference). The
Commodore is strictly neutral territory with only one rule. No guns
at the bar. All sorts of raffish characters hang about, expatriates
from Palestine, Libya and Iran, officers in mufti from both sides of
the Lebanese Army, and combatants of other stripes. I overheard
one black Vietnam veteran loudly describe to two British girls how
he teaches orthodox Moslem women to fight with knives. And there
are diplomats, spooks and dealers in gold, arms and other things.
At least that's what they seem to be. No one exactly announces his
occupation- except the journalists, of course.
    I met one young lady from Atlanta who worked on a CNN
camera crew. She was twenty-six, cute, slightly plump and looked
like she should have been head of the Georgia State pep squad. I
sat next to her at the Commodore bar and watched her drink
twenty-five gin and tonics in a row. She never got drunk, never
slurred a word, but along about G&T number twenty-two out came
the stories about dismembered babies and dead bodies flying all
over the place and the Red Cross picking up hands and feet and
heads from bomb blasts and putting them all in a trash dumpster.
"So I asked the Red Cross people," she said, in the same sweet
Dixie accent, "like, what's this? Save 'em, collect 'em, trade 'em
with your friends?"
    Everyone in Beirut can hold his or her liquor. If you get
queasy, Muhammad, the Commodore bartender, has a remedy
rivaling Jeevess in P.G. Wodehouse's novels. It will steady your
stomach so you can drink more. You'll want to. No one in this part of the world is without a horror story, and, at the Commodore bar,
you'll hear most of them.

    Dinner, if anyone remembers to have it, is at ten or so. People
go out in groups. It's not a good idea to be alone and blonde after
dark. Kidnapping is the one great innovation of the Lebanese civil
war. And Reuters correspondent, Johnathan Wright, had disappeared thus on his way to the Bekaa Valley a few days before I
arrived.
    If nabbed, make as much noise as possible. Do not get in
anyone's car. If forced in, attack the driver. At least this is what I'm
told.
    Be circumspect when driving at night. Other cars should be
given a wide berth. Flick headlights off and on to indicate friendly
approach. Turn on the dome light when arriving at checkpoints.
Militiamen will fire a couple of bursts in your direction if they want
you to slow down.
    Clubs, such as the Backstreet near the Australian Embassy,
keep going as late as you can stand it. There's some dancing, much
drinking and, if you yell at the management, they'll keep the Arab
music off the tape deck. Cocaine is available at about fifty dollars a
gram and is no worse than what you get in New York.
    Beirut nightlife is not elaborate, but it is amusing. When
danger waits the tables and death is the busboy, it adds zest to the
simple pleasures of life. There's poignant satisfaction in every puff
of a cigarette or sip of a martini. The jokes are funnier, the drinks
are stronger, the bonds of affection more powerfully felt than they'll
ever be at Club Med.
    East Beirut is said to also have good restaurants and nightclubs. But the visitor staying on the West side probably won't see
them. No one likes to cross the Green Line at night. And, frankly,
the East isn't popular with the West-side crowd. All the window
glass is taped, and the storefronts are sandbagged over there. It
gives the place a gloomy look. No one would think of doing this in
the West. It would be an insult to the tradition of Oriental fatalism,
and nobody would be able to see all the cartons of smuggled