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 B

good-natured. "Do you speak
Arabic?" asked one. I shook my head, and he said something to
another soldier who poked face and gun into the car and shouted, "He just said he wants to fuck your mother!" At least, I assume this
was good-natured.

    The Druse villages are built in the Ottoman style, graceful,
foursquare sandstone buildings with balconies, arched windows
and fifteen-foot ceilings. The low-pitched hip roofs are covered in
red tile. Tidy gardens surround each house. Peasants in white skull
caps and baggy-crotched jodhpurs ride donkeys along the road.
Herds of goats meander in the streets. It's all quite timeless except
for the video-cassette rental stores, unisex hair salons and Mercedes-Benz sedans all over the place.
    The Bater crossing was another matter. A couple hundred
Lebanese, mostly old people, women and children, were jammed
into line behind barbed wire, waiting for the crossing to open.
Several hundred more squatted in the dirt or milled about disconsolate. These, apparently, did not have their papers in order. Some
had been there for days. A few tents had been provided but no
toilets. There was no running water and no food other than what
people had brought with them. Soldiers from the Israeli-hired
South Lebanon Army were yelling, pointing guns and threatening
everyone. The sun was hot. A few of the women and all of the
babies were crying. The smell was horrendous.
    There seemed to be no way to tell when the crossing would
open. My driver, Akbar, didn't have any ideas. I was not about to
get in line behind the barbed wire. It looked too much like BergenBelsen. No one in sight, as far as I could tell, was in charge of
anything but pistol waving.
    On top of an embankment about a hundred yards on the other
side of the crossing was a machine gun nest with the star of David
flying over it. I took my passport out and, holding it shoulder high,
walked through the barbed wire and tank traps. I fixed the South
Lebanon Army guards with a stare I hoped would remind them of
Grenada. `American," I said. They backed away, and I headed as
coolly as I could for the muzzle of the Israeli .50-caliber machine
gun now being pointed at my chest.
    Israelis are not well-liked in West Beirut. During 1982 the
Israelis besieged the Moslem part of town. There was no electricity
and little food or water. The shelling and air strikes sometimes went
on for twelve hours at a stretch. Beirut's journalists call the Israelis "Schlomos" and consider them war criminals and also real squares.

    Personally, I was glad to confront the only armed maniacs in
the Middle East who aren't allowed to shoot U.S. citizens. I hoped
they remembered.
    "That's my helmet you're wearing," I was thinking. "Those are
my boots, and I paid for that gun so you can just go point it at
someone else." Not that I said this aloud. The hole a .50-caliber
bullet comes out of is not small. It looks as if you could put your
whole foot in there.
    The Israelis motioned for me to come up, and I climbed the
embankment. They held the machine gun on me until it became
clear I was not a peroxided Iranian. "You must speak to the
captain," they said.
    He proved to be a boy of twenty-five. "Do you speak English?"
I said.
    "Gee, sure," said the captain. The Lebanese kept a respectful
distance until they saw him talking to me. Then they descended in
a horde waving unlikely-looking slips of paper and shouting the
interminable explanations of the east. The captain's escort chased
them away with shoves and curses. The women, children and old
folks pressed back with no apparent fear. Finally, they pushed the
officer and me under a guard tower. "Welcome to Lebanon" is the
phrase everyone uses whenever anything untoward or chaotic
breaks loose.
    "Welcome to Lebanon," said the Israeli captain. He read my
credentials and smiled. "Tourism?"
    "Yes," I said, "I'm the only tourist in Lebanon."
    The captain laughed. "Oh no, you're not. I'm a