My brain is full

I am back at work installing cabinets in St. Bernard Parish kitchens. It had been nearly a month since I last picked up a drill, and it’s exciting to be back in action. However, my head is still spinning from my monthlong vacation.
The trip began with a rooftop garden party at the end of a peaceful Beirut street that had been the scene of gun battles one week earlier. It ended with a pilgrimage to the birthplaces of Martin Luther King, Jr., R.E.M and Anderson Cooper. OK, I didn’t go to CNN superanchor Cooper’s home, but I saw his office building in Atlanta.
I wish we could have spent a month in Beirut, but we scheduled six days because we didn’t want to stay too long and risk being trapped in the ongoing violence and political chaos that was churning in Lebanon when we booked our tickets. In the end, we could still be there enjoying the beaches and bustle of a wonderful, peaceful city.
Days before our arrival, Lebanon’s governing parties reached a peace deal. As a fairly uninformed outsider, the peace talks seemingly amounted to the country’s weak political parties trying to talk the so-called “terrorist group” Hezbelloh out of another civil war. It worked. Hezbollah militants put down their guns, and their more peaceful members abandoned their downtown protest camps.
On our first full day in Lebanon, we visited this downtown encampment, which had been scrubbed clean and lined with beautiful flowerpots. Businesses had also opened, and people were happily wandering the streets. The area was busier and buzzing with excitement and energy at night.
Last time I was in Beirut, in the summer of 2003, I spent most of my evenings in this downtown area partying with my cousins. This time Christine and I were busy going to more extravagant parties in more extravagant places, but more on that later.
I hope to add a recap of these parties and all our wild international adventures in the coming days. For now, let me offer a final thought on the thrill of being in Lebanon at such an exciting and hopeful time. And I preface this with the acknowledgement that this firmly puts me in the Michael Moore blame-America-first club and I don’t care: I hope the U.S. government doesn’t screw this up.
Syria and Israel are banished to minor roles in Lebanon. A consistently tenuous and perhaps impossible constitutional arrangement seems to be working. Perhaps most important, many Lebanese are tired of fighting. The country is functioning peacefully for perhaps the first time since I was born in the American University of Beirut in May 1975.
But this fragile peace is based largely on meeting Hezbollah’s demands, which doesn’t please the Bush administration. Hezbollah is guilty of terrorist acts, and it has a principal stated aim of destroying Israel. But there is more to the story than anti-semitism and terror. The group provides comfort, aid and services in Lebanon and is a popular political movement in what is largely a power vacuum.
Lebanese leaders have tried several tacks through the rough political waters of a multiparty, religiously balanced democracy in the Middle East. Many have failed. The U.S. needs to stand back and let them try making a coalition government with Hezbollah.
Next time, I’ll get off the soapbox and show you beautiful pictures of Lebanon and tell you stories about our wonderful friends and family.