The Middle-East is a strange place. That’s the conclusion I came to after reading Belen Fernandez’s recent book “Coffee with Hezbollah.” If I had to sum up the book in a few words, I’d say it’s a combination of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Alice In Wonderland.”
Coffee with Hezbollah doesn’t have the sinister quality or psychological violence of Thompson’s work, but it has the whimsy and the 100% subjective viewpoint. And Fernandez’s description of Lebanon does seem like a fall into a fantasy world. The characters have a fantastical quality, the whole premise of the situation seems unreal. Two young women hitchhiking in a country beset by war seems unlikely to have occurred at all, much less with a happy outcome. They are completely free to roam about, and they are treated to hospitality, favors, and friendship.
But it is real. I suspect (but am not prepared to prove) that in the US has a bi-polar view of the Middle-East — “Lawrence of Arabia” on one hand and “Syriana” on the other. A world of romance and violence, and some oil. Belen Fernandez portrays a very, very different Middle-East. It is far more complex.
Her Middle-East is a combination of common people doing common things in a most uncommon reality. There is romance, but it is the romance of unexpected courtesies and friendships while traveling.
There is violence; in fact it is pervasive. It hangs in the air, but never visited on anyone in particular. The people are sublime, ridiculous, generous, self-serving, thoroughly steeped in misinformation, cynical, skeptical, cunning, and brave. They are possessed of a kind of wisdom that comes from suffering.
The book is loosely organized around the chronology of the trip. From Turkey to Syria to Lebanon and many points in between and back and forth. It’s hard to keep track of the locale or the characters. There is probably a metaphor in there somehow. Perhaps the fluid quality of the characters and settings presents the Middle-East as it really is, which is to say dynamic, not homogeneous, complex, and very fluid. If it is unstable, it is that way for a reason. Those reasons should be respected.
The one thing that stands out in this book is the one thing that I think is totally lost in other discussions about the Middle-East: the humanity of the people. Fernandez captures the attitudes and personalities of the people she meets with a fine touch. She is satirical, but in a way that reminds me that everyone is to some extent a caricature when viewed from the lens of another culture. To the people she met Fernandez must have seemed quite magical.
Coffee with Hezbollah is very different from Fernandez’s other book, “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” which I reviewed earlier. That book was austere in it’s format and unrelenting in it’s attack on the polices of the US and it’s allies. Coffee with Hezbollah is more poetic. The political artifacts are certainly there, but presented as factual ironies on the ground. Which is to say unavoidable realities that are accepted, if not acceptable.
The people Fernandez encounters may have a different worldview then me or you, but they have hopes, dreams, and they aspire to success in worldly and spiritual matters. Something to remember when we read our daily news.
Cheers.
