February 1992, Page 39

Letter from Lebanon

With Peace, Lebanon's Individualists Unlearn Some Wartime Habits

By Marilyn Raschka

"To the honorable citizen." That's how a recent letter from the Lebanese government to the residents of Beirut begins. The flier-type announcement was stuck by the thousands to walls, poles and just about anything that didn't move. The text urges the citizens to pay attention to the cleanliness of the nation's capital, even suggesting that garbage should be put out on street corners in plastic bags between two and four in the afternoon. That's after giving exact directions as to how to tie the bag.

The basic mistake made here lies in the opening salutation. Having been left to their own devices for 15 1/2 years of warfare, most Lebanese families act more like a private militia or a state within a state than citizens of a functioning country. Members of the average family manage their own electricity and water supplies, send their kids to private schools and tip a free-lance garbageman to clean up in front of the house- like hiring a teenager to shovel the sidewalk in front of your house in winter.

No Guff from the Government

Much like the militias that ran the show in the past, the Lebanese citizen is taking no guff from his government as it tries to reign in the unruly populace. The best example is the government's first major project to restore Beirut-the repaving of the streets and the replacing of curbs and sidewalks.

Considering the conditions of the streets after years of neglect, one would think that the citizen would appreciate this endeavor. Hole-in-the-wall shops have proliferated in recent years to fix holes in automobile tires. When the manager of one of the dozens of these tiny shops was asked why he was doing such a riproaring business fixing blown, punctured and otherwise abused tires, he answered, simply, "the streets."

The shafts of artillery shells protrude menacingly from roads-partially buried in the pavement since the shelling sprees of 1989 and 1990. Other shells that exploded left the streets pitted with holes that, with time and weather, have grown to alarming size.

"Manholes Without Covers" could become the name of a support group for drivers who have encountered this phenomenon. The covers were pried up and sole to scrap metal dealers at a reported $20 each during the "good old days." The government argues they were too expensive to replace. So good citizen motorists took to stuffing the open manholes with upright tires as a warning to fellow drivers. Similarly, the shell holes were stuffed with no-longer-needed sandbags or, on occasion, with plastic bags of garbage. Let's hope the stuffing was done between the hours of two and four.

So why wasn't the citizens happy with his government's road and sidewalk rehabilitation project? "They [the government] are doing this so that the foreigners will think the country is OK," said one suspicious Beiruti. Other drivers were irate because of detours caused by the paving projects, even though the road crews were extremely fast and efficient.

Most angered, however, were the citizen parkers. The old curbs were very low affairs which afforded easy access to the sidewalk, a favorite spot to stash a car. The new curbs are eight inches high. "Just high enough so that cars can get up on them," said a worker who was measuring them.

There was a short period when this was true, but it didn't last. Now drivers of large American cars or Mercedes are back at their old tricks, jumping the highest curbs. However, the citizen pedestrian-once thought to be completely extinct-has not only made a comeback but is vowing to fight to regain long lost territory.

"We are organizing a group," one pedestrian informed another. "We won't stand for this." She fantasizes about a Swiss army knife with an electric saw attachment.

Another has learned how to insert a match stick in the tire valve without being caught. (She pretends to drop something next to the car.) One citizen pedestrian walked over a car that was parked on the sidewalk while the citizen parker, still inside, went berserk.

The odds, however, do not favor the pedestrian. The government cannot regulate the infatuation of the average Lebanese with the automobile, tens of thousands of which were stolen or destroyed during the war years. Some 7,000 to 9,000 used cars are being brought into Lebanon every month. The government says that the ratio of cars to population is among the highest in the world.

Even if cars can be kept off the sidewalks, peacetime pedestrians still will have to contend with the citizen shopkeepers-especially grocers and florists-who consider the sidewalks fair game for their merchandise. Some butchers have become accustomed to slaughtering cows or sheep on the sidewalks as well. The "leftovers" are tossed, unbagged, on the corner garbage pile. This briefly unifies both citizen parkers and citizen pedestrians. By day pedestrians are forced to step into the street while detouring the piles. By night, pedestrians face a far worse experience as rats, foraging for tidbits, crisscross their path.

But the citizen parker faces a far more serious problem if he or she parks too near the garbage pile. Seeking out a warm, cozy place for their evening meal. Beirut's rats eat take-out style on the engine block. "The first morning I found a fish bone, the next a drumstick," reported one car owner. When done with the main courses, the rats tend to gnaw a bit on the electric wires, often leaving the motorist without brake or signal lights.

The government's police force hasn't yet started to stop drivers whose lights aren't functioning. But it's on the agenda, as battered Beirut and its hardy citizen survivors move unsteadily down the long road to a normalcy they can barely remember from the good years before war broke out in the spring of 1975.

Marilyn Raschka is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut, where she is an editoe of the Americans for Justice in the Middle East newsletter.

 

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