SoC 3:1

Wave the Red Flag

 

I n Lebanon during the 2005 independence demonstrations, I witnessed the power of self-determination. The idea of Lebanese liberty brought almost the entire population into the streets, closing schools and businesses as the Lebanese insisted that Syria leave their country.

“They were good here once” a man told me, “But now it’s time for them to go.”

I am part of a small cadre of U.S. faculty brought to Lebanon to teach opening classes each term for our college. My colleagues, many come of age in the 60’s in America, were eager to support our students in solidarity and wave the Lebanese flag. I watched them: true 60’s flower children, slightly older than me, buying red cedar flags to wave, holding “Independence ‘05” banners out our bus windows or shouting along with the crowds “Syria Out!” in Arabic. Some were keen to go downtown and join the larger demonstrations, fighting visibly for the Lebanese cause.

I was born at the end of the Baby Boom; just missing the heyday of the 60’s. Back then, I was a hippie want-to-be. The Peace and Love Generation seemed to have it all: freedom from rules, moral outrage against the Establishment; a fashion sense that made anything work as long as it didn’t look like Mom. Marrying a Catholic man from Belfast, a place notable for The Troubles even during the 60’s in America, reinforced my counter-cultural stance. In the back of my mind, I always saved space to become the ideal wild woman.

Lebanon changed that for me. Amidst honking car horns and fluttering banners, my own self-revelation came when a friend asked if I would have gone to these demonstrations if I were a student.

That remark caused me to stop and think. How would I have gone about this in my twenties? Maybe yes, if most of my friends were going; if I believed in it; if my parents didn’t convince me it was too dangerous. Or maybe no, in a crowd of almost a million with no nearby toilets and the possibility something could go suddenly wrong. What would I have done?

To satisfy my own curiosity, I went to our nearby town, a half-hour north of the capitol. It was a night-long cacophony of waving flags, bumper-to-bumper cars, honking horns and ear-breaking-endless sound on its way to downtown Beirut. Nothing dangerous happened, yet instinctively I felt the need to keep my head low, move quickly, be able to disappear fast if necessary. Like C.S. Lewis’ Father Brown, I was pulled to be invisible, not out demonstrating with a flag.

I’ll tell you why. As a teen, I dithered about the Vietnam War, but ultimately I signed peace petitions with those who wanted to end that conflict. In Belfast, whether crossing the border into the Irish Republic or passing a Northern Irish police barrack rimmed with barbed wire, it always struck me British soldiers were young men barely college age; somebody’s child with a gun in a strange land. These days, one of my best friends is an Army fighter pilot, a Vietnam Vet (as is my dentist too.) What I now know for sure is war leaves scarred and dead people on both sides. Somebody’s child.

I saw London’s Baker Street station after the 1973 bombing by the IRA and spent days on the London underground painfully aware an unattended bag might be a bomb. One night in Belfast I woke my husband about a noise, which he muttered calmly was a bomb somewhere. Then he went back to sleep, while I marveled at his ability to not worry until dawn. As random bombs also began to go off in areas of Beirut, I made a mental note to watch out for lonely bags.

Now, at the halfway point in my life, I’ve hit another realization. Sometimes freedom comes by having rules and finding creative ways to get around them. I can see from my parent’s experience how context shaped the people they became—and how that isn’t about pointing fingers and finding fault. I’m too tired to be a wild woman; I’d rather be an independent traveler. As I continue through middle age I want a fashion sense that turns heads in appreciation. Truth is I was never a hippie. I don’t want be one now and I won’t go near the 60s again.

I didn’t go to downtown Beirut or to any of those demonstrations broadcast on CNN, but I still have my beliefs. Peace is a relative concept. Unless people enforce justice daily, unless we all maintain our dignity by refusing to give in to complacency, there is no lasting peace. Protests and action can quell the most graphic discrimination; something certainly better than the alternative. But prejudice continues—it simply goes further underground; to surface again when governments support political agendas and not the rights of their people.

I support a vision of Lebanon that people like Rafik Hariri tried to make tangible. But even as I wore my red shirt and sat watching the stream of demonstrators driving down to Martyr’s Square in Beirut, I knew this was a Lebanese cause. Maybe the best thing to do is step back quietly, making space for those who would continue Hariri’s dream of working for peace. This is so much harder than waving a flag and shouting a slogan. It takes a lifetime.