And I, I took the road less traveled by / and that has made all the difference.
That from a book in the back of an English literature class. I pulled the book from the shelf because the first half hour of the class is independent silent reading and I feel I should join in., model a bit. The book fell open to this poem, of course. One of his most famous, the bucolic Robert Frost. A peaceful existence in the country. Stark contrast to the topic today.
I am here to catch a presentation and question and answer session that another teacher, Jean, is giving this morning. Tom, the English teacher, has invited Jean to talk about Lebanon, because he is Lebanese, because Hezbollah is in Lebanon, because Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran, and because the students have been reading a graphic novel about the Iranian revolution of 1979. Fingers of history poking us today.
War and unrest.
The students finish their individual reading, take a short break, and soon the guest speaker comes into the room. Jean asks “When did it all start?” Pause. “1948,” he answers himself, rightly guessing that none of the students are going to come up with the answer he is looking for: “Al Nakba.”
The catastrophe, in Arabic. The mass displacement of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war.
He jumps to the 1960s and asks if the students know what the PLO is. They shake their heads. The students are from Russia, Poland, the USA. Interesting that they do not know. A new, younger generation. Or perhaps history classes in their countries don’t focus as much on the Middle East as other places. History is written by the winners, goes the saying.
Jean moves quickly up to the 1990s. He wants to give the students enough background to ask questions. He introduces the Party of God, Hezbollah. He doesn’t ask if the students have heard of Hezbollah, it would be hard not to have heard of them this fall.
Wars in 1996, 2006, and now. Unrest in-between, to varying degrees.
Jean takes a step back to mention that the civil war in his childhood was a daily reality. His family would take a boat to Cypress to escape the worst of it. Maybe twenty times, he thinks. For one stretch of time he spent two months straight in a shelter under the building where his family lived. He describes coming out of the shelter, into the sunlight, and after such a long time not being able to see. How do we create a world that creates stories like these? Jean relates that his grandfather kept the keys to his house when he fled Palestine in 1948. “He never went back, of course.”
Jean finishes his quick historical recap and pauses. “Questions?”
“How is life in Lebanon now?” Schizophrenic is the word Jean uses. I remember a movie with Brad Pitt and, perhaps, Paul Newman. They run through the streets of Beirut, avoiding sniper fire, to get to a restaurant, where they sit next to the windows, high above the city, enjoying a meal. Jean is describing exactly that. You might see people in restaurants, dressed up, eating, partying, even now, at least in East Beirut. Even while other parts of the country are getting ripped apart. Jean describes walking across the ruins of houses, as if on the surface of the moon. There was some truth in that scene, Hollywood or not. How do you live like that? How do you grow up constantly having to flee, return, and live in a shelter without light?
Hezbollah is Shia, supported by Iran, sympathetic to Sunnis, based in Lebanon, says Tom. Can you say something about this? Jean reminds everyone that Hezbollah is armed, and that other folks in Lebanon are not, so there is the feeling of being a hostage in your own country. Or more than a feeling.
A student asks about the use of French, which is tied to the French mandate, and the historical influence of the church, I’m not totally clear. Jean says, “’I’ve oversimplified, of course. It’s not just Christians and Muslims, there are 18 different confessions. It’s complicated.”
“We live day by day, we don’t plan ahead, because we can’t.” Jean underscores that although it is tragic, the Lebanese people have gotten used to it. He relates a story of a British man who invited Lebanese friends to a lunch six months in the future. The Lebanese laughed, they thought he was joking. You can’t plan things that far in the future, how naive. “My house,” he offers as an example, “was bombed four times.” A student asks by whom, Jean isn’t sure.
War and unrest.
As hard as it is to hear, as terrible the situation has been, is, and will be, I am glad to visit class today. I am glad that what the students are reading has given them a reason to ask one of our Lebanese teachers about his experience, ask him for his perspective. Seems like exactly what the study of literature should lead us to.
It is October 7 today, Tom reminds us. October 7, 2024, the one year anniversary of Hamas’ invasion of Israel. Another date on the calendar setting off more dates on the calendar of war and destruction.
Jean has to run, the class turns back to its syllabus. The collection of Robert Frost poems is lying on the table in front of me. Today we have heard of a different sort of road less traveled by. Far less traveled by these students, by the teacher and me, anyway. Far too often traveled by far too many people. It is so hard to comprehend that this road is commonplace for Jean and his family, for many people in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. A road pockmarked from bomb blasts, hostages to its destination.