As the years pass, one's memory of important past events gets foggier. The connections between well-remembered moments fade, and after a while all you're left with is a bunch of impressions interspersed with vivid but momentary images. Eventually, if you try to recount these events you find yourself doubting: did these things really happen, or am I remembering it all wrong? Worse yet, am I making stuff up?
I had an interesting, and very unexpected, experience along these lines a couple of days ago, when I accidentally crossed Avenue Trad.
The backstory is this. During the war I was staying in Zouk Mikhael - or was it Zouk Mosbeh? There it goes again! - with my friend Lionel Ghurra, now deceased, in his wonderful old home above the Mediterranean. Fighting was quite intense in Beirut and Lionel was getting ever more frequent phone calls from a friend of his - a woman with two teenage daughters - caught in a building in the middle of the fighting. It was clear from the terror of the calls that none of them were doing well. Along with bullets, a rocket had come through one of their windows and destroyed their kitchen.
After a couple of days of constant calls Lionel realized that the psychological distress was becoming unbearable and he asked me and another friend of his whether we'd be willing to drive with him to Beirut and try to extract these ladies from their predicament. We both said yes, and all that was left was to try to find the right moment, when a lull in the fighting might give us a chance to get them out. A day later it seemed a good moment had come, so we jumped into the car and drove, very carefully, into town and as close to their building as we could get. The only problem: their building was just on the other side of the line, which meant that we had to park several blocks short, then walk, scoot and dodge the rest of the way.
At one point we reached a wide intersection. Looking across, it seemed a mile wide. Someone warned us not to cross, as snipers were active. I recall him explaining that someone else would motion us when to cross. I looked across the deserted street and saw one of the most improbable sights I ever saw during my year in the Lebanese war: an open vegetable store directly across from me, sitting there as if there was absolutely nothing amiss. After a wait, we saw a man inside the little store come forward and motion us to begin running. Which we did, as fast as we could and without needing to be told twice.
Having made it past that hurdle, we darted down a couple more deserted streets until we reached a 5 or 6 story building. A large, ragged hole could be seen near the top where a rocket had gone into the building. Lionel called up in a loud voice and a few moments later a head poked out of an upper window. 'We're on our way, we'll be down in a moment'. We waited another couple of minutes. Nobody. Lionel called out again. Again, the head at the window: 'We're coming! We're just finishing packing our bags!' Lionel, perhaps slightly testily, said something along the lines of, 'What bags are you talking about?! Forget the bags and come down! The shooting can start again at any moment!' To which the head at the window replied with a wail: 'No! We can't leave our things! We'll lose it all!' We waited another few minutes. Nothing. Lionel called up a third time, and the head appeared once more: 'They're too heavy! We can't carry them! Please, can't you help us?!' I remember Lionel looking at us and saying something like: 'If we don't help them, they'll go crazy.' I remember thinking on the way up the stairs that, as far as I could tell, the damage might already have been done.
That, at any rate, is the essence of the story as I have remembered it all these years. With time, of course, large bits have fallen away entirely, and the rest has become as indistinct as a childhood memory. A few weeks ago I was recounting this story to someone in connection with my forthcoming trip and I found myself wondering privately whether ANY of it had actually happened.
So it was with shock two days ago that I unexpectedly walked into an intersection and discovered myself back where I'd stared across at the improbable little market nearly 40 years ago. Here it is. I've added some visual aids to show where we ran like terrified prey and where the snipers were located:
And just a few blocks away, the building, now dwarfed by new construction, where where we lugged about six suitcases down the long stairs, expecting at any moment to hear the bullets start flying again:
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