Lebanon déjà vu
Over the summer, since I started this project, I’ve mentioned what the newspapers are reporting briefly if at all. Actually I started recording newspaper headlines for each day in my diary, thinking there would be items that might spark off an idea or provide the basis for an entry here. I gave up on that after a couple of weeks, partly because copying out headlines was just too much like writing lines at school, but mostly because pretty much everything else I was doing was more interesting or more inspiring.
Pretty much everything else, but not quite. For example, the Götheborg – the replica East Indiaman that was built here (and which I’ve been able to visit at various stages of her construction) finally reached Canton, after a voyage of ten months or so. That would have been a good topic to write about, but it coincided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it seemed frivolous to be paying attention to the one while ignoring the other. And I have ignored the other – or I’ve tried to, writing this. I get a sick feeling thinking about what is going on in Lebanon. Partly, that’s déjà vu.
Once upon a time, in the spring of 1982 when I was busy qualifying as a teacher, it was really difficult to find work in England. At that time newly hatched teachers were two a penny, at least it seemed that way. Most of my fellow graduates were getting turned down from jobs right and left. Two of my flatmates, who were determined to get work and focused on competing with one another, managed to collect rejections from over 100 schools each. Even I managed to get turned down by over 40. English, history, sociology, religion, politics – expertise in these subjects was simply not in demand. The only one of my contemporaries who was able to get the job he wanted had gained his certification in as a teacher of maths, computer studies and sports.
My trump card was that I had also trained to teach English as a foreign language, and so after my fortieth rejection I started looking abroad. The second job I applied for, I got. I left England for a year and (the occasional summer school excepted) I’ve never worked there again.
But that first job foreign job, the one I applied for but didn’t get. It was in Beirut at a Quaker school.
At the time, I was a bit disappointed not even to be called for an interview. Then my second application was accepted and I was too busy to mope, getting myself organised to leave home and move to Bulgaria.
A little later in the year I found myself sitting in my flat in Sofia, my ear pressed to the shortwave radio as I tried to keep tuned to the BBC World Service reports from Israel’s first invasion. The school where I hadn’t got a job, along with the rest of Beirut was bombed and shelled and fought over and overrun by Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian regulars, and all the various irregular militias. The student and teaching body was dispersed. I don’t know what the casualties were, swallowed up in all the rest of that enormous misery. (And this para is a statement built on supposition and ignorance as I've not been able to find any more about what happened in Brummana. I doubt the school was unaffected, but they are obviously well re-established.)
Tucked away in Bulgaria, I followed the story on the BBC and in month-old copies of the only available English language newspaper, the Morning Star. I remember feeling both relieved and terribly frustrated. Relieved to be safe, of course, but frustrated that I wasn’t there where I might have been in the thick of something exciting, where I might have been able to do something noble and heroic. (In my defence, I was 24 and still a romantic and a pacifist. In all probability I’d just have been shit scared and desperate to get away.)
So, back to the summer of 2006, and here we go again, only this time I’m viewing the same thing through the different distortion of the Göteborgs-Posten and Sveriges Radio. (OK, also the BBC’s Internet service.)
***
I had gone on here to write a whole lot more about immigrants to Sweden and Gothenburg, and about how the Swedish reports from the Lebanon started out referring to all the Swedes caught up in the fighting. Many were people who had sought refuge in Sweden during the previous troubles, or their children. There was a deliberate attempt to compare the situation (and more particularly the behaviour of the Swedish Foreign Office) with events following on from the tsunami in South-east Asia a year and a half ago. However, I realised I was just getting boring, so I decided to stop.
***
Putting this together before publishing it, I came across the blogs maintained by Reem and dedicated to the present situation in Lebanon. Reem and the other contributors to his blogs have more serious and moving things to say about the present situation. Go read them.
posted by John TheSupercargo at Friday, August 25, 2006
2 Comments:
Ah well.... a very close friend of mine were in Lebanon with here husband and two children when it all happened. Her husband, who had already 'escaped' once, was very frustrated, partly because he had already experienced this before and partly because he once again had to leave his mother behind. They were on the first evacuation flight back to Sweden. My friend was very happy with the service provided by the Swedish Consulate. She probably has the most exciting stories to tell about this summer's holiday at work..., but probably the stories she wished she hadn't experienced....
Yes, exactly. The sort of memories you might want to relate - even with a degree of nostalgia - from the comfort of a chronological and physical distance, but also ones which at the time you would probably much prefer not to have had.
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