Informant38

On 6 June 1982 the Israelis invade Lebanon, marching as far as Beirut in three days and putting the city under siege for three months. PLO troops are evacuated from Beirut under the supervision of a multinational force. Lebanese Christian President-elect Bashir Gemayel is murdered. Under Israeli cover, Christians massacre Palestinian civilians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila. Many strategic foreign buildings are suicide-bombed, including the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, the US Embassy and the French military headquarters in Beirut. Lebanese and Israeli Governments agree on the terms of Israeli withdrawal on condition that the Syrian army also leaves. Syria refuses to withdraw. US warships shell Muslim and Druze areas of Lebanon. In 1984 President Pierre Gemayel visits President Assad in Damascus to reiterate his demand for Syrian withdrawal. The same year hostage-taking begins, including several Westerners. In 1985 the Israelis withdraw from Sidon and begin their �iron fist� policy of repression in southern Lebanon. The Shi�a Amal militia tries to subjugate the Palestinians by besieging their camps in Beirut.

{imagine you're a Lebanese college kid. maybe 20 or so. and you've got a pretty well-developed sense of style and that international sophistication that comes from growing up in a small but touristy and recreational place. so you have all these signals you've learned, to read and send, all this knowledge, the way things are, boys that matter, boys that don't, how men act, how the women they desire move and dress, which opinions of your father's are respected when you repeat them, which ones are ignored or subject you to the different varieties of tolerance/intolerance. and then no more.
it's gone. that whole world, that whole way of living. just completely and forever over. especially for you. that's what I was thinking about today coming back from another bizarre shopping experience in this little California town, with its box stores and big box stores and little boutique grocery chain and all. lots of that Southern California dress code, those mammalian competition signals flashing back and forth. and all poised deaf and blind above the bottomless abyss that is their future.}