Yellow Flag

Let me tell you about how I came to own a bright yellow Hezbollah t-shirt.

I left DC one July day not knowing my life was about to change forever. I was a year into a job and airbound for Paris, and then to the Paris of the Middle East.

As we descended into this new-to-me city, I stared out at the blue honey of the Mediterranean wondering how it was possible for any place to be that beautiful. I had been starved of travel for a couple of years, and I was beside myself at the prospect of going to this mysterious city by my favorite sea.

As soon as I left the smokiness of the Beirut airport and felt the outside air that was as wet as the sea, I knew I was in another world. I was INSIDE the news. I would be there for two weeks of meetings, with one weekend between them to see the proverbial sites. I met with various dignitaries, from the US ambassador and the country head of USAID to the Lebanese minister of economy and the Lebanese Obama, Minister of Interior Ziad Baroud. The first meeting was in a bar where I witnessed young people hold actual hope for Lebanon, for Ziad's electoral reforms had been substantial. The second was in the massive palatial office inside the Ministry of Interior itself, where he looked tiny behind the biggest desk I have ever seen in my life. In the end, he WAS tiny, and he ended up having to resign due to political bullshit, thus effectively ending a period of relative stability in a country where stability was a luxury.

But that was later.

I had that weekend to myself. On Sunday, I took what passes for public transportation from Beirut to Baalbek, one of the most preserved Roman ruins sites in the world. (That trip is a story itself. Suffice it to say that the Lebanese I met thought I was insane for undertaking it.) A fully standing temple to Bacchus stands on the site, sans roof but with most everything else intact. At the complex's exit sits one of the oddest places I have ever encountered - a Hezbollah gift shop.

You see, Baalbek is controlled by those Party of God fascists who fly a yellow flag with a violent green rifle on it. Because the site and the adjoining city are situated in the Bekaa Valley, being in Baalbek gives them access to fertile land to grow their drug crops. That's how they buy their weapons, in a nutshell.

Like every other religious group on this very stupid planet, they are absolute hypocrites -  growing drugs, making money off a temple to an ancient wine god, and controlling the distribution of alcohol they allow for us tourist infidels near the site.

No, I did not buy the t-shirt in their gift shop. I had a hard enough time justifying the admission fees.

After I had been climbing through the ruins for a few hours, I decided to have a snack and an Almaza beer across the street. While contemplating what it must have been like to be a pilgrim traveling to this temple complex in its full splendor, the scrawniest man I have ever seen came up to my table in the hopes of earning anything for a scrap of food. The man was clearly starving. I gave him what was left on the table and bought one of the bright yellow shirts from him. It was $5.

Lebanon is a microcosm of global inequality. Beirut is home to glittering skyscrapers built by billionaires and playgrounds for wealthy Gulfies to express their religious hypocrisy in drunken, drug-induced, whoring stupors. At the same time, you have neighborhoods like Dahieh (if it still exists after Israeli bombings), the Akkar region in the north, and pockets like around Baalbek scattered throughout the country that are some of the poorest on the planet. Desperate people tend to cling to whatever person or group tells them that they will save them. That's why Hezbollah exists. That's why the PLO existed and why Hamas exists now. That doesn't make it right; it's just the miserable state of human nature.

Let me be perfectly clear: I HATE Hezbollah. I HATE fascism in all its forms. What Hezbollah has done to the Lebanese people is akin to what Hitler did to the Germans. It was Hezbollah that destroyed that period of stability. It was Hezbollah that brought Israeli bombs. This world is better off without Hassan Nasrallah in it, though innocent people shouldn't have been murdered to end his life.

It's Hezbollah that keeps its followers mired in poverty.

I still have that t-shirt buried in a box in a closet. It's beneath a flag of the Christian fascist party of Lebanon, the Phalange, one of the two parties responsible for starting the 15 year war in Lebanon. I pulled that one down from a light pole, disgusted that it turned up in my neighborhood when I was living in Beirut a half a year later.

Why do I keep these symbols of hate, I wonder. They are no different than a swastika or a confederate flag or a MAGA hat. They all represent ideologies of hate for The Other.

I think I keep the t-shirt to remember that man, to remind me that people don't always consciously choose hate, that sometimes they are drowning and clinging to any life raft they can, even if that raft is sinking itself and will take them down with it. Yellow is the perfect color for those people. Hate is for cowards.

As for the flag, it reminds me of what people can do when they encounter hate. Rip the damn flag down. Don't just put up with it.

That's what we have to do in the coming darkness, no matter the danger to ourselves.