Famous Beirut's Rawche

Here is a small video I made gathering all the pictures I took in Beirut near the sea. I loved walking along the Corniche of the beautiful Lebanese capital, a real treat on a sunny day.

Get carried away by these azure hues and the notes of one of my favorite French songs.

The bulls all spruced up during the parade around Santa Caterina church

The smartest thing Catholic religion could possibly think of has been to incorporate pagan rituals into its own ceremonies. Banning ancestral cults all together might have provoked too many protests and caused general unrest, so why not take the lead?

This is how many ancient festivals in Sardinia, especially the ones locals have always organized at the end of the winter to welcome the new season, have survived the Catholic wave and managed to reach our times almost unscathed. Sure, now bulls and horses lead a church-bound procession, white-clad men carry a saint on their shoulder, instead of maybe their working tools or the first produce of the harvest, the message has been slightly diverted, but the deep inside everybody is thinking the same: finally the warm season has arrived.

This small village, blessed with mild temperatures all year long and with an azure sea lapping its coast and making you feel in peace with the universe, is not the only one paying tribute to Saint Catherine. In France, in fact, the saint is celebrated in an even wider way. Considered under the protection of Saint Catherine, in the Middle Ages girls showed their devotion by making beautiful headgears aimed at her statue for the celebrations taking place every November 25th.

When married, young women used to leave the group, and people started calling “Catherinettes” the ones who after 25 were still single. While this practice has now faded away, every November 25th unmarried women still celebrate this festival by wearing Saint Catherine’s headgear and on that day they are still called Catherinettes, although probably, if in the Middle Ages being single at that age was a problem, now very likely it means that such young women have a promising career awaiting them.

The original Torrone of Tonara, the best torrone you will find in Sardinia

Coming back to Sardinia, in aptly named Santa Caterina, the feast actually starts at about 15 km away, in another town called Cuglieri, from where horses, bulls and people walk all the way down to the main destination: the church of Santa Caterina. They leave at 7am to arrive around noon. We can say with no hesitation that the bulls used for this feast were born under a good star: thanks to their being so good-looking, they are never used for any kind of agricultural or farming activity, they are spoilt and looked after all year long, and they spend their days grazing and doing pretty much what they please. To the extent that, in all their 500 kg of beauty spruced up for the occasion, in the middle of the procession they turned where they turn every morning to go to their owner’s land, and four men had to use all their strength to make them go straight down. What do they care about Saint Catherine? They know they are the stars of the show.

Before the parade arrived, young girls sprinkled rose petals in front of Santa Caterina church, and bulls, statue, Christ, and the stream of faithful did the tour of the recently renovated worship place for three times, while horses were lined up as if to fiercely guard them. After the parade, people attended the holy mass, and the bulls finally got to rest and eat, their horns liberated from the flowers.

Along with open markets, this kind of local feasts are among my most favorite activities. What’s a better place for chatting, updating on the latest gossip and seeing people you haven’t seen for ages even though your village counts only 500 dwellers?

As it happens for every festival, a small fair was set up for the occasion, and local farmers and handicraft artists came from their town in the hope to sell their products and because without them it’s not a real feast. The unmissable Torrone of Tonara, the best torrone made in Sardinia, without sugar nor glucose syrup but only honey and almonds, handmade soap, bells for sheep, nuts and sweets populate some of the main stalls: the perfect picture for a perfect Sunday morning with summer just around the corner, immersed in authentic village life and tucking into genuine homemade delicacies.

This is my first “video-adventure”, I hope I managed to give a good idea of the atmosphere. Enjoy and please, leave me your feedback (any feedback!).

Entrance to Museum of Resistance in Mleeta

There is something visceral about Southern Lebanon. Driving up along the harsh mountain ranges that frame its country lanes, around possibly every bend you can find pictures of young men. Nothing fancy, nothing movie-star-like, just a simple photo captioned with their name and the words the population has devoted to them. Words of eternal gratitude for their sacrifice in the name of freedom for their country.

It’s 1978, only thirty years after the Israeli militia has occupied Palestine, when the same military forces launch a new campaign and occupy Lebanon. Only here they didn’t find defenceless farmers who had no idea of what was going on, they found an entire population unnerved, uncomfortable and worried about the ongoing occupation next door. Lebanese have witnessed first-hand the calamity fell upon the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of refugees had arrived in the country after the Nakba of 1948, the tragedy that brought to the creation of the State of Israel. With all this in mind, Lebanese had no intention of letting their country become the “new Palestine”, no Lebanese was willing to lead the same life Palestinians were leading in their refugee camps.

Tank abandoned by Israeli militia when fleeing Lebanon and now displayed in the Resistance Museum

In 1982, four years after the occupation, a grassroots popular resistance started raising and fighting back against the occupation forces. By 1984, the popular resistance started acting under the name of Hezbollah, following the leadership of  Sayyed Abbas Mousawi (killed in 1992), Imad Fayez Moghniyyeh (killed in a car bomb in 2008), and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, alive and adored.

Men and women whose only purpose in life was setting their country free fought with any means against the foreign occupiers, young men and fathers sacrificed their life only to make Israelis leave. Martyrs such as that little more than a kid who blew himself up in the headquarter of Israeli commando in Tyre, determining their withdrawal from the city, his eyes still watching over the empty ground where from that day nothing has been built. Every single person had a role in what to the world seemed an impossible task.

No wonder why today Hezbollah is one of the main government parties, no wonder why Hezbollah fighters and martyrs are remembered every single day, no wonder why Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is worshipped in Southern Lebanon. ”Beirut government was ready to give up the South,” was on the most common refrains I could hear all around. “After Israel occupied Beirut in 1982, the central government wanted to negotiate their liberation and exchange it with the South. Even in 2006 the government was negotiating with Israel to let them occupy the Litani river from Nabatiyeh up to Maroun el Ras, near the border, to make them stop bombing Beirut.”

Israeli weapons abandoned by the army and displayed in the so-called "Abyss" in the museum

Feelings, emotions, details, battles, names that only locals can know made me realize how biased and distorted our mainstream media and education system are. I understand every country has its fair share of censorship, but creating false enemies has the only result of making people live out of fear, and as far as Europe is concerned, it’s fear of our own neighbours, friend countries and important commercial partners.

The occupation ended in 2000, and after 22 years of fighting, war strategies and bombings, the foreign army was forced out. Only in the shelling on Abassiyeh, in 1978, 400 people lost their lives, in Cana in 1996 more than a hundred. When the region was still wounded and struggling for reconstruction, in 2006 Israeli bombings started all over again: “They bombed with no mercy,” remembers my friend Leila who at the time was 14. “A hundred bombings every hour, in some villages, from Cana to the deep South, they bombed every single house, 1400 people were killed in 33 days, thousands heavily injured.” Leila and her family lived in the United States and moved back to their hometown in 2004, to find themselves at war only two years later. “I know it’s a horrible thing to say,” goes on Salam, Leila’s sister, “but every time we saw an Israeli airplane we just hoped to hear the bomb, because it would have meant it hadn’t fallen on us.” They escaped by car towards the North that was less hit, to a city that today takes an hour to reach, and seven during the war. When they got back they saw their house was not bombed, but their neighbours’ was.

To visit the landmark of Lebanese resistance, we had to get closer to the border with Occupied Palestine, up to Mount A’mel, in Mleeta, small village resting at 1060 meters above sea level, that apart from housing the tombs of prophets, saints and kings of the past, has also been Hezbollah stronghold during the occupation.

The means of transportation used by the resistance fighters

There is one thing you will sense from minute one: visiting the Museum of Lebanese Resistance doesn’t classify as the standard sightseeing experience.

Scattered all over the entrance, in a random yet precise manner, is the most diverse war equipment, vehicles, tanks and weapons that the Israeli army abandoned when fleeing the country. The Merkava Mark 4 tank, symbol of Israeli military power, was sunk in dirt with its muzzle knotted, as a sign of all possible contempt to an army that caused so much suffering, death and destruction. This is the first sight that awaits visitors, aptly named “The Abyss”, because this is what the message is all about, the abyss every country falls into when a war ravages its soul.

The mount still wrapped up in its morning haze, we entered the bushy trail where fighters set their home, their departure point towards the occupied buffer zone, their shelter and their mosque. We went past rifles, guns, old boots, rickety motorbikes, rusty digging tools, tombs and corners for prayer, all things that in a way or the other helped them carry on with the resistance. The cave I visited was chosen by the partisans as bunker when Mleeta became Hezbollah main stronghold. It was dug with the most rudimentary tools under the most difficult weather conditions, both winter chill and summer blazing heat. It’s really the case to say that longing for a free country was what kept them moving.

Modified Katyusha used by Hezbollah

I admit, more than once I felt a sense of unease. I’m not familiar with war talk, even less with war equipment. I despise anything military, any war threat fills me with dismay, and I’ve never bought the myth that war was necessary as it never is, but passing through that pathway, crossing the tunnel used as shelter, and picturing the kind of life those kids (because they were hardly older than that) led just because they wanted to defend their inalienable right to live in their own country with no foreign occupation, made me share their feelings.

How could I not? Should someone invade my house, I would fight back in any way I can, caring less than nothing about what the rest of the world wants to define me.

Israel is still occupying the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon, but no settlement has been built as Hezbollah will never let that happen.

From the museum we climbed up on the top of a hill overlooking former occupation posts and the later liberated areas. The region looks calm, you could say a corner of heaven, if you didn’t know of the bombings and the battles those white stones and green fields have witnessed.

Now, there is no leaf in Southern Lebanon that moves without Hezbollah permission, the military wing of the party is constantly on training, in the region everybody is aware of its power, even Israeli leaders admit that when Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says he will take action, there’s no doubt he will, and at the same time, when he says he won’t, he can be trusted. And Nasrallah has already said Hezbollah militia has defence purposes, but in case of a new attack or occupation from the Israeli army, it will not take them 16 years to bring it to an end.

Sayyed Abbas Mousawi

If you would like to see more pictures I took at the Museum of Lebanese Resistance in Mleeta, head over the Flickr set I devoted to it.

There are places that evoke stories even though they don’t flaunt it. Last time I went to the UAE, I divided my time between splendid attractions and luxurious places, not very difficult task in this small former pearl producer that bottomless oil wells turned overnight into a big shiny shopping mall.

Too much wealth does have some drawbacks though, one being the sacrifice of original traditions in the name of a fast modernization able to put this piece of the Arabian desert strongly on the map, and another being extremely rich people living side by side with other people who heavily depend on them to make a basic living. I have felt more than once in the UAE that very rich Emiratis, especially the young generations, the ones that have never faced hardship and don’t know the meaning of labor, have a life apart from the real world, a life spent in their golden castles and in compulsive shopping out of boredom.

However, there still are places in the Emirates that retained much of their old seafaring charm, and one of them is, precisely, the port.

Come here and you will see a concrete expanse clothed with fishing nets resting with ease not far away from the much more glamorous skyscrapers, epitome, in the public mind, of today’s Gulf society, in one of the most quintessential examples of paradoxical society. Moored at the docks is a series of boats that serve their owners as working tool, habitation and shelter.

Sure the fishermen living and working in Abu Dhabi’s port lead an adventurous life, sure they come back every morning with some thrilling tales from the sea, but do they tell someone? Do they know they are the direct descendants of the working category that once upon a time constituted the wealth of the region, ensuring trade, goods and food supplies? Are they aware that they evoke that seafaring link to the times when Darius the Great was busy ordering the buildings and the fabled cities for posterity to admire?

When I went to the port there was a strange calm, it was dusk, nobody was around, I didn’t know what the fishermen were doing, so I couldn’t help but picturing them getting ready for another night out there in the lookout for their daily catch and open to any surprise the sea might have in store.

Herbs and spices exhibition as soon as you enter Tyre's market

A beautiful display of spices and all kinds of herbs in a shop at Tyre market

Weighing herbs and cereals, could I miss the shot that brought me right back to childhood in my hometown?

A bit of everything scattered around in Tyre's market

Sheesha anyone? Kind of the watchword in Lebanon.

No better way to round off a lovely sightseeing in Sidon than with a delicious falafel. Yes, I took the picture after the bite, I couldn't resist.

And here is falafel in the making..

Yesteryear vaulted passageways in Sidon's market

Beyond tasty sweets in Sidon. Flavored with coconut, milk, pistachio and other nuts, they are impossible to resist. In fact I didn't even try.

I couldn't resist food but I did manage to resist bellydancing costumes. I'll wait to take some classes before tackling the cost of the outfit.

It seems like everywhere I go, some of my favorite places are always local markets. I can’t explain how these messy, hectic and often smelly city spots lure me in every time, but I can give for a fact that whatever country I visit, local markets are the first thing I ask for.

I’ve never been disappointed with open fairs, their flaunted ordinariness makes them intriguing, their primeval modesty is their appeal, and Lebanese stalls, both in Sour (Tyre) and Saida (Sidon), lived up to my expectations. Big time.

In perfect line with the country’s conflicting style, also its markets show a clash of emotions, and just beside hijab shops we can easily find lingerie displays. Whether you want to buy a chador or a bellydancing outift, you don’t need to go far, everything is within arm’s reach from each other, standing together with no apparent discomfort, making it possible to see young ladies wrapped up in a see-through sheath dress exchanging tips with abayah-clad dowagers.

Tangy spices, clouds of sheesha-released flavored smoke and evocative attires are only some of the scenes that will unfold before your eyes when you go out looking for grocery in Lebanon.

For more pictures on Tyre and Sidon local markets, head over to the Flickr set I devoted to it.

The symbol of Jerusalem, capital of Palestine, dominates one of the widest roads

When I travel, I always like to unearth unsung spots, and most of the times they are beautiful places that just need some tourism boost. This, unfortunately, is not the case for this post’s topic.

Every region bears within their borders injustice and the dirty remains of a not-so-remote past, and so does Lebanon, especially the southern part of this amazing, tiny country. I’ve always believed travel writing was a mission, more than just a job, and this becomes an even apter definition in West Asia, where travel writers have the opportunity to go beyond brochure-like descriptions and perform their best skills of honest reporting.

Lebanon is a small country that bears so many idiosyncrasies, both geographical and social, that it should be a real tourist-magnet. Yet, here tourism is still a struggling field. Why? Foreigners are hardly lured in because this is one of those war-stricken nations the suffering of which is still very much vivid in our memory. Twenty-two years of Israeli occupation from 1978 to 2000, combined with 33 days of merciless bombing from the same Israeli army in 2006 are way too recent to fall in the scrap heap of history.

A crossroad in the camp, the biggest road I've seen there

When I visited Bourj El Shamali Palestinian refugee camp near Sour (Tyre), I felt I was in the place where Palestine’s tragic history blends with Lebanese troubled past and present. The people I met in Bourj El Shamali are all descendants of the Palestinians who survived the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing carried out in 1948 by the Zionist militia in occupied Palestine, where natives were either slaughtered or expelled from their land.

Every May 5th Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba: next week will be its 64th anniversary, too recent a tragedy and piece of human history to be forgotten, and of which we still hold every detail.

At the end of 1947 the Tel Aviv’s Red House became headquarter of the Hagana, the main Zionist militia operating in Palestine, building where in March 1948 the Zionist leaders decided to put into practice the so-called Plan D, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine through the systematic expulsion of its natives. There are documents, there are names, plans and dates, carefully reported by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his well-researched “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, a book I recommend anyone to read as it highlights both the steps that brought about the expulsion and “the cognitive system that allowed the world to forget, and enabled the perpetrators to deny, the crime the Zionist movement committed against the Palestinian people in 1948”.

Palestinian flag at the entrance of UNRWA-run school

Israel expelled the natives from their land sending them to neighboring countries, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The mass expulsion took place as large-scale intimidation, bombarding villages and population centers, setting fire to homes, properties and goods, demolition and planting of mines to prevent any of the expelled from returning. Palestinians did try to fight back and defend their lands, but with a militia supported by the biggest powers of the time, they were obviously unsuccessful and desperate. It took Zionist leaders six months to complete the final mission they had in mind in order to impose a Jewish state in Palestine: more than half Palestinian population was uprooted (some 800,000 people), 531 villages destroyed, 11 built-up centers emptied of their inhabitants.

The main executors of the plan are all in Israel’s hall of fame: David Ben-Gurion, the undisputed leader of the Zionist movement, in whose house “all early and later chapters in the ethnic cleansing story were discussed and finalised”. Among the other executors are “Moshe Kalman, who cleansed the Safad area, and Moshe Carmel, who uprooted most of the Galilee. Yitzhak Rabin operated both in Lydd and Ramla as well as in the Greater Jerusalem area.” All men who went down in history as “heroes” of the so-called “state of Israel”.

Not-so-subtle wires show the rudimentary electric infrastructure

As soon as I walked in the camp, I realized I was motioning towards a different world, a sort of parallel dimension to the reality I’m used to. “Our youth shouldn’t waste their time dreaming about becoming doctors, lawyers, writers, they will never manage to get an authorization to practice their activity, they will never be able to migrate abroad, they are not allowed in Lebanon and they are prevented from returning to their homeland”, told me Mahmoud Jouma’a, manager and administrator of NGO Beit Atfal Assumoud and pivotal figure in the camp itself.

I knew all this, but listening first-hand to the hard truth acquired a whole new shape. My “free” spirit now looked like a “spoilt-child-like” spirit. I stared at him speechless, observing his polite and calm manners, and finding deeply unfair what he had to say, yet the real reason why I couldn’t come up with any argument for debate was that I knew he was right. How could I dare suggesting to fight for their rights to have a better education when they are still fighting for their right to exist? Who better than him knows the situation Palestinian refugees face every single day?

What I do find utterly frustrating is that many people blindly accept the fact that Israel’s right to exist translates into Palestinian non-right to do the same. They have no right to have a life because they were expelled from their own hometown, prevented from returning, uprooted from their own society and widely ignored by the rest of the world.

Kids playing in their backyard

The narrow alleys of Bourj El Shamali camp barely allow a motorbike per time, while cars fit only in the largest streets. The whole camp, housing some 19,000 refugees, looks like a huge neighborhood, more than a proper town. It was set up in 1948 to provide the Palestinian refugees from northern Palestinian regions of Hawla and Tiberias with a shelter. The main occupation among the camp’s inhabitants is in agriculture, mostly seasonal work at low daily wages. Poverty is widespread, infrastructure is near to non-existent, the drinking water and sewage system are yet to be settled by the UNRWA, in charge of the basics for the refugees, low availability of construction materials results in grim living and health conditions, and unemployment rates reach 65% for men and 90% for women. UNRWA runs two schools, but the absence of any kind of facility and resource makes it impossible for children and teenagers to reach a basic educational level in order to be accepted by any university, should the government allow this.

It took me a bit, but at the end I realized this was a place where dreaming is not allowed in.

Hiba (left), worker of Beit Atfal Assumoud, and Leila (right), my friend, volunteering for the NGO.

Beit Atfal Assumoud NGO tries its best to make life easier for the Palestinians who, after more than 60 years, generation after generation, still are refugees. Medical care, social activities aimed at keeping kids and teenagers off the street, counselling and family therapy, special programs to help children with learning problems are only some of the duties Beit Atfal Assumoud’s staff takes on. Waiting for donations for their medical equipments and volunteers to help them, the NGO’s workers are mainly Palestinians from the same Bourj El Shamali camp.

On my stroll around its maze of narrow streets I was guarded by three young men “because you never know what can happen”. I carefully observed life passing by before my eyes, trying to absorbe as much as I could of this unknown, disquieting reality we only slightly hear of in Europe, never accurately enough to make us aware of the actual Palestinian daily struggle. Crumbling buildings, small shops, rudimentary bakeries from which their delicious traditional bread manakeesh released a homely smell of homemade food, kids playing and sobbing babies clinging onto their mothers’ neck, still unaware of their past and their future, was the scenery that unfolded as I went past. Those babies will be unaware still for a short moment, just about when their understanding faculties will permanently imbue their minds, because they will soon learn the hard way what they can and they cannot yearn for, and they will soon learn from their parents and grandparents’ passionate tales about the tragic history of their people, the calamity that fell upon them and their homeland. That’s right, even the kids know the name of their native village, the original name that the foreign occupiers have changed in a desperate attempt to erase Palestinian identity from earth, efforts that from 1948 up to now have been widely unsuccessful.

These are my three fierce guards, the boys of the NGO who showed me around the camp

When I think of the absurdity of Palestinians’ situation today, of how unaware, and very much in denial, most of us are in Europe with respect to the plight of what a three-hour flight from Rome makes it a neighboring country, Malcolm X inevitably comes to my mind with his powerful quote: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

*I’ve taken many pictures around the camp, you can find them all on the Flickr set I devoted to Bourj El Shamali.

The head of the parade, with horse riders carrying the banners for the Saint

I'm not alone looking at the rest of the horses parading along the town's main street

The tractors start arriving after the horses

More tractors embellished with flowers on the way and riflemen on both sidewalks

The undisputed stars of the show

Ghilarza traditional costumes arriving with the parade

Every age allowed to parade in costume!

The religious branch of the parade carrying the Christ and the saint and praying

The Cross following the costumes

This year fell on April 22nd, but the feast of Sant’Isidoro in Ghilarza, Sardinia, is not always on the same date. Usually set on the second Sunday after Easter, the feast in honor of farmers’ patron is celebrated in different days throughout Sardinia. In Sedilo, for example, only 13 km away from Ghilarza, Sant’Isidoro is always in May and, apparently, with a wonderful ceremony.

The parade that in Ghilarza takes place on the second Sunday after Easter is the last performance of the religious celebrations in honor of the saint. The horses come first, some obedient some more “independent”, followed by tractors and bulls embellished by flowers and ears of wheat to symbolize farmers’ work. After the bulls is the parade of traditionals costumes, different for each village, and finally the priest, his helpers and the townspeople praying and closing the procession.

Lined up on the sides are men blank shooting with their rifles all along the way, friendly noise that made me temporarily deaf while I was taking pictures from my privileged press gallery, my balcony.

I think it’s appropriate to say that townspeople in Ghilarza (and in all of Sardinia) have a knack for organizing local festivals, every month there is at least one, some lasting even ten days on a row. All festivals have a religious background but, as it happens, some come from pagan rituals that Christianity incorporated because unable to erase them.

Palestinian, Lebanese and foreign activists at the protests in Lebanon

This year, on March 30th, thousands of people in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and in many European capitals commemorated Land Day. The first Land Day was held on March 30th 1976, when Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories demonstrated against the ongoing illegal expropriation of their land by the hand of the Zionist settlers. This year, in this occasion, a Global March was organized so, being in Lebanon already, could I miss it?

Since I’ve started my career in journalism, and even before, when I was still in uni, I’ve always been very close to the Palestinian cause, as I’ve always failed to understand how such an ongoing, open-air ethnic cleansing was possible in our times, with all countries in the world knowing and watching without raising a hand to stop the Zionist forces.

Rabbi Dovid Feldman at the conference in Beirut

Unlike what common belief might suggest, Judaism and Zionism are by no means the same thing. At the GMJ Conference in Beirut, I was pleased to meet, among the many activists arrived from around the world, also the members of Neturei Karta, and hearing Rabbi Dovid Feldman’s powerful speech, in which he clearly stated that for the Jewish religion the State of Israel is “forbidden”, because the Jewish people are out of the Holy Land by divine decree, therefore Israeli crimes are against Jewish beliefs (and very likely against any other religion too). He closed his speech with a sentence that sounded both a challenge and a cry for a deeper comprehension of their own plight: “Jews have always lived in Muslim countries without any problem before 1948. We don’t need the State of Israel to save us, and we don’t need the State of Israel to endanger us”.

That's right, there's no Palestinian protest without Palestinian falafel

The March, or better, the demonstration, took place in Kalaa Shkeef, near the Litani river, constantly object of dispute and fights during the Israeli occupation due to its invaluable source of water, and further from the Israeli border than what participants expected. Unsurprisingly after the clashes happened last May 14th, when some Palestinians were killed, among which a 50-year-old woman who approached the fence in a desperate attempt to touch Palestinian soil and was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier, as ordinary.

A couple of days before the march, I had visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Tyre, which made me attend the protest with the greater insight only first-hand research can provide. Although I knew about the dire conditions Palestinians live in, seeing and talking to them was eye-opening and, to some extent, left me speechless. I’m collecting the information I took from that trip and gathering photos and words in order to properly describe, in my next post, their condition most of us would consider unthinkable in 2012.

The colors of the Palestinian flag flying over our heads

Now I leave you with a (very rudimentary!) video I took during the march, when a Palestinian song introduced the series of speeches by local and international activists.

Emir Munzer Mosque, small mosque downtown Beirut.

Al Amin mosque, the main mosque in Beirut, where former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is buried. Lit up for the night and taken from far makes it for an evocative view.

Fountain in the garden surrounding Al Omari mosque, a former Templar church, downtown Beirut.

One of the many cafés in Beirut's classy city center.

Shopping street in Beirut city center, quiet at night, bustling with life during the day.

Beirut shopping district was so clean and quiet at night that it looked as if it were posing, I couldn't stop taking photos.

Still shopping district downtown, shining with cars darting to clubs and restaurants.

This was more a restaurant/café area, much busier than the shopping area at night.

Beirut is a pleasure to watch. Seriously, clean, classy, built with taste. I’ve only spent one day and managed to wander its downtown streets, so I haven’t explored its dark side. Every city has one, and I’m sure the Lebanese capital makes no exception, but on my first time there I only saw its bright angle, which I tried to show here.

Memorial of 1996 Cana massacre

It looks just like an average Mediterranean town, quiet and traditional. Wandering its streets might reveal some stage of decay, its crumbling buildings do give an impression of neglect, and first-timers will think the local administration needs to look after their community in a better way. While this is out of doubt, the history behind these walls is more complicated than what it seems at first sight.

Lebanon, is so rich in places evoking paramount moments of history that it gets overwhelming, and Cana, unwillingly with its cargo of tragedy and emotions, is one of the towns that most bears this weight.

Tombs of the people killed at the UN base of Cana by Israeli shelling in 1996

“That’s Cana”, said Leila pointing to the small town, after Mohammad drove us 12km further south from Tyre. Considered a holy place by the Christians, Cana, or Qana in Arabic, is where Jesus is believed to have performed his first miracle, turning water into wine at the wedding of two of Mary’s friends (John 2:1-11). From the dark and slippery cave where the miracle supposedly took place, the panorama that unfolded before our eyes was of a hostile landscape, where the seldom vegetation gives way to a plateau of barren grey rocks typical of the region. Back on the day when Jesus was on his thirties, just starting revealing himself to the public opinion, this was a place of feast. Little did they know that almost 2000 years later the legendary Cana of Galilee would have been theater of one of the bloodiest tragedies Lebanese can recall on their land.

Like the rest of South Lebanon, the city’s streets are clothed with memorial sites, as are its country lanes, framed with photos of martyrs who fought during the twenty two years of inhumane Israeli occupation that lasted from 1978 to 2000.

Cave where Jesus performed his first miracle in Cana, South Lebanon

On the 18th of April 1996 more than a hundred between UN workers and Lebanese men, women and children of the beleaguered town of Cana were slaughtered by the umpteenth Israeli shelling on the UN bomb shelter. Unsurprisingly, the Zionist leaders tried to cover up the massacre, but the overwhelming hard evidence made their cold-blooded PR efforts vain. Journalists of local papers and tv stations still now remember the carnage as the most horrible thing mind can conceive. Many couldn’t manage to report from there due to the unbearable sight of rivers of blood, body parts scattered all over the former shelter and dead people. As a creepy premise, only two years earlier Shimon Peres, who ordered the bloodshed, was granted with the Nobel Peace Prize, but fortunately, due to the event he was never allowed to become General Secretary of the UN.

Only four years later, Cana, like the rest of South Lebanon, was almost entirely destroyed by the merciless 33 days of Israeli bombings. Today the town is visibly suffering, slowly but relentlessly trying to face the too vivid memories of their townspeople, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters who died there, of their razed houses and of their mutilated lives to be rebuilt once again from scratch.