I would never have written this piece, if it hadn’t been for a Google search. Having seen the site and returned from an enchanting trip to Lebanon, I searched for: “Mleeta resistance museum” – perhaps because I want to find out what the internet had to say about a place I’d just seen. reads the search result from magazine, right below Trip Advisor.
Now, whatever I call it, I am pretty sure I could not be on the same page as when it comes to describing it. Of course, the worldview that gives rise to such headlines would not find this surprising. After all, I’m Pakistani.
And this is the era when people take the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis far more seriously than they ought to – with terrifying results worldwide. *** No sooner had we landed at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, found ourselves a taxi and driven a few metres out, that the question came up. It came from the taxi driver, right after we had established that he could not communicate with me in English or French – leaving me with no option but to trudge along in my flawed Arabic.
The question was one that I had not really planned to answer – at least not so soon. I thought it might come up in a relaxed conversation with friends (old or new), or in the middle of some long political discussion over an arguila, once we had figured out how Beirut worked. But it was question number 2.
And it came in my first conversation since landing. Number 1 was, of course, something for which I am gen.