American Passport in Beirut, Lebanese Humor, japanese terrorist

Moments ago I was in a cramped cab sharing the car with three middle aged business men in suits, one of them using english as if he picked it up from a Radio Shack commercial, peppering the conversation in arabic with words like "optimum" and "number one on the market." My head was on the window and my mind was going back to a conversation I had with my Swedish journalist roommate, something about how hard it is to remember what people would find interesting to read about back home after being here for this long. The traffic was pretty bad on the one way street that would be considered three lanes wide in the states, that's if Lebanese drivers actually remained between the lines. It was becoming ridiculous, we hadn't moved for almost five minutes so the cabbie turned off the engine of his beat up BMW. It shut down without a complaint while the driver struck up conversation with people in the cars beside us. From the arabic that was spoken, I was able to figure out that something was going on in front of us. My youth spent in California traffic could've told me that.

We made progress, a few meters here . . . ten meters there. After a half an hour we had finally reached the peak of the hill and that's when I realized that all the side roads leading from this main street had been blocked off by the military. We had go straight.
Tanks were staggered along the avenue in a pattern that forced every vehicle to weave between them in a single file line. As I caught my first glimpse of the checkpoint, my first thought was that a politician had been killed somewhere in the city while I was tutoring the Jung Yun and Ji Yun. I've never been interviewed, much less been in a car that's been pulled over before. My previous experience told me that there was nothing to worry about.

Five minutes later:

I'm sitting on the side of the road staring up at the soldier who I think is asking me where my passport or I.D. is, but he's speaking arabic and I have no idea what he's saying. He says "Yaboni" a few times with a questioning look on his face to which I reply, "La Japan. U.S.A." My arabic basically non-existent, but getting my point across. I've already paid the cab driver and told him he could go on without me. The business men stared back at me through the rear windshield as the first soldier grabbed my arm.

There's a paddy wagon, aka a truck with a fence around the bed, parked across the street. Young Lebanese men are sitting in the back of that thing wondering what the fuck is going on, scratching their heads and telegraphing windmill-like gestures at the soldiers with their hands, in a way I've only seen arab men do. A soldier who speaks English finally takes the photo-copy of my passport and the slip I've kept with me that proves that the government still has the hard copy. He examines it and tells me, "there's a problem." I'm looking at that paddy wagon like damn, watching the young people passing on the sidewalk as they get stopped and frisked, a few of them arrested and thrown into the back of the truck apparently for doing nothing more than leaving their I.D.'s at home. I'm thinking about the fake-gun I took my picture with when Brian was here, and how it doesn't seem so funny anymore when a soldier has an automatic pointed in my general direction, just enough to send the very clear message that I'm not to move until told.
I try to explain to the soldier that the reason I don't have my passport is because the government still has it, and that I was actually just there today to see if I could pry it from their sticky fingers, but his only response is to tell me that he learned his English in Jordan. He asks for the cell phone of another soldier and calls someone, apparently someone from the office of immigration. He gets off the phone as I'm putting my Ipod in my backpack, preparing to jump up on the truck. Then, with a stern look etched into his young face, he says, "I'm sorry . . . . .," pauses for dramatic effect then finishes the sentence " . . . for keeping you. You're free to go."

Funny guy.

I still don't even know if anything actually happened in the city or if this is all part of an attempt at tougher security. None-the-less I'm about to google my part of the world right now.