Free Jasmine and Fire by Salma Abdelnour Page B

blasting these sounds, here in Beirut of all places?” she asks.
    Yeah, I say. In what other country that lived through fifteen years of shelling and rocket grenades nearly every night is there still such an appetite for fireworks? Fireworks for every wedding, political speech, lavish birthday celebration, holiday, festival, you name it. Are we hopelessly addicted to the sound of things going boom?
    Back in May 2008, when scuffles exploded among militiamen from opposing sects on various streets around Beirut, some of my relatives thought they were hearing fireworks—but quickly realized they were actually shells. They all ran for safety to the windowless hallways of their buildings, and some slept on those corridor floors all night until the shelling stopped. Some of their buildings were hit. None of my friends or relatives were hurt, thankfully. But you never know around here.
    Wendy, the political scientist I’d met at Curtis and Diana’s, is living in an apartment near mine during her Beirut stay, and I call her after the fireworks die down. I need a drink. Luckily she’s on her way home from a dinner. We meet on the sidewalk near my apartment—I spot her blond hair and small-boned frame from down the block—and we take a walk around the neighborhood. I tell her about the fireworks incident and laugh off my paranoia (she hadn’t heard the booms downtown where she was). And I silentlywonder if I can live like this again, in fear that the world is about to blow up around me.
    Over beers at a small, divey Hamra bar after our stroll, I ask Wendy a question I’ve been meaning to ask her since the dinner party, namely what it’s like to be Jewish in Lebanon these days. I’m wondering what the climate is right now, especially given Lebanon’s mutually hostile relationship with Israel. Has she encountered locals who were suspicious of her for being Jewish? I want to know, too, because I’d like Richard, who is Jewish, to visit me in Beirut and to feel comfortable here. Wendy tells me she’s avoided bringing up the fact that she’s Jewish in the months she’s been living here, thinking there’s no point and it could potentially be disruptive. Hiding an identity strikes me as unfortunate, but I can understand the impulse in regions as messed up as the Middle East. Thanks to Israel’s repeated invasions of Lebanon and its occupations of parts of the country, Zionism is not a particularly welcome stance in Lebanon, and unfortunately locals don’t always make the distinction between Zionism and Judaism. Many assume someone who is Jewish must also automatically support Israel’s policies. I can see how even opening the subject could be exhausting and time-consuming, and how it could seem less cumbersome to avoid it most of the time.
    Leaving the bar, Wendy and I stroll along Hamra Street, past the stands that are being set up now for the first night of the Hamra festival—some to sell labneh sandwiches or shawarma, others coffee or lemonade or Arabic pastries, or all kinds of jewelry and handicrafts. The scene reminds me of the ubiquitous New York street fairs that I’ve tended to avoid since they cause so much annoying pedestrian gridlock. But a local rock band is playingon a makeshift stage, there’s an upbeat vibe in the air, and we’re enjoying our stroll. As we chat and get to know each other, it comes up that, a few years ago, Wendy published a collection of essays by Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. And suddenly it hits me: this Wendy is the Wendy Pearlman whose book, called
Occupied Voices
, has been on the shelf in my Manhattan apartment for a few years. I’d bought it once while browsing at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square—this book, by a Jewish author compiling essays on Palestinians’ experiences under occupation, had caught my eye—and after she’d given me her card at the dinner party, I’d thought her name was familiar.
    “Small world” is an even bigger cliché in Lebanon