Haggling with Hezbollah

The Hezbollah spokeswoman sat behind her desk, twirling her little coffee cup and sizing me up. She wore an ankle-length denim skirt with a matching tunic and a blue floral scarf pinned at the chin, Shiite-style.

 We were sitting in the hot makeshift Hezbollah information bureau in the dahiya, the south suburbs of Beirut. The plush air-conditioned office of the past had been destroyed in an Israeli air strike during last summer’s war. The spokeswoman had just dealt me a blow: the rules for journalists had abruptly changed and my interview requests were denied for the time being.

 Perhaps in 48 hours, she said, permission could be arranged, but that was going to be too late for my deadline.

Only later did I learn this was not to be taken personally. Hezbollah is now on a virtual media blackout, and journalists who’d grown accustomed to the sophisticated, press-savvy militant group were getting a harsh introduction to the new cloistered, paranoid incarnation. Several other colleagues, including some who are based in Beirut and have covered the group for a decade or longer, said they’d received the same spiel.

 The spokeswoman handed me a two-page form with spaces for just about everything except a promise to give Hezbollah my firstborn son. They wanted my name, father’s name, birthday, hometown, affiliation, agency’s address, personal address, address in Beirut, hotel room number, and so on. She handed an aide my Egyptian ID and my press card to photocopy.

But that still wasn’t enough to convince her that, despite three years of interviewing Hezbollah strategists and fighters in both wartime and peacetime, I wasn’t a spy just off the truck from Tel Aviv.

 “Google me,” I told her. “Tell me if there is anything inaccurate. I’m just a reporter. I’m not here on an operation to bring down the Islamic resistance.”

 She bristled.

 “Why do you have to go so far and say something like that?” she asked me, wrinkling her nose as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her.

 She sighed and said she knew it was complicated and that she didn’t like the changes any more than I did.

 “Some Jewish, I mean Zionist, journalists lied and came here and did everything they weren’t supposed to, and now this is why we have to be this way,” she explained. “Of course we need media, everyone needs the media, but we need to protect ourselves first.”

 While it’s true that some Israeli journalists had sneaked into the country with clean passports and headed south to Hezbollah territory, I suspected the blackout was not entirely because of them. Was it because the group hadn’t fulfilled its rebuilding promises? Was it because of the fallout from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s controversial speech the month before? A combination? No way to tell.

OK, I told her, forget about the officials (I figured I knew enough mid-level politicians and functionaries to call on my own without going through the bureaucracy). I asked instead for a permission card or a minder to make sure I wasn’t hassled or detained as I interviewed and photographed ordinary residents of the dahiya about their rebuilt (or partially rebuilt) lives.

 “48 hours,” she said.

 “Come on!” I told her. “You mean if I want to interview Abu Haider the falafel vendor I need permission from you guys now?”

 “48 hours,” she repeated.

 “So, dahiya residents aren’t free citizens of Lebanon, adults who are able to say yes or no to an interview request?”

 “Of course they are,” she shot back. “But we have a process. It’s out of my hands now. Everything has changed. We have to get approval for everything now. Even if I go downstairs with you now and we interview people, we’ll get stopped and asked if we got the permission. I could get in trouble.”

 She told me how she’d issued full credentials for a foreign television reporter that day. The woman set off, only to be stopped within the first hour of filming. The journalist passed her cell phone to the Hezbollah security officials to confirm the story with the Hezbollah spokeswoman on the line. Even with her verification, she said, they still stopped the journalist from working.

 We’d come to an impasse. I wanted to ask people about their lives under Hezbollah since the war; Hezbollah didn’t want me to ask people about their lives under Hezbollah since the war. It was as simple as that.

 A silence fell over the room. Whether it was the heat or the anger, I felt flushed and claustrophobic. Honey before vinegar, honey before vinegar, I repeated in my head. It’s my mantra for hostile situations in the Middle East, a reminder to stay cool and focus on sweetness before things turned too sour to salvage.

As we stared at each other with equally forced smiles, the reporter vs. official dynamic lifted and we became two Arab women locked in a delicate dance – the same one you see at weddings or other social occasions when custom dictates niceties even among foes. We spoke in the Lebanese mishmash of Arabic, French and English.

“My darling,” she said.

“My eyes,” I replied.

“My heart, tell me,” she said.

“My sister, you tell me.”

But there was nothing to tell, nothing left to say except goodbye. She squeezed my arm as I exited and promised she’d try to make some calls on my behalf.

Leaving the dahiya, I noticed a sign: Merci pour votre visite.