A few weeks ago A few weeks ago, Michael Totten sent out a call to some bloggers asking if they'd like to join him in Beirut. He said it wasn't so bad there, at least not as bad as it sounded in the news. A couple of bloggers took him up on the offer, myself included.

My husband, who had inadvertently wandered into a time of political unrest during a business trip to Venuzuela told me the most important things to remember were:

1. travel with someone who knows the area

2. avoid streets blocked by police or burning tires.

I went because always wanted to see Lebanon and this would be an interesting time to see it. Also, I've been writing about terrorism and terrorist groups for years, but I've never come into direct contact with them. Here was an opportunity to see one of the more powerful 'militant' groups face to face.

Orbitz didn't offer flights to Beirut, so I used kayak.com to book a flight to Lebanon via Frankfurt airport. If you ever have an opportunity to do a long layover in Frankfurt, avoid it at all costs - the internet access is slow and expensive, the phones don't work and there are not enough places to sit down, even if you do choose to pay exhorbitant rates for cafe or restaurant spots.

However, if you get stuck there for a long period of time, there is one spot of joy in that sea of overpriced wurtz and German 'service' - a place where you can take a long, hot shower for 6 euros. It's on the second floor, Terminal 1, Departures Hall B.

Waiting in Frankfurt

I arrived in Lebanon at around 1 in the morning, Sunday the 10th, the day of the second mass rally in downtown Beirut. The taxi driver assumed I was a journalist, filled me in on the current political situation, and offered to take me on a tour of Hezbollah controlled Southern Beirut. I was a little wary of the offer since he had pointed out Nasrallah's photo with a comment like 'There's the man'. He also overcharged me for the ride. But I did take his card.

Over breafast in a french cafe that, patrons and all, could have easily been located on the boulevard St. St Germain in Paris, we watched flag carrying protesters walking past the tanks and soldiers lining the streets. Walking down the streets, watching orange-flag carrying Christian Aounists drive by, I nearly jumped when a robotic flower shop Santa behind me shouted "Merry Christmas!"

watching the attempted coup from the cafe

The streets in East Beirut are decorated with tinsel and posters of journalist and politicians killed by [most likely Syrian] car bombs. The mall rivals anything Paramus can offer, but they check each bag before you can enter any store. The normally full cafes are empty on nights after the protests, not because people fear what others will do if things get stirred up - they fear what they themselves will do. Nearly everyone wants to avoid civil war, nearly everyone wants to do the things most urbanites do - make lots of money and complain about the traffic.

Beirut would probably look like Italy on a very sunny, crime-free day if it weren't for the troublesome, interfering neighbors.

I was expecting the massive rally to be a gathering of black-robed radicals screaming 'Death to America, Death to Israel", shaking their fists in rage. Instead, I found women, some vieled, some not, families, kids and balloons. If you ignored the inflammatory content, the threats and the incitement in the speeches, the rally was similar to the Million Mom march.

I walked among the crowd with my camera, my entire appearance just screaming 'foreign journalist', but no one seemed to mind my presence. In fact, the guys with earphones and walkie talkies made a special effort to be sure I got photographs of the sizable crowd. There were lots of these 'handlers' and they managed the crowd very efficiently.

Kids asked me to take their pictures.

These men asked me, in French, to take their photo.

The sunny atmosphere of Sunday’s march was a great contrast to the ambiance of the semi-permanent tent city downtown, later on that week. When I visited the outer edges of the tent city, the atmosphere was less Million mom march, more like the South Bronx, 1985.
These are the day-trippers. Many who arrived by bus were looking around as if it were their first day in the big city

The people with the orange flags are Aounists, liberal, secular Christians who have joined with Hezbollah for political gain. They don’t share Hezbollah’s ideology at all, and they have a history of being vehemently anti-Syria.

The Aounists' alliance with Hezbollah shows that people will join with terrorist groups purely for political gain.

These liberal secular Christians, with their orange santa hats, are obviously not motivated by promises of Sharia law, a worldwide Caliphate or 72 virgins.

As I was walking home, a man tapped on my shoulder and asked me to take his picture. He held up a picture of Gebran Tueni, an anti-Syrian Lebanese journalist who was killed by a car bomb. The Syrians and their Lebanese allies were suspects in the bombing.

The man, whose English wasn’t very good, pointed to the Aounists in Orange and said "Bad". He then pointed to Tueni and said "Good" Sometimes language limitations lead to an "occam's razor" simplicity - his analysis was the simplest and the best.