Where I'm Calling From
"Barely a hundred years ago, Lebanese Christians readily proclaimed themselves Syrian, Syrians looked to Mecca for a king, Jews in the Holy Land called themselves Palestinian...and my grandfather Botros liked to think of himself as an Ottoman citizen...None of the present-day Middle Eastern states existed, and even the term 'Middle East' hadn't been invented. The commonly used term was 'Asian Turkey.' Since then, scores of people have died for allegedly eternal homelands, and many more will die tomorrow."
So says Amin Maalouf, whose memoir "Origins" Origins" has recently been translated into English. The book traces the stories of his ancestors -- who include a successful retail businessmen in Havana, a "tragic hunger artist," his freethinking grandfather Butros, Catholics, Protestants, a Melkite priest, and even a Mormon branch. I read Maalouf's "Rock of Tanios," his fictionalized account of the Lebanese civil war. It was good -- not excellent, but good enough to pick up "Origins" if I find myself with a free weekend.
The New York Times published a positive review today. It describes Maalouf as "a polemicist on behalf of the mongrel life," a partisan for a more tolerant sense of identity. Slate published a review a few weeks ago, which uses the book as a launching point to discuss a "lost age of liberalism" that Maalouf's grandfather allegedly represented. I have not read the book yet, but I can say the NYT's review made me more eager to pick up the book.
The Arab Street, Revisited
I don't know anything about the "Lebanese Development Network," but they have released a poll purportedly measuring the popularity of Lebanon's political parties, broken down by religious sect. I have expressed skepticism about the accuracy of polling in the Middle East before. The LDN poll asked respondents "What political party best represents your point of view?" It shows Hezbollah's popularity among the Shia community dropping from 64% in December 2006 to 40% in April 2008. Importantly, all polling was completed before the Hezbollah-led occupation of West Beirut in May.
Assuming these results are accurate (and that's a big assumption), they run counter to the results reached by Shibley Telhami's Brookings Institute poll of Arab public opinion, which showed widespread popular support for Nasrallah. The two polls' results are not, of course, mutually contradictory -- Hezbollah's popularity could conceivably be soaring in the Arab world at large and plummeting in Lebanon -- but it would make for a strange dynamic.
From the Telhami poll, the most interesting result came when Lebanese respondents were asked "Describe your attitude towards Israel's power." They were given the options of answering that Israel's power was expanding, that it was impossible to know if Israel would get stronger or weaker, or that Israel was weak and it was only a matter of time before it was defeated. Check out the growing divide between sects, from 2006 to 2008, in their perception of Israel's strength. It sure doesn't seem like a formula for different community's seeing eye to eye on a "national defense strategy."
