the human province

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the two PSP partisans kidnapped. The word in the Shouf is that they were kidnapped by Shi'a (Hezbollah or Amal, no one is saying) forces in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah supporter last January during the sectarian clashes at the Arab University.

I just heard from my Druze friends in the Shouf that the two were found dead. While one was 25, the other was only 12. Ya haram.


UPDATE: Al Jazeera is reporting that the kidnapping and killings seem to be clan-based rather than party-based.

Last night, some friends and I were giving another friend a ride home. The army was out in droves, and we got picked to pull over and have ourselves and the car searched. However, when one of the two soldiers saw that two of my friends were Druze from a neighboring village of his, he called off the search. He told his colleague that he didn't need to search us and asked my Druze friends if there was anything he could to for them.

We laugh about this sort of tribalism when it comes from the guy selling us a fridge in Nabah. But it's a little disconcerting when coming from an armed soldier at a checkpoint.

UPDATE:I wrote earlier that the young man and the kid were Druze, but they were actually Sunni, although their families were supporter's of Jumblatt's PSP.