Meandering Thoughts from Hamra

The dust kicked up by the crowds of refugees and the buses that brought them in from Nahr el Bared in the North and Ain el Helweh in the South makes an ugly combination with the Mediterranean humidity of Beirut. It is a kind of unwelcome mud-buth, fully clothed. I haven't showered for a day because I've found myself sleeping in places I hadn't expected, and this isn't the greatest sensation on the skin. Around me, young Palestinian men from these camps, improbably dressed in suffocating nylon football tops and tight-fitting black trousers are standing around and waiting for the protest to begin.

A day after trying to tell a crowd in Dubai about the non-joy of science, I have come to a sit-in at Beirut's Martyrs' Square to stand in solidarity with fellow Palestinians whose homes in the Nahr el Bared camp, never very palatial or welcoming in the first place, became collateral damage in the battle between Islamist fighters and the Lebanese government in 2007. Nahr el Bared means “Cold River”, and the posters for today's event have called it “Fi al Bared Beiti”, a witty pun, I think, which translates to “my house is in the cold”, and also “my house is in the Cold River Camp”.

The sloganeering, always emphatic, is also somewhat confused at this demonstration. Are they chanting for a right to return? Are they here because they are Palestinians who were dispossessed from their homes? Or for the right to live in homes other than the temporary dwellings, usually automobile garages and corrogated iron shacks, to which they have been reduced now? Yet everywhere, at every turn, the protestors want to remind you that their destroyed homes in Nahr el Bared were also “temporary”, and have been for something like 3 generations. An unmelodic, slightly frightening and out-dated musical group wearing berets stands to military attention and sings both the Lebanese and Palestinian national anthems. Nobody seems particularly moved, not even the military-clad—and armed—Lebanese soldiers and gendermarie standing around the Square, but it needs to be made clear that this is a protest of Palestinians living inside Lebanon; there are two separate nations working things out here. Not a human rights or civil rights dispute from people who have nowhere else to conceivably call home. Maybe this will be political suicide, but let's face it: There is no space in RamAllah for these people. Israel will not let them return. We can not defeat Israel. They need to live somewhere. Nobody wants to connect dots so obvious they are screaming. Instead, we listen to speeches delivered by the incredibly optimistic Nawal Najdi.

I don't know Nawal but I do know the type—the type of person who shames me for not being more capable and willing to actually fight the good fight. In a sea of veiled, silent and marginalised women from the camps, Nawal has come, head uncovered and with a personality to talk down an army of men, she is the kind of woman who just instinctively knows that somebody needs to do something about Palestine, and she steps up to the plate. It's brave, but I think also depressing. Her voice fights against the heavy air around us, and can be heard in the surrounding shopping centres of the Solidaire, with their Virgin Megastores and Dunkin' Donuts outlets. I begin to wonder if there is any point to this; I spot a young Lebanese woman passing out flyers to passing cars, and I finally have a chance to think “there's a productive idea”; so I borrow flyers from Rana.

The passing cars do their thing. Some are disgusted and frightened to see Palestinian flags in this city which was crucified in the past for its attachment to the cause; others honk their approval. At least one driver tried to run over Rana later on. We are committed. In the ridiculous dust, between the faces of slightly appalled security guards protecting the Beirut's centre-piece Dunkin' Donuts, I have a chat with—no, I am spoken to by—a feeble-minded Lebanese man in a cap. “I live in Nahr el Bared!” he tells me. I'm from Abu Dis. “Ah, you bring the fragrance of Jerusalem on your body”; I can only smell my own sweat. The chap takes me by the arm and tells me to come visit. I say that I might, but know I won't be given a permit to visit. Besides, I am slightly taken aback by this man who smells holiness in my bodily fluids.

There are many like him, Lebanese so poor they have become camp-dwellers. In bed the next morning, I am told how the Lebanese in the surrounding towns have nowhere to shop now—Nahr el Bared gave them a cheap market where the merchants would give them credit facilities. I look at the ceiling and think of the obvious: That the Palestinians are now the Jews to Lebanon's Belarussia, living in Ghettoes and reduced to scratching out a living from the cracks between stones and destroyed tower blocks, with only their wits to plow.

Today the camp-dwellers who came to Beirut continue to live in the legal loopholes of concrete which are still temporary camps. I'd like to think some Beiruti motorists have read some flyers and might now think that the Palestinians from Nahr el Bared might do with roofs over their heads. I have a passport which will let me out of the airport and so I can go away, but maybe a conscience which will rest a little easier because I can say I took some time off from my holidays to go to a protest and make noise. I think of the wretchedness of the Palestinian who told me he can't even get a permit to go back to where his temporary home used to stand. I think of Abu Mazen on the West Bank and Hamas in Damascus agreeing to disagree in Cairo, and hear the whispers suggesting that's the way the US wants it. I think these thoughts and two beautiful Palestinians sitting in front of me talk about their new film project for the camps, and compare their mobile phones in their West Coast US accented English. I also like my mobile phone. I think about where to find the chess sets at Ta-marbouta, and need to make plans to catch a film in the evening. Just like the campers from Nahr el Bared, I have a home in the cold, but unsimilar to them, it is in far-away London.

I really have to think about re-working my Dubai talk.