Dear So and So,

Sounds like you are having a great time shaking up the
stones and wood. The best description of people is
that of stones and wood...so good that you find it in
the Quran in several places. Has to do with the by
products of human physical cellular deterioration.

"Qul: Koonoo hajaratayn wa hadeeda"....which means
literally: Say! Be you stones or iron....(implied, I,
the Creator will resurrect you.)

And you are busy resurrecting yourself.

As for this place...it is a bleak reality and
prognosis right now. Up in Nahar Barid (in English
that means "Cold River") the bombs are still
eradicating the domiciles of the refugees. It will be
quite the game trying to restore that dump to
habitable levels once again...considering the number
of townships and suburbs that were totally destroyed
by Israel last year. The US is trying to force the
Lebanese into a civil war. They just don't give up
all that easily. Hezbollah however refuses to
lift a hand against the citizens of this country and
as long as they remain steadfast in that then there
won't be a war...there will just be more of this
miserable kind of Doctor's Waiting Room motion in
which people are waiting for something and waiting and
waiting and waiting. As far as the south
however...well. The Al Q people have tried to stir up
trouble down there in Naqoura (a town specializing in
UN occupation that sits right on the Israeli border on
the Mediterranean Sea). And as for the villages down
there...well the "watchers" are everywhere...you never
know who is in the group as they are ordinary people
who have joined up with the citizen's army. We saw
(redacted). We also saw some other
things but I cannot go into detail on that point.
Suffice it to say though that the Mossad (Al Qaeda in
Lebanon as it is formally known) is being monitored
constantly down there and the Hez knows far more than
it ever discloses about the UN soldiers who are on the
take and the Al Q who are meddling in internal affairs
here. So there is a certain level of security but I
would not be completely surprised if they stage one of
their famous bomb outs in a Shi'i mosque down there in
the coming months or days. It is bound to happen you
know...or maybe not. We can only hope that it
doesn't. The velvet revolution was in play when my
daughter went to the American Community School
graduation shindig two weeks ago (it is subsidized by
the parent organization in "New York")....they had the
US ambassador give the keynote address. They work on
the kids you know...show them handbooks about
prosperity and success...all the while they are paying
to gun down the innocent elsewhere and sometimes the
guilty. They play both sides...slaughtering the
soldiers and then arming the soldiers to fight the
slaughterers. No telling what this plan wreaks of but
no doubt, the UN 'tribunal' will never investigate
THIS slaughter they've perpetrated via their labyrinth
of war parties and monies.

I can say though without any reservation now, that our
decision to take a hiatus from here was correct.
Things are tough here and the people on the street are
angry, tired, poor and not so very humble anymore
about taking a few bucks from Uncle Sam to do the
dirty. To collaborate. But not the Shi'i who
overall...believe that Jesus Christ (SA) is about to
make an entrance alongside the Mahdi. Yes. They do
think that even though we do not know the time we are
mostly convinced that it is soon. How soon?
Well...Jesus said he'd be back soon and that was two
thousand years ago so your guess is as good as ours.
I, myself think there is much more suffering to endure
prior to the return. It just isn't bad enough yet and
each day is slowly a bit worse and sometimes rapidly a
bit worse...but never better. Never really better.

It ought to give me the inspiration to write a lot
about things but it doesn't. It isn't right really to
do too much of that in my estimation and therefore, my
mind does not operate on the poetical apparatus. It
just closes up and says keep quiet.

Electricity is still being rationed and even more
seriously so. We get about eight hours of it a day
and so we have to pay for a service that gives you
enough amps to light a few lights and occassionally
enough to run the color TV and computer. Most days
though it is only enough to light the house and the
small apartment of the gateman.

The weather is Bomb-Cloudy.

When you get enough of those lit you get this
pall that just hangs around and pretends to be a rain
system. Summer in Beirut is usually quite blue and
shiny but most days now are just a dull gray that
clears a bit by noon and then returns by nightfall.
It is compounded by the dust from the rubble and
reconstruction which is in slow but full motion. On
the bright side, the pall keeps the daytime
temperatures a little lower.

Yours Truly,

Amen