CHAPTER 1

New Leisure in South Beirut

In December 1999, seven months before the liberation of South Lebanonfrom Israeli occupation, an amusement park opened in Dahiya. It was locatedalong its western edge, close to the Golf Club of Lebanon and severalritzy residential areas. Its Ferris wheel was shining new and could be spottedeasily while driving on the highway that linked the airport to downtownBeirut. Mona was tempted to check it out with her 2.5-year-old sonwho had never been to an amusement park in Lebanon. Luna Park in theseaside Manara neighborhood of municipal Beirut was not clean enoughfor her taste, and its rides were old and rickety, and seemed unsafe. Shecalled a friend who lived in the eastern neighborhood of Achrafieh, andthey met with their kids at Fantasy World. Both of them were happilysurprised with the park's accessibility from the highway, free parking,cleanliness, affordable prices, and wide variety of rides and attractions.They spent the afternoon comfortably on shaded benches watching theirkids play. The amusement park was an island of entertainment, flanked bya highway to the west, a low-income settlement to the east, and high-endresidential buildings to the north and south. Mona returned repeatedlywith her son to Fantasy World, alone or with friends. In time, the rides losttheir shine and the bright paint faded—but the place was always full ofchildren of all ages, supervised by parents or domestic workers. A largerestaurant with an open terrace, lush with trees and fountains, catered tofamilies' needs, encouraging adults to spend time and money while theirkids played nearby (see figure 1.1). A few months later, in early 2000, justblocks south of Fantasy World and also close to the highway, al-Saha restaurantopened its doors. The restaurant was housed in an immense yellowlimestone structure that stood out from the surrounding built environmentto such a degree that some passersby took to calling it "that castle thing."Al-Saha's owner was quickly overwhelmed by the demand it generated andcould not keep up with the customer flow; we tell the story of the restaurant'sexpansion in the next chapter. The concomitant establishment ofal-Saha and Fantasy World was a clear sign of new desires for leisure andentertainment in Dahiya.

These two major sites opened in an area of the city where businessesdedicated to leisure were scarce. They represent massive financial investmentsin leisure that foreshadowed and inspired the plethora of cafes thatless than a decade later had filled south Beirut's streets. Before FantasyWorld opened, people in Dahiya spent their free time at Beirut's Corniche,or eagerly awaited weekend trips to their villages in South Lebanon andthe Bekaa. Lower-class men might hang out and smoke argileh on streetcorners, and teenage guys might play computer games in dim, smoky Internetshops. The wealthy visited downtown Beirut and cafes in upscaleneighborhoods like Raouche, Manara, or Verdun. There were a few gymsin the area that met the sports and exercise needs of its residents, and severalof them offered indoor pools used by women during the day and menin the evening. The need to enjoy oneself did not suddenly appear forpeople living in south Beirut, nor were desires for leisure and fun invisiblein the pious Shi?i community before Fantasy World. There has, however,been a significant and palpable change in both how and where people havefun. Fantasy World and al-Saha are no longer exceptions; they are twoamong the many options that residents of Dahiya have when they decidehow to spend their free time.

So why is this? Why has leisure been an arena of major social and spatialchanges in south Beirut during the first decade of the twenty-first century?Where did both intensified desires for leisure and the conditions for thedevelopment of a leisure sector in Dahiya come from? The answers to thesequestions require a historical journey through this part of the city and thepolitical, economic, urban, generational, and moral transformations thathave impacted and been instigated by its residents, especially since 2000.As we will see, the end of the Israeli occupation in 2000 marked a pivotalmoment in the relationship of many Lebanese Shi'i Muslims to leisure.National and international politics in the following years eventually led tonew separations between political communities, thereby altering relationshipsand spatial practices, including those related to fun. A recent historyof economic and social mobility for Shi'i Lebanese came to fruition in theform of a consolidated consumerist class. A generation of youths who hadbeen raised within an environment of religious revival and Hizbullah politicscame of age. These factors have united to produce a vibrant leisuresector in Dahiya as well as a community of pious Shi'i Muslims who seekspecific sorts of fun.

These multifaceted transformations have also resulted in what we callthe Islamic milieu in Lebanon. Islamic milieu is our gloss for the Arabicphrases al-hala al-islamiyya or al-saha al-islamiyya. These phrases haveno fixed, a priori meaning. The synonyms that our interlocutors frequentlyuse for hala and saha include bi'a and jaww, meaning "environment" and"ambiance," respectively. We choose to translate this loose concept thatincorporates "state-environment-ambiance-arena" as the word milieu forseveral reasons. Whether referred to as the hala, saha, bi'a, or jaww, thisconcept simultaneously connotes the physical and symbolic spaces withinwhich pious Shi'i Muslims live out a particular "state of being," the publicsphere where its norms and values are debated as well as shaped, and the"state of being" itself with its continually shifting moral norms. Pious Shi'iMuslims—those who consider themselves a part of the hala/saha/bi'a/jaww—are thus always participating in redefining the milieu. The milieu iscontinually reconstructed and reproduced by various actors, as opposed tobeing either an existential state or merely a context in which people live.The term milieu highlights this entanglement of physical spaces whereideas and norms are inscribed and negotiated, with the social environmentconstructed through those ideas and norms.

This chapter explains the history of the Islamic milieu, and describes itschanging relationship to Dahiya and a new generation of pious Shi'i Muslims.Through this history, we will come to understand how political contingency,urbanization, economic mobility, and generational shifts havecombined to produce an environment ripe for the development of leisure.We also consider transnational influences on leisure, and a general sense ofthe infitah, or "opening up," of Hizbullah and Dahiya as conditions forthese new leisure desires and sites. The most visible of these changes—andour starting point for this historical journey—is of course Hizbullah'spopularity along with its incorporation into the social and spatial fabric ofDahiya and Lebanon.

HIZBULLAH IN DAHIYA AND LEBANON

From Inception To Liberation

Hizbullah is the most prominent face today of the multistranded Shi'i mobilizationthat began in the late 1960s, and included a number of majoractors with varying political perspectives, methods, and ideologies. Oneof the earliest and most important of these individuals was the charismaticcleric Sayyid Musa al-Sadr, who came to South Lebanon from Iran in 1959,and established the Supreme Islamic Shi'i Council in 1969 and Harakatal-Mahrumin (the Movement of the Deprived) in 1974, both of which werefocused on winning rights for Shi'i Muslims within the existing structuresof the Lebanese state. With the onset of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, amilitia branch of the Movement of the Deprived was founded, called Amal,an acronym for afwaj al-muqawama al-lubnaniyya (the Lebanese ResistanceBrigades), which also means "hope" in Arabic. Amal later developedinto one of the Shi'i Muslim political parties in Lebanon. Al-Sadr disappearedwhile on a trip to Libya in 1978, thus attaining powerful status as asymbol of Shi'i righteousness and unity for both Amal and Hizbullah.

Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who moved to Lebanon in 1952after training at the religious schools of Najaf in Iraq, was another keyfigure in the Shi'i Islamic mobilization of the late 1960s. Until 1976, Fadlallahlived and preached in Nab?a, a poor neighborhood in the eastern suburbsof Beirut. During a particularly violent series of events in the earlyyears of the civil war, Nab?a was occupied by the Maronite Christian Phalangemilitia, and many of its Shi'i Muslim residents, including Fadlallah,fled to the southern suburb. There Fadlallah continued teaching and expandinghis grassroots religious educational and development work,emerging in the early 1980s as one of the pivotal figures in the community.He is credited by many of our interlocutors as their inspiration, and by themid-1990s had established himself as an important marja' al-taqlid (henceforthmarja' or jurisprudent), or "source of emulation," in Lebanon—astatus he continues to hold postmortem. This means that he was one of thejurisprudents to whom other Shi'i Muslims could look for guidance inreligious matters, as discussed further in chapter 3.

The context for these Islamically oriented mobilizations of the LebaneseShi'i community included the political and economic marginalization aswell as disenfranchisement of Shi'i Muslims in the Lebanese state since itsinception, the perception that the Lebanese Left had failed to protect theShi'i community, the inspiration provided by the success of the 1979 IslamicRevolution in Iran, and the violence and instability of the Lebanesecivil war (1975–90). Perhaps most crucial to the formation of Hizbullah inparticular were two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, first in 1978 and then in1982, when nearly a half-million people, mainly Shi'i Muslims, were displacedfrom South Lebanon to Beirut and its suburbs. During the 1982invasion, Israeli troops placed west Beirut under siege, and stood by asChristian militias massacred Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatilarefugee camps. In 1985, the Israeli army withdrew partially, but continuedto occupy the southern 10 percent of Lebanon using a proxy militia calledthe Southern Lebanese Army until May 2000.

Hizbullah was born in 1982 as a movement of armed resistance to theIsraeli invasion and occupation, though the group did not formally declareits existence until February 1985. Its Islamic Resistance (henceforth, theResistance) eventually came to dominate the military resistance to Israel inthe South, overshadowing Amal as well as leftist and other militia groupsthat were also fighting against the Israeli occupation. Tensions with Amalescalated to warfare in 1988, and ended with a Syria- and Iran-brokeredagreement in 1989 that essentially conceded control of the southern suburbto Hizbullah. From its early days, Hizbullah was not merely a militia butinstead a broader movement that built on the Islamic mobilization to developsocial welfare networks and institutions in Shi'i-majority areas of thecountry.

With the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, most militias either relinquishedtheir weapons or hid them in basements and village storagesheds, and then transformed or retransformed themselves into politicalparties. With the blessing of most Lebanese, Hizbullah maintained itsweapons in order to continue to fight the ongoing Israeli occupation in theSouth. The group also began transforming into a political party and participatedin the first postwar elections in 1992, winning eight seats, thelargest single bloc in the 128-member Parliament. Since that first election,Hizbullah has developed into a legitimate political party that works withinthe state, and participates in the same sorts of interparty wheeling and dealingthat generally characterizes Lebanese politics. It has continued tocarry a major bloc in Parliament and numerous elected municipal positionsthroughout the country. In addition, its institutions have grown such thattoday Hizbullah manages one of the largest, most efficient social welfarenetworks in the country, and is allied with private entrepreneurs who shareits moral and political stances. The party also administers a vast medianetwork, including television, radio, and print media. And since the late1990s, it has begun to focus on cultural activities, leisure, and tourism.

Hizbullah's popularity within Lebanon has shifted with political contingenciesand events. Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians and infrastructure—suchas the 1996 Grapes of Wrath attack on Qana during which overone hundred civilians who had taken refuge in a UN bunker were killed—generallycontributed to greater national support for the Resistance. Thewithdrawal of Israeli troops and Israel's proxy militia, the Southern LebaneseArmy, from Lebanese territory on May 25, 2000, was understood bymost Lebanese of all sects and parties as a victory for the Islamic Resistance,and fueled a high point in Hizbullah's popularity at the turn of thetwenty-first century.

Liberation, as the Israeli withdrawal is referred to in Lebanon, alsomarks a key moment in the development of the leisure sector in Dahiya.For many Shi'i Muslims—especially those who supported Hizbullah, hadfamily members fighting with the Resistance, or were from villages in theoccupied South—the experience of war did not end in 1990. Reports onHizbullah-affiliated radio and television stations shared detailed informationabout skirmishes in the occupied South, Resistance operations, andIsraeli or Southern Lebanese Army attacks. Many people in Dahiya tunedin to these reports, and did not experience the 1990s as a time of calm inthe way that their Lebanese compatriots did. For those who bore the bruntof the occupation and resistance to it, war ended in 2000. That was themoment when, in the words of many of our interlocutors, "we couldbreathe again." One woman continued, "People wanted to go out again,especially youths. People wanted to be out and about. It's natural, becausewe could breathe." As she suggested, one of the effects of this newfoundsense of freedom and relief was renewed desires for leisure, entertainment,and fun. Fun was no longer felt to be frivolous, as it often seemed whenreports of martyrs lost were a constant part of the media and social landscape.Opportunities for leisure were emerging, as expatriate Shi'i Muslimsstarted to return to Lebanon, riding on this moment of hope, and investingin the building and rebuilding of their community. The wave of expectationand anticipation that followed Liberation was short lived, however, andsoon gave way to a new and newly ugly phase in Lebanese politics.

Old Wars and New Sectarianisms

Liberation was followed in the Lebanese political arena by calls for Hizbullahto disarm, having ostensibly fulfilled the goal of freeing Lebanonfrom occupation. Hizbullah's consistent refusals were based on the premisethat conflict with Israel continued, due to the continued occupation of afifteen-square-mile border region called the Shebaa Farms, persisting low-gradeand occasional cross-border skirmishes, and the detention of manyLebanese in Israeli prisons. The release of many of these detainees inJanuary 2004 further fueled the demands to disarm Hizbullah.

In 2005, after the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri,these tensions came to the foreground and, for the first time in Lebanesehistory, began to take the form of Sunni-Shi'i sectarian conflict. Hariri'sSunni Muslim party, the Future Movement, now led by his son Saad, tookthe lead in accusing Syria of involvement in the assassination while callingfor an end to Syria's political, economic, and military presence in the country(a presence made possible at the invitation of Christian militia leadersin 1976). Hizbullah came to its ally's defense and organized a large demonstrationto "thank Syria" for its service to Lebanon. That demonstrationwas held on March 8, 2005, and to this day the Hizbullah-led political allianceis known as the "March 8" movement. A few days later, on March14, an even larger demonstration demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanonwas held, hence the appellation "March 14" for those parties alliedwith the Future Movement. On March 17, Syrian troops began to withdrawfrom Lebanon; they had left by the end of April.