One Copy Free
The Black & White
Johnston High School Student Paper Football field gets a new look
Summer ‘06
2006 graduate Jess Mitchell is getting married
Vol 16 No. 1
Of Montreal entertains Iowa City
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Page 2
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Student stuck in wartorn country
A flyer dropped by the Israeli Defense Forces reads, “The people of Lebanon will pay for their protector’s actions.” The flyers were meant to discourage Lebanese citizens from supporting Hezbollah.
Senior Black and White reporter Chris Ajluni recounts his time spent in Lebanon On June 29, 2006, I suddenly awoke to the sound of my mother calling to me. Coming to my senses, I yelled, “Yeah, yeah Mom, I’m awake.” My wooden-covered walls, black desk, and television came into view as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of my room. I slowly rolled off of the black and white futon I had slept in, my feet touching the thin carpet on the floor. My weary eyes focused on a large black suitcase with a Swiss Army logo. My mind began to reboot like a computer with thoughts and anticipation for the day ahead, making my fingers tingle excitedly. I couldn’t wait to board the plane for my 15 hour flight and scheduled arrival at one o’clock the next day in Beirut, Lebanon, where I would be taking Arabic classes. After a tedious 12 hour airplane trip and a 15 minute taxi adventure of weaving through disorganized traffic, I spent the rest of my first day in Beirut running, just to get a feel for the area around the Penrose dorm at the American University of Beirut (AUB). I ran on the Corniche, looking out over the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea, and I could see the jutting coast across a bay. The beauty of Lebanon didn’t stop on the coast of Beirut; it was alive in the towering mountains, the thick cedars, and the tall buildings. After turning on Hamra Street, I observed the wild traffic, smaller poorer shops and the large established franchises that lined the prominent road. American businesses, like McDonald’s or Subway, interspersed among numerous Arabic banks, smoky pool halls, traditional Lebanese cafes, fancy clothing stores and small-time family grocers. Visiting downtown Beirut on my first night was an exciting experience, made especially phenominal as the FIFA World Cup was also taking place. Every restaurant on the street had a large projection screen set up outside, with tables packed full of people. Every few minutes everyone on the street would start yelling and chanting during exciting points in the match, and if one team scored, the air would erupt with air horn blasts, clapping, and tables shaking their silverware. A glowing, golden clock tower beams down at you from the center of the area, with the Lebanese Parliament building on one side, and a Christian Orthodox Church on the other. Shops and restaurants of every kind lined the three other streets. If Beirut were a place of business, it would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because although Beirut has tons of things to do in the daytime, but the city really comes to life at night. Our first night out in Beirut took us to Monoe Street, where the best bars and nightclubs in Lebanon thumped to R&B, Rap, and Techno. All of the bars opened at ten o’clock, while the nightclubs opened at about two o’clock in the morning. We usually left Monoe at about four in the morning, taking a taxi back to AUB. On Wednesday, July 12, cross-border fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel. During the initial battles, two Israeli soldiers were captured
by the militant Lebanese organization. We were informed of the fighting by Abood, our program organizer, during classes that day. At that point, nobody believed that the fighting would spread as far as Beirut and the conflict would stay near the Southern border. The program director requested that all full-time students and summer students stay close to the university that night, simply as a precaution because there was a notion that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) might decide to bomb Beirut. AUB had been a safe haven for foreigners and students in the past, and it seemed unlikely to us that if there were to be any air raids on Beirut, an American university would be targeted. That night we heard what sounded like bombs for the first time, although they may have been shells from IDF naval ships. It is also possible that IDF jets were rocketing overhead at faster than the speed of sound, creating a sonic boom that would rattle your nerves and set off panic within the people. The news became a necessity in every room you entered, every restaurant you ate at, even hair salons, grocers, and cell phone vendors, every television was tuned to a news station. Where the World Cup had been only a few days earlier, death and destruction took its place. After playing soccer when classes finished, I left AUB to visit my parents in their apartment as they were scheduled to leave in the morning. Several things went on that night, but mostly my mother cried because she was afraid of what would happen after they left. The thought of leaving me in a war situation brought tears to her eyes. I sat with her on the couch for several hours, my dad and sister talking with us. At about eleven, I left and headed back to AUB on the dark streets of Beirut. They seemed different than they had been before the conflict, with a tense air about every baker or supermarket. I talked to a friend I knew at a café, and he said that his parents were taking him back to California, where he had lived nearly ten years ago. Perhaps it was fitting that the orange sky I had noticed on the way to my parents’ apartment had been replaced by an eerily quiet night sky. I reached the dorms at about 11:15 pm, walking into the lounge on the first floor of the Penrose dorm. Thirty guys sat enthralled with the image of a bloody Lebanese man on the TV with a news anchor speaking about the situation in the background. Behind the man there was a large pile of rubble, the remnants of a building. The yellowcolored wall and I became best friends that night, spending slightly over six hours together. I dared not fall asleep, because every half hour or so my
Chris Ajluni/BW
senses were ignited by the sound and shock of an burning in my mind. Shaking, I typed in “http: explosion or sonic boom. The night took hours, //news.bbc.co.uk”, the web site for the BBC news but it felt like days, waiting with the spattered network. The featured incident of the day was conversations in the rec room. The television the Beirut Int’l Airport bombing. The clock on station that we had been watching had turned to a the computer read 7:49. As I read, I came across view of the city, and every time we heard a bomb two words that eased some of my stress, “…no fall, we would see it explode seconds later on the casualties…” My heart literally skipped a beat TV. During the sleepless nights, my mind rambled and I had trouble breathing, I was so relieved. But in the realm of uncertainty and I visualized the I was still worried, still wondering, still thinking ceiling exploding and collapsing over and over. “What if?” I wanted to know, I needed to know, Every building I saw exploded after being struck so badly, “Where is my family?” I sat there in a by an imaginary missile. When I accidentally flurry of thought for the next ten minutes, images dozed off, I awoke at the thought of my friends and of headlines like “Iowa High School Student Loses family being crushed under the stones of destroyed Family in Lebanese Conflict” or “War Claims buildings. Sometimes I walked outside in fear of Iowa Teen’s Family.” Finally, at 7:59, by some the dorm being hit, but then I realized I had no indescribably remote chance, my parents and sister shelter and went right back into the lounge. Finally, walked through the door of the café. My eyes at about 5:30 am, we thought the relentless bombing flared, wide open, as I ran to give my mother a hug. might be over for the night. I took the elevator They were safe and I didn’t care about anything upstairs, keyed else. They had come to the into my room, café to check the news, just Chris Ajluni/BW and without even like I had. They had been at taking off my the airport when the bombs shoes, I went to fell on the runway, they had bed. I fell asleep heard the explosions and before my head seen the confusion. Their hit the pillow. flight had been cancelled. It I awoke from had been the scariest fifteen my exhausted minutes of my life. It was sleep to the over so fast, but it had such sound of my an impact on me. So much roommate yelling stress and wonder in such at me. Stirring, Lebanese soldiers examine a crater cre- a small amount of time had I murmured ated by a canister containing flyers dropped changed me, made me more something about grateful for a moment than I from an IDF jet above Beirut. being too tired had ever been in my life. before the words The next six nights were he was screaming formed coherent thoughts in insane. Sleep turned into quick naps during the day, my head. Six words started the most terrifying food turned into fuel, and I only ate when I became experience of my 17 year life, “The Beirut Airport extremely hungry. I simply didn’t think to get food. was just bombed!” After that, I wanted my clock All I thought about, and all my friends and I talked to read any time before six o’clock or after eight about, was the fighting going on all around us. o’clock, when my parents were going to be at the One night our group was invited to the university airport. However, the neon-red numbers read 7: president’s house for dinner. That same night, the 44. I was out of bed so fast I fell over. Getting IDF bombed every major port in Lebanon. One up, I wanted to know everything he knew, but explosion happened only a few kilometers from the he couldn’t help me, and no one knew if there president’s house, and the top of a lighthouse was were any casualties. I raced out of the dorm, my hit. By the end of the night, a student was admitted exhaustion gone with only one purpose: to find out to the AUB hospital because she’d had a panic where my family was. I sprinted to “The Net,” an attack and thrown up several times. internet café across the street from the campus and see SENIOR page 2 turned on a computer with sweat dripping from my forehead. My mind was racing; questions were