Chapter 1:
Into the Lion’s DenA JOURNEY INTO MADNESS
THE FIRST CLUE that I had thrown myself into the mouth of madness should have been clear before the Middle East Airlines 767 took off from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with hardly a soul aboard besides me, the lowly writer, and Carl Medearis, the fearless trailblazer who sat beside me, trying to look at ease.
Correction. The first clue should have come five days earlier when I received the call that the Hezbollah had just stormed the parliament buildings in Beirut, had declared their own form of martial law, and were killing dissenting party members who’d taken up arms. A full-scale war had broken out in the very city Carl had talked me into visiting on this quest of ours.
Tanks and military vehicles, hundreds of them, were rolling down the streets. Citizens were fleeing. Hezbollah had seized control of the airport and stopped all flights. The American State Department had just issued a travel advisory, essentially prohibiting travel into the region.
I remember the call vividly. I was standing in a small luggage shop in my hometown of Austin, Texas, trying to decide whether the exorbitant price they were suggesting I pay for Tumi bags was worth the extra coin. I could buy a good Samsonite suitcase for a third the price.
It was then my cell phone chirped and I stepped out of the shop, glad for the distraction.
“Have you heard the news?” Carl asked in his ever-nonchalant voice.
“What news?”
“Lebanon’s at war.”
“Huh. Really?”
“The airport is shut down.”
“Wow. Really?”
“Many are reported killed.”
“Seriously?”
You see, my own use of those words,
really and
wow and
seriously, should have sealed the deal for me. Going to Beirut at a time like
this was ill-advised. And going to Beirut to have tea with the top leaders
of the Hezbollah, of all people, was now just plain absurd.
“What about Saudi Arabia?” I asked with as much bravado as I could muster. I was the apprentice here, playing the role of adventurer-in-training, and it was important that I didn’t start squealing like a frightened child.
“Well, this
is the Middle East,” Carl came back casually. “Samir just evacuated his children on a private plane. He’s adamant that we cancel the entire trip.”
Samir. One of Carl’s many friends in the Middle East, but unique in that Samir knows and is trusted by everyone. A linchpin for this trip, he was responsible for many of our appointments. If he said cancel, clearly we canceled.
My partner wasn’t panicking, so I followed his most admirable example. I glanced back through the window where my wife, Lee Ann, was talking to the clerk about the Tumi bags. Naturally we wouldn’t be needing either Tumi or Samsonite—the world was coming to an end.
“What about Syria?” I asked.
“Yeah, well, the road from Lebanon into Syria is blockaded with burning tires.”
“Seriously?” Again that word. “So our meeting with Assad’s government—”
“Is now probably out of the question.”
“What about the West Bank? The Hamas?”
“Yeah, crazy, huh? Same with the bin Laden brothers in Saudi Arabia. The whole region could erupt. This is big news.”
“What does Chris think?” Chris is Carl’s Greek goddess, his marriage
partner who has given him three children and traveled the world at his side with superhuman grace. That’s my take.
“Yeah, she thinks the trip is dangerous.”
Now that I think about it, I did take notice of those early clues that traveling through the Middle East to ask “never before asked questions” of Islam’s most influential ideologues and America’s “enemies” was a misguided mission. In fact, I distinctly remember feeling buckets of sweet, cool relief washing over my body as Carl broke the news.
The trip was off. I felt jovial! I was liberated from the fear that had nagged at me for many months as Carl slowly but surely put together this unprecedented trip.
Honestly, I never really thought he’d pull it off. Without fail, my mention of the trip to publishers or people of influence would garner the same coy smile. “Yeah, good luck with that.” Who’d ever heard of such a thing? I mean, it’s one thing to sit in a coffee shop in downtown Denver and dream about the ultimate trip to the most dangerous parts of the world, but the list of people whom Carl wanted to meet amounted to a delusional dream. Or a nightmare, depending on your perspective.
Did I say delusional? Add impossible to that. No one from the State Department could get the meetings Carl was going after. In fact, no one but Carl Medearis could land them, but more on that later.
As the months stretched into a year and the appointments began falling into place, I tried to back out a dozen times. Finally, two days before we were scheduled to leave, God Himself had reached down and mercifully rescued me from almost certain death. Not to mention an overpriced luggage purchase. Being the puppy in tow of the great mastiff, I put on a brave face.
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“Well, we wait and see.”
“Wait for what?”
“For things on the ground to change. Could all be fine tomorrow.”
I’m here to tell you that nothing was fine tomorrow. I’m still not sure what—besides foolishness—put me on a flight from Denver to Cairo two days later.
And I’m even less sure of what absurd notions could possibly have persuaded me to board the first flight into Beirut four days later, following a week’s upheaval that had sent souls far braver than me either running for cover or to their graves.
Yet here I was, cranking open the vent over my head to dry the ribbons of sweat seeping from my forehead, never mind that the cabin was already freezing. Samir Kreidie, the wealthy Muslim businessman in Saudi Arabia who’d helped to set up the trip, was returning to Beirut with us. Indeed, without his help, the trip would have been impossible—many of the muftis and clerics we would meet agreed to do so only because of his unshakable reputation as a powerhouse of reconciliation.
But Samir himself, only days earlier, had insisted the trip was now far too dangerous.
Such is the Middle Eastern mind-set. I suppose when you spend your whole life dodging bullets, the threat of a sniper on the corner doesn’t keep you housebound for long. Better to run rather than walk, naturally, but you can’t let dissenters with machine guns make you a prisoner in your own house.
On the bright side, Carl, Samir, and I had virtually the whole jet to ourselves. It turns out that the owners of Middle East Airlines know Samir well. We’d canceled our flights from Saudi Arabia to Beirut a few days earlier on my urging, during a time when all three of us possessed our full share of good sense. Rebooking would normally have been impossible at a time like this, but a single call from Samir and we were on. Such is the power of a man who spends the day talking to heads of state on his flip phone.
And business class to boot. Wonderful. The staff was excellent, as was the food. It was certainly better than any service I’d experienced in the United States. The stewardesses all knew Samir—no surprise there.
But the essential facts remained: One, Beirut was a city besieged by the Hezbollah. Two, we were on the first flight in after a week’s closure. Three, according to reports, anywhere from dozens to hundreds had been killed in fighting around the city, and the Lebanese army controlled the streets only by lining them with tanks and machine-gun placements.
Four . . . I mean, please. Anything could happen. Anything.
Sometimes I feel like hugging Carl and slapping him on the back. The kind of guy who would befriend a starving grizzly bear, he is loved by all, and I do mean all. Other times I feel more like locking him in the bathroom and making a run for it. Both his love and his bravery are greater than mine.
Sweating bullets at thirty thousand feet and headed into the lion’s den better known as Beirut, I was feeling the bathroom might be a good idea. But I had nowhere to run. I was committed.
No longer interested in stewing in my own fears, I turned to Carl. Thankfully, the seats in business class are large, because Carl—a good Nebraska boy with blue eyes and a smile that won’t quit— stands six foot two and is built like the grizzly bears he befriends.
“So you really think this is a good idea, huh?”
“Teddy, Teddy, you worry too much.” His standard answer. I don’t find it remotely comforting and I don’t even try to smile.
“Seriously, Carl.” There’s that word again. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
“Samir wouldn’t have agreed if it wasn’t safe,” he said.
I looked over at the wealthy Lebanese businessman who made his home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He grins and winks. Honestly, this is a man who could make the most hostile enemy lower his gun and settle down for a cup of tea. Being with him coaxes a perpetual smile from all in his presence. I’d just spent two days smiling.
But that was before this flight.
I politely forced a smile and remembered that Samir went to extraordinary lengths to get his family out of Beirut just days ago. I’d lain awake each night since then with visions roiling inside my head of gunmen bursting into my hotel room.
We’d already been to Egypt and met with perhaps the most powerful ideologue in the Muslim world. We’d spent three days in Saudi Arabia meeting with those who shaped Saudi thought, and we’d sat down with Osama bin Laden’s brot...
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