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Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table, Our Journey through the Middle East - Hardcover

Dekker, Ted; Medearis, Carl

 
9780307588272: Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table, Our Journey through the Middle East
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307588270 ISBN 13: 9780307588272
Verlag: Doubleday, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

The author of the best-selling BoneMan's Daughters and a government advisor on Arab affairs document their meetings with some of the U.S.'s greatest adversaries, including Hezbollah and Hamas leaders and the brothers of Osama Bin Laden, to offer insight into their beliefs and the reasons for current conflicts between the Middle East and the western world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ted Dekker is the author of many nationally best-selling novels, includingBone Man’s Daughters, The Circle Series, Thr3e, and House. His unique style of storytelling has captured the attention of millions worldwide. Visit him at TedDekker.com and Facebook.com/TedDekker.

Carl Medearis is an international expert in the field of Arab-American and Muslim-Christian relations. He acts as a catalyst for a number of current movements in the Middle East to promote peace-making and to promote cultural, political and religious dialog leading toward reconciliation. He is the author of the acclaimed book on these issuesMuslims, Christians and Jesus. Visit him at www.carlmedearis.com.

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Chapter 1: Into the Lion’s Den
A 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...

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Verlag
Doubleday
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307588270
ISBN 13 
9780307588272
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
245
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Verantwortliche Person
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