Tyre: Part 1

Two weeks ago (sorry for the delay): Last Saturday we traveled again with Rodrigo down to Sour (like Sure, but without the 'sh' sound) or Tyre, about fifty miles south of Beirut. Seemingly everything has multiple names.

The road south along the coast was flat, so we breezed by multiple kilometers of beach resorts and into Saida, dropping off another customer. I chatted with this German-born Lebanese man whose father owned an Italian restaurant. He complained about the "massive" education gap. I inquired whether he had found 'stupid people', as he

Tyre, looking south towards Palestine

called them, in Germany, which he nodded in agreement. "Here," he said, paying his fee in dollars, "there are way more of them." I couldn't find any consistency in possible illiteracy rates. In school, however, I had asked my students to describe a warm, understanding and open person in their life that had little or no formal education. While a few said their drivers, many of them discussed their grandparents.

Banana groves and citrus orchards appeared on the West, and the Sea on the East. The closer we were to Tyre, the more UN trucks appeared. I never pictured the UN to have tanks, but there they were, entirely white. The Unifil, or the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, have more than 13000 forces in the South since 1978. I guess in the cosmic sense, interim still would be the correct word.