I remained shaken. The Emir had been kind, but stern, and our meeting in the bunker left me no doubt as to the seriousness of the business we were becoming involved in.

Just what the fuck was Hayworth thinking? Why become a party to such affairs? It certainly was not necessary for the election process to go smoothly, at least this time around. This was, after all, a race for the United States Senate, a high office indeed, but not one that required these kinds of relationships. Yes, as I thought then.

Or maybe so. Maybe my years dealing with Washington-people had left me naive instead of experienced and weathered. I was certainly not a hardcore expert, but very involved... I had known Herbert Hayworth for just over a year, but this was enough time to know that he was a man that didn't give a flying fuck about the acquisition of enormous riches- a trait uncharacteristic of white men in business with Arab Emirs.

I shuffled with the other passengers past the stewardess, down the steps and onto the tarmac. As we walked in a shaky line towards the waiting buses that would take us into the city, a young man approached me, smiling. I recognized him from the meeting in Virginia, with the oil representatives. An aide.
"Mr. White. How nice to meet you. Please come with me. I have a car waiting. No need for the buses."
"What now?" I said, and shrugged, following him towards the small terminal building.

"We were somewhere outside Beirut, on the edge of the desert, when the missiles began to strike", the little dog- eared correspondent began dictating into his tape recorder.
You bastard, I thought, how can you so blatantly rip off one of the most well- known opening lines in all of print journalism? But I didn't say anything. The car was bouncing violently, as we had apparently taken a detour from the main road. We were now in low sand dunes, but the driver seemed unconcerned with the terrain. He weaved us in and out, expertly dodging the dunes, finding the miniature valleys between them.

"Excuse me, how much longer?" I shouted at him. He did not acknowledge. "Excuse me?" I repeated, with more feeling. He shouted something in Arabic that I couldn't make out. My Lebanese is mediocre at best, at worst the level of a hotel clerk knowing just enough of a language to get by with the tourists. It is a strange language, being comprised of elements of Arabic and ancient Aramaic, with a little modern English and French thrown in to keep up with the times.
I sat back in the seat. We were now running parallel to the main road, for I could see the tops of big rigs floating across the tops of the dunes half a mile away.

"Why not on road?" I hollered, and the driver said something else in Arabic that I couldn't make out.
"He says the road is too dangerous," the little reporter said to me. "Syrian warplanes are striking along the road, any cars and trucks suspected of being Hezbollah."
"I thought they were buddies- at least diplomatically," I said.
"Yeah, usually, but Hezbollah must have done something to piss them off- no one is sure- Syria isn't saying. Good for Israel, bad for Lebanon. You see, that's why I'm here, to explore the differences in culture that lead to these strikes, why they happen, what Hezbollah thinks its going to accomplish by-"
"Ok, thank you,"I said, holding up my hand,cutting him off. I had heard enough reporter- talk in this manner in the two days I had been in Lebanon. They generally ended up launching, if I gave them the chance, into some sort of sales- pitch type rant about their stories, as if I was in a position to make their coverage more lucrative.

The reporter looked hurt, and turned back to his tape recorder. We rode in silence another ten minutes, still bouncing like a toy boat among the dunes. I looked to my left, and could no longer see the road. I leaned up between the seats, and up dead ahead I saw a low concrete structure, not unlike the German bunkers on Normandy. The driver pulled up fast, and before I knew it there were men with pistols and Russian Kalashnikovs all around the Land Rover, shouting in Arab toungues I couldn't understand. We were all being herded out of the car, without having to be told to put our hands in the air, and the driver was shouting "Said Jabara! Jabara, Gibran!"

It was only later that I would realize that it had been the first time someone had pointed a gun at me in threat, and how strange and terrifying the prospect is to most Average Americans. Yet at the time, I had no real fear that the guns were going to kill me- I just put up my hands, and everything was fine- not that that's always the best rule to live by.