Anyone who has experienced war, or read about it, knows how dehumanizing it can be.

However,
the 1975 Lebanese civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut were especially “insectizing.”

—the author

The Israeli insectisation of the Lebanese southerners

 Description of the Novel

The Palestinian Centipede is the story of Lebanon's fifteen years sectarian war, during which the
country had degenerated into a wilderness and the Lebanese metamorphosed into insects!

Beirut City was reclaimed by nature

Nature reclaimed its territories back from civilization

How was that, you ask? Well, the Lebanese Civil war started in 1975 when boys, taken to insect
extermination, sprayed a bus WITH INSECTICIDES. It was said at the time that, when the bus
crossed the streets of Ain Rommana, east of the Capital, Beirut, the Palestinian passengers on board
were waving a HUNDRED HANDS out the windows on both sides. With their insecticide sprayers
open and ready to use, the local boys saw the bus thus, confused it with a centipede, the fearful
HUNDRED-LEGGED insect, and sprayed it. Hence the novel’s title 'The Palestinian Centipede.'

The boys confused the bus with a centipede and sprayed it

This 'insect extermination' was new to the Lebanese youth, but nobody suspected, then, that such a
kids' game would be so dangerous; indeed, the spraying of the Palestinain bus had consequences in
the country that has been torn apart repeatedly by sectarian, Christian-Muslim conflicts.
Kamal Jumblatt, the eldest of the boys in Chayyah, the quarter with the Muslim majority facing Ain
Rommana, condemns the brutal act.
"How could those 'beasts' spray a bus full of people?" he says to Robert Fisk, the narrator of the
story. "I fear the worst..."
"What?" asks the notable correspondent.
"Ain Rommana boys," answers Jumblatt, "have deliberately 'insectized' those Palestinians."
"Insectized?"
"Yes, looked upon them as insects, and treated them as such."
Bashir Al'Gumayel, the eldest of Ain Rommana Christian boys, refused Jumblatt's accusation.
"What my friends have sprayed," he tells Robert Fisk, "was actually a centipede, and that centipede
has bitten a man, called Joseph Abu Assi, earlier that day in front of the church in our quarter."
 Joseph Abu Assi getting bitten by a Centipede

Armed with their silly insecticide sprayers, the boys of Chayyah and Ain Rommana engage in a yet
newer game 'spray-me-spray-you,' insectizing each other as inhumanely as naughty kids can be:
"Die, dung Beetle!”... Pssssh... "Take this splash, Mosquito!"

The insect extermination game

 Spray me--Spray you game

People got splashed accidentally

Overwhelmed by the intensity of the spraying which filled the air with the poisonous odor of
insecticides, the grown-ups crawl to the basements of their houses and cower there, listening to the
swishing sounds outside.
 People cowered in the bathrooms, like Cockroaches

Whoever ventures to go out gets sprayed, hit by a fly whisk, stamped on, or else caught with a net
and put in a glass jar, among other Crickets and Butterflies, to be exchanged, later on, for some
Cockroach maybe, caught by the 'enemy' boys.

A girl caught with a net

 An innocent law student squashed underfoot

An innocent man getting insectised in the street

 Taken out of his car and squashed like a mosquito at a checkpoint

The girl would be lucky to be exchanged for a cockroach

Now, this is the artistic twist of the novel: When you treat me like an insect, I become an insect; I get
insectised. Therefore, besides a few human characters, the 'Lebanese Garden' is infested with
insectile ones, at which statement, Kareema, a black dung Beetle, would object:
"I am not an insect," proudly raising her antennae, she says to the Earwig who called her by the
name. "I am, rather, an insectised woman."
 I'm not an insect. I am an insectized woman

But, I hasten to say, when you do insectise somebody, depriving him of his humanity, you lose your
own; you become a Beast, and the Garden gets crowded with beastly characters. For example, when
a boy squashes a stingless crawling Insect that tries to escape the extermination, his ranger boot
develops three large toes, equipped with curved, fearful claws!
The two protagonists, Kamal Jumblatt and Bashir Al'Gumayel, compete for what is best for this
wilderness of a country (although they call it, lovingly, the Garden,) keeping to themselves their
ambition to assume the Gardener's position, as the term of the old Gardener, Elias Sarkis, is drawing
to an end.

To frighten the kids out of the streets and stop the insectization of people, Gardener Sarkis threatens
to call the 'Beasts,' a deterrent menace parents usually use in our country with their disobedient kids.
But Sarkis does call the Beasts when the playing boys do not behave themselves and go home.
Therefore, over the low Garden fence, King Leopard, of the Saudi Desert, jumps in, followed by his
cackle of Hyenas, whereas, past the loose, rather non-existent eastern fence, Lion King moves in
from the Syrian jungle, preceded by his pride of hunting Lionesses.
The inhabitants of the Garden, or those who have luckily escaped insectization, breathe freely at last.
However, to their horror and disappointment, the Arab 'deterrent' Beasts prove to be so selfish, ill-
willed, and savage that the Lion and the Leopard end up fighting each other for 'dominion' over the
Lebanese territories. And, in many, ever-increasing incidents, people will be found dead, in a pool of
their own blood, ravened, no doubt, by either one of these big Cats.
Now the green Wasps have excavated underground nests in various hills and valleys of the Lebanese
Garden, such as Tel Zaater. Bashir Al'Gumayel gathers the Christian boys in his playground in Ain
Rommana.
"The green Wasps," he says, pointing his index finger to Tel Zaater Hill, east of Beirut, "are the
principal cause for the deterioration of our Garden. They harrass us Lebanese, sting our mothers, and
bite our younger brothers. What are we going to do about it, boys?"
"Exterminate the alien wasps." Was the boys’ reply.
"Well," says Bashir, "grab your sprayers and follow me."

Nests of the Palestinian green Wasps in the Lebanese soil

Wasps bugged innocent people

Kamal Jumblatt, on the other hand, reminds Bashir of the human origin of those Wasps.
"They are not 'insects,'" he says to an assembly of his friends in Chayyah, "but people like us, our
relatives and kin, the Palestinians, who have been insectized in 1948 and expelled out of their
homeland, Palestine, by the 'Israeli Pest Control Company' that was illegally founded there. They
have taken refuge in our Garden and we should help them to return to Palestine, not exterminate
them!"

The resurrected Dinosaur occupies Palestine and feeds on its people

Ummm! The Kids' game in the small garden is taking on serious dimensions.
Surely, the green Palestinian Wasps will not curl up inside their nests and wait to be killed; far from
that, they will swarm up to defend themselves and their young against Bashir's boys, as they besiege
Tel Zaater hill, and, primarily, they will try to return home in small swarms and attack the Jewish
settlers in Galilee across the border hedge between Palestine and the Lebanese Garden.
The manager of the Israeli company, Ariel Sharon, will not wait for long either, with folded arms.
Through what he calls 'Operation Peace for Galilee,' he retaliates in 1982 by a large-scale aerial
spraying of the Wasps' nests in the adjacent wilderness, accompanied by a never-before-witnessed
land invasion made by his pesticide trucks. The operation insectizes, and eventually exterminates
thousands of people, both Lebanese and Palestinians-- as a 'collateral damage,’ or a ‘side effect,' says
Sharon by way of justification.
But also as a ‘by-product,’ new Wasps, Lebanese ones, will emerge, then, from the burnt down West
Beirut and swarm to defend their beloved Garden.

The novel is narrated by the English correspondent of The Times newspaper, Robert Fisk. He, too,
got transformed into an insect, a blue Fly! In fact, all journalists and reporters in the Lebanese
Garden have turned into tale-bearer Flies: Kareem Bakradouni, Fawwaz Tarabulsi, Samir Kassir…
and Terry Anderson from the American Broadcasting Company.
 The blue Fly, the narrator of the story

Excerpts from the Novel

CATCHING INSECTS IN CHAYYAH

On a Saint Joseph lily, a Butterfly was coquettishly displaying, in the morning sunlight, her delicate
yellow wings with the beautiful black spots when a vast net suddenly fell upon her and, no matter
how she frantically fluttered, she couldn’t get away through its mesh of threads.
A colored Jewel Beetle was holding to the stem of the Christ Thorn when two fingers approached
stealthily, and caught her.
The Cricket felt danger, so he camouflaged with green color while hiding among the leaves of a Rose
Mary. Their untrained eyes will never distinguish me, he thought. But, before he knew it, he was
captured in a clenched fist.
The American blue Fly, Terry Anderson, was whizzing through Chayyah when he felt like landing
on a window sill to have a nap. However, when Terry awoke he felt a curious viscosity underneath
him. He tried to crawl but couldn’t move any of his six legs: the Fly got stuck in the glue!
Vain were his attempts to extricate himself from the sticky substance; he only succeeded in sinking
more deeply. Panic-stricken, he saw his end coming. Fortunately, or may be unfortunately, a childs ’
hand held him, and pulled his legs out of the glue, so awkwardly that Terry felt sure the kid will
have them taken off. As the blueFly was held up to two happy human eyes, looking triumphantly at
him, he buzzed,
“I am a reporter.”
But the kid didn’t care for that. He ran, instead, to put his catch in a glass jar, and screw the plastic
lid firmly.

The abduction of innocent people

LOVE IN THE GLASS JAR

Terry Anderson circled in the confined space of the jar, carelessly left on the cupboard of the living
room in Kamal Jumblatt’s house. He was tormented by the questions: What will the boys do to me?
Will they tear off my wings and release me on the floorto mock me as I crawl quickly away, being
joined against my will to the species of crawling insects?Or will they pluck off my six legs and cast
s something in store for me worse ’Maybe there ?t be able to fly’me into the air on the bet that I won
than all that!
Terry looked around and found himself with a dozen Christian Insects that were held captive by
Chayyah boys. Having lost hope of getting through the transparent glass, they went on crawling,
weak and frustrated, round the bottom of the jar. They fed on what the boys cared to throw to them
every other day: a rotten banana, a spit piece of meat, or a hard cake. It was this last article that the
Ants immediately occupied and excavated a nest in, contending themselves with it-- to hell with the
whole Lebanese Garden outside! The other Insects, however, had nothing and could do nothing but
wait for that lid to open. In fact, the lid opened many times, not to liberate the captives but, rather, to
inflict upon them a variety of ordeals, according to the boys’ caprices.
That green Cricket, for example, who clung motionless to the rotten banana peel, watching his fellow
captivated Insects with big eyes and injured pride, had really been through hard times. One morning,
a boy opened the lid of the jar and took him out with a pincer. All the Insects witnessed through the
glass how the boy messed with the poor Cricket close by on the cupboard. In the absence of his
friends, the naughty boy introduced a thin stick in the Insect’s mouth and made him suck it over and
over again till the boy had enough fun and returned him to the jar.
Whatever the case, the humiliated Cricket was better fated than the yellow Butterfly. The whole gang
conspired, one evening, against the delicate creature. They took her out of the jar and stared, with
breathless admiration, at her beautiful wings as she fluttered, terrified, in their hands so wildly that
most of the color powder fell off her wings. Then, one of the boys, the naughtiest indeed, had the
female lay upon a white cardboard on the living room wall, then, drew a needle out of his pants and
thrust it mercilessly into her soft abdomen. Exhibited thus to the insolent eyes, the rest of the boys
took turns appreciating her beauty!

But what really attracted Terry’s eyes and antennae was the Jewel Beetle. He saw her lying face-
down on the bottom of the jar, and got fascinated by the metallic sheen of her green wing sheaths and
warm red thorax. He made a few circles in the air around her, then settled on the bottom near her
small head.
“I know you’re playing dead, dear Beetle,” he said in a whisper as if the boys could hear him.
The Insect moved her crooked antennae, sensing the approaching sympathetic Fly. She finally
opened her tiny beady eyes.
“If you don’t eat,” Terry said affectionately, signaling with a foreleg to the nearby smelly banana,
“You’ll die for real of hunger.”

Terry loved the Beetle

The Beetle, docile as all the beetles of the world, moved heavily towards the fruit. She plunged her
flat mouth in it, and started to suck the tasty rotten juice. Terry stood by the female’s side on all six
legs, contemplating her black segmented abdomen. So absorbed the Fly was in trying guiltily to
suppress certain inappropriate amorous thoughts that his feelers didn’t forewarn him of a child’s
hand stealing into the jar; the deft fingers held the Beetle by her flanks, and took her out!
It all happened so fast that the self-indulgent Fly only saw, when he lifted his eyes up to the opening
of the jar, the face of a pop-eyed boy and a receding hairline, smiling slyly as he put back the lid.
How hard and painfully Terry hit his head against that perforated plastic lid from the inside of the
jar; still, it didn’t open. He was mad at himself that he couldn’t do anything to save that Beetle. He
felt responsible for what might happen to the harmless, defenseless female Insect; pangs of
conscience, like the strokes of a fly-whisk, squashed him flat, time after time, against a tin hot
surface.
Desperate, he finally clung upside down to the lid of the jar and waited; he didn’t eat, nor did he
clean his wings, letting the dust accumulate on them. Love-sick as a sensitive fly can be, Terry even
had thoughts of throwing himself down to those greedy Ants of the cake, who prowled restlessly
across the interior of the jar, inspecting the captivated Insects in case one was about to die and soon
be food to their larvae in the cake…

TEL AZ’ZAATER: A LAPSE INTOTHE JURASSIC AGE

It could be seen from the top of any tree in the Lebanese Garden: a white pesticide, dense, in spite of
the hot sunshine, and standing still as if no gust of wind was able to drift it away from the thyme hill.
And it could also be guessed that the 'Lebanese Public Health Company,' founded and managed by
Bashir Al’Gumayel, the eldest of the Christian boys, had finally started its long-prepared for
campaign to exterminate the Palestinian Wasps, and eradicate all their Nests in the Eastern Christian
sector of the Garden-- at least.

I knew the flyway to Tel Az’Zaater so well that I could fly there blindfolded through Tabet forest,
Sin Al’Fil, and Dekwana bushes; my visit to Um Ammar, the hill’s Queen, was not long ago. And I
buzzed through the branches of the familiar eucalyptus trees, thinking of what might Her Majesty do
to protect both her offspring of green Wasps and subjects of the other Insect species in the hill. Still
absorbed in thought, I settled on a leaf to get my wings some rest, and...
“What was that?”
It may only be my imagination, but I think I saw some reptile, a Chameleon, lurking camouflaged in
the shades, just starting to extend out at me his long, sticky, never-missing tongue. Whew! I was very
fortunate indeed to fly away, not backwards though, but stubbornly eastwards towards my
destination. I have a report to make.
It was not, however, an easy flight. The air was turbid and somewhat heavy and adverse so that my
delicate wings had a hard time struggling through it-- let alone being literally burnt by the rising sun,
unusually scorching that day. And then there was the smell, doom’s smell if doom had a smell,
getting stronger and stronger, as I approached Tel Az’Zaater.
“QUACK!
Way up, dominating the deep blue sky, soared Quet’zal’coat’lus, the Israeli flying Dinosaur, with
widespread wings. He was watching the Lebanese Garden from very high up, so that the huge bird
looked as small as a sparrow, although his cry thundered and resounded across the horizon.
Quet’zal’coat’lus, the strongest Animal in the region, was not a rare occurrence in the Lebanese sky.
He flapped his wings and turned southwards over the Mediterranean Sea, back to Galilee in occupied
Palestine.

Quetzalcoatlus, the Israeli flying reptile

Turning in the air around a great palm tree, I suddenly ran into them.
At the base of the thyme hill were the boys of the Lebanese Health, or rather, its employees, dressed
up in uniformed, oil-green, sting-proof clothing. On the upper part of their right arms was imprinted
the stamina of the extermination company: the green Wasp encircled by a red impenetrable siege and
cut diagonally by an uncompromising slash.
The exterminators wore gas-masks, not the familiar simple masks, but the advanced ones, with two
circular eyeglasses and a filter piece over the nose and mouth, like an animal's snout. Their insect-
killing instruments were also sophisticated: foggers, the last contrivance of the United States of
America.
 The Lebanese Public Health Company

Held up towards the hill by the handles, those foggers, their burners purring, were emitting columns
of the evaporated white insecticide, called fog. I couldn’t help imagining the Queen, Um Ammar, in
her underground regal cell. I pictured her first-hatched, Kifah-- probably an adult Wasp now-- and
his Fida’ee brothers and sisters, already hatched, huddling together under mother's wings. Her
antennae quivering restlessly, the Queen forebodingly sensed the approach of the insecticidal fog
permeating the stems and leaves of the thyme, and infiltrating itself through the soil grains.
I circled in the air, feeling nauseated.
There was Bashir, standing without a mask a way off the treated hill, supervising the extermination. I
buzzed towards him.
He wore an oil-green costume, like that of his boys, but with the sleeves rolled up his arms, defying
possible Wasp stings, and boyishly imitating the grown-ups. Wasn’t he the manager of a company?
 Bashir

As I flew about his face, Bashir waved me off, annoyed, then he looked at me.
“Hey, blue Fly," he said. "Who are you, and what do you want?"
“I am Robert Fisk, a foreign correspondent,” I told Bashir. “You may call me Fisky.”
Amused by me was a little boy, a devotee to Bashir, for he was loyally clinging to his hand.
“Enchanté, Monsieur Fisky,” the kid said politely in French. “I am Nicolas.” He offered me his arm
to settle on, facing Bashir who readily assumed the attitude of a naughty boy defending his bad
behavior.
“Had those Wasps flew back to Palestine,” he began, signaling south with his arm, “then, I would
have nothing to do with them.”
Little Nicolas looked south, inquiringly.
“As far as I know, they’re striving to return,” I said. “But you know they can’t, at least right now.”
The eldest of the Lebanese Christian boys shrugged his shoulders.
“Then, why don’t they fly elsewhere in the Arab jungle?” he asked, and threw his arm away so
disdainfully. “I don’t want any alien Insects in my Garden.”
“That’s why we’re exterminating them all!” cried Nicolas so vigorously that he shook me off his
arm.

Kifah and his brothers are wrestling with the Fog as he filled up the whole cell; vain are the strikes of
their stingers through his misty breast, to no avail the snapping of their pincers at his vapor arms.
Finally, the Wasps dropped to the ground one by one, writhing, curling up their green abdomens.
“Where did you get those advanced equipment?” I asked, referring to the foggers, as I settled once
more upon Nicolas’ extended arm
Nicolas opened his mouth and was about to say something. But Bashir put in,
“What do you mean, Blue Fly? There’re many do-it-yourself techniques and materials for Wasp
extermination. You seem to think slightly of me and my company.”
I took off Nicolas’ arm and swirled in the air.
“In West Garden,” I said straightforward as I tried to alight on Bashir’s shoulder, “people believe
that your company is actually exterminating the Palestinian Wasps on behalf of the Israelis by using
their internationally banned insecticides. They say that the last thing you care for is the Palestinian
human cause and--”
Bashir brushed me away.
“It’s just Kamal and his gang,” he shouted. “Let them say what they want. I know I am doing the
right thing. Do you know that hundreds of Wasp extermination orders were made to my company,
not only by most of the Christian houses in East Garden, but also by many Muslims in West Garden?
People are fed up with the numberless transgressions of the Palestinian Wasps and want to get rid of
them, regardless of causes and Arabs!”
Nicolas clapped his hands, cheering,
“Bravo!”
will exterminate the “s voice, ’Bashir said with a man ”The Lebanese Public Health Company,”
Wasps in all the Garden, not only in the eastern sector. We will deliver...”
Nicolas clapped again, while Bashir waited patiently, knitting his eyebrows with exaggerated
seriousness.
"We will deliver the Lebanese from the Wasps,” he said sternly, “all the Lebanese, no matter to what
religious community they belonged, and in any sector of...”
Nicolas clapped again and again, and Bashir continued to announce what looked like a program
opposite to Kamal’s for the Gardener’s post he was aspiring to occupy, “of the whole ten thousand
four hundred fifty-two square kilometers of the Lebanese Garden."de fact‘The o' Gardener walked
away, "I have better things to do than talking to a Fly."
Nicholas followed Bashir.
The manager strolled towards the hill. His masked employees were holding up the fuming foggers.
He waited a while longer.
“Stop, boys. Stop the fogging,” he ordered at last.
One by one, the Foggers ceased their purring and held their foul breaths. It was then that I noticed
the Israeli Dinosaur’s head with its long beak imprinted on those instruments’ burners!
Not until after quite some time did the Fog unwillingly rarefy, gradually lose body, and then
grudgingly evaporate in the hot noon sunlight.
The hill was still, very still. Not even a Mosquito’s wing fluttered over a thyme plant. Tel Az’Zaater
looked dead. Kifah was dead.
Bashir walked around the hill, checking up, escorted by Nicolas, of course, and some other masked
employees.
Crawling unsteadily by the base of the palm tree, away from Zaater hill, was a black Beetle. Bashir’s
sharp eye spotted her instantly. The Insect’s convex back was gleaming with the condensed
insecticide; she toppled over, then rocked on her sides until she flipped back on her legs again.
Bashir’s eyelids got closer together. Although the Beetle was undeniably stingless and would
certainly die in a moment, the boy raised his foot and…
Kocht!
He stamped on her; the painful sound made my body hairs stick out. Almost instantly, Bashir’s
ranger boot developed three large toes in front, equipped with curved, fearful claws, and a fourth
little toe behind, with a smaller, yet sharper claw.

When he squashed the beetle he got transformed into a beast

“We’ve killed all the Wasps,” little Nicolas cried. “Let’s run home to tell Maman!”
Bashir applied his whole weight upon the squashed Beetle, vindictively turning his paw this way and
that way.
“You can’t be sure they’re exterminated for good, Nicolas,” I heard him say in a weird voice, “unless
we make sure their Queen is dead.”
At that moment, a black Fly emerged out of nowhere, whirling frantically through the air as though
he was escaping some bird. I knew the insect: Kareem Bakradouni. He circled around Bashir’s head,
buzzing.
“I have an important news for you, Bash,” the Fly exclaimed, puffed up with the news he had, then
perched on Bashir’s earlobe…

THE LION:
His Den in Sham was resonating with the subdued roars of the Lionesses. They were crouching in a
circle around him, and he was standing in their midst, on all fours, that is, out of his usual noon
siesta. No wonder why he looked so upset, his teeth showing and awesome mane bristling. But it was
surely more than just a lost one-hour sleep. The King didn’t even have a bite of that slim Deer the
Females hunted for him, and brought to the Den. There she lay, on the ground nearby, deliciously
waiting to be devoured. The Lionesses’ jaws contracted painfully, not daring to eat before His
Majesty; they had to wait patiently till he says what he had to say.

The Syrian Lion talking to his Lionesses about loose beasts in the fraternal Lebanese Wilderness

The Lion presently cleared his throat with a deep, blood-curdling growl.
“Whereas,” he said, “ferocious Animals are loose in the Lebanese Garden,”
Some Lionesses noticed a pack of Hyenas daringly approaching their quarry.
the King ”And whereas the Lebanese people themselves have become a prey for those Animals,”
of those Hyenas who continued, so taken by what he was saying that he failed to sniff the foul odor
were beginning to snatch athis lunch.
The Lionesses fidgeted, but couldn’t leave their crouching places.
“Thereby, we have decided to enter the fraternal Garden,” he said, using the plural pronoun ‘we’ to
inspire a false meaning of previous consultation with the Animals of his kingdom-- a thing the Lion
never did, “in a humanitarian mission to hunt for those Beasts.”
The hungry Lionesses got to their feet and burst out roaring, apparently in submission to the will and
decision of their obeyed husband, but, in reality, to scare away those vicious Hyenas, who were
fiercely tearing at the flesh of the Deer.
The Lion waited till his Females were silent. He, then, concluded his speech with the noble intention
worthy of a King:
“So that the Lebanese people may live, ever after, in peace and security.”
Having received their orders, the Lionesses turned to their Deer, but it wasn’t there anymore; the
thieving Hyenas didn’t even leave a bone.
With one accord, the starving huntresses darted westwards.

The Deterrent Syrian Lionesses entering the Lebanese wilderness

Into Tripoli, in the north of the Lebanese Garden; Zahla, in the Bekaa; and Saida, in the south, the
Lionesses advanced. They lurked for a while behind some mounds, then sneaked slowly, lowering
their heads among the tall grass.
It was in the wide expanses, however, that red-eyed, sharp-horned Oxen confronted the huntresses,
puffing their noses and stamping the earth with their hoofs.
 The Ox resisted the Lion’s dominion over the Lebanese Wilderness

The Lion didn’t believe the bad reports that a cloud of Flies had carried to the Den. He raced to the
Garden, blind with anger, until the terrible sight met his eyes: his most beloved Females were down
on the ground, rolling in their own blood.
A pack of spotted hyenas was already at the dying Lionesses, but when they saw the Lion coming,
they beat a hasty retreat, giggling noisily. And a horrible roar of lament broke from the Lion's throat,
alarming the whole Arab jungle.

The Lion roaring in lament over his beloved Lionesses

A short while later, the General Secretary of the Arab Barn, the Jackal, galloped to meet the King in
Bekaa, in the eastern part of the Lebanese Garden. Fortunately, the small Animal barely avoided the
perilous claws, for he found the Lion so agitated that he was cutting through the air with his paws.
“It's a cowardly massacre!” he snarled.
The Jackal did not dare to come closer.
“Relax, Your Majesty,” he said, panting. “We shall hold a conference in the Arab desert to discuss
the issue.”

RIAD CONFERENCE
The spotted Leopard received the King of Sham jungle with a taciturn welcome, keeping the
distance, as he has just received the Tiger, the Cat, and the rest of the Arab Animals.

Conference of the Arab Animals-- One Animal had absented himself..

They all crouched, frowning, between the crossed iron bars of the conference cage-- especially
designed to keep the ‘enemies-brothers' from hurting each other. Avoiding eye contact, they looked
up at the Secretary who has mounted on the middle knot made by the intersection of the bars.
 The Jackal, Secretary General of the Arab Barn

“Beasts of our dearest Arab Jungle,” the small, muzzled-long Animal began. “We have assembled
here to put an end to the bloodshed in the fraternal Lebanese Garden…”

The Cat had eaten his children in Jordan River

 The Dog didn’t attend the conference because someone has given him a bone

The Iraqi Tiger competed with the Syrian Lion for dominion over the Arab Wilderness

THE RETURN HOME PASSION OF THE PALESTINIAN WASPS

Even before they were old enough to understand the license given to them by Cairo agreement, the
young Palestinian Wasps, who have hatched in the Lebanese soil, unfailingly flew south over the
Israeli border hedge into their homeland. They were attracted there by the aroma of the orange
blossoms, whose pollen grains still adhered to their mother's legs and abdomens from their days in
Palestine before they were forced to migrate to this Garden during the Great Insectization, or Nakba
in 1948.
 Two Palestinian Wasps Returning Home

The green Wasps attacking the Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine

Samir Al'Qintar had the courage to be the first to set off one morning from the seashore of the
southern village of Tyre, and fly south over the sea, unafraid of being driven off his course by
adverse winds or getting eaten by hungry birds, till he reached the coastal settlement of Nahariya in
occupied Palestine.
Al'Qintar hovered in the sun through the newly-built houses of the Jewish settlement, stinging
whoever stood in his way and pointed a nervous finger at him (unlike bees, wasps can sting
repeatedly.)
Once notified of the intruder, the Israeli Pest Control Management in Tel Aviv sent a team of her
best employees to Nahariya. And for hours on end, they raced after the Wasp with all sorts of insect
extermination appliances. But not until late in the afternoon, when his dart got broken, did Al'Qintar
take cover in an orange tree, where he was finally caught with a net.
The Israeli Company retaliated by the aerial spraying of the southern sector of the Lebanese Garden,
the immediate vicinity of the Israeli border as well as the distant villages south of Litani River.
According to the Israeli entomologists, those plains, mountains, and villages swarmed with
Palestinian Wasps; indeed, the spraying killed hundreds of them and, by the way, insectized and
exterminated thousands of the Lebanese southerners…

The Israeli insectisation of the Lebanese southerners

YELLOW WASPS’ NESTS IN DAHIAH

Leaving the exterminated behind, piled up in heaps among their houses, the insectized Southerners
crawled in columns, and flew in swarms, towards Beirut. For all that, they couldn’t take refuge
except in its southern barren suburb, Dahiah.
The Southerners immigrated to Beirut
 The immigrants built temporary houses in Ouzai

During a flight over the region one late afternoon, I visited a seaside fishery, facing Al’Ouzai
Mosque. The place was known to the flies by the negligence of its owner to his fish displayed for
sale on cane tables.

Ouzai fishery

From over the eye of a fish, the fastest part to rot and smell, I could see the refugees populating the
stretch of greenery around the Mosque:
Bark-boring Beetles dig their tunnels in the tree trunks; a little while later, some brown dust would
be emptied out, to fall on the ground. Below, Locusts were busy devouring ‘the fresh and the
withered’ of the grass, as the Lebanese saying goes. But the Earwigs would compete with them in
cutting the blades with their rear scissors for the construction of some temporary substitute homes for
their young.

The yellow Wasps in Ouzai Mosque

Of all those Insects, what really fascinated me were the southern female Wasps with their smooth,
shiny yellow bodies, narrow waists, membranous wings, and slender, cylindrical legs. What a sight it
was to watch them hover to and fro, with a never-ceasing hum, busy building their Nests, high up
there, in the minaret of the mosque that was constructed decades ago on the tomb of the late good
Imam, Abdu l'Rah'man Al'Ouzai.
With their strong little mandibles, the mother Wasps would scrape wood off the weathered patrols’
kiosk, situated there on the sand hill, supposedly to watch out for the Garden. They chew the wood
bits to break them down and mix them with their saliva, and then fly back to the minaret with mouths
full of the soft pulp, their long hind legs dangling.
In the chosen Nest site, high up in the minaret, the female Wasps spread out the mixture in a series of
hexagonal cells, in which they would lay their eggs when the wet cellulose fibers dry to a kind of
tough gray paper. As the eggs hatch, the females would walk all over the Nest and poke their heads
into tens of brood cells to feed and lick the grub-like Larvae that would soon grow into child-Wasps
and crawl out of the cells. Once they learn how to fly, they would buzz in little swarms about the
holy building, play-attacking with each other.
 The yellow Wasp Queen laying her eggs

Down, upon the outer wall of the mosque, Imam Moussa As’Sudr’s statement:
THE ISRAELI DINOSAUR IS AN ABSOLUE EVIL was written in a neat red calligraphy.

A little black-headed yellow Wasp emerges from behind the crescent on top of the minaret.
"Ali," he calls his playmate.
Ali, a yellow and black striped child-Wasp darts out of the minaret's narrow veranda door.
"What is it, Hassan?"
Hassan excitedly points with a foreleg somewhere in the orange-colored horizon over the sea.
"The Baddie is getting away!" he cries.
"Go tell Imad," Ali exclaims, drawing out his tiny dart.
Hassan circles in the air.
"I can't find him anywhere," he says.
Ali draws in his dart.
"He's probably playing ‘Hide and Seek,’" says the little Wasp, circling also about. "You know he
adores that game. Let's go find him in Beer Al’Abed Mosque, Hassan."
And the two Wasps head eastwards.
“Allah Is The Greatest!”
Imam Al’Ouzai sang with an admiring voice…

THE ISRAELI BEAST:

STRONGER THAN ALL THE ARAB ANIMALS PUT TOGETHER
Our eyes barely taking in his far-reaching dimensions, it really was the great flying Dinosaur, only
much bigger than life-size. Standing upright on the ground upon his four legs, with the wings folded
upward like an umbrella, Quet'zel'coat'lus filled the giant screen. With the bright blue muscular chest
proud, long neck capable, sharp beak deadly, head crowned with an imperial crest, his eyes gleamed
with an old rancor.

Gardener Elias Sarkis has hosted the premiere of Steven Spielberg's latest movie, The Surviving
Dinosaur, and, for the occasion, he has set up a giant sheet screen across the southern stone wall of
his backyard, a high-definition projector before the entrance to his Cottage, and a surround sound
system all around.
 Fossil of Quetzalcoatlus, the Israeli flying Dinosaur, discovered by the English Paleontologist Arthur Balfour

Towards evening, those who have accepted the director's invitation began to arrive successively. The
first to come was the Hawk. He fell from the dark sky like an arrow as if he were hunting down some
prey, then he fluttered his wings and alighted on the staff of the Lebanese flag and roosted upon it.
But, as soon as the lamp lights on the side walls were off for the show, the wild bird tucked his head
under his wing and fell asleep.
Shortly after the wild Bird, timidly approaching upon her two long legs, her equally long neck
straight and the beaked head, small in comparison with her round body, raised up, the lead-colored
Ostrich arrived. She stepped to one side of the screen, but did not roost; however, she stood uneasily,
turning left and right.
Walking side by side with the utmost grace and serenity, the Camel and his female, the She-Camel
came in. They halted right in front of the white screen and, with their lazy, lofty eyes, looked around.
Then the female knelt upon her knees and crouched, folding her front legs underneath her. The male
kept standing for a moment then knelt, too, and crouched right beside her.
A braying sound was heard and a pack of Dogs of different kinds and sizes appeared in the backyard.
They followed each other around and fought, biting at one another's ears and tails, definitely for
leadership.
The two Camels looked at the Dogs without interest-- the female was ruminating and her big-lipped
snout moved incessantly. However, the Ostrich looked more disturbed in her stance as though she
was about to flee.
Funniest of all were the Sheep. They crowded in, their blissful bleating and sure hoofs on the stone-
paved way leading to the backyard told that they thought they were returning to the barn after a nice
day in the pastures. But that was not the funny thing, for the Sheep were escorted by a Wolf. The
canine, however, didn't look as if he would prey on those helpless mammals; that Wolf was there to
protect them! His long black-tipped bushy tail up, the Wolf kept jogging around the herd all through
the show, watching against those Dogs, with his gleaming eyes, and occasionally growling, laying
his ears back on his head, or howling to keep his descendants, that is the Dogs, away. Totally at their
ease, however, the Sheep-- mostly females-- chose a grassy spot in the middle of the backyard,
crouched, and started ruminating contentedly.
When Quet'zal'coat'lus first appeared on the screen, the Ostrich buried her head in the sand, the
Sheep drew closer to each other in their crouching position on the ground, huddling together for
security, or the feeling of security in the herd, having left off ruminating, for no peace there nor
felicity. As for their guard and protector, the Wolf, he was obsessed with watching out for those
Dogs, absolutely uninterested in the film. I couldn't believe he still feared them on behalf of his
Sheep. Hasn't he seen in what state the Dogs were?Restrained from fighting each other at last, the
Dogs were all squatted on the ground, whimpering with lowered heads, their eyes glancing
imploringly up at the great Lizard. They rolled over on their backs; their tails wagged vehemently
declaring infinite submission. And while the male Camel gazed at the screen above his head with
wide-open eyes, trembling; his female clung to him, her long neck bent and tucked under his, her
eyes firmly closed.

On all fours, Quet'zal'coat'lus walked through an inhabited land. With an unbelievable care, he
measured his steps and put down his clawed feet between miniature sand-stone houses, a golden-
capped Mosque, and a standing old Church.
And the Beast roared.

The Arab Animals feared the image of the Israeli Dinosaur

Terrified, and indeed desperate of gaining the Beast's favor, the Dogs fled, with their tails between
their legs, howling annoyingly. The Sheep got up upon weak legs, turned around toward the exit
door, and scampered away as though fleeing from the Wolf who ran after them. t!"---Defea" they
bleated, the word I heard so often afterwards in all the Arab jungle.
Parrots, of every species and plumage, flapped in all directions, repeating incessantly:
"Invincible, invincible, the Israeli Dinosaur is invincible, invincible..."
Monkeys jumped everywhere, gibbering and waving their hands up and down as they protruded their
lips mimicking the flight of scared chicken…

The pure-bred Arab Horse, Nasser, drawn upon the walls in Beirut

OPERATION PEACE-FOR-GALILEE
Ring... Ring!
"Hundreds of Israeli pesticide trucks are invading the Lebanese southern territories.”
At the dawn of the sixth of June 1982, the brown, broken-lock door of the Associated Press Bureau
in Hamra on the western side of Beirut, could not smother the buzzing with the news…
 The Israeli pesticide invasion of the Lebanese wilderness to exterminate the Palestinian Wasps in 1982

SWARM TO THE DEFENSE

In a high-pitched hum, the green Wasps swarmed in the early morning. They streamed out of their
nests in West Beirut.
From over the rooftops of Hamra and Manara buildings, out of the wall cavities of Basta and Barbir
shops, and from under the sidings and eaves of Cola and At’Tariq Al’Jadida houses they swarmed.
Their stingers drawn out, the Wasps circled for a moment in the air before they darted away,
southwards, in various, ever erupting swarms, like the unpredictable but wonderful patterns of
fireworks in the sunshine.
Some of the green Wasps, however, performed a special war dance, before they left, buzzing to the
tune of the Palestinian insectile resistance song:
I'm out for you, enemy
From all the corners of the city
I'm out for you, enemy
With all the venom I have in me
I'm out for you, enemy…

THE AGE OF THE ISRAELI INSECTIZATION

An aircraft roared overhead. It dropped slips of pink and blue papers over the Capital. It was a
warning:
"Inhabitants of the Lebanese Garden. The Israeli Pesticide Company will spray West Beirut in a
couple of hours. We are going to exterminate all the green wasps that harassed you and your kids for
years on end.
“You are advised to leave West Beirut now with the ones you love. Operation 'Peace for Galilee' is
not directed against either the Lebanese or the Palestinian peoples, and the pesticides that the Israeli
company sprays do not target them at all. But the wasps are alone responsible for any so-called
'insectization casualty' that may, unfortunately, result as a side-effect of the spraying or a collateral
damage, having deliberately and maliciously built their nests between people's homes and
marketplaces.
"Lastly, the Israeli Company warns anybody who shelters the green wasps: you'll be exterminated
along with the pest you're protecting.
Signature: Ariel Sharon, the General Supervisor of the Israeli Pest Control teams in the Lebanese
Garden."

Ariel Sharon, the General Supervisor of the Israeli Pest Control teams in the Lebanese Garden.

The plane which threw those leaflets came back; it had completed its obligatory round in the sky. Its
metallic fuselage glistened in the early morning sunshine.
 The Israeli insectisation of the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples

Through the haze of the white pesticide vapor that the plane sprayed, I could discern glimpses of the
change that took place: thin, jointed legs with saw-like extremities; convex, hard-shelled backs;
relatively small heads with tiny, compact mouths; beady eyes; and antennae of various lengths. I got
dizzy and fell to the ground.
THE INSECT-LIKE DEATH OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT IN THE LEBANESE
GARDEN ROBERT FISK: PITY THE FLY
That was the headline I saw in a large, bold font on the first page of the Times, and I instantly
regained consciousness. Frantically fluttering my wings, I turned over and stood on my legs again.
". . . you all right, Mr. Fisk?"
A familiar voice asked me.
"Crawl. Don't fly!"
A familiar phrase, too. My two companions were a black Earwig, the insect known locally as Abu
Mekuss (scissors insect,) and a Silverfish, a silver-colored, fish-shaped insect (also called the
Bookworm.)
The pesticide vapors condensed, and white droplets of poison spattered on the tarmac around us. We
stuck to the pavement just below its stone rim.
"I wish we find an open sewer!" cried a Cockroach.
"Say insh'Allah, if Allah permitted," answered Abu Mekuss.
The Earwig, Abu Mekuss, kept slipping as he tottered by my side.
"I didn't crawl on... one, two, three..." he said, counting his newly acquired limbs, "six legs before."
"Let’s survive the extermination first," answered the Bookworm.
Abu Mekuss turned his insectile face to his neighbor.
"Who are you?”
“Kamal Salibi,” replied the Bookworm. “I used to be a history professor.”
A fat black Beetle squeaked at her two baby-Beetles,
"Hurry up, kids!" she said. "And don't get lost."
Indeed, in the street, a huge number of different Insects scuttled away from the pesticide drops.
Making use of the Israeli warning leaflets, the Ants readily took cover under them and crawled
collectively, carrying the light pieces of paper along over their heads.
A few insect-paces ahead of us, a pesticide drop hit a crawling indigo Butterfly. Bathed with the
liquid poison, the Insect was stunned for a second, then she shook her short, wet antennae and
tottered away uncertainly. Soon, however, she turned over her back and kicked the air with her fine
legs for a couple of seconds before she lay still.
Another drop hit the tarmac not very far from me and splashed into a thousand droplets. A droplet hit
a Bee, wetting her wings and abdomen; she fell to one side and instantly died. A shower of the other
droplets exterminated a whole family of tiny white Aphids, who were cowering around the stem of
the sophomore.
We passed over numberless Insects, lying on their backs across the street, either dead or writhing and
moving their legs. Overhead, Beirut sky was cast down with the Israeli-made, summertime
poisonous clouds.
THE PROTEST OF A HUMAN BEING
A man appeared in the middle of Mak'hool Street, some way off. I thought I were hallucinating and I
kept silent, but Abu Mekuss exclaimed, pointing with a foreleg.
Look. It's a human being!""
Kamal Salibi pushed his way through the Insects towards the man.
"Why is he carrying a shotgun?" he asked.
.He's aiming at the plane," I said, as I followed the professor"
The Earwig hesitated, then, overcome by curiosity, I think, followed us, saying:
“The plate is far up in the sky to be hit by this silly…”
Bang!

Poet Khalil Hawi protested against the Israeli insectisation of his people

On purpose, the man shot himself in the throat, and fell to the ground. We rushed ahead. The
Bookworm reached the dead man first, and turned around his head to see his face.
“I knew him,” he said mournfully. “He’s the poet Khalil Hawi.”
Abu Mekuss was puzzled.
"Why did he kill himself?" he asked, waving his thread-like antennae as though they could give him
the answer.
Kamal Salibi shook his small head with the point-like eyes under the fine antennae.
It was his protest against the Israeli insectization of our people," he said. "The poet preferred to die"
“as a human being rather than get exterminated as a bug…”

JAMMOUL CALL: MANIFESTO OF THE LEBANESE HUMANITY

LEBANESE INSECTIZATION RESISTANCE
Insectized of our Beautiful Garden, the Israeli controllers, whom our Wasps have heroically targeted
with some painful stings they'll never forget-- in Arqub, Tyre, Saida, and Al’Ouzai-- are now
invading Beirut.
I call for you, Lebanese men and women, insectized into whichever kind of Insect, naturally having a
dart, or can carry a dart, to crawl or swarm and join the 'Lebanese Insectization Resistance' against
the invaders.
Darts Out!
Because the resistance to insectization is the pride and honor of all the unyielding Insectized;
moreover, it is the only way to win back our wasted Humanity.
-----------------------------GEORGE HAWI

He was the Lebanese Human Being who had so much humanity that he has been hard for
Insectization. He was appalled, however, to see his fellow citizens metamorphose into Insects, and
his country degenerate into a wilderness.
Declining the invitation to a 'human refuge' in Russia that his friend, Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet
Union Leader, had offered him, George Hawi stayed in his native Garden and took it upon himself to
lead his people back to Humanity. He believed that the stinging Wasps, especially the red ones, are
the avantgarde in the resistance of the Israeli insectization. They had, he said, so far bravely
defended the Silkworms against their Predators, the fearful Spiders, as well as their exploiters, the
owners of the means of natural silk production.there should be no preventive to their defending ,So
the rest of the insectized against the Beasts who have been exterminating them.
And the man sought the red Wasps inside the holes and cracks of the workers' houses and peasants'
huts and students' dorms. He patiently waited for their eggs to hatch, cared for the feeding of the
larvae and their growth and molting, and the development of their wings and darts till they were
ready to swarm. He, then, watched anxiously after the young Wasps as they attacked and stung their
enemies, celebrated their stings, and felt sorry for their failure and martyrdom. In this last case, Hawi
kept the dead Wasps' exoskeletons up his great red oak tree in Watwatt green patch in West Beirut,
as a reminder and glorification of their sacrifice. Therefore, George Hawi, or Abu Anis, became
'father' for the red Wasps, swarms of whom traveled with him like a halo where ever he walked
through the paths of the 'Beautiful Garden.' He insisted on using this adjective for the Lebanese
Garden that his Wasps were dubbed 'Jammoul,' the Arabic word for 'beautiful,' spelled lovingly.
 Communist red wasps

In his spare time, Hawi took to writing. He believed that the word is the immunity against
insectization, both internal and external. By ‘internal’ he meant those who exploit the workers and
‘draw silk out of their work.
"I address you, Wasps, or indeed the human being in you," he wrote in one of his open letters in
An'Nidaa newspaper. "You have taken upon your wings the noblest of all causes in our current Arab
history: the giving of dignity back to our insectized people-- no way to that except by the stinging
resistance…"

ANGIONI'S RESEARCH IN SABRA AND CHATILA CAMPS

The Italian insect expert, Franco Angioni, visited the Lebanese Garden. He dwelt in a tent at Chatila
Camp entrance and began his research on the diverse insect species cramming that wilderness.
He could be seen in his entomologist outfit, lying flat on his stomach for hours at a stretch. A
magnifying glass in hand, he watched the tiny inhabitants as they went about in that patch of the
unpruned undergrowth of the Lebanese Garden. From time to time, Angioni got up to scribble a
remark in his notebook.
 Insect expert Angioni notices a human-like behavior in the Insects of Sabra and Chatila

He was astonished to observe, through his magnifying glass, the extraordinary behavior of those
insects. “Caring for other’s children,” he wrote in his notebook when he saw a black beetle foraging
for food to feed three orphan baby aphids.

SABRA
The researcher was led to the adjacent Sabra Camp by following a springtail riding a mayfly-- the
tiny springtail had used its antennae to attach itself to the base of the mayfly’s wings for its journey.
There, Angioni was on time to watch a male cricket displaying chivalry towards his female-- coming
under attack from a small lizard: the male waited until the female was safely inside a burrow before
climbing in himself. A real gentleman!
"A perfectly human social behavior," Angioni concluded his observations in this entry of the
notebook. "Most unusual in insects."
Most unusual indeed. But what surprised our researcher the most, was a female lacewing caught in a
cobweb. With her bright green skinny body, she was desperately trying to free herself from the
delicate, yet tough and sticky silken threads of the web, set up across two basil plants; she only
managed to get herself more and more entangled.
Angioni saw the spider, lurking there under a green basil leaf, his round glassy eyes glistening with
greed. But presently it left its hide-out and slowly advanced towards his prey with sharp fangs and
grasping tentacles. For once, the dedicated scientist forsook his academic neutrality and interfered
with an object of his research.
"As I watched the entangled insect up-close with my magnifying glass," Angioni wrote in excuse, "I
saw in her conspicuously golden eyes a meaning I've never seen in any other insect's grid of photo-
receptors before: an appeal to the human side in me, and yes, tears did roll down those eyes!"
In time, just before the spider has finally rushed towards the lacewing, the Professore's hand reached
out and extricated the insect from the web.
When Angioni has torn the sticky threads off the insect's wings and legs, she did not fly away;
instead, she clung to his hand, crept over his fingers, and spread her beautiful lace wings before his
eyes: they were large and translucent, with a slight iridescence and fine green veins. The insect then
folded them over her back like the roof on a house, and she gave him that look.
"Gratitude," he wrote, "that was what I now saw in the lacewing's eyes."
That 'feeling' didn't just last, but turned into another, more serious emotion. Whenever Angioni
showed up in Sabra, the lacewing fluttered to meet him. She would alight on his hand, his shoulder,
head, face and even his cheek. Tickled and caressed out of the rules of his research, the man would
take the female insect with his fingers and play with her and laugh, extremely careful not to hurt her
frail body. Before long, the lacewing grew coquettish even; she settled on his lips and gave him a
kiss!

The lacewing gives Angioni a kiss

It was really amazing how much 'humanity' did Angioni witness in Sabra and Chatila 'insects' in the
few days he dwelt there; his notebook was full of examples. But the scientist hesitated. Because of
his scientific rigor, he still had doubts and didn't want to jump into conclusions…
'A HANDSHAKE WOULD BE AN ACCEPTANCE OF INSECTISATION; THE ATTITUDE OF
THE HUMANBEING IS A DART.' Sheikh Ragheb Harb

In his white jubbah and turban, Sheikh Ragheb Harb, the Imam or prayers leader of the southern
Jibchite village, was sitting early in the morning to an assembly of believers, preaching.
"The Israeli company has occupied our land as it had occupied Palestine before. I say, refuse all
cooperation with the occupiers."
And they were sipping tea-- the Sahafa Flies hovering over the cups on the tea table-- when an Israeli
pesticide team burst through the open door.
"Sabaho l'kheir," the Team Leader greeted the assembly with the Lebanese traditional morning
greeting.
Nobody greeted the man back; they just stood up with sulking faces. Sheikh Ragheb Harb stood up,
too, raising his chin with the black beard and drawing the jubbah around his wide waist.
"What do you want?" the Sheikh asked, rather harshly.
The Team Leader stepped closer to Sheikh Ragheb.
"My name is Amir Drori," he introduced himself, extending his right arm for a handshake.
However, the cleric refused to meet the extended hand, on the upper arm of which was inscribed the
new Israeli extermination logo, the black insect with the x mark of negation.
"Who gave you the permission to enter my house?" he asked.
Drori withdrew his arm, pursing his lips.
"Get out," Sheikh Ragheb exclaimed. "Now!"
With a visible effort, Drori behaved himself.
"I have orders," he said in weak Arabic, "to fumigate all of the village's houses-- in case there should
be green wasps lurking inside. I've come to have your permission to do that."
Sheikh Ragheb knit his brows.
"Did your company have our permission when it occupied our land?"
The Israeli Leader was clearly embarrassed before his team members, who muttered among
themselves behind him, while the Sheikh stood for his rights in the middle of his fellow villagers.
"We need to secure Galilee from possible green wasps' attacks," said the man. "And--"
"There are no green wasps here," the cleric broke in. "Go out!"
 A handshake would be an acceptance of insectisation

The Israeli leader stared at the Sheikh for a few moments, again pursing his thin lips, then turned and
went out with angry steps, followed by his men.
Sheikh Ragheb Harb kept standing, holding with both hands the sides of his jubbah and looking
through the door at the leaving Israelis. When they got into their pesticide trucks and disappeared, he
turned to his guests.
"Do you think they suspected anything?" he asked, sitting down again behind the shallow tea table.
An old man with a white prayers hat and a long rosary in his hand answered as he sat down, "If they
did, they would have stamped us with their boots like roaches!"
A bearded young man wearing dark clothes looked inquiringly at the Imam's waist.
"What did you bring us, Sheikh, in your jubbah?" he impatiently asked him, evidently not for the
first time.
The others looked at the Sheikh's unusually bulging stomach. But the man had to conclude the
sermon that was interrupted by the rude entrance of the pest controllers.
"We all have to resist the Israeli Company," he said, and opened the sides of his white jubbah.
Round his waist stretched a rough mass of brownish paper with many adjacent hexagonal cells
sealed by a translucent substance, through which they could discern tiny white grubs.
"What's this, Sheikh?" asked a man with graying hair and a red-striped Kufiyah round his neck.
Sheikh Ragheb nodded his turbaned head.
"These are Wasp's larvae," he explained. "I brought them back with me from Imam Al’Ouzai
Mosque."
The bearded young man raised his hands, exclaiming,
"Allah is The Greatest."
And the man with the red kufiyah murmured,
"Wasps are the avant-garde in the resistance of the Israeli insectization."
Sheikh Ragheb Harb smiled, while he checked the closed cells.
"I knew they'd come," he said. "I mean the Israelis. And I was afraid they'd spray the house. That's
why I kept the larvae here. Who would think that a sane man might hide a wasps' nest in his lap?"
With the palm of his right hand over his cheek, the old man recited verses of the Holy Quran:
"There is not an animal that walks on the earth, nor one that flies on its wings, but they are peoples
like you."
The believers listened to the recitation with pious hearts, then said together, "Allah the Almighty has
spoken the truth." Sheikh Ragheb admired the old man's voice and thanked him. But the man with
the red koufiyah addressed the cleric as he looked apprehensively through the door to the empty
road,
"Good luck that they didn’t notice the nest."
Irritated, or in fact reassured now, Sheikh Ragheb spoke up.
"Good luck for them that they didn't see it," he said.
"If they did, they'd see something they won’t like!"
He tapped his fingers on the paper cells. The Aqeeq ring he wore on the fourth finger gleamed. He
tapped them once, twice, and thrice.
"How strange!" he said, pushing his turban back till his black hair showed. "As’Sayyed Abbas
Al’Mousawi told me that the nest is guarded by a number of fearless yellow female Wasps."
Meanwhile, the Flies, who have made themselves at home upon the sugared rims of the tea cups, fled
out of the house.
"Where shall we hide this nest, Sheikh?"

MY HOUSE IS A SECURITY ZONE FOR GALILEE

It would be a failing if I ended my series of reports on the Lebanese Garden without visiting its
southern sector.
Cold morning gusts of wind mingled with the summer's last hot breaths, thus announcing the
approaching Autumn. I flew among the old olive trees, recently sprayed aerially by the Israeli planes,
for their evergreen leaves reeked with pesticide odors that slowly evaporated in the wane September
sun.
"May Allah be with you,
Standing House in the South.
Suckled loyalty under your roof,
Never will we leave you,
Our House in the South." Southern lullaby
The singing came from a tobacco plantation behind the mulberry trap in Maaraka village, many
kilometers away from the nearest peg in the Israeli hedge. A veiled young woman bent over a
tobacco plant, picking its wide, green leaves and gathering them in a big straw basket. Alighting on
the already yellowing leaf she was about to pick, I greeted her-- unprofessionally for the first time:
"Hello there!"
The woman started, her cheeks reddening. She raised her sleeved hands to her snow-white forehead,
and, with her delicate fingers, tucked under the black veil the lock of brown hair that was showing. I
felt shy myself, as a spontaneous reaction to the young woman's shyness, but I hid it by covering my
eyes and insectile face with my front legs. When she's completely abided by the Islamic custom of
covering her hair and body before strangers, I introduced myself to her, drawn by a funny impulse to
gain the woman's admiration.

Zeinab and Robert Fisk

"I am Robert Fisk," I said, wiping my wings with my hind legs until they shone in the now hotter
sunrays. "An English correspondent for the Times newspaper, and I buzz with history from under the
nozzles of sprayers! "
She tucked her wrists inside the long sleeves of her dress.
Esteez,""she welcomed me by the title of the school teacher, who enjoys in the South the extreme of
respect. "My name is Zeinab. Thanks to Allah that you made it through the Extermination."
I said, gazing at her round, very human face. “Thanks to Allah that I met you!”
Zeinab didn't answer; she just picked another big yellowing leaf, her fingers nervous.
"You didn't have to insectize in the first place, Esteez Robert, like our people. Then why did you
transform into a Fly?"
"I had to be like them to better understand their suffering," I said hurriedly. "But you're still human,
and a very beautiful one!"
Although her basket was only half full, the woman lifted it up on top of her head.
“We the Southerners,” she said from under the basket, “have much more humanity than the Israelis
could ever take away.”
Zeinab made for the stone house that stood some way off the village's main road.
I followed her, buzzing. With an alert, rather suspicious sidelong glance, the woman saw me
hovering languidly, innocently, I should say, beside her. From under her burden, she looked in the
direction of some scattered houses in the distance down the road, likewise surrounded by tobacco
fields; the young woman was embarrassed, no doubt, thinking of the scandal that might overtake her
by inviting a foreigner into her house, even if he was...
"I am just a Fly!"
So, I've accepted insectization now for the sake of a pretty woman. However, it was not my argument
that prompted Zeinab to acquiesce and have me over, but the Southern goodness and generosity that
couldn't say 'no.'
“Honor my house, Esteez,” she said, smiling. “Come and share a plate of Frakeh with me”
My proboscis hanged down in the air.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s the Southern Kibbeh Nayyeh.”
"I always wanted to taste Kibbeh."
Zeinab pushed the door open and let me in. She entered and closed the door behind her. An
intoxicating smell of tobacco caressed my antennae. My host put the basket down under a row of dry
yellow tobacco leaves hanging from a rope across the drawing room.
At the table for two, she asked me the favor of 'sitting down' on the guest's chair. That was the best
chair in the house. I alighted on the rim of the chair's back, though.
"Esteez Robert," Zeinab said, putting a white blanket on my chair. "Do make yourself at home."
She went inside, probably to the kitchen.
With the green curtain drawn over the window, the sunlight spread a relaxing atmosphere in the
room. Cold and slow in my present insectility, the blood in my vessel flew rapidly, and I felt my
heart pumping it warm through my body and jointed legs. A sound of boiling water, coming certainly
from the kitchen, added a sense of security to my making myself at home; Zeinab was preparing
coffee, too. Does she live alone? Maybe her parents are out in the fields. She may even be married. I
didn't like that thought.
When Zeinab came back with a full dish, still wearing her veil, she knit her brows at the sight of me.
The frown enhanced her beauty.
"Why didn't you assume your human shape yet?"
"Now, Zeinab," I began, wiping my face with my forelegs. "I..."
"I wish to see you as a human being," Zeinab said, and laid the dish in front of me on the table.
She went inside again.
During my whole foreign correspondence in the Lebanese Garden, never did I experience such an
insistence that I should metamorphose back into my human form. Indeed, how can a pretty woman
like her eat with a Fly?
When Zeinab came back, she was herself different; a lot smaller and ... prettier!
"Ah'lan, Esteez Robert," she exclaimed laughing, as she sat at the table across from me. "You sure
are handsome with your eyes blue instead of your exoskeleton!"
In the blanket that I drew round my 'human' body like a Roman philosopher, I sure looked laughable.
My eyeglasses were regrettably missing. Even though she still hid her hair from me, Zeinab wore
now a new, more relaxing orange dress and veil. The brown lock rebelled, however; it dangled over
her forehead, and with the well-dressed eyebrows over the black eyes, constituted a hard-to-defeat
'love squad.'
"This is the Frakeh," she said, picking a morsel from the dish with her fingers and holding it up to
me. "Here, have one."
Letting go of the sides of the blanket over my shoulders, I stretched my hand, rather awkwardly, and
took the morsel from between Zeinab's fingers.
"Take care!" she exclaimed, laughing again. "You could've dropped it."
But I managed to put the Frakeh in my mouth, resisting a long-standing habit of spitting saliva on my
food before sucking it in. It has been ages since I sank my teeth into something edible, but I could
judge Frakeh was a paste of crushed wheat, pounded meat, and lots of pepper.
"D… delicious."
"Sure it is, Esteez! Have some more."
And she handed me another frakeh morsel; I was hungry. Zeinab picked one, and began to eat.
Having some difficulty spelling out the words I said,
“I… I see… you live… alone, Zeinab?”
“No,” she said, chewing delicately. "I am married-- I mean, I was."
With a kind of jealousy I could never account for, I almost choked on my food.
"Where... is your husband, then?"
"He was martyrized."
"Oh. I am sorry."
"Don't be, Esteez Robert," she said, not eating anymore. "Death for us is merely a custom: Allah's
generosity is martyrdom. Thus taught us the Prophet's grandson, Imam Al’Hussein."
I succeeded in picking up a morsel from the dish, and I handed it to Zeinab. She hesitated a moment,
then took it, or tried to take it, but I insisted on her taking it with her mouth.
"No," she said, shaking her head. But she took it with her hand, smiling apologetically to my
embarrassed fingers.
"In fact," she said, biting at the morsel, "the Israelis never left us in--"
"Zeinab!"
Someone called my host from outside.
Zeinab gasped. She put the half-eaten frakeh back in the dish, and sprang to the window and drew
the curtain aside. She turned to me in panic.
"These are my neighbors," she said, alarmed. "Please don't let them see you here. Oh Allah, what a
scandal!"
Taken aback by her genuine fear, and actually pleased by it, I stood up in my blanket, and walked,
upon two legs, trying to find a place to hi...
"Ah!"
I fell to the tiled floor with a thud.
"What was that?" asked the voice from outside the door.
"Zeinab?"
"Are you all right?"
Zeinab helped me to my feet, then made me walk, or rather totter naked, leaving the blanket behind.
"But," I objected to such humiliation, "I am a reporter, and they should--"
"Knock. Knock!"
"Please, Esteez," she pleaded, stepping toward the door, then returning to me. "Oh, how I wish you
were still a Fly!"
I hid behind the curtain, feeling stupid, and Zeinab jumped to the door.
"What took you so long to open, Zeinab?"
"I..."
"Were you asleep at this hour of the morning?
"No. Swear to Allah..."
"What was that noise?"
"What noise? I mean, what's the matter?"
"Didn't you know? The Israelis are spraying our houses. They want to exterminate the yellow
Wasps."
From the window pane, I could see an Israeli pesticide truck arriving at the house down the narrow
lane off the main road. For the first time, however, it was escorted by an armored personnel carrier
full of soldiers with Star of David inscribed on the front of their helmets…

THE LEBANESE SILK FARM

I traveled back to Beirut, towards the Associated Press office in Hamra.
That was Old Saida Street, the green line between A’Chayyah and Ain Ar’Rommana that no soul
could cross without being sprayed or trodden upon. How come it is open for cars and pedestrians?
Even though, the street was still cut off at some parts with grass that swayed in the cool breeze of
sunset. Look, it’s somebody moving there. They were a pride of Lionesses lurking among the tall
grass, cautiously raising their heads and watching. No wonder why no Animal moved in the vicinity.

To take a rest, I landed on a green branch.

"Where's the state?" cried a nagging voice from somewhere.
"There is no state, dearest," another voice answered. "It's a farm out there!"

The branch I perched on was that of a mulberry tree. And that was another mulberry tree. A third one
over there. Have they planted the whole Lebanese Garden with mulberry? I rubbed my forelegs
together than wiped my head. I rubbed my hind legs and brushed my wings.
And I was about to hop into the air when a sprayer nozzle was thrust into my face! It's the end, then.
“Game over!” said the bearer of the sprayer.
Can you help me now, Zeinab?
My respiratory spiracles ceased taking air in, waiting for the exterminating splash. But the sprayer
was turned aside, and the person took off his mask.
“Blue Fly, Do you remember me?” he asked, grinning in a repulsive way
My abdomen got filled with air again but I still couldn't revive from the shock.
“Are you a Muslim or a Christian?” he asked, mimicking the voice of a boy. “Answer me or else!”
Through the mist in my memory I saw the kid who had intercepted me in Ain Ar’Rommana at the
onset of the Lebanese insectization age.
Yes. It was him, but he has grown up.
“My name is Rabea,” he said. “I didn’t introduce myself in our first encounter. You know boys get
carried away. It’s Fisk, Robert Fisk. Right? You’ve got a wide reputation in our Farm.”
I flew off.
"You like my new sprayer?" he exclaimed after me. Rabea was evidently trying to make me stay a
while longer. "Made in the United States of America."
He showed me his machine, waving the nozzle this way and that way, then turning himself to show
his backpack.
He put down his sprayer so that its tip touched the ground.
"We have grown up and got hired in the Farm as Guards of the Silkworms against the red Wasps."
"The red Wasp isn't an enemy of the Silkworm," I said, as I circled around him. "He’s the Spiders’
enemy. Anyway, what Farm are you talking about?"
He followed me with his eyes, amused by my ignorance.
"Don't you know anything?
"I've been away for quite some time, in another country, you might say!"
"Rafic Al'Hariri's Farm," he answered at last. "All the Lebanese are working for him. No west or east
now; it's just the Garden, and the Lebanese are one people again."
I hovered some way off. But Rabea's eyes glittered with something more to say. He waved at me
with the sprayer.
"Sheikh Rafic loves reporters and journalists," he said. "Why don't you pay him a visit? He lives in a
wonderful castle in Qureitem in the heart of Beirut. They say that it is a marvel of design."
With a disdain the young man didn't notice as he chuckled, I circled around his head, then resumed
my journey deep into the mulberry plantation.
On the narrow corner between two shops in Bechara Al'Khoury crossroads, a Falafel canteen and an
expresso cafe', was inscribed one of the war game slogans,

"NO TO THE SPRAYING OF THE INNOCENT PALESTINIANS IN AIN AR’ROMMANA

BUS."
It showed rather pallidly in the sunset from under the first application of a blue paint. However, the
pail of paint stood on the pavement near the wall and argued with the painting brush; one of them,
probably the brush, refused to apply the second, covering layer.
 The Lebanese wilderness was a conflict territory for all the Beasts

QUREITEM'S ARCHITECTURAL MARVEL

A marble statue of the late Leopard snarled at me from over the great entrance gate, prematurely
lighted up by two projectors. Even though the sculptor has evidently contrived to make him look
fiercer than he really was, with a hard-muscled body and largely developed talons, never known to
an animal before-- except for the extinct Quet'zal'coat'lus, the Leopard failed to intimidate me.
Likewise, those young men standing sentinels at either side of the wrought-iron gate didn't shake a
hair in my posterior; I knew many of them as boys in shorts chasing cockroaches. They dressed in
dappled trousers now, proud of the stripes upon their shoulders.
I dodged them all, for I had no time to waste upon their silly questions, and entered the orchard.
Once inside, I felt dwarfed by the garden's giant mulberry trees, partially obscured by the gathering
gloom.
 A statue of the late Saudi Leopard upon the entrance gate of Hariri's Mulberry Garden in Qureitem

Even at this late hour of the day thousands, or rather millions of Silkworms, still ate the green
mulberry leaves to the drone of the cicadas:
Work goes on
Talk goes on
For all we care!

The Castle must be there, behind…

I was about to bump into a spider's web, but I jerked back just in time.
What a latticework! In my whole reporting career, I haven't seen anything like it. As it loomed in the
semi-darkness of the twilight, the web struck me with awe and instinctive fear. I sprang back in my
flight, then, from that distance, I could see the dangerous sticky threads, concentric here but reaching
out in all directions, in fact blocking the whole horizon. Some of the threads had visible hold-points
in the tree trunks, and many extended far beyond my eyes could see.
The web suddenly rocked. It’s probably the autumn breeze. No! The ghastly threads reached out in
the air towards me, and I fled. What about meeting Al’Hariri? Some other time, perhaps, thank you
very much!
 A worker in Hariri's Silk Farm

The Palestinian Centipede is a novel by the Lebanese author Issam Adel Hamad about the 1975
Lebanese Civil War with insect and animal characters. PDF ebook designed by Wael Haidar.
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