HOUSE OF STONE - INTRODUCTION (SPOILER THREAD)

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

This is the introduction thread for the book:

by Anthony Shadid

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Introduction

This is the introduction thread for the special spotlighted book:House of Stone; A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East by Pulitzer Prize for Journalism winner, Anthony Shadid.

About the Author



Career

From 2003 to 2009 Shadid was a staff writer for The Washington Post where he was an Islamic affairs correspondent based in the Middle East. Before The Washington Post, Shadid worked as Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press based in Cairo and as news editor of the AP bureau in Los Angeles. He spent two years covering diplomacy and the State Department for The Boston Globe before joining the Post's foreign desk.

In 2002, he was shot in the shoulder by an Israel sniper in Ramallah while reporting for the Boston Globe in the West Bank. The bullet also grazed his spine.

On March 16, 2011, Shadid and three colleagues were reported missing in Eastern Libya, having gone there to report on the uprising against the dictatorship of Col. Muammar Al-Ghaddafi. On March 18, 2011, The New York Times reported that Libya agreed to free him and three colleagues: Stephen Farrell, Lynsey Addario and Tyler Hicks. The Libyan government released the four journalists on March 21, 2011.

Awards

Shadid twice won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, in 2004 and 2010, for his coverage of the Iraq War. His experiences in Iraq were the subject for his 2005 book Night Draws Near, an empathetic look at how the war has impacted the Iraqi people beyond liberation and insurgency. Night Draws Near won the Ridenhour Book Prize for 2006. He won the 2004 Michael Kelly Award, as well as journalism prizes from the Overseas Press Club and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Shadid was a 2011 recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the American University of Beirut. He won the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 2003 and in 2012 for his work in 2011. House of Stone was a finalist for the National Book Award (Nonfiction) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography).

Death

Pulitzer-Prize winner Anthony Shadid died on February 16, 2012, from an acute asthma attack while attempting to leave Syria. Shadid's smoking and extreme allergy to horses are believed to be the major contributing factors in causing his fatal asthma attack. "He was walking behind some horses," said his father. "He's more allergic to those than anything else—and he had an asthma attack." His body was carried to Turkey by Tyler Hicks, a photographer for The New York Times.

Anthony’s cousin, Dr. Edward Shadid of Oklahoma City challenged the Times' version of the death, and instead blamed the publication for forcing Anthony into Syria.

Reviews

"Anthony Shadid’s wonderful memoir of the year he devoted to restoring his great-grandfather’s home in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun. His symphonic narrative strikes many notes — elegiac, ironic, angry, funny (in a rueful sort of way). But a yearning for the Levant that flourished under the Ottoman Empire runs throughout, a hymn for a world and a time not without tumult but far more civil, gracious and ordered than the blood-dimmed chaos of the present-day Middle East." Washington Post

"Anthony Shadid, who died in February at the age of 43 while reporting the crisis in Syria, was one of the most intelligent, experienced and well-­informed journalists covering the Middle East. In his writing, he showed a depth of intellectual inquiry and a skepticism toward conventional wisdom matched by few other correspondents." NY Times

“Wonderful . . . One of the finest memoirs I’ve read.” — Philip Caputo, Washington Post

“A poignant dedication to family, to home, and to history . . . Breathtaking.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Entertaining, informative, and deeply moving . . . House of Stone will stand a long time, for those fortunate enough to read it.” — Telegraph (London)



by Anthony Shadid

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

I thought this was an interesting article about Lebanon and the effects of the Syrian conflict upon Lebanon itself. Since this is the country for the setting of House of Stone - I thought it was worth posting here.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the popular awakening sweeping the Middle East had the unintended effect of undermining the one established Arab democracy?



Photograph by Moises Saman/Magnum

MARCH 25, 2013
AS SYRIA BLEEDS, LEBANON REELS
POSTED BY DEXTER FILKINS

On Friday, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati resigned. His departure followed a stand-off over extending the term of a senior official responsible for internal security and a new national election law, but it had every sign of being sparked by the civil war unfolding across the border in Syria, which has become increasingly sectarian. At the heart of last week’s events in Lebanon lies Hezbollah, the armed group whose members have been covertly fighting to keep the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in power.

(On assignment recently in Lebanon, I reported on Hezbollah’s unacknowledged activities inside Syria itself, where I outlined the group’s efforts to prop up Assad’s murderous regime.) It now appears increasingly likely that the Syrian civil war will ignite some kind of sectarian strife inside Lebanon as well.

Lebanon is a small country with only four million people, but it’s an extraordinarily diverse place that nearly every government in the Middle East has struggled to dominate.

Since 1990, when its own civil war ended, Lebanon has maintained a fitful but functioning democracy, one that relies on a delicate balance of power among its main sectarian groups: the Christians, the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Druze.

Since 1990, the greatest threat to Lebanon’s democracy has been the Syrian regime of Assad and his local proxies, Hezbollah.

Like his father before him, Assad has sought to dominate Lebanon, truncating its politics and extracting millions of dollars from its economy.

Hezbollah, in turn, has used its Syrian cover to nurture its own army, which is stronger than that of the Lebanese state. Even after Syrian forces were forced to withdraw from Lebanon in 2005 following the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Assad and his satraps continued to manipulate Lebanese politics, often by assassinating their Lebanese opponents. Both Syria and Hezbollah rely heavily on Iran; Syria provides the crucial conduit for Hezbollah’s money and weapons.

Now, of course, the Assad regime is fighting for its survival, as much of its own population has risen up against it. The crucial aspect of the Syrian war, as regards Lebanon, is its sectarian nature. The Assad regime is dominated by members of the Alawite sect, which considers itself an offshoot of Shia Islam, the religion of Hezbollah (and of the Iranian regime).

As the civil war in Syria has carried on, it has dragged more and more of Lebanon along with it. Terrified that it will lose its supply lines, Hezbollah has not been content to sit on the sidelines and watch Assad fall; its leaders have been sending fighters into Syria to fight for the Assad regime, actions that are supposed to be secret but that are widely known in Lebanon.

That, in turn, has severely strained Hezbollah’s relations with other Lebanese, especially its Sunnis, who accuse Hezbollah of killing their brethren across the border. At least four hundred thousand Syrian refugees, most of them Sunnis, have gathered in Lebanon. The peace has held in Lebanon, but the Sunni anger is swelling.

This brings us to the resignation of Prime Minister Mikati. Under longstanding national agreement, the Prime Minster must be a Sunni. (The President must be a Christian; the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite.)

Since taking office in 2011, Mikati has presided over a coalition whose most powerful partner is Hezbollah—which, in addition to being an army, is also a political party. Hezbollah’s activities inside Syria have been putting enormous pressure on Mikati, who is seen as the leader of the country’s Sunnis.

Those pressures came to a head last week.

The immediate issue was the extension of the term of Major General Ashraf Rifi, chief of the Internal Security Forces. Rifi is a Sunni and close to the Lebanese opposition, which is staunchly opposed to the Syrian leader and friendly with the West. Hezbollah, which dominates Mikati’s cabinet, refused to extend Rifi’s term.

Hezbollah’s intense dislike for the Internal Security Forces is well known: in October, the head of intelligence for the same agency, General Wissam al-Hassan, also an ally of the United States, was blown up by a car bomb.

Many people in Lebanon suspected that Hezbollah or the Syrian government were behind the attack. Among other things, Hassan, and the I.S.F. more generally, had pushed for the indictment of four Hezbollah members in the assassination of Hariri.

Hezbollah regards the investigation as a pro-Western put-up job. But the decisive point is that, with civil war raging next door, Hezbollah is clearly trying to make the Lebanese state more friendly to Assad.

The other issue was a dispute over a new election law, which is supposed to be approved before new parliamentary elections can be held in June. The deadlock over the law appears to reflect a growing sense of strength among Lebanon’s Sunnis, particularly vis-à-vis Hezbollah, as the Sunni opposition in Syria strengthens as well.

If Lebanon’s President, Michel Suleiman, accepts Mikati’s resignation, as he seems likely to do, the country could be entering a protracted political crisis, without a functional government. That kind of power vacuum, in a country as fragile as Lebanon, could lead to sectarian violence. Mikati himself, in his televised statement on Friday, seemed to hint at just such a possibility. “The region is heading toward the unknown,’’ he said.

Indeed it is. For all Lebanon’s travails, its democracy has been an example to its neighbors. It would be especially sad if it became a victim.


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