Jacob Resneck’s

One evening, after a hard day’s toil in the vineyards of Southern Illinois, I got an email from old friend about a conference being assembled in Lebanon. The idea was to bring together six American and six Middle Eastern journalists for a week and set ‘em loose on one another. Or something like that. All expenses paid.
They were short a couple of Yanks, it said, and the conference would be the following week.
With a little Dutch Courage, I fired off an application and didn’t expect to hear back. The Tuesday after Labor Day I received an email telling me to pack my bags.
Since I got to make my own arrangements, I booked myself an extra two weeks so I could get another “Axis of Evil” country under my belt.
This is my story.

ALEPPO, Syria — After a rickety journey on Amtrak’s “City of New Orleans” train from Carbondale to Chicago, (the Steve Goodman song is bollocks; no old men passing around “paper bags that hold the bottle” - just moody 20-somethings commuting from Southern Illinois University to Chicago’s northern suburbs), I arrived in the great city of Chicago. Spent the day getting lost, but the Art Institute was a treat.
I lucked out, scoring a direct flight from O’Hare to Amman, Jordan. The Amman airport is certainly “Middle East Lite.” Even though I had 5 hours to kill, the customs guard wouldn’t let me out of the terminal since I only had a transit visa.
“You visit Amman next time,” he chided.
These were the activities available: Duty Free (strangely I had no taste for booze, pricey electronics, or Chanel perfumes), Cinnabon, Starbuck’s, and watching English-language Euronews in the little cafe.
I fished a warm can of Heieman’s Old Style lager that I’d brought 6,000 miles with me and settled down for the layover.
Middle East Lite, I grumbled. The only notable event was a cleaning guy’s pathetic attempt to scam me by selling me a 2 dinar telephone card for $5 when the nearby kiosk sold 3 dinar cards for the same price. He had tried to hatch the deal in the bathroom, like it was contraband or something, but I wasn’t biting.
Finally, our connecting flight to Beirut arrived. We shuffled in, packed together tightly, and I was looking forward to getting fed. My hopes were dashed when the “meal” was served, however. Stale cheese sandwiches made from Oregonian Tillamook cheese (individually wrapped). Everything on the plane came from America.
After negotiating my way through the terminal and getting through customs after a sulky customs agent made a very cursory search of my bags (he was horrified by my bag of beef jerky that I’d had since Minnesota), I was free to go. Three emails to the Reuters Foundation asking for confirmation that someone would be meeting me at 10 p.m. at the airport had gone unanswered. So I was relieved to see a wiry young taxi driver holding a sign that said “Mr. Resneck”.
The following morning we were introduced to our fellow journalists. Represented were: St. Louis, Madison, Indianapolis, Savannah, San Francisco, and me. Our opposite numbers were: Palestine, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon.
The course is held at the American Univeristy, a 19th century campus built by American missionaries. The campus is very green and opulent. Scandalously dressed young women in skin-tight clothes draw more than a few remarks from the men folks from both civilizations.
To most of us, the name Beirut conjures up images of destruction, but the center has been fastidiously rebuilt and wealth is all around us. Coming from Southern Illinois, I felt like I had traveled from the Third World to a glistening Metropolis. No offense, Murphysboro.
After two days of getting to know each other, the delegation of 12 journalists took our first field trip. We climb aboard a chartered bus for Hezbollah-controlled territory along the Lebanese/Israeli frontier. We pass multiple military checkpoints, but Hezbollah’s called ahead and everything’s prune juice smooth for the throng of hacks that we are.
We visit the Beaufort Castle, a 12th century fortress built during the Crusades. The craggy ruins stand atop a natural plateau that gives us a stunning view of the surrounding greenery of Southern Lebanon and parts of Northern Israel. Almost everything in the area appears new. That’s probably since the Israeli army only withdrew in 2000. So newly paved roads and glistening new pylons string the powerlines into the repopulated villages. Literally hundreds of thousands of refugees had emptied out of Southern Lebanon and into the slums of southern Beirut following the Israeli invasion in 1982. Now construction is evident everywhere as families are returning.
Our Hezbollah hosts describe how Beaufort was built by Saladin, a brilliant Kurdish strategtist that drove the Crusaders out of the Middle East. But 30 seconds of amateur internet research suggests it was built by the Crusaders themselves.
No matter; in recent times it was used both by Palestinian fighters as a staging point to attack Israeli targets, and then as an Israeli base of operations following its invasion and occupation of Lebanon (1982-2000). Hezbollah was formed in 1982 as a Shi’ite Lebanese resistance to the Israeli army and continues to this day to harrass parts of Israel–specifically the “Shebaa Farms” which they claim is rightfully Lebanese. (The UN says it belongs to Syria, Israel says it needs it for security — it’s a mess).
After the tour of the ruins, we climb back into our air conditioned bus and drive down the hill to the main offices of Hezbollah. We are beckoned into the cool modern building to meet with soft-spoken Sheikh Nabil Kawouk, commander of Hezbollah forces in Southern Lebanon. He greets us warmly, beckoning us inside. He speaks through a translator. Pictures of the Iranian Ayatollah with the Hezbollah leader adorn the wall. The women in the group wear headscarves as instructed by our Reuters trainers.
The Sheikh begins by saying he would like to ask us some questions. I’m trying to pay attention, nursing a broken gut after drinking too much Beirut tap water.
The Sheikh picks me out of the crowd of 24 and says: “I’d like to ask you two questions before proceeding with questions. First, what do you know about Hezbollah?”
Uh… who me? Yeah you kid, the translator explains.
I tried to stammer out an answer. I always thought the word “terrorist” was loaded, but I didn’t wanna come off as an apologist for militant fighters neither.
I had been scribbling notes in my steno pad, but fortunately my new pal Sean from the Savannah Morning News had a tape recorder and he made the following transcript. The Sheikh totally got the best of me, but here’s the exchange verbatim:

Kawouk: What do you know about Hezbollah?
Resneck: I know it is the last armed group in Lebanon and it controls the southern areas, to protect southern Lebanon from Israel.
Kawouk: Do you share the U.S. Administration’s opinion that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization?
Resneck: I don’t use the word terrorist in any context actually because it’s a loaded word. One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
Kawouk: What’s terrorism in your point of view?
Resneck: It’s people that use violence for political means, to accomplish political ends.
Kawouk: Even if it was a rightful political ends?
Resneck: That’s the problem with the word terrorist because you’re stepping into the situation. I don’t have any personal experience with that. There are militant armed groups but terrorism is a word from the perspective of the victim.
Kawouk: If this is the case, than all wars are terrorism, even it was self defense.
Resneck: I agree.
Kawouk: So according to this definition, even a people who were defending their country or defending their right would become terrorists.
Resneck: I agree.
Kawouk: So if I attacked your house and you defended your house, would both of us be terrorists?
Resneck: That’s the problem with the word terrorism.
Kawouk: So now we have to apologize to Jesus Christ because he was crucified … So both are terrorists, no you can’t say that. The oppressor and the oppressed, you can’t say that both are terrorists.

At this point, Washington Bureau Chief Jon Sawyer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stepped in. (He later jokingly referred to me as a “terrorist’s apologist” and himself as the “American stooge”)

Jon Sawyer: On this subject, can we ask his definition of terrorism. How does he define terrorism?
Kawouk: I’ll give you one sentence to define terrorism: The killing of innocent civilians — innocent, innocent civilians. Then when you fight the occupying forces, military forces, this is not terrorism. When you fight military occupying forces, this is not terrorism. I hope you’re satisfied by the answer.
Jon Sawyer: In the course of fighting occupying powers, say you take action against a bus and the bus contains civilians, is that terrorism?
Kawouk: Terrorism is killing of innocent civilians. Killing an innocent civilian is terrorism.
So from the onset we saw the ideological difference between groups like Hezbollah and Hamas (which bomb buses). The former said they won’t and don’t attack civilians (except some Israeli settlers which he said are always heavily armed and hence fair game).

We had a good discussion with the guy. He criticized the insurgents in Iraq for killing innocent people and stressed how his group had no bone to pick with ordinary Americans but was dismayed how categorically the US lined up behind Israel. And he also was chaffed that he was known as a “terrorist” even though their beef was with the Israeli army. It was quite a charm offensive and illustrated some complexities of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict.
A video crew from al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, appeared and interviewed our trainer. One of the journalists was a young woman, hair uncovered, wearing a pink boobetube. The women in our group were puzzled — where was her shawl?
One of them went and asked, and the Lebanese journalist explained that while some of the sheikhs insisted on traditional head covering, this guy was a lot more liberal. Who knew?
****
Next stop was the Khia Prison, built by the French colonialists in the early 20th century, it was a brutal detention center for the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army. We got a tour of the place, met with a former prisoner of 13 years who was now a curator. We watched a propaganda video about the horrors that went on within its walls. The film suggested that many attrocities were committed by Israeli soldiers, though after further questioning we learned it was a Lebanese-run prison, but overseen by Israeli military officers. A small point perhaps, after all many Ukrainians did the dirty work for the Germans, but one that needed clarifying I thought.
Then we broke for lunch. My stomach was a volcano of pain, but I did manage to try one of the local delicacies: “raw sheeps.” Mmmm… finger lickin’ good it was.
After that we drove to the Israeli border. We could see a juice factory and an Israeli army patrol. We were told we had to be quick, lest the Apaches come. We also drove to a former checkpoint known as “Fatima’s Gate”. I threw a few rocks over the fence. One of the Palestinians looked at me quizically.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s my birthright.”
“You know what? You’re an asshole!” he told me. I asked him if I could quote him. He grinned and said “sure.”
The other Palestinian in our group was more somber. Born and raised in Jordan, this was the closest he’d ever come to his parents’ village. I left the guy alone.
****
The next day we drove to the southern outskirts of Beirut to visit the Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. Housed here since 1948, the Palestinians are denied the right to work, own property, and vote, by the Lebanese who fear it would upset the fragile balance between the Lebanese Christians and Muslims of the country.
Our hosts today were Hamas who led us around the camp. They tried to steer us in a particular direction to talk to their own hand-picked “men and women on the street” but me and a few others broke off and interviewed our own people. Not that we heard anything surprising, but it felt good to ditch the minders.
The camp was the site of a massacre in 1982 when the Israeli army let the Phalangists (a Lebanese Christian militia) into the camps to have a free run over the mostly unarmed Palestinians in the camps. What happened next follows the standards genocidal script: “The men and women were separated and …”
The leader of Israeli forces, Gen. Ariel Sharon, was censured by the Israeli Knesset for his role in the massacre. His political career was finished, Israeli commentators said at the time. Israelis put the death toll at 800. The International Red Cross reported seeing bodies in the thousands. The conservative estimate therefore is between 800 and 3,000 civilians killed. A Lebanese Christian woman whose Muslim husband and son were among those killed was wheeled out by Hamas for us to interview.
“If Sharon were here I would drink his blood,” she told us. This greatly disurbed our translator, one of the young Arab journalists from the conference.
After our little walk about in the camp, we met with Usamah Hamdan, whose business card (I had to get his card) says simply “Hamas Representative”. Over tea and juice, Usamah explained that Hamas’ defintion of terrorism was a lot narrower: “The killing of civilians in their homelands.” Since they don’t recognize Israel, this gives ‘em a pretty free reign to blow up who they want, when they want.
But, he said, they’re trying to limit keep dialogue open and negotiate ceasefires with Israel … *sight* It’s hard to know who to believe when both sides are lying to you.
****
The party broke up on Friday night and on Saturday I headed for Syria. I was worried, ’cause I didn’t have a visa and you’re supposed to get them in your own country. I was in a shared taxi weaving on narrow roads at night. I think our driver was nervous about the border too, ’cause about 2 clicks before the border he practically shotgunned a can of Heineken.
The border was fine, “1,000 [Syrian pounds] and you are welcome,” a soldier joked to me. I ignored him, though kept the offer in the back of my head should we hit a rough spot. There were some “Bribery sends you to jail” signs on the Lebanese side, but no such warnings in Syria.
This weblog is supposed to be about freight travel, and so I apologize to my readers. The civil war in Lebanon pretty much destroyed the railway. Not so in Syria. In Tartus, I saw my first freight train in a week and boy was I excited. I found the freightyard the other day and was about to slip in to check out a freight being built. I saw a toe protruding from the guard’s kiosk and realized I was three steps from being seen.
I backed off and watched froma distance. I felt someone watching me and turned to my left. There was a soldier, Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, looking curiously in my direction. I waved. He smiled.
The bulls here are pretty well-armed. This would have to be a nighttime operation. I went and found the bus station.
Today I took a [passenger] train from Lattakia on the coast to Aleppo. It cost a little less than a dollar. What a ride, too. Now I’m in Syria’s second city about to explore the place now that the heat’s subsided.
The absolute best activity in Syria, and I think the reason most people should visit, is to cross the Syrian street. We can make it a sport in X-Games, “Ex-treme Pedestrianism!” or something like that. I think all taxis drivers should be trained over here (most NYC cabbies are). There are few controlled intersections, fewer crosswalks, and seemingly no rules. It’s a very Zen exercise. You just visualize your path through the traffic and then walk through. Just you and the swerving taxis.
The drivers, for their part, do their best to avoid hitting you without actually checking their speed. So there’s a little bit of compassion on their end.

Jaco out (of the country)

MURPHYSBORO, Illinois — Sitting on the “porch” of a hotshot freight train, screaming through western Wisconsin at 70 mph, I was in the midst of an abhorrent act of childhood rebellion. Spooning mouthfuls of Skippy peanut butter, I only wished my health-conscious parents could see me now. You see, you couldn’t find Skippy in our cupboard. Our peanut butter came in a glass jar with peanut oil on the top. You had to stir it vigorously for it to resemble anything like the peanut butter that the other kids had on their sandwiches. Visiting kids would recoil with horror when they saw our peanut butter, they being raised on spreadable peanut-flavored sugar paste. And as a kid I envied them; their sandwiches tasted like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups sans chocolate while mine was distinctively … peanuty. But re-discovering the pleasures of trans-fat saturated junk food is just one of the pleasures of crossing the country without parental supervision.
The last few days I’d been on somewhat of a health kick. I had commandeered a roadbike and fixed it up in Minneapolis. After outfitting it with a set of antique pannier saddlebags, I decided to become a cycle tramp. I had seen others take their bikes on freight trains, and to me it seemed like a great way to go. No more lugging an over-sized rucksack. I had wheels.
After a false start due to mechanical breakdowns and lack of preparedness, I finally was able to ride out of glorious Minneapolis. The two weeks I’d spent there I’d had the pleasure of fraternizing with tramps in a St. Paul hobo jungle on the Mississippi River; metrosexual yuppies in a spartan skyline flat in downtown “Mpls”; hungry crackheads at White Castle’s at 2:30 a.m.; and the state’s great legal minds of tomorrow (my cousin’s law school friends), it had been a great visit but it was time to go. My destination was La Crosse, Wisconsin and so for the next two-and-a-half days I cycled down the river on Wisconsin’s State Hwy. 35.
La Crosse, a prosperous looking college town, seemed an attractive enough place. After humiliating myself in a failed attempt to scam a shower at the university’s gymnasium, I cleaned up at the YMCA. Within a couple of hours, I was bored of the place and ready to catch a freight.
Settling in the freight yard, I waited all afternoon but nothing showed up. Some workers across the tracks were building trains and from their vantage point spotted my bike and pack that I hadn’t hidden well enough. One caught my eye through the trees. Rail workers reaction to trespassers range from friendliness, to indifference, to calling Bubba the Bull.
“Hey!” One of them yelled, seemingly in my direction. I waited — not wanting to show myself. Yet. The yelling continued.
Then I heard, “Secur-it-ee!” More for my benefit, I figured. I stood up, exposing my hiding place and a group were standing over my pack.
I gathered my gear. “Alright, I’m going. Bye-bye!” I waved at them as they glowered at me. I then slunk back through the woods to wait for nightfall.
After sheltering in the library, I figured I’d stop in a tavern to wait for the last hour before dusk.
Feeling a little low, I wanted to be in the company of champions, so I chose a watering hole called WINNERS. Walking in, I learned that there is no truth in advertising. After ordering up a 75 cent draught beer, I made my way to the jukebox.
“Play some country,” a drunken hag slobbered at me as I passed.
“Now don’t you pay her no mind,” another drunk slurred. “You play whatchya want,” he said, giving me that “dap” salute with his fist.
He added: “As long as it’s not any of that head-bangin’ nigger shit.”
Roiled, I scanned the jukebox for a thrash band with an African-American band member but couldn’t find one.
****
Back in the freight yard all was dark and quiet. I heard the distant whistle and a long freight loaded with piggy-backed truck trailers pulled up. Not wanting to ride to Chicago under a trailer greasy axle, I turned my nose up at the “pig train.”
Another whistle sounded and a long graceful freight stacked with shipping containers appeared. I spotted a rideable car and rode alongside it on my bike for a quarter-mile before it finally stopped. Loading the bike and myself into a four-foot gap between the container and the container car, we rolled out less than five minutes later.
This was the first time I had ridden a “hotshot” high-priority train. We screamed along at top speed through the darkness. In La Crosse I had chanced upon a bottle of Night Train Express, a fortified wine of ill-repute that I had only knew from tramp lore. I had once wandered through a particularly unsavory part of Oakland at night looking for a “real” hobo wine to take on a train, but couldn’t find one. Even though the stuff is from Modesto, I still haven’t seen it in California.
Unscrewing the cork, I took a large swallow to wash down the Skippy peanut butter. It was syrupy and sweet and immediately familiar. Manischewitz! I swear to gawd, this $2.50 tramp wine tasted exactly like the kosher Passover wine of my youth. And, rehashing the story of Passover in my head, it made perfect sense: If you’re going to wander in the wilderness for 40 years (as many hobos and tramps do) you’re going to want a little fortified wine to keep you warm at night. The Exodus from Egypt created an entire tramp tribe. So they invented Night Train Express. Except trains hadn’t been invented yet, so they had to call it something else. Man this wine makes you smart, I thought to myself, taking another swallow of the cheap wine that is my birthright.
****
In the morning we were getting close to Chicago. We stopped briefly outside of Aurora, a suburb about 20 miles to the west of downtown. I jumped off as it seemed safer than going into the city where there’d certainly be more railcops. It took me hours to find my way out of there, but I finally got to downtown in time to be told that I had missed–by 10 minutes–the last train to Southeast Chicago (where the other freight yard is) in which bicycles were allowed. With four hours to kill until bikes would be welcome again, I was amazed at the frantic pace of the downtown. Chicago is an attractive city, but I still couldn’t wait to keep going.
****
The delay meant that I wouldn’t get to the freight yard until after dark. This was bad, as I’d hoped to talk to a worker and find out where these trains were headed. I didn’t want to make a wrong turn and wake up in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The yard seemed deserted. Only one train idled in the yard, meaning I had probably missed all of that day’s departures as a lot of stuff originated here. Stashing my pack and bike in the woods, I moved closer to investigate. It looked like mostly carracks, which are too well secured to ride. From the corner of my eye, I saw someone at the rear of the train. I wasn’t sure if I’d been spotted, so I retreated to the edge of the woods. Looking down, I realized with my white t-shirt (not the best outfit for skulking around train yards at night) I was not very well hidden. The figure was peering in my direction, so I figured the game was up. I heard a radio crackle; it must be a worker — or a cop.
Slowly, I rose and took a few steps toward him.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you–” I began to call out.
“Stop! Stay back! Stay back, brother!” The railworker shouted, with an edge of fear in his voice.
I stopped, put my palms up, “Hey, sorry — I know I’m not supposed to be here,” I told him, trying to calm him down.
“What you doin’?”
“Just walkin’ — walking through,” I said.
“Well, well, just keep walking.”
“Sorry,” I repeated. “I thought you were a cop.”
“Heh. I ain’t no cop,” he said. Then, holding up his radio said into it, “Hey - cancel that, everything’s cool.”
But I knew better. Everything is not “cool” just ’cause the worker says so. I retreated into the woods just as the bull came screaming up the path. I wedged myself under a tree with my bike above me, praying that he wouldn’t shine his light in the woods. I sat in complete stillness as he drove around. I heard his radio not a few yards from my head through the thicket, but like many times before, the bull’s laziness was my savior. They don’t like getting out of their vehicles; I suppose walking is beneath them. Finally, the white Ford Ranger drove away. I told myself I would sit still for a full hour before moving. Meditating in the sticky bushes in the warm night, I heard a rustle. A weasel was casually walking right towards me. It looked oblivious, so I hissed at it, shaking a tree. It looked up startled and scurried away. I felt pretty well concealed.
An hour passed and I worked up the courage to return to the yard. The last train had left, and there was a dead string of flatcars sitting there. I began to climb the string to get a better vantage point. I tripped over a piece of scrap metal sending myself sprawling in a loud clatter. Looking up, I saw from across the yard a white building with a group of rail employees sitting on plastic chairs looking up at me. I retreated, cursing myself for being so clumsy and went back to find my hiding place.
Feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself, I tried to review my options. There weren’t many that didn’t include sleeping in the shrubbery. Suddenly I heard the sound of a long freight slowing down on the mainline. I went to investigate, and there sitting out in the open was a long junk train with three open boxcars in a row. I fetched my bike and climbed aboard. I couldn’t see the locomotives and I didn’t have the foggiest idea of where this train was headed — if anywhere. I reasoned it’d be a better place to spend the night than with the night weasels.
I laid down to go to sleep, it was about 11 p.m. At 1:40 a.m. I awoke. We were moving south. I went back to sleep.
In the morning I woke up wondering what state we were in. A roadsign announced Urbana, Illinois in 13 miles. I was on the right track, making my way towards Carbondale along the old “Illinois Central” line. (Anyone remember the song City of New Orleans? — it’s about that line)
At each junction I’d pray that we’d turn towards Carbondale, and each time we did. We stopped and did some work in Champaign, Mattoon, picking up, setting out, and I feared I’d be left in a lonely siding in central Illinois. At Centralia, I was sure we’d break up, it being a major railroad yard. We barely slowed down, racing towards Kentucky. I did a little victory jig.
As we came towards Carbondale, I began to loudly pray we’d finally slow down. Our speed barely faltered as we sped past my destination. Immediately the scenery changed as we entered the Shawnee National Forest. The landscape was rolling steep hills, I was glad to leave the flatness of Illinois proper. For I was in “Southern Illinois” — an entity in its own right.
At Anna, a small hamlet 25 miles south of Carbondale, we went into a siding to let another train pass. Thanking the little junk train that practically gave door-to-door service hundreds of miles down the state, I got on my bike and rode north towards Murphysboro where my relations dwell.
****
In Murphysboro now, a town of 19th and early 20th century splendor that has seen some rough times in the past four decades. My cousin got me a job with him in the Southern Illinois Wine Industry. First two days I was weeding and organic vineyard, but yesterday I was pouring wine and trying to appear like I knew what I was talking about.
“You’ll find this wine’s a little more foxy,” I overheard myself say, as I poured lavish tastings. The crowd here is more about quantity when they’re “tasting” and I was happy to oblige. Harvest is coming up and we’ve been drafted to help with the “crush” this week. So I’m going to enjoy this fine slice of country for a while before I get on a Kentucky-bound freight to see “God’s Country.”

Jaco out