The War Hotels, Part IV: Lebanon

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Commodore became the hotel of choice for journalists largely because the manager, Fouad, could arrange almost anything. When the phones were down, Fouad ran wire outside the hotel until he found a line that worked. The hotel's mascot, and indeed its symbol, was a parrot that stood on a perch by the pool side. The parrot had belonged to a BBC correspondent, and every few minutes it would whistle the first bars of Beethoven's 5th symphony, followed by a disturbingly real imitation of an incoming artillery shell followed by an explosion. The parrot seemed to think that this was quite normal. There was a possibly apocryphal story that one day a sniper had tried to take some pot shots at the parrot from a nearby rooftop, and that Fouad had gone up to the roof and thrown him off. The story is doubtful, but it captured a certain truth about Fouad. The hotel's other major fixture was a cat named Ceasefire, who spent most of its time fighting off the attentions of muscular tomcats in the garden in the back.

The journalists regularly complained about the maudlin music favored at the Commodore's bar. "If I play anything more modern," the manager said,"the Beirutis will show up. They all have guns and someone will get killed." We would meet for breakfast at about 8 o'clock in the morning, and then head up to the Chouf mountains. The villages were exquisite, and the corniche reminded you of the French Riviera, but you listened closely for the distant sound of Syrian 210-mm artillery. If you heard the faint click-like sound of the shell being fired, you ahd a few seconds to find cover before it hit around you. There were still some journalists dumb enough not to wear flack jackets, and the TV producer I was with was one of them. We stopped in a small hotel on the way up the side of the mountain. A CBS soundman was stretched out on the table, while his cameraman tried to pick pieces of shrapnel from his back. "You Son of a bitch," he kept repeating. He was angry because after he'd been hit his cameraman had taken a minute so to film him writhing on the ground before offering to help. The next day I was in the lobby of the Commodore and another journalist came over. "See that guy over there?" he said, pointing to a Lebanese driver. "he and his buddies took the entire UPI Television crew hostage, lined them up against a wall and did mock executions." It turned out that UPI had been on a different story in the mountains and a shell had landed directly on their car with their driver at the time. UPI had refused to make a settlement with the family, so a bunch of drivers had taken the entire news team hostage. The money was paid, and everyone went back to work. That was the Commodore. Fouad was eventually offered a chance to manage the Hilton in London. He turned it down. "Anyone can run a Hilton in London," he said, "Not everyone can run a hotel like the Commodore."

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Commodore became the hotel of choice for journalists largely because the manager, Fouad, could arrange almost anything. When the phones were down, Fouad ran wire outside the hotel until he found a line that worked. The hotel's mascot, and indeed its symbol, was a parrot that stood on a perch by the pool side. The parrot had belonged to a BBC correspondent, and every few minutes it would whistle the first bars of Beethoven's 5th symphony, followed by a disturbingly real imitation of an incoming artillery shell followed by an explosion. The parrot seemed to think that this was quite normal. There was a possibly apocryphal story that one day a sniper had tried to take some pot shots at the parrot from a nearby rooftop, and that Fouad had gone up to the roof and thrown him off. The story is doubtful, but it captured a certain truth about Fouad. The hotel's other major fixture was a cat named Ceasefire, who spent most of its time fighting off the attentions of muscular tomcats in the garden in the back.

The journalists regularly complained about the maudlin music favored at the Commodore's bar. "If I play anything more modern," the manager said,"the Beirutis will show up. They all have guns and someone will get killed." We would meet for breakfast at about 8 o'clock in the morning, and then head up to the Chouf mountains. The villages were exquisite, and the corniche reminded you of the French Riviera, but you listened closely for the distant sound of Syrian 210-mm artillery. If you heard the faint click-like sound of the shell being fired, you ahd a few seconds to find cover before it hit around you. There were still some journalists dumb enough not to wear flack jackets, and the TV producer I was with was one of them. We stopped in a small hotel on the way up the side of the mountain. A CBS soundman was stretched out on the table, while his cameraman tried to pick pieces of shrapnel from his back. "You Son of a bitch," he kept repeating. He was angry because after he'd been hit his cameraman had taken a minute so to film him writhing on the ground before offering to help. The next day I was in the lobby of the Commodore and another journalist came over. "See that guy over there?" he said, pointing to a Lebanese driver. "he and his buddies took the entire UPI Television crew hostage, lined them up against a wall and did mock executions." It turned out that UPI had been on a different story in the mountains and a shell had landed directly on their car with their driver at the time. UPI had refused to make a settlement with the family, so a bunch of drivers had taken the entire news team hostage. The money was paid, and everyone went back to work. That was the Commodore. Fouad was eventually offered a chance to manage the Hilton in London. He turned it down. "Anyone can run a Hilton in London," he said, "Not everyone can run a hotel like the Commodore."