In Lebanon, Ferna'ndez's passions are aroused by the politics of the region and her meeting up with a Palestinian-Lebanese character named Hassan. "Amelia and I first met Hassan," she recalls, "while hitchhiking in Lebanon shortly after Israel's 2006 assault -- not to be confused with Israel's 1978, 1982, 1993, or 1996 assaults, or its 22-year occupation of the southern part of the country." She talks with Hassan and discovers that he's a kind of jack-of-all-trades -- a hustler after mysterious scams, a bus guide for refugees, a blackmailer, a poor man's private eye, and a car rental agent in Tyre ("former stomping ground of Alexander the Great"). He needs a bride to obtain an American passport to visit relatives, he says, in Israel; she obliges, but eschews "the premarital virginity test."
Ferna'ndez has significant animus for the seemingly unrepentant fascism of some Israeli policies, especially when it comes to Palestinians. She notes Israel's bombing of roads and bridges, and discusses Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon; its management by the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA). And, no doubt, Hassan's tales of loss amplify her empathetic rage: He has "lost three sisters, who had been killed by Israel, a sniper, and a car, respectively." As Ferna'ndez and Amelia accompany Hassan, and his pal Mo, on "the high-speed running of unspecified errands in the rubble of Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs," you get the feeling he's on a watchlist somewhere. And she could be playing Ilsa to Victor Laszlo's resistance fighter -- drones overhead be damned, she has her own sassy hellfire.
Ferna'ndez is generally unimpressed with Lebanon. She finds the government useless:
[T]he Lebanese state doesn't do jack sh*t for the majority of its own population-some of whom have been known to contend with a mere two hours of government electricity per day, [and] the near-total lack of affordable health care options or other basic needs.
Syrian and Palestinian refugees are marginalized. Meanwhile, the elite bronze themselves at Zaitunay Bay, content to think of Lebanon as "the Paris of the Middle East," and keen to keep the masses, and their needs, suppressed. It's a theme she will find everywhere she goes.
Ferna'ndez arrived in Honduras a month before the 'pajama coup' of President Manuel Zelaya in the wee hours of June 28, 2009. Zelaya was flown to Costa Rica -- illegally -- and, effectively, exiled from Honduras. Zelaya had tried to introduce "a nonbinding public opinion survey" meant to gauge voter interest in future constitutional reform. The Supreme Court found the survey illegal and told Zelaya to cease. He refused and was ordered arrested for treason. But many outside observers, including the UN and the OAS, saw it as a coup -- including Ferna'ndez:
...Zelaya had stepped on the toes of the entrenched Honduran oligarchy, whose members had long ago pledged allegiance to the predatory capitalism endorsed by their benefactors in the United States.
The elites at work again.
Months later she interviews Romeo Va'squez Vela'squez, the general who'd led the coup, a fatter, more fatuous version of Captain Renault. He gets all gleeful relating how he once "saw" Jennifer Lopez; they talk the zaniness of Honduran politics; and then:
Va'squez warned, "there will always be people who want to attain power through ways other than the proper way of being elected" -- although it was not clear that he had fully thought through the implications of this line of reasoning given that he himself had just perpetrated a coup.
She listens to him liken Honduran security forces to "armed cherubs" and say that the real problem is there's "too much freedom." After the interview, he 'sees' her and says "he wouldn't mind a second wife."
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