Guns and Explosives Under My Bed

Perhaps it was naive of me to think I could go to Lebanon a third time in 5 months and not see something terribly shocking. I sort of figured I'd seen a lot of things in Lebanon. My family is a bunch of mountain folks. They go down into the city a lot, but know how to survive. Hunting is a big sport, but the scarred psychology that remains after a civil that rocked the nation for two decades is a fragile one. "Defense" is still in the front of the minds of many people. One of my cousins that I hadn't seen in nearly 7 years is back from working in the gulf and he likes guns. I'll just leave it at that. He likes guns. The first morning after I awoke, he showed me a pistol. He said "it's good quality, German." Upon further examination he revealed it to be a 1918 german pistol. I don't really know anything about guns (turning my back somewhat on both of my heritages...) but it looked and felt like a really nice piece of machinery. I can't condone it, but I try to appreciate something that is done with real quality. Besides, this pistol had some old cloth wrapped up and stuck in the barrel. Also, the bullets were not in the gun. So I let that one go as a nice machine. What I saw next really shocked me.

My cousin asked if I liked it. I honestly answered "yes, it's a high quality gun." So, essentially given the green light, he asked if I liked hunting. Again I answered honestly (gotta stop doing that around lebanese family...) "I don't like it myself, but I appreciate people who hunt and eat what they kill." So he pulls out a high powered gun. I don't mean a hunting rifle, I mean a military grade weapon. It was the most imposing gun I've ever been able to touch. BIG rifle. Not something I would think to use as a "deer hunting weapon" more like a Samual Jackson from Jackie Brown style "for when you absolutely got to kill ever motherf*cker in the room" style weapon. Any deer that comes up against that thing... Well...

Ok, two weapons, high caliber. Third gun! WHAT. THE. F*CK!? is that thing? I has a shoulder brace and is a much higher powered gun than either of the first two. I was almost afraid to hold it. This was an assassin's gun. Scary shit. I'm not kidding. It was scary shit. Of course, it wasn't loaded and the ammo wasn't even in the room. But holding that kind of potential destructive power is not something with which I can yet consider myself comfortable. Oh MY GOD. I think my tour of guns is finished for the day.

Ok, guns, enough. Later that morning after a beautiful breakfast in perfect weather on a perfect veranda overlooking some of the world's most gorgeous scenery, my (78 year old) aunt comes out and says something to her son and grandson. Her son begins explaining to me that they found some leftover explosives in the old wood shed. He said during the war they had to be ready to defend themselves at a moment's notice. He also explained to me that these explosives can simply be lit on fire and they do so sometimes just to light fires in the stove or whatever other common household chose is necessary. Explosives (plastic explosives) don't explode from fire alone. They require a chain reaction, and generally a powerful force to hit them first. Some my younger cousin (who'd been showing me the guns) goes to the wood shed and brings out some plastic explosives onto the deck... WHAT. THE. F*CK!?
He plays with them a little, and I tell him not to throw them or else invite disaster. He said, if these explode we'd find the stones of the house in beirut. He's right. There were some big explosives leftover. I don't know how much firepower was there, but certainly enough to knock down the house in which they currently reside (and it's a big house). My older cousin finally explains to me that during the war he had a whole stockpile of weapons including but not limited to grenades, mortars, 2000 lbs TNT, TWO bazookas (not just one bazooka, but two bazookas...), smaller explosives, and a small militia's worth of guns. After that war was end he took most of the illegal stuff (I guess it wasn't illegal in the war, because there were no laws) to the local army storage base and said he'd found it somewhere. Whatever kind of story is sufficient to get that stuff off your hands. What was leftover were some guns for "hunting" and a few forgotten plastic explosives.