The Story of the Kalashnikov

(Column published in De Standaard- Translated from Dutch)
It was August 2009, in our apartment in the city of Sidon, South Lebanon. My little daughter was crying because of the unbearable heat. The electricity was out, the generator wasn’t working either—so no air conditioning.
Outside, in the streets of our neighborhood, about a hundred Salafist fighters had gathered—followers of Sheikh Al-Assir. Long beards, Afghan-style clothing, and modern weapons, most likely purchased with Saudi money. Opposite them stood a small contingent of the Lebanese army.
The trigger for this confrontation was a police raid to arrest a suspected terrorist in an apartment building barely twenty meters from ours. When the man fired at the police, his supporters rushed to the streets, fully armed and ready for battle.

A year earlier, a brief war had been fought over the course of a few days in our city and across the country (the so-called May 7 incidents), and tensions were still palpable. At that moment, our side of the neighborhood was completely under Salafist control, and fear was everywhere.
My wife, who was still living in Belgium at the time but had come to visit with our newborn child, remained incredibly calm—she didn’t fully grasp the seriousness of the situation. I, on the other hand, was overwhelmed with fear. Reflexes of a father, but also the awareness that things could escalate at any moment and that they could very well decide to pay me a visit.
As an activist, also in Lebanon, I had always been outspoken against Salafi groups and had written articles in newspapers voicing my criticism. I was active in various action groups and had the wrong profile—leftist, South Lebanese, agnostic—which made me a heretic in the eyes of my Salafi neighbors from Mosque Bilal, where Sheikh Al-Assir preached.
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Suddenly, I saw a neighbor from the sixth floor of our building—someone I had occasionally debated with. I spotted him from the window, fully geared up with an American M18 machine gun, standing alongside the Salafists. The sense of danger intensified.
I rushed to the bedroom, grabbed my machine gun—a Kalashnikov, legally owned with a permit—loaded ammunition, put on my ammo vest over my bare torso, and positioned myself at the side of the kitchen balcony, where I had a clear view of both the entrance of our building and our apartment door. Fear gave way to an extreme state of alertness—I was hyper-focused, determined to protect my family.
My wife, still unimpressed, found it quite sexy. She grabbed her camera and took a picture. I gave her a slightly irritated look and asked her to sit in the living room, away from the windows and balconies.
The standoff lasted another three hours before negotiations between the army and Sheikh Al-Assir resulted in an agreement to hand over the gunmen to the military.
Our summer vacation continued as if nothing had happened.
Once she returned to Belgium, my wife posted our vacation photos on Facebook—including the one of me holding the Kalashnikov. I liked the photo, as did many of my friends. I remember someone commenting, "Ai ai Dyab, they’ll use that against you in Belgium." My response? "I’m never going back to Belgium—I don’t care."
But never say never.
In June 2013, on a Sunday, the situation with Al-Assir exploded. My parents were held hostage for 24 hours by his fighters. Our house was hit by several grenades. Dozens of people were killed, and our neighborhood was completely destroyed in the battle.
The Lebanese army eventually won. Al-Assir fled and remains a fugitive to this day. The situation in Syria escalated, tensions in Lebanon were unbearable, and my deep ties to Belgium—through my wife and children—brought me back here.
Many people weren’t happy about someone like me returning—an activist with a big mouth, that bothers some people. The photo continues to haunt me, along with other falsehoods from the time when I had to be demonized—like the so-called sham marriage that was debunked in court, or the out-of-context statement I made a decade ago about Belgians who don’t feel at home in a multicultural society being free to emigrate if they wish.
Even yesterday, people were still tweeting the photo of me with the Kalashnikov, using it as proof that I am a "terrorist"—when in reality, it was simply a man protecting his family from actual terrorists, and a wife who found that sexy.
Oh, the irony.