For Tucson singer Anna Warr, leaving Lebanon was more harrowing than staying there while Israel and Hezbollah waged war.
Warr, 35, who began a two-month series of gigs in and around Beirut on June 2, said the friends she made in Lebanon took great pains to make her comfortable when hostilities began on July 12. They assured her it would all blow over in a few days, as it had so many times in the past.
In the meantime, life went on, even in her final week when she abandoned her Beirut hotel suite for a chalet owned by her Lebanese manager on the beach north of the city. The Lebanese are used to weathering such things, she said. There were nightly barbecues with the neighbors and occasional trips to the mountains "to watch the fireworks."
"It was very surreal," she said. "You'd be lying on the beach or sitting by the swimming pool and see the Chinook and Apache helicopters fly by." The U.S. Marines were arriving to evacuate Americans.
There was also the smell of burning diesel, after the Israelis ''lit up the fuel sites," and the beach house shook from Israeli bombing to the south.
Warr figured she wasn't on the A list for evacuees with no dependents in tow and no medical condition. She had left her son, Hiram, 4, with his father in Tucson.
She gave up when she first visited the U.S. dockside checkpoint in Beirut Tuesday of last week. "Everybody was screaming and yelling 'Get me on the boat' and there were more desperate cases than mine. I just figured 'Get those people out first.' "
She returned on Thursday and "it was absolutely crazy again." Officials told her that if she was safe and comfortable, she'd be better off returning the next day when more boats would be available.
On Friday, she waited with about 3,000 others for nine hours to clear the checkpoint manned by U.S. Marines.
"The Marines were just great," Warr said, though some of her fellow evacuees were not.
"People were complaining and some were starting to flip out. I just figure 'What's the point?' You're going to waste so much energy going bonkers in a situation you can't do anything about."
After another long line for processing of papers and baggage, Warr finally boarded a boat at 2 a.m. Saturday — the passenger ship Rahmah, hired for the evacuation and accompanied by the USS Nashville, which also carried evacuees.
Warr got a bunk on the Rahmah, but others were sleeping on floors and in the boat's galley, which wasn't stocked with food. The Marines supplied MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and water.
The Rahmah headed for Istanbul, but detoured to Cyprus after one of its engines blew, arriving there Saturday night.
In Cyprus, the Americans were housed on rows of cots in large exhibition buildings at a fairgrounds while they waited for planes to become available to fly them home. Warr left for the airport Sunday afternoon but didn't take off until 2:30 a.m Monday.
She finally arrived in Baltimore at 6:30 a.m. Monday, greeted by Red Cross workers who arranged for passage home to Tucson, where she arrived Monday afternoon.
The experience hasn't soured her on travel, she said. Warr leaves the country again on Sept. 25 for a six-week tour of the Netherlands with "Mr. Boogie Woogie" (Eric-Jan Overbeek), the Dutch boogie-and-blues piano man who showcases Warr on his most recent album, "Live at the Duke."
Warr, who has her own band, has also fronted for the Tucson groups Tony and the Torpedoes and the Bad News Blues Band, and performs with a group of women singers put together by Lisa Otey — the Desert Divas.
She doesn't rule out a return to Lebanon. "I'd go back in a heartbeat," she said. "It's one of the most spectacular places on earth."
Beirut, where she sang with two different bands for weddings and private parties and in clubs, was just reclaiming its position as one of the Mediterranean's best vacation spots this summer, Warr said.
The weddings she played were pageants of singing, belly-dancing, fine food, fire-eating and fireworks, she said.
And the people were friendly. "It's an entire culture based on making sure you're taken care of," she said.
