The Bees Road

The Bees Road by Rami Ollaik is an autobiography that takes the reader from war-torn South Lebanon to a detention cell at JFK airport. Growing in an environment full of violence and cruelty, Ollaik joins Hezbollah and rises to its top echelons. A war-shocked child grows into a man, and after 13 years of party involvement, he reevaluates his life and his conception of love in an attempt to rid himself of his haunting fundamentalist past and to finally pursue his ultimate goal of personal freedom.

The Bees Road is a first insider's view of Hezbollah that tells the story of Rami Ollaik starting with his childhood in Southern Lebanon at the brink of the Lebanese Civil War. Like many Southern Lebanese Shiites, he is drawn to Hezbollah’s resistance movement and indoctrinated into a path of fundamentalist Islam. Distinguishing himself in the Party of God, Ollaik builds friendships and connections with some of Hezbollah’s most prominent figures. Later he moves to Lebanon’s capital to attend the American University of Beirut and head Hezbollah’s AUB recruitment operations, where pivotal events on campus and key interactions with the student body cause him to question his values, his views on women, and even the Party itself. After clashing with Hezbollah’s leadership, Ollaik leaves the Party of God to pursue a life of open-mindedness and freedom. The authors journey of personal reform proves difficult, involving humiliating romantic interactions and a troubling [...] attempt, but eventually the path of the new Rami takes him all the way to the United States to pursue his education. In the land of “The Great Satan,” it doesn’t take long for Rami to fall in love with everything that America stands for. Unfortunately, the fateful events of September 11th and the resulting national paranoia and Islamophobia push Rami into confrontations with the FBI, blackmail, and interrogation. After an unexpected and unwarranted deportation from the US, Ollaik's college assistantship is cancelled and he’s forced to continue his PhD studies through distance correspondence. The story ends with Ollaik back in his home country teaching beekeeping at AUB, filled with the urge to build a stronger Lebanon and unite the nation as whole.