Third day in Lebanon...
Social rules of the high bourgeoisie in the country do not cease to amaze me: they have bent the how and hows of social awareness to an extreme point where you will pay $200 dollars to have a 'cool' mobile number (92-00-93) or license plate in four numbers: easily recognizable is a social necessity in this milieu.
However superficial it may seem, they have the strongest family values you could imagine: men are real gentlemen and will not let a woman go back home on her own after an evening out, nor will they let her pay for the bill anywhere. It is normal at 28 to still be living at your parents', and it is not to bring a girl or a boy home if you are not married, however free the rules can be if the parents are out or if you go on a week-end away. It is a strange mixture of social hypocrisy and true family strength.
Yesterday Loulou and I drove to Byblos with her cousin and some of her cousin's friends.
We first went to the Jeita grotto, which must be the widest grotto that exist in the world. Inside, the volume of the cave, the dim light and the silence remind you of the atmosphere in a cathedral, although warmer and more musical from a constant dripping ringing inside every wall. Thousands of years of water have carved stalactites and limestone formations in delicate shapes and diaphanous transparencies, and the spectacle today is magically luxurious and reminds you that however skilled, men will never manage to create something so remotely close in beauty. To go back down to the parking, which was a 10 minute walk, we took the only train in Lebanon (there used to be a line that went from Beirut to Damas but it was cut off during the war): a children's open train with a black and red locomotive. Disneyland in the forest-coated gorges of the Lebanese mountain.
We then went to Harissa (yes like the tobasco sauce), which is one of the highest and most beautiful sight-seeing points on the coast, protected by a giant satue of the Virgin Mary. Better not look behind the scene when you take the cable cars to go up the mountain: when we arrived at the top, the first view we had was on the control panel, which displayed two big red buttons, two big green buttons, and came with about 10 pliers and screwdrivers of varying sizes... Some kind of safety measure! The way down suddenly felt a lot more adventurous than the way up. At the top, you could see the whole of Beirut bathed in patches of blinding sunlight.
Then mezze at 4pm (I never saw such a huge quantity of food: I could have gotten an indigestion just from looking at it)... Best hummus of my life, I don't see how I will ever go back to the Tesco low-fat one...
And on to Byblos: Byblos is one of the oldest cities on Earth, it is dating from the Phoenician era and is the town that has been inhabited discontinually for the longest time in the whole world... and it truly has a biblical dimension with its narrow paved streets and tiled market arcades. You could have pictured a Bethleem scene in there.
Today was back in Beirut.
My first impression upon arrival was that it was impossible to walk anywhere in the city: there are not many pavements, and the traffic is terrifying. No one takes the red signals into account, people reverse on a high-way and take one-way streets the wrong side knowingly, and there is no respect for the pedestrian, so every time you want to cross a street you tend to sign yourself, pray that nothing will happen and dive in...
Lebanese people live a very sedentary lifestyle: they are quite americanized in this way, and they would not consider going from one place to the next by foot, even if it only represented a ten minute walk. I am the contrary: I go totally mad if I cannot walk anywhere, I tend to walk wherever I can in London because it is a breath of fresh air, it clears my head and helps me synthesize my thoughts. If I had to abide by the Beirutine rules on this one, I would go totally schyzophrenic.
I have done a big walking tour of the city today because Loulou was out on interviews: New city center, Hamra street, campus of the American University of Beirut, Gemmayzeh and Achrafieh. I feel like I understand it better now: defining a social space is such a key to understanding a people's mentality. The city is quite clearly seizured in two between the Christian and the Muslim districts, communities that do tend to live beside each other rather than intermix. There is intermixing of course, although since there is nothing like civil marriage in Lebanon and only the religious institution is recognized, all oecumenic marriages have to happen outside the country. Inter-religious weddings happen more between Muslim and Christian communities than between the Druzes and anyone else, because Druzes are not authorized to marry outside their religion. Apparently there are 17 religions represented in Lebanon, talk about civil wars...
From one street to the next, you will be able to tell if you are in a rich or a poor area, not by the luxury shops which are all concentrated in the new political center around the 'Place de l'Etoile', but because of the amount of buildings that have been restored after the war, the number of shops open in the streets, and the number of veiled or unveiled women: Chiites are the poorer and most conservative community, while Sunnis have pretty much embraced the western lifestyle.
People are warm and generous here: I don't know if it has to do with the size of the country which remains small enough that everybody can relate to each other in a much more natural way than in western metropoles, or because of the community sense they have been raised in. Fall and strangers will catch you, look at a map and they will ask where you need to go (and suggest you take a cab because it is at least 15 minutes away), carry two pizza boxes and you will have a man propose to take them to your car for you. Strange how the bigger a city is, the more estranged and lonely their inhabitants are going to become: it seems like such a paradox right now.
I would like to tell more about the lifestyle and the politics of this amazing country because I am pretty sure I am going to forget a million things within the next three days: the culture is so wonderfully rich here! but I am falling asleep so better crash in bed...
I don't know if it is the omnipresence of religious feelings here, the immensely peaceful church I visited today or the voice of the muezzins calling the faithful from their minarets, but at some point I could not help feeling that maybe people who believed were lucky: maybe they do not feel as lonely?
Anyway, too much thinking. Can't upload pictures the connection is taking forever, but will do an extra post when I get back to London on Monday and show you all.
Champagnista V
Social rules of the high bourgeoisie in the country do not cease to amaze me: they have bent the how and hows of social awareness to an extreme point where you will pay $200 dollars to have a 'cool' mobile number (92-00-93) or license plate in four numbers: easily recognizable is a social necessity in this milieu.
However superficial it may seem, they have the strongest family values you could imagine: men are real gentlemen and will not let a woman go back home on her own after an evening out, nor will they let her pay for the bill anywhere. It is normal at 28 to still be living at your parents', and it is not to bring a girl or a boy home if you are not married, however free the rules can be if the parents are out or if you go on a week-end away. It is a strange mixture of social hypocrisy and true family strength.
Yesterday Loulou and I drove to Byblos with her cousin and some of her cousin's friends.
We first went to the Jeita grotto, which must be the widest grotto that exist in the world. Inside, the volume of the cave, the dim light and the silence remind you of the atmosphere in a cathedral, although warmer and more musical from a constant dripping ringing inside every wall. Thousands of years of water have carved stalactites and limestone formations in delicate shapes and diaphanous transparencies, and the spectacle today is magically luxurious and reminds you that however skilled, men will never manage to create something so remotely close in beauty. To go back down to the parking, which was a 10 minute walk, we took the only train in Lebanon (there used to be a line that went from Beirut to Damas but it was cut off during the war): a children's open train with a black and red locomotive. Disneyland in the forest-coated gorges of the Lebanese mountain.
We then went to Harissa (yes like the tobasco sauce), which is one of the highest and most beautiful sight-seeing points on the coast, protected by a giant satue of the Virgin Mary. Better not look behind the scene when you take the cable cars to go up the mountain: when we arrived at the top, the first view we had was on the control panel, which displayed two big red buttons, two big green buttons, and came with about 10 pliers and screwdrivers of varying sizes... Some kind of safety measure! The way down suddenly felt a lot more adventurous than the way up. At the top, you could see the whole of Beirut bathed in patches of blinding sunlight.
Then mezze at 4pm (I never saw such a huge quantity of food: I could have gotten an indigestion just from looking at it)... Best hummus of my life, I don't see how I will ever go back to the Tesco low-fat one...
And on to Byblos: Byblos is one of the oldest cities on Earth, it is dating from the Phoenician era and is the town that has been inhabited discontinually for the longest time in the whole world... and it truly has a biblical dimension with its narrow paved streets and tiled market arcades. You could have pictured a Bethleem scene in there.
Today was back in Beirut.
My first impression upon arrival was that it was impossible to walk anywhere in the city: there are not many pavements, and the traffic is terrifying. No one takes the red signals into account, people reverse on a high-way and take one-way streets the wrong side knowingly, and there is no respect for the pedestrian, so every time you want to cross a street you tend to sign yourself, pray that nothing will happen and dive in...
Lebanese people live a very sedentary lifestyle: they are quite americanized in this way, and they would not consider going from one place to the next by foot, even if it only represented a ten minute walk. I am the contrary: I go totally mad if I cannot walk anywhere, I tend to walk wherever I can in London because it is a breath of fresh air, it clears my head and helps me synthesize my thoughts. If I had to abide by the Beirutine rules on this one, I would go totally schyzophrenic.
I have done a big walking tour of the city today because Loulou was out on interviews: New city center, Hamra street, campus of the American University of Beirut, Gemmayzeh and Achrafieh. I feel like I understand it better now: defining a social space is such a key to understanding a people's mentality. The city is quite clearly seizured in two between the Christian and the Muslim districts, communities that do tend to live beside each other rather than intermix. There is intermixing of course, although since there is nothing like civil marriage in Lebanon and only the religious institution is recognized, all oecumenic marriages have to happen outside the country. Inter-religious weddings happen more between Muslim and Christian communities than between the Druzes and anyone else, because Druzes are not authorized to marry outside their religion. Apparently there are 17 religions represented in Lebanon, talk about civil wars...
From one street to the next, you will be able to tell if you are in a rich or a poor area, not by the luxury shops which are all concentrated in the new political center around the 'Place de l'Etoile', but because of the amount of buildings that have been restored after the war, the number of shops open in the streets, and the number of veiled or unveiled women: Chiites are the poorer and most conservative community, while Sunnis have pretty much embraced the western lifestyle.
People are warm and generous here: I don't know if it has to do with the size of the country which remains small enough that everybody can relate to each other in a much more natural way than in western metropoles, or because of the community sense they have been raised in. Fall and strangers will catch you, look at a map and they will ask where you need to go (and suggest you take a cab because it is at least 15 minutes away), carry two pizza boxes and you will have a man propose to take them to your car for you. Strange how the bigger a city is, the more estranged and lonely their inhabitants are going to become: it seems like such a paradox right now.
I would like to tell more about the lifestyle and the politics of this amazing country because I am pretty sure I am going to forget a million things within the next three days: the culture is so wonderfully rich here! but I am falling asleep so better crash in bed...
I don't know if it is the omnipresence of religious feelings here, the immensely peaceful church I visited today or the voice of the muezzins calling the faithful from their minarets, but at some point I could not help feeling that maybe people who believed were lucky: maybe they do not feel as lonely?
Anyway, too much thinking. Can't upload pictures the connection is taking forever, but will do an extra post when I get back to London on Monday and show you all.
Champagnista V
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