We went to the Beqaa Valley today (about 50 kilometers from Beirut) to buy plants for the garden (balcony). Certain things are cheaper in the Beqaa than in Beirut. Drugs is one thing, plants are another. Somehow just about anything grows over there. They have these nurseries on both sides of the road, all the way to the border with Syria. We bought a conifer, some roses, a jasmine and a gardenia from one guy. It’s quite a feat to buy things, because here are two foreign looking girls, talking a very poor Arabic, conversing in French. The dollar signs are in our eyes, as far as these guys is concerned. So we have to wait, walk a round the place a little, wait till a Lebanese enters, wait till (s)he asks for a price, listen in, and then a little later we ask for the price of the same plant, just to make sure they’re not screwing us. Well, we did this, but afterwards, he gave us two white roses (plants) as a present. We knew. we had been had when he did that. Which turned out to be true down the road, when another guys priced everything at about half the price as we had bought it. “And you see, you bought Syrian trees, mine are from abroad,” he said. Syria does not seem to be abroad, and as far as I could see, the conifers looked just the same. “Noooo, madam, this one is from Italy.” He had said that about the roses as well, that they were from Holland. So here I am from Holland, in Lebanon, buying trees from Syria.
On our way back we got stuck in traffic, because general Aoun, after 12 years of absence, is coming back tonight, and giving a speech at Martyr’s Square. Orange seems to be his color, the Dutch queen would have been jealous at the mass of orange T-shirts, hats and scarves. I’ll be going out later, join the manifestation and see what he’s got to say. The Christians are pretty excited about this guy. So excited, they blew up something in Jounieh (a Christian town above Beirut) last night. Of course the police blocked all the roads, so I couldn’t even get to West-Beirut anymore, which is where my house is. The police has the tendency to block roads at the end of a road, never at the beginning. So you drive all the way into this road, and just there where you want to get onto another road, they block the street. So now you have to drive backwards the whole kilometer, as there is no place to turn, and all the other 36 cars behind you will start honking, as they do not understand why you would be going backwards on a one way street, just as they are trying to get to the end of it. They do not know it is blocked either, so confusion and honking and yelling and on and on. Everyone giving you advice as to how and why and where you should drive. “Not very well though of, hey, to block it here at the end,” I told the police man. “Mam, I am not here to think, I am here to execute orders.”
I had to pick up Adrian from a birthday party at four. I finally reached there at 5 o'clock.
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