Working Again

Aha, the photo upload feature is back in business, so here's my other sunset with the 'different' sea.
Just picked up Eddie from a party; he's starting to go to evening parties, pretty soon we will be having night parties. These evening parties are very innocent, no alcohol involved, and I don't think any of the kids smoke yet. This, however, is going to change very rapidly in a couple of years. I don't see hubbie getting worried over anyhting, but then again, he was going to parties in a time when not only alcohol and cigarettes were involved, but when everyone was toting guns, RPG's and what else, and when there was basically no law and even less order. And he survived it quite well. So I guess it'll be me who will lay awake until I hear Eddie come home. Pfffff, does not sound like fun. Well, if you can't beat them, join them.
Just got a new harddrive installed, 'cause I had no more space on my computer for pictures. Everytime I would store something, I'd get this message about storage space or something, and how I had to do a clean-up disk feature. With my new 200 GB, that is a story from the past. I think I had like 40 to begin with.

Not utter boredom

No, it is not out of utter boredom that I publish another sunset; rather the change of the sea. I live on the sea (or actually two blocks away from the sea, but as I live on the hill, I can overlook the two blocks on all three sides) right in the tip of Ras Beirut. 'Ras' means the head of, so I live in the tip of the tip, so to speak. Sea surrounds us practically from 3 sides, although I can see only like 200 degrees of sea instead of 270 (yes I can do math). So I see a lot of sea (har har) and subsequently a lot of sunsets. Although they are alays spectacular, some of them really catch your eye. And this one, this eveing, did, because the weather is so cool. The sea is completely flat, and you can see the water currents. We had some rain in the past week, so the sky is pretty clear.
Well, the photo upload program doesn't work. Maybe next time.

Sunset

And so, when you are utterly bored .....

Mehlis

Early morning on the Corniche: the only place where you can walk without interference of cars parked on the pavement, scooters driving over the pavement, shopkeepers taking over the pavement to exhibit their goods, holes in the pavement, or no pavement at all. A palm tree on the beach boulevard. This one obviously survived the war.

The official Mehlis report is out. It’s not a bad read, especially if you are familiar with all the names mentioned in it. I wrote a story, should appear in Trouw newspaper tomorrow. I went downtown, but although there is a crowd and some jubilation, most Lebanese are ‘ni chaud ni froid’. They are – a little anxiously - waiting for things to come. Syria’s Basjaar el-Assad is going down, and although no one will shed teards over this guy (Murder Inc. I read somewhere), people are definitely very worried as to what might come if the regime falls. If you want to know what happens if a secular Moslem society unravels (Stole this from Joshua Landis’s site, who borrowed it from someone else), just look at Iraq, and this is not what we need right now next door.
And on a lighter note, some pictures I shot yesterday on and from my way to work.

Hana checking out the waves

There's this spot on the boulevard, where a couple of local fishermen moor their boats. They're not professional fishermen, from the looks of it. Every morning, an army of about 20 cats hang around, waiting for a lady wearing a wig, who comes and feeds them bits of left-over chickens. It seems they don;t see very well, so when I stop to make a picture, they all come running to me, hoping to get their chicken. All this is much to Hana's delight who -although with two cats at home - is very interested in cats.

This one is taken in the afternoon, around 5 o'clock. Not the guy in the middle of the picture; it looks like he is sitting down and on wheels. Well, he is sitting down and is on wheels. He moves all over this boulevard, and has no legs. Or he's got legs, but they are so severely deformed that is can't use them. In the distance you see the Riviera Yacht Club beach.

The Night Before the Mehlis Report

Tomorrow the day (or actually this evening already) that the Mehlis report will be published. In this UN report it should state who was responsible for the murder of the Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri. It seems that Basjaar el-Assad, Syria;s president, is implicated through his brother in-law, Shawkat. The Lebanse president Lahoud is supposedly not directly inmplicated, however, he seems to be hanging out with the ‘wrong’ crowd, and it is very unlikely that – with his credibility seriously hurt – he can stay on much longer.

The army has made its presence knows throughout Beirut, parking tanks and soldiers on most major points in the city. They are on high alert, although no one is quite certain is to what might happen. Some schools are closed tomorrow, although mine is not. Quite a few students have announced though that they will not come to school. I cannot quite foresee what might happen, nothing really, I think, this is not a lynching crowd. Besides those that would need to be lynched are next door in Syria.

The bloggers are all up and ready for this one; the rumor circuit is fantastically alive and very interesting. To name a few: http://www.libnen.com/, Across the Bay (excellent), Beirut Spring, The Lebanese Blogger, Lebanese Political Journal, Joshua Landis's Syria Comment (very good), Ya Libnan (good round-up of news), An Nahar (Another very good roundup of news), Amarji (A Syrian dissident, great fun, good stuff), Michael Totten ( a journalist visiting Lebanon) and the Lebanese Bloggers Club. Very good stuff if you want to hear what some groups are thinking.

I might have to write something tomorrow; an atmosphere piece as a reaction on the Mehlis report. The paper will do the Mehlis report itself. Should be fun, going out tomorrow evening. I expect jubilation, not gunfire. And if we get to see gunfire; My parents will be flying in on Sunday, let’s hope it’ll quiet by then.

Right now I hear the wind howling through the widow facing the sea. It's not that windy really, just that the window is slightly ajar at a wrong angle. Or maybe the wind is picking up....?

Beqaa Valley II

It’s harvest time in the Beqaa Valley, and the agricultural day laborers are mainly Bedouin women. They are a little like gypsies in the sense that they wear very colorful clothing, layer upon layer. They often have golden teeth, spot large straw heads against the sun and smoke like chimneys. I’m not quite sure where they come from. Some say they are Lebanese, other say they are stateless Arabs that sort of move with the seasons from place to place around this part of the Middle East. You see their ‘tents’ here in the Beqaa, but also in the desert in Syria and in Jordan. They speak Lebanese but with a different accent. They are moved from Bedouin encampment to the fields in these pick-up trucks. A bit like cattle, not very elegant, this mode of transportation.

Hana checking out the museum in Terbol. It’s a house made of mud bricks, the traditional way with mud and straw, and covered with the same mud-straw mix, and then painted white. The roof id also mud, on top of wooden beams. Nice warm in wither, cool n summer, but the drawback is that you sort of have to rebuilt half of it every spring as most of it has dissolved during the wet winter. On the other hand, it doesn’t cost you anything but labor.

Adrian spent most of that day on the phone. He has the habit of turning it off most of the time in order to save batteries. So when you need to reach him, his phone is off. I mailed him a note that the High School Principal sent to all staff regarding cell phones. What it boils down to is that he doesn’t want to see or hear phones in the school building. Still Adrian walks around with it. We could have just gotten him a phone without SIM card, or even a non-functioning phone, the only thing he is doing right now is playing with the ring tones, composing new ring tones (there’s a D.J. device on it), enter contacts, en turn it on and off all the time. Cute though, this adult-imitating behavior.

Beqaa Valley

Hana in the Beqaa Valley (It's pretty dry and arid now after the summer)

Now that the Syrians have left Lebanon, this has gained an infinite number of picnic spots. Those soldiers often occupied strategic points (as soldiers tend to do, ahum), so you couldn’t go there. So yesterday I went some friends on a tour along a coupe of them in the Beqaa Valley. We also visited an authentic Lebanese adobe (mud brick house) in Terbol, a village lying between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=7606. It's Lebanon's first eco-museum, says the advertisement. (part of the of the National Heritage Foundation)

Last time I did that was last fall, with my sister in-law. On our way out of the village, we made a wrong turn, ended up in a lettuce field of lettuce where women were harvesting. When we got out of there, with 500 heads of lettuce in our car, we made another wrong turn and ended up on a Syrian military base. We drove onto the grounds of what we thought was an abandoned building to make a U-turn, when my sister-in law announced; “Look, there’s an army tank there.” Some silence. “uh, and there. And there. And there. Oh shit, I think we’re on an army base.” The Syrians were not people you messed with. There was no law above the Syrians; they were the law. So regardless of what they would do to you – and the horror story are abundant – there’d be no way to go and complain. Just suck it in and live with it.
Now this is happening to Basjaar and Co, in Damascus, so the Lebanese feel they’re having some of their revenge. Not much else to add, just some pictures.

Phone

I have fought it, and fought it and fought it. But I’ve lost this battle. I had stacked up all arguments humanly possible against it, my case was solid and watertight, but alas, who can fight weak men? Adrian has gotten his cell phone. Walid got – after spending just one day together - suckered into buying him a phone.
They did call me to ask my permission, but we all know that this is just a formality. I have told them I would not pay for anything. That did not make a difference either. So there we go; Eddie’s got his own phone. I’ll get back to you once he’s got his own car. He’s working on that too.

Ramadan

Ramadan is a nice time of the year. Although it does not (for me at least) approach Christmas or Sinterklaas (Dutch festivity), there is this sense of 'hurrying home in time for dinner'. Another nice thing is that for once, the Lebanese dine at a 'Christian' hour. This is a very Dutch idiom, and it falls somewhere between being 'civilized' , 'decent' (according to Dutch standards, that is) and ‘burgerlijk’. Burgerlijk could be translated as ‘common’ or ‘conventional’. Being burgerlijk in Holland is not a good thing to be. Being 'Christian' in Lebanon also has a rather heavy - at times - connotation, and I don't even want to go there. But by 'dinner at a Christian hour', I mean that dinner is served at 6 o’clock (or around), and you get home around 7, which leaves you with enough family time/play time, and you even get to bed at an hour which will enable you to function halfway properly the next day. Non-Ramadan dinner hours means dinner will be served anywhere between 8:30 (if you're on the early side) to 11:30 (my mother-in-law's favorite dining time). And I can tell you, dropping into bed feeling like a hippo is not a helpful provision for rising and shining early the next morning.

Ramadan is also the time for lots of Iftar (the dinner served in the evening to brake the fast) invitations, and these are fun occasions. Pity they don’t serve alcohol though.
Another nice thing is that between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M., the streets of West-Beirut are virtually deserted, which is great for getting around town fast. An empty West-Beirut seldom happens, unless it is after 12:00 midnight, or during air-raids, and we don’t have those these days.
Beirut is a great place to live if there weren’t that many cars on the road, because then you can get around really fast in your car. Unfortunately every car owner thinks the same.
Taxi cab drivers are a particular despicable sort. Let me rephrase that; The service drivers are a despicable sort. They can pick up to 5 passengers, and have a sort of regular route through town. If you would have to go to a certain place in Beirut, you just stand on the side of the road, and you wait for the ‘service’, a rather shabby Mercedes, who will honk his horn and stop near you. You call out a landmark close to your destination (as street names are virtually unknown here), and he will either tilt his head right side backwards, indicating “hop in, I am going in that direction”, or just pull up, meaning “get another cab.” And as you are in this service, this process will repeat itself because he needs as many rides as possible, but they’d have to be near the destination of the other service riders. So you may sit with four other people, and one might get off, another one might get on, very much like a bus.

But the point I was getting to is that these service drivers will stop for any person standing by the side of the road, whether these people want to take a service, or whether they are just standing there, or whether these people might want to cross the road, or even walking on the sidewalk. And they’ll stop. Regardless of the fact that they are blocking other people. Actually, it seems they prefer to block the entire street. Much to the chagrin of me. A side effect of these early dinners is that the roads are vitually ‘service’ free. It’s just for an hour, but still, that one hour is a pleasure to get around time.
Enough venting. I’ve got a shitload of work, have to go to the Palestinian camps to talk about the fact that they ‘supposedly’ are importing weapons from Syria these days (in an attempt to destabilize the situation in Lebanon, since the Syrians can’t do that themselves anymore now that they are booted out.), I have to go to Syria t see how the atmosphere in Damascus is now that Kanaan shot himself, and I am waiting for the Mehlis report to see who is implicated, and what the implications (yes, repeat) are for Lebanon.
I’m posting some pictures today. Hana finally started talking halfway legibly. I was getting worried. But no, everything is alright.
Ah, and I almost forget; Ramadan is great for downloading big files, because between 6 and 7, there's not a soul online.

On Suicide and Early Morning Walks

Ghazi Kanaan contemplates suicide at 7:30 A.M in the morning while we walk on the Corniche (the boardwalk in Beirut) on our way to school. Reminds of William Carlos’s ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’. On one side life stops, on the other side it continues as if nothing ever happened.

For those who are unaware of who Kanaan is, there is some very good stuff on Kanaan’s death on Across the Bay , and Joshua Landis in Damascus is very well informed as well. Although we doubt it is suicide.

His last words were “this is probably going to be my last speech”. Emphasis on probably. If you are going to commit suicide, you don’t have to say probably. You are either going to do it or not. Both Tony (Across the Bay) and Landis had mentioned before that Kanaan was a threat to Bashaar. He did not order the murder, as he had extensive business dealings with Hariri, and did not support the extension of Lahoud’s term. He may have known about it, but he did not order it. What was probable is that he knew they (Bashaar & Co) were after him, and that his days were numbered. Bashaar is going down.

Anyway, what do I do on the Corniche at 7:30 in the morning? Due to construction at AUB, and more construction near IC, both institutions have lost a great deal of their parking space, and ACS has recently lost its parking space due to bomb threats, and now no more parking is allowed around that school. So everyone is running for that one parking left on the Corniche. Needless to say, the parking attendant (a Syrian, if I am correct) has hiked the prices to a ridiculous 50,000 LBP, instead of the usual 30,000 LBP you’d pay. I – being Dutch and all that – am too cheap to pay him his extra 20,000 LBP (about 10 euros, yes, thank you). Consequence; no parking available in a radius of half a kilometer from my work. But the good side is that I get to walk on the Corniche every morning. This is where West-Beiruties do their exercises each morning.

Spitting Images

Strangest thing happened today. As I was browsing the web for Hemingway (we’re doing a story on old Hemingstein in class), I came across this picture, made of 1944, Hemingway. Now remember that Hemingway was a journalist first of all, and a writer later on. He was a heavy drinker, had four wives, was somebody who lived in extremes, and who loved the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Now this picture reminded me of a friend of mine, who was very much like Hemingway. A journalist, heavy drinker, was Hemingway all over, and even had four wives (I was almost number four). Eventually somebody else became #4. Hemingway committed suicide, so did my friend.
And look, the pictures are exactly the same! Amazing, if I say so myself.
The second one comes from www.corsophotos.com/ gumucio.htm

The Year of Bombs

Today we celebrate the beginning of a year of car bombs. The first one was a year ago, or actually on October 1st, 2004. They blew up, or tried to blow up, Marwan Hamadeh, a pro-Joumblatt minister, or at that point ex-minister, who had openly shown his dislike for the re-nomination of Lebanese president Lahoud. Lahoud was – unconstitutionally – re-nominated with the help/pressure of the Syrians.
So ‘they’ (we are still waiting for the UN report of Mehlis to find out who is ‘they’) blew up Hamada one block away from my work. It resulted in a ‘lock down’ drill, which is not a big deal. You basically stay inside. It was quite a Big Bang, I thought, hadn’t heard a n explosion of that magnitude for quite some time. Things went pretty smooth until February 14, Valentine’s Day, when they blew up someone on the other side of my work, 800 meters away, close enough to have windows shatter in the neighborhood; Hariri. Now that was a BIG BANG. Never saw a smoke plume rise so quickly above an explosion. For a while we thought it was this balloon, which they have downtown these days, that had blown up. The we thought it might have been one of the buildings downtown that had gone down. Well, 20 minutes of suspicion were solved when we saw one of Hariri’s very close advisors pick up his son in tears. That particular lock down drill did not go so well as 1,000 panicky parents came to pick up their children all at once.
And since then weÂ’ve had quite a few number of regular car bombs (without victims), a few close calls (LahoudÂ’s son in law and a judge being among the victims), and a few direct hits (May Chidiac, George Hrawai and Samir Kassir, Rafic Hariri + basilufelinessil Fuleihan).
All together I wouldn’t even be able to tell you how many explosions we’ve had. There are theories as to when you should leave the house. A popular thought is that once a bomb has gone off, the city will be safe for at least 6 days; perfect time to go out on the town. I am not worried, go out anyway, but do have a tendency to leave kids at home, and drop them at ‘safe’ places, such as the beach. I did make one amendment, however. Hana, my daughter, is no longer allowed to sleep under the window. We have a large supermarket across the road, part of a Christian chain, ( imagine explaining it this way in Europe!), and if they blow that one up, my windows will be all over the place. Only last year I finally removed the last remainder of my M3 plastic; i.e. bombproof plastic, which keeps your windows together in case of an explosion, so it doesn’t shatter all over the place. It was a remnant of the civil war, we had it installed then, but it didn’t seem very useful anymore, so I removed the last bits of it about a year ago. Takes a lot of o work as you need to soak the window, and the M3 plastic for 24 hours in dishwashing liquid before you can remove the plastic with a razor blade. Time to get it back on? I don’t know. I am awaiting Mehlis final report, due in two weeks, but rumor on the street has it that the Syrians are going down, and going down hard. And if Damascus is in turmoil, I predict the same things happens in Syria as what happened to Iraq, which is not going to look to good for us here in Beirut. Maybe this was our last ‘peaceful’ summer in a coupe of years. Prophetic words? We’ll see.

No Bomb Today

No bomb today.
I spent most of my morning going around town to find a specific type of battery; an KL 1145. There’s three of them in my daughter’s stuffed cat, which used to meow when you pushed it. It no longer does, hasn’t done so for quite some time, so yesterday I decided to change the batteries. Anyway, standardizing those small batteries should be high on the list of battery manufacturers, as there must be about 101 different models on the market. Nobody had the KL1145, but after some searching it seemed that the KL1145 was compatible to the SR44W, which wasn’t available either, but that one was compatible with the 357 (which, by the way, is compatible to another 21 different batteries of different manufacturers). Anyway, mission accomplished. For 9,000 pounds ($6), the cat is meowing once again.
Then I went to buy groceries, had a cart filled with about $200, when at the cash register it turned out that, since it was October 1st, my credit card was expired. I could take my groceries anyway if I promised to pass by on Monday and pay the bill.
Tried to go to the movies, that didn’t work because they had changed the show times.
Ramadan is about to begin (October 5th). We don’t fast, but it seems just about everyone else in Beirut does, at least on the West side of town, which is predominantly Muslim. Ramadan means that life comes to a grinding halt about two hours before the Iftar, which is dinner time at sunset. Shops close early, and during the day most shop personnel is half asleep. A good thing though is that right at Iftar, there’s not a car on the road, which makes it very easy to drive through town. Ramadan will last a lunar month, which is about 28 days.
I made a nice picture of the little old lady yesterday, during the afternoon prayer time. She lives In the building across from us. You do not really get to see her a lot, but yesterday I noticed her praying. She does not do it on the floor, but seated. You do not see that very often, I guess it has to do with old age. You don’t see her face, just her hands.