Mamnouwah

As I got out of work today, I walked to my car, and noticed that, although I live in the middle of a one-million soul metropolis, there are some streets that are positively rural. Rural in the sense of small one story houses with vegetable gardens. Some of these are only a block away from the main beach boulevard, the Corniche. So these people – from the looks of their property – live rather sober lives on million dollar soil. Just a block away, there’s apartments that rent for $10,000 a month, or sell for over $2000 per square meter.
Now I wanted to make a picture of this street that is lined with small houses, orange trees, lettuce beds and little gardens, and show you how very ‘small’ a big city can be, when this other peculiar Beiruti feature appeared. A man in grey camouflage (or green camouflage, same thing). And he said “Mamnouwa.”
Mamnouwa is one of the very first words I learned in Arabic. It means ”It is forbidden, or not allowed. Hanafiya (tab) is the other. Everything is forever forbidden; taking pictures, parking a car, going into a street, you name it, it is ‘mamnouwa’.
So I cannot show you the pictures. The reason it is Mamnouwa is because it is near the house of a former minister who was almost blown up about a year ago. Or actually, he was blown up, but survived it. He is anti-Syrian, a hazardous state-of-mind these days in this country, even tough the Syrians officially pulled out their forces.

Here’s another proof of how very small-town Beirut is;
men are playing backgammon on the beach boulevard.

That very same morning, I was told that it was Mamnouwa to park on the beach boulevard, as Ms. Condoleezza Rice was going to pass by that day in convoy. There is fear that the Syrians might try to blow her up as well; she’s also anti-Syrian. As I was on my way to work, not a parking place in sight since there are three educational institutions competing for the same spots and two of those three recently lost their private parking, I had no intention of losing that particular spot. I told the soldier (this one was in green fatigues) that he could shove it, and that I was not moving for no American Secretary of State.
That’s another great thing about Beirut; you can just tell a policeman or other type of law enforcer to ‘shove it’ and you will not necessarily end up in jail.
My colleagues all thought that was a very unwise move. They were scrambling all over the place to get alternative parking spots arranged for their cars, climbed all the way down from Bliss Street, or paid the little rat down the street 5,000 pounds (usual rate is 1,500) for a parking space.
I thought for a while they might have been right. They do tow cars away. Mine was towed away twice; both for a French head of state. Three times actually. The first time they did not even announce it, and when I got out of work that day (Chirac had passed by, I think) my car was gone, and I thought it was stolen. The police had picked it up and parked it several hundred meters away. The second time they did announce it, and I had to pick it up in a downtown depot. The third time they had decided to change parking laws. In the middle of the day.
But this time, Ms. Condoleezza Rice must have deemed my car a ‘friendly’ car. It was still there at the end of the day.
The conclusion of all this is that due to the Mamnouwa of the situation, no pictures of the rural side of Beirut. Maybe next time.