Street Scenes of Yesterday

According to Marijke, there should be some changes to the Arabic food of yesterday: "Het is 'kusa mehsji' (gevulde zuchinni), en niet 'kusa bi mehsji', wat zou betekenen 'kusa' in het gevuld, en 'loubia bi zeid' (boontjes in olie) eet je juist zonder riz (rijst), 'loubia bi lahm' eet je bi riz."

Spring has finally started, Lois is in town (from Korea), so we walked around a bit. Here some scenes in Beirut.

ELVIS PRESLEY

This Elvis Presley has been hanging above one of the shops in the neighborhood for some time, but I cannot really connect the car to the shop contents. It’s not an auto body shop and they do not rent cars. I don’t know what they sell, but the British Elvis – as he is sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the car, looks nice. I like the bullet holes in that right piece of the wall. You do not see that very often anymore. There used to be - long long time ago, at the very beginning of the civil war, so that is in the late 70's, or early 80's - a checkpoint of the Mourabitoun, a sunni militia that was wiped off the map pretty fast. A reminder of those early days. Many checkpoints followed in this part of town, but hubbie says he remembers that particular day.

INVALID PARKING

Parking for disabled people, is it? Or a wheel chair entry? I am not quite sure. My neighborhood seems to have been a pilot project for some ‘exotic’ road signs, like this one, because you don’t see these anywhere else in the country. But whatever it was supposed to be, it no longer is.

HANA AND TINKERBELL DOWNTOWN

The ratio of nanny to child in downtown seems to have moved from 1:2 to 1:1

WE ARE NOT ARABS

I saw this one downtown. I was out some time ago with a friend of my son’s, and we were at a place where there were just too many people. So the boy said: “Can we leave, there’s just too many Arabs here.” Now this boy is 100% Lebanese, both parents are Lebanese and Arabic speaking. “I’m an Arab too,” said Adrian. “I’m not, I am Franco-Libanais,” the boy replied. Seems like he picked up a French passport somewhere. I was pretty stunned, but this way of thinking is pretty prevalent here among some groups.