“C’est l’anniversaire de qui?”

This one can enter the annals of famously stupid quotes: “C’est l’anniversaire de qui?”

We had dinner over at my mother in-law’s on Sunday. These dinners are always sumptuous affairs. She dines unlike anyone else I’ve ever known. This is the 5-star restaurant stuff; three knives on the right sides, three forks on the left. (Or is it the other way?) Plates for the salad, plates for the bread, two plates for the food, crystal glasses, silver ware and the whole shebang. Food is served on silver plates, in special dishes to keep it warm, and served by a maid and the housekeeper. She also cooks quite well; dinners come complete, with an entrée, main dish or dishes, and several deserts. And she does not only eat like this when we are there, she always dines like that. So – as I said – these dinners are always very nice.

Today we had chocolate cake for desert; I saw it as we entered the dining room, it was displayed on the side table. It had a note written on it saying “We adore U”. My mother in-law is quite a socialite. She dines out a lot and throws lavish dinner parties herself all the time. So I assumed this was a cake presented to her, and since there are always too many cakes when you invite people over for dinner (The thing to do is bring desert when you are invited for dinner), she had kept it for us.
Anyway, we have dinner – my sister in-law + hubbie and son were also present – chit chat, the usual stuff, and then it is time for desert.

My mother in-law gets up to dim the lights. “Why do you dim the lights,” I ask. “So we can see the candles on the cake better.” Candles on the cake, I am thinking to myself? Why would anyone put candles on a cake? You only put candles on the cake when it is a birthday. I look at my sister in-law, frown, and ask her surprised as if I missed something: “C’est l’anniversaire de qui?”
She looks at me, eyes wide open, and thumbs in the direction of her right side, meaning ‘The one on your right.” Who’s sitting on my right? My hubbie. And then it suddenly dawns on me. HOLY SHIT! It’s his birthday! My sister sees the surprise in my eyes, and thumbs over her shoulder, meaning 'back, back'. I look at my watch. It’s the 26th. SHIT SHIT SHIT AGAIN! His birthday was yesterday!

So this event may enter the stupid book. Forgot my own hubbie’s birthday. Maybe I should blame him for not having reminded me. Yes, I think I will do that. Makes me feel already a whole lot better.

Khamsin

It’s hot, stuffy and windy in Beirut. The air is full of dust, as you can see from the picture. You cannot see across town, let alone see the mountains. It’s four o’clock now in the afternoon, but the light is like it is at dusk. It gives an eerie atmosphere.
This is the annual Khamsin, or sandstorm. You don’t get sandstorms in Holland, and usually not in Lebanon either, even though it is the Middle East. But once a year, we get the Khamsin.
Here’s an article form the BBC.

“In the eastern Mediterranean there is a wind that blows out from Libya and Egypt known as the Khamsin. This is a wind which is hated by the people living there and indeed in the centuries passed was dreaded as a killer. During the period February to June we still get depressions moving eastwards along the southern parts of the Mediterranean, or along the North African coast, and these can trigger the onset of the Khamsin wind. The name Khamsin is derived from the Arabic word for 50, which generally refers to the fact that this local Saharan wind blows for about 50 days every year.Ahead of these low pressure areas the wind blows from the south or southeast off the hot Saharan desert. The temperature can be in excess of 40 Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit, but to make things worse the humidity is very low. So as this wind blows across Libya, Egypt and as far east as Saudi Arabia, it desiccates or dries up everything in its path.As well as that it carries large amounts of sand and dust making the sun go a deep orange and giving a very eerie feeling to those living there with frequent blasting sandstorms.”
We don’t get the full force of it in Lebanon, and in my 16 years in the country, the sky only once turned an eerie orange and it doesn’t last 50 days either here. But today is definitely the start of the Khamsin.

As you can see, today I don’t have anything to say. I did go skiing, but the snow was soup. Two years ago I almost broke my neck in snow like this, and lay paralyzed for a good half hour on the slope as everyone was skiing past me. I was then contemplating how I would make my house wheel chair accessible. I was transported to the hospital with waling sirens. As I have no intention that this is going to happen to me again, then this was probably the last time I skied this year.

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.

So Where Was Everybody?

Weather was good, snow was fantastic, lift lines were non-existent and the slopes were virtually empty? So where was everybody?
Usually in Beirut - when it is irrily quiet in a place that is normally bustling with energy - it means that something (bombing, attack, assassination, you name it) has happened. However, nothing had happened. No idea, but it was very pleasant.

Theo in action

We did freeze our &%*$# off in the chair lift though. Or they did. Do you see the empty slopes. Okay, so it was a bit windy.

Street Scenes in the Southern Suburbs

I was in Ouzai today; had to pick up a bed. Had my camera with me, and had some fun.
Here's the coffee guy, selling Turkish coffee per cup.

It must be banana season; 1,000 pounds per kilo (about 50 euro cents)

Goldfish for sale.

These guys are hauling around sardines, or something. Fish for sale.

Here we have the scrap metal dealer. Want to get rid of your junk? (Because I cannot imagine anyone buying from this guy. What's there to buy?)

He sells it all. Little mirrors, brushes, beads and combs. Sponges I am sure. Ostrich feathered plumeaus and the like. There's a lot of dust in Beirut, we got to do lots of dusting. Reminds me a little of those expeditions to the African tribes a long time ago, and the missionaries would bring beads and mirrors.

Here's the Sokleen guy, the street sweepers; you see them all over town.

Now what else could you want after attending a school like this? Opulent riches maybe.

This place sells second-hand sanitary stuff; toilets, bidets, sinks and the likes. I remember one time I was looking for a toilet (mine had cracked) in a sort of aqua-green color. The dealer called it 'Fairuze', and said that that color was no longer for sale on the market, but mentioned that I might find it in Ouzai. So I went with a friend of mine. Rows upon rows of Fairuze green -used - toilets. Why don't you try them out' the dealer said. So there we sat, next to the road, trying out toilets. Unfortunately, they all displayed the same crack as the one I had at home.

This guys sells bras stuff. I think. Looks a little shabby.

Planes fly over (this is right next to the airport)

I have a love affair with the southern suburbs. Not many people here (in Lebanon, that is) will share my view. The suburbs are crowded, depilated, in general poor, although there are relatively affluent areas as well, infrastructure is horrendous (is there one?), sewer system does not work adequately, I believe the Lebanese government does not collect the electricity bills from the southern suburbs either (I have been told this, haven’t verified that), and there are a million and one other things that just don’t work there. You can get horrible lost in there. I remember last year, when I went to visit a friend how lives in Hadeth (sub division of Dahiya) but somehow I ended up in Hay es-Seloum, one of the poorest parts of the suburbs. These are all one-way alleys, with cars driving both ways, half of the times, you can touch the walls of the houses, I couldn’t turn around even if I had wanted to, got terribly stuck, and saw wondrous things.

The suburbs of course were not always there. These used to be sleepy villages, mixed Christian and Muslim, on the outskirts of town.
However, an Israeli invasion, fighting between different factions, on top of a poor economical development of the Southern region of Lebanon overall created a rather gigantic influx of Shiite Muslims to Beirut, who for the most part decided to settle in the southern outskirts of the nation’s capital, hence the name Dahiya, meaning ‘southern suburbs’.
My professor at Journalism School – when I told him I was going on assignment to Beirut – made sure that I understood not to go to the Southern suburbs ever. This was in a time when Hezbollah was still in the business of hostage taking. “When you get out of the airport, go straight to Beirut, DO NOT go to the right,” he said. Which is where the Southern suburbs are situated; on the right side of the airport. So where did the guy who picked me up from the airport take me? To the right. Pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini were flashing by during my first ten minutes in Lebanon. “I might have been kidnapped, and wouldn’t even know it,” I remember thinking.
However, the experience, two weeks with the Slim family in Bourj Barajneh, a sub division of the Southern Suburbs, turned me into a convert. I love the Southern suburbs.
I enjoy the chaos, the messy roads, the dust and the pandemonium. It’s the real Middle East for me. Great shopping too. You’ve got to rummage, and you’ve got to love rummaging, you have to love going local, but if you do, this is one hell of a part of town. I spent a good two hours there this afternoon, and took some shots.

I was there, because I had to pick up a bed. In Ouzai. Ouzai is locally known as part of the Dahiya, or ‘Southern suburbs.’ Ouzai is famous for cheap furniture; beds, closets, dining rooms and the likes. Hubbie has had this bed for 18 years, and I inherited it when I married him. It was a fine bed. My son used to use it as a ‘WWF Wrestling Ring’ with his friends ‘cause it bounced so well. So of course, one day, he comes to tell me that ‘something popped off the bed’. I checked it out, and it turns out that one of the four wheels had indeed ‘popped off’. It didn’t bother me much, it was not on my side anyway, but hubbie has been complaining ever since about sleeping lob-sided. Yesterday night was the proverbial straw; he did not sleep well, and when he got out of bed this morning, he announced, that since I had an interview at 3:30, and wasn’t going skiing, I should go out and buy a bed.
As I am Dutch, and therefore notoriously cheap, and decided to buy the cheapest bed possible. Ouzai is the perfect place for that. So out I went, and found a fantastic bed for $200. The showroom model was in the store, the actual bed had to be brought in from the warehouse in another part of Ouzai. So I sat in front of the store, in the middle of a plethora of garden furniture, and looked around. I must have sat there for an hour, but it was great fun. The world passed by.

My new Camera or “Have You Ever Tried To Get a Boy Look Normally Into a Camera Lens?”

I am trying out my new toy (Superflat Sony, just bought a 1 GB memory stick) on a rather peculiar subject, a 12-year old boy. What is it with 12 year old boys and cameras? Or 11-year old boys and cameras? Come to think of it, it wasn’t much different when the boy was 10 and 9. I have a nephew, who has shown a similar behavior since the age of five. There’s this innate approach to cameras; grimace, pulling a face, sticking out a tongue, anything but to appear normal in a picture. Will this phase pass? It should. Although, maybe not, because now that I think of it, I have three brothers, and although they all have passed their forties, I can produce recently made pictures (in the past five year or so) of each one of them with funny face. Cross-eyed, poking fingers up noses or appearing otherwise mentally challenged. And of my hubbie and brother in-law I have a picture made only last Christmas where both show as if they had escaped from a mental asylum. Is this universal?

Some street scenes in Beirut

A new billboard appeared in my neighborhood, reading ‘He lived for Lebanon, he died for Lebanon’ (‘He’ being Rafic Hariri’). It's all over town.

A very narrow house. Wonder what they have standing in the corner.

And the car rules in Beirut. As a pedestrian, you’re free game! These days we have some sidewalks, but there were days that there were no sidewalks either. Walking around town at night could be a hazardous business; you could just disappear in a manhole. You’d have to walk the streets at night with a flashlight because street lights didn’t work either. And even when there are sidewalks, that doesn’t mean much. You notice that really when you buy a baby stroller. Totally useless in Beirut, since you’d get stuck after the first 10 meters. Cars on the pavement, or billboard poles, bus stops, traffic signs and other type of iron barriers cemented right in the middle of the sidewalk, making it impossible for a stroller to pass on either side. This city is totally wheelchair unfriendly. But even as a pedestrian, you’ve got to climb over car hoods now and then to get from one side of the street to the other. Here Eddie tries to walk the dog, but got stuck between two parked cars. I should complain about this; my work is three blocks from my house and I take the car. Shame on me.

Paperwork and stuff like that

I finally got confirmation from the university in the States today that my Dutch HBO diploma has been accepted as a credible paper, and that I have therefore been officially accepted into their Masters Program. Now I need to explain to them that I actually already finished the entire Masters program, and if they can please send me the diploma. It took me a good two years to get my Dutch diploma accepted. And I thought paperwork in Lebanon was complicated…

The Dutch can be a royal pain in the you-know-what too when it comes to paperwork, it’s not the monopoly of the Lebanese. Dutch law – until recently – forbade dual nationality. So if you were married to a Lebanese, you were not allowed to accept Lebanese papers. No passport and no khras-elkaid (Yes, you may laugh as I write this in Arabic, no idea what you call them) were allowed. You’d have to go every year to the Amn-elAm to get your residency permit, pay God knows how many thousands of Lebanese pounds, stand in line for hours, get sent from window to window, stand some more in line, get verbally abused by some uneducated idiot or otherwise treated impolitely, and then in another 12 months time you can go through the same misery again. If you’d want to go to Syria, you’d have to wait at the border for some 24 hours before the Syrians deemed you okay to give you a visa.

Anyway, no Dutch women actually followed that law, they all had passports, and the embassy knew that, but the embassy also knew that it was logistically a lot easier for us, so they sort of let it slide. Until this bitch arrived at the embassy some years ago. I will not mention her name here, but all Dutch know who I am talking about.
Anyway, she must have a very sour life or something, or a shitty marriage - I don’t know what made her tick that way - because she saw things slightly differently.
The trouble started when my daughter was born. Two weeks after her birth I went to the embassy, to apply for a Dutch passport for her. “Oh, is your daughter here,” she asked? I thought that was rather thoughtful of her, and very un-Dutch, because Dutch people in general are not overly interested in other people’s babies. I feel quite okay with that. In Holland, we do not kiss dogs and other people’s children. But anyway, I thought that was mighty thoughtful of her. Or was it? “No, she needs to be present when you apply, to verify she actually exists.” That took me by surprise. “But you held her in your arms just four days ago. You must surely know she exists”, I replied. “Yes, I know she exists, but the law requires she is present,” was the answer. She is the law, I remind you.
Fine. So next time, when I came with all the paperwork, AND the baby, she noticed that my place on the family khras-elkaid was not in accordance with my status as a ‘foreigner’. She realized then and there that I actually had acquired a Lebanese passport. So she took my passport away. That summer I had to travel on my Lebanese one (a humbling experience, as I now had to stand in line for the British and the Dutch embassy for visas). I was now officially ‘Lebanese only’.
But light was at the end of the tunnel; the Dutch parliament would be passing a law that stipulated dual nationalities was accepted in certain cases. I was that ‘certain case’. All I had to do was apply for a new passport. Easy, no? NO! Not with that bitch behind the counter.
I needed a proof that I was no longer living in Holland. So I sent my poor father (87 at the time) to the city that I used to live in, to ask for a proof that I had ‘unregistered’ myself. He went, got the paper and sent it to me. She took one long look at it. “But the paper doesn’t say where you moved to. You could have moved to another city in Holland. I need it to mention that you actually moved abroad.” Well, that was bit difficult, because when I moved out, I never intended to not come back. However, my Dad went again. He explained the story, and the employee behind the counter said: “We get this shit all the time. Just tell me what you want me to write on it, and I’ll write it. Makes everybody’s life much easier.” So I got a paper stating that I had moved out of that city, and moved abroad. Everybody happy, except the Bitch.
She needed a paper I was married. To this Lebanese gentleman. Well, I had a paper from the Muslim court stating I got married somewhere in 1993. “But maybe you are divorced now,” the Bitch said when I handed it over. That took me – again – by surprise. All my other papers state that I am married. Moreover, I just gave birth to a girl, and the father’s name on her birth certificate miraculously happened to be the same guy as the one I had married in 1993. “No, you might have divorced and remarried. I need to know that you were married to this gentleman during the time that you got Lebanese citizenship.” Go figure!
I went to the Muslim court in Tarek –el-Jdeideh. Now I need to remind you that I work for a living. 45 to 50 hours a week. I am in a position that you cannot just take off for the day and go do some paperwork. All that needs to be carefully coordinated, and my working hours coincide with government working hours, so when I am free, they are generally closed. I had this little time span on every Saturday morning, between 9:00 and 1:00 to run and get my stamps and stuff. Anyway, I went to the religious court. The first two times, they send you left and right and up and down, and it is only by the third time that you show up they understand what you want and take your request actually serious. So here I am, three Saturdays further (not to mention 3 scarves further, because you need to enter veiled, or semi-veiled at least, which I forgot every time. So every time I wanted to enter, I was sent back to a shop nearby to buy a scarf.) Anyway, they finally understand I am serious, and get me to a sheikh. What was it that I needed? I explained my case; a proof that I had been continuously married to the man I married in 1993. “But doesn’t it say you are married on all your paper work? Aren’t your children from the same father,” the sheikh asked flabbergasted? Yes, I replied, but I might have gone off, marry someone else, get a passport and then divorce and remarry the same guy. Or something like that. I never quite understood why it was so important that she knew I was married all the time to the same guy. So I am explaining this to the sheikh as I sit in his office, scarf and all, in my crummy Arabic, while people walk in and out, phones ring, get picked up (some don’t) and answered, and another five or six people are just sitting there on old sofas and what they do is not quite clear. When I am done with my story, the sheikh stared at me for the longest time. The other six people sitting in his office, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, fell silent as well. “WHAT embassy is that, you said”? the sheikh asks. “The Dutch embassy, your honor.” He lets out the longest sigh ever. “Mam, have you seen our archive?” I had. When you sit there many Saturdays in a row, you get to know the place. Shelves and shelves and shelves of book upon books and ledger upon ledgers. And there this one old guy, who runs around, looking for things. There are a few sandwiches on top of ledger, a full ashtray and some empty plastic coffee cups. He’s got it categorized according to a system incomprehensible to everyone but him, so if he dies, it is inaccessible as well. No computerized system in sight when I was there. Anyway, the sheikh gets this tired look on his face. “Mam, do you know how many months that will take us, do you have any idea? Do they have any idea at your embassy?” He remained quiet for a while. No one in the office dared speaking at this time. He looked out of the window, head bobbing up and down, when he finally said “What do you want us to write? You say it, he writes it (signaling the clerk), and I’ll sign and stamp it. Anything you want”, he said and you could hear him mutter ‘this is just ridiculous.’ And that’s how I got my paper from the religious court.
Next step was a proof of good behavior from some police station in Furn el-Shiback. I don’t remember the things they requested, but it took me another three Saturdays of hanging around in a crowd of rather obscure origins. It was Ramadan then; no one was on breath mints, so not a great place to be standing in a crowd. It was wintertime as well, to make matters worse, so it was cold and everybody tries to cram him/herself in this little office, mint breathless and all. Ooooffff. I was deemed to be a safe element to Lebanese society, so got that paper as well.
There were several other papers she requested, all very obscure and otherwise unnecessary. Anyway, after a year of running back and forth from government offices in the Netherlands and Lebanon, I finally got my status as ‘Dutch’ back.
I never ever said Hello to the Bitch again. I do see her now and then at official functions and gatherings, but make it a point to avoid her at all costs. Her life is drawn in shades of grey, no color present there.

Oh well, that was the story about my status as a foreigner. Do not know what suddenly inspired me to type all this. Still have a shit load of work to finish before tomorrow, so I guess I better quit this now.

Uneventful

Uneventful is as uneventful does. Today’s demonstration was a bit boring. To say the least. We went, hoped for some fire works, some nice speeches or music, but it was a bland affair. Speakers were incomprehensible, which is probably just as well, as I don’t think they have anything new to say. We couldn’t really see who was speaking anyway. Where were the big screens? Saad Hariri spoke, but I couldn’t understand nor see him either.
But we showed up, and I think that this was all that mattered. Crowd estimations were between ‘hundreds of thousands’ and ‘500,000’ to one million, which means we probably didn’t beat Hezbollah this time. We took the dog, one of my lesser intelligent decisions in a while. I must have heard them all; ‘Hey look, there’s Rustom Ghazali’, or “Why did you bring Basjaar el Assad to the demonstration’? He was called every pro-Syrian name in the book. Dog didn’t mind. One my way back I finally made a picture of that third big tree (that I know of) in Beirut; this is the one near the AUB Medical Gate. Now I've got them all three.

Tree # 1: Basta (near the iron bridge). #2: AUB Medical Gate. Tree 3: Gemayze (near the LF HQ)

Sledding

The time of the wooden sleds – my time – has definitely passed. We’ve even passed the plastic imitations of the wooden sleds.
This is the age of the bodyboards! They’re light and faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast. They’re high-tech sleds! And we tried them out on Sunday. We had to abandon the first place we went sledding, because we were a danger to just about anyone else on the slope. After Eddie knocked the fifth woman off her socks (you cannot really steer these things, and you hit them right about knee height, so they go down real hard), people started to stare really hard at us. They didn’t like the dog either, (and he hadn’t even pissed on anyone’s sled yet!) so we decided we needed an empty slope, all to ourselves, with pristine snow. Well, we found one (and I won’t tell you where so that next weekend we still have that slope to ourselves). It wasn’t really a slope that we had to ourselves; we had to whole dang mountain! First few runs were done carefully, but once the kids got the hang of it, they went right in between the rocks, as if on a roller coaster ride. I had to pick them up 2 kilometers down the road! The kids sled for four hours non-stop. Everything was soaking wet and they fell asleep in the car back to Beirut. I am definitely going to do that again!

On another note: never seen so much military presence in town as today. Policemen, soldiers and Darakeh (Internal Security guys, the Mobiele Eenheid in Dutch) on just about every street corner. It caused horrendous traffic jams. I wanted to go to Virgin to buy a 1GB memory stick for my new camera (got the superflat Sony, am very happy with it), but could hardly get there, and once I did get there, all parking lots were blocked of. This is all for tomorrow’s big demonstration. Tomorrow it’s exactly one year that Hariri got blown up, and there’s this huge demonstration planned in an attempt to sort of revive the Cedar Revolution feeling. Let’s see if it works.
It's my third Sony, and as Sony goes, it means I need to buy a third set of memory sticks. These guys make sure nothing can be interchanged. Stupid Japanese.

Cartoon

No news today

The side effect of this Sunday demonstration and the row over the Danish cartoons are rather amusing. The jokes and JPEGS and WMV.files I have been receiving, they are getting more and more hilarious. Most of them I wouldn’t be able to publish here, out of fear (well, that’s a pretty sad statement, isn’t it?) of having the Dutch enter the affair as well. All this boycotting of Danish dairy products can only come to the Dutch advantage; wouldn’t want to mess with that. But the stuff that has been going around is very very good.
It seems, according to a blogger, that an Egyptian paper already republished those infamous cartoons back in September of last year, and nobody, and I repeat NOBODY, seem to have an issue with it then. Doesn’t that tell you enough?
Oh well, a storm in a glass of water, as the Dutch say. And I’m immersed into Sunni fundamentalism for a story.

Rain and Sunni fundamentalists

I’m baking cake and pizza at the moment, while at the same time trying locating an insider into the finer details of the small fundamentalist Sunni organizations in Lebanon for a story. If anyone knows someone, please mail me. I’ve lost my phone. That is, I know it is in the house, but I don’t know where I put it, and cannot locate it by calling myself on the house phone because it’s turned off. Anyone calling me; use the landline!

It’s quite windy today. The building is moving, because the water in the toilet bowl is swaying. I had a 4 cm layer of hailstones on my balcony yesterday night, first time I’ve ever seen that in Beirut. Definitely not golf ball size, but approaching marbles. February is supposed to have an average of 133.4 cm of rain, but I think twice that amount fell yesterday night. The windows on the west were all leaking, got towels lying all over the place.

The dog house got flooded, now he’s all limping around ‘cause he’s got arthritis (I think). He’s almost twelve now. I’ve been thinking about getting another dog; a stray Labrador they found on the streets, but I’ve already got one dog, two cats and a plethora of other odd animals; I really don’t think another dog is really a good idea. Besides, my housekeep hates dogs. She’ll feed this one, but she’s made it clear that this one dog is all she accepts. She likes dogs fat. My dog was a lean beauty, but since the housekeeper is taking care of her, he’s turned into a regular Archie Bunker.

I found this picture on one of the Lebanese blogs, showing you the finer parts of Beirut.

Shattered Glass

Shattered glass in Ashrafiya
I 'stole' the image from http://lemondedejimmy.blogspot.com/, thought it was very nice. He said he didn't mind.

"Bathing in Lurpak"

I used this quote - "Bathing in Lurpak" - yesterday from another blogger, because I thought it was funny, but it turned out he was right on the mark. I cannot tell you how many people I have spoken today in Beirut who are making it a point to buy something Danish in the supermarket . 'The only way to show my utter disgust with these people', a friend of mine said. 'These people' being the demonstrators. I do agree; they do not make a pretty picture. I shouldn't be too harsh though, it was clear from the TV images that several clerics made a concerted effort to keep the mob from destroying property, and Hezbollah apparently pulled out its people when they noticed things were getting nasty. Goes to their credit. I don't think it is fair to shove all what is Muslim in the direction of an irate group of hard-liners. And sometimes Christians in this country are a little paranoid. I've always lived very happily in the Western part of town. I did one short 8 month stint in Ashrafiya, but was glad when I found an apartment in Hamra, and could move back again. I'm quite dedicated to this part of town.

This is the story my paper printed (my article on the right). I thought the picture on the left was a very nice one, and several readers commented on the fact that it had something 'Medieval', and in a way, it does. It reminds me of a painter, but cannot quite remember who. Anyone any suggestions on this scene? Talking about the ultimate shot (and medieval times); Check this one out! FANTASTIC! He reminds me of this guy Catweazle, the main character of a wizard series in the 70's. This guy lived in a water tower with a toad, and was warped back from the Middle Ages into modern times. Here he is; Catweazle!

Anyway, buying Danish products seems to be the silent protest.

I guess that's just about the opposite as what the demonstrators tried to accomplish. But then again, it seems there were - very appropriately in a country where there are actually two Lebanons - actually two groups of demonstrators. One group of pious believers who were seriously insulted by the cartoons, and one group who was out there to throw a riot, upset people, insult each other and somehow create a rift between the Lebanese Muslims and Christians. All in the name of Syria, it seems. I don't think they've quite succeeded on this last issue, although the Christians I spoke with today are extremely upset with 'les troupeaux barbu' (hope I spelled that one right) in a manner of 'You see, you see? Didn't I tell you'?

Well, we'll see where all this is leading to.

On skiing, Qanat Bakish and the Burning of Embassies

Well, while I was out skiing, some thugs went on a rampage through the mainly Christian neighborhood, smashing car windows and throwing in shop windows, and a nearby church. And when done with that they burnt the Danish embassy. It seems however that almost everyone is into bulletproof windows these days. The Beirut fire department lost a couple of its engines, and the army and civil defense a few of their vehicles. Everyone is blaming the Syrians, but I think the Lebanese should look among it’s own people as well. I like the post of this guy; he's going to bathe in Lurpak tonight! All the bloggers I read seem to be pretty much disgusted by this whole affair.

Fundamentalism is up and coming. I had a long discussion about this with a friend yesterday. We were trying to figure out what this whole cartoon problem was about. West versus East? Islam versus the West? The haves versus the have-nots” The ignorant versus the educated? Clash of the cultures? It’s a bit of everything, we thought, but couldn’t quite put our finger on it.

And just as I placed this post of how very pleasant it is to live in Beirut, I have to add to that that there are two Lebanons; the one in which I live, and where life is all fine and dandy, and tolerant, and the Lebanon of the camps, where families live on $300 a month, where kids cannot go to school, are not fed and clothed adequately and the sick are not cared for properly. We do not see those people, because we don’t live in the same neighborhood, our kids do not go to the same schools, we do not meet at the beach because they cannot afford the 10,000 and above entrance fee (and probably don’t think it a proper pastime anyway), we don’t meet at the sports club where our kids spend their weekends, or the ski-slopes. We don’t shop in the same supermarkets. We basically do not meet one another at all, unless you go down to areas like Hay-esSilloum (in the southern suburbs) or Bourj-Barajneh (Palestinian camp in the suburbs). They do not come in my neighborhood, I don’t go down to theirs. I have no idea who they are and how they live.

Well, I do a little, but that’s because I am a journalist and have spend time their with people. But other than that, I wouldn’t go there. They are probably dazzled about all the riches we have, driving our SUV’s and 4x4 through town with a driver, having the maid carrying the groceries from Spinneys, where we spent in one session what they have to live on an entire month. The gap between rich and poor is simply too big in this place.

What am I doing anything about it? Nothing. I went skiing today. Fed up with traffic jams in Feraya, I decided to explore another ski resort today; ‘Qanat bakish'.

On the road to Qanat Bakish

A little stream right next to Qanat bakish

Look what the web site said about it: "Its ski resort is well known for the quality of its snow and it is visited by skiers of all levels who enjoy the non-crowded slopes as it is the case with most of the other resorts. The first ski lift was built in 1967, and since then the resort has been developing to host more skiers, specially with the opening of a new road between Faqra resort and Qanat Bakish.”
Aha, that’s interesting. Three lifts, all open . So there we went, It’s a bit off the beaten track, so it took us some time to find it. Finally we arrived. We saw a bus in front of a hotel, on a very narrow road in the middle of nowhere. Some skiers, a baby-lift. People hauling ski equipment. We didn’t really see a hill, nor any other lifts, but then again, maybe it was a bit further. So we drove further. Well, that was it, that was the fantastic ski resort of Qanat bakish; one shitty pull line. No lifts, no hill, no nothing.
Disillusioned, and still in a daze, we drove on, until we reached a sign saying “Welcome to Faqra club. Which is the ski resort next to Feraya. Guess where we ended up skiing. Again.
It was a very nice ride though, well worth the time. It’s similar to the Cedars. As you climb up the mountains you pass all these tiny villages, strung like pearls on a string, often still very traditional, with stone houses and wooden shutters.

I just received a warning from the Dutch embassy. They’re not yet asking us to leave though, and I guess nobody would anyway. But they want us to be at our guard. That’s a bit of a joke. I remember a couple of years ago, during some Israeli action, or maybe it was the second Gulf War, when they send us a list of things to have ready in case of an evacuation. It was very obvious that some nut in The Hague had taken a long time to ponder over that list. We (Dutch community) had a great laugh over that one. It asked for things like ‘5 liters of gas’, in case you need to drive out of town and you don’t have gas. Oh yea, they also advised us to have our car reservoir filled up at all times. Just in case. Candles were another item, batteries, portable radio, loaf of bread, money in small nominations and all kinds of other useless stuff, penned down by some idiot who wouldn’t know how to evacuate if his life depended on it.

What I Like About Beirut

What’s so nice about living in Beirut, someone asked me the other day. Well, it’s hard to define, but I guess it is the little things you see.

Spotting a soldier, with an M-16 slung over his shoulder, slouching in a phone booth having a conversation with – probably – a girl he’s trying to conquer.

Seeing a little old man, in striped pajamas and a white knitted skullcap, crossing the streets in Basta at dusk, to go and play backgammon on the sidewalk with a couple of friends.

Walking past a barber shop, and getting invited for a cup of coffee because there the coffee is ready and you shouldn’t hurry too much in life, according to the barber, who gives you his take on life while telling a customer with that typical Lebanese hand gesture just to wait a minute until he’s finished talking to the lady.

Dropping by the pet store – who only sells birds and fish - where you are told that since bird flu appeared, business has been down, that it is all an American conspiracy, and ending with the remark “But I love Americans.”

Having the cashier at the supermarket tell you that “It’s okay, just come by and pay tomorrow,” when you buy groceries for $200, and then you notice you forgot your wallet at home.

Meeting your neighbor in the elevator who invites you for a cup of coffee at her place as we are both leaving the building, and being told that maybe I should think about Botox and that she knows this doctor who is really excellent and will do it for only $50.

That's what's nice about Beirut.

On another note; this thing about the Prophet Mohammed is getting blown out of proportion.
‘Cartoon fever is getting out of hand now’, I read in a blog, and boy, isn’t that right on the mark! It’s the talk of the town, even my husband was undignified about it, and I have never ever seen him interested into anything even remotely connected to religion. It kind of surprised me.
If you are not too much bothered by the fact that certain people of a certain religion blow themselves up in other people’s countries, or that women are not allowed to drive a car by law, or that stoning of women seems to be the acceptable thing to do, or that it is condoned that you can get away with the murder of your sister because there is a suspicion that she might be doing things that you do not agree with, then what is the big deal with this? It doesn’t look like these two cultures are compatible, as long as fundamentalism is accepted within Islamic society. I don’t see anyone in the Arab world touching this subject too enthusiastically. There are many good reads about this on the Lebanese blogs. None of the bloggers really seem to think that it is worth all this commotion, but then again, those are the ones that are bi-lingual or even tri-lingual, that have had an education, that have access to the Internet, so they are – if not open to the West - at least aware of Western points of view. So much for a multi-cultural society.

And I just noticed that Microsoft does not recognize words such as ‘blog’ and ‘bloggers’.