Slow

The suspension is over, but not the suspense (dank Nicolien, mooie woordspeling). People seem to be much more interested in what it was exactly that my son did in order to get a two-days suspension from school than in my fantastically well-written and interesting stories on my exciting life in Lebanon. I will not heed the hints.

When it rains, it pours. I wanted to spend the weekend up in the mountains with A. to celebrate his birthday in the snow, but we got caught in a snowstorm. We almost snowed in, and had to go back to Beirut. The army had to come and help out because even though there was a snow storm and snow was 10 centimeters thick, that did not stop people in regular cars, without 4 wheel drive and snow chains, to try and make it up to the snow. The soldiers were pretty frustrated.

In Beirut my car decided to give up life exactly 600 meters away from our home. We were just wondering why the windshield wipers had stopped, when the car coughed a few times, and then stopped alltogether. I was on an uphill road. The good news was it broke down just in front of my mechanic. The bad news was that the guy was closed. And so we had to slug our luggage through the pouring rain. Arrived home absolutely soaked. The housekeeper says she is going to die of pneumonia. She wanted to join us because she had never seen snow before, but got more than she bargained for. Mechanic says it’s the battery.

Eddie thought that his birthday was as good a moment as any to present us with his progress report from school. Three F’s! Yes, and why not? Last week a two day suspension, and today we get to hear that the young man is looking at a report card with three F’s. He leaves class without handing in class work, does not hand in homework, does not pay attention in class and in general displays rather poor listening skills. Ah yes, the joy of parenthood.

And just as things were getting rather dull in town, I was called by a friend to prepare for another strike. Hassan Nasrallah is promising that the opposition will step up its actions next week. January the 23rd in particular will see a significant escalation in activity. She was at the Monoprix (local supermarket), which was, according to her, “absolutely packed with people stocking up on rice and water.” I guess the Hezbollahs downtown just about had it with this sleeping in tents with a nasty weather like this. Time for a change. The situation has been gradually deteriorating since the end of the war this summer, but apparently hasn’t reached its lowest point yet. Hezbollah and Co have been occupying downtown since December, much to the aggravation of many Lebanese. (I will not say the majority. It is no longer clear who the majority is. I tend to follow Mazen Kerbaj; the majority is at home getting thoroughly disgusted by the boys in politics). This impasse is getting on everyone's nerves.

And as I really do not have much to blog about anyway, I will finish with this cartoon.