House in the Village

Since another Dutch blogger is writing about some of the cultural differences between Holland and Lebanon, I’ll add my two cents to it.

What took me forever to comprehend in Lebanon is the concept of two houses. Every Lebanese has two houses: a house in the village and an apartment in the city.

Where I come from, the possession of two houses indicates major bucks. Nobody has two houses. Maybe, when moving ahead in your career and your kids are out of university, you can afford yourself a minor hovel somewhere up north, or a dilapidated farm shed in the south of France. But not a ‘house’ house.
Yet in Lebanon everyone has two houses. They live most of the year in the apartment in Beirut, but will spend weekends in the house. And in July and August – when the humidity is at its highest and schools are closed – most people will pack up and head for their village house. A lot of these houses are in the mountains (if you are thinking Alps, its more like foothills). The house is usually in the ancestral village.

This ancestral village was another thing I had never heard of before. In Holland you come from the town that you were born in, or grew up in. Although 95% of my friends were born and raised right here in Beirut, no one is actually ‘from’ Beirut. They all say they are from Sidon, or Tripoli, or somewhere up in Zghrarta or down in Arab Salim, even though they never really actually lived there, apart from those two summer months of course. The weirdest thing is that they are even registered there. So when election time comes, or they need an official birth certificate, they physically have to go to that town in order to vote, or get the paperwork down.

The remainder of a chocolate paste sandwich

When someone explained that to me once, I finally understood why Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to be counted. For years and years, while sitting in church during the Christmas mass, I’d always wondered why bother walk all the way to Bethlehem to get counted? It was the ancestral village thing.

I canned the village house concept in this family. I’m a city girl. I can deal with vipers, rats, mice, roaches, scorpions and other irate wildlife, but the spiders were way too big to even consider spending summers up in the village. And besides, this slugging luggage up every Friday evening, and dragging it down again on Sunday evening was not my idea of spending relaxing weekends.
But ‘jiddo’ (Grandpa in Arabic) still has his house, and the kids have a wonderful time there. This weekend they were weeding the garden. You can see my kids are city kids; a little grass gets them going all over the place.

Beirut Word Cloud

Word Clouds seem to be the hottest thing in advertisement trends this year. I may be a couple of years off. A word cloud is a visual depiction of frequently used words in your web site. It illustrates keyword density using font size. The more often a word appears on your site, the larger it appears within the word cloud. This is my Word Cloud.
If you go here, you can have a word cloud made of your site (or blog).

Wilfred Thesiger, one of the last European Explorers of the Middle East, didn’t think much of Beirut. He said that Beirut was ‘a vile spot with nothing to redeem it.’In the The Life of My Choice, he wrote; “I was convinced I was going to dislike Beirut – as I indeed did.”
It is clear from my Word Cloud that I don’t share his opinion.

This is the Way We Do It

Who needs Uhaul? This guy was driving on the highway at a 100 km/ph. That's the way we do things in Beirut.

Part Of Screwing Up; Conversations with Teenage Son

My boy became thirteen this January; a fact he hasn't wasted any time on showing us. He has hit his teens. Life since then has been a constant struggle. The numbers of times I have been called into his principal’s office since then are uncountable, grades have not just fallen but dropped like rocks, and the number of things he has managed to mess up is innumerable. You name it, he has screwed it up. Poor decision making seems to be his talent now.

Last bit of straw was that he lost the house keys yesterday. All of them. You need about 5 keys to enter our house. In an attempt to teach him, we decided he’s paying for the locksmith himself, since we’ve got to change all locks. This is going to be a hefty price. Luckily he’s been saving forever to buy a remote-control helicopter, so he can shell all that cash out in one time. To the locksmith.

Needless to say, boy has been a bit low lately, and I thought I’d perk him up a bit this morning.
“You know A, when I was your age, I was the same. It is just part of growing up," I started, being the wise woman I am.
“Part of screwing up, you mean,” replied A.

The Bridge Was Gone

"Miss, the bridge was gone"

Back home, when I was young and still in high school, we had these lists circulating of excuses you could use when you were late for school. One of them was ‘the bridge was open’. In Holland this is possible, an open bridge. We have boat traffic, and sometimes the boat is too high to go under the bridge, so the bridge has to open. This can take up to 10 minutes if it is a big bridge.

Here in Lebanon, we can also use this excuse since last summer, but we adapt it a little to ‘the bridge was gone’. The traffic jams are getting a little less now, since a number of the 70-something bridges that were bombed have since been repaired, or have been replaced by a temporary bridge. (Very childish, I might add, of the Israelis, to bomb all these bridges. Half of them were never even used by Hezbollah.)

Still, a trip to the south or the north of Lebanon still takes substantially longer than it used.

Pill Popping Population

Spring just started, so I did some spring cleaning, and went through the medicine cabinet. I threw everything out that

1) was expired,
2) had no box ,
3) had a box but no instruction sheet,
4) I could no longer remember what it was for and
5) cured diseases that definitely need a doctor rather than a homemade decision on what pills to pop.

I ended up with this huge batch of pills. It’s a good thing we don’t have suicidal tendencies in this household, because we’ve got enough to finish off the entire building.

I know my collection of pills is not unusual for a Lebanese household. We pop ‘em like there is not tomorrow. No matter whose bathroom you use; you check the bathroom cabinet, and you’ve got an avalanche of boxes and tablet tumbling out.

I don’t know what it is with Lebanese and medication, but it is a close relationship. Beggars in the street wave doctor’s prescription papers in front of your face to implore that money is of vital importance to their survival. You can have entire dinner conversations pivot around the topic of pills and doctors. What medicines to take for heart tremor, what helps best against a rash here or a rash there, how to alleviate a little pain here, and cure a disease there. Anti-biotics seems a standard remedy against the common cold, no matter that it is a viral infection.

A pharmacist at the end of this summer’s war told me that valium and related products were his main income. Didn’t patients need a prescription for that? Well, yes, officially, they did, but he was only helping out, because many people didn’t have the money to go to a doctor, and with 5 years of study, he figured he could make a depression diagnosis as well as any doctor. Besides, who wouldn’t get depressed after 30-something days of bombing?

In Lebanon, you do not go to a general doctor when you have a problem; you go to the pharmacist. I do the same. A doctor requires an appointment, a long wait in a waiting room and a (usually) hefty fee of no less than $25 or more. You in the west will laugh at this ‘hefty’ fee, but it is hefty if you consider that many people do not have health insurance. A doctor is only there in case the pharmacist can’t solve the problem.

The pharmacist will ask you what the symptoms are, and give you a cream, some pills or a liquid, depending on your ailment. No examination required. Sore throats, angina, ear aches, stomach pains, heavy arms, headaches in the front or the back, kidney pain, itchy eyes, lice, eczema, heart burn or heart pain; no doctor is ever involved.
Some pharmacist will even give you the shot, if that’s what they’ve prescribed. All this stuff goes over the counter; no prescription needed. And if nothing else helps, there is always ‘may warde’.

I’ve never seen a study on the use of pills per head in Lebanon, but I think it should be an interesting study.

Beirut Love Bug

You still see lots of volkswagens drive around town. My favorite is this love bug.

Beirut is an Onion

To quote Shrek, Lebanon is like an onion; ‘it has many layers’.

Read today’s headline:
Lebanon Police defuses bomb at American University of Beirut

This was the explanation in the local paper:
Police sappers on Thursday dismantled a bomb at the American University of Beirut, the latest in a series of explosives discovered in Lebanon, security officials said.

This is what I got through my e-mail:

At 9.30am on March 22, an American University of Beirut janitor found 200 grams of TNT in a paper bag that was left in the courtyard in front of Issam Fares Hall, where an AUB workers' syndicate meeting was scheduled to take place at 11am.

And this is what my colleague tells me:

"Ya habibti (My darling), 200 gram TNT, that’s one stupid stick of dynamite. Fishermen fish with more than that. And it didn’t explode because it wasn’t supposed to explode. There is an argument going on at AUB between the guards and the university. The university is about to fire a batch of them over some issues, and the guards are just showing that they are not happy with this. They are showing what they can do if they are not getting what they want. It’s nothing. Boy, you foreigners are so ignorant. "

Boy on the Beach

No Lebanese in his right mind will go to the beach on a Sunny day if it isn’t June, July or August. Winter hasn’t even ended, for god sake! What idiot would go to the beach? Well, idiotic Dutch would, since a day like today can be mid-summer in Holland. And so we went so the beach, picnic basket in hand, a couple of dogs and some kids in the truck.
The beach was absolutely deserted; we were the only ones. Last year I celebrated my birthday while skiing; this year I celebrated by the Mediterranean Sea. Not a bad thing either.
On a different note, boy is beginning to hit puberty. His first words this morning were “shut up.” It’s not full-fledged yet, because by the end of the day he was his adorable-self again. But it is looming there, hanging there on the horizon. I recently read of a workshop for parents of adolescent children, called ‘Praten met Pubers.’ (Talking with Teenagers), where parents learn how to deal with the youngster(s) in their house. Might be something to look into.

Well Connected but Quite Poor

According to a recent study carried out for the Ministry of Social Affairs by the UNDP (The Development Agency of the UN) 25 % of the Lebanese now live below the poverty level. Being poor in Lebanon doesn’t just mean your income is below a certain level, but also that you don’t have access to running water, schools and shelter.
This is seemingly good news, because some ten years ago, this was about 30%. The quote for shelter, education and water went up, but the income dropped almost 9% for these people.
The South is one of the poorest regions, versus Beirut being the richest. Of these poor people, almost 40% are senior citizens, who in general have no income at all.
In 1960, only 17.8 % of the Lebanese were considered ‘poor’, and by 1975, this number had reached 22%.

A Bedouin lady smoking a cigarette while harvesting lettuce in the Beqaa Valley

What income level is considered ‘poverty level’ in 2006 is not clear in the article that can be read in Le Commerce du Levant. A study by ESCWA in 1996 stated that 28% of the Lebanese had to live on an income of $618 for a family of five. I wonder if they took the Palestinians in the camps into consideration win this study. I think it is a safe guess to assume that of the Palestinians living in camps (about 450,000 if I am correct), 85% live below the poverty level. Most Lebanese never get to see the inside of the camps. You are always warned that it is not safe there. I’ve walked through almost all of them in the course of my work; never had a problem. The situations you see there are pretty bad. 6 people to one room, two shared bathrooms on a floor with 45 people, open sewers, one running tab on a street of 45 families, I’ve seen it all. The study doesn’t mention them as a separate group, so I think they were not taken into account.
What got us in this mess is the war of 1975-1990, several invasions (or incursions, as the Israelis liked to call them) and the continuous shaky political situation afterwards. This past summer war is not going to make things any better.

With 25% poor, does that mean the other 75 are doing well? No, because although they may not score low in all four of the categories, (income, running water, education and shelter), but still do poor in one, two or even three of them.

But we are the best connected in the Middle East; 14.29 % of the population has Internet access.

Rain in the Middle East

Looks like we’re having rain tonight. The showers are hanging on the horizon, waiting to move in at night fall. Last night we had some fantastic showers. Hubbie once wanted to buy something on Ebay, but the owner, a guy in the States, mailed him back, and said: “I’m not selling to you guys, go ride your camel in the desert.” He thought it was funny, the ignorance of people, thinking we have camels and deserts in Lebanon. I’ve seen several blogs in the region reporting on that ignorance lately.
Here’s one from a Syrian man doing his intern ship in the US.

An excerpt from a conversation I had at the US hospital where I am training with a cardiologist who knew nothing about me but my name, Mohammad Ayman, as it appears on my lab coat:
M. A: It's amazing how many cocaine-induced heart attacks we've seen lately
Dr. R: You don't see much back home?
M. A: No. Cocaine abuse is uncommon there.
Dr. R: I bet it's because you behead everybody who uses it.
M. A: Well we have capital punishment for dealers, but it's not beheading.
Dr. R: Yeah you execute drug dealers, but export drugs to countries where infidels live, like the US.
M. A: ...
Dr. R: Am I right?
M. A: No, you are absolutely wrong.
Dr. R: Well this happens in Afghanistan.
M. A: Well I am not from Afghanistan.
Dr. R: But you are from a Muslim country, right?
M. A: Yes and it's very different from Afghanistan.
Dr. R: Where are you from?

So no, we do not live in the desert, no camels around either, and we have rain. Lots of it. Check out this short clip of an early morning shower in Beirut I shot a couple of weeks ago. The rain was literally ‘coming down in sheets’.

Hotel California: Sunset in Beirut

Best time of the day in Beirut; sunset.
Spring is in the air. There is still plenty of snow in the mountains, but it’s so warm that skiing is only possible in the early hours. After 12 o’clock you bog down in a mushy slush on the slopes. People were skiing in their T-shirts.

H. had a birthday party today in Chwayfat, which used to be a town outside Beirut, but it has merged with Beirut since 1982, when refugees from the south installed themselves in a zone between Beirut and Chwayfat. I like the town, especially the upper levels, because it has retained some of the ‘old’ Lebanese village atmosphere. People still have gardens with trees in them, and live in one-story stone houses, rather than 6-floor apartment buildings with glass balconies.
We went down (a phrase we use here to say we drive down from the mountains and drive back to Beirut) at sunset, and the view was fantastic. It reminded me of those prints of David Roberts. Roberts, a Scottish painter, traveled through Syria and Egypt in 1838. This tour of the Middle East resulted in a lithographed, two-volume set of prints called Sketches in the Holy Land and Syria. many artists went on a ‘Grand Tour’ through the region, and their scenery must have been somewhat similar to the one you see when you descend from Chwayfat (albeit with a bit of imagination. Okay, a lot of imagination).

At one point I even spotted the Hotel California of the Eagles.

Only in Beirut

Where the street cleaners are from Pakistan, and the traffic lights are being dusted (seriously, check out his 'plumeau') by Sri Lankans.

Life in the Fast Lane

Tuesday; Afternoon strollers on the Corniche

People in Beirut live on a constant high. The Lebanese don’t realize this, because this is how they grew up. They don’t know any better. But for an outsider though, like me, it is obvious that the pace of living and the average stimuli are well beyond the ordinary. All your senses are constantly engaged, and you are forced to use all of your creativity to keep things going in this place. What happens to you here in a year, the average global citizen won’t experience in a life time.
Bus bombs, political assassinations, car bombs, Israeli bombardments, 1 million men demonstrations, street fights and riots, burning cars, closure of schools, besieging of governments, and political debates that are have spiraled into remarkable insulting sessions are just a few of the things that have taken place the last 12 months. And that is only on the public level of society.

Tuesday; Afternoon strollers on the Corniche

But even on a personal level most Lebanese live in the fast lane. People are constantly traveling in and out of the country. To jobs in Dubai, meetings in Qatar, weddings in Virginia, spring breaks in Paris, conferences in London and business trips to India. I see people that were bachelors only last week, and now are married with babies. They are constantly changing phones, cars, watches, wives and/or housekeepers. How they do it on the meager salaries that are offered I don’t know. Creative bookkeeping, maybe? Restaurants open up and close again before I even get a chance to realize they were there (let alone dine in them), and speed bumps appear and disappear (over and over again, I might add) within a matter of days
How this society comes to move so fast in a system that is positively antique is beyond my comprehension. A simple rain storm causes massive flooding in the lower parts of Beirut, road works cause traffic jams that affect entire city neighborhoods, mail gets delivered despite the clear absence of mailmen and the fact that nobody has a mailbox (apart from the ones at the post office). And then I haven’t even mentioned ‘minor’ obstacles, such as constant power cuts, salty water in you pipes (and appliances), and the engagement of less than legal services in order to get decent TV programming, semi-fast internet, and electricity in times of power shortages. Janitors that are lazy, service drivers that stop in front of you to negotiate with 2 ladies over a trip fare or a destination, and assholes that triple park in your drive way.
The 'old' (right side) and the 'new' (left side) light house in West-Beirut, although the new one is not really new anymore since the Israelis used it for target practice last July.

Some foreigners thrive in this environment. Others can’t hack it, and - if they’re expats – whine and vent their entire stay in Lebanon, or - if they’re here for the long run - end up divorcing their Lebanese spouse and run back home.
I am a ‘thriver’. The more chaotic it gets, the better I function. I perform well under stress, although hubbie will probably disagree with that statement.

In Holland we get a weather alarm when it snows 5 centimeter. Things just don’t happen to us Dutch very often. And if they do, like an exploding fireworks factory, we still talk about it five years later because the people that lived nearby are still having nightmares. Beirutis can’t afford to reminisce over trivial things like that. I interviewed a lady, right after the war, who was more concerned with the situation of her hair, now that her hairdresser’s salon was obliterated by bombs, then by the bombings itself. “Oh hon, if I’m going to fret over every single bomb, I’d still be living in 1975.”
Tuesday afternoon; Beirut and Mount Lebanon under a setting sun

Why am I writing this post? Because nothing 'significant' has happened in my life the past two weeks, and I am displaying withdrawal symptoms. Life is going too slow for me.

‘Piecing’ the Neighborhood

In the animal kingdom they call it ‘spraying’; the habit of using urine as markers to designate territorial boundaries. Cats, dogs, and many other mammals, pee on tree trunks, or boulders, or whatever landmark there is, in order to indicate that this is ‘their’ land. They spray during territorial disputes, during aggressive conflicts, and during sexual encounters.

In human society it’s called ‘piecing’. In American inner-cities, gangs mark their turf with intricate and colorful works of graffiti. This is called ‘piecing’, or ‘tagging’ an area. Piecing is most prevalent in areas between two rival gangs. They challenge each others authority by leaving their own tags (graffiti) over the other gang’s tag.

I’m not sure what we call it in Beirut, but rival factions having started to tag the neighborhoods again. It was a common sight when I just got to Beirut; a political party – although we called them militias in those days – would ‘claim’ an area by painting its logo on a wall, and specifically in border areas, between neighborhoods.

As the war faded in our memories, so did the murals, until only those that still remembered them could spot the faint traces of the paint. The paintings got replaced by posters of politicians.
But that is not hacking it anymore these days, and we’ve gone back to ‘piecing’, or ‘spraying’ the neighborhood. You don’t see any piecing in my neighborhood, but that is because my neighborhood is so indisputably somebody’s, that no one in his right mind would come here with a bucket of paint and try and tag the walls. But it is in contested areas that it pops up.
I noticed these – still freshly painted – murals on my way to a friend’s house, somewhere in between Mar Elias and Basta. I thought that both areas were predominantly sunni areas, (The murals are from shia political parties), but it seems pirates are on the horizon. A sign of times to come?

Fisk is pretty upset about labeling areas as ‘predominantly’ one religion or the other. He wrote a rather upset piece – ‘how easy it is to put hatred on the map’ - about it.

Sunrise in Beirut

Beautiful sunrise this morning. This is the only house I've ever lived in (and town, for that matter) where I could see a perfect sunrise and sunset from the same spot. Perfect in the sense thatn the sun rises and sets over geographical, natural features, rather than man-made objects.
Will they bomb Iran? I hope not. If they do, we will feel it too over here. Let's see what today brings.