Horizon

The horizon is defined as the dividing line between the Earth and the sky. When I was living in Holland, I was living mainly in the city, and rarely got to see that line, unless I’d go up north. Here in Beirut I live by the sea, so technically I see the (water) horizon on a daily basis. But the humidity (and pollution) is rather high in town, and the horizon line is often so blurred that you can’t really tell where the sea ends and the sky begins.But after a really good rain shower, like the ones of yesterday, the sky is ‘swept clean’ so to speak, and you can see everything clear; the mountains, the other side of town, and the horizon. Sharp as anything.Today was a beautiful day. Hana's school celebrated the annual outdoor Halloween OctoberFest, and the sun was shining all day long. Had dinner outside on the balcony, and just as we got to desert, it started to rain and thunder. Perfect timing. Perfect Saturday. Perfect Fall.

Finally

The rains have started. Finally. It seems we’re a little late on the rains this year, although I remember last year’s Halloween to be a bright and shiny day as well.

I like rain. We Northerners do. The locals do not greatly care for it, but I like the rains. There is, of course, always the instant worry that, while you’re not at home, something floods. Rains here are not like rains in Holland. In Holland, we’re experts at ‘motregen’; constant drizzle. In Lebanon, what should fall in two weeks time, in general comes down in like a 20-minute ‘down pour’. When it rains like this, somehow it makes Beirut look like a real city.

Snoubar Season; The Umbrella Pine

A botanical post today.

Last weekend was spent in the mountains among the umbrella pines (Pinus pinea). Although Lebanon is known for its cedar tree (it’s the one in the flag), I find the umbrella pine much more significant for the country. You see them everywhere (well, there where there are trees left). It’s a tree common to the Mediterranean area.

A man in the tree hits the cones out, and prunes the branches. On the ground they gather them in bags. The cones are closed when harvested. Some time in the sun and they'll open automatically.

There’s no forestry service in Lebanon (or none that I know of), yet the umbrella pines you see in the mountains are in general well trimmed. As I was wondering who’s taking care of these trees, I ran into these guys: the pine nut pickers.

Pine nuts are popular in Lebanon. You eat them with rice, you eat them with salad, and my favorite is to mix them with ‘kousbara’ (coriander) and garlic, and eat them with a dish called ‘shisbarak’. I buy them in little bags in the supermarket, but the hardcore users by them by the kilo. Exactly for how much seems to depend on the region, or your contacts. A colleague of mine buys them for $30 a kilo, another person said he paid $40 a kilo.

They burn the underbrush so they can find the cones they drop down.

From Land and People, I lifted this bit: ‘In Lebanon it only grows on the red sandy soils of the mountain, soils formed on a geological strata called the Basal Cretaceous. Unlike the vast majority of all other geological formations of Lebanon, this one is not calcareous, and it provides the neutral pH necessary for the growth and survival of pine seedlings. The people of the mountains quickly realized the economic potential of the snawbar pine, and they planted it wherever they found red sandy soils, and where there is enough rainfall to allow trees to grow. The snawbar pine forest almost perfectly match the patches of red sandy soils, and their dense and lush growth makes them look like turf carpets covering the slopes of Mount Lebanon. They're found in the Metn, in the Gharb (Aley) in the Shuf, and in one of the biggest forests is in the south, Bkassine near Jezzine.’ More on this here.

A pine forest, with the 'cutters' in the tree, and the 'pickers' on the ground.

It seems the government lifted import tariffs on pine nuts, allowing cheap imports from Turkey and China to flood the market. Which is a pity, because it will endanger the pine trees, and they have a multi-purpose in Lebanon. The cones are harvested for their nuts. Because harvesters need to be able to reach them, they ‘cultivate’ the forest; they take away small bushes, and trim the undergrowth of the trees, which makes them less prone to forest fires. The pine cones are used as fire wood, and the needles as well. Their roots keep soil together, limiting erosion in areas where they grow.

Well, lots of good stuff from the pine trees.

International Day of Climate Action

Today’s the International Day of Climate Action. These days the movement to stop global warming is getting a little more ‘goal oriented’, which I find very helpful. We (on Earth) are now at 390 parts of carbon per million CO2 – and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year – while we should aim for 350 parts (source).

Being Dutch, a rising sea level will greatly impact the life in Holland, as some 60% of the people, and 20% of the land are below sea level. My parents’ house for instance, and 2 of my 3 brothers’ houses, would all be submerged. They’re currently busy developing floating houses in Holland.

Living on a hill by the sea in Beirut, my house would become a sea-side residence, greatly increasing its real-estate value per m2. But I understand that my good fortune would probably not be in the best interest of many others in the world, so I’ll forego that option.

Over here, we complain a lot about the ‘people’ not respecting nature, throwing away garbage ‘kief ma ken’, not recycling etc, but the biggest polluters are probably those that should know better, those with the 3 SUV’s and the 600 m2 apartments that have AC’s humming all summer long, because the regular people, due to economic factors and the lack of sufficient electricity to service the entire country, are doing their share. Just look at these car-pooling options.

A family of 4-1 little scooter.
And how about this car that must have had over 9 people in it.
They’re doing their share, be it voluntary or not.

Fall is in the Air

Fall is in the air

Summer was officially over a month ago, but the weather refused to cooperate. Now the temperature is finally dropping a little. When I wake up in the mornings to go to work, it is still dark. Dinners on the balcony are now by candlelight, as the sun sets earlier.
I read that in Holland, when the clocks are changed, people are depressed for just about an entire week. I kind of like the darkness, makes me nostalgic.

A cheikh on the road, out for a stroll (I assume)

I’ll be spending the weekend in the mountain house, preparing it for the Christmas holiday. I’m not a great fan of the mountain house, since the mountain villages in Lebanon are pretty much deserted in fall and winter. There are of course the hard-core inhabitants; those that live all year-round in the mountains. But it seems to me that the majority of the houses are owned by Beiruti-based Lebanese, and they only show up in summertime. Still, the weather at this time of year is at its best.

Shepherd with his goats

And so this weekend, I’m off to the mountain house. We’ll be buying pumpkins, and watch the pinecone seed (snoubra) harvest. I hear they go at $30 a kilo these days. And I’ve got my Piff-Paff ready.

And so I leave you with some mountain scenes.

A Sinkhole on a Sunday

A climber coming down the rim of the Balaa sinkhole.
In the background, the waterfall comes falling through the hole.

It was so hot when I got up this morning that my initial plan was just to stay in bed the whole day with the AC on. But then you end up with nothing to blog about. I had to do something. The beach was too hot, downtown was too hot, and everything was too hot. The mountains, I figured, are cool enough, and at least I'd have something to write about. I am telling you, this blogging business has some positive side-effects. So how about a sinkhole on a Sunday? That one even caught the interest of the otherwise so sullen teenager of the house.

The second natural bridge is visible from the top.

I hadn’t done the Balaa sinkhole (N 34° 10.406 E 035° 52.222), near the village of Tanourine, in over 10 years. I don't even remember how I heard about this sinkhole in the first place. According to +961, the sinkhole is 250 meters deep and 160 million years old. It surprised me that the place is still pretty much empty. I tried to Google the place, but just one scientific report pops up about the possible origins of the hole, and that’s it.

There’s absolutely nothing on this sinkhole. It does appear in some tourist guides on Lebanon, but not all, and even my own hubbie has never been there. And he’s not the stay-at-home type.

This is how it appears from the distance; a massive opening.

The Joze river is now a trickling stream.

But the thing is absolutely beautiful. First of all, it’s massive. Really massive. On the upper part there is a little river, the Joze river (Nahr el-Joze, which in winter and spring is a pretty strong stream), which suddenly drops off into an abyss. They say the waterfall is 90 meters high. I’m not quite sure how that fits with the sinkhole being 250 meters deep, since the water drops all the way to the bottom.

You don’t really see anything of the sinkhole until you’re right at the end of the stream. And then it is advisable not to look any further. So from above, you cannot really form a good impression of the enormous dimensions of this thing. You have to walk around it, enter a small valley, and then the sinkhole appears in its entity. The hole has 3 natural bridges.

The three natural bridges (top one is a bit dififult to see here).

I am telling you, I’ve seen natural phenomena in other places in the world, like in France and the US, far less impressive than this one, and there I’ve had to shuffle my way to the entrance surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of tourists. And then you get stuck behind a fence, and you’re not really allowed to get any further.

A couple of people were preparing to rope themselves down the cliff. Listening to the instructions from one of them, I had the impressions that this was their very first ‘abseil’ experience ever. With a hole some 250 meters deep under you, this could not be but interesting, and so we hung around for a while. Three Syrians laborers thought the same, and from the opposite cliff they watched the entire process in absolute silence.

Did he fall yet?

I had the place virtually to myself. There were maybe some 10 other people, including the group of climbers. And here you can walk all the way to the edge, without having to stand in line and without having to pay $10 (like in Jeita). And the tweeting birds in Balaa are for real (unlike the taped versions in Jeita) .

All the way to the edge. The thing is really deep.

Apparently the hole was ‘colored’ in 1985 by the Lebanese Speleo Club. I assume they mean they dyed the water in order to find out where the water flow went. The Speleo club explains the reason as follows; ‘in order to detect any water loss from the underground river’.

I must have mentioned this before, but the geology in this place is absolutely mind-boggling. It’s mainly karst, a landscape by the dissolution of limestone. So holes and caves are a natural occurrence here, but the size of the Balaa sinkhole is quite unusual..

Next project: I'd like to get to the bottom of this hole. Literally. Anyone any ideas?

Beirut Street Scenes: Chillin'

I’ve lived in Beirut forever, but I still can’t figure out the purpose of the multitude of uniforms and colored berets. These guys are something in the police force. What exactly they do, I don’t know. Well, apart from chillin’.

The Rising Phoenix

Last night was opening night for Anne’s pub; The Rising Phoenix. Am I plugging another Dutch business? You bet ya!

Anne

Anne is a Dutchie who’s been literally making the streets of Beirut unsafe for some years now. The name of her pub is rather appropriate I’d say. It has nothing to do with Beirut or the Phoenicians. It’s all about Anne. She’s been in car accidents, numerous bar fights, and jail (if I remember correctly), has been shot at, has had intruders and burglars in her house, got married and had it annulled, and featured in rock concerts; all of this in a rather short time span. She in general likes to live her life in a rather ‘condensed’ manner, but every time you think ‘boy, this is not looking good’, she miraculously re-appears reborn; glamorous and all.

Three Dutchies; J, H & A.
(boy, these Dutch women are tall. And we're just average lenght in Holland)

The Rising Phoenix is her project, last night was the opening night, and the mood & music was good. So if you want to spot some Dutch, get over there. It’s called the Rising Phoenix, and it’s at the ground floor of the Phoenix Hotel in Ain em-Mreisseh (around the corner from the Martinez Hotel).

A Friendly Neighborhood Walk; Zokak el-Blat

The Ziade Palace, built in 1860, was abandoned by its owners in 1975 , at the start of the war. Squatters occupy now the first floor.

I went on a friendly neighborhood walk through Zokak el-Blat. Not your best neighborhoods these days, although you should not translate that into ‘not safe’. I don’t know of any neighborhood in Beirut that is deemed ‘unsafe’, as in terms of criminality. We haven’t evolved that far, thankfully.It’s not one of the best neighborhoods these days in economical terms.

But Zokak el-Blat used to be one of the ‘upper class’ districts, where rich people built their villas, or palaces as they call them here, and ambassadors had their residences. It was one of the first suburbs of Beirut, and the first quarter to have a paved road, hence the name ‘Zokak el-Blatt’ (the cobbled, or paved road). That was in the 1860’s.

At the start of the civil war, the original owners left to 'safer' neighborhoods.

It was still posh until the 1930’s, and then it started going downhill. I guess people like me moved in, har har. My husband’s family lived in the Qasr Aker (Aker Place) for many years until the start of the civil war, in 1975, when the fighting began right in front of their door. They found a temporary residence in a safer neighborhood, but some 16 years later, they were still living there. Zokak el-Blatt found itself right on the Green Line between christian East en muslim west-Beirut. When the owners left, the refugees, fleeing their houses from other parts of the country/city, flew in, and that was the end of that.

Another beautiful building, abandoned. Waiting for a buyer so they can construct highrise in its place.

The actual house of hubbie is still there, all 700 M2 of it, and they still have the rent contract, but the place has seen countless refugees since 1975, and it’s not habitable anymore. Imagine a house of 700 m2 with ceilings 6 meters high (18 feet)! Guess what that will do to you electricity bill. Anyway, the neighborhood has had its best days, but a lot of its former glory can still be seen and visited. There are lots of fabulous buildings still around. Unfortunately they have either been turned into schools, and thus revamped, or are abandoned, and falling apart.This one reminded me of an American barn, and guess what? It is an American barn! The building was prefabricated in Ohio, shipped to Beirut, and once constructed in 1920, housed an American publishing company run by Protestant missionaries.
This hovel wasn’t on the list, but I thought it was pretty impressive. The ‘owner’ didn’t want me to take a picture of the house, and we threatened each other with calling the police. :)

The Heneine Palace in the front (right) with the Ziade Palace in the back. Both were built in the 1860’s, and both were abandoned at the start of the civil war, never to be inhabited again. The former inhabitants have taken up residence in other more posh neighborhoods since then, and are trying to sell.

The neighborhood walk was organized by a group that also works with Souk el Tayeb. The initiative is a good one, although it’s a bit shocking to see mainly foreigners show up for the guided tours, and some Lebanese; the kind that rarely speak Arabic amongst themselves. I’d like them to tackle some other neighborhoods, like Monot , Gemayze and Sursock, where the architectural heritage is even more mindboggling. You can, by the way, walk in other neighborhoods as well, with a guide. This is organized by WalkBeirut, but I cannot vouch for the quality, never walked with them. It seems that on Saturdays, there’s a tour with a special emphasis on the city’s architectural history at 4:30. The whole tour includes 23 stops. To try it for yourself, contact Walk Beirut.
And I couldn’t resist this one; another pair of taule players.

For this Kind of Income Tax . . .

I got yelled at at the post office today.

It did surprise me a bit; it is, after all, the fourth Saturday in a row that I spent better part of my morning there in order to organize my son’s Arabic exemption papers (Yep, I’m still there). I mean, we’re almost like family now, I practically know them all by name.

The first Saturday they needed to figure out how to solve my problem. The figured it out; I had paperwork missing.
The second Saturday I came with the missing paperwork, but then their computers were down.
The third Saturday I came back, the computers were working, but it turned out that some of the paperwork needed authorization first, so they send them to the Ministry of Education before we could proceed.

And here I was today, fourth Saturday in a row, with the authorized papers, waiting politely in line. It did irk me a bit that a seemingly decent looking lady overtook me, but I figured she must have had a reason. But when the lady at the third counter asked someone - who just came in - what he wanted, while I was standing like an idiot in that stupid line, waiting for someone to help me, I rolled my eyes.

A bit too dramatically, it seems, because the gentleman behind me decided to come to the rescue, and he belted out to the entire staff “What the hell are you thinking, letting us standing like idiots in the line while you let other people pass!?”

That didn't go down very well with the postal workers behind the counter, and they yelled back “What are you yelling at us for?” The verbal abuse went on for quite a bit, while the rest of the customers stood there, ignoring it. After all, fist fights have ensued over lesser matters, they know from experience.

It wasn’t pretty, but it did get me shoved to an empty counter. By that time however, the mood had changed, and the ladies were in no frame of mind to be helpful. No matter that we were almost family, after four Saturdays in a row.
It seemed that the papers I had gotten back from the Ministry were not stamped as requested. They were returned with some scribbles in pencil on them

“Why not?” I asked, and the lady read the scribbles.
She replied in Arabic.
“Well, what does that mean?”I asked again.
But she was in no mood to translate anything. She refused to say anything in French nor English, although from the past three Saturdays I am well aware of the fact that she can. And I know, she doesn’t have to. But it would be nice if I knew what was written on those papers in pencil.

I decided not to push it. I’ve got to go back with these papers to my son’s school, figure out what is missing/incomplete this time, and wait for next Saturday.
And then next Saturday, we’ll try again. Maybe they’ll be in a better mood.

And all this has ruined pretty much my entire Saturday, this attitude issue, and the pathetic bureaucracy.

Until now. I was just organizing my accounting. And I noticed that I paid only 4,075,099 LBP income tax this past fiscal year. That’s only 2,707 US dollars. Or 1,844 Euros. In think my Dad in Holland pays that on a monthly basis. My road tax bill last year was only some $100 as well.

And I figure, for that kind of income tax, I think I can handle a clusterf%#@*d bureaucracy and some yelling at the post office.And so I chilled, like the gentlemen playing taule (backgammon) on the street. Maybe I should make a collection of these:.

How Can You Not

Liliane of Lebanon Aggregator wrote that if you read my Dutch perspective of Lebanon “you will fall in love with Lebanon all over again.”

But how can you not love a place . . .

where your colleagues come to work in footwear like this,
where you can pick the rosemary for the pasta sauce on the side of the road instead of buying it at $1 a twig in the supermarket, like you do in Holland,
where you can see the sun come up in the city,
where you can cast long shadows over the road in the morning,
and where your daughter plucks you a ‘flower ring’ from a tree every morning while walking her to school.

All this is of course only applicable when you are not dealing with government institutions.
And traffic.
And lining up.
And customer service.
And social services.
And male chauvinism.
And discrimination.
And online banking.
And pollution.
And any type of bureaucracy.
And building inhabitants who do not pay their bills on time.
Or building inhabitants who never pay their bills.
Yet insist on sharing the same services.
And plumbers.
And janitors.
And service drivers.
And . . . . (you go one).

But that is for another day. Today, only happy thoughts.