The Neighborhood Dikkaneh VII

Some of them have a talent, like this one; he’s got green fingers. He has transformed the corner of this street into a little rainforest type of thing. If you zoom in (i.e. click on the picture), you'll see an old phone in the window. You can make phone calls too, for 250 or 500 pound, which – when cell phones were not a common commodity – was a very useful service, since very few people still had functioning landlines during/after the war. And there is of course the box on the street, which functions as the garbage can.

Sietske is not in Beirut at the moment, but on her annual ‘Trek to the Motherland’. She leaves you every Friday with a typical Lebanese neighborhood ‘dikkaneh’, also called mini-market. They are all situated in Beirut. The exact road & neighborhood are indicated on the picture itself. These little stores have all disappeared in Holland; fallen victim to the big supermarket chains. But here in Beirut, we still have them. This is number 7 in a series of 12. Enjoy, while I enjoy my holiday.