Coffee House

I bet you already knew this, but the word ‘coffee’ (or café, for that matter) comes from the Arabic word ‘qahwah’ ( قهوة‎). According to the etymology,   the word “originally (...) meant "wine," but perhaps rather from Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant (coffee in Kaffa is called buno, which was borrowed into Arabic as bunn "raw coffee").”

A Beirut Coffee House (outdoors as soon as the weather permits it)

Coffee, a produce coming out of Africa, was taken by Arabs back home somewhere in the 16^th century, and subsequently ended up in Europe somewhere in 1515. The next thing that followed was ‘coffee houses’; the first one was opened in Damascus in 1530, and around 1675, some 25 years after its introduction into the country, England counted some 3,000 coffeehouses. This was well before Starbucks.

In Ottoman Turkey it was banned for a while (in the 17^th century) because it was associated with rebellious political activities. The imams of Mecca weren’t altogether keen as well about these gatherings around a cup of coffee, and banned both coffeehouses and the coffee between 1511 and 1524. 

Seems like plenty of revolutions were concocted in coffee houses (source ). Up to this day, Mormons still do not drink coffee.

And so coffeehouses are a part of Arab culture. These days, new coffeehouses appear all over town, with the great majority in Hamra and Gemayzeh.

I thought about all this, as I sat in (maybe not one of the oldest, but definitely a very old) a coffeehouse that is attached to one of the oldest coffee burners  in Beirut. 

There is Beauty in Everything

Sandy road along the river



I went down into the valley of the Beirut River, near Rousseit el-Ballout, on Sunday. That is somewhere in the Metn/Chouf Mountains. Second picnic of the year. It is still a little early; I can see that from the length of the grass and the quantity of wildflowers. Usually we wallow around in knee high grass, with bees buzzing about. Or maybe nature is late. This winter has been short but cold. Funny to think that while I’m outdoors having a picnic in T-shirt, people were still skiing today. 

Beirut River with 'art'



But from the thousand-and-one wads of textile hanging in the trees branches along the river bank, I know that most of the snow that feeds this river seems to have melted; the level of the water obviously was quite a bit higher this winter.

This multicolor display of little bits of plastic, textile and cloth reminds me a little of prayer flags in Tibet. Or even better! The Wish Trees in Armenia, where old customs dictate that it brings you luck. (Thank you Miss Footloose!)  So there’s your title, it’s terribly polluted, but in its ugliness there is some beauty. Technicolor, all along its banks. It is almost an art project.

There's even beauty in trash

 The place has changed quite a bit since we had our final picnic there last summer. The beautiful meadow with the old water mill has been transformed into a farmyard. A cinder block barn has been set up with corrugated iron sheet roofing for some sorry cows, that I doubt produce any milk, there’s just not enough grass around there. There’s a mangy dog and some chickens, and all the waste they produce gets shoved right into the river.

A beautiful hole formed by rolling stones on the riverbed

My daughter found me a heart.

A pine cone lodged between an rock and a weathered branch, polished smooth by the water

I liked the roots on this tree, but the tire was in pretty good shape too.

You cannot really blame anyone. The pace of life in Beirut is so fast these days; everyone wants a piece of the cake. And if that means you’ve got to build a farm on the banks of a beautiful river, in the middle of a pine tree forest, then so be it. I can hardly say anything; my life style here in Beirut is a great contributor to the garbage.

This means for the next picnic we have to go deeper into the valley. Eventually that is going to happen with a lot of spots in this country; we’re going to have to go further and deeper in-country to find pristine valleys.  

Even this dead cameleon was beautiful

First Picnic of the Year

Some of the characters in my blog

And yes! First picnic of the year! A seaside picnic, and a little on the nippy side, but I hereby declare the picnic season opened! Oh, you're not the picnicking kind? You're the Sunday-with-the-Family-Lunch-Crowd-in-Beirut? I pity you. You have no idea what you miss out on. It's a great experience for kids. I just read that children that are exposed to germs at an earlier age do not contract as many diseases as children that are raised in a germ-free environment.





While outdoors, we collect stuff. Things. Anything. Children will in general bring rocks home. I collect stones with holes. Among other things. I pretty much collect anything. My SIL is testing here whether it is a whole hole, or just half a hole.  Limestone and sea water make for some fantastic rock formations. I string them on a rope. And then I plan to do something interesting with them, but I haven't figured out yet what.

And so, pack up your skis and get out that wicker basket, because spring has begun!

Zaitouny Bay

The board walk, restaurants on the right, boats on the left

Summer is on its way and Beirut has a new venue to explore; Zaytouni Bay. It is a 20,000 m2 waterfront project right in the heart of Beirut that only recently opened its doors. It’s a really fancy development, surrounded by hotels, with some 17 restaurants, a marina filled with yachts and a board walk (of real wood, a rare commodity in this town).

I must say that the whole construction of the place, although I drove by it about 5 times a week, totally passed me by until it was finished and up and running. My daughter was invited to a birthday party there, and so I went. You enter the site through an underground parking (one which I fear will flood during a serious storm), but when you come out, it’s a rather bizarre experience, since you basically step out of Beirut and into some other Mediterranean port in France.

This could be any French Mediterranean town

It is un-Beirut-like to me; too civilized and in shape. I have never known the pre-war Beirut, and sometimes wonder whether stories of the ‘Paris of the Middle-East’ are the figments of imagination of a people that went from a civilized place to a dump in less than a generation.

But an elderly lady I was with, assured me that this is how it used to be. We’re talking pre-war Lebanon, when it was in the late sixties, early seventies. And if you look at pictures of the old days, it does look real (go to the beach ones).

However, amidst all these fancy one-million dollar yachts (or more), there is the St. George Hotel in its former glory; as I remember Beirut. The place is standing there just as burnt out as it did in 1975, when militias, in one of their first act of destruction,  set the place on fire.



The St. George (pre-war photo) and the current marina



I am glad though that the St. George Hotel is holding out against all this perfection. The current owner of St. George is upset with the development company Solidere, which holds the Zaitouny Bay Marina, and refuses/is not allowed to rebuild the hotel. Depending on who you talk to, it’s the other side’s mistake, but it in the end it is all about money. And so the Battle of the St. George Hotel continues.

 kind of like it this way; everything all new and fancy and shiny, and then this shot-through-blown –up-burnt-out-skeleton of a Beirut icon. A humble reminder.

The current St. George

Gone Skiin'

Too busy to blog; the weather is too good!

Rainbow over Beirut

Okay, so the quality isn’t great, and the stitching didn’t work well either, but here is a full rainbow that just appeared above Beirut (although I wonder whether a full rainbow isn’t supposed to be a full circle instead of a half circle) at 17:32 local time. I don't get to see full rainbows very often.

Now that's a change from the usual sunsets, no?

First Signs of Spring

Somehow, when the first backgammon players appear on the sidewalk, that’s a sure sign of an upcoming spring.  They are still in their winter jackets, but the 'tawleh' is outdoors. On the right, hidden by the awning, you see someone lurking on a water pipe.

Bad weather is still predicted for this week, but even though there’s plenty of snow on the mountains, it’s will be too warm for skiing, unless you show up on the slope at 8 A.M. And that is very unlikely to happen with an 18-year old.


That’s it. Spring 2012 is in the air. Do I see a pattern here?
Spring 2011
Spring 2009

On Days Off, Road Rage and Zen

My children had the day off on Friday. Teacher’s Day. It’s because we do not have enough holidays in this place. I mean, we only have 18 official days off, and that’s cutting it a bit tight. So we need another one.

Plenty of snow to keep us going til the end of March

I am not complaining, because I got to ski on a Friday, which is a rare luxury for me. Friday is better, because they charge you weekday prices, and it isn’t as busy, since there are still some poor folks in this country that do work (for a living). A friend of mine links the number of public holidays to the state of the economy, since in Holland we only have 11 days off, and we do significantly better. I disagree. The Greek have 14 days off, and they don’t do much better than we do these days.

Friday also means the traffic isn’t as heavy. Or so I thought. Turns out that doesn’t make any difference at all. People that ski obvisouly don't work. I sort of had that impression already.

Which gets me to the next topic; road rage.

Last week my daughter and I observed a fantastic scene while picking her up from school. We crossed Hamra street at a green light, but since nobody really pays any attention to the color of the traffic light, we had to do quite a bit of ‘car dodging’. One young man even had to knock on someone’s car hood to draw his attention to the fact that it was green for the pedestrians and to make sure he wouldn’t get run over. Well, the owner of the car did not like that one bit. He turned the palms of both of his hands up (a gesture meaning ‘what do you want?’) and mouthed “Shou Bik!?” (What’s wrong with you?).

“What’s wrong with me?” replied the young man, pointing to his own chest. “What’s wrong with me?”

That sounded like a regular Al Pacino . And indeed. The verbal abuse lasted only a few seconds, and then the rage took over. The young man walked over to the driver’s door, opened it and entered the vehicle.

Walls of snow

And there we watched from the sidelines the little yellow car bobbing up and down as the young man obviously exerted some type of strenuous activity on the driver. By now the light had turned green for the traffic, and while some cars tried to circumvent this shaking car, others just honked their horn in anger, not aware that someone inside the car was about to be killed. Finally some taxi drivers noticed, and they blocked the remaining traffic flow as they stopped their cabs and tried to separate the two men inside the car. Priceless!

By now of course, the jam was complete, a cacophony of horns were all over the street, and two severely bruised gentlemen, were sent their separate ways. I regret not taking any pictures.

Running into friends at the slopes is probably the best thing about skiing, according to my daughter

So Friday to Feraya still had the usual traffic jams. Which somehow got my daughter to the topic of “How did that Zen workshop work out for you, Mom?”

Yes. That Zen Workshop. Some time ago, a buddhist monk in the making (with the brain of an advertising guy in the body of a nightclub doorman, according to his Twitter account) went on a ‘ yearlong spiritual quest’  to find inspiring people. His adventure, called The Quest for the 21st Centrury Warrior, brought him to Beirut where he offered a 5 hour (!) workshop.

The blurb read ‘The goal is to give you a better understanding of yourself and the other. My workshops are 'experiential' which means that you will actually feel better, more open, wiser and more understanding afterwards. Also, you will experience meditative states and inner peace.’

Well, god knows I could use some inner peace. Besides, I have a sister-in-law who is a buddhist, and I tell you, she never loses her cool, yet lives with my brother, so I am in awe of the power of buddha. Out came to yoga pants (I thought I was going to sit there and meditate) and off I went to this ‘guy in the body of a nightclub doorman’. Make no mistake, he sure was a Zen guy in the body of a bouncer.

I had assumed however that I’d be sitting there with 20 other ‘strangers’ who’d give this Zen business a try.

And playing in the snow is even better than skiing

Turns out he had called all my friends. And apparently they were all looking for some ‘inner peace’. It probably has to do with living in Beirut.

It is ‘life in the fast lane’ here on a constant basis, and being ‘a woman of a certain age’, you want to be heading the platoon out of fear of being left behind. We are, of course, mounting the rear guard, as my son will point out on a daily basis.

So how did the Zen workshop go? I learned that my voice of skepticism is probably a whole heck of a lot more present than I assumed it was. I think I am too pragmatic. And participating in a Zen workshop with your friends present, while having to open up all your ‘inner voices’, well . . . I am not yet in that mindset. My ‘yoga outfit’ was not needed either.

I need more practice. Until then, I find great ‘soulagement’ honking my horn, use a body part that has a name but which my daughter refers to as ‘the F-word finger’ and resorting to all kinds of language while I hear my child in the back of the car say “there’s another one for my swear jar!”

Well, I am all Zen here

So no Zen for me just yet. But a day on the slopes, in the sun, does it for me too. I’m all chilled.

Because its Worth Sharing . .

I didn't watch this episode, but several bloggers have already posted it (Blogging Beirut, Blogbaladi, Lebanon Aggregator, How I See Things and +961), and I think everyone should watch this one.
We're all up in arms these days about some war lord in Africa, but I believe we've got to start closer to home, and take this guy to justice, and the poor girl out of his house.

This is not necessarily how all housekeepers are treated, but things like this do happen in this country, and it is shameful!

The particular gentleman seems to have been identified, and a name is circulating. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, so will refrain from posting it, but other sites will have it.

Dog Weather

It is dog weather in Beirut.

A friend calls.

“Where are you?”

“I am on the Corniche taking a picture,” I reply

“Oh. (sigh) Not another sunset, I hope.”

Uh. No, Yes. Well, not really, I was a little too early for that. But with this dog weather, there isn’t much to do. If I had a fireplace, I’d go and sit in front of it, but mine is in the mountains, not in Beirut. And I dare say it is too cold to go to the mountains. Even with central heating, I’d need about 24 hours to heat up that place (and by then it is time to go down to Beirut again). They say on the news that snow has fallen as slow as 300 meters.

That’s pretty low for a regular Lebanese winter, which means there is snow around the mountain house. I should have gone there, but was busy all Saturday shuttling my kids around to their various destinations and activities, and that was the end of that.

It is dog weather anyway. Not much to do in town. So when I drove along the Corniche this afternoon, and saw the waves, I thought I’d take a picture. This boat (you'd have to click on the picture nd zoom it, it is quite small), by the way, is the Abou Karim II. It is a 6172 ton cargo ship from 1979. How do I know? Go here  (click on Sector 99 and zoom in). You can pretty much track any ship that passes by. You can do it with planes too, but I didn’t see one passing over as I was standing there on the Corniche.

Tomorrow I’ve got something interesting planned. Let’s see how that works out. So, yes (sigh), another sunset of sorts.