Gallivanting around Lebanon in pictures: Baalbek

So my parents came to visit me for a week, which was a great opportunity to show them around the country I have been calling home for seven or so months, and a welcome break from relentless studying. It is very easy to spend extended periods of time without leaving Beirut, and I had been itching to get out of the capital for a while. Over the course of their visit, I took them to Baalbek, Mleeta (yes, again) and Jeita, and let them see Sur and Jbeil on their own like the grownups they are.

Moving to Sector 37

Before coming to Lebanon, I had a hard time imagining what a new life in Beirut would be like, but I hoped that it would somehow involve a small apartment overlooking the sea, or something suggesting similar levels of exciting possibilities.

Instead, I was convinced by my mother to apply for university housing to allay her worries about me struggling to find housing upon arrival and having to sleep under a bridge with my 314 suitcases. This sounded like a reasonable suggestion. Perhaps my dorm room would have a balcony with a view on the sea.

I did end up with a balcony, with a splendid view on a construction site, and well within earshot of an Islamic cultural center broadcasting the five daily prayer calls and the hour-long Friday noon service.

Living in a dorm was a harsh reminder of my closeted misanthropy and my strong distaste for sharing sleeping quarters. I was assigned a two-person room, but was lucky to have it for myself for most of the semester. Eventually, I had to share my living space with another person for two months. While my roommate was very sweet, I still felt that I was accommodating an intruder on my territory, a presence coercing me to do things such as shower on a regular basis and not wallow in my pajamas all day eating cereal during finals. Cohabitation in such close quarters also led to some awkward cultural interactions, such as the couple of times I came home mere minutes before my roommate's morning prayer.

With my first semester nearing to an end, the perspective of going five more months without a kitchen and the assured presence of a permanent roommate this time around was too much. I had to move out and live the dream. So by early February, I threw all my belongings into neatly packed my suitcases, and left the AUB campus for a small apartment, three roommates and two cats in the nearby neighborhood of Qoreitem.

While I now bathed in the glow of having a room of my own, living off campus was my long-awaited introduction to some previously unseen aspects of day-to-day Beiruti life.

Salafis and Ba’th Party supporters in Beirut

On Sunday, two protests were scheduled to take place in downtown Beirut. The city is well-acquainted with recurring manifestations of political will but this time it was different: The two protests concerned Syria and represented pro- and anti-Bashar al-Assad camps. What’s more, the anti-Assad protest was run by Lebanese Salafis, marking the first time the Islamic group led a political demonstration in Beirut. Their presence was upsetting the usual pro-resistance March 8 / pro-Western March 14 political divide that governs most issues in Lebanon.

That one time I went to the Hezbollah Museum

One of the places I most desperately wanted to go to when I arrived in Lebanon was the Museum of the Resistance in Mleeta in the South. The museum was created in 2010 by Hezbollah to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the retreat of Israel from South Lebanon. A museum on a given political organization created and maintained by said organization is the kind of surrealist self-serving enterprise I just had to see for myself. In mid-January, one of my classes got to visit the museum, an occasion that was exciting for the reasons mentioned above, and also because I thought class trips were only for middle-schoolers.

The museum is situated on top of a hill which used to be the location of a Hezbollah encampment during the fighting against the Israeli Occupation Forces. At approximately 1.5 km in altitude, my attitude of denial when it comes to wearing proper winter clothing proved particularly painful on this January morning. The hill was covered in thick fog that we were told used to be prime weather to attack Israelis without being spotted.

View from Mleeta

Are you sure you're French?

I have seen many people over the years try (and fail) to pinpoint where I come from. I find this extremely amusing, seeing how I am a pretty generic white person and don't see what could mark me as being from one specific place over another. The crazy guesses I have heard are even funnier knowing that I have the blandest genealogical make-up ever. My parents are both from the same village in Normandy, and the only possibility of exoticism in my genes is my great-grandfather's unknown father, who, let's face it, was most probably from somewhere super foreign like a neighboring village. Or perhaps Brittany.

Among the most memorable guesses as to my origins, I have been told that I look/sound like someone from Detroit, North Carolina, Italy and even Greece. I was also told over Christmas break by someone I had just met that I sound foreign when I speak French, which was rather upsetting, although probably true. But for some odd reason, no guess keeps coming back quite as often as Eastern Europe.

This is a sarcastic article on articles on Beirut

From NOW Lebanon, "This is a cliché article about why 'Beirut is back'"

My favorite part:

This paragraph begins with one of the four “p” metaphors: pawn, playground, pearl or Paris. Beirut is like one of these. I could also use Switzerland as an analogy, but that is *so* overdone. And take note: I will repeatedly refer to Lebanon’s capital throughout this article as if it is representative of the country as a whole.

And also:

I will also peg a picture to the side of the article that shows a woman wearing a mini-skirt and high heels walking down the same street as a woman wearing a hijab, just in case I didn’t quite prove to you how “Western” Lebanon is.

You are allowed to beat me with a stick (or a plastic ruler, if you're a service driver) if I ever use any of the horrific platitudes exhibited in that article.

Clash of civilizations

Happy New Year everyone! Or, as we would say here, سنة سعيدة (sana sayideh). I hope this year brings you all many great things before we inevitably perish on December 21. At this point during the year, I will be busy working on my master's research thesis, so I for one will be welcoming the Apocalypse with open arms.

I have been severely lagging on the posting recently, although for my defense, I have been over my head lately with final papers. Oh the joys of going back to school... The semester ends in two weeks, so hopefully by February I will be able to discuss more fun things than "I spent six hours at the library today."

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you an ongoing preoccupation, something that has plagued my social interactions in Lebanon since my arrival. 

The bise.