A Cruel Winter

A Syrian child, wearing sandals in the snow. Photo from Facebook.

Winter made it way to Lebanon last week in the most drastic way. A winter storm, dubbed Alexa, swept through the region, bringing gusty winds, rain, and snow to what had so far been a mild end to fall. In an area already fraught with disaster, the weather has turned out to be the latest violence inflicted on us all, but most especially on the Syrian refugees.

On Wednesday evening, my roommate and I found ourselves in the dark as the storm cut off our electricity for four hours, leaving us shaking from the cold in the living room despite wearing two layers of every item of clothing. And yet, we had a roof over our heads, and walls around us, no matter how poorly isolated they might have been. Across Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were trying to survive the night under tents and flimsy shelters.

Ya Madame

The horror! The horror! (Image found on Tumblr)

I turned 26 this month. I am now solidly in "mid-20s" territory, toeing into the "late 20s," and I have a lot of feelings about it. Angst about growing old is a pretty universal sentiment, but I feel like there has been a conspiracy against me as of late to remind me that not only am I no longer a spritely teenager, I don't look like one either.

It happened one evening in June. As I was headed home, I had to pass through an alley in which a soldier and another man were standing. The soldier gestured to his friend to move out of the way and "let the mademoiselle go through." All well and good, until I got to his level, and heard him add: "or is it madame?"

For the first time in my life, I had been madame-d.

Views of Beirut, 2012

As I was gazing through the bus window at the Beirut cityscape one afternoon, I realized how this place never ceases to charm me. There is something about Beirut, a beauty that is neither quite slick nor gritty, but is nevertheless there, and undeniably so. The elegant balcony railings, the rebellious graffiti, the colorful shutters, and this omnipresent warm yellow, coating the walls of so many buildings.

I haven't been very good at posting pictures on this blog. I actually haven't been very good at taking pictures, period. But here are a few I took last year, mostly in the neighborhood of Hamra and nearby. I have since then moved to the east side of Beirut, and hopefully I'll take the time to capture some more views of the city.

Manara

A Season of Goodbyes

While spring has only indecisively tiptoed its way back to Beirut, the end of the school year is already inching closer, which means the inevitable graduation of the class with whom I began this master's degree endeavor. I would have been one of them, if I wasn't willingly delaying my thesis for a myriad of reasons—not least of which my desire to stay in Lebanon for as long as possible.

The ebb and flow of arrivals and departures in Beirut seems to follow a migration pattern mirroring the academic calendar. And while I have already seen some very dear friends leave Lebanon in the past year and a half, the next two months are filled with the exodus of many people I have grown to care about since I have come here.

I have come to the strange realization of how fragile the social nest I have built here can be, and how unwittingly reliant it has been on people who have always meant to leave, at some point or another.

Déja-vu

How do you even start talking about tragedies? How can you write personally about events that take lives, shake some people's worlds intensely and intimately without sounding callous, cold, or even reappropriating them by talking at length about your personal feelings on the matter?

I have been trying to think of how I can possibly discuss the car bomb that happened almost two weeks ago near Sassine Square in the east Beirut. How the immediate aftermath was one of panic, incomprehension and solidarity, before once again falling prey to the ugliness of political divisions.

It's during moments like these that I hate politics the most—the indecency of politicians tripping over themselves to get on television first and try to spin death and destruction to their advantage. When it was revealed that the attack targeted Wissam al-Hassan, dread set in the pit of my stomach. There was no escaping the political now.

Peaking Inside Pandora's Box

It's been a while since my last post, and I apologize for having left on such a somber note. The week following the death of Sheikh Ahmad Abd-al-Wahad, which sparked the Tarek al-Jdideh clashes, was a weird one in Beirut, one that definitely showed a new aspect of Lebanon I had yet to see.

Hamra was uncharacteristically quiet. The usual traffic jams on the neighborhood's main street were conspicuously absent. The parking lot outside of my apartment, usually filled to the brim with haphazardly parked cars, was eerily empty. The café I holed myself in daily to work suddenly got a security person at the entrance. Small details that might have gone unnoticed to someone unfamiliar with my neighborhood, but showed that apprehension was shifting uneasily under the surface.

Waiting for the storm

The rumor has been going around for a while; hushed tones of confidentiality, with the gravity of a doctor giving a solemn diagnosis: This summer, it's happening. Lebanon is going to blow up.

At first, I shrugged it off, if a little uneasily. In the darkness of winter, the prospect of conflict months away seemed like a distant, unlikely possibility; so many things could change until then. But as word came of clashes in Tripoli, pitting Lebanese supporters of al-Assad against those supporting the Syrian rebels, it became that much harder to ignore the long-known fact that Lebanon absorbs every conflict, every tension from the region like a sponge.

But still, even as this revelation started setting in with incoming news of several deaths in the north last week, we began bargaining with fate: As long as this just stays in Tripoli, the country can be okay. Just some clashes at the Syrian border, Lebanon can handle that. As long as it doesn't get to Beirut, we'll be fine. Lebanon will be fine.

But these negotiations were over very soon. Last night, by text message, the news came: sporadic shootings in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Tarek el-Jdideh. In cause, the recent death of Sunni cleric Ahmad Abdel-Wahed, killed by Lebanese soldiers in the north.

Trying to fall asleep last night, I hung to this word, "sporadic," like a buoy. This didn't have to be big. One night of burning tires and shooting didn't have to mean the beginning of war. It couldn't. Lebanon has been through too much, it doesn't need this again.

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.

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.

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.

Happy three-month anniversary Lebanon! I wrote you a poem list.

It's hard to believe it's been three months since I first set foot in Lebanon. In some ways, it feels like I have been here forever, but I still have so much to learn. I've passed the point of being submerged in the unfamiliar, and some of my initial impressions now seem laughably inaccurate.

So now, instead of listing things that seem out of the ordinary, here is a list of things that might have seemed odd three months ago, but to which I am now accustomed:

Façades of Beirut

I have been doing a lot of traveling around/sight-seeing in the past two weeks. My mother came to visit for a week, which was nice family time. I was finally reunited with my camera charger, which means one thing: this site can finally have visuals to satisfy you!, my ADD-prone brethren of the Millenial generation who avoid big blocks of text like the plague!

I also spent two days this past weekend on a road trip in the South of Lebanon. A lot to talk about there. And since I know you are all clearly dying to know what Hezbollah Land is like, the new blog header is a picture taken during that trip. Consider it a teaser of sorts.

In the meantime, here are some photos which are a good representation (in my humble opinion) of some of the diversity of the Beirut urban landscape. These might just be buildings, but I can't help but think they give an idea of the dynamics of the city, which I might discuss one day once I've mulled it over long enough to have something halfway decent to write about it.

Surviving the Service: the first of what will undoubtedly become a series

The concept of a "service"

Beirut, for its apparent lack of public transportation, has a very practical means of moving about called the service—pronounced the French way, aka "serveece."

Basically, a service is just like a regular taxi, except it picks up and drops off multiple people along the way. Think bus, if a bus didn't have a predetermined route, and if by "bus" you meant a car built sometime back when the Soviet Union was still a thing and seat belts were an optional feature.

Day 3: The luxury of getting lost

Written a couple of days ago, but I've been too busy to post until now.

I have been thinking about "L'Auberge Espagnole" for the past couple of days. In one of the early scenes, as Romain Duris' character arrives in Barcelona, he describes those peculiar first moments when places and names sound so alien, before becoming a part of the familiar.

Quand on arrive dans une ville, on voit des rues en perspective. Des suites de bâtiments vides de sens. Tout est inconnu, vierge. Voilà, plus tard on aura marché dans ces rues, on aura été au bout des perspectives, on aura connu ces bâtiments, on aura vécu des histoires avec des gens. Quand on aura vécu dans cette ville, cette rue on l’aura prise dix, vingt, mille fois.


Urquinaona, Passeig de Gràcia, Laietana. Au bout d’un moment tout ça vous appartient, parce qu’on y a vécu. C’est ce qui allait m’arriver, et je ne le savais pas encore.

(When arriving in a city, we see streets in perspective. Sequences of buildings empty of meaning. Everything is unknown, virgin territory. Later we'll have walked these streets. We'll have been to the end of the perspectives, we'll know these buildings. We'll have lived things with people. Once we'll have lived in this city, we'll have walked down this street ten, twenty, a thousand times.

Urquinaona, Passeig de Gracia, Laietana. After a while, they all become yours because you've lived there. This was going to happen to me, but I didn't know it yet.)

Beirut, with its harmonies of car horns and prayer calls, its omnipresent construction, a language so infuriatingly out of my reach... Beirut is intimidating. Part of me wants to stay inside when I am alone because I can't help but feel that I don't belong yet; and I wish that I could skip this part and go straight to mastering the place with assurance, to making it mine.

But that's not how things work. And in order to reach that level of intimacy with the city, I have no choice but to go outside and act like I belong here until I finally do.

Day 1: some initial observations

I arrived in Beirut yesterday afternoon without too much trouble, and have already seen my friend who has been living here for close to two years, which was great. I'm living in a hotel for the next week or so before I can move in on campus, and this morning has been about getting the necessary shit done (bank account, phone, etc.)

Here are a couple of things I've noted in the past 24 hours: