Walking Like a Lebanese

At some point during the last month or so I reached a saturation point. Fraying at the edges, like an old elastic band that loses its structural integrity when you stretch it too far. I felt plateaued out; like I’d done all I could here for now and that it was time to leave.

I couldn’t leave, by now I was committed. One evening a couple of weeks ago I stood by the side of the road on Armenia Street, trying to take a service taxi to Hamra. It’s a relatively long trip, and drivers are unlikely to pick you up unless their car is already full of other passengers heading in the same direction. I flagged down five, six, seven different taxis. Each time I was rejected, either with a firm ‘la’ – ‘no’– or the upwards jerk of the head and tutting noise that is an alternative way of replying in the negative, much like a shake of the head. 

I had neither the energy nor inclination to get frustrated, and had plenty of time anyway. The sky was moving from blue to mauve. I stood by the passing red-number-plated Mercedes’, Skodas and everything in between, and bided my time. Eventually one of them picked me up. Minutes later I was wandering through Hamra’s Sohoesque evening pedestrian traffic, past the bars, cafés and still-open high street stores; as bustling as the cars and cabs honking and crawling along the road beside.

One of the first things I realised when I came to Beirut was that crossing the road requires a different mentality to the one you need at home. I’m a slow learner, and it took me longer to figure out that the same thing applies to walking on the pavement. The sidewalks are narrow, often obstructed by building sites that cut all the way across into the road. Cars park bumper to bumper right up to the very edge of side street junctions. Parking valets and conversing men stand in large groups which block the way entirely, and barely notice or care when someone else approaches, wanting to get past. Old women meander along in the heat, so slowly that queues form behind them. One restaurant in Gemmayzeh, not content with the challenge already present for pedestrians, has placed an inexplicably large pot plant right outside its entrance, so big that you have to walk right around the cars parked in the road just to get by.

All this used to bother me significantly. I’d arrive at language school or the TimeOut office knocked off my stride, irritated by the countless mini-detours I’d had to take en route. I mentioned this to a friend who told me that it was one of his favourite parts of the culture here. Don’t worry, just touch the bystanders on the shoulder, they’ll move without a second glance. No-one is constantly worrying or apologising for possibly being in the way, people aren’t stressed about it, they’ll get by somehow, we’ll deal with the problem as it comes. Friendly physical contact with a stranger? At home it would set alarm bells ringing. Here, no problem.

Whether this is a genuinely Lebanese way of thinking or just an adaptation to my environment I’m not sure. But it’s contributed to a feeling of belonging here, rather than the temporary status which I seemed to have exhausted.

I’ve changed my ticket again. I’ll be here until the 17^th of July.