Float On

The inside of Atatürk International Airport gives flashbacks of a snow drifted winter day spent wandering its departure lounges, the sky outside pitch-black throughout, in my memory at least. A day before I knew Lebanon, Beirut and the good friends and countless unforgettable days and small details of the last five and a half months. Arriving here earlier, I walked past the transit passenger helpdesk where I had taken part in a scramble of angry passengers rearranging snowed-off flights. Today there was nobody there. I walked to the window at the bottom of the slope in front of the main departures notice board. Where before, visibility did not extend beyond the grainy grounded Boeing 737s, today I could see all the way past the green trees at the airport boundary and to the sea.

Sitting opposite a restaurant where I wrote my first blog post away from home, I watched people of every conceivable race and appearance float by. Tanned Koreans, women in full niqab, blonde Dutch children, Saudis, formal Brits, Indians in saris, Rastafarians, hipsters, airport retail staff on rollerskates. I'm surrounded by the world, but it remains impenetrable as I sit in silence.

The lights went out on my last day in Lebanon. With my quarter plunged into an indefinite power blackout by the Lebanese electricity provider, I spent no small effort mopping water from our apartment floor after rescuing my soaking clothes from the stricken washing machine. Once the rush was over, I crammed my things into my backpack and said goodbye to my flatmates and Fustu. As I picked the little cat up, he stretched forward and gave me a playful bite on the nose. I felt a tear in my eye.

I left the apartment and hailed a taxi on the street outside. Blaming "aj'ah", traffic jams, the driver took a route I'd never seen before. Dawra, Achrafieh, Sin el-Fil and Furn ech-Chebbak all slipped past. He turned down a dusty sliproad, from where you could see back across the city from a slightly elevated position, before finally coming down on to the old airport road with its big mosques and concrete shack-like stores and restaurants. A blue sign saying 'Thankyou for visiting Bourj al-Barajneh' marked the end of the journey through town as the taxi entered the airport complex.

After take-off the plane banked sharply to the right and flew almost parallel to the Corniche for a while. I could make out al-Raouché/Pigeon Rocks and even the lighthouse and the concrete promontory of the al-Manara restaurant behind it. Before long the atmospheric haze of the Middle Eastern summer afternoon finally blurred out the Lebanese coastline and mountain range beyond.

Uncle Jim from Nabatiye

The little girl sitting next to me on the minibus to Saida tapped me on the shoulder and asked my name: 'Shu ismak?'. I told her, and we repeated it back and forth a few times until she was happy with her pronunciation. She then asked the names of my two friends who were sitting in front of me, and where we came from. Her mother, with a voice that sounded like she smoked a 20-pack for breakfast, explained that her daughter had seen her first foreigner in a restaurant and, fascinated by the yellow hair, had wanted to speak to them at every opportunity since.

My own time Lebanon is now countable in hours, but the country fluxes on with internet blackouts, burning tyres and summer holiday visitors. I'll just miss Ramadan which starts in a couple of weeks' time. I am at a loose end, waiting to leave, not wanting to wait, but not wanting time to pass. Yesterday we visited Nabatiye, a city conspicuous by its absence from any travel guide, in the heartlands of Shia country in the south. It was at the forefront of the resistance against Israeli occupation prior to 2000. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar al-Assad adorn city centre rooftops, overlooking the town square. The altitude of 500 metres offers slight, but gratefully received relief from the now almost impossible heat of Beirut. We found a restaurant in the large back room of a butcher's and had lunch.

With tourist attractions scarce, we asked some taxi drivers if they could take us to a former military prison further south. This turned out to be impossible without a permit from the army, which we did not have. Hearsay put us on the bus to Sour, from where it might be possible to take a back road around the checkpoint. A stocky, silver-haired man in his late sixties, dabbing sweat from his forehead with a hankerchief, sat near us and began to make conversation. Like the little girl in Saida, he had a curiosity for speaking with foreigners. Proud of his fluent English, he explained that he moved to Australia in the 1970s and came back regularly to visit. He told us the less-than-groundbreaking news that there were different dialects in Arabic and that Lebanon had suffered a lot of conflicts over the years. He explained that no-one in the West knew the real story, as the media there was too influenced by Israel and America, so he was glad we had come to see it for ourselves.

The questionable agenda of his own media sources did not detract from his genial and helpful countenance, which, along with his appearance, reminded me of a well-liked family member back home, popular for his firm handshakes, home-made pickled onions and kind, sociable nature. He pointed us in the right direction as we changed buses, bound for Sour. The taxi drivers in Sour wanted $100 to beat the checkpoint trap, so we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and early evening at one of our favourite beaches, where burkinis and bermuda shorts blend seamlessly to the sound of modern tarab music.

I leave for home in two days and turn thirty in six. The foggy veil of time is closing in on half a year in a Beirut which will soon exist only in my head, becoming ever more distant while the real Beirut and Lebanon move irresistably onwards on their bumpy and unpredictable course, unaffected by my fleeting presence.

Manouche Memoirs

Zaatar wa khaddara. Every day during my morning shift of work I hit a wall of hunger at around 10.30am. I leave the office and walk along the obstacle course that is Gemmayzeh Street, with its pavement parked cars, never ending construction and dawdling pedestrians. ‘Welcome to Lebanon!’ shouts the owner of the Le Chef restaurant, even though I’ve been here for five months. It takes me all of about five minutes to start sweating profusely as I weave amongst the morning activity. Luckily this is all the time I need to reach Snack Na Geo. I walk in and with either a nod or a gruff ‘Kifak’, the baker puts tomato, cucumber and mint on the round bread base with its oily layer of the salty crunchy local spice zaatar, and slides it into the oven on a long wooden stick with a metal plate to hold the flat dough. I pay one dollar and receive the rolled up manouche, biting into its freshly baked deliciousness as I leave, not to be bothered by hunger again for several hours.

Lebanon is a country of contradiction and incongruity, but manouche is everywhere. The zaatar and salad version is only one of a number of options which also include melted cheese; meat; and kishek, a paste cooked from labneh (a creamy milk product) and tomato. Manouche stands are a feature of streets in Hamra, Achrafieh, Bourj el-Barajneh, Saida, Sour, Tripoli, Bcharre, Baalbek and any other small town or village you can name. Taxi drivers, construction workers and housewives can be seen eating them while going about their business.

Lebanon is famous for its mezze, a selection of tasty small dishes like hummus, fried potatoes and the kibbeh meatballs, designed to be shared in a social setting. Manouche, on the other hand, is like a loyal companion. You don’t need anyone else to be around to eat it and it will always be there.

I no longer need to speak when I go to Snack Na Geo, as I’ve ordered the same thing so many times. The three bakers, two of them brothers, are always ready, working away at the big open oven. ‘Ahlan’ comes the reply as I thank them for another zaatar wa khaddara. I even saw them at Souq al-Ahad once, saying hello as they passed, still wearing the matching green polo shirts they have on at work, presumably stocking up on zaatar for a new week at the best manouche joint in town.

Monday in Tripoli

Since recent sectarian clashes it’s not been high on many must-see lists, but with no conflicts reported during the last few weeks, I wanted to go to Tripoli again, having first visited a few months ago. Foreigners were conspicuous by their absence. More soldiers walked around on the streets, most of them off-duty. However, it was safe with no tangible change in atmosphere. We filled ourselves up on delicious mezze for half of Beirut prices at a spacy restaurant in an old stone building with toilet doors that didn’t lock and a big window view of the street. The people working the stalls in the souq were friendly. Teenage girls followed us around the market, fascinated by the blonde hair of my Danish companions.

Fish, meat, vegetables, spices, religious pendants for hanging on car rearview mirrors. Hijabs, baggy trousers and other clothes made by tailors. An amount of shoes that seemed disproportionate. All this filled the souq, which is big enough for us not to be covering old ground by wandering through its narrow alleys. We came out on the side near the river and drank freshly-squeezed orange juice while looking towards the suburbs climbing the hill on the far side. In between was what looked like an abandoned market, or perhaps one that is only open at weekends. Old shoes littered the ground, big piles of them. Faded plastic shelters and tables stood untended.

Seeing what looked like another market on the far side, we walked across and found ourselves in a much poorer area. A few people glared at us out of surprise. Next to one old factory building in a state of advanced disrepair stood a mosque with several broken windows. At the end of the street a tank guarded what looked like the start of a different suburb as the road wound up a hill. The junction was blocked with barbed wire. This was possibly Bab al-Tabbaneh, where fatal clashes between pro and anti-Syrian government supporters occurred in May, but we weren't certain. We took a left turn and continued further into the suburb. A couple of people stopped to say hello. A stack of metal bars rested on a table in front of an ironmonger’s workshop on the right of the street. A boy of about ten picked one up, held it like a rifle and pretended to shoot us with it. Somehow it didn’t feel hostile. We walked past grey square crumbling apartment blocks with balconies stuck to their facades. Patches of rubble with scraps of cars filled the open space in front.

The town continued but we turned back towards the city centre, walking along in a main road until we were almost at the more upmarket el-Mina harbour area before ending up back at one of the main squares, Sahat al-Nour. Suffering from too much time exposed to the boiling heat, we stopped in the park to sit down and drink water. Nearby, fast food restaurants steamed by the street, preparing sandwiches, shawarmas and falafels as they always have. Craving the tasty Tripolitan street food, only our bloated stomachs from the earlier restaurant visit held us back. I bought some colourful flakes of soap from an old khan in the souq to freshen up the air in my apartment. We had chanced upon the ‘wrong’ side of town and returned unscathed with full stomachs and superficial shopping.

My Neighbour's House

My neighbour’s house is one of the most charming buildings I have ever set foot in. It is on the corner of the street but is set back off a courtyard, further away from the road than the other buildings. The house itself is a wonderful coming together of Ottoman arches, French windows and faded blue and white paint coats. Vines grow through yellowing Almaza crates left on the patio. There are almost as many balconies as there are windows. The interior is equally handsome. Shelves made of doors, vintage Beirut photo art, streetlights, shop signs and other relics from a previous lifetime all contribute to the nostalgic atmosphere.

Most of the buildings in the section of Mar Mikhael in which I live date from, I think, the early part of the 20^th century when the Armenian community started to spread across the river from neighbouring Bourj Hammoud. I have no idea how old my neighbour’s house is, but it is certainly a lot older than any of the others nearby.

The house is slated for demolition. The owners, presumably seeing the land as the asset, rather than the building, have ostensibly decided to replace it with a bigger, modern building that will use more square metres and provide more property to rent out. The new building would likely be of the faceless grey concrete variety, just like countless others springing up all over Achrafieh and Hamra as quickly as the heritage of these areas disappears.

There’s a story going around about the reconstruction of Downtown after the war years had left it razed to the ground. During excavations, an unprecedented amount of Roman ruins were discovered underneath the foundations of the destroyed buildings. So many, in fact, that the authorities didn’t know what to do with them. While some were preserved and can be seen today, many were cast aside, thrown into the sea in the headrush of progress. Throwing Roman ruins into the sea? This is the country that takes the wrecking ball to buildings that would be untouchable almost anywhere else. 

Bonsoir and bon voyage, New York

Taxi to Qadisha

One Sunday a few weeks ago I stood in a friend’s apartment in Geitawi at 9am. Four of us, including our Arabic teacher, had decided to rent a car together and drive to the Qadisha Valley, in the hilly interior in the north east a couple of hours or so from Beirut. The car had been rented in a stereotypically Arab way, by word of mouth. The baker on the bottom floor of the building had a son who rented out cars. They were good cars. He can rent you one for a very good price. We called to confirm the booking several times during the week. Sure, I’ll drop the car off at yours. I’ll be there at 9. No problem, ma fii mishkileh.

When the day came and neither the baker’s son nor the car arrived, no explanation was forthcoming from his switched off phone or the suddenly taciturn baker. At a loss, we flagged a taxi and asked whether he knew of any car rental companies that were open on Sundays. Sure, he knew, mish mishkileh. He’d be happy to take us there for the special tourist price of 10 dollars.  For 10,000 Lebanese lira, two thirds of this, we had a deal. He took us far into Sin el-Fil, to an establishment that seemingly only rented white Bentleys and convertibles for weddings and had a minimum rental period of four days. Great. We asked the driver if he knew of anywhere else. Ma fii mishkileh. He drove round in a large convoluted circle and ended back at the wedding company, presumably thinking we wouldn’t remember what it looked like.

Once we had taken leave of this clown we flagged down a new taxi, deciding to go to the Armenian quarter, Bourj Hammoud, in a final attempt at finding a car before conceding defeat. A white Toyota estate pulled up. We hopped in, our teacher in the front. After a couple of minutes of generally indecipherable chatter with the driver he turned around and said to us, ‘Don’t worry, he’s Syrian, and he knows someone in Bourj Hammoud’. We went to Bourj Hammoud and again were unsuccessful after a bizarre episode in which we had to shout from the street to an overweight middle aged man hanging over the side of the third floor balcony of his apartment above his flower shop, just so he could tell us ‘ma fii sayarat’ – no cars. 

We decided to ask the Syrian taxi driver, Mazin, to take us to the Qadisha Valley. He offered us a fair price immediately which wasn’t a great deal more expensive than renting our own car would have been. He was around thirty with a Lebanese wife and child, of whom he had a picture on his phone. He drove diligently, which we were as grateful for on the hairpin gravel tracks of the Qadisha valleyside as we were in the midst of the hair-raising motorway traffic. He often stopped to ask directions, and would thank the helpful passers by with the polite expression 'Kilak/kilik zaw', literally 'You're all manners'.

Lebanon is a country of diverse beauty of a kind that affects a different nostalgia on you wherever you go; whether to the white beaches of the Mediterranean, the stony hillsides in the southern interior, the verdant Chouf, or the rolling plateau of the Bekaa.  The Qadisha Valley, with its stupefying gorges and quaint Christian hillside towns, is possibly the most wondrous of all. We stopped and ate fresh cherries plucked from a tree that seemed to mark the exact centre of the valley. We visited the childhood home of the famous poet Gibran Khalil Gibran. We drove down into the valley and ate kafta sandwiches by a waterfall and visited an old church which looked like it had been grown out of the granite of the cliff. We drove up to the top of the hills and walked out amongst the Cedar trees, the national emblem of the Lebanese flag, now all but wiped out from its countryside. Mazin joined us, preferring our company to waiting in his car.

 

On the way back we were predictably stuck in the end-of-weekend traffic which causes standstills on the motorway around Jounieh. Mazin sang Syrian songs. Our teacher switched on the radio as if to drown him out. We all laughed, switched off the radio again and listened as we edged onwards.