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.
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.
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