Amy’s Journal

Last night we went and saw an Iraqi oud player in concert. The guy is called Omar Bashir and his father was known as “the king of oud”. He was a great player, but there were some jazzy moments that I could have done without. His new record (the 16th) is called ‘Latin Oud’ and there were a lot of sort of flamenco fusion songs.

Afterward, I ended up going to a bar called de Prague (salsa music?!) and then a bar called Layla (possibly another leftist den) with my friend, Lisa, her activist roommate, the aforementioned oud player, and a wacky Marxist guy who told us a story about how his father was recently kidnapped in Baghdad and had to be rescued. I later confirmed that the story was true, but that the details of this fellow’s heroics were somewhat embellished. I think perhaps that his role in kidnapping the kidnapper’s son in order to secure his father’s release was perhaps less instrumental than he indicated.

This morning we went for a spin on a hot air balloon. They have one here right near downtown as a tourist attraction of sorts, so we decided to check it out. It was actually rather wobbly and it felt sort of frail in the wind at first, but I got used to it and was able to enjoy myself. The view of the city and coastline was spectacular, though a bit hazy. We had a bird’s eye view of the spot where Hariri was killed, though apparently the 30 foot crater has recently been filled in.

We almost went to Baalbek today when we found out about a going away party–our friend, Nancy’s husband has finally got his visa and is heading to NYC for the first time. They were married in December 2002 and we went to their wedding reception. Being a young man from Baalbek does not help the visa process along when trying to relocate to the US these days. Ethan has a lot of work, though, so we decided that we had to skip it.

I was just downtown, where Amal and Hezbollah folks are getting rowdy due to Berri’s re-election. Lots of flag waving and impressive fireworks displays.

I just watched (on TV) the new parliament re-elect Nabih Berri as Speaker. Berri has held this position since the early 90s, and has been the leader of Amal since 1980. The Lebanese Consitution says that the Speaker must be a Shi’a Muslim (and the President must be a Christian, and the Prime Minister must be a Sunni). Obviously, Berri is pro-Syria, but the anti-Syrians ended up supporting him in yet another somewhat confusing political move.

It was interesting to watch, because each member of parliament walked up to the front and placed a paper ballot into a ballot box. As soon as this was finished, the votes were immediately read out, one by one, live and on television. The whole process was over in a matter of minutes. Apparently, there was a lot of celebratory gunfire, but we didn’t hear any of it.

Another newsworthy event here in Lebanon- it has been decided that Palestinian refugees can now get work permits for certain clerical and manual labor jobs. The cynical view is that since many of the traditionally low paid Syrians returned to Syria because of the political situation here, now a new class of undercompensated workers is needed. On the other hand, at least it is finally legal for a 57 year old who was born in this country to hold a job.

UPDATE: I finally heard the gunfire, but it was far away and quickly drowned out by the call to prayer.

Yesterday we went to Baalbek with several friends. Baalbek is the most impressive archaeological site in Lebanon – some pretty amazing Roman/Phoenician temples in the Beka’a Valley. When Ethan and I were here in December 2002, we visited the ruins the morning after a big snowstorm and there was about a foot of snow on the ground. We had the place nearly to ourselves, all bright white snow and soaring columns. This time was a bit less magical, though to be fair, I spent a good part of the time playing with our friends’ delightful 2 year old daughter.

We also stopped in at an old but refurbished mosque (with myself and the other women donning Jawa capes) and for a visit at the largest hewn rock in the world. Before heading out, we perused the Hezbollah t-shirts and key chains for sale in the tourist shops. Baalbek is the HQ for Hezbollah and there are flags, banners, and posters everywhere.

Later that evening, we finally got to go the music festival, Fete de la Musique. This festival was started in Paris in the 80s, its aim being to bring music to the streets. Many European cities have followed Paris’ lead. It is supposed to take place on the Solstice, but as it happened, that was the day that George al Hawi was killed, so the festival was rescheduled. There were stages set up all around the downtown area, with people gathering to see mostly Lebanese musicans perform next to the ruins of Roman baths, in churches, or in parking lots. It was festive (though Saturday night in Beirut always is) and also inspiring to see so many people getting to enjoy free music in the open air. We didn’t see any life-changing music (and the rappers were downright awful) but it was a wonderful time anyhow.

It’s now a lazy Sunday morning but hopefully we are going to motivate to go to the racetrack in a little while. The Hippodrome holds races every Sunday, and we have been meaning to go since we got here.

One of the things that I did today was wander downtown. George al Hawi’s funeral was today, so I stuck around to watch the crowds that had gathered outside the church. Hawi was a former Communist Party leader, so there were a lot of Communist flags and many Che Guevara t-shirts. You could hear the service being given inside the church, but naturally I couldn’t follow any of it. According to Reuters, about 10,000 people turned out. However, the calls for businesses to strike today seemed to have gone unheeded, as they did when the opposition called for a strike after Kassir’s death.

Yesterday I went on a little road trip with Carrie and Lisa. Carrie is our journalist friend who is probably going back to the US in a few weeks. I met Lisa beccause she is working at Association Najdeh for the summer. We rented a car (Carrie drove) and were off.

We first headed to the Chouf Mountains to Beiteddine, quickly stopping on the way to check out the very kitschy Moussa Castle. I’ve seen this place before, and it is listed in the guidebooks, but had never stopped in. I think there were more tourists there than anyplace I have been in Lebanon (a couple of busloads of Jordanians plus others). Mr. Moussa is an old man, whom we actually met. He had big dreams as a kid to own a castle, and I guess at some point, he made it big and was able to build this thing. The structure itself looks like a big, bulky carnival castle. Inside he has filled it with these sort of mannequin/sculptures which depict different scenes of Lebanese life and other random stuff, including a scene where he is being beaten by his teacher as a child. Some of the figures are mechanized and the whole thing is just bizarre. It also houses a huge antique gun collection.

We moved on to Beiteddine (House of Faith) where we enlisted a pocket sized and toothless guide. He gave us a tour in a mixture of English, French, and Arabic, so we only caught so much of it. The rooms in the palace are amazing. All we really got to see were reception rooms but they were lovely, with the ceilings and walls being ornately decorated. We also checked out the hammam (bath house) and wandered around on the grounds. There is a huge festival there every summer, and the stage was being installed.

Then we headed on to Aanjar, way over near the Syrian border (to give you an idea of how small Lebanon is, it is not much more than an hours drive from Beirut). The ruins at Aanjar form the only remaining Umayyad city in the Middle East. The Umayyads were one of the first Islamic dynasties, beginning in about 660. They were responsible for the Muslim expansion into North Africa and Spain. Aanjar was built very early on, so there is still a lot of Roman influence in the architecture. We had lunch in Aanjar city as well. Since the town is now mostly Armenian, we were hoping for some Armenian food, but the restaurant where we ended up turned out to be Lebanese. Lebanese food is fantastic, but it’s, well, everywhere. This restaurant was open air, with lots of flowers and a fountain, and even ducklings and baby rabbits wandering around the little landscaped area next to our table.

After a quick stop at Ksara for a wine tasting (and touring the caves where the wine is aged in barrels), and a re-visit of the town of Zahle, we picked up Ethan back in Beirut and drove to Broummana in Mount Lebanon for dinner. It’s so amazing that you can drive off the coast straight into the mountains, and half an hour later be perched high above the city breathing mountain air.

Samir, the taxidermist who lives upstairs, told me today that he is trying to find a tenant for the apartment next to us because it is going to be vacant soon. Samir’s brother is actually our landlord.

Anybody want to move to Beirut? It’s the same apartment as ours except Samir says there are “many antiques”. Also, there are a billion plants and even grapevines (with grapes) on the terrace.

In other news, Ethan is giddy because the company he is doing work for just set up webVPN, so it may not matter that our IP keeps intermittently blocking the port that he needs in order to work.

—we are nowhere near the neighborhood where an anti-Syrian politician was just assassinated with a car bomb.

So the elections are finally over- yesterday was the day for voting for Tripoli and the North. There was a lot of speculation beforehand, the race was too close to call. The results from the week before had been somewhat unexpected, with the recently returned General Aoun taking many seats which most had assumed would go to Hariri’s coalition. This had brought up the possibility for there being no majority in Parliament, with a fairly even split between Hariri, Aoun, and Hezbollah/Amal. Many had thought that the opposition (led by Hariri) would easily take the most seats, possibly forcing President Lahoud out of office.

The appeal of General Aoun is curious. He had been forced out at the end of the war by Syria; he was exiled to France. He was finally allowed to return in May, not long before we arrived. He had long been a hero to many Christians, and was greeted by crowds of supporters in Martyr’s Square. However, Aoun was unable to join with the opposition leadership, and took the unlikely route of joining up with pro-Syrian politicians. He and his allies ended up taking the majority of the Parliament seats that were up from grabs last Sunday the 12th.

On Saturday night, the night before the 4th and final election day, we talked to a bartender on Monot St who summed up the feeling among many Christians regarding Aoun. He told us that he hoped Aoun would win again because he is the only politican in Lebanon who is “clean”. And clearly, he is the only one who is clean, because he has been out of the country for 15 years.

As it turns out, Hariri’s coalition seems to have taken the most seats yesterday- at least 21 out of 28, which is what was needed to give them a majority of Parliament. However, I’ve been reading that it is probably not a big enough majority to force President Lahoud to resign.

Last Fall, at Syria’s insistence, Parliament changed the constitution in order to extend Lahoud’s term, which was set to expire. There are a lot of jokes in Lebanon about how Lahoud spends most of his time lounging beside the pool or swimming laps. This makes for some interesting grafitti: “Le president nage et le Liban coule; Le president bronze et le Liban brule” (“The president swims and Lebanon sinks; the president gets a tan and Lebanon burns”).

It has been 126 days since Rafik Hariri was assasinated. Outside of “his” mosque, there is a counter.

I’ve also included a photo of Hariri’s grave taken from the street. Each day they bring in hundreds of white lilies to cover the site and there are all sorts of larger than life sized photos of the man all around. The graves of the martyred security guards are nearby.

The last photo is of “tent city” in Martyr’s Square, where a handful of Samir Geagea’s supporters are camping out in order to try to have him released from a Syrian prison. He is the only warlord still in jail for crimes committed during the civil war.