Amy’s Journal

Street names, addresses, and directions. A very different thing in Beirut than back in the States. In the US, we are very reliant on street addresses. How would you ever mail anything, find a business, or give directions without street names and numbers?

If I told someone here that I lived at 37 Yamout Street between between Mahatma Gandhi St and Yafet St (and I am not sure that the 37 slapped onto the front of our building is even official-you almost never see numbers on buildings), that would be absolutely meaningless, even to many people who live on this street. If you told someone this when asked where you live, he/she would think you were crazy.

The Lebanese way to explain where we live is:
In Hamra (neighborhood), near Ristretto (restaurant) and the Al-Rifai nut shop, Sidani Building.

Our building is just an apartment building with about 10 or 12 apartments in it, it doesn’t say “Sidani” on it, one would have to ask around to figure out which building it is.

Under the same system in Brooklyn, if you asked for directions to Pam’s place, you would not get “In Ft Greene, 73 South Oxford apt 4, corner of Lafayette Ave”, but “In Ft Greene, near Moe’s Bar and Meat Corp, in the Fisher building.”

I bring this up because I just read an article in the Daily Star about a Lebanese guy who has lived abroad for many years who is making a detailed street map of Beirut. That’s right, there isn’t one. The process he has gone through is pretty interesting.
http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=17102

It’s also kind of interesting to show maps to people here. Often it is as if they have no idea what they are looking at. They no doubt know the way to Broumanna like the back of their hand, but that map is just a bunch of lines and shapes that doesn’t correspond to the spatial representation that they have about the place.

Chatila isn’t on the Beirut map that we have (an attempt to pretend it doesn’t exist or is temporary), so when I showed the map to some directors in the organization with which I am working, they pored over it for some time, but couldn’t place it precisely.

Of course, though we will probably buy the map, I don’t really see much chance of other people suddenly memorizing a bunch of street names and actually using it. At this point, Ethan and I have pretty much stopped using street names anyhow. I had to re-look up the ones that our street intersects to make this post.

Today Ethan and I went up to Tripoli, which is about an hour and a half up the coast from here. We took a bus, and as soon as we arrived, headed to the souk to wander around. Lebanon doesn’t have many of the traditional Middle Eastern markets left, and Tripoli’s is the best of these. Here you can buy most things you would need: clothing, jewelry, fish and meat, fresh produce, sweets, spices, household goods, furniture, etc. We bought a bunch of soap and walked around trying not to feel claustrophobic. Everything is really in your face- cow carcasses and organs swinging from hooks, cages of live chickens next to their recently expired friends, kids selling peaches, huge bags of spices and tea nearly overflowing, the smells of all of this mixing.

After this, we headed to Byblos and had a late lunch. The original idea was to maybe go for a swim, but by the time we were finished, the sun was starting to go down, so we just walked around the port area and watched the area be readied for the Byblos Festival event of the evening- Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson was to play for the second night in a row. All of the summer festivals really suffered this year and several acts cancelled (including Franz Ferdinand, sigh). Ethan tried to sing Supertramp songs, but they kept turning out to be REO Speedwagon. It seemed that a lot of the festival goers were just coming out because it was the thing to do, not because they were into the particular performer. Some people seemed awfully overdressed to see an outdoor concert given by a faded rock star.

Eventually we walked back to the highway to catch a minibus to head home. We played Scrabble on the balcony (I won) and enjoyed the evening air.

Tonight we were walking to go out to dinner, to a street to catch a cab in the right direction, when I spied a TV set on in an open doorway. There was a telltale scene, another car bomb-the same camera angle, the same flattened car, the same gathering crowd. In the taxi, the driver was distraught; he actually spoke English, so we talked a little. He knew nothing except that it happened 5 minutes before and it was on Monot Street. He stopped the car on the overpass above Monot and we got out and looked. It actually happened on a side street, so all we saw were a bunch of army trucks, people standing around talking on cell phones.

We were headed to Gemmayzeh anyhow, not Monot, so we had our dinner- the hommos was good and garlicky, the moutabal bland. We smoked argileh and listened to the band (oud, drum, vocals). Afterward, we had a drink down the street at a place we have gotten to know. No one had details about the bombing. On the way home, we passed through a checkpoint but were waved right through.

Good news: it appears that no one was killed after all
Complicated news: it appears not to be a targeted, political assasination attempt

Oh yeah, Condoleeza Rice turned up in Beirut earlier today for a “surprise”/”lightning” visit to threaten Syria/Hezbollah.

I feel like things are really shifting here. When we arrived, it became clear that the unity we had seen on TV with all of the demonstrations following Hariri’s assasination had sort of dissolved. But I still didn’t find it very tense here.

Maybe nothing has changed and it’s just that I have been here longer; I have talked to more people. But taxi drivers are asking if we are Christian and then trash talking Muslims. All of the old militia flags have come out again. Yesterday, Parliament voted to release Samir Geagea, the former leader of Lebanese Forces (main Christian militia). Out come the fireworks and the flags, the honking horns and the posturing. I am seeing fewer Lebanese flags and more party/militia/sect flags.

Last night, some Amal guys and some LF guys got into a skirmish on the former Green Line (the road that divided East and West Beirut during the civil war). Shots were fired, no one was killed (UPDATE : actually, one guy was killed), the police broke it up and made arrests.

Things with Syria have also become very tense. Trucks are backed up at the border because Syria is intentionally delaying them. Lebanese farmers are furious because their fruit is being held up at the border for days at a time and therefore rotting on the truck. Syria is the only open land border for Lebanon, so it’s a real problem. Syria has arrested Lebanese fishermen for drifting into Syrian waters, and the Lebanese army fired shots at some Syrian smugglers who had crossed the northern border.

Not to mention the string of assasinations and attempts (now suddenly including former Iraqi PM Allawi?), the Hezbollah question, the fact that the new government still has not been formed because the Cabinet cannot be agreed upon…..

UPDATE: Apparently, Siniora (the PM) and Lahoud (the President) have reached an agreement about the Cabinet, and the new members will be announced in about 40 minutes…. maybe things are looking up.

I had quite a nice weekend. Poor Ethan had to work a lot, but hopefully that will slow down very soon.

Today Carrie and I went to Byblos (Jbeil in Arabic) and had lunch and went to the beach. We had lunch in a fish restaurant in the charming port area. We were served a bunch of intact fried perch, a bunch of even smaller fish, and a fried goldfish, which I actually tried. I’m not a big fan of fish in general, so I ended up eating more hommos and salad, and spent less time dealing with heads, bones, and scales.

Byblos has been inhabited since the 6th century B.C. and some claim it is where the alphabet was invented, during Phoenician times. Today, the main attractions are the old city and port and also some ruins which can’t really rival some of those found in other parts of Lebanon. The souk is more like a string of tourist shops selling tacky knick knacks but also some really cool fossilized fish.

The first beach we tried to go to, just south of the port, doesn’t exist any longer, it has been taken over and is now a private beach resort, which was not what we were looking for. We ended up on a pebble beach just north of Byblos. We met a nice Irish couple on vacation from Abu Dhabi. The water seemed cleaner and was more blue than in Beirut.

It was really nice to swim, but the undertow was so strong that I was too nervous to go out very far. After a few hours in the sun, we walked back out to the highway and hopped on a minibus, which took us on the 45 minute trip back to Beirut for the equivalent of 65 cents each. Then I had to haggle to get the same fare across town from the “station” to our neighborhood.

Another day in Beirut. It has been really swampy lately. The temperature hovers around the mid-80s, but the humidity tends to be between 80-94% (yet it pretty much doesn’t rain in summer). So the heat index will be 102F with the actual temperature at 84F. But I shouldn’t complain- it is mid-July and we still have not turned on the air conditioning. We have a great cross breeze in our apartment.

Today I spent all morning in Chatila. I brought Carrie and a journalist acquaintance of hers who is here for the week taking a break from Iraq. We talked to some people about Palestinian leadership. No one seems to be too thrilled with Mamoud Abbas. Some were angry that he came to Lebanon last week and didn’t visit a single refugee camp. There are half a million refugees here and he didn’t speak to them.

There was also a discussion about how there is no way that a Palestinian from Ain il-Helweh camp orchestrated the attempted assasination of Defense Minister Murr a few days ago (which is a prevailing theory, as well as one about how it was definitely Syria, trying to deflect blame about the other bombings, and another- which is a theory anytime anyone is killed here ever- is that it was Israel). We were also solemnly informed that Israel definitely poisoned and killed Yasser Arafat.

Later we had lunch and talked about the camp, Lebanese history, and what Iraq is like now. The journalist kept reflecting on how great it is to be able to walk around with no protection and without worrying that he is going to be killed or abducted. Though he told a funny story about how last night as he walked down the street here in Beirut, immigration asked him for his passport. A bunch of undercover guys all came out of an SUV speaking Arabic and moving toward him and so he started to run because his first thought was that he was being kidnapped.

Yes, there was another bomb, far away. North of Beirut, actually. I was at Chatila at the time, and the only thing that I noticed that was out of the ordinary was that cell phones weren’t working. I later heard that they had cut them for an hour. Considering that the electricity had gone out about 15 times in the camp this morning, it didn’t really seem that bizarre. The footage being shown on television is again rather gory (several cars involved this time), though the target is supposedly in good condition.

I have to say that public figures being targeted with car bombs is starting to feel normal.

Over the weekend, we went to Marjeyoun, a Christian village in South Lebanon. It’s a quaint mountain town with Ottoman houses and is small enough that everyone knows everyone else. We went with a couple of Lebanese journalists, George, who is from Marjeyoun, and Aruba, whose family left around the time she was born. She had never been (and where you are from is VERY important to Lebanese) so she was pretty excited.

The trip itself was annoying in many ways, and it seemed that most of our time was spent being led around the village with little description given and being proudly introduced to people as Americans. As it turns out, a lot of the villagers are big George Bush fans. This might seem surprising (Arabs in the Middle East embracing GW?), but these are Christians in Hezbollah country and GW has taken a stand against Hezbollah. His stance on this issue alone makes him a hero – with some, at least. One guy even told me, “You are not good,” when I admitted that I don’t like Bush. This is probably the first truly rude thing anyone has said to me here.

The highlight of the trip (for me, not for Ethan) was when George thrust me into this faux interview with the mayor of Maryejoun and a few council members. These were fascinating men, devoted to their town and country and extremely well-spoken (with perhaps a better command of English than I have), and they gave me all kinds of insight about South Lebanon, living under Israeli occupation, how the economy has faltered with the Israelis gone, and what they hope for from the future.

We also got a lift from a couple of soldiers at one point.

We made it back to Beirut via service taxi and a cramped mini-bus (2 hours travel for under $5) and settled into an afternoon of Ethan working, me reading and cooking, and the electricity being off about 10% of the time.