Amy’s Journal

The other day I rented and watched a documentary made locally called “Memories of Ras Beirut: Wish You Were Here”. As a piece of film-making, it wasn’t terribly impressive, but I am thinking of buying a copy, just for the footage of Ras Beirut.

Ras Beirut, which loosely includes the part of Hamra where I live, is a fairly newly developed area. It was farmland, outskirts, when the American University of Beirut was formed in the 1860s. It has apparently always been a very tolerant area, one where people flocked from all religions and cultures.

Much of the film centered around different university professors and scholars talking about the area from a historical perspective. To me, the most interesting parts were interviews with more ordinary people. One interview was with a barber on Bliss St near AUB (I have been trying to convince Ethan to go to this barber, actually). He spoke wistfully of the commuter train that used to pass by his shop which stopped in February 1965, according to him. My landlord has also talked fondly of these trains or trolley cars- I am unclear on precisely what they were.

The saddest character was the old lighthouse attendant. He gave a tour of the old lighthouse and spoke about how his family had operated it for generations. The lighthouse is a bit inland, and eventually a new high-rise blocked it. The owners of the new building paid for a new lighthouse to be built nearer to the sea. He seemed despondent, saying he would never leave and that the old lighthouse was far superior to the new one. The new one took over in 2003.

Here are photos of the old lighthouse and the new one:

I found this blurb of information on a lighthouse fan site:
“The Beirut Lighthouse in Lebanon is being torn down ending one family’s light keeping duty that goes back to 1850. The old lighthouse is being torn down to make room for Beirut’s reconstruction program. Apparently they don’t understand historic preservation in Beirut. A new modern style automated lighthouse is being built away from the reconstruction area. Victor Chebli who was born and raised at the lighthouse said the lighthouse is like a vein circulating in his blood. Light-keeping in his family dates back to his grandfather who was appointed keeper of the light by Lebanon’s Ottoman rulers in 1850. That tradition continued during French rule until modern times. However during the civil war, which lasted form 1977 to 1994, the light was turned off. Since being turned back on in 1994 the signal has beamed every eight seconds. After surviving all the turmoil that the world could muster, it is reconstruction and the rebuilding of a city that will cause the light to be no more.”

It wasn’t parts of Turkey or Libya, but the eclipse was still fantastic here. I borrowed “viewers” from random strangers and saw just a sliver of sun, with the rest being covered by the moon. Some people down near the sea had those special paper glasses, but I looked through folded pieces of that colored plastic that you tape over stage lights. One smiling, middle-aged guy had wrapped pieces of that plastic around the lenses on his glasses, and he proudly let me try them. Hopefully, I haven’t fried my retinas. Other people were looking through film negatives.

I didn’t manage to take a good picture using the plastic shield, but this picture, where you can see the moon (a new moon today, too) to the right, is kind of cool.

This is sort of how it looked, but less grainy.

I guess that I had thought that it would get noticeably darker out with most of the sun covered, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Generally, I would say that people here didn’t seem to care too much about it, but it was fun to see the people who did. I also heard that a lot of schools closed because of the danger (impending blindness!). I would think that school would be among the best places for kids to be, so that they could see it in an educational and supervised setting, but maybe I’m missing something.

We have reached the time of year when I am starting to see some of the same produce in the markets that we saw when we arrived last May. It has really been something to see food in stores only when it in season. I guess you get this in farmers markets in the States (especially obvious in NYC, when you get nothing but apples and potatoes for about 5 months straight) but it is much more dramatic when every store only sells what is fresh. Plus you don’t forget and actually buy a peach in December, which is a real bummer. Also, the fruits and vegetables aren’t all creepily perfect as they are in the States. There are lots of heart shaped potatoes and tomatoes with lumpy tumors. The above picture is of fresh almonds. It’s early in the season, so the almonds inside are soft. You can actually eat the green part of the really fresh ones.

Completely changing the subject, I was wrong and the movie “Brokeback Mountain” is now being shown in Beirut. I think it’s the only place in the Middle East that is showing it, and it is currently playing at 3 theaters. I think I might like to see it here, rather than waiting to see it on DVD in Texas. No word on whether or not we’ll see “Syriana” over here, though bootleg copies abound.

For some reason, Lebanon set the clocks forward over the weekend, a week before seemingly everyone else. So until this coming weekend, we are ahead of EST by 8 hours. Lebanon also celebrated Mother’s Day in the middle of last week.

On the bird flu update, the minister of health has announced that “Lebanon is literally surrounded by countries plagued by the flu and so it is critical that we keep a strong grip on the domestic birds and prevent them from coming into contact with any migratory birds that are on the go again.”

I am eyeing the doves on the balcony with suspicion.

Like Ethan, I am vowing to get better about updating this for the next 55 days, even if I have little to say.

The above photo is of a particularly elaborate corn seller’s cart down on the corniche. We met some travelers recently who complained about the corniche, saying there weren’t any cafes (not entirely true) and that they couldn’t relate to a big slab of concrete where there is nothing to do but walk. They seemed to be saying that it was a waste of waterfront. I should have said so, but I don’t really agree. I love the corniche. I love that it belongs to everyone. It’s okay if you don’t have money to spend in a cafe- you just bring your plasic chair, your argileh pipe, and your family, and pass hours socializing and enjoying the Mediterranean Sea. It’s absolutely my favorite people watching spot and Sundays are my favorite. It’s when seemingly everyone comes to walk, visit, and relax.

Sunday morning, we took a rickety bus through the desert to Homs. Once there, we intended to take a minibus to Hama, but found that we were at the wrong station. An old gentleman sympathized and patiently explained in Arabic that we needed to go to a different station, and that we could take the city bus that had just pulled up down the street. As this was sinking in, he determined that we were not entirely convinced, and led us to the bus, told the driver where we wanted to go, and told us how much to pay. You simply cannot stay lost in Syria, someone will always come and help you find your way.

We crammed onto a minibus and headed to Hama. We found our hotel by reasoning that we should be walking downhill, since the center of town is near the Orontes River. Hama is the fourth largest city in Syria, and it was bustling. I peered into a dark tub of water in front of a shop, and a man dipped his hand in and pulled out a big, wriggling fish to show me.

We checked into our hotel and went to wander around to take in the scene. Hama is well known for its norias, or water wheels. These (or versions of them) have been here since the 5th century and are still in use to scoop water out of the river for irrigation. They only turn for part of the year, though, and are not turning now. You can find norias all over the world, but the biggest ones are in Hama.

Hama is also known as the site of a massacre by the Syrian government in 1982. Government troops came in to beat down a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, and beat it down, they did. Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people were killed, and most of the old town was razed to the ground. There is only a small section of it left, which we explored in about 15 minutes. There are no memorials or even any real acknowedgement by the Syrian government. This happened when the current president’s father, Hafez Assad, was in control.

Expect this to be some sort of major justification for going after the Syrian government, should the Bush Administration decide to really do so. There is precedent for this with taking down Saddam Hussein– “he gassed his own people [the Kurds]”. True, but the U.S. didn’t care about it for well over a decade, until it served their purposes to do so.

I digress.

On Monday, we decided to visit Krak des Chevaliers, one of the world’s finest crusader castles. T.E. Lawrence claimed it was the greatest castle in the world. Ethan had a castle book as a kid in which this castle was prominently featured. We could have made the trip by public transport, on a series of minibuses, but we decided to have the hotel get us a taxi and driver. Some other guests, a couple from New Zealand decided to come along with us, so it ended up being pretty cheap. The Kiwis were pretty interesting, being over 3/4 of the way through with a 2 year long journey around the world. We heard of their adventures on the taxi ride. They encouraged us to spend some time in Buenos Aires, which we are inclined to do.

The castle is quite well preserved, and you can climb and wander freely. The area itself is absolutely gorgeous with rolling green hills. In some of the valleys we passed through, I found myself looking for hobbits or unicorns. A fitting end to our last mini-trip (Ethan’s 5th and my 7th) to Syria.

This was our taxi. Fantastic.

We have been in the Middle East for 10 months and finally made it to the desert this weekend. We even saw a few camels (the sort that are paraded around for tourists). Before we moved to Lebanon, I’d say the second most common ill-informed comment that we got was one presuming I’d be fully veiled and riding a camel around on sand dunes. The most common misconception centered around thinking that we were moving to a war zone.

Anyhow, on Friday, we went by minibus to Damascus and then took a bus straight to Palmyra, an oasis town in the Syrian desert. Palmyra is known for its ruins, mostly old temples and some funerary towers. The ruins are pretty spectacular, but I have to admit that I am lately unfazed by the sight of yet another Roman column. Still, it was great fun to wander around the site, up to a ruined castle, and to climb one of the towers that used to contain tombs. I do love the desert.

As the town is in an oasis, there are also huge orchards of palm dates and olives. We wandered along the lanes, peeking through gaps in the mud walls at picnicking families. It was my first time in a small village in Syria, and even though these people see many tourists, the children still call out “Hello, hello!”, and many of the adults, too.

This family held up babies for the photo.

Yesterday was beautiful again and I spent a chunk of time on the Corniche.

I really wish I had an SLR camera. The zoom on my point and shoot is pretty weak. When I was out on the terrace yesterday, I watched an old man and a child having a long conversation, calling out to each other from different balconies. I love this sort of balcony life. Neighbors greeting each other, women calling down to the man with the vegetable cart, throwing a canvas bag down on a rope to give him money and collect her new purchase.

This morning we are making our last trek to Syria and we will be gone until Monday night. Our visas expire next week. Where we are going is still being discussed, but we will first go to Damascus. From there, we will either leave right away to one of the spots we are considering, or possibly spend the evening in Damascus, depending on how late it is when we get there.

Yesterday we rented a car and attempted to drive into South Lebanon, the former “Security Zone” occupied by Israel until May 2000. The borders are still maintained, and officially, foreigners need some sort of special permit to visit. Ethan and I have been there twice without such a permit, though the first time was over 3 years ago and the second time we accompanied a resident of a village in the region. We decided to just turn up and try to visit without one.

It didn’t work out, and we were apologetically turned away at 2 different checkpoints. We were traveling with a friend who happens to be a journalist with a lot of Iraq stamps in his passport. I thought he might be turned away because of this (Hezbollah doesn’t appreciate uninvited foreign journalists running around in the areas they defend/occupy) but we didn’t even make it that far in the process.

We were disappointed, as it’s a very interesting area with several unique sites, but the weather was exceptional and we were enjoying just driving around through the rolling hills looking at villages. We decided to take sort of a back way to Qana, another place we wanted to visit, but we got a bit turned around. We finally hit a dead end just above the Litani River. The road just ends, though you can see where the rest of it used to be. We realized that the road and bridge across the river were likely destroyed during Israel’s invasion or subsequent occupation of the area.

The end of the road.

We are lost.

We turned around and asked for directions back to the coast in a village called Kfar Sir, and half the village got joyfully involved in helping us out. One guy drew all over our map and implored us to visit him the next time we are in town.

[Small tangent: Upon googling “Kfar Sir”, I learned that the village is known for its progressive composting methods. If you have been to Lebanon, you are probably well aware that it has major waste disposal issues. Just last week, a dump in Saida collapsed and sent debris as far north as Turkey. The leaders of Saida have declared a state of emergency now that all of that waste is being pushed back onto their shores. It’s probably not a good time to go swimming here.]

After having lunch in the Sur/Tyr port, we drove off toward Qana. We wanted to visit Qana because it is the site of a massacre – Israel bombed a UN camp there in 1996. Many locals had taken cover there from ongoing bombing, and over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed. We eventually found the former camp as the sun was setting. There are some memorials to those killed, including Fijian UN officers. This UNIFIL camp, now shut down with its ruins home to quite a few squatters, was a base for the Fijians posted in Lebanon. Qana is also one of the possible sites where Jesus turned water into wine.

The guy who followed us around the site insisted that this is an Israeli tank, even though it is Russian made. It seems more likely that it is Syrian.
UPDATE: It makes a lot of sense, as someone commented, that this could be an SLA (South Lebanon Army) tank. So in a sense, the guy was correct in saying that it’s Israeli, since the SLA was more or less controlled by Israel.

I found this mural rather poignant. It seems to have been left behind by the Fijian soldiers who painted it out of homesickness. Our “tour guide”, who followed us around the site vaguely explaining things, said that someone wrote “Breakdance” because the Fijians used to breakdance all of the time. I have no idea whether there is any truth in that.

Today is rainy, and the khamseen dust has returned. Actually, maybe today’s rain is washing it away. There are tremendous gusts of wind which cause a lot of racket blowing all of the balcony curtains around. I had planned to go to the park with a friend and her kids, but the weather isn’t cooperating. I finished reading a really excellent book yesterday and have started on another, about “new germ theory”. Perfect rainy day reading. It hasn’t rained much lately, as we have eased out of the rainy season- I have even had to start watering the outdoor plants for the first time since late October.

The talks among Lebanon’s leaders temporarily stalled earlier this week. I think they are going to try to start again on Monday. Apparently, they were going nowhere and then Walid Joumblatt went to Washington D.C. and started carrying on and asking the U.S. government to get (more) involved. I’m not relishing the thought of more pressure in the region from the Bush Administration. Have I mentioned that practically all of those involved in the talks were major players during the civil war? Where are the new Lebanese politicians?

In retrospect, we probably should have gone to the Cedars as much of the snow is already melting in Faraya. It’s sort of amazing that apart from the traffic getting out of Beirut, you can actually arrive in a ski resort in less than 40 minutes. We had a nice lunch sitting outside in the sunshine. Spring has definitely come to Mount Lebanon.

There was still a fair bit of snow, but it wasn’t fresh and we weren’t too inspired to play in it. We headed to the ruins near Faqra (a private ski resort). These ruins are Roman according to the internet but Greek according to our Lonely Planet. As is generally the case in Lebanon, you could climb all over the columns. There were also a lot of fantastic rock formations, and it was all very stunning in the (patchy) snow. We climbed on the rocks and then I caught a tiny and brilliant green frog. Spring, definitely Spring.

This is the smaller temple at this site. It’s dedicated to Atargatis, a Syrian goddess. Later it was used to worship Astarte.

Confidential to NAC: Look closely at this photo.

We briefly stopped in at one of the ski slopes, but found the pulsing techno at the bottom to be irritating. We ended up driving back down the mountain and then north to Batroun, a town that none of us had spent much time in. We wandered in the old town, with its renovated stone Ottoman houses. We drank some sugary lemonade and walked down to the old Phoenician sea wall. As we rocked along the rocks, we noticed swarms of these weird pillbugs that could also run in and out of tide pools. There were thousands of them.

The sun was setting, so we headed to a cafe and had coffee or beer, nuts, and carrots. One of my favorite things here is that if you order a beer or wine, you are also presented with nuts of different kinds and sometimes carrots. The carrots are salted and marinated in lemon juice. In this way, you can pretend that drinking a beer is somehow healthy– a little protein, a little Vitamin A.

We had an uneventful drive back to Beirut, if you can ever call driving here uneventful. Drivers here insist on turning 3 lanes into 7, which often slows things to a halt. In the States, highway driving can put you to sleep, here it is like a precarious dance.

We dropped the car off downtown, and then proceeded to walk through the completely shut area. All of Solidere has been secured for the meetings going on in the Parliament building. This means that every business, every cafe is closed and will be for a total of 7-10 days. It was like a ghost town, with soldiers everywhere. A gaggle of apologetic ones searched our bags as we passed down one street. Just kids, like everywhere. We had to walk a fair distance in order to find a service, there were no cars or people anywhere. So strange to have the “heart of Beirut” utterly silent on a Saturday night.

UPDATE: Ethan pointed out that is is weird that I wrote this whole long post and didn’t even mention that we went with friends. That was partly inadvertent, but I am always reluctant to say much online about people who don’t know they are being written about. Anyhow.. these new friends are really great, a German couple who are fun to be around. It was a real pleasure to spend all day with them.