Amy’s Journal

This little stretch of road is one of my favorite spots in Beirut. When I walk on it, I feel as though I’m on a little lane in the countryside, even though it’s in a very urban area. I guess it’s the empty fields and lack of tall buildings. The people at the end of the road have a great little city garden that I also love. They have some little pomegranate trees and orange trees, which are currently full of pungent orange blossoms.

Yesterday’s storm is continuing. I feel like we have regressed back to January.

I haven’t said much about the political situation here lately, maybe because it is simply too depressing. Monday brought “National Dialogue Part 5”, where it was decided that President Lahoud’s fate will be announced on April 28. There have been a few well-publicized shouting matches and it is hard to believe that consensus will be reached. Then again, with over 3 weeks worth of back room deals to be made, who knows how far they can go?

Another big storm rolled in just before evening. Lots of really loud thunder, jarring lightning, and rain, of course. The power stayed on but the internet was out for several hours. Does everyone know how happy Ethan is going to be when we get DSL (or whatever) in TX?

Today I had lunch with a friend who works at AUB (American University of Beirut). We ate in the student cafeteria, which reminded me a lot of the cafeteria at Random House. They even had that wretched Ritazza coffee. I had some lovely lentil soup and a nice chat with Caroline.

Afterward, I walked around the campus for a little while and marveled (again) at what a nice campus it is. I can’t think of a nicer one. There is so much green, and the campus itself is perched an a hill overlooking the sea. It really is like an oasis in the midst of all of the concrete. Most of the buildings are light stone with red roofs. I realized, once again, that college students are really, really young. As if all of the screeching and shenanigans of the ones who live on our street weren’t proof enough.

In other news, my father found out he has been selected to participate in one of the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad this summer. He is going to be spending 6 weeks in Jordan. I’m so proud. The only bummer is that we won’t be here anymore, so he can’t come visit us.

Ethan and I just bought tickets to go to Oman. We leave April 21 and return to Beirut on the 30th. I’m pretty excited, but I’m having a hard time finding any sort of budget or mid-range accommodation. It turns out that Oman is really expensive. I also cannot seem to locate a guidebook. I have been to about 15 bookstores trying to find the Lonely Planet Arabian Peninsula. No luck, and now it is too late for me to order it, presuming I can find a store that actually will. Virgin said that they would, but the useless guy who was helping me couldn’t figure out how to use the computer to find the book I was looking for, so I blew it off that day. Sheesh- sorry for all of the complaining- I’m going to Oman!

It’s Monday morning and the sun is coming out after two days of rain. I had kind of thought that we were through with that kind of weather. I like stormy weather, but it meant that we were pretty cooped up on the weekend, a time when we usually both get out of the house.

We did go to brunch on Sunday. We went to Casablanca, which is in a old white house (obviously) with a nice view of the (yesterday, roiling) sea. On the way home we went to a DVD rental store that we had never been to because we heard they have a lot of new bootlegs. We rented “Syriana” and Ethan got some zombie movie. We watched “Syriana” and found that while the quality was quite good (it was a copy of an advance copy, one of those that they send out to awards show judges so they can make sure to watch it), the audio was way too low. Maybe Ethan will write about all of his experiments in sound, but the end result was that we couldn’t always hear everything, so found ourselves confused much of the time.

We were curious about how accurate the Beirut scenes would look, knowing that it was not filmed in Beirut. It looked pretty good. The corniche was different- probably they filmed it in Casablanca (?). The part where they are in the “Hezbollah controlled area” seemed over the top. I have spent a fair amount of time in those neighborhoods (sorry, Dad) and never saw gunmen on the tops of every building or anywhere for that matter. Also, there was nowhere near enough traffic.

Speaking of construction and destruction (see previous post), there is an interesting story about the structure in the above photo. Supposedly, in 1992, when reconstruction of the downtown/central district first began, this little building was uncovered and slated to be destroyed. A worker tried to knock it down with a bulldozer, but as his machine came up against it, it stopped working. He got it started again, but as he tried again to knock the little dome over, his hand was suddenly paralyzed (he spontaneously recovered later).

Naturally, it was decided that this was a miracle, and the building was spared. It turns out it is a 16th century Mamluk structure that was used as a hospice. If I knew Arabic, I could let you know what the plaque currently attached to it says. This area used to be a souq, but it was destroyed by the war. Apparently, it will be rebuilt, but who know what sort of souq it will be now – maybe one where Gucci handbags and platinum cell phones are sold.