Mon 13 Feb 2006
This afternoon, Ethan and I walked down to Martyr’s Square to drop off some books. There was a call for book donations, which would be built into a pyramid, and then later donated to the Beirut Public Library. This is absolutely the first I had ever heard of Beirut having a library. Wherever it is, it is not well advertised. In fact, Beirut lacking a public library is something I have heard more than one Lebanese complain about. Anyhow, this book stacking and library donation are all a part of the anniversary festivities, the first anniversary of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, which is Tuesday.
Somewhere in this pyramidal pile are 6 or so previously read books of ours, including a couple of tour guides to Cyprus and a movie tie-in copy of the short story “Brokeback Mountain”. We are relatively certain that the subject matter of the latter will ensure that it never makes it onto the library shelf (if such a place exists) but we are hopeful that it will get picked up by some young festival organizer who might read it and pass it around to all of their friends. Maybe I will make a passive-observer type post in the future on homosexuality in Lebanon, but for now, suffice it to say that it is strongly discouraged.
It seemed that a majority of the books that had been donated were old textbooks- not a lot of interesting reading material to be found.
There is already a fair amount of flag waving and car honking (for interesting detail on said honking, read this post by a friend of ours about public disturbance as art). There are plenty of cars decorated with Hariri posters racing around town. We weren’t here for the whole Beirut Spring/Cedar Revolution thing, since we didn’t move here until May, so I am pretty curious about the next few days here. The new slogan is “Freedom 2006”, which follows “Independence 2005”. Many have predicted that people will stay away from the gatherings planned in Martyr’s Square either because they have beome cynical or are afraid. It’s hard for me to imagine 1 million people showing up, as they did on March 14, one month after Hariri’s murder.
