kids on the corniche
Sunday on the Corniche

Friday was gorgeous and summery, the first day this year that it actually felt hot. It was great. We had friends over to BBQ and sat outside in short sleeves in the evening. I am convinced that the not-quite 3 year old in the family is a genius, because as soon as she arrived, she began talking about the grapes, because the grapevines had grapes on them the last time she was over, about 7 months ago. I told her that there weren’t any grapes (the vines die back in winter) and she went to go check it out, walking straight to the terrace in back. We have friends who have been over more than 10 times and still get lost, and house guests who took days to figure out the layout of our apartment, but Stella remembered precisely after all of that time. We are going to miss these friends and several others, but I count on most of them to end up living somewhere interesting that we will want to visit.

Saturday was cloudy, chilly, and windy. Oh well. We nixed plans to go to the beach and went out for lunch in Gemmayzeh instead. We eventually went to to see “Brokeback Mountain”. I really liked it, and it was interesting to watch a censored version. I’m not sure how much they cut out, but according to this version, Jack and Ennis never got beyond hugging and wrestling. It was all implied, though. You would see them lean in to kiss, a small flicker, and they were moving away from each other. Then the (very small) audience would sigh in disappointment.

We had an interesting evening at Captain’s Cabin last night, with Mike and some of his friends. They are a little older than I am and had interesting stories about their lives here. They were teenagers and young adults during the war. Most of them had gone to AUB, but they had stories about having to change majors because the program they were in had to shut down. Coming on to campus, they would be searched so thoroughly that sometimes their ballpoint pens would be disassembled. They told us about the last American professor who stayed, until the threat of kidnapping was so likely that he just left the country one night. Still, one of the women told me that the first time she was ever afraid was years later on vacation in Manassas, VA, when she thought a teenaged kid was following her.