Amy’s Journal

Getting into the Easter spirit around here. This is a candy store shop window in my neighborhood.

Here is an article about the toll bird flu fears are having on Lebanese poultry farmers. There doesn’t seem to be much effort to educate people about the fact that you cannot get sick from eating cooked chicken and that you are better off bringing your canaries in from the balcony than refusing to buy chicken.

This little slip from LibanPost, the post office system here, means that my mom sent us 3 pounds of my favorite coffee. Yep, Oaxacan from Curra’s in Austin, TX. When I went to pick it up, I could smell it before they handed me the box. I won’t embarrass my mother by disclosing how much she paid to ship it here, but I can’t get too mad about that.. we are going to be drinking this delicious coffee until we leave! Too bad we can’t receive Curra’s migas in the mail.

Thanks, Mom!

Speaking of LibanPost, they actually do a decent job. Shockingly efficient. It’s much more pleasant dealing with them than the USPS in Brooklyn. Shudder.

Last night I met my friend, Wiebke, at Barometre for dinner. Some acquaintances of hers ended up meeting us, a pair of American journalists who work in Baghdad. It was definitely a mellow evening, though the guys headed off to Gemmayzeh when I started for home. I find that I am less and less interested in going out late in the evenings. Growing old, I suppose.

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.

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.