Found: Weekend [3 of 3]

[ This post is dedicated to Jake, Dan, Addie, and all the others with whom I’ve spent some time and money at Belmont and the Aqueduct. ]

We almost didn’t make it to the racetrack on Sunday. Our journey began w/ the cab driver thinking that we said “matar” (airport) instead of “mathaf” (museum). Eventually, we expensively cleared up this misunderstanding. To be fair, I felt bad that the driver went so far out of his way and criminally over-tipped. This prompted a discussion between Amy and myself about foreign taxi culpability. If one states one’s destination in the three languages of the land and one is still taken to the wrong destination, wherein lies the blame?

Mathaf literally means museum, but in Beirut it also refers more generally to the National Museum and its surrounding neighborhood. If you want to go to the racetrack, the French Embassy, or the Military Tribunal, you (theoretically) tell the taxi driver to take you to mathaf. We had also told him “Hippodrome”, but we’ve discovered that that word has no meaning to pretty much anyone you ask. Unless, I suppose, you ask a horse-player.

Anyhow, we eventually made it to our destination, only to find the gates barred and the grounds deserted. Lonely Planet Lebanon had said that the first race was at 1pm and the last race was at 4pm, so we assumed this meant that our trip was in vain. However, Amy and I have both long gone on record stating the relative worthlessness of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, so it was a surprise to neither of us to learn that the first race didn’t begin till 4pm. Not being too familiar with the neighborhood (though our friend Joumana lives there), we wandered aimlessly for a few hours and, finding nothing open, ate lunch at McDonalds. It was about as expensive as it is in NYC. Amy had a McRoyale w/ cheese but didn’t remember the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction and didn’t see why I thought it was so funny.

When we finally were able to get into the racetrack, the staff seemed kind of bewildered by our presence. They wouldn’t let us pay to get in, but did require us to check our cellphone. This involved a soldier putting a yellow post-it with Amy’s name on it on the phone and sticking it in a big box. I was skeptical, to say the least. We should have insisted on buying tickets because there were no fewer than 7 layers of attendants between the gate and the bleachers that asked to see our tickets (and also, strangely, our passports). One of the attendants told us to sit in first class, and directed us to an area of the bleachers that had white plastic chairs set up. He pointed disparaging at the adjacent area, which was identical, minus the chairs. “Don’t go to second class.” It seemed also that along the way our ticketless presence was explained away by an attendant pointing us out to another attendant and designating us as “two english” (or possibly “too english”).

I have to confess that once we were seated, I had a little breakdown. I couldn’t figure out where to get a program, how to bet, or how to even read the tote-board. Like my internet woes, it was kind of symbolic of my larger Lebanon experience. I was in a situation that was totally familiar, but I completely lacked the basic tools to make it happen. It was frustrating and, as ridiculous as it sounds, it was making me question if I was even enjoying being in this country in general.

After sweating through 2 races in such a fashion, I found a discarded program on the ground (which was all in arabic and of little help) and (with substantial encouragement from Amy) decided to make a go of it. It was a little nerve-wracking, because all I had to go on were the odds and what the horse looked like. I know that a lot of people bet like this, but I generally like to pretend I know what I’m doing and figure in factors like lifetime speed vs. speed last course and things of that nature. I couldn’t even tell where the name of the horse was written on the program. Eventually, I picked what I guessed was the favorite (still wary of the foreign tote-board system) and approached the window and stumbled through my wager in arabic:

“Hkamsa ailef…uh…to win…on…uh…ithnayn”

To which the clerk replied, “I speak English, you know.”

Hot dog. One of the principle things people new to the horse-playing racket tend to mangle is the way you place your wager. In the States, you say how much you’re betting, the type of bet, and then the horse. Here, I quickly learned the order is a little different. What I should have said was:

“Gagnant, ithnayn, hkamsa ailef.”

…or…

To win (french), horse #2, 5000 pounds.

Over the course of losing that race and the next one, I was able to figure out a little bit more about how they do things on this side of the Mediterranean. There is the “gagnant” wager, which analogous to betting “to win” in the States. Also like in the States, there’s the “place” wager, or betting that your horse comes in first or second. There is apparently no “show” wager, or betting that you horse is first, second, or third. There are several other bets that I didn’t exactly understand. I am assuming that a “trio” is the same as a trifecta, or wagering which horses will come in first, second, and third. There is something called a “twin”, but I don’t think it is like an exacta (first and second horses in exact order) or quinella (first and second horses in any order), because the payout was less than for a “gagnant” wager. Also on the board were “C4” and “C5” wagers…of which I have no ideas.

As for the races themselves, the horses seem smaller, though they’re supposed to be Arabians as opposed to thoroughbreds. This isn’t idle chauvism, but to my inexpert eye, the jockeys seem less experienced as well. More than once they tended to fall apart right before the end of the stretch and used more crop than I’m used to. You could hear it hitting the horse’s side from the bleachers. But again, these are amateur observations.

10000LL or about $6.50 later, we decided that my education could be continued at a later date. My arabic tutor from NYC is in Lebanon right now and if we ever manage to meet up, I’m definitely taking my racing program along.

Unlucky #2, all alone. He broke too early and ended up #4 of 8.