Friday is supposed to be one of my days off, but things haven’t really been working out that way lately. This Friday, however, I just said no to work with the intention of going with Amy to Bourj Al-Barajneh to sit in on the English class she teaches there. Apparently it usually takes Amy an hour to an hour and half to get there on the 12 bus, but we made it in under 45 minutes. The reduced traffic was most definitely due to the fact that the Mehlis report came out today and many people were staying safe and off the streets. We saw an increased military presence, more soldiers as well as tanks and APCs, in the streets on the way. The real highlight of the ride, however, was a pet store on the bus route that sells a real, live baboon.
Actually, we had received some advice to stay close to home ourselves, or at least not go to Bourj. Again, for those of you with a late pass, Bourj Al-Barajneh is one of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It’s located in the largely Hezbollah- and Amal-controlled suburbs South of Beirut. Our thinking was that in the somewhat unlikely event that there was to be any “excitement” in the immediate aftermath of the report, it certainly wasn’t going to happen till much later.
Since it was Friday, Amy is usually light on the exercises and heavy on the games. We played Pictionary, and when the word “key” came up, my interest was really captured. Keys as symbols are huge in the Palestinian refugee community, representing a return to the houses they were forced to leave. Many people actually still literally have the keys to the homes they were driven out of. As a result, there is key-themed grafitti everywhere in the camps. So when the student got up to the white-board, I was expecting here to draw the old, iconic skeleton-key type image from the grafitti. Instead she drew a near-perfect rendering of a regular key, the kind that you have for your front-door, rather than the kind you’d see in a Disney pirate-themed animatronic. It also took the students a long time to correctly guess, so I suppose I’m guilty of assigning a gravity to the situation that just wasn’t there. Also interesting from more of a linguistic point-of-view is that when the word “chicken” came up, the student started drawing a kitchen.
Afterwards, we took the 12 bus back to Hamra and from there caught the 4 bus downtown. I have to say, I love taking the bus. For whatever reason, I find taking taxis (service or otherwise) to be an anxious affair. I like the economy and lack of bargaining and personal interaction that goes with taking the bus.
Downtown was fairly empty and the restaurants were nearly deserted. I imagine that the fact that it is Ramadan somewhat contributed to the latter, as well as obviously the aforementioned UN report. Unflapped, we felt genuinely leisure class as we partook of gourmet pizza and Musar red (a Lebanese wine that Richard from Scallywags turned us on to) in the shadow of the magnificent and nearly-completed Hariri mosque. Carrie joined us for some wine and coffee and Amy fed our left-overs to the adorable kitten that had been napping in a nearby flowerbed. It seemed like the only other pedestrians downtown were the passengers of the SS Emerald, a cruise-ship docked in the port.
Afterwards, we dropped by a little place in Gemmayze called Torino Express. It’s cozy and has a lot of character, but more importantly it is the new home of our friend and favorite bartender Mike. He told us that the place had been lousy with press all day. Apparently one of the patrons got (drunk and) sick of it and totally bent the ear of some people from the New York Times. “Free my people!” and all that sort of thing. I’d be interested to see if it makes it into their coverage.
At eight o’clock, there was supposed to be some kind of rally in Martyr’s Square. We didn’t live here when the huge rally occurred shortly after Hariri’s death and I missed the handful of others that happened since. So, my only memory of a protest event in that location was an anti-war protest we went to in 2002, during our first visit to Lebanon. It was a lackluster, student-driven affair. Although it was now a different time, with different circumstances and issues, I was for some reason expecting more of the same. One of the first things we saw was a phalanx of riot police across the street at the South end of the square. Carrie remarked that it would be funny if anything went down because they’d have to charge across two lanes of traffic.
There were, to my estimation, a few hundred or possibly a thousand people there. Some sources count the number in the multiple thousands, but it didn’t seem to be that populated to me and anyway Carrie said “several hundred” in her NPR spot, so I’m going to stick with that. There was much waving of Lebanese and Progressive Socialist Party flags and much chanting, but in my observations it seemed like the most
demonstrative acts were carried out by teenagers vying for the attention of the news cameras. At one point a group of young men ran screaming through the square and climbed the statue at the North end in what I cynically regarded as a photo-op. We left after about 45 minutes or an hour, so it is certainly possible that the event took on a different character (and higher body-count) later.
We decided to have one last beer with Carrie before going our separate ways and we ended up again at Cocktails and Dreams upon my suggestion because it’s one of the only places I’ve found that you can get a pint of non-Almaza/Heineken (in this case, Murphy’s) draft beer that isn’t completely egregious. Unfortunately, they had no Murphy’s capability because “the machine [was] broken.” As a sidenote, “machine” is the popular shorthand among the english-as-second-language set for a device of any stripe, be it mechanical, electronic, or otherwise. Our coffee-grinder is a machine. My router is a machine. Whatever part of the Murphy’s aparatus that wasn’t functioning was a machine. Anyhow, I was disappointed about the Murphy’s, but Tony, the owner, came over and sat with us and bought us a round and told us a funny story about being pulled over for speeding in Paris and telling the cop he was a Saudi prince. Apparently he was convincing because it rated him a full-siren, red-light-running police escort back to his hotel.
Afterwards Amy and I headed back to Hamra. Diran, the owner of our video store, was djing at a place in heretofore-unheard-of-by-us neighborhood bar called The Captain’s Cabin. As soon as we walked in, we were kicking ourselves for not knowing about it sooner. To those readers on Team Brooklyn, imagine Freddy’s if it was rennovated with the intention of preserving every detail of its charm…and then add a nautical theme. Yes, it was that cool. The music was good, the bartender courteous and attentive, and we’ll certainly be returning.
So, all in all, it was a fairly active Friday. Today (Saturday), we woke up early to visit the zoo at Jeite Grotto with our friend Mary Ann and her daughters. The rest of the day was spent at home, hanging out, eating chili, taking care of wedding stuff, and watching movies. In case you’re interested, we watched A Time For Drunken Horses and then I watched Comic Book Confidential on my, Amy having no interest in such nonsense.
Tank on the bus route to Bourj. I think this was actually on Rue Hamra, basically around the corner from our apartment.
Amy Campbell, leisure class.
A leisure class kitten, downtown.
For contrast, a cat in our neighborhood, Hamra.
The statue in Martyr’s Square at sunset. I’d like to point out that the garbage can visible in the lower right of this photo remained in place all through the protest. It made me very nervous, but I was tempted to pretend to put something in it to see if anyone noticed (not seriously, Mom).
Hooligans climbing the statue in Martyr’s Square. I was hoping that the picture would come out such that you could see the Virgin Megastore looming large in the background, but no such luck.