Photographic evidence

We are having guests this week, and part of my duties as a tour-guide is a morning walk on and around the Corniche. While for my guests – a Spanish couple – everything they see is a surprise, for me this is a great opportunity to discover new details in buildings and areas I have come to know oh so well. I love passing by this building, for example:

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There is always something going on here – some rooms, apparently, have sleeping shifts, because the beds are almost never unoccupied. There will always be someone having a drink on a balcony, someone doing laundry on another, yet someone else surveying the street from up above.

Now that the political posters have been taken down, it’s time for other questions:

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And also for more cryptic decorations, it seems. (For those of you unfamiliar with Arabic super-stars: that second picture is a graffiti of Umm Kalthoum, a famous Egyptian singer of endless poetic songs, uttering the words of another (in)famous singer, Haifa Wehbe: bous el wawa – 'kiss the booboo'.)

When we got to Raouche, home to the famous stones-sticking-out-of-the-sea known as the Pigeon Rocks, we were joined by a busload of tourists busily snapping pictures of this attraction. A small guy with a Polaroid camera approached us and asked if he could take a picture of us. Not interested, we told him no, but then he explained in broken Arabic that it wasn’t for us – there were two Iranian men standing with him who wanted to be in the picture with us. Who are we to deny anybody our pretty faces? we reasoned, and agreed on the portrait. The Spanish couple and me in the middle, the two guys on each side against the backdrop of the Pigeon Rocks… beautiful. Except that just before snapping the picture, one of the Iranians moved closer to the middle, pushing the Spanish boyfriend to the side, and draping an arm around the girl. Click! I didn’t see the end-result, but I am pretty sure that it showed 4 people maximum, and I wonder what their story about it will be at home…

Wedding Season: 2008 (extended edition)

Tomorrow is the finale of wedding season 2008: I will attend my fifth (and last) wedding of this summer. It will be the fifth time that I am supposed to get a new dress, new shoes, new purse, and a professional to do my hair and make-up for a considerable amount of money. (And to think that five is not even considered to be a lot, knowing that one of my friends had to attend no less than 14 weddings over the course of four months – that’s more than one a week!) (And to add that I am lucky that not all my friends know each other, so I can get away with alternating dresses and switching shoes to look all new and shiny for the next party…) (But I digress.) The season was actually kicked off in The Netherlands by my cousin who finally got married to his boyfriend. Hilarity all over, of course, when I came back to Beirut and was asked to recount my holiday-adventures in Arabic class. ‘So, I went to my cousins wedding, and his husband…’ ‘HER husband’, my teacher immediately corrected, ‘ehm, no, HIS husband….’ Oh yes, that’s how we do things in Holland, as she remarked rather displeased, but in Lebanon, weddings aren’t to be taken too lightly.

Weddings in Lebanon are serious business, in fact. Everything is important: the amount of invitees, the number of guests, the prestige of the location, the abundance of the decoration, the costumes of the dancers, the freshness of the flower-arrangements, the amount of food, the sparklingness of the bride’s dress – everything. For upper class Lebanese, weddings are the ultimate way to show their position in society, and for those longing to be part of the upper class they are the ultimate way to create a gigantic debt and pretend to have a position in society to show off. Upper class weddings are nothing like the village wedding that I attended two years ago, where all the guests fitted in one front yard.

A typical wedding will include all or most of the following: - 1/3rd of the more than 500 guests are friends and close relatives of the couple, the rest are very-far extended family and business-partners invited by the parents - after the groom has walked in on his own, all eyes are out for the grand entrance of the bride, who will be accompanied by her father and preceded by up to 8 traditional dancers jumping and twirling - of the three camera-crews present, one is instructed to focus on the bride and on the bride only. The other two are for the groom, the couple, the decoration, and the audience (excuse me: guests) - the couple will spend the evening going around the room to have their picture taken with everyone of the 500+ guests, who will receive a copy of the picture on their way out as a thank-you note - a five layers high wedding cake, which will be lightly cut by the couple jointly holding the saber, then carted off to a corner of the room while the guests are served pieces of another inedible cake decorated with white glazing - a band with a keyboard or a dj, who plays the exact list of songs the bride has told him she likes, in complete disregard of the mood of the guests who are supposed to have dinner or dance to it - the throwing of the wedding-bouquet, even though blindly over the right shoulder, inevitably straight into the hands of the best friend who is, unfortunately, still unmarried - an amount of make-up on the guest’s faces that could sustain a theater-company for a year, and a collection of glittering jewelry on the guest’s necks, ears, arms, and fingers that would make the Rockefeller Christmas-tree look pale in comparison - the incessant repetition of the wish Ae’belik – ‘may you be next’, even if you have no intention of getting hitched anytime soon - and, not to forget, a worried mother of the bride who keeps running around her daughter to make sure the dress is always draped in perfect position. You know, for the pictures.

And if you don’t believe me? Come join me tomorrow. There are 1200 invitees – I think I can sneak in one extra…

Wishing all my friends who got married this year luck and happiness in their marriages. Alf mabrouk!

Getting lost without political guidance

It’s like Spring cleaning, but in October: on order of the Minister of Interior, no more political posters and banners are allowed in Beirut. No longer the 6 meter high face of the dead politician Hariri watching the sun rise on the Corniche, no longer the little green flags with the red and white Amal sign flying across the street from lamppost to lamppost or the Hollywood rendition of their chief. No more red SSNP graffiti, no more light blue Moustaqbal ribbons either. We can actually see walls and trees and traffic signs, now that the stern and smiling faces of innumerable men, dead and alive, no longer decorate (soil) public space. See the difference?

I’m not really sure if it is done to make space for new posters and pictures in the name of the upcoming election campaigns, or to bring a much needed halt to the visual claiming of urban territories by politicians and supporters alike. However, walking around in my neighborhood is no longer an assault on my senses – aside from the honking and screaming, it is almost calm and relaxing, like watching TV without commercials.

But politics are part and parcel of daily life in Lebanon, so even the simple act of removing political posters and murals has some practical repercussions: A friend who just moved to the neighborhood told everyone who wanted to visit her ‘just keep going straight on that road until you see the wall with the big Haraket Amal sign painted on it, then turn left.’ After the cleaning she promptly got lost herself, not recognizing that bright white wall on the corner of her street…

Broken memory

It is known that a fish forgets everything after one tour around the fishbowl.

And you, Lebanese, when was the last time you tested your memory?

Two options only

A ‘Green Line’ runs through Beirut, starting in Downtown and going South-East, separating the city and later on the country into two parts. East of the ‘line’ is Christian, West of the ‘line’ is Muslim. Although never an official frontier, its physical presence (stemming from the civil war) is still visible in many places in Beirut – certain houses on the roads that make up the line are still riddled with bullet-holes and signs of rocket-attacks. Yet even though the line is only visible in the city, I can never entirely forget about the division of the country. It’s not just the endless amounts of crosses and mini-Jesuses that decorate the roads in the Christian areas, nor the Ramadan banners in the Muslim areas. It’s me.

Being a tall, blond, European female means being subjected to many different stereotypes, depending on where I am in the world. In Africa it meant I was rich, in the USA it meant I was a model. In Lebanon, it can mean one of two things, and again, it depends on my geographical location.

In the Muslim areas of Lebanon, both city and country-side, it is automatically assumed that I am a journalist. After all, Lebanon is bursting at its seams with 20- and 30-something independent European females who want to report on the Middle East but do not have the freedom to do so in many other Arab countries. The stereotype is mainly annoying when I try to arrange a permit to South Lebanon, and have to explain why I would like to visit Hezbollah-favoring territories if not for media-related issues. On the streets, I don’t feel noticed, other than the occasional disagreeing look of a Muslim sheikh and his wife.

It’s a whole different story in the ‘other’ part of the country. Waiting for the bus on the street-side will inevitably result in several proposals that may or may not include cups of coffee or glasses of alcohol. Men who would otherwise never ask for directions feel compelled to back up and ask me ‘where is that shopping mall again? Oh, you don’t know? Where are you from then? Would you like to get in the car?’ I still don’t know where to look when the passing cars slow down for their ultimate staring and drooling experience. But the worst is when, like this weekend, we are trying to escape the heat in Beirut and spend the night in a hotel in Broummana. ‘Excuse me sir, the woman, who is she?’ ‘She’s my fiancée.’ ‘Ah ok. Mmmm. Let’s see. No, I’m sorry, we don’t have any vacancies.’ The accompanying look leaves room for no doubt that in his eyes, we are obviously lying, and Walid just picked me up from the street for $50 a night.

I know this is by far not the worst type of racism in Lebanese society. One only has to look at the malicious behavior towards the Sri Lankan maids and Bangladeshi gas-station attendants to see how much worse it can get. But it’s still hurtful, insulting and limiting; if given the choice between press or prostitute, I would still like to have the option to say ‘neither’.