Move Your Feet

The sunny days of the past week have reminded me of summer in Lebanon, and got me reminiscing about the many nights we spent in Barometre, a small pub here in Hamra. When the nights are hot and the bar is so full the people spill out onto the terrace all the way to the street, there is always the moment that the dabkeh starts. It’s either a particular song, or someone comes in with a big drum and beats the right rhythm, and then the men get in line and start dancing. It’s one of those things I really like about Lebanese men, that they are not afraid to dance, and that they do so with more grace than a broken robot.

Dabkeh is usually danced at weddings and other (family-)gatherings, not in bars, but in Barometre people insist on doing this traditional dance. Although often a men-only affair, women can and do participate in it as well. Some parts are slow, some parts are faster, and sometimes the jumping and moving of the feet goes so fast I can do nothing but sit and stare in awe. It looks something like this:

(warning: the quality of image and sound is not perfect, but the spirit of dabkeh is captured perfectly [edited to add: the original video was removed from YouTube, so below is a new one!])

Watching this makes me remember the summer-camp we organized at the NGO in South Lebanon where I used to work. On the last day, a contingent of Italian UNIFIL soldiers passed by to see what was going on, just as a group of teenage boys was performing a dance for the other participants. Rather than getting all self-conscious, the boys made it an even bigger show, and even invited the Italians to join. Mediterranean as they are, of course they immediately took the opportunity to dance, dancing along outside on a field in the sun.

How unfortunate, I thought, that Dutch boys don’t know how to dance. That most of them are too shy, or too self-conscious to move to the music together with others. But then I remembered the hype of a little while ago… and it turns out they do dance! And it’s not even that different from the Lebanese dabkeh!

I passed it off as Dutch folklore to my Arabic teachers, and they totally believed me…

That explains things

Yesterday we had some American friends over for dinner. They were in town to see several people and were slightly worried about the fact that they didn't have a watch with them and afraid they might be late for one meeting or another. We told them not to worry – often meetings in Lebanon don't start until half an hour or an hour after their scheduled time, and if somebody is late for less than 20 minutes, they don't even need to say sorry. This is something even I have gotten used to (and am now regularly guilty of, myself), but I still don’t really know why this is the case, and we did not manage to not explain why this national phenomenon of ultimate flexibility with time exists. Moving on to other topics, we got to an all-time favorite international-discussion-topic: animal sounds. You know those picture books you had as a kid, which you would look through over and over again while your parents would try to teach you the sound each animal makes? Well, apparently not only humans speak different languages – animals do too! A cow, for example, says 'mooh' in England and the USA, but 'boo' in the Netherlands. A chicken, curiously enough, says 'pȏk pok pok pok pok pok’ in the low countries, but ‘baq baq baqeeq!’ in Lebanon. (Only if it’s an Arabic chicken, though, because the ‘q’ refers to the letter ‘qaf’, a sound which is quite unique to the Arabic language). We continued our search for sounds and found out that only sheep can travel internationally: they say ‘mȇh’ in both English, Arabic and Dutch.

Finally we got to the rooster. In the States, a rooster says ‘cock-a-doodle-doo!’ our guests started. In Holland, he says ‘kukelekuu!’ was my contribution. We looked expectantly at Walid. What does a rooster say in Lebanese? ‘Cocoricoo!’ was his answer. But that’s French! What does a post-colonial Lebanese rooster wake you up with in the morning?

My dear Lebanese boyfriend looked confused and said …well, I don’t know, I can’t think of a sound! Upon which our American friend shook his head and said well at least now we know why everybody is late in this country….

On Diminishing the Decorative Value of Traffic Lights

We were once on the way to Jezzine, a town in the mountainous area of South-West Lebanon, when we hit a stretch in the road that had recently been repaved. Smooth, black tarmac for what seemed kilometers on end, with brand new road surface marking; clear, thick, white stripes on both sides of the road and in the middle. ‘Wow,’ said Walid, ‘look at this road, it’s almost European, so beautiful!’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and it seems they even put the correct stripes in the correct places! Double, uninterrupted lines in dangerous bends, and single dashed ones on straight stretches.’ ‘Wait…’ was the incredulous answer, ‘road markings have a meaning..?’

Well yes, they do, although I am not surprised that this is little-known fact among Lebanese drivers. Traffic here is notorious, and my friends used to tell me that ‘traffic lights are for decorative purposes only.’ But now that the Minister of Interior has decided to try to actually regulate Lebanese traffic, it is slowly dawning on people that it might be useful to know some rules. Rules such as speed limits, which to the surprise of many are different inside and outside the city.

Currently, he has invited some French policemen to train their Lebanese colleagues in traffic-control. I remember when I was taking driving lessons in the Netherlands; we would go to a busy intersection where students from the police academy would train in regulating traffic, because it was the best place to learn the many different positions of hands and arms and all the different directions the traffic police was giving with them. In Lebanon, the poor policeman in the middle of the road only has two orders to give: Stop! or Go! And for both of these he can use any type of gesture he wants to convey the message.

The newspaper reports how the French-Lebanese training-sessions are going; they spent some time with a pair of them on one of the major roads in the city. At one moment, the French policeman has signaled a bus-driver to stop, and the bus-driver has obeyed his orders – only about 6 meters too late, right in the middle of the intersection. The French policeman explains to the bus-driver where he was supposed to stop; a few meters earlier, before the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing. The Lebanese policeman translates for him. The bus-driver looks over at the French policeman, shrugs, and says with a smile: ‘Ala rassi’ – which in this situation means so much as ‘sure man, no problem.’

I hope the Minister of Interior is a very, very patient man.

Nieuws

Vandaag ben ik elders te vinden (klik op de titel voor de link): Demonstreren à la Libanaise: Als je hier demonstreert ben je tegelijk ook voor Cuba

Your God or Mine?

So the talk is about marriage, and whether one should or should not get married to a muslim. I’d say yes, but then again, I am biased; I’m about to get hitched with an atheist Sunni. Not that it matters, we’re both products of mixed marriages (sunni-shi’a for him and catholic-protestant for me), and neither of us are very attached to any of the rituals that came with all these religions. To my Arabic teacher, a devout Sunni muslim without a veil, this is still a bit puzzling. She’s perfectly ok with different grades of religiosity, and mixed marriages are not a problem, but no religion at all? How does that work? I explain that we will do a civil ceremony somewhere, and then have it registered in our respective countries.

‘So your kids,’ she says, ‘what will they be?’ ‘Here in Lebanon they will get their (grand)father’s religion, according to the law’, I answer. ‘And in Holland?’ ‘In Holland they won’t be anything until we register them as something.’ ‘They won’t be Christian?’ ‘Unless we have them baptized they won’t be registered as such, no.’

I’ve had this conversation before, and it usually stops here, because the possibility of being ‘nothing’ is a new concept for many. But my teacher was still curious about something, and carefully asked:

‘How about… what will you tell your children?’ ‘Supposing I will have them, I don’t think I will tell them anything.’ ‘You won’t take them to church?’ ‘I don’t plan on doing so, no. I guess they will pick up enough about religion from their grandparents and the people around them, and when they are older and they want to join a religion, they can do so.’ ‘So you won’t tell them God doesn’t exist? That there is nothing?’ she asks, seemingly a little worried about my unborn, godless children. ‘I don’t think it’s up to me to decide whether he exists or not, so no, I probably won’t be telling them that.’

The answer reassures her. But then a more practical issue comes to her mind.

‘But if you don’t have a religion, who do you refer to when you say ‘nshallah’ [God willing] or ‘ya rabbe’ [oh my God]?’ she asks. I try to avoid these expressions as much as I can, because indeed, who am I referring to? but sometimes there is no other option. My answer is the first one of the day that she can really get behind. ‘All of them.’