Why, really?

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So why do you like living in Lebanon? My friend, visiting from the Netherlands, asked me after a day of being harassed on the Corniche and having been overcharged with every single purchase just because we are both foreign.

I couldn’t quite think of anything, just then.

But two days later I knew full well why I like living in Lebanon. Because I can sit on the beach on a Monday night, enjoying the colors of the sunset and throwing pebbles in the water, I said.

In November! she added.

In November, indeed. It’s easy to forget one cannot wear flip-flops this time of year everywhere in the world...

Liefde gaat door de maag

Het moge inmiddels duidelijk geworden zijn dat eten een belangrijke rol inneemt in de Libanese samenleving. Familiebanden worden onderhouden met de uitwisseling van locale specialiteiten, gastvrijheid wordt uitgedrukt in een stroom van hapjes, drankjes en maaltijden, en er worden zelfs rechtszaken aangespannen om bepaalde gerechten voor het land te behouden. Het was dan ook tijdens een familie-barbecue dat ik officieel aan Walid’s grootouders voorgesteld werd. Het was niet de eerste keer dat ik ze zag. In de zomer van 2007 was ik ook al eens uitgenodigd voor een uitgebreide familiemaaltijd, maar toen was ik nog geintroduceerd als ‘een vriendin uit Nederland’, en niets serieuzers dan dat. Het leek de familie beter om de grootouders niet teveel van streek te brengen – een buitenlandse vriendin voor hun kleinzoon, daar zouden ze niet heel blij van worden. Dat had niets met mij te maken, maar alles met hun oudste zoon: die was 30 jaar geleden met een Française getrouwd, en woont sindsdien in Frankrijk met drie kinderen die geen woord Arabisch spreken. Dat zou de grootouders niet nog eens overkomen.

Opa dacht dat ik een mede-student was van Walid, en sprak mij vriendelijk toe in het Frans, almaar proberend mij als vegetariër een lekker stukje vlees van de barbecue aan te bieden. Maar oma had mij wel door. Ze riep Walid bij zich en waarschuwde hem zich niet aan mij te verliezen, want voor hij het wist zou ik hem meeslepen naar Nederland en zouden zij hem nooit meer zien! Uit veiligheidsoverwegingen werd ik daarna alleen nog meegenomen naar familie-aangelegenheden waarbij de grootouders niet aanwezig waren.

Dat duurde zo een jaar of wat. Een jaar waarin de moeder van Walid (die gelukkig geen problemen heeft met de buitenlands-heid van haar zoon’s aanstaande) hard aan het werk ging om haar ouders voor te bereiden op het onontkoombare: hun kleinzoon aan de hand van een lange blonde Nederlandse. Ze prees mijn beheersing van de Arabische taal, mijn werk met een NGO in het gebied waar de grootouders wonen, en verhaalde zelfs van mijn Hezbollah-diploma om aan te geven dat ik toch echt aan hun kant van het politieke spectrum sta.

Haar moeite werd beloond, ware het niet van harte. Toen Walid een paar weken geleden bij zijn grootouders langsging, werd hij bij zijn opa op de bank geroepen. Hoe zit dat nou met die lange? vroeg opa, ben je daar nogsteeds van overtuigd? Walid keek eens om zich heen, zag zijn moeder en tante knikken dat het moment daar was, en brak het nieuws: ja, opa, we zijn verloofd.

Vandaar dus de barbecue; geen beter moment om mij officieel de familie in te schuiven. Maar omdat de grootouders nogsteeds niet helemaal beseften wat dat nou inhoudt, vegetariër zijn, had de moeder van Walid speciaal roosterbare groenten voor mij meegenomen. Ik werd in een stoel naast grootvader gemanoevreerd, alwaar ik in mijn beste Arabisch een gesprek probeerde te voeren over hoe hun huis en de stad er vroeger uitzagen. Toen opa mij alle planten in de tuin aanwees, zag ik aan de glimlachende gezichten van ooms en tantes dat het de goede kant op ging, en uit de brede glimlach bij oma’s kom nog eens langs, met Walid! bij vertrek bleek het een uitgemaakte zaak: ik was goedgekeurd.

Maar de ware bezegeling van de acceptatie kwam twee weken later. Onderweg naar een picknick bij oom en tante gingen we even langs bij de grootouders. Welkom welkom! We hoorden al dat jullie zouden gaan picknicken. Opa kwam naast me staan, greep mijn hand en zei: maar we weten niet zeker of ze wel goed aan je gedacht hebben, dus oma heeft wat voor je gekookt. Oma hield glimlachend een schaal omhoog. Mjaddara, linzenpuree – zonder vlees! Ware liefde gaat door de maag, ook die van de grootouders.

The Great Competition

“It’s the oil, stupid!”No, I am not talking about the USA and their wars here in the Middle East. Nor am I talking about their nerve-wrecking elections. (I mean, I don’t even know if I will dare to go to sleep tomorrow, for fear of what we might wake up to on Wednesday! Which reminds me of the election-results in 2004, which I accidentally witnessed with the Democratic crowd in an upscale club in New York City. I remember the speech of Barack Obama, broadcasted on the big screen, and someone whispering in my ear ‘watch closely, that there is our next president!’ – I didn’t dare to believe him then, and I can only hope to believe him now.) But that’s not what this post is about. I am talking about olive oil.

Olive oil might very well be as important for countries around the Mediterranean and inwards toward Iran as black oil is for the Gulf States. Back in the Netherlands, I used to work in a Persian restaurant, and the sweet chef would start every recipe with ‘oil olive, lots of oil olive!’ before adding any other ingredient. (This same sweet chef had learned to cook when his political intellectual activities had landed him in prison for a few years. Once his request for asylum in the Netherlands was approved, he set out to find a job, and the overly-helpful placement center thought a kitchen restaurant would be the most appropriate considering his skills. Glad we made use of his intellectual abilities, right? But I digress again.)

So, olive oil. In two years in Lebanon, I have only had to buy a bottle of oil once, and not after all my friends apologized that the harvest had been so meager that year that even they had to get it from the stores. Every other time one of my friends would discover a nearly empty olive oil bottle in my kitchen, he or she would immediately exclaim ‘your next bottle will be from our oil! You have to taste it, it’s the best!’

I have been offered spoons of olive oil when coming to people’s houses for a cup of tea, ‘just to taste’. I have been laughed at when suggesting that someone (usually on their way back to job or studies in Europe or the USA) could lighten their luggage by removing those two-liter bottles of uncle’s olive oil from their suitcases. Good olive oil is a source of pride, and an almost essential part of someone’s identity – even if they had no hand in growth, harvest or preparation of the olives and the oil.

Now that I am living with Walid, I have automatically become part of the sharing of olive oil of his family, much to the chagrin of many friends who have proudly supplied me with olive oil before. Walid’s mother’s family has some olive-groves in the South, and for her and her brothers and sisters there is no question as to which oil will be used in their households – their husbands and wives have no say in the matter. But the pride never really goes away, and when one uncle-in-law had a chance, he offered me olive oil from his family’s village. ‘You know,’ he said with a wink, ‘they may think their olive oil is the best, but we are not from their village, we can eat much better!’

I’m looking forward to the competition. May the best man - uh, oil win.

Don’t forget to check Qussa: The Visuals every once in a while!

It's about time

You know you have been in Lebanon for too long when… - You are happy that during a thunderstorm the rain only comes in through the walls and is not dripping from the ceiling - You ask for bread with dinner – even when the dinner is pasta with tomato-sauce - You wonder why the car in front of you doesn’t pass the slow one in front of him – he can easily squeeze himself between the truck and the sidewalk on the right! - You are no longer able to formulate a sentence consisting of one language only – little bits of French and Arabic show up in everything you say - You assume the phrase ‘oh I’m fine, nothing’s happening’ means no fighting has taken place and no bombs have exploded recently - You catch yourself saying ‘we’ when you try to explain crazy Lebanese habits to tourists

But you know you are still European when… - Your first thought, when seeing people burning tires during a demonstration, is ‘but… but… the black smoke is bad for the environment!’ - You hesitate to shake out the table cloth onto the street because you worry that the breadcrumbs and the like will dirty the sidewalk - You actually get upset when a co-worker promised to have something done and hasn’t… 3 days after the deadline - ‘I invite you for dinner’ means just that, not that you will pay for the whole evening

And you know you are still Dutch when…

- You expect a koekje every time you order coffee or tea in a café - You assume you will meet someone around 11am when you had agreed to go for a coffee, at 3pm for a tea, or at 7ish for a dinner date – rather than any random time during the day or night, for any of these things - Your friend is coming over and you ask her to bring drop, Calvé pindakaas, peperkoek, stroopwafels, and the Saturday edition of de Volkskrant.

The Unfair Lightness of Being

So Lebanon has a problem with electricity. Not only are the electric cords so old and rotten that with every bit of rain they break and leave whole neighborhoods in the dark, and not only is illegally tapping public power sources (streetlights and such) and refusal to pay the electricity bills a common occurrence, there also simply isn’t enough electricity. What does that mean, you ask? It means that every day, for a few hours, the electricity goes off. These power-cuts are scheduled on different hours during the week. For example, on Monday, the power cuts from 3 in the afternoon until 6 in the evening. Tuesday, it cuts from noon to 3pm. Wednesday, there is no electricity from 9am until noon, and Thursday from 6am to 9am. On Friday, the cycle starts over again at 3pm. And this is for the lucky ones in Beirut – outside of the capital, the power-cuts can go up to six, seven, eight, in some places even 10 hours a day.

In many places, people buy private generators or subscribe to a big one that provides for the whole neighborhood. Some buildings have a generator just for the elevators, but ours unfortunately doesn’t. Not that I mind a bit of physical exercise, but I do plan my grocery-shopping around the power-cut – I don’t feel the need to carry the 10-liter bottles of potable water all the way up to the 8th floor. And it’s not only the grocery shopping that gets scheduled during electricity hours; the same goes for showers (no hot water!), watching a movie (no TV / computer!) and even cleaning the house (no music!). Luxury problems, true, but inconvenient nonetheless – and I have come to realize it contributes greatly to the feeling of ‘in Lebanon, you can never decide for yourself, it’s always outside forces that determine your life’ that I have heard so many Lebanese people express over the time. It’s not just about wars and major political events; it’s the small, daily stuff that puts you out of control over your own actions.

But back to the electricity, and there not being enough of it. As I said, those of us living in Beirut are lucky, with the minimal power-cut of three hours, thanks to the strange reasoning that ‘tourists come to Beirut so the businesses there need it more than elsewhere’. With the arrival of a new minister for electric affairs, however, this unfairness was going to be addressed: cutting the electricity in Beirut for four hours a day instead of three would presumably free up enough electricity to bring back the power-cuts everywhere else in the country to five or six hours. All fair and well, right? But no, heavy protest ensued, especially from those men in the government with many followers in the city. It was even named an attack on the capital, and a continuation of the siege that happened in May. So the fair and equal distribution of electricity throughout the country never happened, and Beirut is still given preferential treatment with 21 hours of electricity a day.

Obviously, I don’t mind, living in a house on the 8th floor with no generator. But I don’t think we need to brag about it by leaving the streetlights on even during the day…