It's the 14th of February

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I always thought Valentine’s Day was the day to send the person you had a crush on an anonymous card, and to receive just such a card without the name of the sender, so you could spend the whole day hoping the card you got was sent by exactly that person you sent one to. Which of course was never the case. Here it seems like Valentine’s Day is all about red candles and pink teddy bears and heart-shaped chocolates, and if you can afford it, a five-course meal in an expensive restaurant. Which kind of defeats the point, because you can’t really go out for dinner anonymously.

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day, with or without secret love.

(Picture taken in the sea-castle in Saida, South Lebanon, summer 2008)

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….

So you want the real thing...

I’m in a service (shared taxi) and since I am the only passenger, the taxi-driver starts a conversation with me. ‘So, what do you think of Lebanon?’ It’s the usual question to start with. ‘I like it. That’s why I live here.’ My standard answer to this question. ‘You live here? Where are you from?’ Curiosity goes up, possibility to charge higher rate goes down. ‘From Holland.’ I have to pronounce this one really well, for it not to be confused with Poland or written off as ‘non-understandable Scandinavian country.’ ‘Hahaha!’ The taxi-driver starts laughing. ‘You must be scared of the cold there!’ ‘That’s right. I love the sun!’ I’m glad he understands what I’m talking about. ‘Well,’ he says without missing a beat, ‘you could just take a picture of it and put it up in your room.’

And with that: case closed on the weird foreigner who wants to live here.

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.