I believe this is what we call ‘irony’

The Lebanese are an opinionated people. (According to many of my friends, this is the reason I feel so at home in Lebanon.) (Many of my friends could very well be right.) And the Lebanese are specifically opinionated about themselves and their society. “We are like this”, they will say, or “we are like that.” As an anthropologist, I also have an opinion about Lebanese people, or rather, about Lebanese society. It is based on doing fieldwork here, combined with anthropological, sociological and psychological theories on why people do what they do and act they way they act. However, this opinion does not always correspond to the opinion a Lebanese person may have of his/her society. And when a discussion comes to a point where people say ‘We do this because we are like this’ and I say ‘well, I think you do this because you are like that’, it usually ends with the ultimate dead-end argument from the Lebanese person I am speaking to: “But you don’t know, you can’t understand, because you are not Lebanese.”

It's an argument I obviously cannot refute.

Recently, I participated in a workshop about collaboration between NGOs in Lebanon (of which there are a stunning 3000 to 4000 registered with the Ministry). We learned how to initiate, manage and sustain collaborations between NGOs of different backgrounds and with different goals and missions.

On day 3 of the workshop, it became clear we wouldn’t have time to cover all the subjects our American trainer had in mind, so she drew up a list of the remaining topics and let us choose, collectively, which ones would be dropped.

It didn’t take long for the group to decide that we didn’t need to learn ‘communication skills’, nor learn more about ‘conflict resolution’. The general argument: “We know all that already.”

I could hardly keep myself from asking “really? Is that why we still haven’t elected a president and are on the brink of a (civil) war?”

But I can’t say that. Because I’m not Lebanese…

Old, abused... replaced

One of my friends who left the country doesn't want to come back because she doesn't recognize Beirut anymore. "The Beirut of my childhood", she says, "is a city full of beautiful buildings, old architecture, low houses with elegant balconies. Now, all I see is ugly high-rises without beauty or soul."

Unfortunately, I don’t know the Beirut of her youth. But sometimes, on a walk around the neighborhood, I catch a glimpse of what it must have been like. It looks beautiful indeed – the stairways outside the house, arched windows, red-tiled roofs, evoking thoughts of times long gone. Damascus and Aleppo (big cities in Syria) are still full of houses like this, with courtyards surrounded by small balconies, a small tiled fountain in the middle. These are the places where the thousand-and-one-night stories still live.

Also unfortunately, these beautiful old Beiruti buildings are not only left to rot and wither away, they are also replaced by towers of glass and cement that leave nothing to the imagination. They mainly just block the view.

See? This way the rich Saudis (and other millionaires from the Gulf who bought these apartments on the Corniche) are the only ones to enjoy the view…

De vrienden van Geert

“Zij komt uit Nederland,” zei de boekhandelaar, en wees naar het boek dat naast de kassa lag. De Engelse versie van Mijn Vrijheid, het boek van Ajaan Hirshi Ali. “Weet ik,” zei ik, “ik ook.” “Jullie hebben daar ook Moslims,” vervolgde de boekhandelaar. “Dus ook problemen.”

Dat was anderhalf jaar geleden.

Dezer dagen is haar boek verplaatst naar de onderste schappen. Nu krijg ik af en toe een vraag over ‘die ene minister van jullie, die een film aan het maken is.’ Denemarken is het land van de cartoons, Nederland het land van de anti-Mohamad-film. De meesten willen vooral weten waarom. “Om te bewijzen dat jullie terroristen zijn”, zeg ik dan maar. “Oh ja,” lachen we dan, “waar is de Nederlandse ambassade eigenlijk?”

ABN-AMRO Tower, 9e Verdieping, Ashrafiyeh, Beiroet; ik hoop dat ze hun rampen-draaiboek klaar hebben liggen. Ga ik vast mijn Belgische paspoort oppoetsen. Of misschien is het slim om voorlopig het gerucht dat ik uit Noorwegen kom niet meer tegen te spreken?

On the road

It’s one of those things I have come to accept as a normal part of daily life: checkpoints. I pass by least 3 of them on my way to work. Some are standard, fixed in one place; others appear and disappear in unexpected places along the road, lasting a few hours or a day. Most are manned by the army or the police, a few by ‘internal security forces’ or, rarely, customs officers. They can be part of the scenery, with warning signs half a kilometer ahead, concrete roadblocks lined up to steer the cars in the right direction, and a little sentry box covered in the colors of the Lebanese flag to shelter the officer on duty from possible rain; they can also be haphazard constructions of crush barriers blocking the road to a point where cars have to slow down to a snail’s pace to slalom around them. The cars are usually directed towards the left side of the road, leaving the right side open for those whose drivers are pulled over. A soldier to the left, machine-gun in one hand, peeking into every car, signaling with the other hand to continue driving or stop for a closer inspection of the car and its passengers. About 20 meters ahead another soldier holding a spiked barrier on wheels, to be thrown in front of the wheels of those ignoring the orders of the inspecting officer; on the right a few uniformed men walking around, checking car-papers, driver’s licenses, passports, identity cards, trunks and car-hoods.

When passing a checkpoint, the driver is supposed to come to a near halt (without actually stopping), with the window on the driver’s side rolled down and the volume of the radio at its lowest. If motioned to drive on, a ‘thank you’ is in order. Having a majority of female and/or blond passengers usually warrants unhindered passage, but cars full of young men almost always get directed to the side, and so are delivery vans and pick-up trucks.

I am still trying to find out what they are searching for. Clearly, these checkpoints are intended to make the country more secure, but how exactly they contribute to the overall safety – I don’t know. Do they want to intercept smuggled weapons? Stop boys from joining their friends in a fight? It seems that only men and immigrant workers (Ethiopian, Sri Lankan and Filipino women) pose a threat to society, because they are the ones who have to show their identity papers at the rare occasions that the (mini)bus gets pulled over. And apparently I am the least dangerous of all, because even when all the other females on the bus were asked to show identification, the soldier looked at me once and ignored the passport I tried to hand him.

Lebanon wouldn’t be Lebanon if the Lebanese wouldn’t know their way out of the hassle. With a car full of cameras and other equipment, we were sure of a spot in the inspection line, yet when our driver opened his window and the soldier said ‘good morning, where are you going with that?’ it took us only 7 words to make him grin from ear to ear, nod his head in agreement and let us pass. What we asked? ‘Sorry sir, are you from the Bekaa-valley?’ Yes, he was, and coincidentally from the village next to that of the driver.

Another strategy, to be used in case of forgotten IDs, is ‘ask before they ask’: when you get to the checkpoint, you ask the soldier about the road ahead, and (hopefully) he will get so caught up in explaining it to you that he will completely forget to ask for your papers. This does not always work, however, as we realized when we got lost in the hills of South Lebanon and asked to soldier about the way to Tyr last summer. ‘Of course we know the way,’ he said, throwing a look inside the car, ‘but first we would like to get to know the boys a bit better.’

Oh! My Soul!

A while ago I went to Tripoli, in North Lebanon, and bought soap. This was no ordinary soap.

The soap is handmade according to ancient wisdom and practices, all of which are secrets of the soap-makers. But they do explain what makes this soap so extra-special:

Just what my soul needed. And my excitement too.