Toetje

Nog één keertje dan, over dat huwelijk van ons: Een interview dat Daisy Mohr afgelopen zomer met ons afnam in Beirut voor Radio Nederland Wereldomroep:

Nicolien Kegels trouwt Libanese vriend op Cyprus.

(Of het ook beluisterbaar is op de site weet ik niet.)

How can you tell…

… that you’re back in Beirut? It’s when you run into 11 people you know in the first 6 hours after leaving the house. It’s when you wake up from the sound of construction works and the smell of foul. It’s when you can have a cup of tea in a hidden place on the seaside. It’s when you walk past a bar called ‘Starbuzz’ that has all its TVs tuned to the ‘Fashion TV Arabia’ channel, including the one underneath the floor in the entrance.

It’s when you can’t think of anything else to do except go for lunch, go for coffee, go for dinner, and go for a drink – and you don’t even mind. It’s when you agree to meet people and they don’t show up, but it doesn’t matter because others do. It’s when you see an ad for ‘Philippina woman wanted to help 55 year old man in small house’ right above a poster for the weekly Filipina Disco; Sunday from noon to 7pm.

It’s when you wonder why everyone stares at you until you realize you’re the one sticking out again. It’s the sound of honking cars is louder than your own thoughts. It’s when you can satisfy your craving for both donuts and saj 24/7. It’s when there’s always someone saying ‘you didn’t eat enough, have some more’. It’s when you see a billboard for diet pills that promise to ‘cut the fat and burn the calories’ with free delivery, so you don’t need to move to get them.

Beirut, it’s good to be back (even if it’s only for a short while).

P.S. I have some trouble uploading pictures to my blog, but if you click on the light-blue parts of the sentences you will see examples of what I am talking about.

Even new habits die hard

Some habits are hard to acquire. Others are not. For example, it didn’t take me long to pick up the Lebanese habit of asking ‘do you want/need anything?’ upon leaving. Whether it’s leaving a room going to the kitchen, leaving the house to go shopping, or even getting off the bus to go to work (I’m not kidding, I once heard a guy ask the bus-driver if he needed anything – how he would get the wanted item to the bus-driver once he would drive off, I don’t know); you ask the question every single time.

Usually, the question is answered with ‘your health’ – as in, you don’t need to bring me anything other than your safe return. Hardly ever is it met with an actual request to bring anything. If somebody does ask for something specific, it’s most likely because your destination is spoken of earlier and they know you’re going to that exact store that carries the item they need.

The problem started when I came back to the Netherlands and forgot that this is not standard practice. Every time I left the office, I would ask my colleagues ‘do you need anything?’ First they didn’t know what I meant. ‘Do I need anything? Like, what kind of thing?’ I would try to save face by making up a story about going to the supermarket rather than to the soup-place around the corner for lunch, to increase the chances of them thinking the question was a genuine one, rather than a strange routine I had picked up abroad. When they started ordering their groceries from me, however, it was time to lose the habit.

I still ask it though, but only on one occasion: just before packing my bags to go to Lebanon. The perpetual request?

Stroopwafels. Lots and lots of stroopwafels.

stroopwafels-1

A phonecall from hell

My friend Iman, afraid that I might start missing (an idealized version of) Lebanon too much, forwarded me the following joke: Queen Elizabeth, Bill Clinton and the Lebanese president died and all went to hell. After spending a few weeks in de house of the devil, Queen Elizabeth says: “I miss England. I would like to call my country and see how everybody is doing there.” The devil hands her the phone. She calls and talks for about 5 minutes, hangs up and asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” The devil answers: “5 million dollars.” “5 Million dollars?” She writes him a check and sits down on her chair.

Then Bill Clinton, a little jealous, gets up from the couch and says he, too wants to call his country and see how everybody is doing. He takes the phone and talks to the United States for about 2 minutes. Afterwards he asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” To which the devil answers: “10 million dollars.” “10 million dollars?” He writes him a check and sits back down on the couch.

The Lebanese president gets extremely jealous; he wants to call his country too! “I want to see how everybody is doing!” he says, “I want to talk to the prime minister, to the deputies, I want to talk to Lebanon!” The devil hands him the phone and the Lebanese president talks and talks and talks, he is on the phone for almost 20 hours. When he hangs up, he asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” To which the devil answers: “2 dollars.”

Queen Elizabeth and Bill Clinton jump up and scream “only 2 dollars?!?!”

“Well,” says the devil, “from hell to hell, it’s local!”