Category : Ranting
Inactive blog land. It’s a bleak and desolate place. It’s mostly populated by teenagers who’ve veered away from telling the world their innermost thoughts and are concentrating on porn again. There’s also a smattering of bored housewives in Tuscon, Arizona who thought a blog about their lemon meringue recipes would make the world a better place, but quickly realized that their readership consisted mainly of their e-tarded aunts who needed the blog printed out for them since they couldn’t find the on switch on their kids laptops. According to report in the New York Times about a year ago, which I can’t be bothered to dig out and link to, 95% of all blogs lay abandoned. That’s a substantial chunk. But it’s not as tragic as you may suppose. Most blogs are devoted to the daily activities of Mitsy the housecat in a Newcastle council house. Of the blogs that do survive, and make tons of cash, most are devoted to the exposed nether regions of celebrities stumbling out of their Swarovski-encrusted sports cars and into bimbo-ridden LA nightspots.
So, I’ve been in inactive blog land for the past month or so. I’ve felt bad about it, but only briefly. I’d rather write nothing than slobber onto my keyboard and hope that something semi-entertaining emerges onto the screen. There are a couple of reasons for this inactivity. First of all, I’m pretty busy at the moment, but that’s a crappy excuse because if CEOs can blog, so can I. Secondly, I’ve come to be quite happy in Beirut, and the ire that fuelled my initial posts has subsided. I obviously still have infuriating encounters with the odd overzealous valet trying to monopolize 7 spots of prime parking.
So yeah. There you have it. That’s why I’ve been away. But now something has compelled me to post. Anyone care to guess what that might be? Anger at insane World Cup fans popping up with previously unknown flags at the end of every football match? No, but close. It’s Paul the Octopus. Paul’s accurate predictions of world cup matches have me convinced of an impending octopod take-over of our planet. Bow down to the octopi.
It’s almost here. Billions have been waiting for it for the past four years. Nations will rise and fall. People will cry, people will rejoice. Money will be made, money will be lost. Is it an impending meteor shower? The End of Days? The Third World War? Nope. It’s the World Cup in South Africa.
I’m not a huge football fan. I don’t particularly enjoy watching league games on a regular basis, since they mainly feature 22 overpaid twentysomethings running around after a ball of leather and diving spectacularly all over the pitch. I supported Manchester United as a kid, but that was mainly because Eric Cantona used to kung-fu kick annoying fans and compare games to fishing and birds in the sky in post-match interviews. More recently, I’ve claimed to support Arsenal, but that was mainly to fit in with my colleagues who were all Gunners fans. Plus they’ve got a player called Nasri, which made my life in London immeasurably easier last year.
But the World Cup is a different affair altogether. Along with billions of people around the planet, I become a fervent fan and don’t miss a game. I become an expert on every rule, shouting uncontrollably through my television at balding Italian referees. I also turn into an expert half-time and post-game analyst, discussing the formations of players I didn’t know existed until a week ago. I still think Bebeto plays for Brazil (he played on their ’94 squad, for any of you kids out there too young to remember). There’s no denying the World Cup is an amazing global moment, shared by the entire planet. Old and young, rich and poor, men and women, everyone is enthralled by the month-long spectacle of nations battling it out on the pitch with fine sportsmanship and a splattering of sponsorship.
However, one thing casts a shadow over my enjoyment of the event when I’m in Beirut. You guessed it; I can’t stand the proliferation of various national flags all over the place. People who’ve never met a Brazilian, let alone set foot in Brazil plaster their cars and balconies with the Brazilian flag. They support a team to which they have no national or ancestral connection as fervently as they mispronounce the country’s name. I wonder if they know that the text emblazoned on the flag, Ordem e Progresso, means Order and Progress, two things we desperately lack in Lebanon. Fistfights will break out between cousins on opposing sides of the Italy/Germany divide. The festival of flags has started earlier than usual this year. I was away for a couple of weeks, and when I got back on Monday every other car had a foreign flag fluttering from the back window. Either the country had been taken over by visiting diplomats or world cup fever had kicked off.
I saw a convoy of 4*4s yesterday all bearing the German flag and was briefly concerned they were off to invade Poland. I saw a Fiat today being driven by a man who I can only guess was schizophrenic, seeing as he had an Argentine flag attached to one window and a Dutch one attached to the other. What annoys me most about all this is that I’ve never seen the Lebanese flag displayed and defended with such passion. Granted, we’ve never played in the World Cup, and I’m not holding my breath for 2014, but still. These aren’t’ the flags of Bayern Munich or Barcelona or Chelsea. These are national flags, to which most of us have no allegiance.
Someone asked me who I was supporting today, and I obviously said England. I got the kind of look you get when you say you collect garden gnomes. Disgust and confusion infused with pity. I explained I was British and had lived in England for a very long time and so on. The guy retorted: Yeah but they don’t stand a chance. I found it odd how blissfully unaware he was that you don’t support a national team according to how likely they are to win; you support them because of some deep personal connection. Otherwise what’s the point? Of course women support teams based on who has the better looking players, making Italy and Argentina favourites amongst the fairer sex. They must have a thing for men in headbands who gesticulate a lot, maybe I should give it a shot someday.
I suspect that in the highly unlike event that Brazil play Lebanon in a World Cup match, most of Beirut would be dancing samba and drinking Caipirinhas when the Brazilians win. In the meantime, I may stick an English flag on my balcony on June 12th when we play the USA. My only concern is that the last time I did that my neighbours thought I’d started a regional office for the Red Cross in my flat.
As some of you know, I spent the best part of 22 years living in London. This means that I’m possessed with a sort of permanent wistful melancholy, a penchant for a mug of PG tips and the occasional violent outburst at a football match. You can imagine that the cultural baggage one accumulates in the UK is kind of hard to share with someone who doesn’t understand the culture. The English sense of humour is famously puzzling to anyone who hasn’t spent time on the British Isles.
True, it’s hardly as obscure as say being from Botswana, but when I want to reminisce about watching Newsround and Bananaman, I’ve always felt fellow Brits were few and far between in Beirut. Any Beirutis who grew up in the US have it easy, American culture being so ubiquitous that I’m sure even Massai tribesmen in Kenya are aware that Ross and Rachel were on a break. Anyone who grew up in France is also spoilt for choice when it comes to popular culture. Lebanon is a francophone country, and prides itself, sometimes misguidedly, on its links to our ex-colonizers, something of a prolonged Stockholm syndrome. You even get the full bouquet of French terrestrial and satellite TV stations from your neighborhood pirate cable provider. My provider comes in the form of a diminutive Armenian man who seems to have inherited very little from his ancestors beyond one tooth, a stutter, a sweaty disposition and no understanding of what the BBC is.
I can’t complain too much though, because things are much easier than the last time I moved to Beirut in 1997. Back then I had to rely on memory for any attachment to my native London. I had to dig out old VHS tapes of Have I Got News For You, Fawlty Towers and Blackadder. Oh, by the by, VHS tapes were those big boxy things we used before DVDs, for you kids out there.
Now I download the latest episodes of QI and Mock The Week on YouTube. I download podcasts from BBC Four, and enjoy the surreal prospect of listening to Germaine Greer discuss post-feminism whilst I’m stuck in traffic behind a pimped-out yellow Honda Civic with two of Lebanon’s finest soldiers whistling at everything in a skirt.
And more recently, I’ve actually been meeting Brits, of the proper kind and the Lebanese kind, like myself. And as they say, once it rains it pours. I went from not knowing a single Brit for years to suddenly being surrounded by people from all corners of the UK. I’m overcome with a very un-English sense of joy when I speak to someone who has a proper English accent, never mind if it’s from Godalming, Somerset or Manchester. So in the last few weeks I’ve been remincing about a childhood spent watching Superted, Neighbours and The Bill. I’ve been recounting tales of meeting Jet, Hunter and John Fashinu at a taping of Big Break’s Christmas special with John Virgo and Jim Davidson. This probably means nothing to most people, but it means the world to me.
I’ve been away from Beirut for a couple of weeks now. I spent a few days in London last week, and it was refreshing to walk around aimlessly on pavements under a gentle drizzle. It was nice to wander into Waterstone’s and ask knowledgeable staff for book recommendations. It was nice to walk past my old school, my old university and my old flat. It was nice to walk into a pub with carpets rendered pungent from years of spilt lager. It was nice to have a conversation with a cabbie “bout all these fecking foreigners”, with a delightful sense of irony and self-awareness.
One particularly chilly day I headed to Canary Wharf for an interview. I boarded the Jubilee Line armed with a well-stocked iPod and a copy of the Financial Times. As the train trundled along, I caught a reflection of myself in the window. I was far paler than I was a week ago, especially in the unforgiving neon light. I looked like a caged corporate slave again, my Windsor knot choking any ambitions of creativity I have been harboring for the past year. My lips were chapped. I looked down at my hands clutching the FT, dried and cracked from the subzero temperatures outside. When I got to my interview, I gave it my all. I was even invited back for a second round, which I’ve politely declined.
I’m afraid London isn’t home anymore. I’m afraid there are ambitions I have for myself in Beirut, I want to be part of the generation that comes back and makes a difference. I have role to play in Beirut that surpasses my role as a faceless zombie on the Jubilee Line. Plus its warm in Beirut. And most important of all, I miss it.
Here’s a little story I haven’t told many people, because it shines a bright light onto my unbridled geekiness.
So, the year is 1992. The Chicago Bulls are NBA Champions. Andre Agassi is sporting a full head of hair. Kids are sitting around their rooms with Troll dolls attached to their pencils as Kriss Kross’ Jump and Sir Mix-a-lot’s Baby Got Back blare out of the boombox. Home Alone and Sister Act are topping the box office. And I’m a 10 year old kid.
Of all the year’s cinematic offerings, I’m particularly excited about the prospect of watching Aladdin, especially since I’ve discovered that he’s modelled on Tom Cruise and that makes the fat little bespectacled Arab kid in me really proud. It’s going to be cool to be Arab.
I settle into my seat at the Odeon on High Street Ken, and I’m ready for a mystical land full of anthropomorphic cuteness from monkeys and whatnot. Then I sit through 90 minutes of thinly veiled racism, which leaves me crushed. Even Robin William’s psychotic take on the Genie isn’t enough to salvage the film in my eyes.
I go home, and being the nerdy English school kid that I was, embark on a quest to chastise Disney for their insolence through the only means available to me: a strongly worded letter.
The details are a bit fuzzy and haven’t withstood the test of time in my memory, and I have no idea what I wrote. But I remember being particularly vexed by the swashbuckling and monstrous law enforcers. Plus the following lyrics didn’t really sit well with a proud Lebanese kid, who’d never actually seen his parent’s homeland yet:
Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where it’s flat and immense / And the heat is intense / It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home
So there you have it. I was a ridiculous 10 year old with a warped sense of pride sending a letter to one of the biggest corporations in the world. End of story. Right?
Not exactly. Through some weird combination of events, it would seem Disney thought a fat 10 year old had a point. They thanked me for my letter and forwarded it to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, of which I’ve been an honorary member ever since.
Moral of the story. Always complain when something just isn’t right, sometimes people listen.
O zouzou, how brave you are on your battered Jog scooter, weaving in and out of traffic, an artist of the two-wheeled form
O zouzou, how dashing you are as you stand tall under the weight of all the Brylcreem that has established permanent residence from the roots of your hair to the tip of your lush pony tail
O zouzou, how charming you are when you whistle at young ladies passing by, forever stealing their hearts. All helpless victims at your feet. 2eww 2eww.
O zouzou, how cool you are, reclining against walls in department stores sneering at the passers by
O zouzou, how pensive you are, sitting on your throne of white plastic on the sidewalk committing the remnants of pumpkin seeds to the seaside air
O zouzou, how distinguished you are in your 1991 Mercedes CE Coupe with Serround bass and windows darker than the night itself, a true lover of the classic car
O zouzou, how I love it when you cheer on-screen kisses and bad-guy punch-outs at the cinema, a true lover of the arts you are
O zouzou, how I rejoice when the stars align and place me next to you in traffic as I gently hear the sounds of Assi Al Halani waft over from your pirated CD to my eager ears
O zouzou, how I admire the cigarette dangling magically from your lip all day, oscillating with the uttering of every new word
O zouzou, how I love thee.
Right off the bat I’d like to apologize, I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks, which is inexcusable in the world of blogging. However, I haven’t been particularly inspired for a whole host of reasons, and I would rather not write than unleash a load of piffle unto the world. However, I finally have something to say again, so you can revel in my superficial insights and nagging tirades once again.
The worst cliché amongst the plethora of bad clichés available to mankind is the one that states your abhorrence of clichés, promptly followed by the use of one. So here goes. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
I recently spent a week in Qatar, experiencing the Gulf beyond Dubai. As one might expect from a bourgeoning oil-rich Gulf economy on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, it is replete with shimmering skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes, man-made islands, gargantuan shopping malls, white Land Cruisers, sun burnt expats and south-east Asian labor. It’s not a place particularly fussed about tourists or visitors beyond the transiting passengers of the wildly successful Qatar Airways. It’s practically impossible to hail a cab anywhere in the city, there’s essentially one museum, a souk and not much else. The city is infested with construction cranes and vacant buildings. Towers rise out of the desert and stand empty, corroding away in the gentle caress of the sands. But all in all, it’s a great place to make a living and it doesn’t have any of the gaudy excess of its shinier neighbor (you know, the one with all the “Biggest” and “Tallest” in front of everything).
The Lebanese friends I saw are making the most of it, settling into healthy routines and giving themselves completely to their work. They do so almost joylessly though; talk of a dreamed return to Beirut always creeping in early on in any conversation. I would try to comfort them, saying half-heartedly that Lebanon wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that they were romanticizing the place due to their position as voluntary exiles. Until one of these friends asked me if I’d ever watched Beyrouth Derniere. I’d heard about the show (a one-off spin off of Paris Derniere broadcast by French cable channel Paris Premiere) but I’d never found it anywhere. So we sat down in from of his laptop and watched it.
Before I explain what the show’s about, allow me to indulge in a little rant. Contrarily to most of my beloved friends, I tend to be mostly irritated by foreign (and local) coverage of Lebanon and its supposed attractions. I cringe anytime I read about calls to prayer overlapping with the ringing of church bells as the sun gently sets across a shimmering Mediterranean. I shudder when I read about a veiled woman crossing paths with a mini-skirt wearing blonde along the Corniche. I’m left with a sour aftertaste anytime I read about the sense of impeding danger hanging in the air even as people party away at rooftop bars. Although I can’t deny that these things occur, I’m infuriated by the constant lacing of commentary on Lebanon with a touch of exoticism, post-colonial guilt and the conflict-porn of bored Europeans.
It seems we are relegated to being an amalgamation of clichés, some of them of our own making. For example, in 1968 Abdallah Farah published a series of postcards of Beirut. We’re all familiar with them, they’re the weathered and battered clichés of Beirut in the 1960s that are still sold in some bookshops that time has forgotten. In the early 1990s they were the only postcards you could find anywhere. So here we were, perpetuating an image petrified in time. A Beirut from the Golden Age, as if the war had never happened, and it was of little importance that half the places represented on these postcards didn’t even exist anymore. If anyone were to receive one them in the post, it would be a postcard from another era, let alone another country. Basically, I had always been waiting for an accurate portrayal of what Beirut was to me.
So, it is in the context of these various imaginings of the same geographic place that I return to the television show I watched in Doha last week. The concept of the show is that the host (who you never see) has a handheld camcorder, and goes around town interviewing people. He usually does this at various venues around Paris. The resulting feel of the show is very intimate and realistic, as you’re basically looking at the world through the host’s eyes (technically your vantage point is that of peeking over his shoulder). His escapades in Beirut are varied. He’s shown around town by renowned architect Bernard Khoury, musician Zeid Hamdane, he wanders around Sabra and Chatila with actress Beatrice Dalle (a favorite of mine because we both have gapped teeth). It basically feels like you’re showing a friend around town, the good the bad and the ugly. He even ends up at some sort of drug-fuelled sex party in the hills above town, which might shock some, but it does happen and is an integral part of our city. So here was Beirut, laid out on video, in its excess and its decorum. In its superficial intellectualism, and its deep superficiality.
But watching this show was almost like a revelation. Amongst the highly ascepticized skyscrapers of Qatar, I suddenly remembered I lived in a real city. It isn’t a city made up of artificial islands and towering temples to all that is shiny and new, built in the hope that people will flock to inhabit them. It is an organic city, sprawling and disorganized, and all the more attractive for it. A city that contracts and expands in tandem with the demographic and societal demands of its population and not some oasis-like dream. I have to say, my friend and I sat there in front of the screen in a nostalgia-induced numbness, mine tempered by the fact that I would be coming home the following day.
Being Lebanese and Mediterranean, our actions are often laced with a heavy dose of passion. We wave our hands about comically in order to convey our points in conversations; we greet people with “a thousand welcomes of welcomes”. Everything is superlative, from the size of our Hummers to the depths of our hospitality. So it’s quite natural that our relationship with our country is also one of passion. It’s a relationship between lovers. But like all romantic endeavors, after an initial phase of unbridled admiration and steamy romps, we settle into a facile habituation.
During this phase we take our partner for granted, and start complaining about the futilities of life. The way she squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle rather than from the end. The way she places pot pourri in a bowl near the television. We start taking each other for granted and become infuriated at the slightest hint of one of our pet peeves. However, should you spend a week or a month away from your better half, you’ll quickly remember what it is you love about them, and you’ll find yourself in anticipation on the road home. You look forward to the passionate embrace, to the inevitable tryst. And so, on my trip back, I realized I was lucky to be coming back to this city I love and hate in equal measure. Source of all my frustrations and all of my ambitions. It’s good to be home.
Of all the pleasures one misses when moving to a new country, the most taxing are often also the simplest. I, for example, miss a certain sense of anonymity which comes with living in a sprawling metropolis. This same anonymity which allows you to head to the supermarket unshowered and in your Superman pajamas free from the anxiety of a possible encounter with a distant relative, colleague or classmate. There are plenty of these little things I miss, but by far the thing I miss most is walking.
Walking in the Middle East as a whole seems to be an activity that is frowned upon. Indeed it is a region where the car is ubiquitous and often gargantuan and gas-guzzling. It is a region where walking from one end of a mall to the other is considered physically strenuous, as evidenced by a recent Economist study which shows the region to have the highest obesity rate in the world (with Lebanon way at the top at number 1. Woohoo, world champs!). I can understand the aversion to walking outdoors in Arab countries in Saharan Africa or in the Gulf, where the climate isn’t adapted to the pursuit of casual wandering, but we in Lebanon have no excuse.
Overall, the climate is typically Mediterranean and temperate, set aside a couple of scorching months in the summer and a month of torrential downpour in the winter. Granted, the city is quite uneven topographically (which could exert a wheeze from the less fit, such as myself) and the sidewalks are an afterthought in the city’s urban planning, if one can speak of such a thing. Indeed, sidewalks seem to be built without really taking into account that anyone may be adventurous enough to walk along them. They are about 30 centimeters in width, and most of that is taken up by illegally parked cars. If you do find a spot unencumbered by an immobile (sometimes even mobile) vehicle, you have to spend your time playing dodge with a plethora of nonsensical, ignored and improbably placed traffic signs. But, nevertheless, if you decided to park your car and trek across town, you could do it with relative ease.
I have to admit, I never really bothered walking around Beirut before. Although I was addicted to walking everywhere in London and on weekend trips around Europe, I got sucked into the prevailing ease with which one goes through life here. People drive their cars from their home to their given destination where they proceed to valet the vehicle. If no valet is available, they go into a prolonged panic even though the street is littered with spaces and parking lots. However, over the indescribably busy holiday period, I came upon a novel idea. Drive close enough to where you’re going, park your car, and proceed to walk around form meeting to meeting for the rest of the day. Journeys started to take ten pleasant minutes instead of a stressful half-hour. I noticed buildings I’d driven past hundreds of times but never bothered to look at.
Cities everywhere are successions of comfort-zones we create for ourselves. Our living rooms, our office cubicles, our favorite cafes and bars. Wherever you live, you fall into a routine that involves roaming around from one of these areas to the next. The capitals of the world like London and New York start to become manageable when you settle into this pattern of habituation. However, the moments where you interact with these cities come from pounding their pavements and engaging with their hive-like public transports networks. That is where you overhear conversations, come up against interesting characters, catch fleeting glimpses of would-be lovers, sneak peeks over people’s shoulders to read to check the progress of their crossword puzzles. Sadly in Beirut, we don’t have access to this hive. Our cars become an additional comfort zone, where we fail to interact with our surroundings, beyond the occasional fender bender and flipped finger from a rolled-down window.
Let’s not forget, that much like any city, Beirut is has a treasure trove of alleyways, architecture and people to discover once you stand upright and put one foot in front of the other. There are streets in Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael which you can only access by ascending uneven steps into pedestrian alleyways. A whole network of decrepit traditional colonial houses, replete with interesting characters awaits you. Having ventured into this labyrinth I’ve been met with the vicious gnarls of barely chained guard dogs as well as the warm smiles of ancient veiled widows tending to their colonies of feline companions. Elsewhere, wandering around the structured chaos of Hamra’s main thoroughfare and side streets is really the only way to discover the wealth of cafes, holes in the wall and jazz bars that litter the area. Aimlessly sauntering through its newly cobbled streets you’ll see blonde, blue eyed expats retracing the steps of their Missionary forefathers, although they’re probably more interested in the eponymous sexual position than the religious mission these days.
Once you abandon your car and walk around, you glide through traffic jams and drown out the sounds you hate. Much like swimming underwater on a sunny day, the sounds from the outside world become a dull and soothing thud, that leave you alone with your thoughts. Walking has long been viewed as the only true way to commune with a place or even to engage in creative thought. In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau says “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think, my mind only works on my legs”. Even in ancient Greece, the Peripatetic Philosophers, of which Aristotle was a member, owed their name to their inclination for walking whilst conjuring up great ideas. Maybe we owe some of our lackadaisical cultural pursuits in this town to our lack of curiosity to discovering it on foot. Next time you’re driving down the road for a kilometer journey, think of your health, the environment and your brain, park your car and hit our tiny and hazardous pavements.
Over the last few days I’ve been engaging mainly in two major activities. The first is ingesting as much food and drink as humanly possible at every available opportunity. The second has been explaining to all my visiting expatriate friends whether or not I’m enjoying Beirut. Both activities have their positives and negatives. The former is causing a tightening of my jeans around my waist and an arduous struggle against ever-present hangovers, whilst the former is sending me into deep meditations on the nature of my identity.
I’m not quite sure what to tell people when they ask if I’m enjoying Beirut. My automatic response is to say no, but I’m not convinced it’s the honest answer. It’s usually an answer that is elicited in the wake of a particularly annoying day on the roads or the ludicrously tardy arrival of a plumber. The truth is I don’t really know yet because I’ve only been here a short time. I haven’t really settled into a routine, a proper job and so on. And I’m not prepared to judge the place until I have that sense of normalcy. This brings me onto another point. Beirut is somewhere I have to get used to. I didn’t grow up here, and the only years I lived here (between the ages of 15 and 20) were just enough to give me a solid group of friends and a list of favorite places, but not really enough to give me a sense of belonging. I have always viewed Beirut with certain romanticism, and the time I spent here during those years gives me the same attachment to the city that a New York native would have for Michigan if he happened to go to college there.
Which brings me to a far wider ranging question with almost existential properties. Will I ever really be Lebanese or Beiruti? I have lived in the UK for far longer than I ever expect to live in Beirut, but have never really considered myself entirely British. I had Lebanese flags and posters of Baalbek on my walls as a kid before I even remember setting foot in Lebanon at the age of 11, yet I’ve never really considered myself entirely Lebanese. The struggle to find a definition of who I am has, ironically, become the best approximation of that definition. Then I realized, through my friends in London that this is a pretty widespread phenomenon amongst people in my generation. I had Russian friends in London who grew up in Prague but went to American schools. What would that make them? I had Mexican friends who grew up in Switzerland but now live in France. What would that make them? And I slowly began to realize that everyone I got along with pretty much anywhere in the world had the same deep-rooted crisis towards their identity.
As I was discussing all these elements with a friend of mine the other day, he brought up the subject of Third Culture Kids (TCK). I have to admit I’d never heard of the concept and it sounded a bit like an 80s pop group to me. However, being a serial-Googler, I headed home and started looking for information. What I found was comforting beyond anything I could have imagined. According to my extensive research (i.e. a leisurely perusal of the corresponding Wikipedia page), a TCK “refers to someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture”. Then, going through the piles of research on my desk (scrolling down), I was relieved to learn that TCKs tend to have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCKs from their own country.
It’s so nice to read that someone has the same problem as you, if indeed it’s a problem at all. It’s kind of like discovering you’re not the only person who likes watching reruns of Home Improvement on Sunday nights. You feel part of a community. Because ever since I’ve been back in Lebanon I’ve been having trouble really identifying where I fit in. But maybe that’s the point; maybe I’m not supposed to fit in anywhere. I’ve come to realize that for me the real division in Lebanon isn’t religious, social or economic. The main barrier between people is that between those who’ve lived abroad (by choice or by necessity) and those who never have (by choice or by necessity). And I’m not convinced it’s a surmountable barrier. Whether you’ve lived in Europe, Africa, Asia or the North Pole, you bring back characteristics with you, both positive and negative, which are irreconcilable with the prevailing order of things.
There has been a lot of research conducted recently in the field of existential migration, studying people who migrate for the purpose of self-fulfillment rather than refuge or financial necessity. In the context of the free-flow of people and resources that has accompanied globalization and the opening up of borders; this is a particularly interesting field. People can choose to move about far more freely. They have choices they wouldn’t have had a few decades ago. This excess of choice makes things harder in a sense, because we’re bound to take a few wrong turns along the way. A new book on the subject is entitled “The End of Belonging”, which I think is a poetic title in itself. As well as the new concept of existential migration, the research proposes a new definition of home as interaction; that the ‘feeling of home’ arises from specific interactions with our surroundings that could potentially occur anywhere, at any time. This is almost antithetical to the usual definition of home as a fixed geographical place.
I’ll never be fully Lebanese because I love Fawlty Towers too much. I love the feeling of a cold drizzle in South Kensington. I love dunking a Chocolate Bourbon into a mug of PG tips. I love complaining about the weather. I love queuing. I love living in a city where there are people from the four corners of the Earth, and plenty of ‘em. And I never lived through the Lebanese civil war, which I feel guilty for and will never allow me to fully participate in the nation’s collective consciousness. But then again I’ll never be fully British. I love the sun too much. I love waving my hands around and raising my voice when I’m trying to make a point. I love Kibbeh Nayyeh. I love the gentle breeze in the shadow of a pine tree. I love smiling old men selling Chiclets on street corners. Oh, and I’ve got a hairy face and a funny name.
So I’m neither here nor there. I’m somewhere in between and that’s where I have to really settle in. And I think I can make my peace with that. Ubi bene, ibi patria!*
*Where I am at ease, that shall be my homeland.
I haven’t written anything in about a week because I’ve been in a particularly visceral “hater” mood. Since most people complain that I’m turning into a grumpy old man, I figured it was probably best not to write anything during this period of pronounced negativity. One friend told me I was slowly turning into a version of Peter Griffin from the “What Grinds my Gears” episode of Family Guy. However I’ve just had one of the most enjoyable weekends I’ve had anywhere in a while, so I think it’s time to write again.
Being the grumpy serial-complainer that I am, one of my favorite pet peeves about Beirut is that there’s very little culture to be savored year-round (besides the obvious summer festivals). However I now realize that I’m very much mistaken in this assumption. The major difference is that whilst culture assails you incessantly in Europe, here in Beirut you have to proactively seek it out.
And on this point, I’m afraid most of us are inexcusably lazy. Anytime I suggest anything remotely cultural to any of my friends I’m met with either a pronounced sense of apathy or a geographical/sectarian disdain for the region where the particular event is taking place.
However this weekend a good friend of mine was over from abroad. He didn’t come from the snowstorms of Paris or London. He didn’t come from the newly-bankrupt sandstorms of Dubai. He drove two and a half hours from Damascus. We’re friends from London, and transcend the confessional, national, blablabla divides that often punctuate friendships in the region. I poke fun at the nasty looks his Syrian number plate must elicit in Beirut and that’s about it.
So imagine my personal shame when this friend was the first to take me on a cultural tour of Beirut in a while. On Friday night we headed to the Madina Theater in Hamra. I’d heard a lot about the play “Sar Lezim Nihke”, a follow up to the wildly successful “Hakke Niswen” itself a Middle Eastern take on the worldwide success of the Vagina Monologues. The whole theater-going experience in Beirut is a bit of a novelty for me.
I have one major handicap when it comes to culture in this city; I dress like a hardcore capitalist/off duty banker. I have a self-imposed uniform of White Shirt, Black blazer, jeans and loafers. This shouldn’t pose a problem in and of itself. However both ends of the stupidity spectrum are equally represented here. The capitalists are caricatures of themselves, as are the hippies. So one party doesn’t accept me because I don’t embrace their apocalyptic perception of the “Dollar rules all”, and the other rejects me because I don’t wear socks with sandals and reject all earthly possessions. It’s a tricky catch 22, but I deal with it. Maybe I should get a t-shirt made: “No One Knows I’m a Hippie”.
So back to our theater. I was delighted to see some new faces, filled with anticipation at this new play. People started congregating in the hall of the theater, itself a self-knowing throwback to the 70s. A few people sipped on wine and vodka as they waited for the tardy start of the play. Everyone respectfully switched their phones off before walking into the auditorium. It was a welcome reminder of what civility looked like.
The play itself was a mixed bag. It was refreshing to see “taboo” subjects treated in colloquial Lebanese meters away from a mosque. Female characters were complaining about their male counterparts’ lack of geographic orientation skills with regard to their G-spot and so on. However for someone with exposure to plays and comedy the world round, some of the jokes sounded tired (read Plagiarized) and some of the dialogue was straight out of Sex and the City. But I guess, placed within the context of the local theatrical scene, this stuff is groundbreaking. And that’s the important part. So that was success number one.
Then on Saturday came two eagerly awaited cultural happenings. The first one took place at the Paper Cup Bookshop in Mar Mikhael. The Lebanese photographer Rhea Karam, who I was supremely chuffed to meet on my last trip to New York, was signing copies of her self-published book detailing the evolution of Beirut’s walls. It’s a seminal work in the analysis of self-expression in the Lebanese capital and I recommend you all grab a copy.
Shortly after getting the book, I headed over to Barometre off Bliss Street for a quick beer and some chicken wings before moving onto the main event on the musical calendar for the week, the Mashrou3 Leila CD launch and concert. These guys had been brought to my attention a few months ago, and I’ve been listening to a handful of their tracks on MySpace and some shaky YouTube handheld camera footage from some of their appearances around town. The concert took place at the Demco Steel Warehouse in Bourj Hammoud. The venue was great, even if it was something of a Health & Safety nightmare. Hundreds of kids hoped up on cheap Vodka and foul beer in a steel factory? What could possibly go wrong?
The band played all hits like Shimm El Yasmine and Batenjein, as well as a few improvised bits here and there. The front man exhibited a fragility and dexterity onstage which was mesmerizing. He skipped about as if he were alone with 6 friends, forgetting that there were hundreds upon hundreds of people there cheering them on. From time to time he and the band would look out over the crowd and say: “fuck there’s a lot of people here tonight” and indulge in a fit of nervous giggles. I’ve been listening to their CD (which they were giving away with the tickets at the door) on loop in the car. It’s a truly solid work, exploring themes we can all identify with. From the overbearing parents to the abrupt and intimidating security forces. They even brought out a male belly dancer at one point, which greatly angered a raging homophobe standing next to me, but I thought was a brave (if slightly pointless) addition to their whole rejection of established Lebanese societal morals. My personal favorite song is Latlateh, mocking gossipy Aunties Who Lunch.
So, overall, I can say I was a very happy camper in Beirut this weekend. I bumped into lots of old friends and made a few new ones. I even discovered this blog has some fans, and that they’re badgering me to keep it going because they’re happy someone is voicing what’s happening in their minds. The constant question, should I be here or should I be somewhere else. Should I be a banker or a writer? Should I go to the theater or to a pompous bar? I say do whatever makes you happy. And do it well. And keep doing it. And when it stops making you happy, move on. Which brings me to my next anecdote.
I really wanted this post to be entirely positive. However, on my way home tonight, I was confronted with the kind of bozo that makes life here just unbearable. Driving down a quiet one way street in Achrafieh, I see a set of oncoming headlights heading towards me at speed (the wrong way down a one-way street, if you’re following closely). So I responded with flashing lights of my own, this being the preferred method of communication along with the horn amongst the cabal of inbred retards that occupy the nation’s asphalt surfaces. The guy persisted in driving up the road, and squeezed in next to me at the entrance of a parking lot (still facing the wrong way, obviously). He rolled down his window, and I had to hear what this fine specimen of a human being had to say so I rolled down mine.
Then came the dumbest sentence of the week, in the world’s most efeminate voice: “ma shifet 3am dawilak w itfilak yaane?”. I responded in an equally camp tone to make the situation even more absurd: “eno mat koun jayye b3aks il sayr 3ayoune”. The effeminate man, who by the way I think I’ve met in London (ironic, I know), the responded with “ma tit3a2ad” which sent me into a protracted bout of existential solipsism. I took a hard look at this pitiful little man sitting atop one of those huge American SUVs, the kind that looks good when it shows up on in a scene on CSI Miami, but makes you look like you’re overcompensating for shortcomings in the size department in real life. Then I responded with a barrage of highly expressive Lebanese expletives (the best in the world in my opinion, I’ll let you imagine what I came up with) and sped off. What I really should have said was “mate you should get laid and go to a concert from time to time. You’ll be happier and be a better driver.”
The wedding invites are piling up on the mantel piece. “Save the Date!” they shout out every day as I walk past them. It seems everyone and their mother is on the road to wedded bliss. I mean in one sense its normal. I’ve just turned 27, so it’s hardly surprising that friends around my age are tying the knot. But I’m sometimes alarmed by the absolute necessity which marriage seems to be in Lebanon.
I’m a guy, so it’s actually quite bearable for me. I get a few questions here and there about the existence or not of an unlucky lady in my life. But being a woman must be an absolute horror. Girls get molded into aspiring wives when they’re still potty-training. Two thirds of the female population grow into aggressive husband-hunters, whilst the rest actively reject this social imperative and try and delay things by a couple of years.
God forbid a woman would want something as unattractive as a career! She instantly becomes the conversational fodder of bored Aunties Who Lunch during their rendezvous’ at Paul Gemmayze in between hair and nail appointments. As the smell of hairspray hangs in the air and the 5th layer of foundation on their formerly wrinkled face (thank you Botox) begins to melt, they bring up the subject of poor Maya! “Yvette, you know I don’t laike to talk yaane. I’m very discreet, bta3rfineh. Bass cette Maya, she’ll never find a husband like zis. She wants to be a banker 2al. Haram her parents, 3an jad. Bass ca reste between us!”
The worst environment for a woman in her 20s to show up unaccompanied is undoubtedly someone else’s wedding. There she is showered with compliments and fake smiles, and asked when her “happy day” is due. People asking this tend to neglect that a wedding does not a marriage make, and that the “happy day” isn’t really what one should be planning for. The people egging this young girl on towards marriage are often themselves standing a few meters away from an alcoholic husband they’ve come to despise. Maybe they want to drag the young and the beautiful down with them into the realm of the Desperate Housewife.
Weddings themselves have become ridiculously lavish. I was invited to one last summer, and when I asked how many people would be there I got the most ludicrous response I’ve ever heard: “it’s a small wedding. 650 people.” Really? That’s a small wedding? That’s entire population of some island states in the South Pacific. The bride and groom probably get repetitive strain injury just thinking of all the hands they have to shake and the sweaty cheeks they have to kiss.
Then there are the less intimate weddings. The one’s with 1500 guests. The ones with a succession of Z-list Arab pop stars belting out their latest lip-synched tune. The ones with pyrotechnics worthy of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The ones with vast untouched buffets and rapidly depleted bars. Weddings so gargantuan that they go beyond the realm of the fairytale and get lodged somewhere between the grotesque and the decadent.
I feel sorry for people from my generation who don’t realize that a marriage isn’t about the wedding. That after the sparklers have faded, the champagne has been drunk and the cake has been digested, there’s a real life full of ups and downs to envisage. When you look at someone you’re about to marry, don’t think of the good times you’ve had, think of the worst thing you’ve ever been through together. And think of that moment happening 50 times over the next 50 years.
I’m lucky I have a healthy example to look towards at home; my parents have been together for 39 years. When I look at pictures of their wedding it never fails to make me smile. Twenty impeccably dressed and impossibly glamorous people in small village church. My dad in a dapper suit brought back from New York where he was covering a story for his paper, my mum in a short white dress and big white hat like Audrey Hepburn on the poster for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. No pop stars. No papier mache center pieces. No ice sculptures. Just two people willing to face the future together. I hope I find that someday, and that you will too.
(PS: Please don’t dis-invite me from any weddings. I’m really looking forward to drinking your booze and hitting on your bridesmaids)
