I’m a huge fan of Monocle magazine, and have been reading every issue religiously since its launch a couple of years ago. The magazine has always had a loving relationship with Beirut, and we’re often featured alongside Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Cape Town as one of the most exciting places to live and work. Finally, the magazine’s weekly radio show has broadcast from Lebanese capital. It is a refreshingly honest conversation, both heartwarming and utterly scary, much like Beirut itself. Here’s the synopsis from the website and a link to the streaming podcast:
The Monocle Weekly takes its first trip to Beirut this week and kicks off with a briefing on the state of politics in the region with Nicholas Noe, political analyst and editor-in-chief of the news service Mideastwire.com. Architect Raed Abillama is in the studio to share his views on architectural preservation as Beirut continues to develop at top speed, and pioneering Lebanese music producer Zeid Hamdan plays some of his latest tracks. Finally, we check in with Kamal Mouzawak to hear about Tawlet, his unique new culinary concept in Beirut that has the Monocle team hooked.
Listen to the podcast here.
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.
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.
As 2009 slowly comes to an end, Beirut is full of expectation at the upcoming arrival of the hordes of expats for Eid and Christmas. As is usual during the holidays, our sprawling and chaotic capital will double in size. Expect traffic jams as far as the eye can see, lots of gesticulating drivers, queues in restaurants and inflated prices all around.
Up until last August, I used to be one of these returning exiles. I’d sit in the offices of the bank I worked for, a soulless concrete and glass block in London, staring out at the perpetual drizzle and gray skies and think of Beirut. Then, suddenly, I decided it was time to quit and move back to Beirut. The use of the term “move back” was even surprising to me, as I’d only ever lived in Beirut for about 6 years during high school and university. The rest of my years have been spent in the aforementioned drizzle. But I’d always had this longing, even before I’d ever set foot in Lebanon in the 90s, to one day inhabit the country whose faded Ministry of Tourism posters I had plastered around my childhood bedroom on Queen’s Gate.
In the months since I’ve moved here, I’ve dealt with the daily frustrations every Beiruti endures. I’ve spent hours baking in the August sun in the Beirut Port waiting for my furniture, books, DVDs and albums. I think importing a container full of RPGs would have been less cumbersome. It appears books (of which I had 34 boxes) are far more threatening to the powers that be. I’ve endured the traffic jams, the aggressive drivers, the frustrated traffic cops, the bored telephone receptionists, the over-zealous security guards, the gossipy housewives, the faux-hippies, the faux-jetsetters. I’ve gotten used to the fact that people can smoke in restaurants, clubs, hospitals, airports, offices. I’ve tried not to stare at the botched nose jobs and garish dress sense. I’ve accepted that my internet connection slowly evaporates as the rain starts to trickle and then pour down through flooded streets. I’ve accepted that on the sunniest of days, my internet connection is still only about a 20th of the speed of the one I just left behind in the West.
Then one day, I flipped. I refused to believe I lived here. I’d tell people vaguely that I lived between Beirut and Paris. I promptly packed my bags and went to Paris for over a month. Since I quit a soul-destroying career in finance, I’ve decided I would take up my one and only passion, writing, and make a career out of it. I’m currently working on a book about Saudi Arabia’s regional wars, as well as a first novel. While I was in Paris, I was also working on an online magazine I’d been developing for a few months. Since most of my intellectual fodder comes from Manhattan-based publications, I wanted to launch an online arts & culture magazine in the same vain. I could basically live anywhere I wanted and work from my laptop.
Then, a week ago, I returned from Paris. I found the same insistent cab drivers at the airport, the same cops shouting vague threats at incorrectly parked motorists outside the arrivals terminal. My heart sank immediately. I was back. A few days of moderate depression ensued, with daydreams of my next flight out of here. Then one morning, I decided to head to my father’s ancestral village. One of the last places where I can escape to without the burden of car horns and wireless internet. I had always admired how my father has travelled to the four corners of the earth, but still only finds true peace amongst the pine trees of his native village. Sitting on a sundrenched terrace, staring down a sunlit and green valley all the way to the sea, I realized my place was in Beirut. I finally accepted that I now live here.
As I drove back to home, thoughts were racing through my mind. As soon as I got back into the 21st century, and found my wireless connection, I purchased this domain to the page you’re now reading. I have now scrapped my initial ideas for an online magazine, and will now direct my online efforts towards this blog. The daily musings of a returning expat, with all the frustrations and joys that this implies. As Beirutis and Lebanese, we’re quite good at complaining about our plight, but we’re not really proactive about it.
Over the years I’ve posted a few thoughts on Lebanon and the Lebanese on my personal blog and on various forms of social media (you can read a couple that I’ve reposted on this blog get a taste of what’s to come). Some have been plagiarized; others quoted on blogs and in books. The last note I posted on my Facebook profile drew 80 responses, so it’s pretty obvious a lot of people share my frustrations and hopes, and more importantly they want to discuss them.
So, on Monday night, this blog was born. The title “Our Man in Beirut” is a reference to the byline attached to foreign journalists and the segways made by news anchors to war correspondents. I thought it was appropriate as I often feel like a stranger in my own city. You’ll find my own musings as well as links to videos and articles of interest, with some form of snooty commentary from yours truly.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.
