Our Man in Beirut

There’s a video currently making the rounds, featuring an over-excited Richard Quest extolling the virtues of Lebanon’s hedonism and joie de vivre, while he prances around its handful of rooftop clubs dressed like that weird uncle in your family no one talks to, who hits on 16 year olds at weddings. And wears white loafers. When I first stumbled on the video, I wasn’t sure whether I should feel a mild sense of pride or a profound sense of shame. I have opted very firmly for the latter, for a number of reasons.

I mean the show is called Future Cities, and is supposed to be about how cities are positioning themselves for the future (the name kind of gives it away) through development and sustainability. Quite how cramming thousands of people into sweaty clubs ensures Lebanon’s sustainability, is quite beyond me.

However much I enjoy positive portrayals of Lebanon in the media, I’m not sure that showing its three most inaccessible venues is really the way to go. I mean, when they cover Mykonos or Ibiza, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a slum where people live on less that USD 2 a day within walking distance. Before I’m accused of hypocrisy, sure I go to these places. But I don’t think they’re our greatest achievement in thousands of years of history. Not by a longshot.

Plus the video features Ke$sha. Why would I listen to Ke$ha’s opinion on anything? For starters, she has a dollar sign in her name, and anyone with monetary symbols in their monicker loses points on the Credibility-meter. So, I’m pretty sure her musings about how Lebanon’s energy mirrors the energy she puts in her shows, can be safely ignored.

And what’s all this nonsense about joie de vivre anyway? I’m sorry but I have yet to see a genuine example of someone loving life when I go out in Lebanon. We go to clubs with 3000 people, but hang out with the 20 we already know. We all look inward at our table. People stare into their Blackberries and iPhones trying to figure out if something more exciting is happening elsewhere, because they’re under the impression that they are in no way contributing to the complete lack of an atmosphere here, and it’s everyone else’s fault. If they can tear themselves away from their apparati, it’s to give someone across the club a death stare. Then maybe bbm somebody about it.

And before anyone says it’s just the rooftops, I have to disagree. Go out anywhere, and it’s the same. Batroun, Sour, Gemmayze, Jounieh. Maybe Hamra’s bar scene is a tiny bit different. I have yet to see anyone actually dancing outside the sweaty confines of a salsa night. And no, guys, slicing the air with the palm of one hand and shaking your vodka tonic around in the other, while you bob your head to the newest Taebo Cruise, or whatever his face is, track does not constitute dancing.

I’m sick of people confusing self-medicated post-traumatic stress with a love of life. Drinking yourself silly is not an affirmation of life. It can be a lot of fun, sure, but don’t call it joie de vivre. People not caring about tomorrow isn’t a smart thing. Shocking, I know. Many people at these clubs didn’t live the Civil War, they have every reason to plan for tomorrow. They’re young and educated and living in a period of relative, if tenuous and tense, stability. But they don’t, because they’re inheriting their parent’s misplaced insouciance…

Pick a street in Beirut. Any street. Look in front of you, behind you, above you. Chances are, within your line of sight, there is an ad for some form of physical enhancement, a woman who looks like a cross between Najwa Karam, a disco ball and a Czech pornstar and a guy who has consumed enough steroids to make Schwarzy look like a girly man whistling at her. This unholy trinity of visual queasiness is starting to get very annoying.

I am by no means conservative when it comes to social mores. I’m a Godless libertarian. But the socio-visual landscape in Beirut is becoming repugnant. I actually wouldn’t mind it if everyone was actually bumping uglies, but it’s the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Our society has become hypersexualized, with a distinct lack of actual sex.

Let me explain. I don’t mean no one is having sex, obviously. I mean, Beirut is one of the rare cities I’ve seen where they sell every kind of Durex condom under the sun at the Duty Free checkout counter at the Airport. You know, in case you’re thinking of joining the Mile High Club and you haven’t planned ahead. What I’m saying is that if you walk into a club in the UK, your chances of leaving with someone and getting up to no good are about 70%* (*highly unscientific guess). Your chances in Beirut, where I would say everyone is dressed and acting about the same, is 15% (*again, highly unscientific guess).

There is something misleading about the way we function. Everyone is always dressed up to the nines. Everything is enhanced. Breasts are augmented, fat is reduced, hair disappears. Eyes go green. Lips go red and plump. Pecs appear, bisceps bulge. And yet, very little actually every happens between the sexes on a casual basis.

I know I keep coming back to the opinions of tourists I meet, but they’re a highly useful objective and external vantage point. Every time I take them somewhere, they gasp and say something like “Jeez, it looks like everyone here is getting some tonight”. I proceed to explain the complex dichotomy between appearance and reality, which is an immense buzz kill to the pack of marauding horny Italian Eurotrash men.

Much like the oversexualized women in Arab pop videos, Lebanese women are expected to be alluring and seductive, yet remain virginal. Walking through a shopping mall or making limp-wristed vaguely Oriental dance moves in a club, most seem to be reprising their role as themselves in the movie of their life. It’s a symptom of the Blingification of the world. Everyone wants to be in a hip-hop video. So the men and women of Lebanon flock to Skybar (Note: Other Rooftop bars are available), tanned and toned, their bloodstreams a mix of vodka and champagne, their nostrils flaring at the smell of fireworks. They sway and flirt. But there is no dancefloor. Ever. There is no communal space for people to interact and meet, dance and sweat together.

Everyone lives in a proverbial music video for a few hours. Then they leave the blinged out universe of faux-independence and fleeting adulthood and return to their parents’ homes. Their parents’ homes replete with marble floors and gold chandeliers and expectations of virginal daughters.

Of course, for the men it’s different. They are coached from their earliest age to have double standards, namely that Lebanese women are pure and respectable and foreign women are to be used as vessels for sexual discovery. Many Lebanese men have their first sexual experience at the hands, quite literally, of Eastern European prostitutes in seedy hotels North of Beirut filled with the pungent odour of desperation and lost youth.

Men then go on to embrace this concept of the “Western Whore” and consider anyone remotely blonde that they meet ripe for the taking. Like unevovled cavemen, they whistle and gawk and grope. It’s an embarrassing sight. When I dated a Russian girl in London for two years, and I’d tell anyone in Lebanon where she was from they’d give me a knowing wink and I suppose they’d imagine her with her legs wrapped around a pole, upside down, her blonde hair caressing the stage floor. When I would explain she wasn’t a stripper, or blonde and was the epitome of class, I’d get confused looks for a few moments. It was as if I was pulling the rug from under their every assumption about relationships and sexuality. Then they’d chuckle, as if to say “I’ve just erased what you’ve said, and gone back to my parochial social dynamics. Phew, that was close”. Sigh….

I got a message from a French friend of mine the other day asking if Beirut was a safe place to visit. I’m never quite sure how to answer that question. And it comes up quite a lot. On the one hand, walking the streets at night in Beirut is probably safer than anywhere I can think of. There are no hooded youths on the streets waiting to steal my Blackberry and use it to film me as they go about on a happy slapping rampage. On the other hand, we tend to pepper our existence with Ak-47s and the occasional car bomb. Armed with these two realities, I gave my usual answer, which is “it’s safe until it’s not”.

This particular French friend was planning on visiting as a tourist but was also interested in the ins and outs of life in Beirut, beyond the security situation, because she intends to move here to take up a rather exciting job opportunity. She asked me how easily I thought she’d make friends, because she doesn’t know anyone in town and she’s a bit concerned about that. I chuckled to myself as I told her not to worry, everyone in Lebanon loves foreigners and that she had the added advantage of being both French and Female.

There was a time when the word tourist in Beirut basically meant anyone from the Gulf who couldn’t be bothered to make it all the way to Europe for a long weekend intended to smoke a chicha at Grand Café. And that was about it. I don’t have a problem with that kind of tourism, but it’s the Lebanese equivalent of a lobster-red English tourist in Mallorca in a Newcastle United shirt who thinks he’s mastered the Spanish language because he can say “Oi, Manuel. Dos cervecas por favor. Innit.”

It also meant hordes of returning Lebanese expats, with bulging wallets. But even though the Ministry of Tourism loves counting them in its statistics, they aren’t really tourists at all. They sleep at home with their extended families and basically use the country as a large spa for the duration of their stay. They get medical checkups, see the dentist, get a haircut, load up on zaatar and head back to work….

One of my pet peeves about Beirut for years was that it always seemed to lack some sort of ambient artistic activity. I mean the city wasn’t lacking in artists, by any means. Writers, musicians, filmmakers and so on have a compulsion to create during difficult times, to make sense of them, and we call agree we’ve had more than our fair share. But the city lacked a certain public art scene, pervasive and visible.

That has changed over the last couple of years. The city has seen a plethora of art galleries opening their doors, as well as non-profit entities like the Beirut Art Centre and the Beirut International Exhibition Centre. Some galleries, like The Running Horse, are pushing the boundaries of what we normally see in Beirut. It’s fun and easy and intellectually stimulating at the same time.

I’m writing this whilst sitting at Bread Republic in Hamra, and there’s a wall in front of me literally plastered in posters for art exhibits, dance performances, concerts and so on. Not only are these posters informative, they’re part of a visual landscape. So even if you never end up going to whatever show it is, you’ve seen the poster. You’ve been affected by it. You’ve given the poster at least a second’s fleeting thought. And we shouldn’t underestimate how important that is.

When it comes to music, there’s no shortage of talent. There was a time in the 1990s when the only alternative to Wael Kfoury was Soap Kills. That’s far from the case today. Bands and solo acts are springing up faster than you can say “The Lead Singer is in it for the women”. Bands like Mashrou’ Leila, Scrambled Eggs, Lumi, Slutterhouse and many more, make textured, layered and appealing music. Music with subtext and context and, as the kids say, killer beats. They have lyrics that speak to a generation disillusioned by their surroundings. The most engaged and engaging are the hip-hop artists. Fareeq Al Atrash and Zeinedin deserve their place in the pantheon of masters of the Arabic language just as much as Said Akl.

This month sees a renewed flurry of cultural activity. First off, there is next week Reel Festivals (9-15 May), which I’ll be covering for hibr.me. The festival pulls off the petty unique feat of creating a cultural exchange between Scotland, Lebanon and Syria. Cue jokes about haggis and hummus. But a cursory look through the program reveals a hell of an interesting line-up covering poetry, music and film.

Then from May 18 to June 12, there’s the Beirut Music and Arts Festival. I’m happy to be involved with the organisers to help spread the word about this event. I’ll be going to some of the concerts and live tweeting photos to the BMAF blog, as well as covering stories in and around the performances. The almost month-long festival promises to bring international and local musicians and artists to the heart of downtown Beirut. And anyone who’s walked through downtown Beirut recently knows how much it needs an injection of sincerity and life. The ascepticized fakeness of Downtown, its forced prettiness will be infused with something real for once.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Sarajevo-born Goran Bregovic and Marcel Khalife live for the first time. I’m also very excited about the Band Village, which will feature 45 local bands. A lot of my friends are in local bands, and I’ve often been to lazy to make it to their gigs (my bad) and this means I get to see them on a stage worthy of their talent…

Before you get all excited, this isn’t some steamy Beiruti version of the seminal Bertolucci film. It is, however, a post about tango. If you’ve ever seen me on a dancefloor, you might be confused as to why I’m writing about anything involving dance. I usually shuffle around like a middle-aged man at a wedding, [...]

Lebanon’s recent past has been consistently been characterized by a pervasive sense of joyful insouciance, a kind of permanent amnesia that allows us to convince ourselves the biggest decision in our day is what shirt we should wear or what bar we should head to tonight.

Given the ambient carefree attitude, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Bermuda or Andalusia, not in a country in a volatile country in political deadlock for years. There is something vaguely grotesque about how we go about on a daily basis, oblivious to the fact that so much in Lebanon remains unresolved.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. I can hear you shouting at your screen “But that’s the Lebanese way, we’re brave in the face of adversity, we’re famous around the world for our resilience in times of difficulty. We partied under the bombs”. That’s all well and good, and the Lebanese spirit of steadfastness is admirable beyond words. Everything somehow continues to function regardless of what state the country is in.

However, there is no denying that our inability to deal with our past is a considerable problem. I mean a country doesn’t go from a 20-year free-for-all of murder and destruction to a peaceful having of foreign investment overnight. Something is wrong with that process. The fact that the political discourse 20 years after the end of the war is so bitter is the most glaring illustration of how unhealthy our attitude to the past is. You only need to scratch the surface of any conversation/confrontation and you’ll find people digging up various vile episodes from our prolonged periods of civil strife….

a rain-soaked street and a dreaming wall near the Beirut Art Center.

I’m not usually one for heartfelt posts about serious subjects, but today is different.

We often get caught up in the machinations of daily life and lose sight of what’s really important. For example, that idiot who cut you off in traffic today has managed to ruin your whole week. But taking a step back can make us realize most of us have a lot to be thankful for.

I took that step back when I met Aya.

Aya is a 13 year-old girl who was born with a dying liver. She’s coped any way she could so far, but things are getting tough now and she needs a liver transplant urgently, she has less than five months to live.

I feel humbled to be involved with the campaign to raise the money Aya needs for the operation that will allow her to live the life every teenager deserves. A life with its ups and downs, but a healthy one with a bright future.

Some of you may have noticed a Facebook page called SAVE AYA showing up in your friends’ minifeeds in the last couple of weeks. If you haven’t joined the page yet, please do. Everyone is encouraged to upload their photos with messages of support for Aya. From what I gather, the effect the messages have been having on her is really quite something.

But beyond the messages of support, the real life-saving work happens over at http://www.saveaya.org. That’s where you can donate online through Bank Audi’s secure payment system and really make a difference in this little girl’s life.

The fundraising effort is an initiative of Hep Attitude Positive. So far they’ve raised around USD 10,000 dollars through the campaign. Which is great. But we all have a responsibility to get to that USD 50,000 mark, which is where we really make a difference.

Will you Save Aya?

The folks over at Time Out Beirut have launched a new student publication, aptly named Trashed. They asked me to write an article to motivate young Lebanese kids to stay in the country. Click on the photo to read it, but be warned, most of my argument revolves around my chest hair/beard.

When I went to watch 12 Angry Lebanese – The Documentary on Sunday, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’d read bits and pieces about the play, a version of the 1950s American play and film 12 Angry Men, and knew it vaguely involved inmates at Lebanon’s notorious Roumieh prison.

The documentary opens with shots of the impossibly depressing prison on the hills above Beirut. I mean no one expects a prison to look cheerful, especially amidst the bleak concrete jungle our country is slowly turning into. But Roumieh is a whole new world of misery. Certainly many who reside amongst its crumbling walls deserve to be there. Rapists, murderers and thieves. But even the evil within our society deserve humane conditions. Roumieh, originally intended to house 1000 convicts is currently buckling under the weight of its 7000.

Now, in Lebanon, we’re not big on rehabilitation. Amnesia is the rule. One day it’s ignoring the plight of the 17000 people who went missing during the civil war. The next it’s turning a blind eye to the tens of thousands who self-medicate their post-traumatic stress with Xanax, vodka and their car horns. That cousin who ended up in jail? Don’t talk about him and he doesn’t exist anymore. Magic.

Sweeping things under the rug is all we do collectively. But the more you sweep, the more uneven the surface of the rug. And that’s what we’re left with. A jagged collective memory with thousands of walking ghosts, all ignoring each other’s presence. It’s the kind of conclusion that can lead to despair. Then I saw this film.

Zeina Dacccache should be celebrated for her genius and madness in equal measure. After studying drama therapy in the US, she took it upon herself to wander into a maximum security prison in one of the most machismo-laden countries in the world to poke around in the psyches of rapists and murderers for 15 months.

The choice of play is poignant. The original 12 Angry Men explores techniques of consensus-building and the difficulties that the process involves, among a group of male jurors whose range of personalities create tension and conflict. Twelve bickering men entrusted with deciding the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder. The poster for the 1957 film read: Life is in their hands, Death is on their minds. Nothing could be truer in the context of this prison.

At the outset, the group looks hopeless. Sitting around haphazardly, they don’t let each other finish their sentences. Their anger is palpable. The anger of 7000 inmates in a country of angry people. Tempers flare and you can’t quite imagine how this ramshackle group would stand in a straight line, let alone put on a play in front of an audience.

However, as the film progresses, a gradual cohesion surfaces. The men start caring about each other. They start caring about the success of their performances. They talk about Zeina with a sense of awe, and without the slightest indication of objectification, something many men on the outside would undoubtedly be guilty of.

Among the inmates turned actors are some foreigners. A Nigerian, a Bangladeshi, an Egyptian, serving sentences far away from home yet proud of their involvement in an ambitious undertaking. A multi-confessional and multi-racial group of men working under the leadership of a strong woman? It’s an inspiring sight, rendered melancholic by the nagging thought that it would probably never happen outside the walls of this prison in our largely bigoted and sexist Lebanon.

The play itself is a resounding success, presented to an audience of ministers and security forces as well as family. It’s a surreal sight. Criminals in suits acting unhindered by restraints or barriers, to an audience. I challenge you not to shed a tear at some point during this documentary. The result is so powerful, we learn, that after the play action was taken by the authorities to implement laws on early release for good behaviour.

The film, in the most unlikely of places, finds qualities that are sadly missing in our everyday lives as Lebanese. Determination, will and positivity in the pursuit of catharsis and rehabilitation. It is both beautiful and profoundly moving to watch. You find yourself empathizing with people who have committed unspeakable crimes. Rooting for them. Hoping they don’t falter. You see their human side. You are happy to see that even though they are locked up, they have experienced a freedom. A freedom of thought and achievement. Some are shy and introverted, others breakdown whilst they speak of the things they’ve done. But none of them wants to be seen as a victim, they acknowledge their wrongdoing. They want to understand the circumstances that lead them to do the things they did. They want to enjoy the freedom that working on something worthwhile has given them. They want to make their families proud now, through their dedication and work. In a deeply wounded country busy frenetically erasing its past with bulldozers and cement; few things could be more inspiring.

Twelve Angry Lebanese is playing at Metropolis Cinema – Sofil until September 14th. Watch it.