Our Man in Beirut

Sometimes it’s tough to figure out how you’re supposed to feel about being Lebanese. I got called unpatriotic for not getting behind the Vote for Jeita campaign. Apparently, I had to blindly support something purely on the basis that it was something everyone in the country agreed on. Presumably we can all also all agree that kittens are cute, so let’s go ahead and put one on the flag. It’s not like we have many Cedar trees left anyway.

My main problem with the Jeita campaign was the, now well-documented, fact that it reeked of con-artistry. It felt like a scam from the very beginning. But then we Lebanese are suckers for a good scam. We get scammed about a dozen times a day, and we grumble in silence to ourselves.

Earlier, I was pounced on by a bunch of friends because I had no desire to go watch Where Do We Go Now?, Nadine Labaki’s latest cinematic offering. It was my patriotic duty to watch it apparently. Well, I don’t know how you decide on your cinema schedule, but patriotism doesn’t have much to do with it. I saw the trailer, it bored me half to death, so I decided not to watch it. The same happened to a lot of Americans with Transformers 3, but they weren’t ostracized or placed on the town square for all to see.

I have an Almodovar DVD box-set I’ve never touched. Does that mean I dislike him? Does it mean I hate Spain? No. No, it doesn’t. It just means I’m lacking culturally because I haven’t had the curiosity to delve into them yet, and I should be less trigger happy when I shop on Amazon.

That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of the fact she’s getting a ton of international recognition, and winning awards, quite the contrary. I just chose not to watch it. I probably will someday, and from what I gather, I’ll like bits and pieces of it. But the vitriol to which you’re subjected for not toeing the party line, is quite shocking. The level of discourse in general is reaching worrying levels of incivility. In a way I avoided watching it because I was concerned I wouldn’t like it, and that would put me on the defensive when discussing it.

We’ve slipped into a worrying pattern in Lebanon, where intelligent conversation is frowned upon. We’ve turned into a nation of Dubya Bushes, where every conversation has to reach the inexorable conclusion that “you’re either with us, or you’re against us.” Any form of independent thought is prescribed outright. You cannot claim to be non-political. You cannot argue with something patriotic. Basically, you are faced with the impossibility of rational thought…

Marcel Proust famously answered a personality questionnaire when he was aged 13 and then later when he was 20. The questionnaire has gone through a bunch of iterations, probably most famously on the back page of Vanity Fair. As I was moving some books yesterday, I found a book that included the responses of various public figures to the questionnaire and it made me want to take it myself. So here goes.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I grew up in the UK, we tend to favour wistful melancholy. Happiness just isn’t a very English trait, or a very Lebanese one for that matter. If I had to answer at all costs, I’d say being with friends and family around a swimming pool at night, with bossa nova playing in the background. But then it would probably rain or something.
What is your greatest fear?
Failure. But that’s a fear that’s surmountable, through success. Oh and people dressed as rabbits. That scares the bejesus out of me.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Mr Bean.

Which living person do you most admire?
At the risk of sounding like an immense cheesball, it’s very honestly my parents.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
The fact that I feel compelled to make up silly dances everytime I go out, and I force everyone around me, including strangers, to learn the moves.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
The inability to park correctly, or signal when making a right turn. And a general lack of respect.

What is your greatest extravagance?
It used to be spending copious amounts of money on spirits in plush West End clubs in London, trying my best to convince Eastern European goldiggers that I was incredibly wealthy. Which I was, and am, not. Now, I’d probably have to say it’s travel.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
What’s a virtue?

When and where were you happiest?
Happiness? Again? Was Proust American or something?

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
I’m a large hairy Lebanese man. There’s a lot to dislike.

Which living person do you most despise?
Pretty much anyone who has neon lights under their car. And anyone who double parks.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Fuck. Dude. Enno.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Leaving a promising yet soul-destorying job as a banker in London to become a penniless struggling writer in Beirut. Best decision ever. And I can live off crackers and water, right?

On what occasion do you lie?
Never. Or always. I can’t remember which.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I’d like to play the accordion. And look cool. Preferably simultaneously.

What is your current state of mind?
Contemplative. I’m mainly contemplating what sandwich to have for lunch.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
The pleat in a Hollywood starlet’s Lanvin skirt.

What is your most treasured possession?
My books. All of ‘em. Even the shitty ones I used as coasters.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Being surrounded by bubbly happy people talking about inane matters. And being alone when I don’t want to be. That’s no fun.

What is your most marked characteristic?
I’m 1m96, 110 kilos, with a full beard, I’d say my most marked characteristic is my eyelashes.

What do you most value in your friends?
Their silence. Badda bing. Eh, fuggetaboutit.

Who are your favorite writers?
Bukowski, Beigbeder, Flaubert, Easton Ellis, Baudelaire, Hage, Brooker, Hunter S. Thompson. Any self-destructive womanizing alcoholic basically.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Captain Planet. You know, because he was our hero, and he was going to take pollution down to zero. And he did.

Actually, hang on…

How would you like to die?
Not anytime soon, thank you very much.

What is your motto?
Some people never go crazy, what horrible lives they must live.

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….

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?

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.

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.

So I might be a tad late commenting on the two main Oscar nominees, but who cares. So Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron used to be married and now they both have movies nominated for 9 Oscars.

Cameron has always been a specialist of the big brainless money-churning blockbuster. He’s brought us such visionary films as Terminator 2, Titanic and True Lies. He even wrote Rambo. And now comes Avatar. The first reason I hate Avatar is the slew of 3D films it has spawned. Now every studio thinks they can make a billion dollars by making us wear stupid glasses and get slightly queasy at the sight of various objects coming our way in a darkened room. At least they’re not the silly red and green glasses of my childhood, which made you look like a genetic reject.

So here we sit, faced with the awfully named Pandora, a rainforest on acid inhabited by a race of annoyingly and relentlessly new-age oversized Smurfs. Its basically a John Smith meets Pocahontas story set in an improbably elaborate environment some 150 years in the future. You’d think that 150 years from now people would have stopped using unmistakably Bush-era terms like shock-and-awe and vilifying big heartless corporations. To be fair to Cameron, the movie took years to elaborate, and much of those years (8 to be specific) were spent under the mind-numbing gung-ho attitude of the Bush neocons. And the film has been met by conservatives in the US with much ire. All the quacks from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh have taken to calling Cameron a tree-hugging, America-hating, Marx-loving, sandal-wearing commie. That’s the kind of treatment usually reserved for the latest outings by Michael Moore or Oliver Stone. The right-wing hatred of the film is probably the only thing it has going for it in my view.

Don’t get me wrong, the experience is entirely immersive. The vistas on Pandora are absolutely breathtaking, especially in 3D. You kind of come out wishing you could book a holiday on one of the floating mountains. The film is also a new benchmark with regards to technology in movie making. However, I was consistently annoyed by the pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo and caricature Marine oafs and corporate whores. I mean, surely audiences in 2010 are capable of accepting more subtlety from their blockbusters than this. You just need to look at franchises like the Bourne Identity to see how subtle yet entertaining popcorn movies can be. A Slate review of the film notes that the original Sanskrit meaning of “avatar”—the bodily form taken by a deity descending to earth—is also suggested in this movie’s quasi-religious cosmology. But so what? Superficial depth of analysis is far worse than a deeply superficial story.

The Hurt Locker on the other hand, is what movie screens were made for. It deals in a more direct and less insulting fashion with the implications of warfare in far-flung places. The film starts in the summer of 2004, where Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge of Bravo Company are at the volatile center of the war, part of a small counterforce specifically trained to handle Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), that account for more than half of American hostile deaths and have killed thousands of Iraqis. It’s a high-pressure, high-stakes assignment which becomes glaringly apparent when they lose their team leader during a mission. The gleefully reckless Staff Sergeant William James (an amazing Jeremy Renner) takes over, much to the dismay of the rest of the team. Throughout the film we slowly realize that James is a hybrid of a swaggering cowboy, a highly professional solider and a real human being.

Its impossibly tense from the get-go and the film basically swings back and forth from ultimate boredom to impossibly dangerous situations. A perfect representation of time spent in the war theatre. The depiction of Iraq in 2003 is spot on, and as someone who lives in the Middle East I can safely say that the cinematography captures the feeling of sweat and claustrophobia and dust hanging in the air perfectly. The acting is spot on by every member of the cast, even the 10 year old Iraqi bootleg DVD salesman at Camp Victory. There isn’t a boring minute throughout, yet the film is rife with contemplations on the nature and legitimacy of war. It examines war as a drug, evident in Jeremy Renner’s free-wheeling adrenaline junkie character who is itching to be sent back on a second tour. The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a 2002 book by war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

The Oscars have long been a pointless exercise in futility, both as a telecast and as a benchmark by which to judge the year’s films. They are highly political, and no one really cares about them anymore beyond figuring out “who” Beyonce is wearing this year. “Academy Award Winner” is a nice title to blurt out before someone’s name in a trailer, but many of the worlds greatest actors and directors were never recognized with a statuette. So, what I’m trying to say is let’s not pay too much attention to who wins how many trophies on the night itself. If you have to choose between watching Avatar and The Hurt Locker, watch the latter. You’ll have more fun and come out of it having learnt something real and honest about human nature.

Here’s a short documentary from last year’s Beirut International Tango Festival, as a little taster of what’s to come this April.