Our Man in Beirut

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

Anyone who’s ever met me knows I’m pretty obsessive compulsive. I arrange everything in a neat grid system on my desk in what can only be described as a veritable orgy of parallels and perpendiculars. I fluff up the cushions on my couch the second someone gets off it, much to the dismay of my houseguests. I have even been spotted at the supermarket rearranging unkempt aisles of cereal boxes or sloppy magazine displays, making sure the spacing is just right. I basically love the sight of things neatly organized. I guess you could say I’m OCD Light.

One thing I have lovingly organized is the bookmarks in my web browser. Besides the intricate folders and subfolders assorted by theme and region, I have a tab in my bookmark bar simply called “Morning”. It’s the first thing I click when I wake up and it basically opens up the world in 20 convenient websites. Facebook, Twitter, The Guardian, fffffound, Metro UK, Le Monde, Arts & Culture Daily, The Onion, Not Cot and so on. My morning dose of news, design, gossip, culture and escapism.

But once in a while I like to supplement this daily routine with something a bit meatier. Something that’s a throwback to my days studying politics and doing internships at the UN. So, a couple of weeks ago, I dug my teeth into an article in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. IJURR to its friends.
As with all academic papers, reading the title of the journal took me the better part of a week. Then there’s always the cryptic title of the article to look forward to. When I was studying for a masters in international politics at SOAS, I always used to give my papers unnecessarily complicated names casually sprinkled with words I didn’t understand and semi columns and subtitles. Things like “Pseudo Dualistic Dychotomies in Post-War Glasgow: How Factory Workers Overcame the Unicornification of Labour and Triumphed Over Plethorism”. Obviously, this was mostly to overcompensate for the fact that I’d done very little to no research and the essay itself was unreadable.

I glanced at the title of the IJURR article I had in front of me: Towards a Phenomenology of Civil War: Hobbes Meets Benjamin in Beirut.
Big words: Check. Semi colon: Check. Obscure academic reference: check. “This is going to be fun,” I thought to myself as I settled into my chair.

“Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.” – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

So it would seem we’re in for another few months of what foreign media outlets will inevitably euphemistically call turmoil. Last week eleven ministers walked out of the Lebanese government, leading to its collapse. Not that the difference is immediately obvious, given the systemic paralysis the country ritually suffers from. We’ve come to expect very little from our leaders, all the while bestowing them with demi-god status. The result is that most Beirutis are pretty self-reliant, providing themselves with essential utilities the state fails to provide, like water and electricity.

However, it’s still nice to know there’s someone in power somewhere taking care of things, however badly. Saying I’m not particularly fond of Lebanese politics is the understatement of the decade. I wrote a piece in l’Orient Le Jour a couple of months back detailing the extent of my disdain for a system that has forced me to live for decades in lands that weren’t my own. Despite having a father who’s a political analyst and journalist, and having studied the politics of the Middle East for years at university, I have absolutely no interest in the country’s politics.
Politics is a pretty fancy word to describe the Machiavellian machinations a cabal of self-interested ideologues. I find my level of happiness in Lebanon is exactly correlated to how little news I read in a given week. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few good people in the system on all sides, but the overwhelming presence of corruption and pettiness drowns them out, and I’ve stopped caring about them too.

All I want is to be able to go to work in the morning without seeing 15 tanks on the way there. Without the nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere today might grab his finest AK-47 and head out into the street. Knowing for sure that we’re not on the verge of armed conflict in the streets would be nice. You know, the simple things in life and whatnot.

I just want a normal life really…

Plagiarism is nothing new, so I guess I shouldn’t really be shocked by this latest example from the Lebanese advertising industry. Following the shocking ripping off of a Nina Ricci campaign, some agencies are now busy ripping off public service announcements. From campaigns that started as far back as 1987. As anyone who’s involved in [...]

I’ve recently embarked on a quest to find the perfect coffee table. And when I say perfect, I mean an adequate coffee table that won’t require me to sell my right kidney to an Uzbek organ dealer to finance it. That sounds pretty simple, right? You’d be forgiven for thinking that. However perusing the furniture stores of Lebanon isn’t as straightforward an experience as you might envision.

Products fall into three broad categories. First off, you have the ridiculously unaffordable foreign brands. “Ooh, look, such a pretty desk lamp. Oh wait, it costs three months salary”. Secondly, you have the highly talented local designers, who’ve appropriated tradtional approaches to craft and who make coasters that cost more than my undergraduate education. The final and most prevalent category is the plethora of nauseating “galleries” selling faux Louis XVI armchairs and gold-plated dog bowls.

So it is with wistful melancholy, in a showroom that redefined my understanding of how many shades of grey the world has to offer, that my mind wandered to Neasden. “Not THE Neasden!” I hear you clamour. “You mean the Neasden where the UK’s first McDonald’s drive-thru opened its greasy doors in 1988?” That very one, ladies and gents. The streets of this fair neighbourhood are lined with semi-detached houses with boarded up windows, and burnt out 1993 Ford Fiestas sit idly in their drive-ways. It’s what I like to call “ASBO chic”.

But my nostalgia for this bastion of urban decay and suburban squalor isn’t tied to the golden arches or the rolled up copies of the News of the World in the dash of every Transit van…

The Three Quarter Turn
This is the standard pose of the Lebanese fashionista. She has spent hours fine-tuning the exact angle that puts forward her every flattering feature. She puts up one of these pictures on a weekly basis, bringing her total tally of profile pictures to at least 137. There is an increase of activity during the summer months, when her tan means that less Photoshop expertise is required.

The Photoshopper
This type of person is a close relative of the TQTer. Saturation levels, contrast and brightness are all essential elements in getting the skin tone right. The person is most probably not a graphic designer (as they fall into one of the categories below) but has enlisted the help of a cousin who works at a web design agency to crop any undesirables out of the image and scratch away that pesky pimple on her right cheek.

The Bride/The Groom
We all know how everyone in Lebanon is obsessed with marriage. Obsessed with getting married, going to weddings or hating your best friend who got married before you. So wedding-related profile pictures deserve a whole field of academic study. They come in an array of variations. There’s the photo of the groomless bride, engulfed by half the annual production of flowers from Holland in her parents living room. There’s the solitary groom, who’s motivations for using a picture of himself without his bride, and looking quite dashing, can seem disquieting. There’s the picture of the happy couple. If they’re facing the camera and set against the backdrop of exploding fireworks, not so romantic. If they’re locked in an intense gaze into each others eyes, happy future ahead.

The Baby
In a concerted effort to show you that they’ve grown up faster than you, your friends from the Bride/Groom category, will move on to the Baby category within a year. They will post a picture of their little cherub, which will make you momentarily wonder if they have gone Benjamin Button on you. Some babies are as cute as teddy bears sliding down a rainbow, and some look like the love-child of Wayne Rooney and the Cookie Monster, but you’ll invariably comment: awww. Hayete. So cute.

The Childhood Photo…

I’m not normally one for scathing restaurant reviews. Come to think of it, I’m not one for restaurant reviews of any kind. The truth is, contrarily to my approach to most things in life, I’m resolutely unadventurous when it comes to food. I stick to a few choice staples, I usually know what I like on a menu and I rarely stray for my exceedingly boring culinary path. It may come as a surprise to those who’ve seen me lumber around with my 110 kilos, but I’m just not that into food.

One thing I do enjoy, however, is a good hamburger. It’s a food item that is guaranteed to raise your floundering spirits. Such a simple construct yet so deeply satisfying. But I’m afraid my faith in the state of the Hamburger took a beating last week. Before I tell you why, let’s take a walk down memory lane and explore the history of the humble hamburger in Lebanon.

I remember when I first ventured over in the mid 90s as a Harry Potter spectacle-wearing buck-toothed teen, being enamoured by what seemed to me to be, two exotic places: Winners and Juicy Burger. Having come over from London, where I used to spend my pocket money on the soggy and questionable fare offered up by the twin bastions of the evil West, McDonald’s and Burger King, I was in awe of these burgers. They seemed to offer up an authenticity lacking in my post-cinema Big Mac at Whitley’s on Queensway. Their décor was kitsch, but the burgers were made with pride. I only enjoyed them a couple of times though, before these places saw their untimely end. But my friends who grew up in Lebanon think back to their Winners days with swelling hearts, and I’ve appropriated a smidgen of their nostalgia.

Then, one fateful day in 1998, Lebanon changed. Something irreversible happened. McDonald’s came to town. My classmates at the Lycce and I headed to Dora in a convoy of serveeces, with our minds racing through fantasies of Filet-O-Fish and Chicken Nugget 9-packs. We queued for hours, like Muscovites had after the fall of communism outside their first McDonalds, for a taste of the junk food we used to love back in Europe. All thoughts of mloukhie and shish barak were exorcised in the months that followed, as Friday afternoons became the sacred time where we drowned our week’s sorrows in a draft Coca-Cola, under the benevolent eye of a redheaded clown.

But soon McDonalds and Burger King stopped satisfying us…

Beirut is a city of two million souls and what often feels like 16 million cars. Organized, reliable and clean public transport is virtually inexistent. We use our cars drive 15 minutes through dense traffic to a place we could have walked to in half the time. Everyday new combinations of swearwords are concocted by irate motorists, festering behind the wheels of their vehicles, their palms dampened, their brows collecting sweat above angry eyes. The ubiquitous car horn overshadows your in-car musical selection, and adds that crowning touch to the symphony of mayhem that are Lebanese roads.

Whilst in a rush hour traffic jam ten days ago, I got rear-ended by a distracted female driver. And it’s not as fun as it sounds. My car is in the shop for a few weeks, so I’m rediscovering the joys (or lack thereof) of making my way around Beirut using my wits and some crumpled thousand lira notes, which inevitably means a succession of taxis and serveeces.

The taxi driver anywhere in the world is an odd entity. Part driver, part psychiatrist, part friend, part annoyance. As a motorist in Lebanon, I’ve found them mainly to be an annoyance so far, with their frequent stops and blatant disregard for traffic regulations, where they exist. But now as a passenger, I’ve come to love these unsung heroes of the road.

As I was heading to work the other day, my cabbie surprised me by assaulting me with a plethora of obscure facts about global warming. He then elaborated on his entire political belief system, which he very accurately described as Northern European Social Democrat. After single-handedly finding a solution to Middle East peace, he’d managed to restore my faith in humanity in 10 stress-free minutes. He tried to refuse to take any money from me, since he’d enjoyed the conversation as much as I had. But I insisted, such good work couldn’t go unappreciated.

Later that same day I hailed the archetypal battered old Mercedes serveece. I’ve always believed Mercedes should use these cars as posters for the endurance of their vehicles. This particular Merc seemed to have about 10% of its original parts, and was held together mainly by wishful thinking rather than any sort of welding work. The driver started discussing the various types of surgeries he’d seen performed on the Reality Channel. After initially fearing this meant he was going to drive me down a dark alley and remove my spleen with a pocket knife, I realized he as just very proud of his intellectual curiosity. As was I.

This got me thinking about how many times taxi drivers have proven to be the highlight of my day…

On Saturday afternoon, I decided to head out to a café alone to enjoy a bit of sunshine. I ordered a lemonade with crushed ice, since it’s still quite warm in Beirut, and settled in for a spot of people watching. The fact that I was sitting alone, not waiting for anyone and didn’t have a laptop with me, seemed to puzzle my waiter. He kept asking if anyone was joining me, and I kept saying no. I was tempted to tell him he needn’t feel too much pity, that I’ve got plenty of friends but occasionally enjoy a bit of time alone with my thoughts. But I decided against it for fear of blowing his mind and straining his seemingly limited IQ.

A quick glance at the café’s patrons revealed every Beirut cliché. From the bored housewives ignoring their kids whilst armies of Filipino maids struggled to contain the nascent wrath of the bevy of spoilt little brats to the wannabe Golden Boys, wearing hand-me-down suits on a Saturday, smoking a fat cigars jacked from daddy’s cabinet. It was fascinating to just sit there, ignoring the contents of every conversation and just watching the social interactions. Listening in on the conversations wouldn’t have added much to my understanding of this herd anyway, since their focus seems to be primarily on appearance.

Now, anyone who says they don’t care about appearances is a consummate liar. We all care, and it’s probably a good thing. As evolved social beings, we are programmed to infer a certain amount of information just by looking at our surroundings, which include the people around us. Over time, we make decisions over who is approachable, less so, threatening and so on. A lot of these assumptions will probably turn out to be erroneous, but it’s a practical social construct.

Most of us don’t head out into the world every morning looking quite the way we woke up. We wash our face; put on some form of clothing that we think reflects our mood or our obligations. I personally tend to lather a non-negligible amount of gel into my hair on a daily basis to live up to the visual stereotype of a sleazy Mediterranean. So, we all know that our appearance matters. For some it matters more than others, and for some it becomes a sickness.

Beyond the things we can manage through a new haircut or a funky pair of jeans, there are deeper changes to our appearance that require a bit more work. And just as I was thinking this, and explaining to my waiter’s colleague that I really truly wasn’t waiting for an imaginary friend, it hit me. About 50% of the people around me had had some form of plastic surgery.

It’s no secret that Lebanon has a love affair with the scalpel and Botox…

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?