Edukashun

In a meeting yesterday I discovered some fascinating things about the wretched state of the education system in Lebanon.

1. There are two schools in Lebanon that you have to cross the border into Syria and back into Lebanon to get to because there are no roads directly to the school. To other schools children must walk through fields because of a lack of roads. Schools are often located in buildings that are falling apart, old stables, or buildings without roofs.

2. Lebanese high schools are really good because by the time children get old enough to attend high school, the bad students (i.e. poor students) have already dropped out of school.

3. There is a school in Bourj Hammoud (which is in Beirut) that sits above a fish market where there is a 73% failure rate. I suppose I'd fail, too, if I had to smell fish all day.

4. Teachers who are on contract only get paid once a year, and it's at the end of the year. To live, they depend on salary advance companies, which take up to a 30% fee. Full-time teachers are tenured and impossible to fire, so they often don't bother showing up to class.

5. The Education Ministry has historically been so corrupt that anyone who needs a job and knows somebody can be appointed as a teacher, no matter how unqualified.

Sad.

Life's a beach

Spent a lovely Sunday afternoon at the beach yesterday. I've turned from a white American to some sort of islander. Actually, yesterday I had the face of a lobster.

Walked past the Pigeon Rocks and what did I see? Some idiot had somehow climbed to the top and posted a baby blue Future Movement flag on top, ruining the whole view of the Med with stupid politics.

Today, the ugly gray weather is perfect for a Monday.

For the next two weeks there will only be a 6 hour time difference from the East Coast because Lebanon doesn't change to daylight savings time until the last weekend in March.

Allahu Akbar

I have to hand it to Islam. I love the sound of church bells, but they can't beat a muezzin's call to prayer.

In Beirut, it's difficult to reconcile the incessant honking of car horns, the construction drills, the conversations on the corner, or the ka-ching of a cash register with the spiritual song coming from the minarets five times a day. Sometimes I wish everything would just stop and everyone would just listen - me, the irreligious, metaphysical agnostic with a healthy respect for Christian philosophy but a belief that all religions are the same chemical manifestations of the mind taking shape through the lens of culture, the coincidence of birth; me, the fledgling disciple of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and St. Bono the Divine. There is something other worldly about these calls to prayer, as if they exist outside of time, like they are the past, present, and future ringing out all at once. They seem to be breathing soul back into the world after humans have sucked it all out.

But sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who notices. It's a lonely feeling.

Then they stop, and everything melts into normal again, and history returns to books and the future returns to sci-fi films, and the present becomes the dissonant tick tock of a bustling clock and flesh and bones and joy and sorrow and haves and have nots. The sun goes down, the sun comes up, the alarm rings, and the labor of breathing continues. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and all that jazz.

Mysterious ways, indeed.

They only come out at night

The bats come out at dusk. They flutter around abandoned buildings like butterflies on speed, dashing between antennas and satellite dishes, under wires, through windows that have long since seen their glass removed by bombs or bullets or simple neglect. A feast of mosquitoes and gnats floats there in the darkening sky.

[You’ve done nothing until you’ve gotten a giant insect out of your room by throwing a wine cork at it and swatting it with a pair of jeans. It looked like the world’s biggest mosquito; I couldn’t take the risk of letting it stay.]

But back to the bats – they’re one of my favorite things about Beirut. They’re stuck between the darkness and the light; they feed on the bad to make things good. They fly above the city unnoticed by everyone but me.

I’m like a bat, fluttering above the nonsense, stuck between the darkness and the light. Like the waves of the Mediterranean that crash upon the shores of this artificial country, I waver in my own thoughts and feelings about the place. Certainly I love living in Hamra, with its plethora of cafés and dive bars and bookstores and students, but I wonder if this country will ever stop teetering on the brink of conflict and insanity. I’m beginning to think that the bats turn to vampires at night and that the politicians are just zombies with fancy makeup. Can vampires and zombies be in the same movie?

It's not an air freshener, it's an earth killer

Last night I got home at 11:30 only to discover the chemical taste of air freshener had returned to my mouth. In my place, there is a mechanical air freshener that spits out some horrific chemical that I think is supposed to be like a flower. It floats through the air and gets on your tongue and makes you sneeze. I've asked three times now to have it turned off (they have a key to do it), but for some reason, the maid keeps turning it back on.

I can't figure out how anyone could think such a device and such chemicals are a good idea. I mean, even if you don't care about the environment, which is the case of most Lebanese, it doesn't smell good and it's so thick it gets in your mouth! Why on earth would they use these things?

She also keeps the balcony door open, too, which allows the mosquitoes to get in and buzz around my ears all night, keeping me awake. I have a huge mosquito bite on my face. Being winter, the only place there is to bite is my head and hands, and that's where they do.

Yeah, the place smells a little funny because of the old pipes in the bathroom and the kitchen, but it isn't so bad that I must suffer these things for it.

Where Everyone Knows Your Name, Even If They Pronounce It Funny

My day usually consist of this: 10am meeting in Hamra (the neighborhood where I live), walk to the office in Achrafiyeh (a half hour walk), work until 4pm in the office, have a meeting at 4 or 4:30 either in Achrafiyeh or back in Hamra, and go to an event in the evening, sometimes at universities, sometimes at NGO offices, sometimes at cafés. When 8 or 9pm rolls around, the day is done. That’s when I go to Evergreen.

Evergreen is a pub owned by a guy named Amigo that is around the corner from where I live. It’s a quintessential dive bar. The walls and shelves are covered with all sorts of items given to him by his customers – odd hats, flags, knickknacks from other parts of the world, and things you might find at Spenser’s Gifts. Behind the bar is a wall of money from all over the globe, most of it with messages to Amigo on it. On the ceiling are rolled up “wishes” that customers wrote, pieces of yellowed paper hanging like bats in a cave. In a way, it’s appropriate, because Amigo is like a vampire, as he never sees the sun. He opens his bar beyond daylight hours and roams the streets of Hamra whenever his last customer leaves or when he feels like closing. People sometimes come in at 3 in the morning. Other times, he kicks everyone out so he can go have some fun. (I love this thing called freedom here, where there are no imposing laws telling you what time you have to go to bed.)

There are a few customers that are there nearly every day. One is a retired general who’s called General. There’s another called General, too, because he looks exactly like General Aoun, one of the infamous political figures in Lebanon.

I'm learning Arabic from them. I could spend hours pouring over lessons and texts and listening to pre-recorded language tapes, or I can sit in a pub with a bunch of old guys and just listen to what they’re saying. I a few weeks away from where I was when I took my Arabic proficiency tests in terms of listening and reading, and I’m amazed at how I am remembering obscure words, sometimes randomly.

It’s important that I be able to speak Arabic because soon I will start traveling to smaller towns and villages to meet with civil society groups and not everyone speaks English outside of Beirut. It’s also important because showing you’ve attempted to learn their language gains the trust of people who may be skeptical of a foreigner. I’m fairly certain that in two or three weeks I will feel comfortable having a conversation in Arabic, as long as I keep up my study regiment and my trips to Evergreen. (The latter shouldn’t be a problem.) I only wish Lebanese dialect wasn’t so different from Classical Arabic, because I feel like I’m learning two different languages at the same time.

I often eat dinner there. Sometimes Amigo will share his dinner that he’s cooked for himself with me; other times Amigo or the General (the real one) will order food for delivery and we sit there and eat it at the bar and they answer my questions about Lebanon. A few days ago I tried Armenian food for the first time – it’s spicy, not like Lebanese food. Of course I liked it. I rambled on about how I love spicy food and how I love hot sauce and now I have to bring in my bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce for them to try. If I can ever figure out how to light the stove in my place, I’m going to cook Cincinnati chili for them some time. (I think you have to put a match on the burner when you turn the gas on, but this scares me.) This is the Lebanese way; I’ve been few places where the people are as generous.

Of course, there are also people my age and younger who come in, people like the two German guys whose names I always forget (but whom I beat at darts) and Ashkan from Iran who teaches at AUB and with whom I’ve gone other places in Beirut and Sami the AUB track runner who told me I was too tense and Dr. Paul the Plastic Surgeon and his friend Tarek and many college students who make me feel like I’m in the age group of the old guys.

Oh, yes, and there is the dartboard. I triumphantly won five dollars from Amigo when I defeated him on Saturday two games to one, and we’re not talking the game where you get three of each kind of number but the game called 301 where you have to hit a double (double is the tiny ring on the outside of the board) to start the scoring and you count down to 0, ending your game with a double. In the final game, I needed 5, which meant I needed to hit a 1 and a double 2. I hit both. Yes, I am still gloating about it, ha ha ha.

Last night I was suddenly hit with a memory of Pub 13 in Luxembourg where I learned how to play darts. When Amigo first asked me if I had ever played, I said yes, but I couldn’t remember where. Last night I remembered, and I couldn’t stop remembering. This trip feels a lot like that one. It’s been a dozen years and I’ve some life experience and the caution that comes with it, but I haven’t felt this energized since then.

The other night I had a dream that I was in Ohio and I wanted to go back to Beirut but there were no flights and I couldn’t get anyone to drive me to the airport. I was so upset in the dream. But when I woke, I couldn’t help but laugh, because I realized that I was still in Beirut and still had a lot of time left. I’ve fallen in love with the chaos, with the dirt, with the sounds of construction drills and hammers and shouting, with the occasional cockroach crawling across the bar, the insane drivers, the dreadful traffic, the incessant honking of horns even as it drives me crazy.

But damn Israel if they attack this spring like some people think might happen. And damn the Obama administration and the United States if they sit back and let Israel do it. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that. Political talk is banned in Evergreen. Religion, too. Of course, I haven’t been thrown out yet.

Conversation with a taxi driver

Me: Sodeco Square, please.

Taxi driver: Sodeco?

Me: Yes.

(We drive.)

(Later...)

Taxi driver: Muthaf? (Museum?)

Me: No, Sodeco Square.

Taxi driver: Sodeco?

Me: Yes, Sodeco.

Taxi driver: Wayn fi Sodeco? (Where in Sodeco?)

Me: Just Sodeco. Binayat fi Sodeco. (A building on Sodeco.)

Taxi driver: Muthaf? Muthaf watani? (National Museum?)

Me: No, Sodeco.

Taxi driver (after we are almost at the museum): Muthaf.

Me: Not muthaf, Sodeco.

(Then he tells me I have to walk back the way we just came or get another taxi. It was a ten minute walk. By some miracle, I was not late to my meeting. If he was going to make me walk, he could have just dropped me off at the corner instead of driving a ten minute walk away from my destination. Sodeco Square is a well-known area in Beirut. I got out without paying. For all the times I've been ripped off by cab drivers here, why should I pay when I he made me walk to my destination?)

I see

I can see three churches and two mosques from my office window. I see enormous cranes erecting new high rises next to crumbling, bullet-riddled buildings. I see Roman ruins, Beirut ruins, and towering skyscrapers scintillating under the Mediterranean sun. I see the port where massive ships carrying goods from overseas come to dock. I see banks and satellite dishes and plants growing on top of buildings because there is no soil on the ground for them to grow. I see the reconstructed Ottoman building that houses the Prime Ministry and five star hotels and far too many cars.

But I should be at the beach.

961

I'm already getting sucked in.

So what are you seeing here? Well, here we go:

Memorial rally for Prime Minister Hariri's assassination. It's been five years now. Seems like an eternity.

He's not Superman. Popart exhibition at Art Lounge.

King Elvis - if you click on the image you will be able to see the bobblehead Elvis on the dashboard.

A can of Seven Up - I find the logo clever - what looks like a 7 actually says up, and what would be up actually says seven. From right to left, of course.

Down the road along the sea - rich people have stolen both a view of the sea and the sun. These towering skyscrapers and what will be new seaside developments (for wealthy gulfies) will also steal the air from the people, as they are blocking the sea which has had some effect on cleaning up the pollution that plagues Beirut. Look for increases in asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory related infections.

Where my office is - no, not the bullet-riddled building on the right.

Racism in Beirut. Made in Germany. No one ever accused the Germans of not being racist.

Orange trees in front of a house. They picked them the next day.

Wall art in a restaurant.

Hizbollah poster.

Kaboom goes the tolerance

Earlier in the day, it was sort of raining, which produced an amazing rainbow over the sea. Now it is a bit brighter and there are some guys outside cutting up the street with some type of machine. One guy is doing the pushing while another stands with a jug of water, which he periodically pours on the machine to put out the flames it shoots out. The machine is running on gas. A gas can sits not too far from them. Cars are dashing and prancing by them - I wonder if their drivers even notice the fire.

I've been wrestling a bit with my biases since I've arrived, and I can't figure out why I have them. I never felt the need to say "why do they do it this way?" in the past, but most of my travel experience has been in the West, with only brief stints in Cairo, Jordan, and Istanbul. Perhaps since I've spent a few weeks in Lebanon (two last summer, one so far on this trip) I've had more time to notice things I deem "problems." Perhaps it's because Beirut seems like a Western city from appearances and I assume they have Western views on safety. Perhaps as I've grown older, I've become less tolerant of cultural differences.

Or perhaps this really is just stupid.

Come on, you're using a gas-powered machine that's spitting out flames and think pouring water on it is going to stop it from exploding before you finish cutting up the street?

You might want to get to the end of this rainbow and talk to the leprechaun if you're gonna keep doing it this way.

Floating on

It's been rainy and sunny at the same time all day and a little chilly, especially with the wind gusts. Everyone here thinks it's so cold and I laugh, the same way I laugh at people from the South or California who think fifty degrees in winter is cold. I've heard Jerusalem might get a dusting of snow after midnight, which might also hit here, but that was on Twitter so who knows if it will really happen. Even if it does it will be melted and warmed up enough to not feel like winter by the time I get up. The humidity is really something.

The Med's pretty rough today - white caps are aplenty. It sort of looks like a river good for whitewater rafting, if you can ignore that it stretches to the horizon...and now...the storm clouds are coming in...a ship is coming into port (how the heck do those things float?)...Beirut darkens...and the sea disappears.

But a few minutes later, it returns, and another ship, this one leaving Beirut, appears from beneath the nothingness. For where? What does it carry? Lebanese oranges? Beiruti bananas? Hizbollah drugs and weapons?

The gray has already lifted, revealing patches of blue that make the Mediterranean what it is, a way of life, the color of the soul. Fluffy white clouds laced with the yellow tint of evening follow what had once been darkness. In twenty minutes, a storm was here, then gone, leaving behind the sound of tires splashing through puddles, and what puddles there are, like in any old town, like in Washington, USA, turning the streets into rivers, and mud comes from seemingly nowhere to be suddenly everywhere.

Some Beirut

A few random photos: Roman columns downtown; snow and palm trees on Bliss Street; new mosque and bombed out mall; bombed out church; orange tree ready to eat; generators for when the electricity is out.

I suppose I should write something about why I took each of these photos, but that's just it - I don't know why. I only know that they caught my eye for being so typically Beirut, the kind of life crammed into a situation type of thing that you don't get in too many places on this planet. I mean, sure, there are Roman columns all over the place in so many different countries. But these columns, well, they were discovered after the Beirutis bombed whatever was on top of them out of existence, and they stand next to a T.G.I.Fridays in a downtown rebuilt from the ground up after it was leveled during a 15 year war.

And these snow-covered mountains? They're located about an hour away from palm trees. Lebanon is one of the few places on Earth where you can ski in full view of the sea and go to the beach on the same day.

Bliss Street is named after Daniel Bliss, the founder of the American University of Beirut, which is, obviously, located on Bliss Street, which is where I was standing when I took this picture. Funny, but in July, you couldn't see the mountains from this street through all the haze, so when I was on this street, looking at the snow, I didn't realize where I was.

And where else are you going to find the remains of a shopping center, crying for a bulldozer, near a shiny newish mosque where an assassinated prime minister who rebuilt a city lays in rest?

(Maybe it's not a shopping center - someone told me it was, and there is a parking lot beneath it that you can no longer get to. It's a strange shape, anyway.)
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A bombed out church, next to a highway, that I walk by every day on my way to the office. This corpse of a church is located across from the corpse of a shopping mall down the street from the newish mosque.

I wonder why it hasn't been rebuilt when so many other churches have been. It has trees growing in it. Someone hung a banner on it advertising some Christmas charity, so it isn't totally ignored. Perhaps they just decided to build a brand new church somewhere.

Perhaps the war made them give up God.

Some people have maple trees in their yards. Some have oak trees. Some have elms, hickories, and pines. In Lebanon, lucky people get to have orange trees. How tough it is to walk by and not pick one!

I love this building, too. They have such great architecture, Italian style. Still need some paint, though, and the buildings are covered with the sludge of pollution. (There's something to be said for government regulation of emissions.)

And lastly, the generators, ahh, the generators, the only way you get to have electricity 24 hours a day. Odd for a city that seems so cosmopolitan.

Ahh, the life...

I've never even had an office with a window and now I get this view?

So I finally will have regular internet access from now on, at least access that doesn't require effort like getting in an elevator and going downstairs. But oh, is it tough to focus when I can just stare out at the Mediterranean.

I decided I am going to walk to the office every day (unless it's raining, and maybe even then.) It is only a half hour, and I only half to dash across one crazy street if I cut through the government area, which will probably require me getting my bag checked every morning. Fine with me if it means being safe. The guard was really nice about it this morning, even apologized.

(Boy, is this internet connection is sloooooooooooo ooooooooooo oooooooooow. Perhaps I won't post photos here as much as I'd like. Been trying to upload a second photo for ten minutes now.)

Here's a church next to a mosque, a palm tree at AUB, a violation of copyright, and some palm trees on top of a building. I'll post more pics when my patience refills.

A new travel experience

This is the view from where I live, or at least the view to the east looking at Abel Aziz Street. Yes, I have a view. A view. Am I getting older, or what? I mean, here I am, standing on a balcony, taking pictures of a view. A balcony of an apartment I rent. Alone. In another country.

Bye, bye, hostels. Bye, bye, cheap hotels. Here I am in my new world, renting an apartment in another country by myself with a balcony and a living room and 24 hour electricity and cable television and a maid (and laughing from the cafe a block away while a girl proudly displaying a nose job walks by.)

Here's another view from my balcony. I took it in a t-shirt drinking a beer. In January. Evan says I should get a grill. (Evan is friend and former co-worker who is going to grad school here.) I think it's a fine idea to get a grill for my balcony to the apartment I rent by myself in another country with the living room and the 24 hour electricity and the cable television and the maid (the maid is a little excessive, but it's included in the price. I'd rather not have someone come in and touch my stuff, to be honest.)

Here's a view of the balcony from the bedroom where I had a very nice sleep last night, a very nice and very long sleep in which I missed the opportunity to go out in Gemmayze with a bunch of grad students and some couchsurfing Americans living in Ankara, Turkey because after I got ready to go, I sat down to see what television stations could help me learn Arabic (or relearn, I guess) and what do you know, I feel asleep, waking just long enough to drag myself to the bed. Stupid jet lag. Unless that disgusting chemical air freshener that lets off some horrific flowery scent every 15 minutes is actually sleeping gas put there by Lebanese intelligence. Or Mossad. Or both. I got that turned off today. We'll see if I fall asleep there again.

Here is the kitchen where I doubt I'll do very much cooking, what with me being afraid to light things that have gas going to them. That and I'm just too lazy. I mean, why on earth would I try to cook something when I've got hummus and tabouleh and fatoosh and kibbe and all of this wonderful food prepared by other people? And the orange juice...the freshly squeezed orange juice that makes me embarrassed I ever thought Tropicana Pure Premium was good. And the stand on the corner where they bake fresh croissants every morning...I guess I'll need to use the burner to heat water to make coffee since my tongue cannot take the bitterness of the stuff here.

Here is the living room, which was the difference between this and another place. Not that I plan on watching much television - I only have four months, why waste them? - but it will help with my language skills (I have French channels, too.) Still, it's nice to have some place separate from a bedroom to work, read, and blog. (Though I don't have internet in my room. :( I can still type up what I want to say, hit up Cafe Prague a block away, if I can mind the communist wannabes, and have high speed access better than what I had in my apartment in DC, which is unreal here.)

Look for this bookshelf to be filled by the time I leave. UPS is gonna love me.

A view of the kitchen from the living room. I even have a table for eating, which I've already turned into office space. I do need to get one of those pen organizers.

Even though the sun never directly hits my apartment, there is plenty of light, as you can see from the scintillating glow emanating from the balcony to the apartment which I am rented by myself in another country with 24 hour electricity, cable television, and a maid. Oh, about that electricity thing - Beirut rations electricity so everyone loses it in three hour periods every day. The losing time varies, but many places have a generator. Thanks, corruption! Thanks, Israel! Thanks, sectarianism!

A view of the living room from the other side. Yes, that's my Reds blanket on the couch. I have to do some streaming video tests from Cafe Prague to see if this is the place from where I will be watching our Holy Opening Day or if I'll have to go to another country for such an important holiday. I also have the baseball Billy Hatcher threw me in DC last summer and a little Reds sundae helmet, as well as my Reds cap and jersey. Despite everything, I am still pumped for baseball season as much as if I were in the States.

Here's another view from the balcony, this one more typical of what I'll be posting here. This building stands abandoned, yet one (obviously) squatter hangs laundry outside. I felt the squatting was juxtaposed with the palm tree, the latter being a symbol of prosperity in so many places in the world. The building itself is juxtaposed with the others around it, as the whole block aside from it is under construction. As I was marveling at the situation I found myself in, that being standing on the balcony of an apartment I've rented by myself in another country with 24 hour electricity, cable television, and a maid, I felt a guilt looking at that one occupied apartment among trash-strewn ruins. But hey, I'm here to help Lebanon overcome such an injustice as a squatter in ruins among wealth. We're going to fix this.

This photo is what I think of Beirut, with the contradictions and the absurdities and the imbalances of life. How among the new high rises and the furnished apartments for foreigners can a ghost of a building house someone who has no place to live? Of the 18 different gods who rule over this place, can't one of them dish out some justice?

And so I will live across the street from this squatter, neighbors by location only, and I'll pay a rent equal to what I paid in DC to have much more. I am going to enjoy every second I am here. I mean, look at this photo - how could you not? (Just don't look at the enlarged photo - there are two ships participating in the salvage operation of the plane crash from Monday. This is what's going on.)

Oh, and HA HA - I'm getting tan and you're not!

First day: Success.

Feeling pretty good after sleeping 12 hours and getting up about 6am. Ran out for some coffee before some places were open and got back to take a shower by candlelight, my first introduction to the power issues which plague Lebanon.

Yesterday, or rather on Monday, I embarked upon a turbulent flight from Washington DC to Paris on my way to a four month stint in Beirut. Three hours of rather scary turbulence that made us reroute our trip (adding a mere three minutes to our seven hour journey) were three hours of hell for a nervous flyer like myself, especially when the meal service was suspended and the flight attendants strapped themselves in. And to think that the takeoff hadn't really bothered me...

The flight from Paris to Beirut was a breeze and quite beautiful. When we got to Paris, I felt like I was home. Charles de Gaulle has become so familiar that I know how to find everything. Sadly, I have not been to Paris in a decade, but I've seen it from a plane many times.

What you see here in this first picture is Bulgaria in all its winter glory. Nostalgia came to me as I sat so high above it, face pasted to the window as soon as we left Europe's winter cloud cover and hit a clear shot of the Balkans. The rest of the trip was cloudless and amazing. Most of Turkey was snow covered and beautiful.

This may be the creepiest photo I've ever taken and I hope I never take one like this again. This is a ship that is part of the rescue operation for the plane crash that happened the day before. (You can see a clearer version from Reuters here.) Nothing like seeing the rescue operation of a plane crash from a plane as you are about to land. It was pretty easy to figure out what was going on, because I was looking for it, being the nervous flyer I am. The Reuters photo of the same ship confirmed it. I saw more rescue boats today - I knew they were rescue boats because it was too cold for people to be boating for pleasure.

On a better note, I like a place where you can choose whether or not to have winter. Snow-covered mountains, Mediterranean Sea, a great big city with a lot happening, and warm, beautiful sunshine...I really couldn't ask for more.

Some more photos: