Beirut: Day Two

On Sunday we had brunch with an expanding network of new friends at Dar on Hamra. Dar used to be a house that was converted into a café and has – in the back – converted an office space on the premises into a bookshop with a fairly eclectic magazine collection including the recent issue of Brown Daze/Days (something)  ‘a magazine for the Arab community in Sydney’ and had helpful tips on things like ‘Things to do in Sydney on a Saturday”. None of which included the Aussie essential “Get bombed”.

Cee and I held them hostage over brunch and plied them with questions about our respective fieldwork. C is an anthropologist and looks at the aesthetic and impulse towards the dominant trend towards plastic surgery in different classes in Beirut. I am interested in state provision of low-income housing and the use of public space through architecture.

In Beirut there is a narrative link between the two. Writing your chosen story on your body and on your city through reconstruction. As we talked through more zaatar and labneh and cups of tea, one version of a Beirut life became more visible. (You can’t help but be bounded by the group of people you associate with and the lens they give you for a life. I would have been a different person had I been at SOAS instead of Oxford. I would have had a lot less black tie and white tie in my wardrobe for one.)  This version of Beirut had people with an international background, growing up in Beirut and choosing and wanting to live there and still having one foot somewhere else. Just in cases. So different from the people I chatted to at the airport security clearance and border control who warmly said “Welcome in Lebanon” and asked “Why have you not been before?” and when I countered with “Have you been to Karachi? Or Oxford?” they’d laugh and say, we haven’t been out of Lebanon at all. The version I heard about in the early part of the weekend was one where teenage girls would get rhinoplasty done over a winter break and where little girls played around with scotch tapes on their noses pretending they’d had surgery. Where in 2006 the airport closed down because of the bombing of Beirut and one class of the young worried about college applications because although you didn’t know when Israel was going to stop, you had to think of a distant point in the future. Where there was a class divide between the intelligentsia, the old money and the nouveau riche almost. The former’s aesthetic subtle, more toned down and the latter’s more influenced by glittering, glitzy, gaudy sheen associated with a certain strata of the Arab world in Gulf states in dressing, in home décor and in how to be seen. One girl at the Friday night party had told me about how people take out loans to invest in image, their houses will be crap from the inside but they will have the coolest car and the latest handbag. The men also go for plastic surgery but they more than the women will say “we had an accident” and since they were under the knife they considered they may as well… So on and so forth.  Where is all this funded from? Lord knows. I couldn’t tell.

For some it may be levels of savings they make by living in a city that has not altered its rent control laws (rents can only be freely agreed between tenant and landlord since 1993). It started as a humanitarian attempt to acknowledge the loss of property and wealth that the civil war had wrought on the population. Today it has become circus of common sense as people pay as little as 60 dollars a month for living a beautiful, old style apartment in downtown Beirut.

How can a landlord get out of this situation when the legislation is not on his side? The list of exceptions is equally farcical.

1.     You wait for them to die

2.     You prove that they have another property within 7 km

3.     You drive them out by leaving dead cats on their doorstep or similar such plagues

4.     You prove they haven’t paid rent for 2 months

5.     Not being present for 6 months

I am increasingly itching to see another version of Beirut, however superficially. I ask Cee about the Muslim areas and strongholds and we make a plan next day to go to Dahiye, the Hezbollah stronghold.

The rest of the day, we wander the city down towards the coast because I want to see the surf breaking over pigeon rocks at the corniche. I had flown over it on my way in and it had been a ferocious sight at night to see an otherwise calm stretch of sea rippling gently towards the shore, losing it at the edges, hammering insistently into the rocks. The walk all the way on the promenade down from Hamra up to the American University of Beirut was hilarious, not the least for channelling Cee’s inner model sidling nonchalantly into my amateur attempts at landscape photography. There would be an oblivious man eating potatoes and Cee glamourously smiling and presenting him  to the camera with gestures best reserved for emergency exit indications in airplane aisles. The promenade social scene consisted of a line of cars parked on the edge of the road populated by couples of friends unwilling to get out; fishermen down on the rocks or just up on the promenade handling their rods and hooks with little sensitivity of space (it could take an eye out) and lots of kiddies roller skating and famililes walking up and down (plus aforementioned fleece-garbed wannabe gangsters).

We walked up to AUB guided by its verdant campus and clocktower on the hill above us and skirted it to meet a friend for coffee. It was then Cee pointed out proliferation of beauty salons outside the university gates to me where girls would get their hair and nails done before classes on a regular basis.

It made me wonder about plastic surgery again and reconstruction and housing in Beirut. Cee spoke of how clinical psychologists come into play in the process when people don’t get the social validation or the imagined result after a plastic surgery and keep trying again and again before help is needed to manage their expectations. Once the city does become the modern city of the ancient future that Solidere is aiming for, will it also deliver the economic uplift associated with that kind of high living for all? What happens when the freshly painted but looming gaunt eyed buildings cannot deliver the expectations for the city? Beirut’s slogan in my head is “watch this space”.

Beirut: Night Two

Kayan in Arabic means entity or essence. It was also the name of one of our bartenders in the very popular namesake bar Kayan in Hamra. A couple of hours in, Kayan from Kayan asked me if I wanted to learn to make doudou shots. Hellz ya. I got behind the counter much to everyone’s entertainment and he went suddenly from charming bar tender to Lebanese drill sergeant. “Two doodoos and one tiramisu shot, quickly” while I scrambled around on some invisible deadline for drinking responding to his shouts of “hold it from the top, quickly” “vodka there” “wash spoon” “one olive” “gentle gentle, NOT SO GENTLE with the powder”. Lemon juice, one teaspoon of olive oil with an olive, 2 drops of Tabasco sauce and vodka- I made enough on the night to remember this for a long time).

The bar was about the size of a train carriage, tended to by 2 hardcore bar tenders (who looked like they had a Harley obsession in their time off) and one apprentice. They went about socializing with the regulars and the tourists, pulling drinks out of the air, smoking between the drinks.

After Friday night’s faux fur crowd the vibe here was quite different, mellow, crowded, lots of laughter, lots of interloping into conversations because of the space.

The other bartender, Avo spooned in what I thought of a heavy amount of salt into a drink and then blitzed it into some concoction. I watched with the intensity of someone who has just learned how to read. L whispered to me ‘They give you salt to keep you drinking.” Avo served the drinks and came back and stared at me and said “What?”

I responded: “It’s like, you know..art. But also irresponsible. “

Avo: “Not its not.”

Me: “So much salt?”

Avo:“It’s sugar!!Taste it!!”

Me: “It doesn’t matter. You will make them drink, they will go home with someone unsuitable, wake up with children and then spend their lives coming to your bar drinking to forget. ”

Avo: “It’s not my fault. God gives them sense.”

Me: “And you give them alcohol”

Avo: “For those who don’t have sense, God gives condoms.”

I am laughing now at this man who looks like an Arab version of Mr. T minus bling on chest (but there in his ears) and he takes the opportunity to tell me about life being a risk and how that often means being on snow shoes when you’re drunk and then breaking your leg. For him that is. I do think philosophizing about life must be Item No. 1 on a bartender’s CV.

Many conversations, behind the bar forays for L and me later we head out to meet some of the crew who had been at the party Friday night at another bar called Alcove. We dance, we laugh and we hanker for some Arab music. One short walk down Gemmayze we walk up a broad set of staircases that form the alleyways in streets here to Sepia. In Sepia I almost immediately run into an Argentianian-Lebanese whose claim to fame, he said, so far “was touching Maradona”. The music was invigorating, the crowd loud and the vibe different from the regular remix bar. In very much the Andrew Wright style (so famous in Oxford. Not) I find myself dancing with a…..wait for it wait for it….a doorway.

In that night, I spied with my own two eyes that…

a.      Baarbar is a life saving chain of all night food kiosks/bars scattered over the city.

b.      A ‘service’ and a ‘taxi’ are different. The same car can become a taxi or a service depending on how you call out for them. If you say service the price is 2000 lira and the assumption is that the driver is allowed to pick up other passengers on the way. Taxi is 10, 000 lira automatically for exclusive carriage. If the driver charges you more than 2000 lira for a service, give him 2000 anyway. He knows the terms.

c.     Youth unemployment is high (for under 25s it is 29% and about 4-5% in adult employment)

d.     The gaggle of men with women are often much older than them (particularly in social entourages); young men can’t afford to show them a good time.

e.      Young men who want to look like gangsters are usually very skinny and have fleece hoodies that rest demurely on the crown of their heads.

f.     One of the most beautiful sights in Beirut are the mountains glittering in the night.

 Khallas.

Beirut: Day One

In times of difficulty I do the social equivalent of turtling: zone out and wait for things to sort themselves out. In Beirut trying to pay with two currencies makes me turtle. American dollars and Lebanese lira/pound are the two currencies everyone pays in; the Lebanese lira having been pegged to the U.S. dollar since September 1999 for stability. It makes my brain hurt a little. Exacerbated by being able to read Arabic and listen to the clear words being formed with a very vague idea of what is being said based on the knowledge of classical Arabic word roots. Usually travelling in another country means not knowing much of the language at all but this is frustrating. It's like being on the brink of something and then not. I've decided to come back in the summer, not just because I want to be able to say something other than "La" (no) with a very Punjabi cluck of the tongue (much to my delight; this is a nation that thrives like the Pakistani on tongue clicking for communication), but also because I feel Beirut and I will have unfinished business after this week.


The least of which is a developing addiction to Lebanese food - tabouli, labneh (really light yogurty cream cheese), zaatar (thyme done in a certain way), makdous (stuffed egg plant) and so much more - courtesy my first epic 4 hour brunch in the city, recovering from the night in the comfort of conversation with new friends and old. Because the food is so veg based and nothing is fried or cooked in heavy, industrial grade oil, you feel full without feeling sick. The tea on the other hand has more tannins than I could imagine; without milk, the shock of its strength makes gums clench in apprehension. After brunch we walked down Maar Mikhayel in downtown Beirut in the largely Christian dominated residential area (while we stay in Kantari, the Muslim dominated area; the difference? So far uno: the sonorous Azaan five times a day pooling from the nearby mosque and dos:proliferation of workers party flags ) and I clicked away on the camera, feeding it on architecture old and new. I went a little bit over the top because of this deepening sense that some of the Ottoman style buildings would not be here in the summer when I come back.

In the aftermath of the civil war (1975 - 1990) the Lebanese government undertook reconstruction and rebuilding with a vengeance. The project goes on, the city forested with cranes, CATs and gaping maws of earth welcome you at turns as another foundation is laid for a high rise. The Plan Horizon rebuilding project is led by Solidere, a company that Hariri had shares in and that has monopoly of construction over downtown Beirut. They have an agenda to be modern and to have selective history linkages. Their slogan is "The Ancient City of the Future" and the bit of history they want to link Lebanon to is the Phoenician bit, maritime trade and wearing all that noble purple. There isn't much of an acknowledgement of a civil war or that it's less that ideal to have the city divided into neighbourhoods so cleanly along religious and ethnic lines. That segregation is what doom prophesying bureaucrats in Karachi are always warning against, the possibility that if political parties in Karachi don't watch out, we will become another Beirut. Solidere constructs in waves that takes down the old Ottoman-style mansions, with Venetian windows, arches. There are no green spaces in the city though there is a  growing effort to start roof top gardens so you will see palm trees swaying drunkenly from penthouses when you look up. The Ottoman style mansions are beautiful, even in their ruins with lopsided lattice-worked arches. They are the ideal height for a cityscape (not more than four-storey usually) and soft pastel colours. Some areas like Gemmayzeh maintain the buildings, the ceilings high, tall doors and windows and bedroom and corridor floors tiled in the 20x20 decorated tile (the Beirut preference is for shades of ochre and the patterns floral or geometric). They are rapidly disappearing as construction companies take them down to replace them with towering hollow eyed structures. Who is going to occupy them honestly? There aren't enough people forget people who can afford it. Beirut has a population of 2 million approx (last census was done in 1932, they threw up their hands I think at how much displacement was going on); the entire country is not more than 4 million. Who will buy these multi-million dollar apartments? Beirut isn't exactly a commercial hub either from what I can gather. There is a very large UN employment base in the city and banks make a killing as well (home to the region's petrodollars since the oil boom in the Middle East). And of course construction businesses and architects. 'Ancient City of the Future'. Cringe.


I don't see the sense in this kind of self-defeating reconstruction/destruction. The battle over housing (tis a trial not to try and do fieldwork in every trip) is also about memory, not functional residence in isolation. Solidere seems to be using the civil war as an excuse to bulldoze Beirut's local history (a damaging, scarring civil war that lives on in the lifestyles of people regardless) and linking it to selective pieces of history as Beirut is propelled into modernity. Every construction site scaffolding has the phrase "modern luxurious living" in some form or the other. The walls of the city carry graffiti from some civil society bodies including groups of architects, protesting against this conversion to a soulless Dubai but as with Karachi when real estate booms, you can't go back. It is a seller's market. 


We walked through the former Green Line that was once the city's battle line (though the fighting took place everywhere) where Solidere attempts to make a nod to the divisions in the city by developing the 'Garden of Forgiveness' project. The site is bounded by building on 3 sides and a busy main road on the fourth. It is easy to miss out the Roman ruins that have halted construction on the site. Six marred columns rise in the city lights on their plinths next to the walkway which two men lean against puffing smoke rings into the night. The buzz of the traffic is loud and the remains of the Roman city of Berytus look hilariously mutinous in modern Beirut. If the columns were children, they would be standing with arms akimbo.

We walk on to prepare for Beirut: Nightlife, round two.

Beirut: Night One

Last time I remember a plane full of people bursting into applause was in the early 1990s when as a child I had flown from Karachi to Tehran with my parents. Last night it happened for the second time when Pegasus Air made a none too smooth landing at Beirut international airport. Children laughed, adults stood up as the plane was coasting to excitedly talk to their neighbours. I stood and worried about my hair. I was going to a house party by a music label owner from the airport. I wondered if there'd be a place in airport loo to plug in a straightener and tease some sense into hair I'd been sleeping on all morning. Caitlin, all glammed up for the party and waiting for me in the arrival lounge bbmed "Straightener???!! You're so Lebanese."

On the way down from the escalator we passed one of the ubiquitous military men sprouting all over the city waiting to give a VIP welcome to someone. An Arab man who had been sitting in front of me with his BBB (beyond belief blonde) turned to her and said, 'do you remember when I did that for you?' She laughed in fond memory. He sighed contentedly "Connections bring such freedom".

We drove into the mountains past many many check points to the penthouse where the 80s themed party was being held. To say it made my eyes pop is not saying enough. It was one hell of a welcome. Alcohol and sushi overflowed; an amazing live band; djs and women oh the women, so picture perfect, looking alike women. I couldn't tell a real nose from a fake one. During one conversation I looked over to see a beautiful girl staring discontentedly on a close up of her side profile on her blackberry, zooming in and zooming out. If I hadn't been so in the zone I might have felt a bit insecure and got a loan from the famous/infamous First National Bank (that gives out 'humanitarian" loans for plastic surgery) to look a bit more perfect. (Also I would have thought twice about dragging luggage with tickets all over it and handing it in to coat check. Image is everything.) The music was fantastic (everyone admits later but if you're cool you don't clap, you dance and look bored when the music ceases); the booze unlimited, the view from the penthouse amazing with the city lit up at night and the people ridiculously weird and out to get wasted like it was a crusade. At 2 am we drove to the 'winter Sky Bar' the new club called Life and were shown into the VIP area courtesy 'connections that bring freedom' and danced until the wee hours of the morning. It is meant to be an expensive city and it is for most part. Unless you are a woman in a party, club or bar. Everything is paid for, how, when it happens you don't know. You nod thank you and dance to Rihanna and try hard not to think of how much the city reminds you of a part of Karachi you never felt at home at but have no problems having an amazing time with so many miles away.

Based on the night I venture to say - and will later confirm if its true - that the highest sources of employment are taxi cabs, military checkpoints, valet parking (McDonald's has one).

This covers the hours from landing at 10 30pm to some time in the morning.