Amy’s Journal

Lately there has been a fair amount of buzz about these cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, which were first published in a Danish newspaper several months ago. Some leaders and clerics in Saudi Arabia and other countries have called for a boycott of Danish products and stores in Kuwait and the Gulf are obliging. However, today at my grocery store all of the Danish cheese and butter was still in place. So far the most absurd report is that a gang of armed men temporarily took over an EU office in Gaza in order to register their disapproval. Way to challenge the insinuation that Islam breeds terrorism by engaging in an act of terrorism.

There is still no bird flu documented in Lebanon or Syria, but a lot of Lebanese have stopped eating chicken. Some of my students stopped eating it last Fall, and it did no good for me to explain that you don’t get sick from eating chicken, you need to be exposed to live birds. Chicken is now about half price here and I read this a while ago about a guy in Saida who has publicly eaten raw chicken to try to persuade people to buy it.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day and we are off to Syria for the weekend. We are going to Aleppo, a very interesting city in the northern part of Syria. Aleppo is one of those cities that claims to be the oldest consistently inhabited city in the world – along with Damascus, Byblos, Jericho, and some cities in Turkey and Iran. We went ahead and got expensive Syrian visas in Washington D.C. right before Christmas, since we wanted to avoid another possible border debacle. I’m really looking forward to it, even though it sounds like it is going to be rather chilly there- below freezing at night. I will post some pictures next week.

Sort of like the ice cream trucks in urban America, there are fruit and vegetable sellers here who push their carts around, calling out their products. This one is in the camp, but they come down our street, too- though much more often in summer. The fancier ones have actual trucks that they drive slowly around, calling out with a megaphone. When we first arrived in Beirut, upon hearing such commotion, I wondered if we were hearing some sort of political announcement. But it turned out, it was just a guy selling tomatoes to women on balconies.

They have the old balance scales. You tell him you want a kilo of pomegranates, and he puts a kilo weight on one side, and piles up the produce on the other until the two sides are balanced.

He hasn’ t been around in awhile, but every day when the weather was warmer, there was a guy on a moped who sold bread (kaik, actually, a round bread with a hole in it) by driving around the neighborhood honking his horn, revving the scooter engine, and yelling out “Kaik!”. He was on the street below our apartment every afternoon like clockwork. Maybe I will know that winter is over when he reappears.

Wow. Unexpectedly, Hamas has swept the Palestinian elections. I kind of wish that I was seeing my students before Monday to see what they think about it. And I’m definitely curious to see what this means for Palestine, Israel, and the rest of the Middle East.

I feel like I haven’t taken as many photos of Bourj al-Barajneh as I did in Chatila, so I took a few today. Michael, this butcher shot is for you.

Earlier this week, Ethan and I were stuffing a few wine bottles and water bottles into the recycling bins. A young guy (high school aged?) passed us and said, “Good job!” and pumped his fist in the air. He seemed genuinely pleased. Normally, when we are trying to perform this civic duty, people will slow down in cars or look on in wonder. I’m not sure if they have just never seen anyone use them, or if they actually are not clear on the purpose of such bins. I’ve never seen anyone else put anything into them or take anything out, but they do fill up, so we are not the only ones giving the recycling thing a shot.

This is all that I have found about Sukleen’ s recycling program, so I have no idea how successful it is. Sukleen is the garbage collection company that serves Lebanon since the mid-90s. There are dumpsters all around where you are supposed to put your trash if your building doesn’t take care of it for you. Our friend, Andre, told us that before the dumpsters were there, people just threw the trash in the street, sans garbage bags. Anyhow, the Sukleen employees, who are mostly immigrants, always seem to be working pretty hard, and the streets and sidewalks stay pretty clean. I would be curious to know whether or not Sukleen is a good employer, though I suspect not.

I just finished a great book – Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury, a Palestinian born in Lebanon. It’s historical fiction and recounts the journey from Galilee to the refugee camps in Beirut when Palestinians were expelled by Israelis in 1948, referred to by Palestinians as nakbe, or “the disaster”. It made me wish that I could read/understand Arabic, since the translation showed such an intoxicating style of writing. The stories that Khoury collected from the camps take on a mythic quality, and I think a lot of those stories are myth by now, having been retold over and over and rarely written down over the last 57 years.

Today, I started reading a new book called Heart of Beirut: Reclaiming the Bourj. So far it seems absurdly optimistic about Lebanon’s future, but who knows. Somehow, even with having read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people, and experienced living here for many months, I feel less confident that I truly grasp the situation here than I did when I arrived. It really feels like the deeper one gets, the more there is.

The two points that get made about Lebanon/Beirut when trying to sell it as a tourist destination are the following:

1. Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East.

2. You can ski in the morning and then swim in the Mediterranean in the afternoon.

I have no idea who actually does this, but if they do, I imagine they do it in March, when it is presumably warmer out.

Last night, Ethan and I had dinner at Scallywags. When I called to make the reservation and gave my name, the voice on the other end said, “Amy? Is this Amy-Amy?”. It was great, not only to have someone be excited about my coming to the restaurant, but because it was for sure the first time anyone has ever said “Amy-Amy?” as if there is only one. There are worse things than having the 2nd most popular girl baby name of 1970, but it is sort of nice to be here and feel unique.

Juice man in Haret Hreik

I read this article about a psychic who “predicted” the assasinations last year in Lebanon. He isn’t planning on making more guesses about Lebanon’s political future, however.

Aleppo in August

I think I’m over my jet lag, which is pretty cool.

Yesterday there was a pretty big (thousands) pro-Syria protest near the U.S Embassy and I watched some of it on TV. Supposedly it was mostly Hezbollah and Amal supporters, though most of them were careful to carry Lebanese flags. An oh-so-clever slogan has been adopted- “U.S. — Leave Us”.

On Monday, Iran announced a new visas on arrival policy… for Americans, too! I didn’t read about it until yesterday. It was pretty timely because the night before, Ethan and I had chatted with an Iranian grad student about Iran and how it was too bad that Ethan and I, as Americans, couldn’t easily go there. He encouraged us to apply for visas anyhow, since sometimes they are approved. Now it looks like we will be able to go, which I hadn’t expected.

Our travel plans are getting pretty exciting. We are going to Aleppo (see photo above) in a few weeks (we got Syrian visas when we were in Washington D.C. in December), hopefully we are going to meet Katy and Oneida in Athens soon after that, and we are going to try skiing in Lebanon at some point. I hope that we can go to both Iran and Oman in March or April.

Last night there was a tremendous thunderstorm- some of the loudest thunder I have heard in my life. I have no idea how people manage to dry their clothes in winter here. We have moved the latest load into the apartment on our drying rack. I think we have been trying to dry them for 3 days and they have been caught in several downpours. I am trying to adopt the strategy of carrying an umbrella at all times. We now have a gas-fueled space heater, which makes a huge difference in taking the chill off.

On the way to Bourj al-Barajneh today, I noticed that the butchers seemed to have been hard at work. Lots of swinging carcasses and heads in buckets. As I sat on the bus, I watched a fellow remove the head and legs of a sheep a few feet away. Halal butchers are not kidding around with the sharpness of their knives.

Today was absolutely gorgeous here in Beirut. These guys in the photo really know how to hang out. The clouds are obscuring the snowy peaks–it’s ski season after all.