Ethan’s Journal

More information on the Geagea-related incident I mentioned yesterday:

http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=16918

I was getting ready to take my evening constitutional last night and I went to get some cash from our secret stash. Right next to all those portraits of Madison were some errant of British pound notes. Seeing those took me back to the day before we left for Lebanon, specifically to our last lunch in New York. We had fish and chips with our friend (and my sometime-collaborator) Malcolm at the Chip Shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn (an establishment which, by the way, I was impressed to see get a little screen time in the Supersize Me special features). I believe we had haddock and chips and Amy drank a pint of Stella, which she doesn’t normally like, but they were out of Strongbow cider Old Speckled Hen. At one point, Malcolm handed us an envelope containing £50 because he knew we had a 4-hour layover in Heathrow. Last night when I saw those remaining pounds, I missed Malcolm and was touched again by the thoughtfulness of the gesture. So, I want to take this opportunity right now to give a tip of the hat and a salty salute to Malcolm Hearn.

Yesterday I kind of had a “good day a the office”….I was able to do an unassailable¹ 9 hours and successfully merge Gaylord Entertainment’s online application process with their agent registration process, and enable applicants to edit their .xml applications. Fascinating stuff, really. I’ve actually been having some real difficulties (mostly of my own creation) with my work lately, so it was nice to clock out and take a stroll around the ‘hood. I literally hadn’t left the homestead since coming home Friday night. I was surprised again by the fact that we have a Subway and two McDonald’s (not to mention a Wimpy and a Starbucks) within like 7 blocks of our house. It was around 8pm and everything was closed or closing, so my secondary mission of finding a place that sends faxes internationally was a bust. I’m trying to do some remote banking so that we don’t have to pay $3 every time we make an ATM withdrawal. Thank you very much, JP Morgan/Chase. They also charge a 3.5% “conversion fee” if we take out funds in Lebanese pounds. For that reason, we–along with a few other of our American friends–always withdraw money in USD, which you can actually do at most ATMs. I have to say, I have never handled so many $50 and $100 bills prior to moving here, as that’s mostly what the ATMs dispense. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, US currency is accepted almost everywhere at a flat 1500LL=$1 exchange, somewhat to the consternation of the government.

Back at home, Amy prepared a predictably wonderful chicken and black bean stew and she predictably sold herself short: “Ugh, the beans are so undercooked.” But seriously, we’re like the Cleavers minus the Beaver.

After dinner, we checked out one of the local joints, American Dream. We chatted with the owner, who’s been more or less involved with the place for 44 years, and he treated us (not for the first time) to his own creation, the TGV; tequila/gin/vodka. He said that he changed the recipe by adding more gin. I’m not sure that there’s a right direction to take with such a concoction, but adding more gin is definitely not it. Mercifully, he gave us small portions.

We asked about the place next door. American Dream: Restaurant and Pub is next door to American Dream: Disco Pub. He explained that he rented it out to some Egyptians who “have girls that dance and make drinks.” I wanted to say, “Yeah, it’s ok…we know what a super nightclub² is.” But we barely had a chance to get into our salted carrots and pumpkin seeds before getting a text message from Carrie asking if we wanted to meet up in Gemmayze. Carrie left this morning to go spend 10 days in the States.

We took a service taxi towards Gemmayze, but ended up getting out downtown. People were out celebrating the release of Samir Geagea ³ and there was a lot of traffic, so we wanted to give the driver an opportunity to not sit in traffic for half and hour for a dollar and change. Walking over to Gemmayze, we passed by Martyr’s Square and noticed that all the tents were down and the streets were open. Ever since Hariri’s assassination, people had been camping out protesting one cause or another and the final holdouts were protesting Geagea’s incarceration. The police had closed the streets around the square, presumably for safety reasons.

After meeting up with Carrie, the three of us ended up at Brooke’s, a place I believe I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I’m glad that Amy posts about all her adventures because if one were to judge our experiences in Lebanon based on my posts alone, one might think that we’re a couple of barflies. Carrie left around 1am because of her early flight, but we got kind wrapped up in conversation with the bartenders and lost track of time till after 3am. Talking politics here is an always interesting and sometimes revolting (both bartenders are Bush supporters) experince. We’re also actually friends with one of the bartenders, Mike, and we may take a trip to Mt. Lebanon with him next weekend.

In deference to Amy’s claims that I’m too “complainy” in my blog posts, I will not mention the fact that the cab driver over-charged us 2000LL on the trip home.

Today we learned that there was actually a gun battle last night in response to the Geagea release. I actually just got off instant messenger with Carrie, who was enjoying her own layover in Heathrow, and I remarked on how absurd it is that we so easily absorb these sorts of current events here. I believe my exact wording was, “Pssshhhh, par for the course.”

In other news, there was apparently an assassination attempt on former US-installed Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi in Lebanon recently. The odd thing is that I think it was just announced today, there are no details being released, and the casual observer might think it’s just an attempt by Allawi to give a salty salute of his own to Amal.

And a propo of nothing, here are some pictures of Amy in our “home office”. Amy said yesterday, “In the next place that we live, can we not have so many cables everywhere?” Don’t say anything about Amy’s tattoo and don’t steal my code.

footnotes:

1. I say “unassailable” because I have a real complex about the amount of time I work and the amount for which I bill. Sometimes I’ll work for, say, 12 hours but only bill for 4 because I feel that I only got about 4 hours’ worth of work done. Amy is alternately amused and irritated by this situation. So, an unassailable 9 hours is basically working for 9 hours and billing for 9 hours.
2. From Let’s Go Middle East 2002:
   

   LET’S NOT GO THERE. A word to the wise: so-called super night clubs are common in Lebanon. Many visitors wrongly assume that “super” means “very good.” Those in the know simply call these clubs “brothels.” So unless your planet is lonely, avoid this scene.

   Amy and I accidentally went to one of these called The Candel [sic] Light the first time we were here. Amy argued our way out of paying way too much for a couple beers. The elderly pimp tried to pique our interest by saying that one of the ladies had said Amy looked like an Egyptian movie star. It was a totally bogus scene at the time, but hilarious to look back on. Especially the part about Amy refusing to be ripped off (whereas I was ready to just pay and get the hell out). Incidentally, the joint in question is about 2 blocks from where we currently live.

3. Pronouced like Zsa Zsa. He had been held as a political prisoner for 11 years. I don’t know all the details

Friday night. After 10 or so hours of coding automated xml edits and user authentication, I like to unwind with some nice taxi-driver hijinks. Unfortunately, I can’t just flag down a cab and ask the driver to rip me off or spout his nutty philoso-religious views and move on, so I generally have to manufacture and excuse to actually go somewhere. With that in mind, I met up with Amy, Carrie, and Carrie’s friend Ben. Ben is another American journalist who’s taking a little vacation in Beirut from his regular post in Baghdad. I find this kind of humorous.

I don’t remember if Amy or I covered this before, so I’m going to give a little recap on how cabs work in Beirut. You can try to catch a service taxi (pronounced servees), which entails flagging down a cab and saying, for instance, “service Gemmayze?” or wherever you’re going. They’ll either wave you in or keep driving. It costs a flat fee of 1000 LL/person (~$0.60) and the route is generally very circuitous on account of the fact that the driver picks up other passengers. There are variations on this, like the “double-service” (2000 LL/person), for destinations that the driver feels are a little bit off his beat. Since there were four of us, however, we opted for a regular taxi service. This basically entails paying 5000 LL (~$3.30) to go more-or-less anywhere within the city-limits. Many cars run service or taxi.

Since there were 4 of us, we took a regular taxi to Gemmayze. It’s about a 7-minute ride and indisputably within the 5000 LL radius of Hamra. However, on the way over we committed the dual crimes of being American/European-looking and perhaps saying to one another “Now where is this place again?” When we arrived at our destination, the driver handed me back our 5000 and said, “Hamra to Gemmayze is 10000. Ask anybody.” You know, I was tempted ask anybody because I’m sure anybody would have said, “Only if you’re a fool.” My companions just laughed it off and walked away, which was the smart thing to do. I felt that I had to stick around and make it clear to him that not only was I not going to pay double, that I knew he was ripping me off. In the end, I just walked away in a gray mood.

It’s one thing to hustle a little. If he had said to himself “Hey these look like stupid tourists and I’m going to see if I can fleece them for 10000” that’s one thing. But a the point where we balked, the honorable thing to do would be to accept the hkamses ailef and find some other sucker. To say, “No. It’s double. Ask anyone.” and then feign indignance isn’t hustling, it’s lying.

So, we met up with some new friends of Ben’s at a place called Layla. We’d been there once or twice before and it’s a cool joint…cozy, inexpensive, etc. I have to confess though, between working all day, the cab experience, and the genre-defying fusion-jazz-techno, I had a hard time hitting my stride. The rest of the gang seemed kind of tired too, so we ended up calling it an early night.

It was just the two of us on the return journey, so we hailed a service. Once we got in, he asked very specifically about where we were going I was worried he was going to charge us taxi fare. Those worries diminished to nothing as he began to unleash his particular personal magic on us. We drove by some women from the Gulf States (i.e. fully covered in black veils, etc) and he pantomimed spitting at them and said, “Ugh. Arabians. They look like ninjas, no?” He then turned to us and said, “You’re Christian, not Islam?” To this, you kind of have to say yes, because it’s true at least in the spirit of the context of the question.¹ He began to go off, perhaps %20 intelligibly and %0 comprehensibly, about the various perversities of Muslims. He cited a man he new that had 4 wives and 80 children. At first we thought he said 18, but he reiterated “No, zero-eight, zero-eight.”² At one point he was fervently asking if we understood that Jesus was the “shadow of god”.³ All of this was interspersed with frequent and unprovoked woops and whistles. It was quite a ride, but in the end he dropped us off a block away from our door, only charged us 2000 LL, and was more than happy to break a 10000 LL note (another popular taxi-driver hustle is the “I don’t have change” routine).

Though I worked all day Saturday as well, I didn’t feel a need to similarly “unwind” so Amy and I stayed home and watched TV.

As a coda, I’d like to mention the fact that Lebanese in general and Christian Lebanese in particular very much pride themselves on being of Phoenician and not Arab decent. Just another brick in the wall. Amy was actually making kind of a joke when she talked about “Arabs in the Middle East embracing GW“.

_footnotes:

¹ Apparently earlier in the night–i.e. before I met up with the gang–a waiter was disconcerted by the fact that Carrie wasn’t drinking alcohol and asked, “But you’re Christian, no?”

² In arabic, numbers are written left-to-right, largest-to-smallest place value, just as in French or English or whatever. However, since arabic is read right-to-left, conceptually numbers are read smallest-to-largest place value. For example, 51964 would be written but would read as 4-1-9-6-5. You dig? So it makes perfect sense for the cabbie to say “80…0-8”.

³ I found his specific choice of words ironic. I’m currently reading Karen Armstrong’s history of Islam and in it she describes the various changes brought about by the Abassids when they overthrew the Ummayyads. One of the big changes was that the Islamic rulers went from portraying themselves as relatively ordinary people to styling themselves as “the Shadow of God on Earth.”

My favorite saying about the Southern U.S. refers specifically to Florida: “The further north you go, the further south you get.”

Last weekend, we finally made the trip down South with George, the Lebanese journalist that Amy met when she was downtown a few weeks ago observing the hoopla following George Hawi’s funeral. He had postponed last weekend due to some troubles down there, but then was somewhat discontinuous and evasive all week leading up to this weekend. I think that Amy and I were both expecting it not to happen.

So, as we were finally in a taxi to Cola (a big intersection in Beirut where you catch buses) to make our rendez-vous with George, a singular thought rattled around in my head: are we stupid? Seriously, were we being completely idiotic? Amy had just met this fellow, had spoken to him for a sum total of about five minutes, his journalistic credentials were unchecked, and for some reason he wanted to take us to a place that we were warned was dangerous and not to be travelled by foreigners unattended. Now, the last time we were here, we rented a car and drove all over the South unattended. It wasn’t without its hassles (especially of the non-english-speaking soldier variety), but maybe our lack of real hardship on that trip had made us brazen and incautious this time around. I was resolved to keep my guard up, but when we met George and his friend Aruba, I was a little relieved.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have been so relieved. We were led to believe that the whole intent of going down South was to see the Marjeoun and learn a little more about the town, the history, and the people However, we ended up spending almost all of our time on purposeless meanderings through the outlying areas. Well, I shouldn’t say our wanderings were entirely without purpose. George seemed very intent on impressing us with all the people he knew in the town. He also seemed intent on impressing the same people with the presence of his American friends. He would make introductions in arabic, but they would be peppered with english such as “freelance journalist” and “New York Times.” When George first met Amy, he thought she was an American journalist and apparently wasn’t ready to give up the dream. Despite Amy’s protestations, he kept talking about how they had “a job to do” and how they would co-write an article about the town and sell it to the Daily Star. It was almost as if he had this fantasy about collaborating with an American journalist and was deluding himself with the notion that Amy was the one.

On the bright side, Amy got to have an apparently interesting interview with the mayor and some other older Lebanese intellectuals. I disposed of an hour and a half sitting by the hotel pool watching a young girl choke on the high-dive, drinking beer, playing Othello on my cellphone, and listening to “Careless Whisper” in muzak.

The whole experience, while not terrible, kind of brought to the fore something that I’d heard several Lebanese say comparing Lebanese and Americans. [DISCLAIMER: I am in no way endorsing the following viewpoint, merely reproducing it in the context of my experience.] A few people have told us that they like Americans because they’re “honest” and that Lebanese people (and I’m paraphrasing here) lie and bullshit to try to impress you or get you to like them. This sentiment has more than once been brought up referring to people driving expensive cars but being broke. I wouldn’t say that that has been my experience in general, but our experience with George definitely fell squarely into this category.

On the way back, we were passing through a checkpoint and George leaned to Amy and said, “See how they just let us right through. That’s because they know me.” Amy replied, “No, it’s because we’re leaving.” She’d had it, too.

Now my Christian sensibilities are trying to make me write something now like “but he was a nice guy…not a malicious bone in his body…and it was really nice of him to put us up….” etc. but I just can’t do it. As I said, it was not a terrible experience, but it certainly was a bogus one in every sense of the word.

This weekend, being the weekend after 4th of July, was the weekend of Twin Lakes VIII. Every year, our dear friend Michael generously invites his friends to his family’s lakeside cottage in western Connecticut for a few days of relaxing, swimming, fishing, grilling, and just general hanging out and being friends. We might even drink a beer or two while we’re up there. This tradition started Thursday, July 9, 1998. That night it was just Michael, myself, a couple six-packs of Miller Highlife, a minidisc player (years before the iPod destroyed music and turned people into machines) and some mixes full of Source Direct and Photek, and a the sounds of a creature lurking in the woods that we swore was half-man, half-dog, and half-beetle. It has evolved since then to a nearly full-week event with many more attendees than the handful that first year. But the traditions remain the same: midnight canoe trips, Michael’s father John coming up on Saturday night for a bbq, me chopping wood.

This is the first year I haven’t been able to make it to Twin Lakes the weekend after 4th of July. It’s kind of melancholy, though I’m sure that the rest of the gang had a great time and I look forward to hearing the tales and seeing the pictures.

It’s nearly a week later, but I wanted to write a little something about our 4th of July in Beirut. Without exception, I have spent at least a portion of every one of the last seven 4th of Julys on some rooftop in Brooklyn. Now, I’m open to being corrected on that, but I’m pretty sure that it’s at least mostly true.

This year, we had a party on our back patio. It was well attended in two waves. At around 4pm, we had Becky, Joumana, and Matthew and Mary Ann and their daughters. A bit later, Lisa, Carrie, and the embassy boys stopped by.

At one point, our landlord came by and I asked if we were being too noisy. He said no, and asked if we needed anything. He offered to bring some fireworks by. He never returned, but at one point some kind of ordinance went whizzing by the balcony. The embassy guys (Army and Navy…both have been in Iraq) kind of freaked a little because they thought it sounded like a rocket.

Cakes and salads were brought and I like to think that a good time was had by all.

I made hamburgers and lamb ribs. The latter was a frankenstein’s monster of things found on the internet and in our bbq cookbook. The former was my own recipe. Amounts are very approximate…

Hamburgers

1.5 kg ground beef
4 tbsp olive oil
5 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp salt

Knead the ingredients into the beef. Makes about 14 burgers.

Lamb Ribs

1.5 kg lamb ribs
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp salt
1.5 tbsp ground black pepper
1.5 tbsp paprika
1.5 dry lemon
1 tbsp ginger
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup cider vinegar

Mix the oil and vinegar and baste the ribs. Mix the rest of the ingredients and apply liberally to the ribs. Put the ribs bone-side down on the upper rack or on an unlit section of the grill for 30-35. Flip and put meat-side down on medium flame part of grill for 7 minutes. Cut and serve.

Last Sunday I was finally able to get together with Michel, my arabic tutor from NYC. He’s been living in Brooklyn for the past five years, but he’s originally from Kfarabida, a village about halfway between Byblos and Batroun. He’s been in Lebanon for the past couple weeks visiting with family.

He drove down to Beirut Sunday morning and picked us up at our apartment and drove us up to his village. We saw his house (which he started building 15 years ago) and met his family. We collected a niece and a nephew, ages 3 and 5, and headed to the beach. On the way there, Michel was explaining that we would catch something from the sea for lunch, but it wasn’t clear what that “something” was. The children were very excited to be going, sporting new bathing suits and sunglasses, but once we arrived, they were clearly intimidated by the sea. It turned out that the “somethings” were sea urchins. I swam behind Michel as basket-man while he dove and pried them off the rocks with a screwdriver. Unforunately, they weren’t big or plentiful enough to constitute lunch (much to Amy’s relief). We did try a couple, though. You crack them open and eat the orange guts inside. I think because they were so small, the flavor was somewhat salty and bland.

We spent the rest of the day touring around the area, highlights of which included a crusader castle, a Phoenician sea-wall, a martyrs’ shrine, and many of Michel’s friends and family in the village. One of his friends was a 98 year-old friend at a home run by the nuns of Saint Rafqa. He offered Amy a plum from his lunch tray and was bewildered why I, a man, would have such long hair.

Before driving us home that evening, we enjoyed coffee, watermelon, and the sunset on his balcony discussing the economic and personal dynamics of living in the United States and supporting a family in Lebanon.

A couple weeks ago I said to Amy, “This is the longest period of time that I’ve been out of the United States.” To which I quickly added, “Except for the four years that I lived in Canada.” When I was in Montreal (1993-97), I remember having a few conversations with Canadians about travelling abroad and invariably someone would state that Canadians were lucky because they could just slap the old maple-leaf flag on their backback and people wouldn’t think they were American and hate them. To this, I would invariably reply, “Americans are perfectly capable of pinning Canadian flags to their backpacks and many of them do, not that it does them any good because Americans and Canadians are the same as far as much of the world is concerned.”

When I came to Lebanon the first time (in 2002), the first time someone asked me where I was from (a security guard at a bank), I said Toronto. I instantly and permanently regretted it.

Going back again a couple of weeks, we were out with our friends Lisa and Carrie, both Americans, both well-travelled, both formerly in the Peace Corps. We discussed the topic of being American in a foreign country and to what extent you show (or hide) your Americana. I guess I’ve kind of been thinking a lot about it since then.

When Amy and I were preparing to come to Lebanon this time, several people gave us some variation of this “advice”: try not look or act too American. This confused and irritated me. It confused me because I have no idea how to look or act like anything other than American. It irritated me for two reasons. The first reason is the implicit assumption therein: you are going to the Middle-East and everyone in the Middle-East hates Americans (and may or may not be prone to responding violently to your presence). The second reason is that people seem to feel that you can’t go out into the world and represent America.

Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that there are people who hate Americans all over the world. Hell, after George W. Bush was re-elected, even I hated Americans. But I think that you’ll find, especially in a place like Lebanon, there are people all over the world who also have a profound understanding of being under/mis/not represented by their country’s administration. I’ve heard time and again here, “We love Americans, we just hate your government.”

But so far as the second reason goes, I think that not only should people not hide that they’re American, they should feel at least some responsibility to represent Americans as decent people. If decent people who happen to be American (of which I count myself to be one) don’t feel they can be “out” in a foreign land, then the only pedestrian spokespeople America will have abroad will be obnoxious assholes who don’t really care one wit about what the rest of the world thinks about Americans. I’ve met plenty of these people abroad, and it’s pretty grim.

End of sermon.

As a coda, I want to say that I am totally digging the new $50 bill with the stylized full-color stars and stripes on it.

Yesterday we went on a little excursion with fellow Americans Lisa and Carrie.

Destination: Gemmayze
Objective: happy hour

I’ll skip the play-by-play and get straight to the highlights. At Godot, the bartender was dumbstruck when we marched out upon learning that they had no happy hour specials. At Bar Louie, Carrie overheard some men talking about another bomb and it turned out that, not only were they fellow journalists, one of them was kind of one of her heroes. At Layla, Lisa convinced the bartender (in arabic) to give us the happy hour rates because we had technically arrived before 8pm. We had a very satisfying dinner at the Armenian restaurant Mayrig, where we learned that “mayrig” means “mommy” in Armenian. The girls enjoyed cocktails of beer, rum, and crushed mint and I enjoyed a fine–if expensive (20,000 LL~=$13)–Hoyo de Monterrey at Casa del Trova. We rounded out the night at Brooke’s, which is a nice little place on Rue Gouraud that Amy and I go to from time to time. We ended up meeting the British owner and his Lebanese wife. With the latter, I discussed finding software development work at Lebanese banks. With the former, I discussed beer…at length. I learned that the fat, green Almaza bottles have different contents than the tall, skinny, brown bottles. I learned that the reason why no bars have any draft beer other than Heineken and Almaza is that the prices on imported kegs are such that you’d have to sell 5000 pints every three days to turn a profit. I also learned that the owner was actually a stock broker by day and that Brooke’s was just kind of his “project.” Afterwards, Amy and I walked home, buoyant after a delightful night spent with our new friends.

And now I’ll leave you with this moment of Zen:

Amy did a fine job of policing the area with regards to this event, so I’ll just include a few more pictures.