Thistle in the Cedars

Harping On

The only thing more unnerving than navigating the streets and pavements of Beirut is navigating the streets and pavements of Beirut with a harp.  Suddenly approaching wing mirrors seem to come much faster, scooters zip closer, there are more poles to squeeze between, street cats to trip over or more spatially unaware ladies with giant handbags to overtake…but this is a danger I am increasingly having to face.

The Youth Leaders’ Training Conference in Harissa was a great success.  Not only were the sessions useful and our discussions very encouraging but I met a lot of interesting people from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq.  Being the only officially Christian country in the region, Lebanon is able to host such events freely but there is so much we can learn from the Churches in the other parts of the Arab world.  The situation in Syria at present is really dreadful and we should be praying for the Christians there who are now being targeted in a series of sectarian attacks.  Although there have been some ripples of violence over the border, those who can are moving to Lebanon for safety.

Now that we have a youth team at All Saints we can start doing the things I have been dreaming about and we even have other youth leaders and churches to work together with now which is great.  I am finally managing to break out of my foreigners’ bubble and meet Arabic speakers (somehow difficult to do in Lebanon) and more people like me (oh gosh..!)  This means I am starting to have the opportunity to try out my baby Arabic and, being so happy to do so, I stayed up chattering until dawn one day at the weekend sitting under church cloisters to shelter from the rain and watching the city below.  In fact it seems that midnight is the best time for practice and so I haven’t slept before 3am these last few evenings, choosing instead to drink coffee on the corniche with new friends.

More than just the Arabic, I have met musicians and artists and people to be creative with, hence the carrying the harp about.  This week I might even get the chance to play with a Lebanese singer-songwriter who is back visiting from New York and for months an elderly lady from Church who is a yoga instructor and wears saris has been at me to record relaxation music for people to listen to in the traffic jams.   I have been politely thinking of excuses but finally gave in and we had our first rehearsal yesterday which turned out to be great fun.  These days I keep being reminded that I think Lebanon is the right place for me to be and so I am contented and grateful but I won’t keep harping on!

A few days of Winter

Tonight I am revelling in luxury at a conference centre on a hill above Jounieh, a city just north of Beirut.  It might not seem luxurious to anyone else but I have come from a grubby school ski camp in the mountains where I was roped in as an emergency ski instructor for a group of forty teenagers.  Since Monday night I have been sleeping in a freezing cold, stinky dorm with six giggly girls and a bathroom so small I couldn’t stand up straight in it. During the day, I steadied the wobbly, calmed the reckless, encouraged the fearful,  jogged up and down the slope picking up lost poles, untangling their clumsy legs and heaving the fallen back up onto their feet and shouting “SNOWPLOW!!” to no avail.  At night we got next to no sleep and survived on stale sandwiches (a flatbread rolled up around a lump if cream cheese – which I never want to see again) and sweet tea.  That was it – breakfast, lunch and dinner, nothing else, not even water.  I kept going out to eat snow and a few of us leaders tried to drive to the village to get something else (anything else) but the car got stuck in a snowdrift and had to be driven back by a confident tenth grader (fifteen year old!) who had grown up in the mountains and did handbrake turns on all the corners saying “you want I brake hard?” while we all clung to each other and screamed in the back.  Fortunately we were ten kilometres from anywhere else, there wasn’t another soul on the road and we were protected by high walls of snow to crash into on either side.  When it rains in Beirut it snows in the mountains and having had miserable weather (that I have loved) for the whole of January, there are now three metres of snow up there.  When we went for a walk yesterday we found ourselves well above the fences and had to find our way along the side of the roads by the tree tops.  This morning we woke to the perfect silence of a white landscape for the last time; white sky, white landscape, white road.  When we left, we had to dig the car out and sit on the bonnet to weigh it down until we got further down the mountain onto easier roads.

At 10.30 am, after two hours of asking for directions in the villages, I finally arrived here for a Youth Leaders’ training conference and was immediately running around greeting people, trying to remember people’s names and entering into conversations, lectures, discussions groups, workshops and games.  I was also trying to distract them from my muddy clothes with a dazzling smile!  We have been on the go the whole day and this evening when the programme came to an end I shot straight to my room and collapsed in a heap.  Everyone else is high on the first evening of a weekend away but I am already “peopled out” and desperate for sleep.

Things falling

This week there were fears that a flyover bridge in East Beirut would fall down.  But as we were reading about that and the shipwreck in Italy we were also hearing about a building which collapsed in a nearby neighbourhood, killing at least twenty seven.   It was an old building, possibly riddled with bullet holes, like so many, and unstable because of digging the foundations of a new building directly next to it and, of course, if had not been maintained.  Apart from there being three Lebanese families in the building there were also several migrant workers living there and among the dead were eight Sudanese, three Filipinas and one Egyptian, none of whom were mentioned by name in any reports or the memorial service.  Two surviving Sudanese were arrested in hospital and transferred to prison for not having the correct papers and it turns out that there was a Filipino church in the building which had met somewhere else that day but the pastor and two other leaders had returned to make preparations for the next week when the building fell down.  

On Friday I attended a meeting held by the Lebanese Anti-Racism Movement and the Migrant Community Center.  Although it was a positive meeting, most of what we discussed was about the various tragedies that have happened in the last week including the building disaster.  Other stories included the body of a Sri Lankan maid being taken from the hospital by her employer and disappearing so it cannot be repatriated and another body which has been in the morgue for several months, a woman who has not been identified but is probably Bangladeshi.  This migrant committee had to take photographs to send to Bangladesh for families to identify.  They work alongside the embassies trying to achieve justice but in a country where there is such corruption that is virtually impossible.  Although it is the size of Yorkshire there is a horrifying number of cases like this in Lebanon, the worst of which I will spare you, with an average of one suicide or murder a week among the maids alone.

For those who are fortunate enough not to live in with their employers, they sleep three in a bed in flats half the size of my bedroom.  The Nepali couple who run the centre and live in a place like this have just had a baby.  Unfortunately they can’t find a bigger place at an affordable rent so they think they have to send the baby back to Nepal to be looked after by a grandparent.

A Lebanese friend of mine joked that all sorts of things can fall here – bridges, buildings, planes, and bombs, silicone implants and roses on parachutes dropped by the army, but not the government.

Social see-sawing

It is Sunday afternoon.  The wind is howling, waves are crashing along the seafront and the rain is pelting down.  It is 13 degrees and the locals are miserably cold.  The power has just gone out and so I can think of no better place to be than tucked up in bed.  Besides the whirr of generators, the afternoon call to prayer (Asr) has just started up and is echoing around us in mysterious harmony.

On Sundays I usually need a post-church recovery nap.  Apart from never knowing how many people there will be or how many leaders will make it, or if the vicar will run off with our materials as he accidentally did today, we never know where we will be either as they are doing construction work (as everywhere else) so the church hall is currently without walls.  This time there were twenty-two of us in a builders’ construction cabin which was not ideal but better than standing in puddles.

To celebrate, we went to the Phoenicia hotel (the fanciest in Beirut) for a drink afterwards but unfortunately Ban Ki Moon was also there for a UN ESCHWA conference and so the place was swarming with important looking people and strict security guards.

Here I do a lot of see-sawing from one social extreme to the other and following that we went to visit a migrant worker neighbourhood.  This is where those who have the privilege of a day off gather and swarm about on Sundays in their ethnic groups, local men go about on the prowl for prostitutes and “sticky children”, as my friend calls them, stuff chewing gum in your pockets and cling to your sleeves until you give them money.  The air smells of spices and fish and everything costs a fraction of what it does in the rest of the city.  My flatmate was in her element distributing Jesus DVDs and greeting everyone in their own languages while I watched from the sidelines to see expressions of surprise and delight and even people chasing after her (including a policeman) to get a free DVD of their own.  It is strange to think that there are many Lebanese who don’t even know that this part of town exists and wouldn’t be seen dead in such company.  It is a world away from the university where I spend the other half of my life.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend in a Filipino shop where the air was full of cigarette smoke and two girls drinking beer were singing karaoke at top volume.  There was a sign on the wall in English:

“1 beer = 3 songs
By order, the management.”

We were automatically given the song list with our fish and rice but it would take much more than one beer to make me sing.

Maa fii kahraba!!

As usual, the more there is to say, there less time there is to say it.  These past few weeks have just shot past so fast, I can hardly believe we are in December and, especially in this weather, talk of Christmas seems nonsensical.  Today is my day off and so I am resolutely staying in pyjamas as long as possible.  Fortunately there is rain and thunder outside and a power cut inside so it is a good time to stay at home.  

In this country nothing is predictable except the power cuts which are always on time.  They work on a four day rotation system which means (in our area) we have three hours without electricity every day 6-9, 3-6, 12-3, 9-12.  In well off areas most people have generators and in poorer neighbourhoods the cuts last longer.  They are an inconvenience but I love them.  They provide me with a few hours of peace and quiet and give me the excuse to do the things I rarely have time for – sleeping, knitting woolly hats, writing letters, reading, making music, etc… all by candlelight.  I have been told that the Lebanese are “allergic” to candles, it reminds them of war-time, but I am blissfully unaware of such connotations and can enjoy the novelty.

When the power cuts in Britain we all stop and look at each other and wonder what to do.  Here nobody bats an eyelid, they just carry on talking as if nothing has happened.  The first time it happened to me, I was in a basement cafe with a friend, the lights went out and we kept on talking and a few people got out their phones until it came back on and I found I was looking in the wrong direction.  It can be difficult if one is telling a story that requires gestures, as most of mine do, the story has to go on hold till the listener can see again.  At church we have to plan our services around the cut at noon and make sure we are not singing at that point.  My Arabic teacher changes our appointment saying “maa fii kahraba”, there’s no electricity, so that we can use the lift and don’t have to walk up flights of stairs.  In our flat we have a mad rush just before it goes off – “E-mail, toast, shower!” My flatmate shouts, “Quick before we are stuck in the dark with no water.”

Last week, however, there was some upset at the power station in Tyre which produces 35% of Lebanon’s electricity, and the plant was forced to close down for a few days.  We had power cuts lasting ten or more hours and the streets were eerily quiet and dark.  We were all texting each other to stay out longer and go in search of a place with electricity because nobody knows what to do at home without it.  I have a fiend here who is a generator salesman and drives a very nice car – no wonder!

Walk to Work

Let me take you with me on my walk to work.

In the morning I heave open the downstairs door and head out past the coiffeur having his morning cigarette and on into the street.  I carefully navigate the tyres and bits of car on the pavement at the mechanique and greet the lady who sits knitting all day at the front of a dusty suitcase shop that always has the shutters half closed.  Next comes the “Phillipines Products” shop, the grocer with his vegetables piled high in colourful mounds and the Armenian jeweller who always wants to talk to me about Scottish wrestling.  I had no idea there even was such a thing till his eyes lit up and he rattled off a whole list of names excitedly “you know?!” “Yes, very nice! I like so much!”

Then on the corner is a house with a spacious courtyard full of intriguing things, including three ducks which waddle about free and, a little further on, a place with blue barrels full of olives, green and black, with canisters of oil and a blue olive press on the pavement.  There is a mural of Lebanon min zamaan (a long time ago) behind some trees full of cats and then a few crumbly buildings at this point with one especially lovely pink one with blue shutters and shiny banners welcoming home the recent pilgrims from the hajj.  As I passed by the other day, one of these remnants of beautiful old Beirut was getting the scaffolding of a new building hammered into it, covering half of the curved wrought iron balcony.  Ya Khsaara! (What a loss!)

Here I turn down past a barber who is often doing his own beard and the green costumed SuKleen men picking up rubbish off the street and towards the park where there is always plenty to see; enormous, twisting eucalyptus trees and date palms; women gossiping on benches; others feeding pigeons; men playing cards and expertly flicking prayer beads over and over and over;  sometimes the odd person practising tae kwon do and, without fail, the bored looking soldiers watching every move and the QaHwaji in fur hat selling coffee at the gates . At the corner I pause to smell the jasmine at the mosque and walk along an avenue of jacarandas heading down into the polluted blue air of Hamra.

There are just so many cars in Hamra that the car parks work on a system like those puzzles that you have to make a picture by only moving one square at a time.  In fact, I am not really sure how they work at all because the cars are parked like sardines and the car-park attendants have to spend their days shifting cars to allow others to come and go.  There is so much demolition that the air is thick with dust and so much drilling happening these days that it feels like a permanent earthquake.  I do wonder if Ras Beirut will one day have so many holes in it, it will fill up with sea water like a sponge.

Feeling indispensable?

Today I am stuck at home with a nasty cold and wrapped up in a blanket but it is a good day to be inside. Outside there is a spectacular storm, with thunder, lightning and pelting rain and we have just got cable television! Perhaps stupidly, I am watching all the European channels and making myself thoroughly homesick. Actually, as I said last time, Lebanon is not so bad and I am starting to enjoy the benefits of being here more than a year. I keep bumping into people I know in the street, and I am now an expert not only at judging what kind of driver a taxi man is before I flag him down but also at pretending I understand them and maintaining a conversation with minimal vocabulary so that they think I am a local. It has become a bit of a game that I quite enjoy.  

Another advantage of having been here a while is that I have found friends to escape the city with. There are some beautiful parts of Lebanon but they are all quite inaccessible without private transport and people in the know. Two weeks ago I took the All Saints Church Youth for a day out to a country club which has a pool and a view over the hills. Last weekend I went for a road trip with some American friends to enjoy autumn leaves and fresh air. We stopped by a reservoir full of ducks and frogs hopping about at our feet, ate fresh figs off the trees, played with a wild tortoise and stumbled across a strange private collection of stuffed animals in a convent. Apart from rooms full of butterflies and insects there were also beautiful birds, a wolf, and somebody’s deceased pet hamster. By far the strangest, though was a monkey wearing a bow tie, riding a donkey, while smoking a cigar and holding a coconut. Very odd indeed.

Last weekend was my birthday and so the same friends organised a two day scramble in the Qadisha Valley (Valley of the Saints). It is a deep gorge in the North of the country and, until fairly recently was home to many hermits and monks in caves and monasteries built into the rocks. Nowadays there is only one remaining hermit, a Colombian, who, despite his private lifestyle, has become a well-known attraction with information about him all over the internet.  

We took a day to descend to the valley floor, carrying everything with us and stopping frequently to sit and admire the surroundings and set up camp for the night in a terraced orchard down by the river. We cooked chicken and potatoes on a fire and I hung my hammock between two persimmon trees. It was absolutely freezing (hence the cold now) and every time I turned, fruit fell from above. We slept to the sound of a donkey braying and woke to the sound of pilgrims and monks singing high up on the cliffs. We breakfasted on plums and grapes picked from around us and practiced our Arabic with a lovely lady who served us cold drinks when we reached the top on the other side. It was magical.  

It is very hard to find Lebanese friends here but the other day one of my weakest students from the ladies’ centre invited me to her home for lunch. She had prepared almost everything Lebanese and, when I exclaimed at home much work she had done, she took my hand and led me into the kitchen where she opened the oven and, bringing out even more food, said “mmm…Pizza!” quoting the recent class dictation!
I have enjoyed this nice day at home and imagine it is probably very good advice that if we ever start to feel indispensable, we should take a day off!