the other day in the caf

i was having coffee with some friends between classes and, upon glancing to my left, i noticed that the girl sitting there was studying hebrew. i was shocked: the existence of a hebrew class here means that there is enough interest in hebrew to have a class in the most important university in the capital of lebanon, which does not have relations with its southern neighbor and will not permit anyone with an israeli (or palestinian) stamp on his/her passport to enter the country. i imagine that i just gaped at this girl's textbook in an overly conspicuous manner because she looked up.

"it's hebrew."
"um...oh."

despite my terribly insightful response, she introduced herself, as did i, and told me that she's from syria, in a city between damascus and aleppo. she is in her second year in biology and studying hebrew for the hell of it. she began telling me how fascinating she found the language and giving me examples to demonstrate how intimately related it is to arabic. only sort of thinking, i told her that she should go to israel. she clicked her tongue, a typical expression of disapproval or disagreement here, and replied, "i know that is how you're supposed to learn a language, ya'ani. you study and then you go to where they speak it, bas i can't go there. i would be killed!"

i got momentarily distracted. what would happen if a syrian girl showed up at the israeli border? would she be allowed to enter? and if she were, would she be welcomed once she was there? even though syrians presently don't have much say in their political representation, i don't know if many israelis would draw a line separating the government from the people, so i am hesitant to reply in the affirmative to either question. do i think she would be killed, though? no.

misconceptions like this are far from one-sided. before i arrived, almost every jew with whom i discussed my imminent departure inquired about the state of my mental health and then expressed extreme concern for my physical well-being during my stay here. some of these worries have subsided since i have been existing here happily and successfully for 5 weeks, but many have not.

in lebanon, there is absolutely an anti-israeli sentiment and, from what i've seen so far, few people distinguish between israelis and the israeli government, although since israel is a democracy and sharon's last popularity ratings before he fell ill were still fairly high, i find it less objectionable than when someone assumes that i voted for bush since roughly 1/2 americans didn't. if an israeli managed to come here -- on another passport, obviously -- the person would not be welcomed the way i have been and would not feel comfortable being here. i don't think, however, that, at least in beirut, the person would be in physical danger. the security situation here is less than ideal at the moment, but the targets have nothing to do with jews or israel. except for those who espouse anti-syrian rhetoric to the masses, beirut is a party.

further, hiding a feature of your identity because you're not sure of what the reaction to it would be (e.g. israeli, jewish, scandinavian), is not difficult. most lebanese people in lebanon have never met a jew, much less an israeli, and i don't think there is much of a scandinavian expat community. consequently, there is no recognition of what constitues a jewish or scandinavian name (provided it's not well-known, of course; if a man introduced himself as moses ben gurion, people might catch on), and no one can pick out an israeli or danish accent in english because they've never really heard either one.

in any case, there is often a distinction made between jews and israelis. professing subscription to judaism in public gatherings is unwise, but confiding to intimates is not. the reaction is surprisingly similar to saying that you are american: people try to find out which stereotypes are true and which aren't, and they are pleased and impressed that, despite lebanon's reputation in much of the west, you have elected to visit anyway.

the syrian girl told me that she invited several american exchange students from aub to her house in syria in the fall and then she expressed her dismay that the government is being "difficult, ya'ani. if it improves before you leave, you are welcome. ahlan wa sahlan." (equivalent to "my house is your house" in english.)

i hope that when she can bring americans to her house again, a jew visiting lebanon will be able to take her to israel, confident that, not only will she not be killed, but that she will find the door to the jews' biblical house open and awaiting her arrival.

intellectual angst and why aub is sort of ridiculous

before i begin, i'm a little appalled that my post borderline triggered an international conflict. i won't go authoritarian despot on all of you and censor what people say as that would hinder my attempt at creating an open space for response and dialogue, but we should all try to do a better job of making nice.

***

the only way to do this is by categories. i also don't like transitions. this is a cheap and pseudo-inconspicuous way of avoiding them.

1. textbooks

i have so far had 10 days of school. keep that in mind.

i just got my lebanese colloquial arabic book YESTERDAY. i have 2 required books for my arab culture and society class and only one of them has arrived in the aub bookstore and there is no expected date for the other. my ideological trends in the middle east professor -- who is a conspiracy theorist and/or insane, more about him later -- assigned 5 books. instead of doing something that makes sense, like making copies of the articles we're going to read from these books and then getting them bound, for example, he copied all 5 books in their entirety. i suppose that, on the one hand, i should be excited by that since i now have 5 new books on middle east ideology. at the same time, though, i had to pay for 5 books and i only actually need a few chapters from each one.

my israeli politics professor, who is otherwise on top of it, didn't order the books we have to read for his class; he put them on reserve in the library because, as he said, "you never know how many people are actually going to buy the book." my favorite, though, is that the majority of the 6 books for lebanese politics are out of print so even if i wanted to get them, i couldn't. like yezid sayigh (israeli politics), dr. farid el-khazen has also put his entire course reading on reserve.

a note on the reserve system here: you can keep the books on reserve for as long as you want/as long as the person who is in charge of reserves tells you you can, but damn you if you try to take them out of the library. consequently, i spend 1-2 hours in the library every week making copies and sometime this semester, what i need will inevitably be taken out by someone else in the class who will be hiding somewhere in the library where i can't find him and i'll be screwed and then embarrass myself since most of my classes are discussion-based.

i've heard that the students here don't read too much. maybe it's because the professors seem to go out of their way to make it difficult and time-consuming for us to read what they want us to read? perhaps? meh. i never thought i would miss coursepacks so much.

2. the library

things that regularly don't work and should: a) printers. b) copy machines. c) both of the above. any guesses?

on a separate note, much like other libraries i've visited, jafet library has signs in the study area that say "silent" in big letters. departing from tradition, however, these signs are systematically ignored. i would say the study area has a dual purpose: it is a place for congregation and a place to procrastinate since it's blatantly too noisy to actually do any real work. i tried to read in there for about 20 minutes yesterday. during that time, groups of people both in front and in back of me carried on spirited conversations and i heard phones ring approximately 4 times and then i watched their owners pick up. and talk. i thought about beating people up, but i decided it would make too much noise and that would be making a mockery of the sacred idea of the Quiet Library, which would make me a hypocrite and that would be most unfortunate.

3. other ways aub makes things unnecessarily complicated

when it's time to pay tuition at mcgill, i get an email from student accounts informing me that my invoice is ready. upon reading it, i sign onto minerva to check how much i owe and then i sign into royal bank of canada and transfer the money electronically. the whole process takes roughly 2 minutes. i assume this is because mcgill wants me to pay as soon as possible so they make it quick and easy for me to do so.

based on this logic, i have concluded that aub does not, in fact, want my money. i didn't know that tuition was due or that our invoices were online until someone else told me. i checked my aubsis (the equivalent of minerva), figured out how much i needed to pay, and then wrote a personal check. then, on thursday, i went to the comptroller's office. the room is rectangular: the door is on one side, there is some window directly opposite, to the left is student accounts, and to the right is the cashier. i decided to go to the cashier. i waited on line for some time, the guy behind the window typed in some information and mumbled a bit, and then told me that i had to go print out my invoice before i could pay. i went to the library and, obviously, only 1/3 printers was functional and i had to go to class, so i "peaced," if you will.

i beat the system on friday and managed to extract a hard copy of my invoice from an initially unwilling printer. feeling like i had just won a large sum of money, i made my way happily to the comptroller's office. again, i waited for a while, the guy typed and mumbled, and then told me that i had to go to the student accounts window to get my invoice signed before i could pay.

i finally paid my tuition yesterday. there is absolutely no reason why something so basic to the functioning of the university should take 3 working days to accomplish successfully.

another thing that should have been easy and wasn't was webct. (for those who are unfamiliar, webct is a system in which all professors can post material from their courses. it also often includes a discussion board and an internal mail function as well as readings, practice assessments, etc.) at mcgill, if a professor decides to use webct, all of the students' names will automatically be imported. at aub, all students have to manually add their courses. my access, for some reason, was blocked, so i had to go to academic computing services (acs) and prove to them that i was indeed a student registered in the courses i said i was, and then they un-blocked me. now, however, i just found out that another one of my professors will be using webct, which i was not aware of when i went to acs, so i have to go back and ask them if they can re-un-block me and add the last course. if another professor spontaneously decides to use webct, i'm going to protest and/or cry.

4. my classes and the people who teach them

i don't really have any complaints about lebanese arabic except the whole book situation and that it's at 9 everyday, but that's better than 8:25 like last year. also, i despise transliteration. it's an arabic class, freaking give us the pronunciation in arabic letters.

i really enjoy my arab culture and society class. it's an anthropology class, so i am learning to look at things from a different perspective, which i appreciate. as a social science, though, i think social/cultural anthropology has a lot more social than science

my israeli politics class is fantastic. i will devote a whole entry to it after i have one more class, which will be in a week from today.

now...lebanese politics. from what i hear, prof. khazen is kind of a big deal. he was apparently recently elected to the lebanese parliament and, sadly, is only continuing to lecture for the salary. he comes late to class, walks in reluctantly, and then sits down and scowls at us a little before taking attendance, which he does by last name since he clearly has no interest in actually learning who we are. during the lecture, his own boredom periodically overwhelms him and he takes a long, exasperated breath and allows his head to fall heavily into his hands. at the end of each section, he asks if we have any questions, except it's actually a statement since he doesn't really care if we understand, but has been teaching long enough to know that he's supposed to say that.

despite his highly uninspiring performance, people register in his courses en masse and he's always forced to go over capacity. why, you ask?

it's because, when he stops lecturing and steers the class towards discussion, he allows completely unrestricted debate with no regard to decorum or respectfulness, thereby encouraging the voicing of unrefined and knee-jerk ideas. he is aggressive and rude and asks provocative questions that he he knows will trigger emotional responses generally devoid of intellectual consideration. people take his class so they can fight with each other sans safety concerns since they are in the controlled environment of a university classroom.

my ideological trends in the middle east class is equally ridiculous, but for different reasons. i find myself questioning about 75% of what hilal khashan says, whether because it's inconsistent with reality or because it contradicts everything i've ever read. notable examples include claims that:
- iran has never tried to export the islamic revolution.
- the latin american military leaders who took power through the assorted coups that took place throughout the region were interested in enjoying the amenities of being in power, but had no commitment to the countries they were governing.
- pakistan was created to get muslims out of india.
- israel gave iran missiles to fight iraq in 1986, the sixth year of the eight-year iran-iraq war. iran couldn't pay israel for these missiles, however, so israel instead accepted iranian pistachios, and the israeli market suddenly had a mysterious influx of pistachios.
- despite what it seems, iran actually has no problem with the us or israel. the only real enemy of the country is sunni islam.

by the end of the class, all of us were either staring at the professor dumbstruck, debating his points, or trying not to laugh. the class is supposed to be a graduate seminar.

in sum, the education i'm getting here, with the notable exception of israeli politics and arab culture and society and lebanese arabic to a lesser extent, is sub-par. further, the attitude of the students is lax and the excessive bureaucracy presents even those who are committed to learning with obstacles. were the experience i'm having not compensating for what i'm lacking in academics, i would miss mcgill terribly.

hariri

picture captions:
1. lebanese army soldiers. observe the guns. there were quite a few of them around today, but, as the daily star noted, they were working to secure the demonstration, rather than stopping people from participating as they did last year out of fear.
2. my first glimpse of the crowd.
3. a decked out car, complete with posters, flags, and blown-out speakers blasting patriotic music.
4. a flag-cape.
5. these signs seemed to be more popular last year based on what i saw on tv, but there were still many of them today.
6. "live lebanon and die..." something. someone teach me arabic.
7. the an-nahar building and jibran tuéni.
8. hariri's mosque. it was supposed to open today, but i don't know if it did or not.
9. from left to right: no to cowboys (george w.), no to animals (gen. michel 'aoun), yes yes yes (lebanon).
10 and 11. good vantage points.
12. crowds and flags.
13 and 14. the site of the assassination.

***

today marks one year since the assassination of former lebanese prime minister, rafik al-hariri.

i went downtown with zoe and several hundred thousand others. zoe and i wanted to go to participate and observea historic event in lebanon. i can only assume that everyone else was going to pay respects and remember a man who played an instrumental role in rebuilding beirut after the war destroyed it. more importantly, though, the demonstration today was an expression of lebanese unity. this is what i gathered from the speeches and chanting:
- insults to syria's president, bashar al-asad -- "name your child elliot, name your child stupid, but don't name your child bashar!"
- calls for the complete removal of syria -- "yalla! suria! get out of here!" the massive demonstrations in the wake of the assassination last year resulted in mounting international pressure that forced syria to withdraw from lebanon after having occupied the country for 30 years. despite having officially left lebanon, however, syria still has an influence in lebanese politics, evidenced by emile lahoud -- called a syrian puppet -- still holding the post of president here. the relationship between the two countries is quite tenuous. there is no syrian embassy in lebanon, which syria says is because the two countries are "so close," but in diplomatic lingo, not having an embassy is tantamount to non-recognition. in a throwback to the days when lebanon and syria were united under the banner of greater syria, syria still maintains its pseudo-covert territorial ambitions with regard to its smaller neighbor. besides ideology, syria has practical interests here, as well, mostly in terms of business and finance. many people attribute the murders of hariri and several other prominent lebanese people in the last year to syria, saying that the latter is trying to destabilize lebanon to justify a continued presence here. judging by the u.n. inquiry, which implicated the syrian government at the highest levels in addition to the pro-syrian members of the lebanese government, and that all of the targets have been people who were openly critical of syria, this accusation hardly seems far-fetched, but there has yet to be any concrete assignment of blame.
- demands for truth -- al-haqiqa -- in response to the above.
- affirmations of lebanese unity, irrespective of religion.
- chants of hariri's nickname, abu baha-. as is customary in the arab world, parents are referred to as mother or father of their eldest son, or daughter, if there is no son.

the speakers included people i didn't know; hariri's son, saad; and walid jumblatt, the leader of the druze. the latter has apparently criticized hezbullah recently, calling for their disarmament. as a result, hezbullah didn't participate in the demonstration today. people i talked to said this was unfortunate: whether or not they agree with hezbullah's actions of late, they said, they are very patriotic lebanese and should have come.

as i walked toward downtown, i saw all sorts of vehicles plastered with posters of hariri, lebanese flags protruding from every window. everyone carried a flag -- some people even wore flags as shirts or bandanas or capes. there were posters and then scarves and ribbons of red, symbolizing hariri's political party, or bright blue, the color of his remembrance.

we rounded a corner and i saw, perhaps, 20,000 people. i've never seen so many people in my life and it was only a fraction of everyone there.

zoe and i walked past an-nahar (the daily), an important arabic newspaper. since i have arrived in beirut, there has been a massive poster of jibran tuéni, a staunch critic of syria who wrote for an-nahar until he was killed a few months ago.

we decided to make our way towards hariri's mosque. retrospectively, i have no idea how we made it as far as we did. the situation was comparable to stand-still traffic except that the cars were also on top of each other. we ended up quite close to where people were speaking and an old man pulled us up onto a platform, so we could see better, in theory. i couldn't see anything except the 15 people within two inches of me, the buildings, and the cameras suspended in the air. in exchange, though, the old man thought he could put his arm around me, which was creepy, so i moved out of his reach as soon as i could.

i suppose zoe and i were vulnerable. we speak english to each other and only sort of knew what was going on, so we're obviously tourists, she has blonde hair and blue eyes, and we were two women by ourselves. (we intended to meet two male friends, but we lost them on the way and there was something disabling cell phones in downtown, imaginably for security purposes.) initially, it was just scattered groping, maybe because of the complete lack of any semblance of personal space, but as the day continued, things became obviously not accidental and i began trying to smack people away and shooting dirty looks at everyone around me because i couldn't actually tell who the guilty party/ies was/were. my capacities to do either were very limited, though, because of the lack of space, and any success i had was met with replies like, "shu??" (what??) and "ana? la." (me? no.) after blatantly catching a guy, i tried to turn around and give him a really angry look, not knowing how to say, "stop it, you asshole," in arabic and he backed off and apologized. i started envying the muhajiba (a woman who wears a hejab) in front of me, assuming that no one was trying to grab her, although that also could have been because zoe and i were behind her and we certainly weren't interested in her ass.

we decided we'd had enough, but moving anywhere didn't look promising and the former offender took my hand and literally dragged me through the crowd, pushing people out of our way, and someone behind zoe pushed her after me. after several minutes, during which my feet hardly touched the ground, i was able to breathe again. zoe and i thanked the guy, who promptly asked for my number. maybe he thought the language barrier was irrelevant since he had proven that he was tough and could repent, but i saw it otherwise and i attempted to stifle my laughter as i turned him down.

on a positive note, or something, people were a lot more interested in us than our belongings and no one made any attempt to steal our things.

maybe zoe and i just had the misfortune to end up next to lots of sleazy guys, but i'm glad i went. it was an experience, for sure.

on israel and lebanese family life

I should have written this over the weekend, but I’ve been busy and exhausted, so I didn’t. I am now, though, not to worry.

Nizar gave me the names and phone numbers of his closest friends here and I met up with Joelle and Tamara on Saturday night in Tamara’s apartment where she lives with her family. Joelle’s family lives next-door and the girls are childhood friends. Their families and, indeed, the whole building’s families, are very close because they all sought refuge together in the mountains during the war.

The three of us made dinner in Tamara’s kitchen and I felt so relieved at being in a “normal” environment again. The dorms here are nice, but living in a single-sex building with communal bathrooms and having to provide my own sustenance without my own kitchen is not my style. Not having a kitchen in particular is difficult because it forces me to spend more money than I otherwise would and prohibits me from engaging in a favorite pastime: cooking for my friends.

In any case, while we were cooking, Tamara, Joelle, and Tamara’s mother questioned me about where I live and what I’m studying, how long I’m staying here and how I find it so far. They were all impressed and surprised by my commitment to learn Arabic: the former because they recognize the inherent complexities in the language and the latter because Arabic here, while it is by far the most widely spoken, is not the language of academia. The best schools are either English or French.

I felt very much at ease and Joelle, Tamara, and I began discussing politics over dinner, a topic that many Lebanese can’t put out of their minds, but won’t speak about in public for fear that it is a potentially deadly liability. We talked about the situation here and they admitted that the last year has been difficult, though they did not fear for their own lives or those of their friends and families: “It’s the important people, ya’ani, the politicians and the important journalists.” They asked me what Americans thought of Arabs and I conceded that 9/11 had cultivated a strong suspicion of Arabs that is particularly apparent in the airports and in law enforcement. I mentioned that I had read that the prejudice against blacks and Hispanics was inversely proportional to what Arab-Americans face. We talked about Hezbullah’s place in Lebanon and Joelle responded saying, “Ya’ani, I respect them for what they did, bas I do not support a lot of what they do now.” What Israel did, as I found out later, was an unintentional massacre in the southern Lebanese town of Kana in 1995. According to www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org:

"In April 1995, the IDF mounted 'Operation Grapes of Wrath' to halt Hezbollah's bombardment of Israel's northern frontier. During the operation, Israeli artillery mistakenly hit a UN base in Kafr Kana, killing nearly 100 civilians. Afterward, a Joint Monitoring Machinery, including American, French, Syrian and Lebanese representatives, was created to prohibit unprovoked attacks on civilian populations and the use of civilians as shields for terrorist activities."

Judging by this conversation, Kana seems to be one of Lebanon’s major hang-ups as it grapples with what its relations with Israel should or should not be. As we edged closer to discussing Israel, they asked me if everyone in America supported the Jewish state. I confirmed that the government certainly does and always has and that the general sentiment was definitely pro-Israel, particularly among American Jews and evangelical Christians, both of which are powerful lobbies. I asked them what they thought about Lebanese relations with Israel. Tamara’s answer surprised me: “It is stupid. There is nothing wrong with Isra-ili and the government is ok – ” “What they did happened a long time ago,” Joelle interjected, nodding her agreement with Tamara, who continued, “There should be peace between us. There is no reason for not, ya’ani. And it is in Lebanon’s interests.” “Ay,” Joelle added, “bas some people think there is no peace because it ISN’T in Lebanon’s economic interests.” Tamara and I looked at her, confused. “They make better things than us. People would buy only Isra-ili things and not Lebanese.” Tamara agreed, but denied that that was the real reason for the absence of peace. “A lot of people don’t think like us, ya’ani. There are many who don’t agree because they won’t forgive and also they are like Palestinians.” Joelle finished her thought: “We care about Filisteen, bas as a human issue, ya’ani. The politics don’t affect Lebanon.”

Later, we got onto the death penalty. I said I didn’t agree with it and that the US was the only very developed country that still used it. Life imprisonment seemed to make more sense to me and Tamara agreed. Joelle’s eyes flashed. “It’s like Isra-il, ya’ani! You have to forgive!”

Her view struck me. Countries can forget the past and make amends with each other, but serious criminals and murderers do not get a second chance to walk free. You could argue that most of the time, countries don’t make peace with each other immediately after bloodshed, so there is a new generation of leaders in power, whereas the same person remains in jail. That logic, however, a) is not always the case, and b) puts a lot of faith in the uniqueness of each generation, implying that certain traits – here, the inclination towards violence and the perceptions that incited the violence – are not hereditary, nor are they ingrained in a country’s process of socialization. I believe that Lebanon and Israel should be at peace. Should I also believe, then, that people sentenced to life in prison should be offered the chance to repent? Are there exceptions to moral consistency?

My head was spinning by the time we finished dinner – at 1:30am. When I asked if they would be able to give me a ride back to AUB, Tamara inquired if I would rather sleep over since it was already late. Once again, the generosity of Lebanese people astounded me and I didn’t even know how to respond since my instinct was that it was inappropriate for me, a stranger, to sleep over, but that clearly is not the case here. Tamara sensed my uncertainty and assured me that it was not a problem. “My friend is coming for breakfast and you can stay. We are having kinaafeh, it is typical Lebanese.” She gave me satin pajamas and a new toothbrush and we went to sleep.

I spent the next day eating; the kinaafeh was delicious and then Tamara’s mother wouldn’t stop feeding me and sent me home with lentil noodle soup. We also watched the news and I listened to the disgusted reactions of Tamara and her mother and brother at the rioting outside of the Danish embassy. We watched movies and then I got dropped off back at school as the family was on their way to visit Tamara’s grandfather, which they do every week. I was, of course, invited to come with them, but I had dinner plans. Tamara’s mother gave me her cell phone number and told me to call her if I was in need of anything. She said that she hoped to see me soon.

“Goodbye, Ariana. Welcome to Lebanon.”

Welcome indeed. I have never felt so welcome anywhere in the world as I have in Beirut.

muhammad cartoon controversy

i'm exhausted and my head hurts, so my preemptive apologies if this periodically gets incoherent.

i'm only going to address the most pressing issue tonight due to the above.

achrafiyeh is about 3km from aub. in the early afternoon yesterday, thousands of people -- who were not necessarily all lebanese -- assembled near the danish embassy here to protest a danish newspaper's printing of cartoons of muhammad. the cartoons have inspired such fury in the middle east for two reasons:
1. islam forbids depicting muhammad because of the religion's very intense ban of anything even vaguely resembling idolatry, for example, iconism. there have, however, been portrayals of the prophet in the past that have not provoked such vehement and violent responses, thus this recent anger has been attributed to
2. the implication in the cartoon that all muslims are terrorists, which is obviously a sensitive subject nowadays. this is entirely logical taken out of context: the cartoon shows muhammad with a bomb in his turban, welcoming terrorists into heaven.
in context, though, the story is a little more reasonable. a danish writer, kare buitgen, had difficulties finding someone willing to illustrate his book on muhammad due to artists' fear of retaliation by islamic militants. in response, the editor of denmark's jyllands-posten commissioned cartoonists to draw satirical pictures to accompany an article on self-censorship and freedom of speech. essentially, there were no bad intentions here, but the editor showed poor judgment and taste, though nothing that would nearly merit the violence that the cartoons precipitated.

protestors here burnt down the danish consulate, damaged a nearby church, and clashed with the lebanese police and army who were trying to control the situation. the danish government has advised that all danes leave lebanon.

the rioting was over by the end of the afternoon and most people seemed to move on with their lives, believing that this was an unfortunate occurrence, but not one that would persist past yesterday. in the back of their minds, though, most people i spoke with were making a conscious effort to suppress fears that the day's events would be taken as an attack on christians and would then provoke christian retaliation and perhaps lead to another war. the extent to which the civil war scorched the soul of this country is profound. in its remains are bullet-ridden walls, decrepit buildings, and a paranoia that will surely take generations to subside.

my danish friend who arrived on the same flight as me is still here and nothing was different today except that i didn't go to dinner in achrafiyeh like as i otherwise might have.

beirut reminds me of a runner who smokes 2 packs each day and has to slow down a bit to cough up blood during a race, but still finishes lengths ahead of the competition without breaking a sweat.

from my first day

picture captions:
1. downtown on thursday night...i think. very close to martyrs' square.
2. raousheh (pigeon) rock. there are caves inside and you can borrow boats and go exploring and swimming. <-- on the list of things i'm going to do here
3. what i saw when i woke up on my first morning here
4. the main gate of aub, bliss street

***
oh, sweet, sweet internet and laptop power cord.

an unbelievable amount of things have happened in the last 24 hours, but my first day of school is tomorrow, so i don't have time to write. i'm going to make a quick list to remind myself so i can write everything tomorrow:
- lebanese family life
- on assorted political topics (israel, the death penalty, hezbullah, palestinians)
- violence in achrafiyeh, which is nearby. (i was there 2 nights ago...that's where monot street is.) i'm fine. just to put that out there.

in the meantime, this is what i wrote the first night that i was here. and some pictures. i'll take more because now i have an adaptor and can charge my camera.

***

A little after 3:30am on Sunday, January 29, 2006

I can’t believe I’m still awake.

I got into Beirut around 8:30pm. On the way to London, 2 highly attractive British soccer/football players sat next to me and informed me that in England, class, not geography, is the chief determinant of accent: “speaking posh,” therefore, is the abandonment of any regional dialect. In London, I met 6 people who are also going to AUB, so we talked freely through the 1 ½-hour delay about our parents’ responses to our decisions to study in Beirut, where we were living, long-distance relationships, and our own perceptions of the city we had all committed to living in for nearly 5 months having never been there before. I slept through continental Europe and woke up only when we were about to pass over the Mediterranean. It was completely black outside, save for a receding stretch of light along the horizon. Rather than trying to figure out exactly where I was, though, I watched the stars, which seemed closer and more brilliant than any I’ve ever seen. I felt like the big dipper was about to smack me in the face. From the sky, Lebanon is crisscrossed with lights, even in the mountains where one lighted tier rises over the next. Flying low over Beirut, the city seemed much bigger than I had imagined. The runway of Rafiq al-Hariri International Airport literally emerged out of the sea.

Once in the airport, a place that played host to some of the worst atrocities of the Lebanese Civil War, the lack of security was astounding. No one asked me anything. I said hello to the immigration officer who was wearing absolutely nothing that identified him as such and he smiled at me and waved me through.

I am temporarily sharing a room in New Women’s Hall with Carmen who is from Michigan and a graduate student at GW. We live in a suite with two stunning Lebanese girls, Mona and Sara. As we began unpacking, Mona came in dressed to the nines to introduce herself, and then apologized and said she was already very late to meet someone and would talk to us later. After a fruitless quest to get internet access, Carmen and I returned and met Sara, who offered us enough food for about a week and then gave us her user name and password so we could get online. I couldn’t believe that something so confidential in North America could be offered so freely to a stranger in Lebanon.

Intending to go to sleep immediately, Carmen intercepted me on my way back upstairs and told me that Sara had invited us to come bar-hopping with her, her boyfriend, Fadi, Mona, and some other friends, among them an American girl who attends AUB named Maris who is an unpaid intern at the Beirut Daily Star. She enjoys it very much, but says it is very time-consuming – so much so that she is unable to take a full courseload at school. I’ve also heard that the Star is always in need of copy editors and thus takes on people fairly liberally. In any case, Carmen and I dressed quickly and not nearly as extravagantly as Mona, Sara, or any of the other girls we passed on our way out, and after some deliberation, all of us got into 2 cabs and left.

We arrived at a place that seemed to me to be quintessentially Beirut: a pedestrian-only area with palm trees and teeming with beautiful and ultra-fashionable young people wandering around from bar to bar, running into friends, and heckling with bouncers. At the same time, every few buildings brazenly displayed varying degrees of physical damage leftover from the war, and armed members of the Lebanese army patrolled the streets. It was the third time in my life that I remember seeing someone walking around with a rifle.

Everywhere was full so we again piled into 2 cabs and went to another part of the city and ended up at a kind of Tex-Mex-themed bar called Cactus where they offered free chips and salsa and played country music. We stayed there for some time, everyone else drinking while Carmen and I sipped virgin Jamaicas. We told stories and laughed and asked each other questions. I learned that bartenders often hit on girls and girls tend to flirt back because it is considered a low-risk situation and will likely earn her free drinks. American girls are assumed to be easy. Men will hit on women even if they’re walking around in pajamas. It is normal and acceptable to pay for things in a combination of Lebanese pounds and US dollars, but I didn’t pay for anything tonight because Mona and Sara insisted that they were taking us out. I heard my first anti-Semitic comment: I mentioned to Mona that it seemed that girls with boyfriends were very flirtatious with their boyfriend’s best friend and she replied that, “We Lebanese are not like Jews; we like to share everything.”

Fadi’s best friend, Roni, gave Mona and Sara a ride to an upscale restaurant/bar and then offered to take Carmen and I back to school. While we waited in front of the restaurant, Carmen and I got into a spirited discussion with Fadi and Roni about Lebanon that stemmed from their realization that we had arrived five hours earlier. They welcomed us to their country and advised us that we would find many surprises in Lebanon, both good and bad. When I asked about that, Roni said first that the electricity in Beirut goes out all the time, sometimes just briefly and other times for several days, a result of the government’s claim that they don’t have the money to pay for fuel. “I don’t know what they do with the money. We pay taxes, but it doesn’t go there. I don’t know where it goes.” He also told us that Lebanon is the most beautiful country in the world, but that the Lebanese themselves are destroying it with their politics. He asked Carmen and me what religion we were. Carmen explained that her parents had converted to Islam before she was born so she was raised Muslim and I said I wasn’t religious. He nodded and confirmed that those differences were unimportant in America, whereas “the three groups in Lebanon – the Christians, the Muslims, and the Druze – have never and will never be united. No matter what it seems; they are not together.” He said that the government was totally corrupt and inept: people enter into politics not because they care about the country, but because it’s a good way to make money. These wealthy politicians have chalked up the assassinations and bombings that have happened here during the last year to “a ghost” and haven’t initiated any kind of investigation. Finally, he revealed that the Lebanese have no money because “they work 11 months of the year and then spend all of it the twelfth to party.” He thought for a moment and then said that, “Lebanon is a country where you can do anything. If you want to go dancing somewhere at 7 in the morning, you can do that.”

That’s what intrigues me the most about Lebanon: to say that anyone can do anything isn’t an exaggeration here and the absence of limits simultaneously contributes to Lebanon’s downfall and keeps the country on its feet.

I asked Roni what people do when there’s a bomb.

“You look around and then you keep driving to a different place. There’s no bomb at the other place."

the vindication of boom-chic

i just returned from mute, a club on monot street. there were many notable things about this experience:
1. my first time dancing in beirut!
2. my first time at a non-latin club in about 2 1/2 years.
3. there was no cover, just the expectation that you would buy a drink, which i managed to avoid, making my tab for the night a whopping...$5. (dinner + cab rides there and back.) excellent.
4. THE BASS WAS TOLERABLE, OH MY GOD. this last one is so remarkable that it deserves further explanation.

i wouldn't say i'm a clubber by any stretch of the imagination, but i've been to a few, particularly in latin america, and a commonality everywhere i've been is excessive bass to the point of borderline giving me a heart attack and/or making my repressed alter-ego of a gay man grinding at a club in the village where you can hear the boom-chic going several blocks away come out wild and fabulous. shockingly, this was not the case at mute. perhaps it's because lebanese people have a sense of rhythm and don't need an obscene bass to latch onto, although latinos clearly do fine with rhythm, too. or maybe the dj was just more sensitive to balance. or...i don't know...the owner mandated that a serious bass would run contrary to the club's name, so the owner banned it. in any case, it was amazing. i didn't even mind the half-hour techno set. i'm excited to go out again.

two other non-tonight related things occurred today.

i finally got internet. i was starting to lose faith in the system, but now i feel better. except that i gave my friend my power cord to hold because i had a small bag and i forgot to take it back and my computer is presently dead, so i won't be able to post pictures and my first-day writing until tomorrow. alas.

i got my courses straightened out almost...i suppose 4/5 isn't bad. and i got into everything i wanted to take, which i don't understand because i don't think any of my friends did. perhaps i dropped bassil's name at some point and upon realizing that, as bassil himself so eloquently put it, he's "kind of a big deal," aub was impressed and made it happen. شكرا بسل حبيبي

here are my courses:
intermediate colloquial lebanese arabic -- no idea how i got into intermediate, but i'm ok with it because it means i have class at 9 and not 8.
ideological trends in the middle east (a graduate course)
israeli politics with a professor who is supposed to be quite intense
lebanese politics

now the 5th course...i need some advice.
i came here intending to continue my study of formal arabic, but my level is highly inconvenient for aub: the lower class is a repeat of things i've already done, but the higher class is 4 chapters above where i am in my book, which i think is an impossible gap to bridge. i could always sit in on both and see if they don't work as much as i feel like they won't, or i could take neither and instead go to a cafe everyday with my friends, an arabic newspaper, and a dictionary. i think i could get a lot out of the latter if i were really committed and did it each day.
i'm also interested in continuing my study of french, but the level i should be in conflicts with one of my other classes, so i would have to take it outside of aub at a language institute (ex. berlitz). if i did that, i wouldn't take a 5th class because i would probably have french five times each week.
or i could take neither arabic nor french and pick up some other m.e. studies class...a history or sociology, or something.
thoughts? thus far i have one vote for not taking french.

i have one more topic of discussion. i can't believe i still have this much in my head at 4am.

nizar made a few comments on my post yesterday. he corrected me in saying that there are no unlimited local calls because, as i found out later, there are. sorry about that. erratta. he also said that the recent explosion on the corniche was, in fact, reported in an arabic paper. i find that very interesting; why would an arabic paper report bombs and an english one not? and finally, he chastised me for referring to muslim and christian areas of beirut although i was never under the impression that that was wrong or uncommon. sensitive for sure...the general sentiment of the country is to rebuild in order to foster national unity and referring to areas of the capital city as strictly demarcated by religion promotes sectarian identities that may be an unfortunate and, indeed, inaccurate throwback to the war. in my interactions with lebanese people here, one person had no idea which sections of the city were, at least historically, christian and muslim, but everyone else is quite aware and i often hear many parts of the city mentioned in conjunction with their religious affiliation. demographically speaking, how religiously segregated is beirut today? and if it is wrong or offensive to describe places as christian or muslim, why doesn't everyone stop?

missed calling

definition: calling someone, allowing the phone to ring once, and then hanging up such that your name and number register on the callee's phone as a "missed call."

"missed calling" people is a lebanese phenomenon. it is the result of the cell phone monopoly of alfa and mct touch, which allows both companies to charge obscene amounts for plans and even the purchase of a phone. a USED phone. just to give an idea:
- a used phone will cost somewhere between $30-110, depending on where and how assholish the seller is, how foreign and/or clueless you are, and how willing you and the seller are to bargain. a new phone starts around $110. also, there is much speculation that all phones are ones that lebanon gets from the us and then hacks into in order to enable them to continue with their overcharging ridiculousness.
- it costs minimum $55 to activate a phone and for your first month, or something. things are done by units here. i don't know exactly what that means, but it seems like each unit is equivalent to a dollar and local calls get charged as 50 cents/minute or something totally obscene like that. i don't know whether text messages count, but local ones are 9 cents/message and international ones are...a lot more. i don't know. i don't like text messages that much.
- i think each set of 125 units is supposed to last a month, but unused units roll over if you purchase another 125 units for $42, i think. no unlimited evenings and weekends, no unlimited incoming calls, no long distance minutes included.

this is where missed calling comes in.

besides its function to show off your high-class number to someone you're looking to impress, missed calling has 2 other applications:
1. making it so that there is a lesser likelihood that you will enter someone's number into your phone incorrectly. for example:
person a: give me your number!
person b: ok, it's 03/555444. [unsaid implication: i paid $4000 for it.]
a: thanks. hang on, i'll missed call you.
(b receives a's call, thereby getting a's number.)
2. to communicate certain things without using minutes/units. my friend, nour, explained it to me: "you might get a missed call before you go to sleep and that means 'good night.' or one during the day and that means 'how are you?'. then at other times, one missed call means 'i'm on campus.' two means 'i'm at this building.' three means 'i'm going out tonight.'" etc. etc.

can you imagine someone calling and hanging up 3 times?? i would kill myself. i'm sure it's going to happen to me at some point, though, so you all should be prepared.

***
another topic.

a bomb exploded on the corniche (essentially down the street) late last night. i never would have known had not the president of the university told me when i ate dinner with him this evening. (for those who don't know, i know the president of aub because i found out by chance over the summer that he is my friend's uncle. he also used to teach at the woodrow wilson institute at princeton.) the newspaper didn't report it, though, as i noticed when i arrived here. apparently, only bombs that result in deaths make news and even then, sometimes only the important deaths. nonetheless, as i've been told by others here, the president and his wife told me that beirut proper is safe, even the christian areas, which, minus a few notable exceptions, have been where explosions have happened. the christian areas, coincidentally, are some of the most enjoyable parts of the city: monot, the epicenter of clubs and bars; achrafiyeh, which boasts amazing restaurants, one of which i've already been to; and jumeyziy, a shopping hub.

does that seem weird to you? it does to me, but perhaps that's because i'm new here.

bureacracy + promised observations

i didn't think any other university in the world could have more bureaucracy than mcgill, especially a much smaller one like...oh, i don't know...aub, maybe.

this is what i've done today:

we were supposed to meet in front of west hall at 8:30 to do registration things and then we were going to go to jessup hall. i get to west hall...no one. jessup hall...no one, except this syrian kid named sami who was just as lost as i was so we made friends and wandered aimlessly together until we finally found where everyone else was with the help of the omnipotent overseer of the international students, ms. caroline chalouhi. she reminds me of hartman in that she functions on a higher plane than the rest of the human race. if she didn't exist, i don't think aub would take international students because we would all probably fall over and die of confusion upon arrival and perhaps even before then.

so i went with zoe (from virginia, goes to princeton and i met her at the latter a couple weeks ago) to the arabic department to talk with the head to find out about some stuff. she wasn't there, but another professor was and he seemed very interested in us and then directed us to the center for arab and m.e. studies (cames). we went, found out things about the colloquial lebanese course (which i've decided i'm going to take even though it's at 8am because i can't handle being dysfunctional here), but not about the modern standard arabic. meh. we continued our quest to get shit done and went to the library to check something on the computers, but upon entering, saw that our id cards do not register and thus, we can't swipe in. i also realized last night that i was still unable to get onto the computers, including my own if i want to use the internet. we then went to the main advisor woman for the faculty of arts and sciences and she approved us for our courses and we felt very accomplished, though there were still the aforementioned issues that had to be dealt with so, obviously, we went to caroline. she called lots of people to try to solve our problems, but the only one who could was out, so she told me to come back later. in the meantime, i tried to register for my courses, but they were all full, as they have been for 2 weeks, so i have to wait until tomorrow to try to get overrides. AND because i can't log onto computers, i couldn't get my own computer configured for the aub wireless, so i still don't have internet and i want to pummel someone. conclusion: aub kicks the shit out of mcgill re: bureaucracy. i feel like this should be on ripley's believe it or not.

i'm done bitching. this is what i've been doing. i'm going to start with orientation day because that's when i started doing things other than aimless wandering and flaunting my deficiencies in arabic.

that night (2 nights ago), we went on a bus tour of the city, which, like i said yesterday, is stunning. there are lots of different neighborhoods and each has a different character. we drove down the corniche (the waterfront) and saw the rawsheh rocks, went to verdun and concorde (fancy shopping places), downtown, and then had a dinner as detailed yesterday in achrafiyeh. i found downtown very interesting: ruins and very grand buildings juxtaposed with ancient ruins and long pedestrian-only avenues filled with people sitting outside at restaurants and cafes eating, drinking, or smoking arguileh (sheesha). we went past hariri's grave, saw his last footsteps before he got into his car nearly a year ago, and drove by the square where thousands of people gathered in the wake of hariri's death to commemorate him and voice their views and counter-views on syria's place in lebanon. we also drove by the place where hariri was actually assassinated and it's still in ruins because it had to be preserved for investigations. it's not far from aub at all and, in fact, current students told me that the entire campus shook when the explosion happened and everyone started running because it sounded as though the school itself had been bombed.

as we drove around, i learned that many places in the city have been the victims of the recent bombings. i didn't realize this before i got here because i don't think everything is reported which is revealing in itself. everyone i've talked to so far has been of the opinion that beirut is not inherently dangerous since all of the bombings that have happened have had very few casualties besides their intended targets. moreover, no place has been bombed twice so people joke that it's preferable to go to places that have already been hit because the likelihood of them getting it a second time is low. the mentality takes some getting used to and when i'm lying in bed, i half expect to hear something go off down the street. i do feel safe, though, and i'm getting more comfortable everyday.

i have to get going...someone else needs the computer and i have to go back to campus to deal with more things and then i'm meeting a friend of nizar's, nour, to walk around so i can buy stuff. enjoy your day.