walidat wardeh

that It upsets me that I didn’t find this place before now. Actually, that’s not true. I have passed by it several times in the course of my weekly wanderings around Hamra and then Saad and I stayed next-door to it at the Marble Tower Hotel for one night. It looked cute, the changing menu written on the chalkboard easel outside.

Now having been here, though, I wouldn’t describe Walidat Wardeh as cute; rather, it is the epitome of the way I see Beirut and, while Beirut could easily appropriate a host of adjectives, "cute" isn't one of them.

I think it was originally built to be an apartment, but then, upon becoming a restaurant, the owner enlarged the doorways and knocked down the bedroom walls. But there is still something that feels residential about it, although perhaps that’s more a result of the décor: framed pictures on the wall, the banister between one room and another, and the understated lighting.

The number of people in here is substantially increasing the temperature and cigarette smoke hangs heavily over everything, making things a bit hazy. It reminds me of the glow effect on Picasa – “gives pictures a gauzy glow.”

There is something about this place that takes me back to the 1920s in the US, a time when everyone managed to be simultaneously classy and irreverent. In Beirut-speak, this is how I imagine the city was before the war broke out, when it was at the apex of its own sophistication, the definition of blasé glamour. I can even imagine Walimat Wardeh during the war. I imagine the building next-door being riddled with bullets, but the clientele are oblivious. They come here to exist in the only manner they understand.

A woman in a black and white dress is swaying in the doorway next to my table. I can see that what she wants more than anything is to dance in the center, in front of the band, but she isn’t yet. Maybe she is waiting for others to feel the same compulsion she does, or otherwise she is waiting until the music infuses her body and she has no choice but to capitulate. The tabla and the aoud determine her movement and she is necessarily submissive in the face of their sultry, rhythmic persuasion.

Another woman joins her, but she is dancing because she wants to be seen, not because the music is telling her to. She is wearing shiny, black boots, so pointy that I think a kick from them would splinter any surface, and her maroon shirt looks like lingerie. It is entirely sheer and she is wearing only a black bra underneath. The sole indication that it is a legitimate shirt is that it has a sparkling brooch in the middle, though I suppose lingerie could also have such an ornament. Her hair matches with her shirt and her eyeliner matches with her boots. One of her companions has gotten up and is dancing on the banister. Beirutis will seize any opportunity to dance on a raised place. That’s probably why the banister exists.

The band is four-piece and every instrument is played by a man with long hair. I am thinking of Ian Anderson + Mikael Akerfelt. 1970s head-bangers, but Lebanese. They have a symbiotic relationship with the audience. They play so that people dance and people dance so that they play.

I feel intoxicated.