Thursday, September 24, 2009

Beirut Part One: September 2009


24 September 2009

BEIRUT (17 September – 22 September 2009)

PART ONE

We’re back home in Amman. Flying in from Beirut we were struck by the absence of color: below us was brown, higher brown and lower brown with the odd stamp of an orchard or black Bedou tent. It was like flying back to black and white Kansas from the dazzling color of Oz. Heat but not warmth rose to us from the desert that dominates the Jordanian landscape. How easy it was to delight in the blue of the Mediterranean Sea that laps the edges of little Lebanon, and embrace the green of the palm trees, banana plantations and citrus groves. Lebanon is beautiful to behold. But excavating its soul is scholars’ work. It’s a treasure of paradise, poverty, and paradox.

We arrived in Beirut on Thursday night, 17 September, on the eve of Eid, the final few days of Ramadan. The flight from Amman was just one hour and of all the coincidences, our new friend Frances Abouzeid was seated right next to us. Frances works for Academy for Educational Development,www.aed.org/Regions/MiddleEast/Jordan.cfm. She's lived in Jordan for several stints of several years. Like me she’s got one Arab parent and one Canadian. Through her father she has Lebanese citizenship; she’s also American. We’d gone with her and a few other “newbees” in Amman to “Wild Jordan” – a restaurant “powered by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature,” and built (at least in part) by USAID, “a gift from the American people.” Fabulous spot, cantelievered off the side of Jabal Amman – with a breathtaking view of the older part of the city and the Citadel across the way (www.rscn.org.jo). Frances is as lively as ever, excited to be spending an extended holiday in Lebanon with her husband. We were invited to her home in the mountains but with our limited time we chose to maximize our experience with our friends, the B-'s.

Our welcome by the family B- was loving, gentle and generous. We stayed in an apartment in a privileged community in the hills to the south of Beirut. The apartments have a magnificent view of the sea, the airport, and the city; to the right were the hills dotted with homes that twinkled each with its own story into the night.

Katie and I shared a guest room. My dear friend from home, Samia, her niece Alizar, and a new friend of Alizar’s from American University of Cairo, a 25-year-old of Iraqi heritage who uses Katie instead of her given name, Badriya, shared the bedroom of Sarah and Mohammed’s daughter. Badriyeh left her six-year-old daughter in Cairo with her new fiancé to make this trip.

The apartment reminded me somewhat of our own in terms of layout: there’s a public part and a private part with a door separating the two. In the private section a corridor with bedrooms and bath opening off the hall. In ours the kitchen belongs to the private part. At that apartment the kitchen was its own kingdom, with three entrances: one from the elevator, one from the salons, and one from the dining area. Off the kitchen was the room and lav for the Senegalese helpers that live with them full-time, who cook and clean and primarily care for Samia’s mother who is in an advanced stage of Parkinson’s and unable to move on her own. Her mouth can no longer smile; her eyes struggle to speak, beautiful blue eyes like my mother’s, pale and clear; her skin white and smooth with a glow belying her 84 years. She is loved and cared for as anyone could ever hope to be in the final stages. As Myron Zimmermann, my dear late father-in-law, was cared for by his family, too, if with little less luxury.

Samia’s father is everything she said he was. White-haired, good looking, short of stature and tall of spirit. He’s elegant, sparkling with smarts and humor; full of philosophy; hospitable to a fault. He reminds me of my father in so many ways. Generosity he wears on his sleeve. Just under the cuff hide high expectations of his guests, family and friends in return. I am grateful for the upbringing of my parents: an emphasis on respect, listening to one’s elders, meeting eyes during conversation, engaging in conversation, submitting individual wishes and whims to the perceived needs of the whole. From the moment we met, however, I assumed familial familiarity: I called him Abu Jafar. He’d heard as much about me as I’d heard about him. This was in some way a meeting of friends who’d never met. During four days we moved from friends to dear.

Abu Jafar woke me for suhoor the second morning, Saturday, when my alarm didn’t go off. We shared coffee, labneh, bread and za’atar in near silence, piecing together uncomplicated concepts in a jigsaw of Arabic, French and gestures. Would you like some more? Is it sweet enough for you? Excuse me, I’m going to get my notebook to jot something down and will come right back … Are you off to sleep again? As it turns out that was our last suhoor of Ramadan.

Each member of the family deserves a profile. They are second generation Lebanese from Senegal where Abu Jafar grew up and to where he moved his wife to raise their family: Jafar, Sarah, Samia, and Nejwa. Sarah, the eldest sister, is caretaker to her parents, loving, giving, also to a fault, perhaps, also sublimating her needs to the greater good, kind, fun, retreating to cigarettes on the balcony when retreat is required. Her husband Dr. Mohammad, is one of Lebanon’s top cardiac surgeons; he visits his patients every day, on duty or off. He’s an avid music lover with a collection ranging from Charles Mingus to Gustav Mahler and arrangements of the classic composers by jazz players. He’s got Concierto de Aranjuez and Schehrezade. Noteworthy: he listens (retreats to his music when retreat is required?). When he gets home he often pulls a chair to his CD player, positioned perfectly between the standing speakers, and is his own DJ, playing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. He was happy to share a variety of pieces with me and I was glad to absorb.

Sarah and Mohammad’s daughter, Darin, 11, with her thick curls like Samia’s and Katie’s, that come from an unknown, perhaps Palestinian origin, was adopted in Tyre. She spent time with us at home and went with the other girls on some day trips. She, Alizar, Badriyeh/Kate, and Katie went to the famous Jeita Grotto, caves competing for finalist status in the search for the Seven Natural Wonders of the world. Their son, who I did not meet but heard about from Samia back in New Jersey, is in his twenties, recently married, and lives on the French Riviera in an apartment owned by his parents.

Jafar, only son and eldest child, is tall, dignified, and another top surgeon in Lebanon. He’s a bone specialist. His wife, Laila (her hair red the way mine is absent of white), is charming, pretty, and loves their place in the heart of Beirut. Both (all of them really) excellent English to the great fortune of Katie and me. Although this means we are going to have to struggle extra hard to speak Arabic! They float from French to Arabic to English to Wolof as if they were speaking one language. Remarkable, really, and inspiring.

The family is Shiite: forthright, bold and proud. It seems a cultural rather than religious identification without explanation, conviction, or politics, but with an edgy concern for justice and equality for the large Shiite population of Lebanon (approx 41% of six million people).

Here’s where I wander into paradox: the city, you’ll read in my next letter, is rebuilt and bustling. People seem to mix easily downtown; church spires and minarets crown the skyline; the bells and calls to prayer come antiphonally.

Yet you also see signs of artillery on buildings just behind the new construction. You hear people talk about “Muslim” sections and “Christian” sections of town. “They don’t come here …” One remembers stories of a 15-year civil war, 1975-1990, taking some 200,000 lives. There are ongoing Israeli incursions and bombings. How did a town this nice, filled with such fun and loving people, tear itself and each other apart such a short while ago? In Pretoria I could feel the animosity left by apartheid a decade after it was officially ended; you could cut racism in the air with a knife. I didn’t feel that here.

There’s much more to learn. Next time. After all, Lebanon is within reach, a place to return to.

Meantime, here are some websites with background.

http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/320/324/324.2/musa-sadr/

http://countrystudies.us/lebanon/70.htm

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=826#

1 comment:

  1. I totaly enjoyed this article
    may be bcoz i love lebanon , beirut , fairuz ..

    thank u

    ReplyDelete