Beirut

First, some vitals on Beirut: It’s the capitol of Lebanon and has about 1.3 million people in it, so it’s about the size of Philadelphia or Phoenix. Beirut is on Lebanon’s west coast which puts it on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The city is built on a point of land that sticks out into the sea and is surrounded by water on two sides. The city is mainly urban with hardly any green spaces or parks. The sea front in Beirut is nice with a road that runs right along the water, appropriately named The Corniche. The Corniche has a wide tiled sidewalk that is on top of a sea wall and overlooks the rocky shore below. It’s more like San Francisco’s water front than Los Angeles’ beaches. The road is lined with expensive hotels, restaurants, beach clubs and a dusty little amusement park called Luna Park. Amy and I took our lives into our own hands one afternoon and rode the old rickety Ferris wheel. Up top it was a great view if you could stop looking at the loose hanging wires and the twist ties that held mechanical parts together. As you travel inland from the coast, the terrain rises into a hilly landscape which eventually gives way to a mountain range with 6,000+ peaks. You can see these snow capped peaks from the city on a clear day.
Amy’s apartment is about a quarter mile from the water, though the view is blocked by larger buildings. The apartment is also about 200 yards from the campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB). The campus of AUB is beautiful and when you’re on it you could easily think you are at some lush New England college campus. It’s probably the only place in Beirut where there is grass and a park-like setting. Just for clarification, AUB is not affiliated with the American University in Washington, DC, nor is it affiliated with the American government in any way. It’s a private college that was started by an American missionary who was here in the late 1800s. It has an office in New York City but most of the faculty is Lebanese. There are a handful of Americans and Europeans that teach there as well. 50% of the students are Lebanese, 25% are from elsewhere in the Middle East and the rest are from other places in the world. There are a few American and Canadian students floating around in there, too. AUB is considered one of the best schools in the Middle East and its medical school and hospital are considered the top in the Middle East. The apartment Amy lives in is about 100 yards from the emergency room which may seem comforting in case I cut my finger on a can of hummus but the ongoing sound of ambulances coming and going wipes out any of the novelty of it. More on the apartment later.
Beirut used to be known as “the Paris of the Middle East”. Many Europeans would come here to vacation in the middle part of the 20th century. Then in 1975, as you may or may not know, Lebanon had a civil war that lasted 15 years until about 1990. During that time Israel invaded the southern part of Lebanon, Syria invaded the north and in 1983 a truck bomb blew up and killed a few hundred American soldiers that were stationed over here. Also, many of the University’s professors and their president were dragged out and assassinated. Meanwhile the war raged on and destroyed most of the buildings in downtown Beirut. My buddy Rob was stationed on a US Navy ship off of Beirut’s coast in the mid 80s and watched the sky light up every night as the shelling and bombing crushed the city. Ask Rob to tell you a story about why he was always running out of socks on that ship.
Since the end of the civil war, much construction and rebuilding has gone on and is still taking place. The greater downtown area has been completely rebuilt and new high rises are popping up every year. In the Beirut airport there’s a large photographic exhibit that juxtaposes photos of what the city looked like after the civil war compared with photos of what it looks like now. The comparison is shocking. I’m told that Beirutis don’t like to talk about the war and I don’t blame them. While the downtown area is all shiny and new, there are still buildings around Beirut with bullet holes in them. Predominantly in the skyline near downtown still stands the Holiday Inn, a 20 something story husk of a hotel that has 2 foot in diameter holes punched through its walls. So much for “Staying Smart”. Since the war, tourists and business has returned to Beirut. A lot of them are wealthy business people from the Gulf States that come to Lebanon in the summer to escape the heat by heading up into Beirut’s mountains. They also come here so they can vacation and drink booze which is prohibited in some areas of the Middle East.
While the reconstruction of the downtown area is remarkable, it also has received a lot of criticism about its design. The new buildings in the heart of downtown are now all high end, super expensive, fashion based stores for things like clothing, shoes and jewelry. There are no theaters or opera or any large venue meeting spaces, just high end consumerism and expensive restaurants. Also, this newly built commercial zone has the parliament building right in the middle of it, so, all the roads are closed to car traffic, which is nice if you’re a pedestrian, which I am, but there are tons of soldiers and guards all over the place and anytime parliament does anything, the whole of downtown gets shut down for the day. Obviously someone wasn’t thinking when they laid this one out. That being said, it is a nice open area that is a relief from the traffic-choked, narrow-one way streets of the rest of the city.
While there’s a lot of construction going on around town (it’s really noisy here) there is a lot of Beirut that looks like time stopped that afternoon back in 1975 when the war broke out. Many of the store fronts and apartment buildings are old and worn and in desperate need of a fix up.
Beirut is similar in many ways to a lot of cities in the US and Europe now. It is a modern, cosmopolitan city with more people wearing designer clothing and high heel shoes, than head scarves and robes. Like New York City, every neighborhood has pretty much what most US cities have: restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies and video rental stores. There’s a big mall on the other side of town but for the most part all the shops in town are small businesses and deal in one specific thing, like the US used to have before the Supermarket and Wal-Mart’s came into being. For instance, when I walk to the Laundromat, I pass a shop that sells only cheese, another which sells only bread, another that sells only flowers and another that is a butcher. There is a grocery store in the neighborhood, but it’s like a local market in New York City, not a big, get everything you want type of store. You can get meat, vegetables, canned goods and cleaning supplies there but you can’t get aspirin or spray paint or toys. Beirut, sadly, also has the American fast food chains: KFC, McDonald’s and even Hardees’s. I hadn’t seen a Hardees’s in years. I think the last time was in West Virginia about 15 years ago and their burgers tasted like saw dust and coal. There are also some other chains here like TGI Fridays and Starbucks.
The cost of living is close to that in the US. A one bedroom apartment could run you $1,000 and a meal at a restaurant will run you about $20-$30. There is an organic food market that takes place every Saturday in downtown with loads of vegetables, honey and breads, all from the local area. There’s still a lot of farming that takes place right outside the city limits.
A really interesting thing about Beirut is that there is not really any petty crime here. The streets are, for the most part, safe, even for woman to walk alone and even at night. Oh, civil war could break out at any minute but you can rest easy knowing no ones gonna pinch the wallet out of your cold dead fingers.
Most of the streets in Beirut are narrow, one way streets. This, of course doesn’t mean that anybody’s going to go in one direction. You really have to look both ways because at any minute someone could be traveling the wrong way down a one way street. Another interesting thing is that there are a lot of really expensive cars in Beirut, like brand new Mercedes, Porches, BMWs and Jaguars. You would have to be in LA or NYC to see this many new, high end cars. Also, because traffic is so bad here, a lot of people have installed custom horns in their cars, including police sirens. You’ll hear a police siren going off nearby and look to see that it’s coming from a brand new Ford SUV with a businessman in it.
While there are restaurants that serve food from other parts of the world, like sushi or pasta, the majority of the restaurants serve what we usually think of as Middle Eastern food. A large variety of shish-kebabs are at most restaurants and there’s always hummus around. The grocery store has about 8 different types of fresh olives. I’ve been eating hummus and olives like a goat. One drawback about the restaurants here is that smoking is allowed everywhere, so many is the time you’re half way through your meal when the woman with the $500 purse at the next table lights up. Another popular smoking thing here is the nargileh, or hookah pipe. It’s not uncommon to see people sitting at sidewalk cafés puffing on a hookah. The tobacco they use is mixed with fruit and gives off an interestingly pleasant smell. I haven’t tried one yet for fear of waking up in Alice’s Wonderland.
More about the apartment now. Amy’s place is really nice, though it has some draw backs. It’s a good sized one bedroom with a full kitchen. It’s fully furnished and comes with internet and cable. The water is supposed to be filtered but my intestines ain’t buyin’ it. The bugs from India don’t want any more competition. I’m not taking any chances and drink bottled water. Amy has one of those big office bubbler tanks. There’s a little nasty back patio area that gets no use because there’s construction taking place right next to it and the workers like to stare. Amy gets stared at quite a bit in Beirut. Fortunately, I look like Klinger from MASH and fit in a little better. The apartment is on the ground floor of an office building so during the day there’s a lot of foot traffic from people going to and from work. Also, anytime anyone wants to get into the building’s security gate they ring Amy’s buzzer. Another huge draw back about the apartment is that she’s not supposed to have any guests and it’s against Lebanese law for men and woman to cohabitate out of wedlock. So I have to kind of sneak in and out. I think most of the maintenance guys and residents that live upstairs in the building probably think we’re married, but anytime anyone from the housing department comes by I’m either hiding in the bathroom or sneaking out the back door. It’s really exciting…for about a day.
A sad aspect of life in Beirut is that almost everyone has a house maid from Sri Lanka or the Philippines. These maids are nearly all woman and a lot of them are abused. Some of the abuses range from physical beatings to being locked in a room. There’s a case that was recently settled where the husband and wife who hired a maid to live with them and clean their apartment did not let the maid leave the apartment for over 8 years. When they would leave for work, they’d lock the maid inside. Also, they barely fed her and did not pay her for 8 years. Hmm, sounds like slavery to me. Lebanon does have labor laws but none of them apply to foreign workers even if they are here legally. The case was settled in court by having the hiring couple pay the maid what they owed her and that was it. No penalty, no jail time. It’s strange because only about 25% of Lebanese women work, and everyone lives in an apartment, not houses. Makes you wonder why they need a maid in the first place. Anytime you see a Lebanese mother with little kids out on the street they’re accompanied by a Sri Lankan or Pilipino maid. There are tons of agencies in Beirut that set up these arrangements. Amy has her own maid and cook now but they’re not from Sri Lanka, he’s actually a white guy from Alaska.