Beirut and Birthdays

Hello all,

Mr A and I have been travelling again, hence the gap in blog posts, spending last weekend in Lebanon. Mr A’s willingness to travel to Lebanon despite the FCO advising against all but essential travel is explained by our companions. We were meeting some friends who live in Khartoum, and Mr A says spending a weekend in Beirut is essential if you live in Sudan and it’s your birthday, so therefore we should join in the fun. And it was a lot of fun.

We love visiting Levantine cities for the opportunity to actually walk places, seeing other people who also walk, and streets with human scale buildings on them. Beirut did not disappoint. It’s a crazy city – an incredible mixture of bombed-out apartment buildings and extremely smart restaurants, decrepit ornate mansions and ugly underpasses.

Despite (or perhaps because of) a history of instability, the Lebanese are committed to doing business, having fun and looking good. We were staying in a hotel overlooking the sea with a rooftop bar and pool which was so achingly trendy (or at least thought it was) that we didn’t dare go for a swim surrounded by girls and boys 10 years younger and at least 4 stone lighter. The pounding dance music at 2pm didn’t make it the most relaxing place anyway. When we tried to go there for pre- or post- dinner drinks we had to run the gauntlet of the huge (passive-aggressive) bouncers. The hotel also overlooked buildings destroyed by the bomb that killed Hariri in 2005 and still haven’t been refurbished.

Mr A wanted to go for a drink overlooking Pigeon Rocks on the first afternoon. We decided to walk there, after all it was cooler than Doha. Mr A knew where to go so there was no need to take a map. We set off, stopped to buy Mr A some flip-flops (somehow living in hot countries has little impact – everywhere he goes, he packs for an autumnal weekend in Yorkshire), then asked someone for directions. They sent us in the opposite direction. We asked someone again, they sent us back the way we came. So it came to pass that we walked miles along the corniche, in temperatures that were definitely lower than Doha but still pretty warm, extremely humid, having not eaten or drunk anything for 8 hours and having had 3 hours sleep the previous night. When we came to (what seemed like) a large hill I had a sense of humour failure and Mr A hurriedly hailed a taxi which drove us the final 100m of the way. Good day for the taxi driver. Bad day for sweat patches. We eventually found ourselves a table on the top of the cliffs, ordered a lot of water and settled in for the night.

The next couple of days whirled past in a frenzy of eating, walking, sweating, drinking and hangovers. We were driven to Byblos by Abdul Kareem whose car had speed, no seatbelts, no speedometer, and a lot of Arabic morality for Mr A (‘Nancy Ajram (the Arab equivalent of Beyonce) is a whore’) where we wandered around old ruins and a little port and stopped for lunch (sitting outside, with wine, with parma ham – as you know, this ticks ALL the boxes). It rained, but we didn’t mind, and we coped with the pornographic towels for sale, and we admired how very Mediterranean all the buildings and churches were.

To celebrate F’s birthday we went to a delightful, delicious restaurant in an old house (thank you Richard for the tip) overlooking the sea, ate too much, drank cocktails and thought about why we lived in Khartoum and Doha, not Beirut. It then transpired that almost everyone we knew from Damascus (and some we didn’t but have moved there since) were in a nightclub just across town.

One taxi ride later, we were dancing to Footloose and drinking Veuve Clicquot with friends we hadn’t seen for 7 months in BO18 (‘be over 18’ – see what they’ve done there?), surrounded by Lebanese young things dancing on the bar in hot pants.

I’m only gutted that we didn’t meet up with the Damascus friends the next night when they went to another extraordinary club: ‘laid out like a Roman forum with a mafia boss on each side, distinguishable by having more gold and chest hair than his crew. When someone ordered a magnum of champagne (which happened more than you would have imagined), Carmina Burana came on and the waiters processed from the bar with the Magnum held aloft as fire-crackers exploded from the sides of the bottle, whilst the Mafioso stood up to Nazi-salute the bottle as it went past’. Next visit to Beirut, we’re there…..

The next day Mr A was determined to go to Baalbek (more old stuff, ruins etc, the BIGGEST COLUMN IN THE WORLD). We weren’t sure our hangovers could take it, so he grumped for a while, before deciding that the boys would do roman stuff, whilst the girls did sleeping, pottering, chatting and drinking of tea. Compromise, the basis of all good marriages.

Our subsequent wandering taught us two things. 1: Walking around Beirut at 2pm will make you sweat and your hair frizz, but this will not stop waiters flirting with you. 2: You will see a girl with a post-nose-job plaster on her face every 10 minutes.

Finally, a quick tour around the National Museum (beautiful building, beautiful things, beautifully displayed) and we were off to the airport.

Mildly perturbed by our flight not being displayed on the screens, we soldiered through security to the desk where the grumbles of fellow passengers told us the plane had died (not the technical term) and another one wouldn’t arrive for 8 hours. Back to Beirut we went (at half the price of our first airport taxi, taxi-drivers = bunch of crooks) to find Damascus friends nursing hangovers in an artsy café. 3 hours, 1 goats cheese salad, 1 cranberry juice, and 1 lovely-chat-with-ANOTHER-Damascus-friend-who-was-in-Beirut-for-the-day and we were significantly less bothered by the delay. Another 2 hours later, after sunset beers by an infinity pool on the top of a hotel overlooking the sea, we thought the delay was actually really rather a good thing.

Whilst sipping our drinks a bride and groom came up to the pool to have their wedding photos. I have never seen someone pout so much in my entire life, nor wedding photos that necessitate a crew of six and industrial lighting.

Then we passed a gallery showing paintings of women recovering from plastic surgery, and a tiger-themed monster truck parked outside. THAT is Lebanon.

When we eventually got on the plane to Doha, I was one of only two women surrounded by Asian workers heading to the Gulf. One old gent took a shine to me and I discovered there is nothing more perturbing than falling asleep (repeatedly) during a 3 hour flight when every time you wake a man is staring at your dribble, and boobs. Eventually I confronted him and he claimed to be looking at the view. Convenient. Actually these flights break my heart - the man sitting next to Mr A had just been in Nepal for a month. He won’t get another holiday for 2 years. Others have obviously never flown before and run between the various gates and security checks because they’re so worried they’re going to get left behind. There have been stories of migrant workers arriving at Doha airport with no money, food, water, English or Arabic and no-one collecting them for 24 hours. Anyway, our optimism didn’t quite carry us through to arriving back at our flat at 5am, Mr A needing to do some work before going to bed, and needing to be at the office at 8am.

Since then we have been busy drinking Pimms in swimming pools with Ambassadors, eating home-baked cookies with American friends and working like dogs. Being British in Qatar when a Qatari boy died in Hastings amidst violence from a gang of hoodies this week is uncomfortable, and deeply upsetting.

This weekend will be all about recovery from Lebanese craziness, watching ER and West Wing, and being cooked quail by some friends. That’s what the frozen-poultry section of the supermarket is all about. We’ll also be re-hanging every single picture in our flat which we’ve just paid some men to hang wonky. Of course rather than pointing out the small deficits in their workmanship at the time, I plied them with glasses of cold water, ensured the aircon was on in case they were too hot, and thanked them effusively for their hard work. Must work on the employer/employee relationship.

Until next time….

Xx

London and Lamborghinis

There’s nothing like leaving Doha to make you appreciate it a little more upon return. When we first arrived someone advised us that the way to enjoy Qatar was to leave it regularly and they were right. After almost 3 weeks in Europe we know that London has always been home, and really it still is, but for now Doha is doing just fine.

We were really dreading the August heat/humidity double whammy which everyone has been warning us about, at every opportunity, since forever. Disembarking the plane, we were struck by the feeling of having stepped in to a sauna-hairdryer amalgam. The humidity is about 98% during the day and it is pretty damn damp but the heat isn’t much of an issue. When you step outside your skin is immediately sticky but it isn’t sweat, it’s just that you are literally condensing. Weird. People with glasses really suffer – they steam up within seconds. After a while you stop noticing all this quite so much and as long as you mostly stay in an air conditioned space, no troubs.

We returned to a spotless flat thanks to friends who had been staying in our absence. They had also borrowed our cars, which meant they were the cleanest they’ve been since we bought them. They’ve now left Qatar for good which is exciting for them, a tragedy for us, and something that I think we have to get used to while living in a country with such a transient workforce. We remembered the joys of having our own bathroom (and three spare should we need them), a proper double bed, no plane noise/police sirens to disturb our sleep, and a swimming pool in the building. We get dressed knowing what the weather is going to be, with no risk of rain, and in the knowledge that there are definitely clean pants available. Since everyone who can has left Doha this month, we drive places knowing there won’t be any traffic and we don’t have to charge our Oystercard. And we got from the airport to our flat in 15 minutes. To top it all, as we walked in the door at 6.30am we found our windows being cleaned for the first time in over 10 months, so life felt good.

Being back in Europe did make us realise that it is almost impossible for us to escape the Arab world these days. Both London and Paris are big cities with lots of Arab influences and thousands of Arabs in the summer months. In Hyde Park we overheard Gulfi Arabic conversations and watched ladies in abayas attempting to control a pedalo on the Serpentine.

Then headed to South Kensington where a Lamborghini cruised past with a Qatari numberplate. Ah yes, getting a sports car shipped over from the Middle East for the summer holiday – no carbon emissions issues there...

In Paris, we admired Arabic art in the Pompidou and then an Arab lady sat on my camera lens cap whilst demanding crab mousse.

We visited the Institut du Monde Arab (okay, admittedly we didn’t happen upon this one), drank mint tea and admired a stunning building.

Then, finally as we were buying some last-minute CDs at Heathrow, the 13 year old in front of us in the queue in HMV paid for a DVD with a £50 note (one of many in his pristine leather wallet). There is no way he was anything other than a Gulfi or a very well-dressed thief. We spent virtually the entire holiday trying to spot potential Qataris in mufti – the brand new jeans and crisply ironed T-shirts are a giveaway. It is easier than you would think – almost as easy as being able to spot a Syrian from miles away by his very shiny, pointy, seventies shoes.

So, some general observations made on holiday in England and France:

• If you try you can eat pork in almost every meal, especially in France. You can almost have a glass of wine or beer with every lunch you eat, but combined with the heavy intake of pig products this is bound to lead to mid-afternoon sleepiness and the inevitable nap. In an effort to rejuvenate (and slim) ourselves on our return, I have been enforcing a mini-detox. Mr A hasn’t drunk alcohol or eaten red meat for 2 days, which he is inordinately proud of.

• Newsagents in the UK are full of women’s breasts. Has this always been the case, or have I become a prude?

• Just because it’s mid-summer doesn’t mean it won’t rain frequently, and just because Dieppe is in Northern Europe doesn’t mean you won’t be caught in a tropical monsoon which makes walking home impossible. When you haven’t seen rain for over 6 months, these things are interesting and mildly enjoyable, rather than incredibly annoying.

• Pubs are brilliant things, especially without people smoking in them. As are spritzers. But if you drink white-wine spritzers in pubs every night for a week, the spritzer starts to lose its appeal.

• Going to weddings of people you really like is a lot of fun, especially when they involve beautiful rural villages, bingo and fireworks. Fun enough to not mind being told ‘there’s always a touch of ethnic about you since you moved away’ by your husband’s extended family.

• When playing bingo it is best to pay attention. Realising just after someone has claimed the prize that you had all the numbers in one block 10 minutes ago is not the way to get ahead.

• Having parties in the garden, surrounded by friends and fairy lights, with loads of food and drink that your parents have paid for is also a lot of fun. Even when a friend’s child falls into the pond, and the first thing your Dad asks is whether the goldfish are okay. Also, parents are funny when they tell you in advance that you must ensure the music is turned off at midnight, but then (at 1am) tell you off for turning Miles Davis down.

• Seeing old friends and family is brilliant, and reminds you that living thousands of miles away is okay because people really don’t change very much. Having supper in gastropubs with friends is truly one of the most enjoyable things you can ever do.

• Some friends (note plural) are so nice that they don’t mind if you turn up to see them at 11pm and stay until 2am, even when they have work the next day.

• Being a landlord is a bit annoying, and even with fantastic tenants you have no control over the plumbing of the flat above you. You also have no control over the size of the flat, which seems to have magically shrunk in the year since we last saw it.

• St Pancras is frigging awesome these days, as is the Eurostar. Travelling between countries on a train, what a novel idea. Having friends living in the centre of Paris is also super and is definitely to be encouraged.

• When one’s husband learns Arabic, it will be to the detriment of any other lingual skills he may once have possessed. As much as he vaunts his ‘beyond GCSE’ proficiency, only Arabic will emerge from his mouth when he tries to order anything in French.

• More random things happen in Europe than they do in Doha. For example, people get married and then decide to have their wedding photos taken on the embankment beside the Seine. Then random hip-hop dudes and afro-ed men walk past, in the background of all the photos. That doesn’t happen in Qatar.

• Europe has cliffs and hills. Naturally occurring places which you can look down from or up to. Great.

• Kew Gardens is amazing. It has lots of trees, green grass and general vegetation. It has a marginally terrifying, beautiful structure which you can climb to appreciate the treetops. Apart from impending vertigo, what could be better?