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