Arriving in Beirut

After a semi-dramatic departure from NY/CT on Thursday [complete with a last-minute packing effort, a four hour delay on my 10:25 pm flight, a rebooking onto American Airlines, a goose chase from one terminal to the next for the appropriate ticket, a repacking of the bags at the check-in desk due to an overweight bag, a 'random' body search at the security gate and a tearful goodbye to the parents at the gate and another to friends on the phone], the plane finally took off around midnight from JFK and after a quick layover in London, I arrived in Beirut at 8:15 Friday evening to my waiting cousin, Chantal.

Driving home to the apartment that she lives in with her mother, my great-aunt Nagibe, Chantal gave me a quick tour of the city by night. The last time I was in Lebanon was 1997, when I came for Christmas with the rest of my family. We had gotten visas as soon as it was safe to travel after the end of the civil war. I remember my dismay at having to travel on Christmas-- I figured they didn't celebrate the holiday in Lebanon and all I would receive for gifts that year would be maybe a toothbrush (I don't know where I got that idea from, but I was only ten). I also remembered leaving the gate at the airport and seeing huge billboards that said "Ahlan wa Sahlan! Welcome to Lebanon!" next to equally large pictures of the Syrian president. The airport as well as our drive home that night had been marked with soldiers and checkpoints, and the damaging effects of the civil war was evident in the bullet-ridden and bombed-out buildings.

On our drive home that evening, she took me through a narrow downtown street where you could still see the style of old-Beirut buildings, though the lower levels of the buildings had been turned into hip bars and fancy restaurants, attracting nightlife to an area that was otherwise silent. The following day, it was easier to appreciate the changes that had come to the city in the past eleven years. Many buildings remain abandoned and destroyed, including the site of the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in 2005, though a monument to him stands between the two bombed buildings on either side of the street. Some areas of the city have been rebuilt by those who could afford the repairs, trading in 1930s French-influenced architecture for modern skyscrapers and hotels, causing areas of downtown Beirut to look as familiar as any other Western city. Neighborhoods that were formerly bustling downtown areas were abandoned during the war and though they have since been rebuilt in their former style, the activity has moved on to these new neighborhoods in town, areas that some say lack the character and personality of the old Beirut.

By 10 pm, we had arrived at the apartment in Jel El-Dib, a neighborhood just outside of East Beirut, the Christian side of the city. During the civil war the city was divided between the Christian East and the Muslim West along the Green Line, but now the border has come down and people move freely across the autostradt with no checkpoints. At the apartment, my aunt Nagibe was waiting up for us with dinner. We had stuffed eggplants (the size of zucchini, stuffed with meat and rice), salad, Lebanese sweets (mostly filo pastries with nut fillings and syrupy sweetness), fruit and tea made from anise seeds.

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It is only Tuesday and already I am far behind on keeping up with this blog... I will have to spend one day outside exploring and one day inside writing about it.