Friends for Maggie?

As you may have noticed, I've been spending a lot of time with old people. I use the word 'old' loosely, meaning anyone over the age of... 27 maybe. It hasn't really bothered me so much, especially since they have been family members primarily, but it worries my cousin Chantal to no end that I have not spent time with the youth of Beirut. Thus, on Wednesday I was set up to spend an evening with her colleague's 22 year old son, Ziad. Being forced to spend time with anyone you don't know can be awkward, especially when parents are the driving force behind the arrangement. I felt a little like the socially inept cousin who can't get a date for the prom, but all in all it wasn't that bad.

I met him at Chantal's office, with his mom and my cousin excited enough for the two of us. We got into his car and started driving around the city. At first, I assumed, naively I suppose, that he had some ultimate destination in mind, and we made easy conversation as he drove. I started to recognize the buildings and the neighborhood and it appeared that we were making laps around downtown Beirut-- finally he asked me if there was anywhere that I wanted to go. I assured him I had no idea what there was to do, that I hadn't gone out at night yet and I would be happy with anything. He assured me we could do anything I want, I need only to say it. After a little back and forth I realized he really had no idea what to do with me. Great. We walked around downtown a little bit, where expensive designer boutiques and cafes line the pedestrian streets. There are engraved footsteps in the sidewalk marking the last steps former Prime Minister Hariri took before he was assassinated in 2005, and we could see the mosque built in his honor lit up in the background. Then we returned to the car and continued driving. For at leaaaast 2 hours.

In the meantime we had fairly good conversation-- he is a business student who never does school work and says the only things to do in Beirut are go out to eat and go clubbing. "Did you know we have clubs that are open 24 hours a day?" I asked him if he had any other interests outside of school-- yes, clubbing, also he used to play basketball, but then girls took up too much time. Ok. Eventually he asked if I would be interested in a movie, yes of course! We parked the car and waited for his friend to pick us up. She was warm, friendly and very talkative, named Laili, studying journalism. She had just finished her first interview, with a Shi'i Muslim who belongs to a particular sect that celebrates some kind of event in their religion by cutting their scalp with razors and wearing white cloth to soak the blood. Her analysis? "People who do this are very stupid."

We met up with Laili's brother, Hamoud, and his girlfriend Maia, and followed their car to the cinema, located in a shopping mall in the neighborhood Achrafiyeh. We arrived at 830, 30 minutes after the last movie had started, so we opted for dinner instead. It was my first experience eating out at a restaurant, and ultimately I was grateful that I am so lucky to have such good cooks and a home to stay in, so I don't have to spend all my money eating out (Chantal's friend Michel explained to me that there was a difference between Lebanese food at home and Lebanese restaurants. Restaurants only serve mezze, small appetizer-style dishes, kabobs and sandwiches, whereas at home you get the real thing). There is nearly every genre and chain of restaurants here: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, fast food/American (Ziad was surprised to hear that there was such thing as American cuisine outside of fast food). We ate at a Lebanese restaurant called "Cafe Blanc." Only 3 of us ordered food and Hamoud, who hadn't ordered anything, picked up the check. Of course I pulled out my wallet to pay and was met with wide-eyed looks from all around the table and was forced to put it away.

For the most part, they spoke in Arabic together and I had small side conversations in English with the people near me. Hamoud's friend, Sam, asked me how I feel about Obama. They were surprised to hear that most Americans are glad to see Bush go-- which surprised me in turn. Sam said he was reserving his opinions on Obama for when there was some clear evidence of his political policy, since he hadn't been overt about them during his campaign. This has been a common theme with most Lebanese I've talked to about our new president and in general I think it is because they are most concerned with US political policy toward Gaza, and they are skeptical that the US will ever do anything for the Palestinian people against their Israeli allies.

We left the restaurant around 10 and drove back to Laili's apartment to drop her off. On the way we noticed cars pulled over on the side of the highway and Ziad pulled over to join them. We got out of the car and as we followed the commotion and looked over the bridge, we saw an overturned car on the road below. Looking further along the bridge that we stood on there was a gaping hole in the rail where the car had apparently driven through and flipped over, landing in the highway below. Thankfully it didn't seem as if it had struck any other cars. All along the side of the highway, cars had pulled over with their hazard lights on and everyone watched the activity. It was rubbernecking like I'd never seen it before.

Once we arrived at her apartment, we left her car there and joined Hamoud in his car so he could drive me home. In the car we had a pretty good conversation; Hamoud had barely spoken to me during dinner but now he loosened up a little and asked me many questions about studying Arabic and told me about Lebanon and Beirut. When I had told Leili and Ziad earlier that I was planning to study in Damascus, they responded with the usual confusion. To them, Syria was "ugly," the people were "dirty," there was no nightlife and no reason to go there. Hamoud was a little more reasonable and once we talked out why I was interested in studying there, he agreed with me for the most part. It has been interesting bringing up this subject with the Lebanese here, because they don't understand why I am majoring in Arabic in the first place (which is interesting because its not appealing to them at all and it doesn't tell them anything more about my academic interests; obviously I want to learn Arabic, I'm in the Middle East, my family is from here. So what else?), why I wouldn't pick something that actually gave me a career ("Don't you want to add business or some other program to that? Can't you double major?"), and why I would go to Damascus, of all places. We also talked about the Francophile Lebanese-- Hamoud said there was no reason why he would ever want to travel or work in the US, because "what is there to learn there? In Europe there is history and culture....what is there in the US?" Lebanon gets its French leanings from being under French occupation after WWI; some Lebanese (at the time, maybe now) would have preferred to remain part of Europe than the Arab world. A lot of people here attended French schools, travel there yearly, moved there during the war, etc.

Another interesting conversation we had was about men in America. Earlier, Ziad had asked me if it was true "what you hear about gangs and gangsters in America." Uhhh what do you mean by that? I told him of course they exist, but only in certain parts of certain cities, and they certainly weren't prevalent in the culture, though they have their own subculture, and it was likely misrepresented in whatever representation he saw of it in Lebanon. Hamoud similarly asked me if it was true that all American men are "assholes." I didn't know how to respond to that. Ziad brought up the gang question again and Hamoud referred to college movies where the big guy beats up on the little guy and is respected for it. The only thing I could think of was the stereotypical frat/jock and no of course not all men are like that. He said it makes him angry to see that depicted in movies-- I think he is watching the wrong movies.

Hamoud also asked me what I thought so far about Lebanese women. I wasn't really sure how to respond. "You know, you will never see them without makeup, big hair, high heels, even at 830 in the morning! they go to class dressed like they just left the club..." Ahh yes, I think American women are a little bit more casual, for better or for worse, though you can find a little bit of everything there.

Anyway, apparently they had never been to Jal El-Dib before, probably because it is outside of Christian East Beirut and Muslims don't usually go out there, so we continued to drive on the autostradt until I realized that we were halfway to the next city, Jounieh, and asked if we had gone too far. "We never use navigation systems or maps in Lebanon, I know every street in Beirut, but I've never been to Jal El-Dib." Somehow I managed to navigate the neighborhood (yes I was very proud of myself) and was home by 1130. So much driving, so little action. But in the end I was still appreciative that they took me along and it was good to learn a little about the youth in Beirut.

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The following day (Thursday) Chantal called me from work to see if I would want to go an Arab play with her and a few friends, though I wouldn't understand most of it. Of course! I took a taxi to her office and she asked me how my previous night had been. I explained and she was shocked. I told her it wasn't that bad, but still she was disappointed: "They have nothing better to do than drive around the city in circles at night? They have no interests?? When we were their age, we were wild!" Unfortunately, the play was sold out, so we went to her friend's house instead ("Maggie, I am sorry but you will have to spend another night with old people." Really, I don't mind.) She warned me in advance that the host of the evening, Akram, loved to put on film nights, but he was too much of an intellectual and they were often difficult to get through (and he difficult to watch them with). Akram is a professor at AUB in literature, and a writer himself. I promised I was up for the intellectual challenege, it would be a nice change from the night before.

We picked up her friend Jenna on the way, who is also a nurse but teaches dance therapy and is also involved in drama. Once she found out I was studying formal arabic, she pledged to speak to me only in fus'ha for the car ride over, so we commenced to speak (or I tried to speak) in the elegantly constructed sentences that no one ever uses.

Akram and his overly energetic dog met us at the door-- it is somewhat rare to see dogs in Beirut, I still haven't seen one outdoors (when I was at Selim's apartment a few days earlier he had a beautiful tall blonde dog who bounded about the house, I commented it must be tough to be inside all day and he said, well, he has the balcony). Chantal asked for some recommendations about what I should do and see, and lamented about the youth today. Akram agreed, both as a professor and a father, as his daughter is my age and he can't get her to take interest in anything beyond going out. Chantal suggested she might take me along somewhere... and so it continues. Though, I did meet her when she came home and she seemed significantly more down to earth than the others, and she promised to make some plans after her architecture final was finished on Tuesday.

The movie for the evening was based on a James Joyce short story called "The Dead." His friends groaned and cried out for something more entertaining. He replied, "To me, this is the height of action." There was an extended debate about which restaurant to order in from, finally they agreed to eat home-cooked after the movie was over. Chantal's worries about me spending too much time with old people were in vain-- regardless of age I would prefer to spend time with people I can relate to. I could imagine having some of the same conversations they had with my own group of friends, and they seem to have a lot of fun together, planning weekends out, dinners at home and going out to plays and films.

The movie, faithful to the 20 page short story to the word, was slow and difficult for the others to hear the Irish accent. But the last scene tied together the entire film with all its recurring themes (or machines, as Akram called them), both intellectual and aesthetic. Over dinner, which Akram had prepared himself, conversation erupted into a massive argument, which I stayed out of, on whether or not one can "interpret" any work of art. Jenna, the dancer/drama teacher, pleaded yes, while Akram firmly argued that there is no such thing as interpretation, only analysis of structural elements, and that it was impossible to ever determine what the author "means" or is "trying to say." I thought Akram was overlooking the value of art as a form of expression, but again, found no method of entry into the heated conversation. Ultimately, the difference in opinion was boiled down to a mistranslation of the word "interpretation" into English from French, since they were all speaking in their third language, for my benefit.

The conversation turned to politics when Jenna asked me what the opinion of the American people is on the situation in Gaza. I told her it was difficult for me to say, since it began when I was at home, rather than surrounded by people at school and then of course I came to Lebanon. However, I thought that speaking for myself, and those whose opinion I am aware of, were sympathetic to the Palestinians and waited upon the regime change so it would not be Bush acting in the name of the American people. Around the table, they all expressed doubt that the US would ever come to the rescue of the Palestinians against their own longtime ally. They argued about whether or not the US president was a puppet for the political elite, and how the president's position of power had changed since Nixon and LBJ had abused their power and kept their political actions hidden from the people. I decided they were raining on our DC parade and chose to forego cynicism for optimism, just this once.

For dinner (served by the housekeeper but made by Akram), we had lentil soup, vegetable soup, spinach side dish, kibbe, salad, breads, beans & snowpeas in a red sauce, rice. And for dessert, three kinds of jam: fig, apricot and quince. Also carob molasses, which I didn't like but is a favorite here-- the tree of which I saw for the first time while hiking last weekend. Apparently all the seeds on a carob tree are equal in weight, without fail, and as a result it was used as a weight of measure-- the carat. In fact, now that I am looking the word up in the dictionary to make sure I spelt it correctly, the word actually derives from the Greek word keration, meaning "fruit of the carob." [side note: I also saw a pepper tree for the first time. Who knew that peppercorns grew on trees?!]