First Impressions

I woke up again, for about the third time on the four-and-a-half hour flight from London to Beirut, to the moon. It was absolutely the only thing in the pitch-black sky. No stars, no city skyline, just the moon. Lucky for me it was my favorite moon, when it’s a day after full, just risen, and that startlingly bright yellow-orange. We were somewhere over the Mediterranean, 20 minutes away.
I scanned the runways for signs of this summer’s bombs but noticed nothing. I had to fill out an entry card stating who I was, why I was there and where I’d be staying. I checked the box next to “Furnished apartment.” The man I had to give my card to asked me where it was. I wasn’t sure. It was my friend Julianne’s friend Dan’s place. He scratched out what I’d written and jotted down “Holiday In” (sic).

The Holiday Inn, which Jules and I passed on the way from the airport, was built just before the 15-year civil war, frequented by journalists (which I’d told the guy in the airport I was) and snipers and had been the target of bombs and bullets from all sides in those days. It’s an uninhabited shell of a building with holes all over it. It was designed to withstand an earthquake and kind of had. I laughed when I saw it and remembered that connection.
The government recently added 6,000 troops to patrol downtown because opposition protesters have been camped outside parliament in tents since the beginning of December. That erupted into violence for three days a week before I arrived. While walking from Jules’ hotel room to Dan’s, we passed about a foot in front of a soldier standing guard to the entrance of what I can only guess is a construction site.

“That’s the closest I’ve ever been to an AK,” I said quietly when we were beyond earshot. Jules laughed. Army guys with guns are good guns, not bad guns, the man who drove us from the airport said when we passed a few and a small tank at a corner.

English is everywhere but slightly broken. Some billboards are in English only, some Arabic only, some both and some French. I took an Arabic lesson in a Starbucks from a guy named Wael, a Lebanese friend of one of Jules’ friends. I’m probably going to hire him as a tutor. I hate not knowing the language.

Jules and I basically just walked around getting some things in order today – meeting with her advisor at school (which didn’t ultimately work), getting converters so we can plug our computers into Lebanese walls, finding a cell phone.

Now I know the rule is to haggle for things in the Middle East, but I was surprised I could haggle (I was 5,000 Lebanese pounds short) for the price of my phone. But that’s Lebanon, I guess. Everything’s kind of fluid. There simply aren’t traffic rules. However many cars abreast can fit down a road is how many lanes there are. “Lanes,” however, incorrectly suggests people stay in some sort of straight line while they drive. The only cars that stop when you try to cross the street are the taxis that have been honking since they saw you to see if you need a ride. You’d think your failure to respond to their honking would suggest you’re just crossing the street. Not the case. They stop, not long enough for you to cross, mind you, piss the people behind them off, and speed off when you say no.

The general cityscape is a hodgepodge. Beautiful stone buildings with ornate balconies that look well maintained and at least 100 years old are sandwiched in between drab, ugly, 6-story blocks resembling ramshackle housing projects. The entrance to my (Dan’s) apartment building is a perpetually darkened 8-foot opening between to some sort of store and a pile of dirt, chunks of concrete and debris before you get to a nice-looking restaurant. Especially at night, it is the last place you’d want to walk into. The door into the place is on the third floor. After you walk in a few feet and up maybe 10 stairs (the landing between the first and second floors), there’s a light switch. There’s another on the second floor and another on the third; actually these are buttons, not switches. The bulbs start on the second floor. The light turns off after 20 seconds. It’s like a race to get to the door in the light.
You can smoke everywhere, which people do, and apparently cigarettes are around $1.30 a pack. I haven’t had to buy rolling tobacco yet. I travel with the essentials.