Some of you have asked why I haven’t been writing this blog as frequently as I did last year. The answer is simple: I’ve gone native. I am spending my evenings in restaurants and bars, walking on the corniche, and more recently, going to the theater. Now that I have a track record of returning here I am being invited into people’s lives. This is the benefit of depth over breadth in travel.
The Beirutis are such a late night crowd that I’m embarrassed by my hometown’s boast that IT is the “city that never sleeps”. New Yorkers are infants in need of a nap compared to Beirutis. With my daughter coming to visit in a few days I started looking at musical events to take her to – performances routinely start at 10pm!
One of the performances I want to take my daughter to is an Egyptian burlesque show that is very popular here – it harkens back to the 1950s when camp cross-dressing was considered harmless fun. This week I listened to a Hakawati, a traditional storyteller, describe a beautiful woman to his mainly Syrian audience and when he got to her breasts, he said: “About that, there is censorship”. “No! No!” cried out his audience, “There is no censorship in Lebanon!” (True enough – it’s why the press often has its Middle Eastern bureaus here.) So, the Hakawati smiled slyly and said that a man would have to jump to get from one breast to another.
Apparently, ISIS thinks we’re having too much fun here. Recently there have been reports that ISIS is going to declare Lebanon an Islamic emirate. The Lebanese are responding the same way the Italians have since ISIS told them they were coming to Rome: “Good luck with the traffic!”, “Plan around the strikes!”, “We’ll have wine waiting for you!”.
I think the very chic Lebanese women would simply pound ISIS to death with their high heeled shoes.
ISIS is in the mountains of the far north of Lebanon and has been targeting Hezbollah towns. On the whole, though, the Beirutis don’t seem too worried about ISIS. Construction is going on all over the city. There’s a steep mountain range and an exposed valley between where ISIS is and Beirut. I think ISIS would have to develop a navy to get here.
To be on the safe side, though, I am encouraging a shift from bar to bistro for our drinking. If ISIS decides to declare Lebanon an emirate they are going to have to do something to show they’re serious and a bomb is as good a calling card as any.
In the meantime, though, the clear and present danger in Lebanon is food safety. With the health ministry ramping up inspections it has become a scandal how filthy the slaughterhouses are and how the spotty refrigeration is for foodstuffs. Even staying away from meat and fish is not enough — the supermarket I use was shutdown for a day last month for spoiled cheese. Never mind the expiration dates on packaged products.
I mean, what will we eat at Happy Hour?
goingfortheguttural 