Beirut notes

Tom is in Cairo at a teacher conference. This weekend I got to go to a conference as well, here in Beirut at the new Beirut Art Center--a beautiful new place in an industrial area, with a spacious gallery, meeting room with outdoor patio, and theater for showing films. The conference, funded by a Swiss foundation, had to do with “landscapes of belonging in the eastern Mediterranean” --a rich topic! I got to hear speakers on Iraqi refugees in Syria, including Kurds who choose to live in the squalor of Palestinian refugee camps so their children don’t have to go to school with other Iraqis, Arab Jews, Turkish Kurds, and Armenians’ memory of catastrophe.

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We have an election coming up here on June 7. Posters of various candidates proliferate, a different guy (they seem to be all men) in each neighborhood. I heard today from an American widow friend whose husband was Lebanese and who has lived here for many years that she got a phone call asking if she would like to see her daughters. One daughter lives in Paris and the other Texas. The caller represented a party that would pay to fly them in for the election! Apparently there are several parties doing this!

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Seen around town:

Too Cute to Shoot (thankfully, a photo studio)

Green Salon

Blue Building

Blue Snack

Visit to real Hell

Adlieh Detention Center: 3 floors underground.

We wait in a line of about 15 people, mostly men, Syrian, Egyptian and Sri Lankans, for about 30 minutes, as a guard records our names and ID card information. “We” are five women, three Ethiopian and two American. We are here to visit Tizita, an Ethiopian migrant domestic worker. Here is all I know of her story: as a result of months of working next to a very loud generator, she lost hearing in one ear. There must be more to the story. Worried about her hearing she escaped her employer, who had taken her passport from her on arrival (and apparently was unconcerned about her health), and sought medical care at the Ethiopian Embassy. The Embassy, seeing that she was under contract to the employer and had left, turned her in to the police, who brought her to the Detention Center. One of the people in our group had spent five years here herself! We marvel at her courage, both for staying in Lebanon after her release, and for returning to Adlieh in support of a countrywoman.

People in line have brought large bags with water, tissues, telephone cards, biscuits, gum. Some Lebanese citizens arrive and pass to the front of the line. As Americans we could do the same, but choose to remain, wanting the full experience on our first visit here, and not wanting to make other people wait longer.

Sandra calls it Modern Day Slavery. The “Mister” and the “Madame” act as owners, and the maids have no rights. There are more than 100 migrant domestic workers in this detention center, 120 in two other prisons, and an unknown number in three more. Undergound shelters house others without the means to go home.

The guard who checks our bags has a heart, treats people as human. This is notable. This place is right on a main road, on a traffic circle, just blocks from the national museum, but off the grid, out of the daylight.

Visitors are allowed in two days a week. 15 of us are allowed in at a time, for about 10 minutes. We go down just one floor. Those lucky prisoners we have come to visit ascend to meet us. They file in and peer through the metal mesh, cupping their hands around their eyes to try to find familiar faces. It is hard to see; the holes are 1/8” and a piece of its metal frame is right at eye level.
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Our lady, Tizita, arrives. She thanks us strangers who have come at the request of her scared and worried friends, talks to them, cries, and at the end accepts the things they have brought through the square foot door in the metal grid wall.

Goodbye Tizita. Will you be here 5 years too? In order to leave she needs a plane ticket, which, amazingly, she has, she needs $300 to pay her employer, who is suing her for breach of contract, and $200 more for the employment agency. And someone to run all the paperwork through the bureaucracy. Sandra promises to call the one NGO that formally helps these women, but three days later no one has returned her calls.

Snowshoeing the cedars!

Tom got to go snowshoeing up at the cedars (in northern Lebanon) on Sunday.

Refugee kids

At first our Thursday group of volunteers just spent time reading books with kids in the refugee camp. It was hard to find books that didn’t have too many pictures or subjects that were completely alien to life in the camp: houses, grass, parks, zoos, or even igloos. Now we have moved on from books and I spend time dreaming up lessons plans, perusing the internet for ESL games, and having similar problems. A number of activities involve using objects in the classroom--maps, clocks, even books--there are none of these.

Someone took a photo of one activity I found that was a hit” “My Grandmother (Tata) is going on a trip and in her suitcase she is bringing something beginning with letter A”, B, C. etc.

Trip to hell, a wedding and a funeral

Hell’s Valley (Wadi Jhennam), so called because from the top it looks like you can see into the bowels of the earth. It is around 200 meters (650 feet) deep and the valley walls are very steep. A river runs through it, with falls this time of year. It is some of the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen here.


At left are flowering peach trees in the valley. And Tom heading down the trail.

A smiling old man (our guide says he is poor in life but rich in heart) offers the entire group tea.

The views are stunning. This is probably the most remote hike we’ve been on, and one of the longest at 13 km (8 miles). We drove along the coast north all the way past Tripoli (and Nahr el Bared Refugee Camp) before turning inland, not far from the Syrian border, and about 2 1/2 hours from Beirut (including the obligatory stop for fresh baked snacks--yum).

Drinking tea in small plastic cups at the man’s house, we hear music coming from further up the valley. It is a wedding. We walk on, toward the music, and see (and hear) the wedding party crowded on a rooftop. There is Lebanese line dancing (dabke). We pass by the bride and groom’s getaway car and I notice rice sprinkled on the seats.

Aside from the one tiny village and the wedding party, it is quiet and we see no other people. The valley walls are beautifully terraced in spots, reminding us of a human presence somewhere. Otherwise it felt unusually remote and untouched.




















The day before, Tom and I volunteered at Bourj Barajneh Refugee Camp, substituting for ACS teachers who had started short-term English conversation classes there but were off on a field trip this day. Here is Tom with his class.

And this is outside the Women’s Center building where we taught.

On the way out, walking to the ACS bus (because the roads are too narrow for vehicles inside the camp) we hear drums and bagpipes--yes, bagpipes--and soon see crowds, in fact become surrounded by crowds as the head our way. It is a funeral procession. Behind the bagpipes are banners of some military group, followed by the flower- and Palestinian flag-draped casket. We feel quite awkward to be intruding, but the road is narrow and there is no place to disappear.
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Curious signage of the week:

• Top Tapis (“tapis” is French for rug)
• Wedding Planer (we see dozens of billboards with this on it)
• International Teaching High School

The Ball, and Wrong About Spring

We got talked in to the St. Patrick’s Day Ball at the Movenpick Hotel. We were warned that Tom should wear a suit or tux, but decided that the only sport coat we brought from the States would have to do. I was thankful for the designer top sister Margaret gave me last Christmas. We live fairly simply and weren’t inclined to buy fancy duds for the one evening. I did splurge on manicure and pedicure (hey, it was my birthday treat) and a pair of fancy stockings. Alas, the manicure shot is the only one I have to share as in my haste to get to the ball (pumpkin syndrome?) I neglected to bring the camera along. [Small factoid: what we call a "French manicure", which is also called a "French manicure" in Beirut though people are more likely to speak French than English (so why not "manicure francais"??) is basically unknown in France. How do these things start?]

The Movenpick is right on the Mediterranean, and a short taxi ride for us. We wanted a “service” taxi, the type that picks up multiple passengers and may not go directly to your destination, but costs only 2000 Lira ($1.33). Generally these are ancient Mercedes, with multiple bash marks and, often, assorted colored fenders. But this was our magical night at the ball, and we happened to get a cushy, newer service, and arrived in style.

In the outer hall outside the banquet room, waiters circulated with trays of shrimp and salmon canapés, and gin tonics, wine and champagne. I passed on the champagne, memories of next day headaches from bubbly white wine masquerading as the real thing, but when a French friend later asked why I declined a waiter’s offer of the bubbly and I saw that the bottle was actually Moet Chandon, I dove in.

There must have been several hundred people there. Lots from the British Isles. People were well dressed but relaxed, having fun. Robert Fiske came in blue jeans and a rumpled sweater; if you are that famous the dress code apparently does not apply.

There was a bottle of Jameson’s Irish whiskey and Bailey’s Irish Cream on each table. A four course meal was served around 11 pm. We had to remind ourselves it was fundraiser. We never did actually learn what the funds were for…

A band imported from Ireland didn't start until after dinner and played only one set--perhaps too busy with all the alcohol? But no one seemed to care, as canned dance music played and dozens of people danced, including a happy nun in full habit, and us (which is probably what saved us from hangover). When we left at 1 am the party was still going.

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I was wrong about Spring, at least this year. We have now had several weeks of coolish (~65 F) weather with occasional showers.

Israel Floods Lebanese Fields with Rainwater

The small article below, too typical, colored my day today. Yesterday I went to a lecture at AUB (American Univeristy of Beirut) by a Harvard professor who spoke of the long-range plans in place that reduce Palestine to a charity case. I hope you heard about the "macaroni incident" there? [John Kerry, on a recent visit to Gaza, learned that Isreal had forbidden a Mercy Coprs shipment of pasta to enter. It seems pasta (along with crayons and tomato paste) are not essential and therefore suspect. Perhaps it could be used to "shell" Israel? Anyway, it took an intervention by Sec. Clinton to release the shipment]

"Israel deliberately flooded Lebanese farmlands with excess rainwater from an Israeli orchard, located off the southern town of Mais al-Jabal early Tuesday, ruining crops and properties.The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL dispatched teams to look into the incident, which drew protests from the southern residents.Tuesday's flooding is part of a systematic practice by the Israeli authorities to turn the highly-fertile land into swamps by channeling rainwater into the fields via trenches, which were dug for that purpose. The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL have tried to block the water channels to protect the crops.Separately, UNIFIL's media coordinator, Dalia Farran, reiterated calls for Israel to hand over official maps detailing where the Israeli army dropped cluster bombs during the July 2006 offensive."

Beirut, 17 Mar 09, 15:57