Weekend in Lebanon

We decided to take a last minute trip to Lebanon this past weekend, just a 3 hour plane ride from Abu Dhabi. Our good friend Matthew Kuhl has been living and working at an architectural firm in Beirut, so it was a good opportunity to catch up with him and get an insider's view of the country.

Lebanon has a fascinating and complicated history full of many overlapping cultures and religions that are visibly evident, even on such a short visit. Its geographical location, where East meets West on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and fertile Bakaa valley have made it a desirable land for millenia. Evidence of civilizations dates back 7,000 years and include the Phoenicians, Persians, Romans, Syrians, Arabians, and Ottomans. Current religions present in the area, noted by places of worship and distinctive clothing, include the Shia, Sunni, Greek Orthodox, Christian Maronite, and the curious Druze. Common languages spoken today are Arabic, French, and English. Many Lebanese switch easily from one language to the other, frequently blending all the languages into the same conversation.

Unlike Abu Dhabi, which is a very new city, Beirut is old and full of character. It has been called the Paris of the Middle-East, which is understandable due to its colonial architecture and vibrant neighborhoods. But bullet holes are everywhere, remnants of the civil war from 1975-1990 and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The downtown area has been beautifully gentrified, with high end shops and new buildings in tones of ochre, designed to compliment older restored buildings. The renovation is largely due to the financing of billionaire Rafir Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon that was assassinated in Beirut in 2005. Despite tensions, Lebanon is recovering from its most recent battles and is working hard to restore its image. Its efforts have paid off: in 2009, a New York Times poll voted Beirut as the #1 top tourist destination.
The roads of Lebanon are full of old cars that get beat up on a regular basis due to cavalier driving habits. While having breakfast at a corner cafe our first morning there, we were admiring a funky looking dune buggy driving down the street when it intentionally backed into the car behind it - twice. Apparently there was an argument over a parking space. But this is totally acceptable behavior in Lebanon. Many cars, including our driver's car, have extra heavy duty metal bumpers applied to the regular bumpers. Red lights? Completely optional. That solid double yellow line down the middle of the road? That's the line you straddle to pass slower traffic, even if there's a blind curve ahead of you or another car is doing the same thing in the opposite direction. I can safely say driving in Lebanon is the unsafest I have ever seen in the world.

Our weekend included a day trip through the Lebanese Mountains and into the Bakaa Valley. If Beirut is the Paris of the Middle-East then the Lebanese Mountains should be considered the Italy of the Middle-East. The scale and colors are strikingly similar. The hillsides are tiered for grape vines and other crops. Numerous ancient hill towns dot the landscape. We visited one partiularly picturesque town called Deir El Qamar, known as the Village of Princes due to the many Lebanese aristocrats that were born there. We made a brief stop at a much more recent quirky castle that was built by a man in an unsuccessful attempt to win the heart of a woman he loved. Further up the road, we stopped by the Beit ed Dine Palace, built by a local emir starting in 1788 and full of beautiful gardens, waterworks, inlaid stone floors, and inlaid wood walls and ceilings. Moving higher up into the mountains, we hiked through the famous cedars of Lebanon with vistas of the valley that we had just crossed. On the other side of the mountain pass we got views of the lush Bekaa valley. We ate a very pleasant late Lebanese lunch at a restaurant called the Seven Eyes in a garden setting surrounded by the fruit and vegetable crops of the region. Our final stop was at the Kafraya Vinyard with grounds on par with what you might find in Napa Valley. Our day ended with a white-knuckle return trip over the mountains and back to Beirut.
We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend in Lebanon, even though our visit was brief. The weather was sunny and a refreshing 75 degrees. The scenery was beautiful. If we had more time I would have loved to visit one of the many coastal resorts, the Roman ruins of Baalbek, or the ancient town of Byblos. But those will have to wait for another time. Maybe we can combine those sites with a winter ski trip in the Lebanese Mountains.

Matthew and John, before the dune buggy incident

Typical old colonial building being restored

Combination of old and new buildings

Pedestrian friendly downtown

Bullet holes are everywhere

Deir el Qamar

 

 The Castle of Unrequited Love

Detail

 

Making minutia at Al Almira, Beit ed Dine

 Beit ed Dine Palace

Beit ed Dine Palace

The Cedars of Lebanon

Top of the World

Top of the World, II

Bekaa Valley with view of Qaraaoun Lake

Late lunch at the Seven Eyes



Pictures!

So we still don't have our own internet service. Waiting for 3 months now, which apparently is not unusual here. We've been dreading getting too much computer stuff set up because inevitably it doesn't work which just lead to more frustration. However, downloading pictures on the laptop patched into our neighbor's wireless ended up taking about 60 seconds to figure out. Wish I had done it weeks ago. Here are a few:
(Okay, that took 60 seconds to download onto the computer and 2 hours to figure out to download onto the blog. Facebook download is just going to have to wait.)

 Zoomed in view from our balcony of the Emirates Palace Hotel

Dragon Boat Races at the Shagri-La Resort

Inside the Grand Mosque

Helen admiring the view from our balcony

Marina Tower at dusk

Our beach

Skating at the Marina Tower Mall

Outside the Grand Mosque

View of Burj Al-Arab from our hotel room at Atlantis-Dubai

Atlantis-Dubai, lots of fun

The Bottom Line

So I was flipping through an American Vogue magazine, poolside, the other day. Lest anyone is concerned about my choice of reading materials, don’t worry, I have Paul Harding’s Tinkers, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and a New Yorker bedside (all excellent pros that I highly recommend). I just need something a little lighter when I’m trying to keep an eye on the girls running around from pools to water slides to beach (tough life, I know). Once again I was wondering why I bothered with a fashion magazine since it’s full of painful looking six inch high heels and outrageously expensive clothes that I will never wear. Some of them are actually quite beautiful, but I’ll wait until they’re watered down into something more affordable at the local Forever 21 (think Old Navy). And there it was, near the front of the magazine, a two page advertisement featuring the model Kate Moss. She is lying front side down on a beach, casually staring at the camera, stark naked except for the fact that her butt has been scribbled out with a big fat marker. This made me laugh out loud. Somebody in the UAE has a government job that must be titled something like Fat Marker Scribbler Outer. She (I’m guessing a woman has this job, otherwise there is a definite conflict of interest here) has to go through thousands of magazines from throughout the world wiggling her sharpie over visuals that are deemed offensive. Then it really got me thinking. The black and white photo is very tastefully composed. It reminded me of the coy neo-classical Odalisque painted by Ingres way back in 1814. It might be almost 200 years later, but a different culture now considers this inappropriate. The United States, of course, have their own limitations, which are more conservative than France, for example. Even Greek statues, naked and glorious, had fig leaves strategically placed centuries later.
Had the backside not been scribbled out, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But instead of the sharpie making me ignore what it was hiding, I want to know much more about it. Is it just a silhouette or is it her, umm, bottom line. Except for maybe being slightly annoyed by her pretty pouty face, I can’t say I’ve ever thought much about Kate Moss in my life, let alone her backside. And now it’s really bugging me. So, what is allowed visually in the U.S. these days? Somebody stateside, help me out here. It’s the Vogue with Halle Berry on the cover, page 60.

The long flowing black abayas that women wear here are a little like the big black markers. You’re not supposed to see what’s underneath. Like Kabuki theatre stage hands dressed in black, you’re just not supposed to notice them at all. When I first arrived in Abu Dhabi, I asked Abdul, the nice Public Relations Officer (PRO) helping me with my residency paper work why it is that he and other Emirati men wear all white while the women wear all black. He laughed, while driving his fancy car and drinking a Starbucks coffee, and simply said he didn’t know. So maybe the clothing is so ingrained in the culture here that the Emirati don’t even think about it. When we visited the Grand Mosque, I asked our fully covered female guide the same question. She responded that the myth is men wear white because they are angelic and women wear black because they are the devil. But she emphasized that is the myth and not the truth. Right. The real reason, she explained, is because you cannot see through the black gowns at all. I’ve also been told that there is beauty in sameness. I’m not entirely satisfied with any of these answers. Perhaps it is because I’m not entirely satisfied with the very fact that men and women have such a limited choice in their exterior appearance and will never be happy with any answer I hear.

Back to my Vogue, there are lots of malls around here chalk full of the very expensive clothes advertised in the Magazine. I might not be able to afford them, but for the local Emirati, money is no obstacle whatsoever. In public, The Emirati women may be covered in a flowing black abaya, hiding their hair under a sheyla, and possibly hiding their face behind a burka. But underneath the abayas, they are more likely than not to be wearing the latest Armani creations. The only people that can appreciate these fancy threads are immediate family members and girlfriends. I have not been to a local traditional Muslim wedding myself, but from what I understand, this is one of the few opportunities for the women to show off their amazing outfits. Except even at weddings the women and men have their parties in completely separate rooms.

It should be noted that hiding the face behind a burka is more of a Bedouin tradition than a Muslim requirement. Less than 1% of Muslim women worldwide wear a burka. Most are in the middle-east, home of the Bedouins. Burkas have caused quite a stir much further away, in France, where burkas were recently banned. Many Muslim women protest their abolition and say wearing a burka is a personal choice. Interestingly, burkas and sheylas have become more prevalent in some countries recently. The UAE has become an incredibly international country in just a few decades. It is full of tall modern buildings and fast cars from all over the world. Aside from numerous unimpressive small mosques and a smattering of heritage centers, there is very little left that can be identified as local character. Perhaps the black abaya, sheyla, and burka that the women wear and the long white dishdasha that the men wear can be considered a way to preserve the local traditional and religious customs. I suspect that there is lots of peer pressure involved too. Once a young woman or man starts to wear the national dress, they are expected to wear it for the rest of their lives. Perhaps I'll have a better understanding of the traditional dress the longer I live hear, but right now, I have a long way to go.