Christmas in Beirut

My Christmas Eve started around, well, about five o’clock when I went out to snap some photos around Hamra in dusk beneath the flutter of the bats of Beirut. The capitalist presence of Christmas is alive and well in Beirut. The spiritual Christmas? Not so much.

I ventured to downtown around 8pm, walking the half hour from Hamra so I could look at the Christmas lights along the way. There weren’t too many to see. I was a sight myself, for I was walking. No one walks anywhere in Beirut. They complain for hours on end about the traffic but heaven forbid anyone gets out of his car and walks anywhere. I took the long way, cutting down to St. George’s Marina where Prime Minister Hariri was killed five years ago in a car bomb. The “Stop Solidare” sign was back up on the bombed out St. George’s Hotel. (Solidare is Hariri's company that rebuilt downtown after the war. The protest is a result of the destruction of many old buildings and the development of the coast, which is cutting the people off from the sea, among other reasons.) The sea was darker than the night; it was as if I walked along the edge of the world. Even the Christmas lights the city had strung up along the road weren’t enough to escape the feeling of darkness.

Downtown was bright, though. It was bright thanks to Beirut Souks, the shopping center that seemingly is the only thing in existence downtown, the thing rebuilt by Solidare. Someone had made the bombed out building at the westernmost edge of the souks beautiful with lights and Christmas trees in every window. A thinking person couldn’t escape the bullet holes, however. They had tried to mask the destruction with Christmas but the bullet holes were still there, turning green and purple and blue and red while the people beneath them drank coffee and smoked and talked about trivial things.

The lights were plenty but there was no Christmas spirit, not the kind of magic you feel when there is snow on the ground and you're gathering in warm houses with fireplaces and stuffing yourself full of food and eggnog. There's something about palm trees and sixty degrees that makes a fat guy in a thick red coat a little out of place. I walked around the corner by ancient mosques and the Roman archaeological site beneath the souks and the glitter of stores selling nothing necessary and the people that made Christmas seem like a carnival.

Before I reached the church, I wandered passed Martyr’s Square that had once been a beautiful space full of trees and people and now it is just a parking lot and rubble. Some of the rubble is Roman, uncovered by bombs during the war after everything on top was destroyed. The stones had sat for a thousand years but now they seem as uninteresting as cinder blocks. A Christmas tree stood on the square, surrounded by hijab clad women and jabbering men fresh out of the Hariri mosque, wielding cameras and arousing a clamor as if they were participating in some sort of pagan ceremony around the pagan tree. The traffic was thick and even more unruly than usual. Car horns and Arabic music blasted into the night beneath random displays of fireworks. A parade with three floats full of Santas blocked up traffic. It felt more like Mardi Gras than Christmas.

St. George’s – the largest of the Maronite churches in Beirut – didn’t open its doors until 10pm. I had an hour to kill so I stopped in for an apple pie latte at Costa. (It was disgusting.) St. George’s is building a massive bell tower – presumably because the massive Hariri mosque next door makes the church look like a chapel in comparison and the Maronites feel insecure about it. (Maronite insecurity about their minority status is the source of a heckuva lot of political tension and conflict in Lebanon.)

When the church doors opened I went inside expecting to see something beautiful like the Lebanese version of the Vatican or something, but I was forgetting that the church had been on the front line of a 15 year war. If you really looked you could see patch marks from bullet holes, but the restoration folks did a pretty good job of hiding the war, though the stainglass windows looked like they had been made in haste, as they lack the adornment and color characteristic of older churches. The inside of the church is something resembling a European palace – French, Italian, I couldn’t say – but it didn’t look like Western churches. It was all rather square aside from the nave, which is divided into three rounded sections like Orthodox churches. On the left side was a painting of Mary and on the right was Jesus, while in the middle were four saints holding scrolls – I can only assume they were the gospel “writers.” Then in the very center of the church was a painting of St. George slaying the dragon just like in the Orthodox churches. Silly Christians, there’s no such thing as dragons. St. George must have been reading too much Harry Potter.

But the mass itself followed Catholic liturgy to a T. It didn’t matter that it was all in Arabic – I understood everything that was going on. It was fun to hear the Apostle’s Creed and Our Father and even though I didn’t know the words, I knew exactly what they were saying. Amen is pronounced “all meen” and peace be with you is salam alakum and when the priest in his red and gold priestly robes and his pointed hat said peace be with you, I smiled when the response was “wa maka idhen” because I knew that was what the response would be. That’s the cool thing about Catholicism – it doesn’t matter where on earth you go – the mass is exactly the same and you don’t even need to understand all of the words to understand what is going on.

But the people in the church…well, I have never seen such disrespect in a church. I arrived two hours before mass began because I 1) wanted to get a seat and in the US midnight mass is always full, 2) wanted to have time to look around the church since I’d never been in, and 3) wanted to watch the people. The first people to arrive were many Filipinos who sat in the last three rows. I thought how sad it was that they felt the need to sit in the back. After about a half hour, they all disappeared. They didn’t even stay for the mass, and I wondered if their Lebanese employers dictated that they had to be home at a certain hour.

At 11pm people began to trickle in, and at 11:30 the choir started for real, but they didn’t sing any Christmas songs I knew. In fact some of the songs they sang were rather scary and sounded like they were meant for a funeral rather than the birth of someone who is supposed to save them from their own destruction. (Maybe it’s because they haven’t been saved from their own destruction…)

It was like musical chairs as the people came in. Everyone kept changing their seats, and it never really stopped throughout the mass. Many of them had never been in the church before, for they looked around and snapped pictures even though the sign said it was not allowed. Then a group of four Muslim women and a man walked in, snapping photos and laughing and generally being disrespectful. I guess it didn’t matter much because no one in the church was praying or reflecting. All we needed was some coffee and we could have been in a café with all the talking and socializing. Throughout the entire mass people got up and moved around and a quarter of them didn’t even stay until communion, and only half got up to take communion.

This is a country with 18 official religions, but just one mass said a lot to me. Religion to the Lebanese has nothing to do with a soul or spirituality. It is an identity, a tribe, something you are born with and have no responsibility to think about. Then again, that’s true with most religious people anywhere. People just say the creed because they were told to say it when they were children. They “believe” something because they are told to believe it. They are Catholic or Protestant or Sunni or Shia because they were born in a place and to a family that is Catholic or Protestant or Sunni or Shia.

I walked back from the church downtown and went to Amigo’s. After he closed we went to another place where the people were dancing debka, and I felt jealous because they were young people who were dancing a cultural dance and in America what people call dancing is just jumping up and down. About the only people in America that have anything like that are the bluegrass folks and square dancing. There’s also country line dancing but that feels mechanical and lacks life. The people in the bar were singing the songs like you would find happening in an Irish pub or a Greek Taverna or an Italian whatever it’s called in Italian, but the only time people sing songs in a bar in America is when drunk college kids sing Don’t Stop Believing or Living on a Prayer.

The spirituality that is lacking in Lebanese religious life can certainly be found in the debka and the old Arabic songs and the appreciation for music and culture. It was a pretty great Christmas.

(The only Christmas music I have on my computer are the U2-related ones in the video. I never ripped the Christmas music because when I'm listening to music on shuffle in July, I don't want to hear Mitch Miller and the Gang singing Jingle Bells.) By the way, internet in Lebanon is so slow that it took me AN HOUR to load this video!!!!!!!!!

Scrambled Eggs Fry My Ears

It was an unplanned attendance. Scrambled Eggs, a Lebanese rock band, was playing at The Basement in Gemeyzeh, and I found myself there with a friend. The Basement is another one of those ridiculously overpriced pretentious places in Gemeyzeh that are so expensive nobody actually drinks anything inside. Once we paid the 20000 ($15) cover, fine for a show, we headed to the bar for beers. Almaza. The stuff you can get for a dollar in a shop. 20 thousand, the bartender said. 20 thousand for two crappy Almazas. For that, I can get 6 Almazas at Amigo's pub.

The band wasn't bad, but the sound was horrible. The drums were way too loud and the guitar distortion way overdone. You couldn't understand a word from the singer, which was a big deal because they passed out CDs when you entered and on the cover it said "Peace is overrated, War is misunderstood" and I really wanted to see if they were being ironic in printing that or if they actually believed it. Normally, I'd assume it was irony, but this is Lebanon, where everything is literal.

The crowd itself was dull. They just stood there, lifeless, not drinking because of the outrageous prices, and not moving like they were suburban brats at a Coldplay concert, too cool for dancing, or maybe they didn't know what to do at a rock show, since rock music isn't exactly big here.

The decibel level of the whole show was like they thought they were playing in a stadium. IT WAS TOO LOUD. The Basement is a tiny venue. (My suspicions that Beirutis are half deaf were only bolstered by the decibel level. It's why they can bear the incessant honking and shouting and construction and blasted music at all hours.) I did see a few people holding their ears, so we weren't the only ones. It made what could have been a good show turn bad, and I was glad when they left the stage, though we were not given 30 seconds before a DJ blasted music and a couple of people began to dance. An older man who looked like a Western diplomat to me was really getting down on the tiny dance floor and made for an amusing sight.

I think I'd like the music, but they really need to rethink the volume.

Visit Scrambled Eggs MySpace page here.

It only took an hour to upload, but here are my photos from Tripoli

It was a dark and stormy night. And day.

It wasn’t until I left that I could describe completely how I had felt in Tripoli. Three letters. S-A-D. I walked its ancient streets and ran down the list of people who had lived here. Phoenicians. Seleucids. Romans. Byzantines. Ummayads. Abbasids. Fatimids. Crusaders. Mamluks. Ottomans. Temples became churches became mosques, each built on top of what was already there, making for some interesting architecture. The city was truly a gem in times past.

Now it’s a cool, cruel wreck of a city. Not that it hasn’t been wrecked before. It was pretty much wrecked by each one of those peoples when they sacked it. The worst was probably when the Mamluk sultan Qalaun massacred most of the population and razed the old town in 1289. He rebuilt it and much of the old city is covered with the black and white style of Mamluk architecture. Some of it is in marvelous condition for being seven hundred years old, likely thanks to the Ottomans, who had a healthy respect for building maintenance when they weren't destroying churches. The Ottomans were big into recycling buildings, turning churches they liked into mosques, schools into mosques, castles into mosques, mosques into mosques...

These kind of sieges feel like they are made for history books and blockbuster Hollywood movies, but they are real, and they continue. Though Tripoli didn’t see as much damage as South Lebanon during the civil war, they were still trying to slaughter each other up there, and the city was wrecked again as late as 2007 when Fatah al-Islam briefly took over the city before the Lebanese Armed Forces fought them back to the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr el Bared just 16 km from the city center. At that time the apartment of one of the taxi drivers I rode with was blown up by a jihadi bastard who is rotting in hell with the rest of the suicide bombers these and the rest of days.

Stupid War. So sad. Tripoli could be a beautiful town, but it probably never will be, because I'm quite certain that thousands of years of being under siege is not over. Someone else will come in and be possessed by the sea or whatever it is that makes people in this part of the world crazy. They'll come in and destroy the new high rises and cafes and restaurants that are popping up everywhere. They'll destroy the orange trees and lemon trees and palm trees that line the city streets and are found as commonly as a maple tree in an Ohio yard. They'll destroy the odd sense of calm that one finds in Tripoli after being in the cosmopolitan insanity of Beirut.

It poured. It poured the entire sea into the streets, creating rapid rivers with pavement for beds. We drove over a bridge with a foot of water on it and I wondered how long before the bridge collapsed and all of the cars with their stupid drivers who created a monstrosity of a traffic jam with their self-centered vehicular navigation plunged onto the concrete below. As the car moved slowly along the seaside through half a foot of water, the Mediterranean swells tossed a fish into the air and onto the walkway where feet would travel on a sunny day. I couldn't help but laugh at the sight of the silvery fish flapping around like a deranged bird. The storm seemed to travel in circles, pouring, brightening, pouring, brightening, dripping, flooding, flash, flash, boom.

I'll have to go back when the sun is shining and my shoes aren't soaking wet. I have a video of photos but don't have a fast enough internet connection to upload it.

Hamra Christmas

One of the Christmas trees that have appeared in Hamra over the last week or so. I'm looking forward to walking around Beirut closer to Christmas time to look at the various decorations in the neighborhoods. It's always interesting to experience Christmas time in other countries. This one is strange because it's so warm. Even though the days are awfully short (it's only 3pm and I ordered a beer thinking it was about 5 or so), it does not at all feel like it should be Christmas.

Spotlight Series: The Animal Pride and Freedom Campaign

Animal rights activists are a growing part of Lebanon's civil society.  Although many in Lebanon might laugh away the notion in a country where full human rights have yet to be secured.  Regardless of your opinion on the issue, there is something to be said about the ability of a non-political issue like this to bring people together around a common concern and help build a concept of citizenship that transcends sectarian divides.

Some recent news on the issue:

Last week, animal lovers around the world were mortified by the news of Omega, a smoking 12 year-old chimp who was rescued from a zoo in Lebanon.  Click here to read more about Omega.   

And then last month, activists staged a protest outside a local pet shop.  Click here to read more about it. 

Developing Lebanon is pleased to be able to bring you another spotlight series with one of the lead organizers of this campaign: 

Spotlight Series: The Animal Pride and Freedom Campaign

Interview with Mrs. Soraya-Zattar Mouawad


1) Mrs. Mouawad, please tell us about the "Animal Pride and Freedom Campaign?" What is your mission? How do you plan to effectively introduce change to the ways animals are treated in Lebanon?

The Animal Pride and Freedom Campaign was launched two months ago. The group was created in response to the poor treatment and abuse violations of animals in Lebanon. Animals are thrown in cages in illegal pet shops with no concern for sanitation or hygiene. We hope to raise public awareness on the national and international levels to highlight the plight of innocent animals and the violations they face. We hope to encourage pet shop owners to become more cooperative and humane in their treatment of animals.

2) Does Lebanon currently have any laws or enforcement mechanisms pertaining to the protection of animal rights? If so, what are they? What does the Campaign propose to improve the situation? Are the violations you see happening because the law is insufficient or is it a question of enforcement or both? How can a new law ensure proper implementation and enforcement?

The current law is outdated and does not meet the demands of the current generation. We need a stronger law matched by better enforcement. A strong law will enable activists to hold pet shop owners accountable without feeling threatened. However, the law is only as good as the enforcement mechanisms that are in place. Unfortunately, corruption in Lebanon prevents proper enforcement and exotic animals are imported illegally into the country as a result. We have been trying to meet with the leadership from the Ministries of Agriculture and Interior. Until now we have been unsuccessful in fully gaining their attention. The campaign would like to see an end to the gross animal rights violations including, ending the illegal importation of exotic animals and the sadistic practice of dog-fighting. In addition, the campaign would like pet shops to no longer cage animals and make improvements in proper hygiene. It is important that any new law also mandate the implementation of quarantine for any animal entering Lebanese territory and that they have proper check-ups and documentation from legally registered veterinarians.

3) Do you have a draft of a new law? Are you working with any international NGOs to help improve advocacy efforts to influence Lebanese politicians? What is the best way to force Lebanese politicians to pay attention to this issue?

We are working on a draft law. We currently do not have the support of any international organizations but we are aware of their presence and interested in working with them to help boost and improve our capacity. It would be good to learn how this problem has been dealt with on a global level so that we can make improvements here at home. Domestic and international media coverage is critical to gaining attention. There needs to be more awareness of the problem first before having any kind of impact.

4) Are the Campaign volunteers and activist representative of Lebanon's sectarian diversity? Do you believe that bringing Lebanese civil society together around less political but equally important issues in Lebanon's development can play a role in national reconciliation?

We are a mixed group of volunteers representing Lebanon’s diversity. Lebanon is suffering from many internal and external political problems and the country has yet to successfully implement a national reconciliation process. Perhaps, by uniting around non-political issues that do not have sectarian sensitivities we can help start a process in building national consensus by Lebanese as citizens of a democratic state and not as religions.

5) Do you have an action plan to reach out to more Lebanese citizens?

We are currently working to educate children and teachers about the values and responsibilities in raising pets. They are not toys to be thrown away at the end of a summer vacation but they are a long-term commitment that should bring joy and happiness to many families. I am also an artist and working on organizing an art exhibit in collaboration with local environmentalist to reach out to more people.

Tripoli July 2009

A few previously unpublished photos of Tripoli. I'd love to spend some time there as a tourist rather than rushing from meeting to meeting.

Hair Saloon

More previously unpublished photos of Beirut from July 2009.

Beirut July 2009

I found some photos from last year's trip to Beirut that I never published, so here they are.

Small Grants, Big Impact

Not one of us who have worked in international development cannot relate to this impact question.

Un jour a Clamart

Musique: Octobre par Francis Cabrel.

Danse Macabre

As I wandered the streets of Paris, I came across this cemetery, Père Lachaise. Many famous French are buried there, including artist Eugene Delacroix and writer Honore de Balzac. It's not every day you wander into a cemetery and stumble upon the graves of people you've heard of.

Music is Camille Saint Saen's Danse Macabre.

Wet

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really, it was. I had left beautiful, warm, sunny Beirut at 2pm for cold, dreary Paris. Oh, it was tough, maybe not as tough as it was the last time I left Beirut, if only because it had been so easy to return, but it was tough all the same and I fought tears in the airport again. I was leaving ten days of 100% contentment - Paris was my buffer between that and the winter of Washington.

I was to stay in a small town outside of Paris called Clamart. I wanted a bit of Europe rather than big city but didn't want to stray too far from the airport, so I settled for Clamart, a town close to Versailles. I had directions, which stated:

From Airport Charles de Gaulle: You can take a taxi to the hotel or you can take the RER B (blue) train and change trains at 'St-Michel Notre-Dame'. Change to the RER C train direction 'Versailles-Rive Guache'/'Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines' and get off at train stop 'Issy'. The hotel is at 25 minutes walking distance from the train station but of course it is better to take taxi from here to the hotel.

Seems simple enough, right? So I got on the train at CDG and got off at Issy (8 euro instead of the 50 a taxi would cost). It was raining.

I descended the stairway to the train station expecting a taxi or two to be waiting in front of it like you would expect taxis to do, but there were none, so I went into the station, where a helpful attendant gave me a phone number to call one. Easy enough, right? Except no one would answer the phone. I walked to the corner of the intersection to try to hail one on the street, but there were few who passed by and none who stopped. I called the hotel to tell them I was having trouble finding a cab (at this point it was nearly 10pm, the time I told them I'd be arriving), thinking they would call one for me, but the guy must have thought I was just calling to tell them I'd be late and he hung up on me. (I don't know how much AT&T charges for international roaming calls, and I'd already made two, so I didn't want to call again.) Did I mention it was raining?

My other option was to walk the "25 minutes" to the hotel. That would have been fine, except I had no idea in which direction it was, so I went to a nearby bus stop to see if there was a map. Nope. There were no people on the streets and nothing was open, so even asking someone was out of the question. I probably stood on that corner for twenty minutes trying to figure out what to do, and I was getting frustrated (and wet), so I just started to walk. I knew the town was Clamart, and there were road signs that pointed towards Clamart, so logically I followed them through the darkened suburbs of Paris on whose roads I had never roamed.

Despite not knowing where I was, I enjoyed the first minutes of my walk. I felt like I was in Europe for the first time on the trip. Paris is wonderful, but it is an international city, and my Europe days were spent in many small towns. I just wanted a taste of that once again, and I got it. But I was pulling a suitcase behind me, and I had a laptop and some books on my back, and after about 20 minutes of walking, I was getting tired and was unsure if I was going in the right direction. I came upon another bus stop. This one had a map, but my destination was not on it. Suddenly, a taxi came by! The driver slowed when I hailed him, and I thought I might be saved. Alas! He had a passenger, but he sympathized with me walking in the rain, pulling a suitcase behind me. He wanted to pick me up, but that passenger said no. %$#@!

So there I was, standing in the rain, wondering what on earth I was going to do. I had no choice but to walk on, so walk I did, walked like I hadn't been on a plane for four hours, walked like I hadn't left my heart behind, walked like I knew where I was going. I got to a curve and I just had to stop. I felt like breaking down right there, but then I turned around.

The whole city of Paris was out there, Eiffel Tower and all.

It was one of those moments when you just feel like you were supposed to be there, one of those times when something sucks all the bad from your soul and you feel like the most blessed person on earth for just being permitted to breathe. And on I walked, no longer doubting my decision to come to Clamart.

I walked another twenty minutes or so until I came to a circle, and behold! A town map! Turns out, I should have gone left a mile back, but it was ok, because I could take one of the streets from the circle to get to the street my hotel was on.

And so, an hour after I had arrived at the Issy train station, I found the Victor Hugo Hotel, where a warm shower and a lengthy sleep awaited me.

To be continued...

U2 in Paris

I couldn't believe I was seeing U2. It was over before I knew it. It was a good show, not great, not like NYC. The energy in the crowd was weird - better than DC, but still not what it could have been. And I got behind the same obnoxious people as I did at the DC show. Can you believe that? Of all the people in the world...

I wrote some notes before the show on my phone:

1. Of course, I had to get beside a group of loud Americans.

2. The queue. In the US, it is called a line, and a line it is - orderly and relatively straight. In Paris, it's more like a rugby scrum. Chaos ensued when the gates opened some 20 minutes after they were supposed to. I got in the slow line, each second getting me further from the stage. When I finally got through the gate and the all-to-familiar security check - the next part could happen in any country on Earth - the running for the grass. (Doucement, said the guards.) I went around back and asked in English if I could go in the circle before the guard had a chance to open his mouth. He said yes, I could go in. Then. A guard told him there were too many people and to cut it off. NOOOOO! I had failed by seconds! Perhaps a mere one person in the scrum I had let pass in all the pushing at the gates...

But.

The guy said a certain number could go in. I was one of the last people allowed. I'm not as close as NYC or DC but close enough to be happy.

3. The pushing is tiresome to me, a demonstration of either cultural definitions of space, arrogance, or, well, what else could it be? I am short; therefore, I get pushed around more than others. Shouldn't have worn so many clothes, as it is hot with all these people and I'm feeling claustrophobic.

I put my phone away once Interpol came on, who were quite boring. That was disappointing. Other things that happened:

I got conked on the head with and elbow and saw stars at one point. The guy who did it was apologetic.

There was this giant French guy next to me who spent more time filming than actually watching the show, and HIS elbow was in my face most of the time.

An Indian-American chick peed in a coke bottle right in the middle of the crowd.

The idiot Americans in front of me were taking up more space than anyone else, turned around, ate junk food they had brought the whole time, and complained about the French, while one of them was so upset by how close other people were to her that she didn't move the entire time. Her giant head blocked my view for a good part of the show. They were typically ugly American tourists, and I was embarrassed by them.

I wondered if Bono's back were hurting him a bit. It looked like he was leaning on Larry as they were leaving the stage and he was holding his arm in a strange way.

Bono spoke French (terrible accent, but he knew all the words). Good thing I could understand it, because aside from talking about Aung San Su Kyi in English, French was all he spoke.

The band didn't seem to have much energy - they feed off the crowd, and the crowd wasn't that energetic except when they seemed to think that songs like Elevation, Vertigo, and I Will Follow were for mosh pits. They did it for Beautiful Day, too. That was the first song they played, and all of the sudden, the whole crowd got pushed over several feet, bringing me a bit closer to the middle of the stage.

Listening to the crowd sing along with their French accents was funny.

Really liked one of the new songs they played - I don't know the title. Wanted more new stuff, but it was a bit weird hearing the new songs and not knowing them.

They didn't play enough from No Line on the Horizon. I really wanted to hear Breathe and No Line, but we only got Magnificent, Moment of Surrender, and the Crazy remix.

Got to hear Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me live for the first time, but they did it in place of Ultraviolet, which had been the highlight of the 360 show.

Got to hear Until the End of the World, still my all time favorite song.

I was a little disappointed with the set list, actually. Some of the weaker songs were played while songs like New Years Day were not.

Bono nailed the Italian opera solo on Miss Sarajevo. It really was incredible - I have never heard his voice sound so good. He had people's mouths drop.

Oh, it was awesome.

UPDATE: Some awesome videos of the show. When they are zoomed in, they are my exact view of the concert, minus the hands and the heads in the way. I'm sure my hands are in one of these videos. Really incredible how technology allows us to recall things we might otherwise forget. Man, life is really amazing, isn't it? Why do so many people waste it on warring and anger?

The videos:

Bono is a rock star, but occasionally, he is also a singer. A real one. And this is the proof. Wait until you get to about the 3 minute mark. Incredible. This may have been my favorite moment during the show.



The new song I loved is called Mercy.



My all time favorite song. Jesus, meet Judas:



They want you to be Jesus, and go down on one knee, but they want their money back if you're alive at...53.



The quintessential international development song, turned into a beautiful weirdness, with Larry playing tabla, Adam playing the bass line from Last Night on Earth, and Bono singing lines from a Duran Duran song. In the 360 shows I've seen, aside from Ultraviolet, this is my favorite song they did. If they want to sell more records, they need to put out more weirdness like this.



I am reminded of a very bizarre dream I had last night with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yeah, him.


The beginning of the show. Return of the Stingray Guitar to start. More of this, please. Then, one of the greatest songs every written, Beautiful Day, about finding the beauty in a world full of shit.



Another awesome new song, North Star. New album now, please?



Not my view, but any post without this song would be missing something great. A very underrated song, and a very good ending to a very amazing show.



This is the song when I got conked on the head.



I am blown away by the fact I got to see this. Not sure what I've done to have the luck I've had in my life, but I sure appreciate it, more than words could ever say.

A Moment in Hamra

It was a shriek that made you forget about the car horns and the din of the traffic. The culprit was a toy whistle blown by a former cop whose mind had seen better days. He was clean shaven and wore a green shirt and jeans that had never been in fashion, but he was well-groomed and obviously had someone to take care of him. Where was that someone as he stood on the sidewalk, blowing the toy whistle and thinking he was directing traffic on Hamra Street?

A massive tour bus from Dubai rolled over the cobblestones. Two truckloads of bored soldiers rumbled by looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. The traffic was thick but moving, always a bonus on this gridlocked street. Arabic music blared from loudspeakers strapped upon the rooftop of a car adorned with flags of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. More sectarianism, each group claiming to love Lebanon the most while taking steps to divide and destroy it.

The SSNP had hung their sectarian flags throughout the neighborhood some time in the night. We had all gone to bed in Hamra to wake up to this nonsense. The Cedar Revolution was dead. One fourth of an entire country had turned up that day, March 14, 2005, but the hope for unity that had been inspired by that day was all but gone.

Wedged between two universities, Hamra is a sore sight for eyes but has the soul of the Left Bank and the desire to be normal in a place where nothing has ever been normal and probably never will be. But there is a fire in the ground now, the same molten hatred that flows beneath the surface of all of Lebanon. Hamra sits across town from the pretentious glitter of Gemmayzeh and the riches of the haves in Achrafieh, two areas that were part of what was once called East Beirut in a city that throbs with the violence of division. East-West, North-South, the whole world is a fractured compass, its needle spinning mercilessly as we all desperately try to find our place in it.

Last week, as I sat beneath the glow of dusk and watched the flutter of bats among the filthy buildings that seemed to be contemplating crumbling their ways to dusty death, I wondered if this was ever a beautiful place or if its creation was a spontaneous explosion of chaos that gave rise to these ugly dwelling stones. The life, though, the life is real. It manifests itself in various forms - in the youth of students, in the rattle of traffic, in the experience of bartenders, in the clacking of prayer beads among the devout and not so devout. Here, people live for Now, because tomorrow violence could take the peace away.

No one wants the violence; they are a weary people, yet it cannot be filtered from their sectarian being. Even when they shun religious identity, they replace it with some other religion - communism, anti-zionism, graphic design, not different than most of the world but far more pronounced.

So it goes.

Finally, some Paris photos

The Beginning

So much to write about - where do I begin? It started with surrealism, moved into perfection, and ended with a heaviness of heart and a rather smooth flight across the Atlantic.

I departed Washington, DC on a cloudy day, racing down U Street to the Metro, then hopping a bus to Dulles before being thrown around the airport. I was flying United because it was the cheapest flight I could find, though I much prefer Air France. United is...how should I put it? Disorganized? When you fly Air France, you check in online and give them your bags. There is no such thing as a line. With United, you check in online then are sent to a billion different places before you finally are able to give your bags to the sketchy looking security people and hope that they actually get to your destination.

I should say bag. I had one bag. It contained a few clothes and 8 bottles of different American beer for my friend Amigo. The beer made the bag pretty heavy. I hoped it'd get to Paris and then to Beirut in one piece. It did.

My greatest curse is my fear of flying. Love to travel, hate getting there. This time, I actually slept a couple of hours on the flight, something I can never do.

During the previous couple of weeks, my brain actually was adjusting to the time zone change - it was quite an amazing subconscious process. I just started waking up earlier and earlier and going to bed earlier until I was already asleep by the time the Daily Show came on. I really can't get over that. When I got to Paris on a Friday morning at 7am, then managed to get to my hotel by 9am (to discover I couldn't check in until 3pm but could leave my bag full o'booze), I set out to wander the streets of Paris wide awake, happy, and not at all full of yawns. I got back to the hotel around 4pm, checked in, and took a two hour nap before heading out to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. Went to bed around 10pm, and voila, I was fully in Parisian time.

But I never felt fully in Paris. Yes, I was physically there and very happy, but I felt a sort of disconnect, like it was all surreal. I went wandering the next morning down streets I used to know and discovered I had very little memory of any of it. I got to Stade de France around 3pm and managed to get in the inner circle for the U2 concert, but never fully felt like I was really there. Even now, a couple of weeks later, I can't figure out how to explain it. What I can explain, however, is how I spent ten days in a place where I felt 100% whole. For the first time since I can remember, maybe in my entire life, I felt like I was physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally in the same place at the same time. As my friend Ash would say, I was totally living in the Now. That place wasn't Paris, it was Hamra.

And so, in the next few days, I will be posting about the trip with photos and videos and write ups of the amazing things that happened and how the whole direction of my life is probably changed and how I am once again scattered across the globe - mentally in Paris, physically in Washington, with my heart stuck in filthy, chaotic Hamra, just waiting for me to retrieve it. And I will, as soon as I can.

Mr. Internet, Tear Down That Wall!

The Aspen Institute held an event in Washington today entitled, "Digital Statecraft: Media, Broadcasting and the Internet as Instruments of Public Diplomacy in the Middle East." Elie Khoury, Chairman and CEO, Quantum Communications, a leading advertising and communications firm in the broader Middle East; and Chairman and CEO, M&C Saatchi, Middle East & North Africa made the trip from Beirut to discuss modern public diplomacy.

He led with a comparison of the Berlin Wall - a symbol of East-West divide for so many years - to today's East-West relations, though today's "East" is the Islamic world. On September 11, 2001, a wall of separation was erected that senselessly divides our species.

When talking about public diplomacy, we have to ask, are there enough tools to make it successful? Do these tools work with Islam? Do we have to wait another half century to see successful results? Does television reach enough people? Radio? The internet? Can Western media play a public diplomacy role?

Mr. Khoury said, "All can reach one, one can reach all."

Even with censorship, quality and pertinent information will eventually get to people thanks to new media. There are 65 million internet users in the MENA region despite the fact that only 1% of online content is in Arabic.

Khoury added that of all websites that are run in the Middle East, only 20% of them are related to Islam, contrary to what the West might think. He lamented that a few psychopaths (my word, not his) have hijacked Islam and use the Quran as a substitute for the Communist Manifesto. See, we all dream the "American dream," no matter what our nationality. You have to remember Americans come from everywhere else. Aside from a tiny minority, most human beings want control over their own destinies, a safe place to raise a family, and the freedom to pursue whatever makes them happy. But there is an imbalance in the world, between haves and have nots, and once when Adam Smith was the promise of having, then followed Marx, Lenin, and Nasr. Arab socialism failed the Arabs, and some have turned to radical Islam.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

New media, social media, whatever you would like to call it, gives us this amazing, amazing opportunity to skip government run public diplomacy and have direct interaction with each other. Isn't it time we start talking TO each other rather than passively-aggressively complaining about each other?

Tick, tick, tick...

The writing said Sylvania at the end of the glowing tube above my head, a tube that was sucking the soul of out me. Octron, it was called, made in Mexico, probably manufactured beneath the same glowing tubes. There was a slight yellow tint to most of these soul-sucking abominations, though a few glowed almost purple and one of them was dark. I stared at them in revulsion. When I looked away, my eyes were filled with spots, spots that skewed the view of the glowing screen in front of me. Everything glowed, everything was artificial, even the afternoon fatigue that had routinely overcome me, the result of hours beneath those tubes and in front of that screen.

I'm leaving for Paris on Thursday to reclaim some of my soul. If only I could go to sleep and wake up Friday in Montmartre.

Paranoid Android

Slaying in Fairfax followed earlier confrontation about speed hump, police say

Stephen A. Carr worked aggressively, but patiently, to try to slow down the cars that flew past his house in the Burke area of Fairfax County. Most of his neighbors applauded his help, and earlier this year a speed hump was installed in front of his house.

This is not unlike the fatal shootings over a parking space in Lebanon that occurred a few weeks ago in terms of the pointlessness of the deaths.

We've become such a paranoid society about safety that we've given up a heckuva lot of freedom. Instead of installing speed bumps (at taxpayer expense), how about teaching your kids to look both ways before crossing the street? Is it too much to ask for a little personal responsibility? Common sense? Guess so, if people are dying over speed bumps.

More great stuff from the Lebanese Transparency Association

This anti-corruption video is made by the Lebanese Advocacy and Legal Advice Center, an intiative of the Lebanese Transparency Association.

Tea Party of God

I wrote pages and pages of thoughts on the events that occurred in Washington DC today, some of them as I was walking around the Mall, wondering how we as a nation had reached this point. Hundreds or thousands of other people wrote on these events, too. What I can give is only a personal perspective and a few photos and videos that no one else has because I can't do anything to change these people since irrational people cannot be reasoned with.

I didn't last 20 minutes before I felt the need to get away from them. Everything that is wrong with America gathered on the National Mall today, and curiosity prompted me to put on my Obama shirt and trek down to the Lincoln Memorial. I never should have gone.

This is how much these people care about America. This massive quantity of garbage is near the Vietnam Memorial, which so many of them "solemnly" walked by without a thought in their heads about how they are responsible for the deaths of more than 5000 American troops because of their voting patterns. Their votes = murder. Not to mention the murder of more than 1 million Iraqis and Afghanis their votes are responsible for. Not that they'd give a damn about the deaths of Muslims.

It didn't feel like a rally of any sort. It was more like a giant picnic. These people just sat there in their foldable chairs next to coolers. They brought coolers and chairs to a political rally. Seriously. They were carrying massive quantities of crap for a four hour political rally. And they had to have chairs because they, well, how can I put it nicely? More of them were obese and sickly looking than not.

Some illegal politicking by Batshit Crazy Bachman's token black guy makes me wonder if we can gather enough evidence to have these people penalized for violated IRS regulations. The charity this non-political rally was supposedly for was one I've never heard of, and while I have no problem with giving scholarships to kids of veterans, this charity seemed like an afterthought. In fact, I couldn't figure out what the hell this rally was supposed to be about. There was a lot of religious nuttery - it sounds like Glenn Beck wants to turn America into a theocracy. But do his followers understand what Mormonism is? How would Beck's belief that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are brothers sit with them? Or that Mormons belief in multiple gods?



So why do us educated folks let these teabaggers get under our skins?

Well, they have an equal vote with people who actually know...something.

These are irrational folks who would scream at you that the sky is red if you told them it was blue but you held a different world view than they did. This is the most frustrating thing about them. The Obama birth certificate is a perfect example. 40% of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the US, or at least think it is possible he wasn't despite the fact that it is readily available and well-publicized in many places. These people can't distinguish from belief and reality, and what's worse is trying to reason with them.

They detest intelligence. There are two possible explanations I can come up with for this. First, intelligent people make them feel insecure, so railing against education and knowledge is a defense mechanism. The second could be that because their intelligence is limited, they can't grasp the idea that other people are capable of knowing more than they do. I think it's mostly the first one.

The fact that they are proud of their ignorance and call people who are smarter than them "elitists" only compounds the problem. Why do they do that?

Because they're told to. And they vote how they're told to without bothering to learn anything for themselves.

They're also arrogant folks. You can hear Fox News rail against Mr. Rogers telling kids they're special and all, yet Fox watchers must have taken his advice to heart, because they all think very much of themselves. First, they think they're better than other people in the world simply because they're Americans. Most of them have never left the country and have no idea what it's like anywhere else. Many of them think Arabs live in tents, for example. Instead of counting their blessings that they weren't born into a dictatorship, they proclaim their superiority over other people despite the fact that none of them chose to be born in America. Compare this to saying you're better than someone because of your skin color. It's the same thing. And they think that, too.

Oh sure, they claim to not be racists, but that's only because they don't understand modern racism. (Well, some of them are proud racists.) Because they aren't that bright, they tend to view the term racism as lynchings and firehoses, something that doesn't happen these days. What they refuse to understand is the institutionalized racism - the psychological and sociological impact of this nation's history with race. The fact that they deny racism exists is in itself a form of racism.

They also think they're somehow entitled to America above others. This is why they rail against immigrants, despite the fact that they are descendants of immigrants themselves. Take this guy, a model citizen for the Foxcist Movement of America. He had his propaganda down. You can't get much more racist than that. Devil costume, anti-Latino slur. Good job, Hans. Sieg heil!

But they can't walk more than a few blocks without having to sit down to rest. This is due to the fact that they all come from places where they drive everywhere. Walking is reserved for the refrigerator.

They were everywhere. They invaded my cafes, my bars - some of them actually were hogging up space in a non-Barnes and Noble bookstore. I couldn't get away from them. And the looks of hatred they had in their eyes, and the comments they made upon seeing my shirt, well, I came home and threw darts for a half hour.

I think the teabagger "movement" can best be summed up by this photo, a brochure for the Vietnam Memorial tossed on the ground.

Hezbozos

The headlines read:

“Senior Hezbollah Member Killed in Beirut Clashes”

The first line read “Clashes erupted between Shiite and Sunni groups on the streets of Beirut…”

But the argument allegedly started over the lack of a parking space. The guys who wanted the space happened to be a Hezbollah official and a Sunni from Al-Ahbash. There was, as far as we can tell, no political reason for the parking space; it was simply a squabble – a daily occurrence in Beirut due to the dearth of space for parking – that escalated into death. The tribalism that characterizes much of the planet took over from there – a family was pissed that someone killed a member and sought to exact revenge on the killers. The story is as old as time – think Montagues and Capulets. The only difference between this situation and one of the McCoy-Hatfield American variety is that RPGs are regularly available in Lebanon.

Yet the media somehow turned this into a battle of Hezbollah versus a Sunni sect, as if using “Hezbollah” had any relevance. This is the same type of ignorant paranoia that blinds the West every time it deals with Lebanon. It is the same reason Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Howard Berman ordered a hold put on US military aid to Lebanon out of fear it would fall under Hezbollah’s control. Not once did anyone take into consideration that Iran would rush to fill the need or that without that aid to the Lebanese military, it is weaker to counter Hezbollah. Everything is HEZBOLLAH, HEZBOLLAH, HEZBOLLAH! Give it a rest.

The same blind mentality that the West uses in dealing with Lebanon is also the same blind mentality that Hezbollah and likeminded militia idiots use in sticking to their retarded ideologies. Yes, resistance against Israel is needed. But it shouldn’t be up to the undereducated morons that populate the ranks of Hezbollah, morons like Mohammed Fawaz who are stupid enough to die over a parking space.

Combating Corruption in Lebanon

Via the Center for International Private Enterprise

Bourdain returns to Beirut

The first time I ever saw No Reservations was a rerun of the 2006 Beirut episode. I was as angry about the invasion when I saw it as I was when it was first happening. I'll never forget the day the war began. I went screaming through the office halls and said some pretty nasty things about Israel, all well-deserved. And there I was, safe and sound in Washington, DC. It was a totally helpless feeling.

I didn't know back then how much Lebanon would become a part of my life. Now I know Beirut very well and have many friends in Lebanon. I am just as repulsed by Israel aggression as I was back then, but I know, too, that Lebanon is not innocent.

I'm looking forward to this episode - I even set my alarm so I don't forget. I hope he didn't stick to the overpriced, overrated pretentious restaurants but really got some of the local flavor.

Spotlight Series: Silat Wassel

SFUSA: Silat Wassal is using art as a tool for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Are you focusing on a particular area? What is that area like?

Silat Wassel: We mainly have our activities in the north; right now we are taking part of a project called the Middle East Expedition (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) and soon we will work over all the Lebanese territories on the same website project. It aims to activate the dialogue between different sects of society through artistic, cultural, social and environmental activities. It also aims to create an atmosphere of non-violence through events and workshops with different age groups in marginalized communities.

SFUSA: I understand that you have just recently gotten NGO status, so you must be pretty new. Do you have a website? If not, do you have plans to establish one? It would be great to see some of the art even if we are across the ocean!

Silat Wassel: We are working on creating LNCA (Lebanese Network for Civic Achievements), a network that should be formed by youth NGOs working in the north and then maybe expand it to the other Casas of Lebanon.

Concerning the website, we are preparing to launch a big interactive website by the end of the summer. This website will be used by youth to create advocacy groups in their local governments, municipalities, etc.

SFUSA: Where did you get the idea for using art as a tool for conflict resolution?

Silat Wassel: I, myself, am an artist and two other members are also artists. We figured out ways to use art as a tool to fight violence, and we also do social training, capacity building, and public awareness workshops.

SFUSA: What do you envision for the future of your organization? Do you think the international community could do more to help peacebuilding projects in Lebanon?

Silat Wassel:The Together We Live project is a series of workshops to establish a culture of dialogue between youth of different backgrounds.

As for what could the international community do concerning the peace building projects, we think there should be some sort of sustainability in projects; for example, we trained for the past couple of years around 700 participants from all over the north on conflict management and citizenship, thus we had an idea that we should keep on seeing them and working with them and so we created an idea of (Center for Public Awareness (CPA).

Paris September 2010

Thirty-eight days. Actually, it's only 36 until I leave, insha'allah. I have to wait until payday on Friday to get my ticket. I saw Dulles-CDG for $579 yesterday, and I am praying that one of those fares is still available on Friday. The rest were outrageous, but I'm going to Paris no matter what, even if I have to survive on the sugar packets I can get in the office coffee room.

It's been ten years since I've set foot in the City of Lights, ten long years in which I have seen the city as a tiny Lego town from an airplane window more times than I can count. This time, the plane is landing, and I am taking the bus into the city. These last ten years have been peppered with moments in time when my desire for Paris has been overwhelming. I can remember the time I vowed I would go to Europe at least once a year for the rest of my life. That was in 1999, the third year in a row I was in Europe. I made it one year after that until I broke down and went to Eastern Europe in 2007. But it wasn't Paris.

It was, well, I don't even know when it was that U2 announced they would be performing in 2010 - sometime in late autumn, or maybe December. I can say with a straight face that those two shows in NYC in September 2009 were two of the greatest nights of my life. It was a natural high, and totally worth getting sick after because I went without food or drink and stood up for basically two days straight, even though I was sick for the DC show a few days later (but that didn't matter so much because the suburban zombies who pass for music fans in DC made the show suck a little.) When the band announced a few more dates in 2010 and they gave us U2.com subscriber folks (that's what they call a fanclub these days) a chance to get tix, well, something came over me, and I did. And what city would I choose but the subject of my urban lust for a decade.

Of course, at the time, there was no North American announcement and I thought now here's the chance to get to see them two years in a row after thirteen years of having to wait four or five years between shows. But logically I knew they'd come back to North America, in one of those many, many layers we sort of generically label as the human brain.

So, ten years. I left Paris in February 2000 after spending a week in France - Dijon and some tiny town in Bourgogne I can't remember the name of but it was the best France experience I ever had because, well, it wasn't Paris, and the French get a bad rap because Americans, the few who actually go to France, usually only go to Paris, and, well, Paris is a city, and in cities, people are less friendly to tourists because tourists are SO FREAKING ANNOYING. Believe me, I know. I have lived in DC for most of the last seven years, and my tiny town of 600,000 swells to 1,600,000 on any given summer day. Although I gotta give props to the parents who bring their kids to DC instead of Disneyland. You're doing something right.

Paris is definitely a city of the past. I once wrote something somewhere about how it seemed like Paris was the past, London was the present, and Berlin was the future. (I was 22. Give me a break.) I don't mean Paris is a city of the past in a bad way, and I know Parisians hate when people say this, but Paris is a giant outdoor museum to European history. Frankly, I think they should be proud of this. (And come on, Americans - without the French, there would be no America. They helped us beat the limey asses across the channel to get our independence. One of my favorite quotes of all time is Patton's quote on D-Day: "Lafayette, nous sommes arrive." It was a thank you. I'd much rather have a "special relationship" with France than with those folks up north.) But Europe is "Europe" now, and should always remain so, because they figured out a way to stop fighting (and if I prayed, I'd pray the EU sticks together, but they really shouldn't have expanded so quickly, and they shouldn't make those retarded laws they are prone to do, like German barmaids can't wear sleeveless shirts because they might get sunburn.)

I love Paris for its past, especially for its literary past. Not only did they have great thinkers and writers roaming those cobblestone streets, but the best in all the world roamed there. My personal favorite, James Joyce, did most of his writing there in the same places as some of my other favorites, like Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. It's a place where thought once roamed, like New York.

But it's been ten years. I'm afraid. Please don't have a Charmucks on every corner.