Archive for September 2012

Four: Acclimatisation

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Evidence A: I wear jumpers in air-con because I am cold

Evidence B: I experienced the existential moment when you stop and realise that yes, this is your life.

Evidence points to the fact that I may, in fact, be acclimatising to life in Beirut.

So, since the beginnings and the finding my bearings I've found myself just living and existing in Beirut. I go to coffee shops, eat good, cheap Lebanese food all the time, talk about regional politics with everyone and anyone (a surefire sign of adjustment and staple of Lebanese culture). I hate to say it (nb: I don't) but this really is the life.

I spent last weekend with Zeina and went up to the mountains to get out of the chaos of the city for a while. Lebanon is full of mountains and the mountains are full of tiny hill towns and villages where the air is clean, life is calmer and you can get a man'ousheh and a Pepsi for 2000 Lebanese Pounds (less than £1). A man'ousheh is a mixture between a pizza and a fajita that is covered in herbs and oil (Za'atar, seriously the best invention ever) which is baked and folded in half. It sounds a bit odd, it tastes absolutely delicious. Driving out and up you can palpably feel the change in atmosphere and while it takes less than hour to get up it feels like driving into another country. The villages and towns are a lot like Beirut in some ways though. They too, are sectarian, with most of them having a dominant majority community. Now before I came to Lebanon I thought it was divided by Muslim and Christian, down the middle. It is definitely not. 

A lot of people talk about Muslim and Christian areas as if they are inclusive terms but it couldn't be more different. So far I've heard of independent communities of (brace for it): Sunni Islam, Shi'ia Islam, Maronite Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Greek Catholic Christians and the Druze and this complex patchwork of communities has both divided the country and added to it's cosmopolitan, multicultural identity. In the mountains every village is a community that has been intact for hundreds of years. It struck me most when I started comparing it to my family. My parents were both born in London, their parents were born in London and Scotland but then after that? I have no idea. We don't navigate around places in the same way that Lebanese culture does and that means that when someone talks of home it's not just their home but the “home” of their uncles, cousins, grandfathers and everything else. Those places are an integral part of their cultural identity and their daily lives and that means whether you're in Beirut or Brazil or Brisbane you still have a connection to your past and your family contained in a little village perched on the side of a Lebanese mountain. So we drove to Jouar where Zeina's great-great-great grandfather probably lived, which was utterly beautiful and surrounded by the most incredible scenery.

It's only after realising that Beirut is a macrocosm of these villages that it started to make sense. The idea that people have migrated from small communities to the city and maintained their identities is a driving force in Beiruti and Lebanese life. And after a day of lounging around, eating the most amazing lunch (including raw liver, try it folks, it's actually really nice) I was rewarded not only with break from mother Beirut but with this view. Beirut, je t'aime.



This week I also started my Arabic course and I can now inform you all of my ability to write 20 letters of the Arabic alphabet. This means very little in reality because at the moment, a) I can only make sounds like a child without any concept of their meaning and, b) I still can't actually read properly because of a hideous mount of dot placing and letter mutating rules, but it's start! I'll keep you updated on my progress but I am absolutely loving it even if I have to do homework and haul myself out of bed to sit in a classroom all over again. Suffice to say that even after being in full time education for the past 17 years I still think the only thing I'm good at is learning and I'm not bored of it.

Sorry, it has taken me so long to get round to posting this but it's been a really hectic couple of days and i've been doing my homework like a good boy but I'll update this soon.

Yallah bye,
Gx. 

Three: Beginning in Beirut.

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I have now been here for four days and I still wake up in the morning, walk down to the street and still can't quite believe that I'm here. I am falling in loving with Beirut more-so, I think, than I thought I would. The Saifi Institute, where I start Arabic lessons on Monday, and the Urban Gardens, where I'm staying, are in Gemmayze, in East Beirut. It's an amazing place with a mix of backstreet cafes, little old school eateries and hipster bars and cafes. One of which, Urbanista, I'm in now because of it's functioning internet, as opposed to the internet elsewhere, which can only be described as tortuously lethargic. It's been a busy couple of days so I will try and condense this to summarise what I've been up to.

Home for the next 7 weeks. 

Flying from Dubai at six in the morning was less than ideal. For some reason the Emirates terminal building has been decked out in Times Square-esque lights and screens so stepping out of the cab was like stepping into a shit version of the Opening Ceremony. The overpriced bars (the only place in the airport you can smoke, obviously) were crowded with people drinking Chardonnay to wash down their toothpaste. One rather elderly, hagged Australian woman asked a Lebanese man who she was chatting up if “Lebanon was in Israel now”. Swiftly left and spent three hours next to an overweight man from China who grunted in his sleep.

I made it to Saifi with indicative and expected difficulty. My taxi driver didn't speak English or French and seemed to speak only two phrases: “I don't know English or French” and “OH MY GOD”, shouted wearily at traffic in general. I asked if it was busy because of the Pope and he responded with the two phrases in order. So perhaps that was a yes.

Besides the traveling everything has become a blur of walking through streets littered with bistros, cafes and bombed out buildings in regular intervals, drinking strong black coffee during the day and Almaza beer during the night. Besides Downtown, the new precinct surround Place d'Etoile in central Beirut, which is overpriced, snooty and devoid of any culture (reminded me of the UAE), Beirut seems not to abide by the same rules as normal cities. Walking down a street in Gemmayze, Hamra or Ashrafieh, (the three main distrcits i've explored so far) you notice that you don't really get the uniformity that you do in Europe. Rue Gouraud, near Saifi, has posh cafes, dingy local cafes, restaurants that advertise 'fusion cuisine', restaurants with no menus and everything in Between within about thirty paces. They have a feel plurality that I've never really experienced before, and Gemmayze especially has drawn people from all over Beirut to make it into an up-and-coming young, artistic centre. It's full of amazing bits of urban art like this one.

بيروت‎ - Beirut Graffiti 

They're scrawled over crumbling buildings which are a constant reminder of the fact Beirut is still suffering from a war which threatened to consume it entirely and destroy any semblance to the pre-75 cosmopolitan city of the Middle East. It is beautifully, brilliant decrepit and at the same time avant-garde and exciting and seems to refuse classification as either a museum city or a sprawling modern metropolis. And I love it.


Kate, who has been my much esteemed tour guide, Arabic teacher and interpreter left yesterday and now it's down to me to take up the mantel and explore for myself. I ordered my first coffee in Arabic yesterday (he repeated it to me in English, “two espressos, yes?”) so I feel suitably equipped for anything. Luckily Zeina is still here (working at as an intern) and so I have at least one permanent drinking buddy on call. My room mate is a Mormon from Mississippi so not much hope there.

Will stop now as this is getting rather epic but I hope you're all well. Send me an email and say hello.
Love
Gx.

p.s
For those asking, my postal address at the moment is:


George Edward Connor
Post Restante 
LibanPost - Beirut Souks Post Office
Beirut, Beirut Souks, Downtown Beirut
Lebanon

But let me know if you do send anything so I can go and pick it up.  

Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Two: Dubai & the GI look.

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One thing Dubai is not, despite the efforts of Sheikh Muhammed's PR office, is a cultural capital. With it's profusion of malls, hotels and indoor ski slopes, but distinct lack of museums or galleries there is a distinct lack of "culture". But despite its wanton bedrock of consumerism it is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Only 17% of the population is local Emiratis with the rest made up of migrant workers from Europe, America, the Phillipines and the India subcontinent and if you venture away from the glittering, towering hotels and into the actual streets you'll find some of the best food, company and crafts this side of Mumbai. You can buy fresh naan cooked in baking hot tandori ovens for a dirham (20p) and have a slap up Rajastani meal for under a tenner. Satwa and Karama are the two districts that make up "Little India" and they're undoubtedly my favourite parts of the city.

A street in Satwa 



But, of course, the other thing that Dubai does well is fun. Expats here welcome the beginning of the weekend with a singularly Dubai custom: Friday Brunch. Brunch here is less a fry up at midday but a full on buffet come banquet with rows upon rows of cooking stations groaning under the weight of the food. Reflecting the multicultural outlook of the city you can eat everything from roast beef to roti all washed down (generously) with unlimited libations. Excessive it is, and indicative of the Dubai way (the superlative city after all) but there is no doubting that it's fun. To finish my week long stay here, and to say goodbye before I go to Beirut (where my mother is convinced I am going to become embroiled in a revolution) we went to the Yacht Club for their Brunch (which starts at 7…) Today I feel decidedly fragile but not only that I realised the consequences of plying the middle aged with tequila shots. At some point it was decided that it would be amusing to shave my head even more and I woke up this morning with a headache and a lack of hair. Brilliant. 

The GI Look


Anywho, I now need to pack before I leave on Monday morning for the Paris of the Middle East. I'm more excited than ever and have booked myself onto an Arabic Course at the Saifi Institute so will let you know how ordering hummus in my best accent goes. 

Gx

One:

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If you've got this far you are either an amazing friend, a Facebook stalker or my mother. Congrats to you. First of I think i'll explain what this blog is (or will hope to be), what I'm doing, where and why. 

This blog is going to be a record of my travels around the world while I run away from the fact I've just graduated and don't want to get a job. However, as much as possible i'm going to try and make sure that it's not pictures of me at the full-moon party with captions like "THAILAND YOLO". As I travel I want to try and capture some of what I see, hear and experience through photos, videos and soundbites. For me, this is so that I can look back at where I've been and remember. But also I'd like to share this with you to stay in contact, to show you the bits of the world i'm seeing and so you don't worry (Mum) and hopefully you'll enjoying seeing some of the people, places and events that I stumble into.

For the next year-ish I'll be going to Lebanon for 2 months and then India for six, and well, that's as far as I've got with planning. Two of the aims of this trip are: to learn Arabic and Hindi at Language schools in Beirut and Landoor; and to do internships with charities and NGOs wherever I can. The reason for both of these is that I want to travel in a certain way. I want to spend long periods of time relatively static so that I can really experience the places I visit rather than speeding through various temples/beaches/museums taking photos and getting on a train to the next place. I want to really communicate with people and carry on learning (I worry it may be the only thing I'm good at) and I also want to try and give a little bit back in general (as best I can). 

Now, if you're still reading then thank you! Hopefully you'll pop back and keep an eye on what I'm up to. Goodbye to you lovely lot, and goodbye to England!

Keep in touch.

Gx. 

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