The Elsewhere Diaries

Well, I'm sorry for the lack of updates and the seeming silence of the last couple of weeks. Suffice to say it has been exceptionally busy, hectic and, most of all, fun. 

I've spent the last couple of weeks cramming Arabic letters, words and verb conjugations into my head for three hours a day while trying to sample the best the city has to offer as well as finding myself a new place to live. I can now actually write بتعلَّم عربي كل بوم !

Flat hunting in Beirut is a fun game to play. Sifting through posts on website for apartments for rent, finding ones that are even barely suitable and then trying to track down the owner, arrange a meeting, find the apartment and then actually look around, has probably be one of the most difficult things I've done since I've been here.

The first apartment I found was located way south of where I wanted to be. The bedroom was in the living room, it had a mixture of odd furniture including one bedroom with an antique French wardrobe that the landlord pointed at triumphantly and declared "It's so much nicer than new things". The same could not be said for the 80s flatpack that littered the place. This landlord then offered to drive me and Zeina home, decided that we were fun and told us how he was an actor/videographer/singer/photographer. He regaled us with his impressions of accents including Italians speaking Arabic (which sounded vaguely offensive but I couldn't really tell) and then decided we'd like to hear him sing "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. So as we weaved through rush hour traffic he were stuck in a car with a Lebanese man crooning "I deed it mayyyyyy whayyyy" very loudly and ever so slightly out of tune. He then decided he'd quite like to come out with us to a pup quiz. Suffice to say it was all very odd, slightly surreal and I did not take the room. 

I did, however, finally find a room in the most amazing apartment I've seen in Beirut.  It's perched on the fifth floor of a building in the Mar Mikhael area of Achrafieh, only 10 minutes walk from class and across the road from a friend. It looks out over the winding suburbs of Beirut, stretching up to the mountains, and down to the sea (if you position yourself just right, you can in fact, see a slice of the Med). It's decked out in industrial chic furniture (my bed is made of pallets) and has a kitchen that looks like it's been stolen from the set of a 60s french movie. I absolutely love it. I have also been left in charge of the various plants on the balcony and am worried that my perpetually ungreen fingers, which appear to be like anthrax to plant life, will result in their untimely death. I am also able to go down four floors to the beauty salon and get "fillers/botox" without even having to step out on the street. Domestic bliss.

Unfortunately, it hasn't all been good news. Yesterday while I was sat out on the balcony I heard a huge blast, the windows in my apartment rattled and a weird silence fell over the city. I jumped, of course, to the idea that it was an explosion. Then I chastised myself for being an overly paranoid Westerner and decided it must have been a sonic boom from a jet or something. Then I looked at twitter and saw the beginnings of the coverage of the bomb in Sassine. 

It is absolutely devastating to me that this would happen to Beirut, which I feel is finally managing to shake of it's post-war feel and is finding itself an identity that doesn't depend on sectarian violence. It is more devastating to know that 8 people have died and over 80 have been injured. These were mostly civilians, going about their daily lives. There are reports that a large amount of the injured are elderly and that at the time of the bomb (2:50) the area is usually busy with school children. 

However, as I sat holed up skipping from the Guardian, to the Lebanese Daily Star to Twitter I started to worry. When it was announced that it was an assassination of a prominent Sunni the fears of sectarian violence crept back into play. The scariest thing about this bomb is not just the death it caused yesterday but the lasting impacts it could have, the passions it could reignite. And perhaps this was the point of the entire thing. The one thing that came to mind, and I later discussed with my friend at a bar last night (I'm British, I won't be quarantined to my apartment and I deserve a pint on a Friday) was the speech that Ken Livingstone gave post 7/7:

"They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other […] Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved".

These are sentiments that I have seen echoed on social media by normal Lebanese, bridging sectarianism and turning away from divisive politics. The most we can do is hope that this is the case, that the young, bright Beirutis stand together instead of apart. 

But for now I'm keeping my head down, cracking on with the Arabic verbs and trying to make sense of the whole thing. 

Gx.