The good life

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Last tuesday I stumbled across a farmers' market in Beirut, and a girl (Aurelia) at one of the stalls explained what was going on and then gave me her phone number and said she would be happy to show me around Jounieh if I was interested. A couple nights later I called her up; she had just arrived at Beirut and was going to hang out with some of her friends, and invited me to come along. So I went (she picked me up) and had an awesome night: it's been ages since I had full (interesting) conversations with cool people my age and with whom I share interests. Aurelia is a theatre actress and the friends I met work in the advertising industry, either directing or working on the set. She said she met them while they were shooting commercials at her house, but I didn't really give much thought to why her house... it all made sense later.

The next day I went over to Jounieh (a short ways from Beirut) and she showed me around their house, "a typical Lebanese house" as she put it, of which very few have managed to hold out against the onslaught of concrete apartments. I met her parents and her older brother who is an interior designer who apparently designed their other house to which I was subsequently taken. I was completely unprepared for what was waiting for me, and I know I won't be able to do it justice. They had purchased a ruined old stone house and then proceeded to fix it up, a process which took the better part of 8 years. The place is simply amazing: tons of thought was given to every small detail, part of the house is made to resemble a souq with narrow winding passageways, the ceilings of the bathrooms have the small skylights and domed ceiling common in hamams, the walls are "old style" adobe, the garden is designed so none of the neighbors can be seen and one feels like they're in the middle of the jungle... I couldn't help but think "awesome!" no matter what part of the house I considered. They apparently manually did much of the work; I think it was hands-down the coolest house I have ever seen or contemplated. After chilling out a bit after dinner it was too late to head back to Beirut so I camped out on her floor.

The next day I packed my bags and brought them over to her place, and she took me for a walk in a valley nearby the house which is beautiful but threatened by an ongoing road project and the ever-multiplying construction work. We then head back to prepare for a party that night. It was a costume party themed "Woodstock", so we had a really hard time picking out clothes for her since she normally dresses pretty Woodstock as it is. In the end we found the right combination and she, her brother (who had designed the interior of the apartment where the party was going on) and myself (looking like the homeless guy who crashed the party) head out.

Once again I found myself surrounded by awesome people (guys and girls) all doing cool things and all more or less in the art scene. The most common occupation at the party was "dancer", and I winced everytime they asked me what I did "in the real world": computer engineer sounded vaguely obscene in those surrounding. This was the "new years' party" I was hoping for: getting to meet real (and cool) Lebanese young people and having meaningful conversations... towards the end some of them were pretty drunk but still 😉 The design of the apartment was awesome as well. They all speak French amongst themselves, and assumed I did too, so I had to play the part of the monolingual american saying "english! do you speak english?!" everytime someone walked up to me and said "so... who are you?"; luckily they all did.

I spent the night at their "new" house, and we woke up pretty late the next morning: the view from my window through the enormous glasss-pane doors that form one of the walls of the room into the banana trees in the garden made me just want to lie there all day (at least) without doing anything else. We did, however, visit Byblos, a beautiful town nearby where we watched the sun set over the mediterranean (it always sets over the mediterranean), and then lied on couches staring at the fire for hours and hours until her friends came over and we chilled with them.

The story loses a lot in the telling, but the entire experience was simply awesome: what are the odds that someone you meet on the street will end up inviting you to stay with them and turn out to be the best hostess one could hope for? It was such a nice change from the dingy hotel rooms and tarzan conversations I've been accustomed to having with the Lebanese people I usually meet on the street.

Unfortunately I'm running out of time here (I only have a 15-day visa and today is day #11), so I left this morning and head up north to Tripoli, where I was immediately reminded that there's a hard world out there when the minibus driver refused to give me my change, pretending I hadn't paid him, yelling and even driving into a narrow alley when I suggested the police might help us figure it out... I really don't know what his problem was, but I could tell he was trouble the minute I saw his eyes... in the end he reluctantly gave me my change, but his nervous looks towards the back of the van made me think things could have gone differently...

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Comments

[anonymous]

fotoo
Abim insan o güzel ortam1n o güzel k1zlar1n hatunun falan bi fotoraf1n1 çeker hayret bi_ey yav. yaz i_te oratm güzel hatunlar güzel. ben de yazar1m nolcek nerden bilelim atmad11n1? delil isytiyorum delil :) neyse hadi sana iyi gezmeler - izzet

[ro]

:-)
And to think that I may have seen you, maybe on my daily commutes from berut to my university... But I would have forgotten by now, knowing my state of mind when I go to the university.