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Published: April 16th 2007
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On my way out of Tripoli I load up on sweets - the city’s signature vice - picking up a few kilos’ worth for friends, then packing a dense plate of
haliwat al-jebneh - a cheese-based gut-buster - into my belly. In the increasingly desperate Battle of the Bulge I’ve been fighting with my waistline, this round grudgingly ends in sweet, mouth-watering defeat. Back in Beirut, though, I’m greeted with ravenous smiles:
maamoul and
mafroukeh are fine ways to cozy up to friends. Even Eliana - maniacally fit by anyone’s standards - lets her sweet tooth get the best of her, going to town on the
baklawa in a way that makes me wonder just where she’s putting it.
She’s kidnapped me for the better part of the weekend, whisking me off along the coast until Beirut fades into the distance. We make it into Batroun, an old port town, just after twilight. The souqs are shuttered for the night; packs of listless teens are milling around the harbor. During the civil war in 1989, Eliana’s family was forced to flee Beirut; dozens of families came to live in Batroun, where they were taken in by the locals.
She shows me the house where she spent six months, pointing out her old bedroom window. There’s a long-limbed tree dipping its boughs over the front wall, the leaves rustling as an alley cat purrs and mews in the shadows.
We linger by the front door while Eliana works up the nerve to knock, but she balks and turns away. In the end it’s not just shyness that’s stopped her: knowing the Lebanese mania for hospitality, she suspects a brief walk down memory lane might quickly turn into a marathon dinner. She sighs nostalgically and I give her a hand a reassuring squeeze. Then we walk down to the waterfront, where the water is clear and rippling with the evening tide, and the lights from the seaside cafés are flickering like gold coins over the waves.
On the way back to Beirut we drive through Jounieh, Lebanon’s temple to hedonism, with its neon-bedecked streets already swelling with the weekend crowd. Before long there will be lines in front of all the nightclubs, disconsolate guys smoothing their shirts and patting their hair and wondering why the hell they didn’t bring a few girls to get them past the
door. Eliana - no stranger to good times, it should be noted - isn’t in a partying mood.
“We go out and we drink and dance because we have to,” she says. “My friends, we don’t know if tomorrow is going to be a war, if you’re driving and someone blows up a bomb next to you.” She’s gripping the wheel tightly and her shoulders are shaking. “Why does anyone want to live here? I want to get married and have a family and live in Lebanon, but not like this. This isn’t life.”
It’s a tough high-wire act you have to pull off around here, and there’s a sense that everyone’s dancing on a knife-edge. I’m reminded of that line of Auden’s: “The lights must never go out, the music must always play.” The next day, back in Beirut, I have coffee with Eliana and her friends. They’re an attractive, outgoing bunch of girls who go through the same litany of problems with guys and jobs that I’ve heard so many times back home. Like most of my friends, they’re just trying to put together the pieces of a normal life.
But “normal” loses something
in translation around here, and happiness - a slippery fish in the best of times - is even more elusive. Norma - a saucy brunette who’s poured into her form-fitting jeans - is still struggling to get her reluctant Fadi to commit. Jeanine - a sharp, thoughtful blonde who could stop traffic from across town - is putting the finishing touches on her wedding plans for the summer. She’s thinking of places to spend her honeymoon - Hawaii and the Maldives head the list - and you get the feeling that the only way to stay sane in Lebanon is to make certain plans for an uncertain future.
And you grab, however blindly, for whatever faith you can find. After coffee Eliana offers to take me to church, which is admittedly not what I had in mind when the weekend started. It’s the second time this trip that my scuffed-up sneakers have touched hallowed ground - a fact that my grandmother, bless her heart, would most certainly note with a rosy glow. There are dowdy old women and balding men kissing cheeks at the entrance; a few girls are decked out in decidedly un-Christian clothes. Inside a half-dozen
curtain-draped confessionals line the walls. These people, I suspect, have a lot to get off their chests.
We take a seat near the back, while the rest of the crowd shuffles in. Eliana dutifully hands out French psalm books - “Chantons Notre Joie” - though they make about as much sense to me as the Gutenberg Bible. Light is pouring through the stained-glass windows near the ceiling. There’s a rash of sniffling all around. I’m trying to figure out if a flu bug is in the air, or if some powerful, emotive force is about to shake this place to the rafters.
The priest steps to the mic with his wide, pompous forehead and ravaged hairline. “You are sinners,” his grave face suggests. “Trust me on that one. And now it’s time to pay.” If he’d decided to start flinging thunderbolts at our wicked breasts, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. Instead he tells us to turn the pages in our psalm books, and Eliana flips with her neat, manicured fingers, a look on her face as serene and beatific as the seventh day. An earnest young guy starts plucking a guitar and the choir hums a few bars: a bit closer to Peter, Paul and the Virgin Mary than the grave
kyrie leissons I remember from my own church days. A few voices warble and strain to find the notes; Jeanine - her head tipped back, her lips slightly parted - sings with a high, crystal pureness. I shuffle and mumble a bit into my chest: a black sheep who’s wandered into the wrong, faithful flock.
Compared to the marathon sessions of my Greek-Orthodox childhood, though, the mass is a merciful sprint. We stand and sit and sing with our pale throats trembling. We lower our heads in prayer, while I sneak a few peeks at the taut, pious bottoms around me. When the service ends the line for communion stretches to the door: a neat, Christian queue if ever there was one. Afterward we shake hands and kiss cheeks, the girls gossiping, the old men lightly taking their wives by the elbows and leading them into the parking lot. Then we high-tail it to the bars of Monot nearby, our throats dry with the sort of thirst no faith alone could quench.
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