beirut stories

Beirut was a strange passage into reverse culture shock: after a lengthy period in Syria and Jordan, Beirut was the first time I'd worn makeup, or a sleeveless lowcut top, in over a month. I browsed wonderful bookstores and ate Californian-style salads on Rue Hamra, and watched the sunset over the sea from a bench on the AUB campus. Went to Starbucks one afternoon (which made me laugh), then the next day to the remnants of a fourteenth-century hamam in Tripoli, where one of the pools of water had a clever optical illusion of shape and depth, a playful trick of some long-dead Mamluke mason. I found a trendy supermarket and bought soy sauce and rice noodles, having promised a Dutchwoman back in Damascus that I'd bring ingredients to make Chinese dinner (and we did, a week later, in the little half-kitchen at the al-Haramein in Souk Saroujah.) When I think of Beirut I think of sushi, drinks and dancing with a man whose name I've since forgotten; posh shoe stores and Catholic churches; straying on foot around the Green Line, wondering about the stories behind the faded-away checkpoints; old Ottoman yali-style mansions echoing those that once lined the streets of Istanbul, side-by-side next to concrete apartment blocks with bullet-pocked facades. Also of the gentle bookish man that managed the hotel where I stayed, and the not-so-gentle taxi driver who tried to assault me, the only time ever in my travels in the Middle East when I felt genuinely scared.

I've lost or worn out the red leather sandals I bought there, and the photos from the trip are hidden away in a box in Seattle. But I know there's an unsent postcard--one of those old Beiruti houses--in my notecard-box in New York, and when I get back I will pluck it out and pin it to the wall. Lots of slogans to take to the march today, but the little hand-lettered sign I carried said:

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