Beirut Day 10 – July 3, 2009

Yesterday was my birthday! And we also had a program fieldtrip around downtown Beirut, solely to celebrate my birthday of course. We started off at the Muhammad al-Amin mosque. It was built under the auspices of Rafik Hariri, the assassinated PM of Lebanon, and was dedicated by his son in 2008. Unfortunately, despite my dressing incredibly appropriately (long sleeves, pants, shirt that goes past the butt, hijab) I did not get to go inside. I heard Bilal, the program director, saying we didn’t have time. What I think he meant was we didn’t have time for all the inappropriately dressed students to get into the allegedly provided abayas that would render them modestly dressed. Some students did get in. A lot more students stood at the entranceway and flashed pictures in. I was behind these students so I didn’t notice that a few of our group did get in.

After that we went to Martyr’s Square where there is a statue commemorating a group of nationalists that had risen up during Ottoman rule during WWI when the city was blockaded by opposing forces and was undergoing starvation. The statue has also suffered a lot of damage and bullet holes from the civil war are quite obviously visible. It apparently has also become a rallying point, notably during the Cedar Revolution. Nearby were some ruins although I did not hear the explanation of their provenience but I assume that they were Roman or Phoenician. After that we went to a smaller mosque that we did get to go into but regrettably I did not learn the name of. It was very nice and a majority of the women stepped off into the women’s area (before the beginning of the main section of the mosque) to put on abayas or other coverings and I once again donned my hijab. I explored the main area of the mosque, the women’s prayer area and the central courtyard. After the mosque we were taken to a nearby shop where we were provided with fresh squeezed juice on the program’s dime. We walked towards the center of downtown, Place de L’Etoile or Solidere, and visited St. George Cathedral, a Greek Orthodox church. It was really interesting to see clearly Christian imagery which was clearly Orthodox but to see Arabic writing above it. After that we saw the Roman ruins, some other ruins and another, smaller church. Then we all returned to AUB. I took a nap and then skyped my parents before preparing to go out to for my birthday.

We were planning to go to this vegetarian/vegan restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet, located in Achrafiyeh. We took a cab and took it quite well. The past two days in amiya/dialect class the teachers had painstakingly gone over vocabulary for service rides and proper behavior for them as well, e.g. not getting in without agreeing on a price beforehand as none have meters. A service (pron. Ser-veec) is a shared taxi in which the driver tries to pick up other people going the same way so he’ll have a full car. These are obviously much cheaper and if you’re smart shouldn’t cost more than 2000 or 4000LL (keep in mind 1500LL =$1USD). A taxi is a private car just for you (and can be called at the company or gotten on the street) and is much more expensive.

We arrived to the street the restaurant was listed as located. We could not find it. We walked up and down Rue Abdel Waheb al-Inglizi about five times. We asked locals who had either hadn’t heard of it or worked for competing restaurants and didn’t want to say. After standing and staring at the place it was clearly supposed to be, we concluded it no longer existed somehow, despite the guidebook being published as recently as 2008. Having decided never to leave campus without my guidebook I whipped it out and we began looking for new places to eat. We found one fairly nearby. Unfortunately we walked past it (I have complained previously about the streets being poorly or unlabeled) and were actually on the edge of Gemmeyze, a new neighborhood. We said screw it and picked a restaurant located nearby in Gemmeyze. It was called Olio and was Italian. We didn’t have a reservation but the guy at the door said he could give us a table until 9:45 or 10 even though we didn’t end up leaving until about 10:15. To give you an idea of how long we walked we had left campus at 7:30 and reached the restaurant at 10. Even including the cab ride, that’s a lot of walking. Dinner was good and a generous treat from Claire and Teresa as my birthday present. After that we decided that it was a nice night and we’d walk our way back, once again operating under the assumption that if we were tired we’d hail a service. It was father than most people would walk and much farther than I think Beirutis would walk but it was as I said a nice night and we felt like strolling. We did have to endure a thousand offers of services and taxis, smooching noises and stares, but it was still nice. On the way we passed by the St. George hotel which is where the car bomb was detonated that killed Rafik Hariri. Much like the infamous Holiday Inn from the civil war, the building has been left standing and the damage is obvious and astounding. According to Wikipedia, the force of the blast was approximately 1,000kg of TNT. It was also startling to see the metal railings on the building opposite it (also abandoned but preserved) bent back from the force of the explosion.

We got back to the dorms and stood around talking for a while. I discovered that somehow I had a light sunburn from my knee to my ankle on both my legs, but worse on the left. I was burned nowhere else. Although I swear I remember doing it, I can only conclude that I failed to apply sunscreen to my legs during my morning rituals because I was wearing pants for the entirety of my time outside except for a half hour when I was getting lunch. So much for my no-burn streak. But it wasn’t a bad one and I only noticed because of the color. It was mostly faded by the next morning.