Home  The All New Blog Lebanon: Beirut the Magnificent
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Lebanon: Beirut the Magnificent |
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Monday, 06 March 2006 |
It's been a very long day. The training day was some 11 hours, but worthwhile, and the guys I was teaching seemed to get a lot out of it.
I was picked up first thing and driven to the office. The city I hadn't seen clearly in the night was now visible in all it's raw beauty. The buildings - even the new ones - don't scream out the way the ones in Abu Dhabi do. These buildings tease you, and show their newness in far more subtle ways. What did strike was the buildings that remained unscathed - in the daylight the bullet holes and scars from mortars were clearly visible. It seems that very little of the city truly escaped the horrors. Talking to my hosts they tell me of how they were born in the early 1970s, and were barely walking and talking when Lebanon was gripped with war. That they spent the first 15 or so years of their lives in a strange world where bomb blasts and gun fire were normal, and the news of a major bomb caused them to go "hurray! No school tomorrow", through to their teenage years when they'd be out drinking, hear a bomb blast, yet continue their nights, and how the cities restaurants remained full all the way through the years because they weren't going to succumb to it.
I doubt I'll appreciate ever everything they've been through, but to talk to people of my age, and know that for the majority of their lives they've lived with real war and bombs and constantly running from the worst of it just seems unbelievable. Words really aren't enough to describe the emotions that these conversations bring. I could only listen to everything they say and utter the ridiculous "I can't even begin to imagine living through that", because truly I couldn't.
Lunch was interesting, with great Lebanese food, followed by them having hearty political discussions and trying to put the country right; the downtown of the city is closed at the moment for the visit of many Middle Eastern leaders, plus the return of the old ruler of Lebanon who has been in exile for years. It's not often in the UK you'd get people discussing politics over lunch, yet here everyone knows that politics have got to solve the problems, because they know first-hand that war doesn't.
This evening they took me out for a proper Lebanese meal, where we ate humous that tastes unlike any humous I have ever had before, it was incredibly rich and tasty. We ate stuffed vine leaves, we ate olives, we ate taboulleh, various other salads, cheeses and raw meat and liver with pepper, and I enjoyed it all, much to amusement of my hosts who doubted I'd want to eat it all, and slyly ordered a dish of french fries just incase the Englishman wasn't able to stomach what was on offer. I relished it all, and heartily enjoyed their company, the conversations and the food. The hospitality of them was wonderful. I really wish I was staying here longer than the two days I have here. |
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