Hostage in Beirut
My first evening in Lebanon and we are held hostage although it is interesting and quite amusing and opposed to scary and serious. By Kate
Rarely have I been so happy to leave London
There is a chance I won’t ever come back.
Beirut Lebanon Paris of the Middle East ’. Sami Ghosn of Massaya winery is a one man crusade for the promotion of the idea that the Middle East is more than just a seething mass of mad Mullah’s. Beirut
It has been years since I have been this excited about a wine trip.
I love Lebanon
Secondly, a number of the people waiting for their loved ones to emerge are clutching huge bunches of flowers and of these, a few break into spontaneous and heartfelt clapping when they spot the traveller. Can you imagine a more splendid welcome? I can’t and I now feel that somehow, my life will not feel entirely rounded until someone meets me at an airport somewhere one day , dispensing flowers and applause.
It is already dark and so difficult to make out the structure of the city but we have landed in the southern suburbs, a Shi’te stronghold which Sami describes as a ‘favela’. The hotel is certainly anything but and after an incredibly quick turn around to drop bags and apply lipstick, it is back out again, to down town Beirut
Although the area we are dining in was apparently utterly razed during the long years of war in the 70s and 80s, there are no traces at all of the fact that anything other than eating and expensive shopping has ever gone on here. This is one of the glossiest places I have ever been. We stroll down a pedestrianised boulevard, restaurants with large outside terraces on either side of us, all full of impeccably dressed people. Apparently, almost no one we see is Lebanese although everyone looks Middle Eastern. These are mainly tourists from other gulf states , in Beirut
Not literally as the woman are mostly wearing head scarves but they are brightly coloured, chic and expensive looking whereas back home apparently, they would be in regulation black. Several of them are smoking shisha’s while talking on their mobiles and most groups feature not a single man.
We sit outside with ample opportunity to watch the Passeggiata and the food starts to arrive. It is pretty generic Lebanese mezze but of a seriously high standard. Tangy Tabouleh (with nary a single grain of Bulgar Wheat – an age old Green and Blue dispute settled, once and for all) humous, fatoush, richly smoked, incredibly intense baba ganoush, chicken livers, various cheesy pastries and something called Shanklish which Sami describes as ‘dried yoghurt’ and which tastes like fairly intense, salty cheese. All very good.
The dessert selection is less so – mainly variations on the theme of sweetened curd cheeses. The mint tea though, is excellent and the atmosphere is addictive. Some places try with all their might and simply never mange to make one feel instantly relaxed, at home and part of something splendid. Others do it without even trying and Beirut
After dinner, we stroll past surely the blingest shoe shop on the planet, a tiny grotto with merchandise in a range of intensely tropical colours and swamped in diamante, winking and twinkling in the window and on the shelves. Round the corner and suddenly we are in front of a huge, rather ostentatious mosque built by Harriri before he met his violent end. Immediately in front of it, lies an excavation of the walls and foundations of a small enclave of buildings which are 7000 years old. The sense of history is an audible hum and the sharper edged chatter and glitter of shoes fades utterly by comparison. This is a very, very old place.
We have places to go, though. Sami marshals us through the streets, past apparently the shop selling more Cuban cigars than anywhere else in the world and past a cool, white marble cave full of glistening mounds of Lebanese pastries until we turn into an entirely unprepossessing office building. Into the lift and up to the roof where the doors open onto another world entirely.
It is a loud world. Deep, mesmeric house throbs over an open air bar which seems suspended above the lights of the city. People, 4 deep, throng its edge, none of them unattractive and none of them, seemingly, bearing even a trace of awareness of work the next morning. It is a Wednesday night, after all.
“Do these people have to work tomorrow?” I ask Sami.
He shrugs “Casually” he says.
I am not entirely sure of what he means but I can tell you that working casually makes for people who look much sleeker, happier and healthier than the alternative. Beirutees clearly know this. We don’t stay too long as it is already late and we have an early start. Sami decides to show us where a new synagogue is being built, right by the Prime Minister’s palace so we take a circuitous route back to the hotel, weaving through deserted, streets lined with shiny designer shops.
We turn down another small avenue, heading for the palace when a stocky, swarthy man with a gun stops the car to tell us that it is a one way street. More specifically, he stops the car by whistling loudly. Sami winds down his window and berates him for whistling as this, he points out, is a very rude way of hailing civilized people. We don’t know this of course as it is all in Lebanese but we do know that the conversation is not friendly and doesn’t seem to go terribly well.
Sami winds the window back up and we start to move away but this is not to be. Swarthy man now has reinforcements, all of whom are also bearing arms and, according to them, we are going nowhere. Swarthy claims that Sami made a rude finger gesture while winding the window up. He did no such thing but for anyone reading this who is thinking of travelling to Lebanon (and you really should) I urge you to at all times think about the shape your fingers may unintentionally be making as anything less cheerful than a thumbs up is clearly taken VERY seriously. Particularly if it happens in front of the residence of the Prime Minister.
Sami got out and the tone of the conversation became even more irate. There were many Mediterranean hand gestures. More men with guns came. Some peered in at us, others merely wondered around the car or stood glowering at Sami. The short one who had started it all was by turns nervous and triumphant, unsure of whether the unfolding situation was a sterling effort at the protection of the Prime Ministers honour or a gigantic cock up which, if Sami was to be believed, was going to cost him dear.
At this point, Sami was on the phone, explaining to a variety of high placed government ministers, Generals and people in the judiciary that we had to be allowed to go. Countering that, several of the men with guns got onto their phones too. I am not sure who they were talking to, perhaps they merely wanted to feel involved. Either way, we weren’t moving.
A man who was clearly more important than the others came. There were more conversations on more phones – at one point Sami had one in each hand – before finally, the more important man spoke for a time in a far gentler tone to Sami, no doubt explaining at length the importance of not allowing ones hands to be visible at all during any exchange with those guarding the palace of the Prime Minister. Sami nodded gravelly at this sage advice and we were free.
So, I can officially say that I was held hostage in Beirut
Mind you, when I use the word ‘Byzantine’ to a very well informed Lebanese man at dinner the next night, he dismisses this outright. “Not Byzantine at all”, he says “what we have here is pure, lawless Gangster behaviour”. That may be entirely true but it is Gangster behaviour on a bed rock of practised, age old civilization.
I grew up in a place where now, Gangster behaviour is a fact of life and can tell you that there is none of the crackling tension and palpable fear on the streets here that you find in some ofSouth Africa
Perhaps a city that has literally seen it all, endlessly, over hundreds and hundreds of years just knows, in the core of its ancient foundations, that this too shall pass. Short, officious men with guns will come and go, disputes minor and major will erupt and recede and that despite all of that, life will go on. And the confidence , optimism and innate saviour faire that comes from that knowledge make this an intoxicatingly attractive place to be.
We turn down another small avenue, heading for the palace when a stocky, swarthy man with a gun stops the car to tell us that it is a one way street. More specifically, he stops the car by whistling loudly.
I grew up in a place where now, Gangster behaviour is a fact of life and can tell you that there is none of the crackling tension and palpable fear on the streets here that you find in some of
