How to make a joint jump.

I am so tired, I cannot sit up straight. Sami drives us back from Bekaa to Beirut as both night and fog draw in. We climb the mountains and watch as the valley disappears, rolled away from us beneath a cloudy sea.

We stop briefly at one of the largest cedar forests in Lebanon which is now, thankfully, a protected reserve. For centuries these incredible trees have been plundered for their wood and in a country not big on environmental controls the problem of preserving sufficient stocks of cedars is not a new one.

We get out of the car and gaze up at the fantastic shapes that the magnificent trunks and twisted branches are making through the blur of the fog. It is bitingly cold, impossible to imagine our bare arms at dinner only two nights before in Beirut. The wind hisses and purrs through the branches and their scent is heavy and distinct.  There is magic in this forest. I want to go back when I am not subsumed in exhaustion and can spend time here.
 

We get back in the car and the drive continues. Once over the pass, we descend again through towns of elegant villas and narrow high streets crammed with people and shops. Sami points out the Druze Christians, the men in their very distinctive pointy scull caps and harem pants and the women swaddled in white. I am still struggling to stay awake. It is a struggle I lose with regularity but it's only a few seconds before another particularly sharp bend in the road jerks me back.

Suddenly, Sami screeches to a halt and jumps out, leaving his hazards on. We sit in bemused silence for a few seconds before he returns to the car.

“Come” he orders us “ we are going to say hello to a friend of mine”.

We clamber, confused, onto the road. A General, in full uniform, and his incredibly glamorous wife stand on a terrace by the door of their home. They both beam and make come hither gestures with their hands.

“Welcome” they both say, inviting us in.

I am not entirely sure whether I have managed to finally fall properly asleep and am now having an elaborate Lebanese dream, but after obligatory handshakes all round, we are in their entrance hall and then beyond that, in their large living room.

This contains various pieces of tasteful but very formal, stiff and straight-backed chairs, various knick-knacks, four elderly men worrying away at beads and a large flat screen television which is on, although no one is paying any attention to it. The men glance up at in surprise at our entrance. We stare back, also slightly unnerved. The general’s wife wafts in, her jewelled sandals clacking on the marble floor.

“Welcome” she says again, graciously, “please, sit. You must drink coffee”.

We obediently perch on the edges of chairs around the room. The men go back to their conversation. Clearly, although we are rather dishevelled, our sudden appearance is not that unusual.

Sami decides we should have a tour and so the General and his wife take us down some stairs into a garden with a view down the mountain. Underneath the house is a cavern like room clearly intended for the kind of civil parties which are more about talking than anything else. The General’s wife explains that things are a bit of a mess (they aren’t) as they are only here for the weekend. This is in fact their summer house where they live when Beirut is too unbearably hot and on the occasional weekend in autumn and winter.

Tour over, we climb back upstairs. A maid brings a tray of coffee and while Sami and the General engage in an intense conversation the wife does some of the most seamless and adept small talk I have ever witnessed.

She is, as far as my limited experience of Lebanon allows, a typical Lebanese lady. Groomed to ferocious perfection, beautifully if showily dressed, and despite the bling, utterly classy. I can’t imagine any of the women I have met or seen here suffering the indignity of a bad hair day, never mind indulging in unseemly drunken or out of control behaviour.

I am only just starting to get used to the idea of this unscheduled stop when Sami springs up.

“We must go”, he announces and so after another round of handshakes, we do.

So, it seems that Lebanese hospitality (as if we needed any more proof) is indeed an unassailable fact. Can you imagine the reception in this country if a friend turned up, completely unannounced, with five slightly bedraggled and bemused strangers in tow, and not only brought them into your house but insisted that you give them a tour?

I am willing to bet that the word 'Welcome' would be bandied about with considerably less warmth and enthusiasm.

Another fairly quick turn-around at the hotel and then to dinner at a brand new pizza restaurant owned by a friend of Sami’s. We drive there through the older part of downtown which is thronged with glamorous people. Legs and chests are out; hair is big, everyone is shiny and the bars and restaurants are packed. Mind you, it is not noticeably busier than the Wednesday or Thursday nights.

Sami had booked us a table at somewhere called the Music Hall for later, but I was not entirely sure I was going to make that. Much as I wanted a memorable last night, I really didn’t know that I had the stamina. Amazing how restorative a glass of Massaya Rose can be though. By the time we left the restaurant, I was more than ready to at least give it a brief go.

I am so glad I did. It turned out to be a definitive experience and one I would not have missed for a lifetime supply of Massaya Rose.

Well, maybe for a lifetime supply but it would be a VERY close thing.

The venue is in downtown Beirut and is an old cinema. It very much feels like that – a large room with red velvet walls and a stage at the far end concealed by heavy red curtains. The place was packed; the effect of many, many people intensified by the tables crushed almost on top of each other, shoe-horned in long, straight lines running left to right all the way up to a long bar at the top of the room.

Our table was right in front of the stage. Impossible to know whether this was to prove a brilliant or really rather awful thing, but there was so much else to look at so we were not unduly bothered. All ages were here. I saw men and women who, while all looking very well preserved and of course immaculately dressed, must have been in their late 60’s or early 70’s. There were plenty of early twenty something’s as well as every age in between. Everyone was having a whale of a time. Most were smoking furiously and talking with even more gusto. I noted the lack of a dance floor and felt that this was a pity. This lot looked like they knew how to move.
 

How very naïve of me. Beirutees don’t need a dance floor. They just need a beat.

The curtains finally opened on a crowded stage. There was a full band backing a very professorial looking man in an elaborate gown who solemnly, but highly proficiently, sang an apparently traditional song. It was very good. The band were excellent and the crowd were appreciative. I glanced behind me a few times during the performance and although it was not an overly dancy song noticed the odd pair of arms being thrown enthusiastically into the air, although everyone was still seated.

The professor did only one song and the heavy red curtains came down again. Apparently, the venue never lets anyone know who is on the bill on any given night, so every time the curtains draw back it is a proper reveal. After a brief period of contemporary Lebanese and good western dance music, the lights spoke of another happening on the stage and the curtains parted again. This time, the stage was emptier. Two guitarists, one bearing a t-shirt which asked someone (everyone?) to fuck him because he was famous, a drummer and keyboard person and finally, crouched on the floor with his back to the audience, a man in his pyjamas.

We were sitting right at the stage remember and so had the benefit of very close proximity. Honestly, he was wearing pyjamas. They were white, quite possibly a silk/cotton blend and had a definite Far Eastern influence. Reinforcing the idea that he had either just got out of bed or was shortly going to get into it was the fact that he was barefoot. He was also rather short and stocky and had long, frizzy dark hair.

He turned slowly to the audience and started to sing. It was a rock ballad, in English, about the fact that someone was not, after all, going to marry him. Perhaps she grew tired of his inability to dress himself appropriately? He was really quite upset about it.  The audience were very enthusiastic. Several people were waving their mobile phones which were blazing with that clever app that pretends to be a lighter. The song came to an end and he dropped his head in a final gesture of utter melancholy.

But he recovered with remarkable speed as the unmistakeable opening bars of ’Smoke on the Water’ were struck by the band. The crowd went wild.

Truly, until you have seen this hard rock classic performed by a slightly maniacal, hairy short person in pyjamas, you do not know live music. He gave it his all. The crowd gave back even more. It must be said that despite the utter incongruity of the whole thing;  it worked. He was, weirdly, wonderfully very good and the atmosphere was truly electric.

It was when I found myself giving a devil horn salute and singing along as Mr Pyjama swung his head round on his neck with such alarming force that I was sure he was going to do himself an injury, that I realised I was definitely not returning to the hotel any time soon.

That was an entirely sensible decision. If I had returned to the hotel, I would have missed the slow at first, then steady, and finally completely unstoppable riding of the rhythms that began to unfold. During the next chunk of recorded music I noticed one or two older men who, no longer able to contain themselves, were standing up at their narrow tables, wriggling their hips and flinging their arms to the ceiling with abandon. It was sheer, delighted exuberance of the type that makes you incredibly happy to witness.
 

You get even happier if you join in though, and slowly but surely, everyone did. As the bands and the music between bands became ever livelier, more and more people got to their feet. There was almost no space between tables or even at the tables but I have rarely seen more expressive, enthusiastic dancing anywhere. Everyone shook and swayed, clicked and pointed their fingers and sang their hearts out. There were even couples who managed to do some very impressive twirly things together on the walkways between the tables.

Whoever first coined the phrase ‘the joint was jumping’ had clearly spent time in Beirut. I did not know whether to dance or watch and constantly switched between the two. Is it decades of living with conflict and the terrible destruction it wreaks that does this; gives this incredible zest for life? The purest zest I have ever seen. Nobody seemed horribly drunk, nobody was out of control but everyone, EVERYONE was clearly having an absolute whale of a time.

I finally concluded that it must be something innate to the Lebanese soul. There must be countless nations on earth who, after years of the horror of war ( a conflict which remains – and perhaps always will – unresolved) would be reduced to cowering nervous wrecks, living mainly in bitterness and fear. Not a trace of that here. Beirut did for me what maybe nowhere else in the world could do right now given how tough this year has been. It made me glad to be alive and it reminded me that, after all, you can always dance. Total exhaustion, an imminent return to reality, living in a recession (on a personal and wider scale) – none of these matter when the rhythm comes to get you in a place where people truly know how to party.

God bless Beirut. And everyone at the Massaya winery – not only for the truly incredible, world class wines that they make – but also for giving us what was a life changing and affirming experience.

That definitely doesn’t happen on most wine trips.

The drive to the airport the next morning at an ungodly hour was swift and painless as the sky turned from soft grey to pink over the sea and the mountains.   I was feeling surprisingly normal on 2.5 hours sleep.   When we got to the airport, Rachel paid the driver in dollars and apologised for not having the correct change. 

“This is not a problem” said the driver  “don’t worry, be happy”. 

A sentiment I would do well to hold on to for the next few months.  One that can be unbearably fatuous most of the time, this comes into its own in situations when there is in fact a tragically long list of worries and ‘being happy’ is a state of being that requires hard work and commitment.   No-one knows this like the Lebanese and for this, and a million other reasons, this is a place I hope I can come back to.