The last few months have been culture-packed – a never-ending series of art exhibitions, dance performances, plays and concerts. Now that I am working freelance for the newspaper I spend my time either writing, interviewing or attending cultural events – not a bad life, I have to admit!
Last night after nine months in Beirut two unexpected things happened which freaked me out. I am used to worrying about the normal things: money, work deadlines, walking home by myself at night – but then up popped two things I had (perhaps foolishly) not anticipated.
Firstly at ten o’clock last night I was in a fourth floor flat in Gemmayzeh, babysitting and watching a DVD, when I felt the sofa rocking under me. The dog was some way away and couldn’t possibly have moved it and I was alone in the house. I got up and walked around it, trying to work out what had happened, then decided I must have imagined it. I sat back down and a minute later the same thing happened. I realised that the sofa couldn’t moving by itself – which meant that the building must be moving, which meant – earthquake!
One week back in Beirut and I’m struggling to get back into a routine now that I’m not in the office everyday. I’ve spent a lot of my time baby-sitting little Sam, celebrating his first ever easter by decorating the little tree on the balcony with easter decorations (Sam was far more interested in the packaging that the decorations) and dying eggs to make a colourful easter basket. Sam loved the dye, as he is going through a phase where he is obsessed with water, and very much enjoyed splashing the colours all over me, himself, the table, the floor, his high-chair and everything else in a three-metre radius.
I’ve had a rather exhausting but very fun week reviewing three plays in Arabic, followed by a lazy weekend which was spent not partying but doing rather mundane but necessary things. I spent yesterday cleaning the house, which in my absence has become a cess-pit, then baby-sitting last night and today cleaning all my clothes, which over the past couple of weeks have over-flowed the basket and made their way in a steady mass across the floor forming an impregnable fortress between bed and door.
Everitte went to the post office again on Friday and was once again served by Shireen. Having not seen Noor in a long time he inquired as to her whereabouts and was told that she had left. “She told me you upset her very much,” Shireen said to him. “But she wouldn’t tell me why.”
Back to work yesterday after a weekend which cannot really be called a break from work, but was nevertheless a lot of fun. After a busy but very enjoyable week at the Daily Star, where I had the opportunity to write lots of culture articles, I spent Friday night baby-sitting. Samuele is used to me by now, which makes life easier when it comes to getting him to sleep. I am growing to love him dearly, though I do think he thinks he’s a dog, as evidenced by his reaction when I try to wash his face which is to lick me enthusiastically. He also took his chance while I was reaching for the towel and decided the simplest way to dry his face was just to wipe it energetically on the shoulder of my jumper, while attempting to chew it at the same time, thus proving his ability to multitask.
Beirut is a city of contradictions. It’s 1000 other places and things and at the same time it’s utterly unique.
It’s Roman ruins…
…and it’s Dunkin Donuts. Continue reading
Fall seven times and stand up eight - Japanese proverb
So yesterday was a very mixed bundle. Since, as will soon become apparent, the number seven was key, I’ll start by giving seven examples of the emotional roller coaster ride I went on in the space of a day.
1) The day began terribly. Everitte and I finally made it to the Indian Embassy, after two mornings spent trying to find it last week and failing miserably, only to be told that they would not issue us with a tourist visa for our trip, which is in less than a month, because we don’t have residency permits.
2) We came home and spent several hours looking on the internet for possible solutions, stressed because we had already spent over $300 each on non-refundable flights and apparently shipping passports across international borders to get visas elsewhere is very difficult and possibly illegal. I was running late for my internship at the newspaper by this point, and had an article due in a few hours, and ended up screaming at poor Everitte like a demented harpy-woman, which unsurprisingly lead to a fight. It was raining and life seemed like too much hard work. Continue reading
A couple of people expressed interest in seeing more of Beirut’s graffiti. In my previous post on Beirut’s Street Art I posted pictures of the art around Hamra and Gemmayzeh, two central, residential districts of Beirut. In the process of researching my article on graffiti in Beirut for Hibr online I subsequently made a trip to Karantina, one of Beirut’s industrial areas out by the port, in order to photograph the graffiti art there, which is a lot bigger and more impressive, as artists go there to bomb the ugly concrete walls along the main road in and out of Beirut so that people see their work on their boring commutes to and from work from Northern Lebanon.
A skeleton road-sweeper surrounded by ravens on the side of a bullet-ridden building
Over the last week my life has suddenly got about three times as busy. I’ve gone from working for Everitte, helping to answer his emails and deal with commissions for his calligraphy, a job which clearly left me with far too much time on my hands – as evidenced by my taking an entire day to shoddily sew one giant pair of trousers out of two perfectly good, reasonably sized pairs:
And by my spending another whole day last month making my own Christmas decorations for our tiny Christmas tree: Continue reading
I woke up this morning to a wonderful surprise: the lovely jmmcdowell has presented me with the One Lovely Blog Award. Jmmcdowell is an archaeologist-turned-novelist. Her blog about her writing is always entertaining and engaging and is one of my personal favourites – if I could I would give this award straight back to her, but I guess that would defeat the point rather. Instead I’d like to say a huge thank you to her for making my week and I strongly suggest you check out her blog here.
This award comes without any rules or requests, so I’ve decided to pass it on to five of my other favourite bloggers, in the hope it’ll make them as happy as me. I also very much liked jmmcdowell’s idea of listing some things that make me happy, so here goes… Continue reading
