The man under my window

I’ve been back in Beirut for almost two months now; and all I’ve done is complain since I got here. I came back from New York, you see, where I was isolating myself so I could write a book (live my dream) and not have to deal with all the distractions of the Lebanese life. I forget sometimes, that no matter how many times I’ve wished otherwise, this is where I’m from.

I came back and the first thing my father told me is that I think twice before flushing and that I can only take a shower once every other day because there is no water in the country, you know, it didn’t rain all winter, and we can’t get the “citerne” every damned day. I came back and quickly forgot the pleasure of walking in the streets of Manhattan, where side-walks are four times the size they are here. I got in my car and remembered the infuriating tragedy of being behind a wheel in this country, where scooters seems to have a law of their own. The three kids that run to my car every time I stop at a red light, also I complain about. I die a little inside every time I see one, and I don’t want to see them mostly because they make me feel guilty about sitting in my little red car, thinking about what a piece of crap it is and how I’ve spent way too much money on repairing it –probably more money this little kid has seen in her entire lifetime.

I complain that I can’t find all the organic ingredients I had when I was in New York just a block away from the biggest organic supermarket in the world, and that’s probably why I’ve gained a couple of kilos since then.  I complain about the lack of recycling, about the smoking indoors even though it’s been banned, the state of the country, the lack of president, the effing government, the electricity (I had to climb 7 flights of stairs, twice) the valet parking in front of my house whom I fight with everyday, the chairs they put when there’s a space open to “reserve it”, the lack of parking spots, the ticket I got, the bank that closes at 2pm, the internet connection that cuts in the middle of an episode of The Good Wife. Yes, all that.

And then yesterday night, it was pouring rain outside and I was standing at my window, and I saw a man on the stairs below. He was dusting the floor with a blanket, then he sat against the wall that had was a small roof, put his head on a big bag full of stuff, and slept there, all night, under the rain.

I complain a lot, but I forget to be thankful sometimes.

Tonight I saw the man under my window again. He is still here, sleeping outside on a blanket and a bag of his stuff, probably content that at least tonight, it isn’t raining. 

what we're leaving behind

Another day, another bomb.

This weekend it was all about the piles of trash that weren't picked up by Sukleen. Last week it was a tie between the EDL strike, the STL trial and a blog post by my colleague about how only Christians can save Lebanon. The week before it was also a bomb; or was it the week before that? And there was the Chattah assassination, and the Christmas and New Year traffic and reunions, and the amazing article by Fifi Abou Dib in L'Orient-LeJour describing exactly what it is that we keep losing, as Lebanese.

I'm leaving on Sunday, on a one-way ticket to New York; I don't have a job waiting for me, I'm not one of those lucky many to hold another nationality, I don't have a dad with unlimited money and I don't know what I'm really going to do there, but I know I can't stay here any longer.

And I know very well what I'm leaving behind. It's not the bombs --that are more present on my Facebook feed than in my reality. The bombs will come with me, because every time I hear there was in explosion in Beirut I will frantically try to call my family and friends to make sure they are all ok. It's not the lack of government, or the social segregation, or the power held by Hezbollah, or the sunni/chiite/orthodox/maronite/etc. bullshit that I could never wrap my head around, or the towers of cement growing like mushrooms in Beirut --none of this is what I'm going to miss. It'll all be here when I return, whenever that may be.

What I'm leaving behind is my sister, the person I love most in the world and who I wont be around for every day. I'm leaving my dad, my childhood home, and all the places where the memory of my mother is still alive. I'm leaving my friends, the friends I made when I was just a little girl, going to school in this very neighbourhood where I lived through all of my most important memories. What I'm leaving behind, what we are all leaving behind, is the potential for something great that will unfortunately never be. I have travelled a lot, met many different kinds of people. As a journalist, I've heard and told many stories. And I have yet to see families love each other as they do here; or groups of friends form ties that last longer than anywhere else; or a diversity that I really believe could've made us special in stead of hateful.

What we are all leaving behind are the brave. The young hopefuls who create LiveLoveBeirut to shout out the love; the heroes like Nidal and Kholoud who defy all odds and fight to marry civilly, and have the first secular baby in Lebanon; the activists who fight for children, for the poor, for the sick, for the environment, even though they get no help and no encouragement. And so we go; writers, filmmakers, designers, finance tycoons and doctors and whatever we may be. We go, and we come back for the people we've left behind. In the country we've lost.

Beirut, I'm sorry.

Dear Beirut,

I have to admit, I’ve given up on you many a times. I’ve insulted you, I’ve cursed you, I’ve tapped my feet in exasperation against you, I’ve yelled out my window at you, I’ve made fun of you, I’ve been ashamed of you, and I’ve hated you.

Even yesterday, I hated you. But today… what can I say, today?

Today I realize that whether I like it or not, whether I care to admit or not, I am part of you. And what’s worse, is that you, Beirut, are part of me.

Today I walked through the streets of Achrafieh, streets I’ve walked through my whole life. And they were darkened by evil. They were wrapped in smoke, stained with blood, screaming in fear. And I realized as I walked in front of these places where I order my food every other day, watching them sweep the broken glass from their windows just barely an hour after the blast, was that they were the places I knew the most. Because as much I love the streets of New York, Paris or Florence, they are not my streets. Not like the sidewalk where I had my first car accident with my mother 23 years ago. Not like the roads I went to school on every single day, not like the place I had my first kiss or where I smoked my first cigarette or the café where I spent hours and hours hanging out with my friends. Today, it was Achrafieh. The hospital where I was born was filled with more than 50 victims of a vicious crime. The same Achrafieh that just over a month ago, we celebrated with no cars and the most amazing sense of community. Today this Achrafieh, the neighborhood where I have spent most of my life, was blown up to pieces.

And you know what? I was blown to pieces too. Which is incredible because I really truly thought that I was over you. That my heart wouldn’t skip a beat. But I was wrong.

Today, I heard a sound that took me back seven years ago when I was an AUB student and Rafik Hariri was killed just a few hundred meters away from my campus. It took me back to 2006 when our city crumbled under Israeli fire. It took me back to those nights as a child, when the whole family was huddled up in the corridors and we lived by candlelight… And it seems like so long ago that I sometimes wonder if I dreamt it. But I didn’t dream it. I was there. Here. This is where I was born, where I went to school, where I made my friends, where I fell in love, where my mother is buried, where my home is. And even if I hate it, even if I wish I had another passport twenty-times a day, even if it drives me crazy, it’s my city. I’m a Beiruti. I’m an Achrafieh born and bred woman and whatever I am, in some way, has got to be impacted by you Beirut.

And so, I wanted to say that I’m sorry.

I wanted to say that even though I hate you, I love you. Because that’s just the way it is with things we really love. And I wanted to say that I hope, when I see a crowd spontaneously gather with candles to honor their neighbors, that we can get the chance to treat you right. To love you better. To have you always.

Yasmina.

got one!

I was browsing through Pinterest and saw this:

Funny.

But more seriously: oh so true. I mean the relief of every bride out there telling herself that "phewww, I got one" is palpable. Just like the stress of unmarried girls between the ages of 25 to 35 is one you can cut through with a knife. And the social pressure of it all makes it so that if you are 27, not at all "stressed" about ending up a "spinster" and without the hint of a white dress on your mind, everyone else around you makes it so that you will be stressed, one way or another. I went to Italy with my Parisian for two weeks and at least 4 people asked me if he had proposed. No, he didn't propose. We've only been together 7 months. He doesn't even believe in marriage, and frankly, neither do I, I would only get married to have kids.

But there it is: the stress factor. So did you get one yet? Or are you going to end up alone for the rest of your life? Well I don't mean to be the Grinch that stole weddings, but seriously, "getting one," even on paper, even on holy scriptures, it really doesn't mean that you wont end up alone anyway.

Take this for example: the other day I was sitting with three women: my aunt, my dad's girlfriend and my uncle's girlfriend, and they were telling me how: one of them was married at 19 and divorced by the time she was my age (27), the other was the last of her friends to be married (at 30) and the first to be divorced (at 32), and my dear aunt who got married at 31 lost her husband to Cancer 8 months ago, making her a widow at the ripe age of 53, and has to spend the rest of her life alone, even though she had a good one. But, my dad and his girlfriend have been together for 10 years now, and they might very well be together for the rest of their lives, and yet they don't feel the need to get married at all. It's like once you're passed a certain age, and you've already been divorced, then no one will pressure you about it.

Well, I say no pressure from the start. Seriously, I mean, if you want to get married and believe it's the right thing for you, then by all means, have your perfect day and hopefully a happily ever after marriage. But for all the others, I really believe we need to tone down the social pressure. It no longer makes any sense in this day an age and honestly, it breaks more couples (and morale) than it makes brides and grooms. Women start pressuring their significant others because they are pressured by their moms, dads, aunts, sisters, and because they see all their girlfriends getting married and they don't want to be the last one to go --it makes them feel like they failed the pre-set story board of life, that's been told to them ever since they were little girls. And men also feel the pressure from their girlfriends and their parents and they might end up proposing even if it's not really what they want or what they are ready for. And then what happens? Divorce rates in Lebanon have risen from 13% in 2000 to 20% in 2011, and that's only considering religious marriages. I have two divorced friends and they're not even 30 years old.

I think you only really "get one" if you've spent ten, fifteen, twenty years of your life as a couple and still want to be together. I think you deserve a huge party and a wedding and fireworks when you've made it that far, when you've been through thick and thin and stuck together, when life has tried and failed you, and you've both come out on top.

scaredy cat

I'm really not a cat person. And by that I mean that I hate cats. They scare the shit out of me. I don't know why, I can't explain it, but when I see a cat all I think is "run" and when I catch a cat's eyes I get shivers down my spine...

Now my Parisian lives alone in a big apartment on the ground floor of a building in the middle of Achrafieh, with a garden and a balcony that both connect to the streets. A few months ago, he saw pee and excrements on his father's bed --which has a door that opens into the garden, that he must've left open. This happened on more than one occasion. Cats were constantly roaming through his garden then, and he kept trying to scare them away.

Then one day in May, we heard miaowing coming from the garden. It was small, young sort of miaow.  The garden was pitch black and we could barely see a thing, but we kept following the sound until we found a newborn black kitten entangled in the bushes. My Parisian helped it out, trying not to touch it with bare hands so that his smell didn't rub off on it. Once freed, he put him down and we waited for the mother to collect it. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the mother appeared with two other kittens by her side, and they were reunited.

The next day, my Parisian went to Paris for a few days. When he came back, there was no sign of the three kittens or their mother. I was relieved, as I really didn't want cats constantly around me seeing how much they scare me. On a Sunday, as he spent the afternoon cleaning his garden, my Parisian saw something odd in the small fountain: there he found the three kittens, who had drowned.

The very same night, he heard a noise coming from his father's bedroom. He went in there to check, and there he found a female cat who had just given birth to three kittens. In the bedroom! The mother panicked as she saw him and fled the room. He carefully put the kittens on a pillow and placed them outside in the garden for her to collect them, and closed the connecting door.

One morning a few days later, we were walking to the kitchen when we smelt a horrible stench. We looked everywhere for what we were sure to be cat excrements, and finally, after about 10 minutes, hidden under a pillow, was a huge pile of shit on the couch. It was so disgusting I almost threw up. We cleaned up and closed the windows, as it seemed cats came in from everywhere.

Later that day, he heard a sound coming from the living room. And sure enough... there were the kittens! Two of them, not three. Behind a big trunk. Again, he carefully placed them outside, and barred all the doors, all the windows, once and for all.

Now the family of three took refuge in the garden. The two kittens never seemed to leave the garden and the mother come and goes. My Parisian, being a born animal lover, couldn't help but feed them, giving them a box of tuna every morning, and some milk.

This morning, at about 7am, we awoke at the sound of a kitten, miaowing and miaowing and miaowing. We ignored it and went back to sleep. Then, later, when my Parisian went outside to give them their morning tuna, he couldn't find them anywhere. Until he saw one of them completely flattened on its stomach, and the other with an odd foam coming out of his mouth, both looking dead. Or almost. He called the vet and they both concluded that they must have been poisoned, although they don't know how. He carried them in a cardboard box and drove them to the veterinarian, but both of them died.

Kind of disturbingly weird, isn't it?

Beirut RATsodies: Raw Emotion

It's been a while since we've had the perspective of a guy around here. Someone who actually volunteered, without me having to beg him to write a few wise words for this blog. And I'm glad he did this because it's something I have to admit I never thought about. Girls complaining about the lack of men in Beirut is the ultimate topic of conversation we've all overdosed on. Yet here's something to feed your thoughts on --or are we too good to let go and use raw emotion? I like the way you think SmartRat*. 
[The Four Rats take offense when I label someone a Rat when he isn't one of the core. For the purpose of this blog, they're gonna have to oversee this offense and readers, please make note that this is not the work of one of the core Rats. Thank you.]

Beirut RATSodies: Raw Emotion

The other night I was getting drunk with two friends. As usual, they were complaining about the scarcity of men in this town. Trying to stay a little chirpy and up their morale, I tried to convince them that there must be hope. I looked around the bar and pointed at a few guys. After this little exercise failed, I quickly noticed the girl’s range of guys to look at was substantially smaller than the males is saw. They literally scanned the whole place in 1.4 seconds, when it took me a good minute to figure out whether one of those guys had potential. First I thought it must be a girl thing (they know what they want, what they look for etc…) but then I quickly realized that they had actually left out the guys working in the bar, which constituted about 40% of the males present. So here’s one of my biggest concern with the girls in Lebanon: They calculate. A lot. There's no room for raw emotion. To them, a guy working in a bar would NEVER make the cut, so there’s no point in even going there. 

I know were in a more traditional part of the world, and it is important not to bring home a bum who’s life plans are to live under a bridge. But at that moment in the bar, I was looking at a bunch of hardworking guys, that might or might not have quite interesting characters, with no chance in hell of ever dating one of my friends. It struck me as sad. Not in the “oh the world is such a sad place where a working guy cant get an upper class girl.” It was sad in a way that was more like an obstruction to the natural attraction process. 

Here’s what I mean. In western society, the image of the good-looking barman, construction worker, truck driver or what not has quite a different lure to women than it does here. Over there a guy like that can be attractive to women. Over here, he’s just: quote “niakkk!”. Now I know this probably has some socio-economic reasons in this part of the world, and that not all the girls here are like that, that it really depends on the situation etc etc. But bottom line is the chance of the average girl getting with a bartender here is probably 87 times lower than anywhere else. That sucks, especially for the bartenders. 

What this creates, I think, is this: the driving force behind a girl engaging in such a way abroad is raw sexual attraction. I think its very healthy. You find much less of that here. Our girls have been so brainwashed with the image of an ideal guy that will make their family, friends and finally them happy, that expectations are really too high and more importantly they are really anticipated. No chance is given to anything that doesn’t match the standards. Most physical encounters are calculated and little is left to a surrender of the flesh. I'm not saying the girls should all start acting like hoes and jump on whatever’s in front of them. But a little more ease in this domain would be appropriate. And the little ease that’s out there shouldn’t all be directed at the “perfect match” guys. 

By the way, I can vow for that. Many girls perceive me as coming from a wealthy background. And its gotten me much further in this city than it has in any other.

Of course its better if you end up dating a presentable guy from down the block whose family kind of looks like yours so that everyone gets along and your social status is maintained or improved. But this shouldn’t and can’t be the decisive factor if your looking for something real. Because odds are, that prince charming is not going to come to you on a silver platter. I do think he might come to some on a cheaper platter and some girls will be lucky to get the silver ones. But they cant ALL be silver.

I think western cultures are much healthier than we are in that way. Couples have more reasonable relationships based on real attraction there. Here, I feel a lot of girls mainly go for the guy that makes everybody else happy. And god forbid he s a foreigner!

Whats up with that? Lebanese girls never giving a foreign guy a chance? Every time my foreign friends (descent guys that are usually quite successful with girls) come to town they complain about how girls are so unapproachable or after a one night stand the girls act like they’ve never met the guy. I'm sure my friends are fine with that, but something’s messed up here no?

that something special

I took a trip outside Beirut this weekend. I drove two hours north and then west up the mountain all the way to Bcharreh, a village right below the Cedars. I am embarrassed to say that in 26 years, this was the first time I saw our national emblem. But everything I discovered on that little trip reminded me that our country is so much bigger and richer than the streets of Gemmayzeh and Hamra.

From the Kadisha valley to the river walking in the woods picking wild berries and grapes, to the highest peak of the Middle-East where we stared into the vastness and watched the sun set. There's the cedar tree seed which you break to get the sap on your fingers and breathe in the smell of cedars. There's the purple flower which girls used to wear as earrings, and the fresh water source that's freezing cold. And the villagers that are so friendly and considerate even the chef making me a sandwich made me one with less bread then the boys'...  And then, there was that view. Late afternoon, in the month of August, all the clouds gather in the crevice and if you just drive a few minutes up the mountain, then you find yourself way above the clouds, the sun shining and the sky clear blue. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever laid eyes on. And it felt like I was in heaven, looking down at the earth from above the clouds.

I guess sometimes you don't have to go that far to find that something special. Now I'm going to make it my mission to discover all these beautiful places in Lebanon that I've heard about and never bothered to visit, always postponing or waiting for the right occasion. But then you go and you wonder why on earth you waited this long to do it. Maybe it's a cliche thing to say, but after views like that you can only be in a cheesy cliche mood. And from time to time, that's a good thing.

to be free

Last night I was having a sleepover at my cousin's house --it felt like I was thirteen years old again and we were each under our covers in the dark talking until we fell asleep. And as I talked about my life and everything I love about it right now, I realized that what really feels amazing for me lately is being absolutely free. Free to come and go as I please without having to justify myself to anyone. Free to only do things I want to do and not have to take anyone into consideration. Free to leave a party early or to get wasted,  to kiss anyone I want or kick someone out of my bed. Free to put myself first.

I feel lucky, I've got an easy definition of freedom: I felt burdened by a sense of responsibility I didn't want and now that I'm free from it I have never been happier.


But it's not always that simple. To be free doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. For a fourteen year-old girl who wants to be out later than midnight, to be free means to have no curfew. A 27 year-old guy who has been in a relationship for three years and feels suffocated by commitment, just wants to feel free to have one-night-stands. My friend Gay wants to tell everyone he likes boys and be able to kiss his boyfriend without inhibition. My parents wanted the freedom to love each other even though they were from different religions. And for my friend Brave who is handicapped from head to toe and hasn't walked in over ten years, it means to be free of his body.

For the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans and the Syrians it means to be free of dictatorship.  For Casey Anthony to be free is to get rid of her two-year old kid. For Amy Winehouse it's to be free from addiction. For that psycho from Norway to be free is to kill 76 people to prove a point. For Zeid Hamdan to be free is to write a song without getting arrested for it. 

No it's not that simple. Because to be free from dictatorship, countless people have died and you've still got the same man playing God over the masses. Casey is free and Amy is dead. The psycho from Norway has people using their freedom of speech to blame his actions on Islamic Extremism. And as a friend said and I quote "Zeid's free. What about expression?"

Freedom feels so great it's obvious why we all fight for it --and why the fight is as old as the world.
Makes you understand why Adam ate that apple.

a Lebanese weekend

I want to tell you about my weekend. Mostly because it's the first weekend in 4 months where we weren't on set shooting for "Beirut I love You" and I was having some serious withdrawal symptoms. But then again, it's summer, and I haven't had a summer-like weekend yet so I went all in.

Friday night, I had dinner with one of my closest friends who was here "de passage," for a wedding of course, her seventh of the season. We did the whole "let's catch up in an hour and half" thing when you just give the highlights of the last few months and, in perspective, so many stories that felt important along the way don't make it to the final cut. Then I spruced up my  attire, adding high-heels and gold earrings in order to enter the epic Lalaland of Skybar. I usually risk it once a year, just so I can reaffirm my hatred when friends try to convince me to go. That way I can say with absolute certainty that yes, I still hate it as much as last year, and no, I will not be coming next Friday. Now I know it's part of our national pride or something, and should probably be in the runner against the Jeita Grotto for the Wonders of the World thing, but I hate it. And it's not Skybar itself that I hate, because it's a beautiful place, obviously, but that music; and those new screens with the light shows; and the fire; it's like what one of my friends called it "a modern day circus." Seriously, I know us Lebanese love to go and look at each other, males riveted by females wearing short dresses or mini-shorts, and girls starring at each other always finding a way to put down the beautiful girl who just walked in because "her toes are crooked" or "she's not a real blond" or "she actually has a fat ass if you look at it closely." And I'm not saying I've never done it, I'm just saying I hate that I actually stand there and participate.  Of course it wasn't all bad --mis-a-part my poor feet that really aren't used to a night in high-heels.

On Saturday, we got ourselves up early and were at our favorite summer place, Jammal, by lunchtime. It's an annual tradition for us to gather on the pebbles, tables and chairs in the water, eating fish until we burst and drinking Arak and/or Rose for about seven hours. There's usually 20 of us harassing the poor waiters assigned to our table. We laughed about each others sex lives (well mine mostly) and tried to be polite in front of newcomers, the respective dates of some of my friends --and we came to the  realization that all the guys on the table were attached, and all the girls (who weren't their girlfriends) were single. Makes you wonder. But every year people have come and gone from that table on the pebbles --some are gone for good; others, perhaps, have joined for good, but the core is always the same.

We stopped by McDonalds on the way back and each ate a full meal, with supersized fries and cokes. And we all felt like throwing up afterwards.

Now Saturday night was a whole new experience for me, as I attended a gay birthday house party. Don't get me wrong, three of my closest friends are gay and I love them to pieces, but this was still an experience. First of all, we don't have that many house parties in Beirut. Second of all, there was an agglomeration of thirty guys in a super cool and neat apartment, with a buffet of neatly cut and shaped fruit on the table. And I had the best time. Samantha, an Italian hot-stud who I so wish wasn't gay, told us the story about when his mama came to Lebanon and wanted to visit Sabra and Chatila wearing Chanel from head to toe and a big summer hat. Now imagine him telling this story with an Italian accent. Priceless.

On Sunday, my eternal brunch buddy came back to the surface after months of neglect. I went with him and Classy to have lunch at Tawlet. We spent the afternoon in the AC watching the most depressing movie of the year, Winter's Bone, and then we had to put thirty minutes of Gad Elmaleh just to change our moods.

At night, it was the BILU reunion [Beirut I Love You cast and crew] since I wasn't the only one having withdrawal symptoms. We went to have dinner in Bikfaya, at our director's beautiful house. We ate, we drank, we had a guitar. And we were all in the garden singing Bob Dylan and the Beatles and apart from the random beetles and insects that scared the shit out of me a few times, it was perfect. And this is going to sound cheesy but that's ok, we could all use a small amount of cheesy in our lives --we were singing Coldplay's "Beautiful World" and I had a thought: I had a very Lebanese weekend, from one extreme to the other. But what makes it Lebanese isn't Skybar or Batroun or Tawlet or Bikfaya. It's the human connection we encounter everywhere we go.

Cause everybody here's got somebody to lean on.

Beirut RATsodies: dating beyond borders

Lebanese live abroad, work abroad, date abroad. I asked one of the guys to talk about his experience of dating a non-Lebanese. This is the RATsody of the month!

Dating beyond borders

Lebanese men seem to have become accustomed to the concept of dating foreign girls. We hear of the Lebanese who moved in with his French girlfriend in their 15 m² apartment; the friend who got married to an Italian girl he met 6 months ago, only to divorce 6 months later; the colleague who is dating an American blonde who seems to come straight out of a Hollywood teenager movie.

When you leave home to settle in another country, dating a foreign girl becomes an adventure that follows very specific stages. You start by hanging out with other Lebanese and feel awkward about approaching locals. Then, you’re puzzled about the idea. You think it would help your integration. You’re excited. You can’t resist her blond hair and blue eyes. You make a move and you intend to test the claim that French girls are great in bed. It generally doesn’t really work the first 2 or 3 times. Then you find the perfect match, get to know each other, discover a new culture, move in together and feel that you finally belong.

That’s until the moment of truth arrives, when you invite her to come spend a week in Lebanon… Because no matter how much you prepared her for the ride, or how many times you asked your parents and friends to be nice and always speak English, things unfortunately never turn out as easy as you thought: excitement is replaced with awkwardness, discussions about your parents turn into conflicts, English turns into Arabic. Then you realize what “lost in translation” feels like, and that the same jokes are actually not that funny in German.

Being part of a family that has a significant number of unsuccessful experiences in the topic, I knew I would be facing issues introducing my foreign (now ex-) girlfriend to my family.  Initially, my mother didn’t like the idea of us living together – not to mention the fact that we shared our apartment with her huge dog, that she was 2 years older than me and spoke a local dialect that often required a quick search on Google translate. Less than a week after introducing her to my entourage, annoying questions started popping up: why is she dressed like that? Doesn’t she wear any make-up? Are you really planning on marrying someone who doesn’t understand our culture? Before I knew it, they were already trying to introduce me to their friend’s daughters or sisters. I wondered if only they could learn a little from our politicians who seem to know how to please their foreign counterparts even more than the local people who elected them.

Don’t get me wrong, the experience obviously has lots of upside: teaching her swear words in Arabic, taking her to Baalbek and realizing it’s the first time you actually go there, or being proud to show her how many good friends you have at home. When I was away from Lebanon, I loved how simple our relationship was, the fact that we didn’t have to deal with her parents every day, that issues such as religion and age difference were not that big of a deal. I also appreciated not having 50 friends in common with her and not meeting her ex every time we went clubbing, which seemed to be very common experiences for my friends back home.

So how can you make it through without the hassle and the conflicts?  First, prepare yourself mentally to face the challenge and the criticism; Prepare your partner to the test that she is about to face and help her get through it: buy your mother a gift on her behalf, remind her to call your dad on his birthday, help her find common interests with your best friend. At the same time, show your entourage how much she means to you and remind them that she truly makes you happy.

Most importantly, make sure to explain to your partner that in Lebanon, dating beyond borders means she’ll be in a relationship with your parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, culture and origin!

introducing girls and boys

Meet the Lebanese girl.
She's the one who gets her nails to match the buckle of her Chanel bag. She goes to the gym six times a week, has her hair professionally done, wears the latest Louboutin and when it's time to walk that body in a bathing-suit, she looks like she was copy/pasted from Playboy Magazine.
She's the one who sits in the back of Torino Express sipping a beer and inhaling a cigarette with her hair kinda falling in front of her eyes. She reads books written by obscure Russian novelists and shows up at every Art show in town --which most of us don't even know existed.
She's the one who works 15 hours a day, but still manages to look good when she walks out of the office and into Myu at 10pm, ready to put her flirt on. She's the one who goes biking and skiing and climbing --just for the fun of it. She's the one who stands up for gay rights, women's rights, children's rights, and always has an opinion. She's the pretty one, the smart one, the snobish one, the fashion-addicted one, the diet one, the plastic one, the business one. She's all of that and none of that and there's one for every taste.

Meet the Lebanese boy.
He's the one with the black Porsche and the 4 digit car-plate even though he's only 21. He orders Champagne at Palais, and has a table every week of the Summer at Sky Bar. He wears a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt and a Rolex watch, none of which he could ever afford without Dad.
He's the one hiding behind his beard, drinking Tequila shots at Behind the Green Door, sometimes dressed like a homeless drunk, sometimes looking edgy and hot. He smokes weed to chill-out, and ends up at B018 on any given Friday night.
He's the one who works in the family business, and acts as if it was not handed down on a golden platter. He's the one who watches sports on TV, 7 hours a day, and spends the other 7 playing sports --on his Playstation. He's the funny one, the expat one, the sleezy one, the political one, the gay one, the workaholic one, the rich one. He's all of that and none of that and there always seems to be a girl who digs it.

Now meet the Lebanese couple.
They're the ones who are both good-looking, have three beautiful children, and have a professional photographer take their family pictures. They have two Philippino maids, a driver, three cars, and an apartment with sea view. She used to match her nails to her Chanel bag, but now matches it to her kids' clothing. He used to have a table a Sky Bar for the summer, and he still does.
They're the ones who are chilled-out, she still dresses like she was twenty-two, he alternates between the business look and the homeless look depending on the mood. They've been married three years but don't have any children because they're not ready to give up smoking just yet. She's an architect or a journalist, he's a self-made consultant or something financial.
They're the ones who have been dating for seven years, finally got engaged last summer... and then broke up because it suddenly felt too serious. They're the ones who seem to really like each other, especially because they're both from prominent Sunni (Maronite, Chii'a, Orthodox...) families and their parents love each other. They're the ones who are head over heals because their parents can't stand each other, are from different religions, and the boy has no real prospects and the girl doesn't care. They're the ones who cheat on each other like it's just another thing you do, the ones who act like a couple but refuse to acknowledge that they are together, the ones who fight constantly and you wonder why the hell they're still together.

We're all of that and none of that and that's what makes us a little bit Lebanese, and a little bit of that something else that we all bring to the pack.

screw the odds

The Lebanese dating scene has become quiet the bordello since I've been single around here. Two-years and a half in a relationship, and before that, two years and a half in New York, and before that, two years in another relationship, so basically, I haven't really seen what's out there in my own two eyes in over seven years. Enough time for a new generation (those who used to be 12 and are now 19) to flood the bars of Gemmayzeh with their perfect bodies, fashion victim wardrobes and out-of-a-commercial looking hair. But the real shocker is how unbelievably easy all these girls have become. There are no more taboos and nothing is too much or too fast. Girls will be in a guy's bed by the night's end. And men know this now. The whole seduction game is mostly out of the window, and guys decide what they're in mood to order: "Tonight, I don't feel like working too hard, I just need to empty my balls" [I guarantee you, I've heard this before, but I will not attribute the quote]. So they find an easy looking twenty-year-old who giggles at everything they say, and they know they're all set. Sometimes though, they order the more complicated, and ultimately more satisfying fuck. A girl who seems easy but at the end of the night walks out with a cheeky look on her face, making him wait another couple of nights. All the while bringing the Lebanese guy's ego through the roof. My friend Lord-of-the-Rings said the other day "There are no women we can't have... Just women who take longer to get."
Wow. And here I thought we women had the power to mystify men and make them run in circles around us.
I wonder what happened to make women so available, and take everything out of the seduction ritual --which is actually the best part of any relationship. Maybe it's the fact that there are five women to one man in Lebanon, and go figure how many of them are normal, aren't taken, or gay. At some point, all single girls and all single guys have all slept with one another by some kind of transitivity equation. And then comes the Xmas season, and a new shipment of fresh flesh and blood is delivered --and you better hurry, because you've only got about two weeks to go through the merchandise. The pool of choice is getting so small, that my friend Drunk Rat who comes to visit from Dubai every couple of weeks, found himself watching two girls making-out on a Sunday at 10pm. Again, odds are in the men's favor --they obviously love it.
But screw the odds. The amount of girls remaining that are good-for-keeps can be counted on my ten fingers, and the odds to that are probably one to a million.