The day before I left Lebanon for Egypt, I went around the city revisiting people I'd met just days ago at random shops and restaurants. This could be a clever way of getting to know the city as well as the people who dwell in it, but really, I just wanted to thank them for their hospitality and kindness toward me, a complete stranger. I visited the crystal jewelry shop lady with voluminous wavy black hair, bedecked in gaudy jewelry and bold makeup. She showed me the reindeer she had made completely out of crystal gems strung cleverly together, I browsed through her little shop and bought a couple more things, and we chatted in French over extremely strong (must've been Turkish) coffee and Lebanese pastries. I lingered there a bit too long, said goodbye, and rushed out to catch a cab (not a moped this time) to Gemayzeh where I told the young owner of the Godfather restaurant all about my time in his country which he rarely got to enjoy himself, and promised him a souvenir from Egypt, or at least more stories. I stayed there overlong too, and by the time I said goodbye and rushed out, it was getting uncomfortably close to my departure time, and I wasn't sure if I had enough time to visit the wonderful couple who owned the artisan crafts shop along the Corniche. I hailed a cab and made my way down to the waterfront. Luckily, there wasn't much traffic along the road we were taking, so I got there in a few minutes (Beirut is such a tiny place I now realize). I wandered into their shop, the floor still scattered with real, crisp leaves, and they greeted me like an old friend. I told them all the things I'd seen in their country, about the water in the Jeita Grotto which was the color of that blue-greenish color in the painting that hung on that wall, but ever clearer, even more pure.
The husband showed me a small teacup with only the dark, sludgy dregs of coffee left, the inner rim stained with a most interesting pattern. The cup had belonged to a customer, and the husband told me that the customer would receive news from Italy, pointing to a particular dark smudge that resembled a lady's high heel hanging off the inner rim's patterned chain. The “Italian shoe” he called it. It took me a minute to realize that he meant it resembled Italy, which looks like a shoe on the map. Cool! I thought. Another instance- like the rock sculptures in the Jeita Grotto- of forms in nature that accidentally resembled something man-made, though there had been no human conscience directing its formation. The wife started giving me a tour of their shop, and at the back of the shop, I gasped because a ginormous wave had just rushed up to the height of their store and seemed close enough to touch. She let me out the glass backdoor, and I stepped onto the platform and approached the ledge, awed by the enormity and ferociousness of the waves. What made the sea so angry? The tides rolled in like a stampede of white stallions and crashed thunderously against the boulders, white seafoam exploding spectacularly outward and upward, rising several feet high at times. My god, what a rush! The exploding waves blotted my camera with blizzard-like spots as I tried to capture them in action. I put down my camera and looked out to sea. Away from the shore, the waves appeared a lot calmer, an endless sheet of ice-blue. Gray sky stuffed with puffy white clouds like sheep in dire need of a good grooming matched the sullen, angry mood of the waves pounding at my feet.
To me, a short-stay tourist from the West, who'd recently lived a few months in the Islamic country of Kurdistan, Lebanon was a phenomenon, a wonderful blend of the West and the Arab world, like the perfect blend of coffee and cream. What I loved most about Lebanon: one, they go all out for Christmas; two, the people are so open and friendly and welcoming and they (quite unlike Egyptians, as I discovered later) demand nothing in return for their kindness; three, they speak fluent English and/or French along with Arabic, and so the chance that I could communicate with a random person off the street was fairly great; and four, seize the day, seize the moment! This is the mindset of the Lebanese people. War? Bombs? No problem, we'll just rebuild everything the next day and party all night! Of course, with this great carpe diem attitude comes one of their greatest weaknesses- absolute materialism and superficiality. They love to party and look good while they party, and even when they are not partying they like to look good, and when they're completely past that partying age, they just like to look good. Period. Or as the Brits say: “Full stop.”
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