Jasmine and Fire

by Salma Abdelnour

  I’ve brought a labneh sandwich I made at home, along with the moufattaka. I sit down on the sand and begin to unwrap my sandwich. In a minute, I sense someone hovering over me. I look up and find a young guy in a white polo shirt and a visor standing a few inches away and peering down at me.

  “Biki shi?” he asks. Is anything wrong?

  “La.” No. “Okay if I sit here?” I ask, half-sarcastically, annoyed at the intrusion.

  “Sure. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  I’m irritated with his question because it feels so tiresomely Lebanese, Arab, this assumption that if a woman is eating by herself, then something must be wrong. Even in Beirut, where so many women are fiercely independent and can dress as they please, drive, succeed in business, and generally act the part of the freethinking twenty-first-century woman, sexist attitudes and traditions stubbornly intrude.

  I later learn that Ramlet el Bayda is a paradox: an upscale residential area with expensive condos and a clean sandy beach that, apparently, was known in the recent past as a prostitution zone. I wonder, then, if the guy in the visor was some kind of security guard. Was he wanting to arrest me, or wondering if I’m a lost soul in need of help? I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and sneakers—hardly effective hooker gear. Was he there to guard the beach for the mysterious holiday? Doubtful, since there was barely anyone at the beach. Was he possibly flirting? He didn’t have that vibe at all; he just seemed puzzled and slightly disapproving. A few minutes after he walked away, I noticed him sitting on a bench a short distance behind me, gazing in my general direction, looking vaguely official despite any recognizable uniform.

  Another paranoid question popped to mind: Did he suspect me of being some kind of spy? I was sitting on the beach alone, and there had been military ships at sea that day, just off the coast, but that’s not terribly unusual. Still, in Beirut these days, Who’s a Spy? is a popular little parlor game. Suspicions easily swirl around foreigners who speak multiple languages, or anyone whose job requires frequent visits to political hot spots around the country or region. The speculation can be nothing more than amused curiosity, or just a side effect of the jadedness that comes from living in a place like Lebanon. A relative of mine was once joking to me, or half-joking, that a new American neighbor of hers, who’d arrived in Beirut days before the 2006 summer war and introduced himself as a refrigeration systems engineer, must have been up to something shady. I’ve heard rumors that two homeless men who always sprawled on the sidewalk outside the AUB campus gate were Mossad spies. And that various street vendors and workaday locals roaming the streets of a particular neighborhood day after day could be undercover agents for the government—mukhabarat, secret police—or foreign intelligence moles or who knows what. One of my aunts once told a dinner guest he had “espionitis,” the disease of assuming everyone in Beirut is a spy.

  The night before the Job holiday, I’d watched on DVD the film Beirut Open City, about a filmmaker suspected of espionage when he tries to make a movie about a shooting incident in Beirut. The movie’s atmosphere of a security-goon-infested, tense, post-civil-war Beirut was still with me as I sat on the Ramlet el Bayda beach, even more so after Visor Guy appeared. In this paranoid city, everyone might be up to something, or nothing, or might think you’re up to something—even if you’re a woman alone, wearing sneakers, jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt, and eating a labneh sandwich on the beach on a sunny April day.

  The intrusion by Visor Guy reminded me—an unwelcome but I suppose necessary reminder—that this country is still fucked up, in insidious ways that go beyond the obvious infrastructure and political problems. And expectations of what is and isn’t done can be hypocritical and embarrassingly archaic, sometimes when you least expect it. Maybe wandering the nearly empty sands of Ramlet el Bayda alone in a still-traumatized and suspicious city is not quite the same as my solo New York adventures, like taking the ferry to Staten Island to check out the Tibetan museum there, or walking from SoHo to Hell’s Kitchen to eat Portuguese cheese bread. But at least my Job Day adventure—even if it didn’t shed much light on the strange holiday—convinced me of one thing: if I’m ever going to make Beirut my city again, I’ll have to take the weird stares, the nosy questions, the “what’s a woman doing eating lunch alone” glares, and just press on.

  MAY

  After that Ramlet el Bayda day, and nine months in this crowded and intrusive city, I’m feeling claustrophobic. It’s not an unusual emotion here. Most Beirutis I know get cabin fever on a regular basis. Lately I’m counting myself among them—the locals I mean, not the mere visitors. Ironically perhaps, the more I feel at home in Beirut lately, the more I realize I need a break.

  I’m getting the urge to run and hide from everyone, just shack up alone somewhere for a few weeks and read, work quietly, stroll, meditate, recharge. I also figure I might as well escape the city for a while because—well, because I can. The freelance world may not be the highest paid or most secure, but it has one fantastic fringe benefit: I can, in theory, work from anywhere.

  I have some writing and editing assignments to finish over the coming weeks, and besides that I just want to spend time outdoors and feel the rhythms of Lebanese life outside the high-octane insanity of Beirut. Some time along the mellow northern coast might be nice, and maybe a couple of weeks trying out the quiet village life down south. I sketch out a plan that will get me out of the city for most of the blue-skied month of May.

  First, my northward destination: Amsheet, a town an hour up the coast from Beirut. I’d read about a campsite and adjacent little hotel built in Amsheet in the late 1960s, a hippie-backpacker pit stop dating back to the optimistic prewar days. I book myself a cheap room there for the first half of May—before the summer high season kicks in—and pack up the army-green camping backpack I brought with me from New York. I explain to everyone I know that I’ll have intermittent phone and e-mail access this month, then lock up my apartment and hit the road solo.

  The coastal highway from Beirut north to Amsheet runs along a stretch of stunning rocky cliffs plunging down to the bright blue sea. But before that, the road runs past clusters of drab white concrete buildings on the northern edge of Beirut. Anyone paying close attention will notice on some of those walls a series of trompe l’oeil landscape murals, a gentler, more bucolic version of the city’s ubiquitous graffiti. One building has a wall painted with a scene of birds flying in front of a window, its curtains parted to look out onto the soft blue sky. An urban prisoner’s escape fantasy?

  My taxi driver to Amsheet immediately strikes up a conversation—the usual routine here. Every interaction in Beirut, even a trip to the grocery store for a roll of toilet paper, can feel like a ziara, a social visit. In just about any cab ride in Lebanon, especially a long one, the personal asides will soon start tumbling out, unsolicited. With any luck, the driver will have a salty wit to keep the captive chitchat from turning bleak or too awkwardly personal. After the usual “what’s your name? where are you from?” questions, my driver opens by telling me he never would’ve guessed he’d end up driving a taxi. Explains that he doesn’t even own his cab. He used to be an accountant with four successful branch offices around the city, but he went broke during the war. I’ve heard similar stories from taxi drivers in Beirut before. Maybe they’re all true.

  The driver seems to be in a sour mood today. Like other cabbies I’ve ridden with, he’s stressed out lately by the rising cost of gas, not yet reflected in the standard taxi-ride rates, and he curses the economy. Then he screams out the window at a pedestrian who is just trying to do his best to cross a gridlocked intersection. I excuse myself to put in my earphones and listen to music instead. The sun is beating through my window. We’re edging out of the city now, and in my head I’m already miles away.

  As we approach Amsheet, the rocky coastline curves around the crystal-blue sea, the water visible from high up on the road, like driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco. My t
axi pulls into the campsite, tucked into a hilly green enclave of conifers and bursting pink bougainvillea bushes, and adjacent to the driveway is the small inn where I’ve booked a room. The forested grounds are scattered with tents and wooden huts, and I see a few camping vans and groups of what appear to be twenty-somethings sitting around in swimsuits drinking beers. After I exit the cab, my backpack slung over my shoulder, I check in at the cluttered reception office, then walk along stone steps winding through flower bushes and grassy patches down to the sea. From the rocky beach, a ladder attached to a wide flat stone leads directly into the waves. It’s a windy day and the water is whipping high, but a few blond, European-looking campers are swimming in the waves, shrieking and giggling at how cold the water is. I climb back up the steps and walk along a pathway to the inn to find my room. I open the door to a bare-bones but clean, comfortable space with a queen-size bed, a kitchenette with just a fridge and sink, a turquoise-tiled bathroom, a sitting area, and a terrace outside overlooking the cliffs and sea. Perfect. This is all I need.

  I settle in, then walk out to the terrace with my laptop to stare out at the sea and start in on my day’s work. I’m drinking tea I’ve brewed in the water pot I brought with me, and my bare feet feel good on the cool stones. My cell phone is switched off, and I’m already feeling relaxed. I could do this for weeks on end.

  Each morning in Amsheet, I walk up a hill behind the inn and set myself up with my laptop on one of the carved-rock benches a short distance from the main campsite. I love this quiet, with just the sounds of the sea below. One afternoon the sun fades in and out every minute or two, blazing hot when it comes out, cool and windy when it vanishes. A strange weather pattern, this, like a new season kicking in every few minutes. I take off my long-sleeved shirt, when the sun first comes out bright and strong, and sit for a few minutes in my purple tank top and white cotton workout pants, which roll up easily to become shorts. I soon realize I could easily put the long-sleeved shirt back on and take it off every few minutes, roll and unroll my pants; the temperatures are changing so dramatically, each time the sun and clouds shift position. The sea looks rough today, the bright blue water rolling and punching against the cliffs.

  I spend much of my time in Amsheet just like this: propping myself on a bench for hours every day, staring at the Mediterranean, the cliffs, and my computer screen. I’m writing up an interview with a New York chef for the travel magazine Afar, and editing a batch of articles for the Lebanese American University campus magazine. I’m in that narrowly focused, intensely productive zone, a work mode I crave and find hard to reach in Beirut, where every few seconds the jackhammers crank up next door or a street vendor screams out his goods for sale. The inn is in a sleepy part of town, but a few cafés down the road make competent versions of classic Lebanese dishes, so I keep the fridge stocked with baba ghanoush, fattoush, and mujaddara, and sometimes I order in a hot dinner delivered to my room: lentil soup, skewers of spiced lamb kafta, fried cauliflower with tartar sauce.

  On my fifth day, I take a break from work and decide to do some exploring. First I take a half-hour walk along the two-lane road that leads north from Amsheet to a bakery I’d heard about, called Furn al Sabaya. It’s down a twisty path that leads away from the road, and is marked only by a small sign in Arabic. The place is run by four sisters who bake using organic flours and who, among their specialties, have perfected an unusual dessert and also invented meatless versions of Middle Eastern meat pies. The bakery has a few shaded seats on a patio and some gingham-covered tables inside, and I sit chatting with one of the bakers as she steers me to what I should try. I find I’m not wild about the meatless lahmbajin flatbread, the ground meat replaced here with bits of crunchy wheat, but what I do instantly love is the muwarraka pastry that the bakery is known for, made with layers of phyllo dough wrapped around a filling of crushed walnuts and sugar, then rolled, shaped into a long cylinder, and twisted around and around like a coiled snake. I munch on the crisp, salty-sweet muwarraka as I walk back out to the road and follow it to the main Amsheet town intersection.

  My path forks from there along an uphill road that leads into the hills of Amsheet, dotted with spectacular old houses overlooking the sea way down below, through purple jacaranda trees and pink hibiscus bushes. This time my walk takes more than an hour, and when I reach the top, I wind around through quiet residential streets and stop to look at houses built in the nineteenth century by the rich silk merchants who once lived here. The houses are made of yellow or white stone and have classic Lebanese features: balconies with wrought-iron railings in a variety of colors and designs—mint green, or lavender, or turquoise, with straight or swirled bars—and those arch-topped windows capped with fan-shaped glass that I hope never disappear from houses in this country. The views down across the valley and toward the sea are breathtaking.

  A thought blows through my mind: I love Lebanon. I really love it here.

  What does it mean, to love a country? Especially a place like Lebanon, which doesn’t always make it so easy. Is loving your country the same as nationalism? My feelings for Lebanon—admittedly stronger on some days than others—seem more visceral than ideological. My love of Lebanon is not love for the idea of Lebanon, or in any case not the way the country was envisioned in the early twentieth century as a protected Christian homeland, or the way it’s currently run. In any case, I’ve always had trouble with the idea of nationalism, anywhere. I understand that nations can’t function without the loyalty of their citizens, but nationalism seems to me a lot like organized religion. Do I have to believe this is a great country, just because I was told to as a child, or because I was raised here?

  But despite its past or present political baggage, Lebanon is an enormously diverse and complex place, a country with phenomenal—if mostly abused so far—potential as a meeting place for a great variety of cultures and ideas and ways of life. It also covers an undeniably beautiful patch of land. And the truth is, I do love this patch of land, even more now than ever before. I might love other countries, too, and believe in some of their political ideologies more than I believe in Lebanon’s dysfunctional system at the moment. But I love what Lebanon could be, if it could ever clean up its political mess. If it could ever start putting its incredible diversity, talent, and beauty to better use.

  And I do love this coastline, and these hills and valleys and mountains and trees and flowers, and this sea. Always this sea.

  I return to Beirut on a mid-May weekend so I can show up at a political demonstration I’ve been hearing about, scheduled for that Sunday. I almost never go to demonstrations in New York, a reflex left over from my Berkeley days, when my friends were always en route to one protest or another and the contrarian part of me got bored with the everyone’s-an-activist culture. I’m not exactly proud of this. But here, the more I complain about the endlessly murky, corrupt political system, the more I feel I should walk the walk a little more. Adding one more body to a thin crowd of Lebanese optimists feels, even if it’s hopeless, still somehow vital.

  On Sunday morning, I walk down to the Corniche to join the rally, calling for a secular political system in Lebanon. It’s organized by a group called Laïque Pride (laïque means “secular”), responsible for organizing the first big demonstration for the cause last spring. This time last year Lebanon’s secularist movement—it also goes by the terms antisectarian or anticonfessional—was a mostly low-profile idea. This year it’s picking up momentum, partly because the revolutions around the Arab world have inspired more vigorous stock taking in Lebanon, along the lines of: We may not have a dictatorship here, but it’s time to get rid of the religion-based division of power.

  Another secularist organization called Isqat al Nizam (Down with the System) has recently been setting up a daily stand in front of the Ministry of the Interior headquarters. The group also held a few well-attended rallies of several thousand people while I was visiting California this spring. The time seems ripe—maybe, finally—for t
he secularism movement to get some traction.

  The Laïque Pride rally today is a march, starting from a central spot along the Corniche near the huge McDonald’s and the Hard Rock Café, heading to downtown and the parliament building. It’s a strong turnout on this Sunday afternoon, at least several thousand people, it looks like—teens up through the elderly, and families with their kids, and women in the hijab and others in skimpy tank tops, and stray passersby joining up midway, a whole eclectic mass. Banners with secularist messages are everywhere, hand-written or produced on fancy print-shop computers. The Laïque Pride organizers, a small group of men and women who look to be in their late twenties and early thirties, are sitting on the back of a pickup truck at the front of the crowd, holding megaphones and chanting: “Shoo deenak? Ma khassak!” What’s your religion? None of your business! The whole troupe of us marches, following the truck and chanting, for the hour it takes to walk slowly through the streets that run from the starting point on the waterfront and into the center of downtown.

  The confidence and momentum of the crowd keeps gathering strength along the way, with alternating hollers of “Shoo deenak? Makhassak” and “Al sha’ab urid, isqat al nizam,” “The people want the fall of the system,” a chant inspired by the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. We also call out a plea to parliament members to vote yes on draft legislation to update the personal status law. That change would allow mixed-sect couples like Mona and Jia-Ching to wed in Lebanon in a civil marriage, instead of having to convert or marry outside the country, and could open the way for more secular-minded legislation.