Tripping

(New photos @ Beitut/Bcharré, please let me know what you think...)
Lastnight we finally made it to Gemayze, the part of town rated number 2 in the world for drinking and dancing. Went to a small underground club that was recommended by a friend, ate tapas and listened to a young Lebanese band play classic Lebanese folk tunes, the crowd mostly young, singing along and clapping, and after enough food and drink, Leslie and I find room on the floor to try and dance and are surprisingly encouraged by the few oldsters in the crowd. My feeling is, these people will never see us again, so we may as well. We leave with friends and buy gardenia necklaces and float home.
Spent the morning trying to climb through bureaucracy at the Indian embassy trying to secure visas, which we need traveling as Americans from Lebanon, but wouldn't need traveling from America, or wouldn't need if we were traveling on Lebanese passports. Funny I guess. And our departure date approaches... I'm confident we won't be here longer than we have to be, though the air in the embassy is stifling, and a driver is waiting outside to drive us out of the city, and everything is mutable. We are all trying to remember this.
We get on the road after nine, crawl through Beirut traffic north, through the port and congestion to Jounie Bay, which 30 years ago was separated by miles of nothing. We're taking a trip I took as a fourteen, fifteen and eighteen year old, up the coast past Batroun, to Chekka, where we turn east and climb 5+ thousand feet in 20 miles, to Bcharé, the village Kahlil Gibran lived in before his exile. A steep climb up through deep canyons and small villages with red-roofed houses. Some villas, some working-folks' homes. This is Christian country, and there are endless posters of the as yet jailed Samir Geagea, jailed for life under charges brought by the Syrian backed Lebanese government for waging war, and possibly due to be released in a couple of days under the new coalition Lebanese government. Huge posters of Samir and his wife, the long suffering and beautiful Strida, who's lobbied for years for her husband's release, and who soon may be wrapping her lips around the mouth of the man everyone here calls a hero..
We walk through the Gibran museum, under reconstruction after years of neglect, then eat overlooking the river and the incredible valley. I get lost in memory and the charm of all this.
Before turning home we climb the rest of the way to the last of the original stands of cedars, the Stand of God. Sadly it's 100+ trees, in various conditions, but the trees are amazingly old, and are still awe inspiring. Huge and deep. Then the gauntlet of the cedar trinkets and toys, then the long slog home, through more traffic than I thought possible at 5 o'clock on Wednesday. Slipping back into Beirut, Fadi, our driver stops to buy us ice cream and smokes, and we get home and buy him flowers to take home.
Tomorrow more bureaucratic nonsense and joy, winding down some in Beirut.

Comments

[judy]

Hi all!
Finally got on your blog, even though I've been hearing about it for weeks at the Enso breakfast! Your writing and photos are even more wonderful than what everyone's been saying. Miss you!

- judy

[Gordon]

Any local news/reactions/perspective on the London bombing(s) today? Just curious. I too am enjoying your journaling, thanks so much!