A Cross-Cultural Analysis:

After checking out that turban on Sunday at the souvenir store, I’ve really begun to pick up on some of the less obvious differences between Beirut and Rabat, Morocco, where I just spent the last month living.  In actuality, the turban may possibly be the nearest thing to the type of dress that the Moroccans and Lebanese wear; out of respect, my colleagues and I were asked to pack conservatively with clothes that covered our shoulders and came past our knees, but as it turns out, the Lebanese women here like to show a lot of skin.  The halter tops and booty-shorts that I have seen young women wearing have been few and far between, but the head-scarves are just as few and far between here in Beirut, in my opinion, which is an unexpected and vast difference from the dress I am used to in Morocco.  As a Lebanese NCUSAR worker told us when we were back in the office, the women in Beirut look for opportunities to do their make-up and their hair and put on a small, cute dress, even if it’s just to grab a coffee with a friend at the nearest Starbuck’s.  In Rabat, it is very common for women to wear head-scarves that match their traditional kaftan dresses, and if they are wearing a short-sleeved shirt, then they wear a long-sleeved black shirt underneath so that none of their arms show.  There were many exceptions in Rabat that I saw as well—less conservative, working women who would strut the streets of Rabat in cute pumps and a pencil skirt—but I found myself having to be constantly aware of what I wore each day.  Here in Beirut, I can wear everything from my wardrobe at home and more.  The only time in that I’ve had to cover from head to foot here was when I entered the enormous Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque next to Hariri’s grave.

As far as differences go religion-wise, there are a heck of a lot more religious buildings that are not mosques (i.e. churches, cathedrals, etc.) than in Rabat, which makes sense considering how sectarian Lebanon is.  Also, and I did not realize this until Josh brought it up (the Deputy Escort I mentioned in an earlier post, who, funny enough, I ran into while we were both on vacation in Fez, Morocco, two weeks ago), but the minarets of every Lebanese mosque are circular whereas all of the minarets in Morocco are square.

Additionally, I’ve noticed with relief that I have not come across a single toilet yet in Lebanon which has not had toilet paper available and has been only a hole in the ground, which is definitely what it was like in Morocco.  Not only that, but I haven’t had to pay to use the toilet a single time here!  No more having to ensure that I have toilet paper and pocket change in my purse :-)  On a side note, I learned that you can easily use American dollars here (fixed exchange rate: 1,500 Lebanese pounds=1 USD); this makes things very convenient and saves you from having to pay for the ATM currency conversion fee.

As I think I mentioned before, the tea also just does not compare to Morocco’s, and unfortunately I cannot vouch for the coffee because although I have had at least one cup of coffee here a day, I had only one cup the whole month I was in Morocco—the tea there was just too delicious to pass up.

While the driving is just as crazy here in Beirut as it is in Rabat, the people of Beirut do not seem to honk just to hear their own horn, in fact I hardly hear it at all.  And when it comes to public transportation?  There is none.  Well, maybe 6 or 7 public buses (or so I was told) but compare that to Rabat’s numerous bus systems, two tram lines, and multiple train stations, and you have got a heck of a lot of people driving private vehicles through the streets of Beirut (roughly a population of 1.5 million people total).

Similarly, the large amount of inhabitants living in Beirut do not make much of a difference in ensuring that top efforts of improving infrastructure are being put forth, as made apparent to its citizens when they go days and sometimes even weeks without electricity.  We went to a bar for dinner last night and I thought that the bar specifically lit candles and kept the place dim to set the mood…that was until the power randomly came on over an hour and a half after we had been there.  This was never once an issue when I lived in Morocco.  Interesting.

I’ve always had an open mind about the Arab World and stereotypes, but after being able to personally observe the differences in the dress, music, food, history, and mindset of the Moroccan Arabs compared to the Lebanese Arabs, I have a further understanding of just how much one cannot attribute a certain set of ideas to any group of people.

And the best difference I’ve discovered?  I’ve found that a lot more people can speak English here—and those who don’t speak English, speak an Arabic that I can comprehend!!  There is just as much French used here as in Morocco, but when the Lebanese speak in Arabic with the Levantine dialect, it is 99% more comprehensible than the Moroccan Arabic dialect of Darija was when I attempted to use my Arabic while living in Rabat.  After futilely trying to improve my Arabic fluency by speaking with the storeowners of Rabat the formal dialect I’ve been learning for the past three years at university, I had come to accept that I really ought to have studied French instead… after all, my professors back at Grand Valley had made it known to us that even two native Arabic speakers from different countries will often resort to speaking French with each other because their dialects are too incomprehensible to the other.  However, I am very pleased to say that, even though no Arab person understands what comes out of my mouth, between my two years of formal Arabic and one year of Levantine, I can at least understand part of what comes out of theirs!!  On top of that, I am stoked to find that I learned more Arabic in Rabat than I thought I was learning while I was there—my confidence in speaking has increased immensely, and I have spotted vocabulary words and grammatical rules on signs and pamphlets everywhere that I had just learned out of the last few chapters of my new Al-Kitaab book.  So cool!!!

cedar trees & snowball fights

Our Sunday was full of adventure.  The bus left at 8 in the morning so that we could drive through the Lebanon Mountains to Baalbek, precariously close to the Syrian border.  Making our way up the mountains, we passed by Khalil Gibran’s home/museum.  For those of you who are not familiar with the great Lebanese writer/artist, might I suggest that you introduce yourself to him through his quick and easy read, The Prophet?  The National Council required that we read a few articles and at least one book related to Lebanon.  Honestly, I only read The Prophet because it was the only book that I could get from the library, but it turned out to be a suitable choice for me; written in 1923, this philosophical-style book seemed to parallel another intellectual book that I very much enjoy reading—the Tao te Ching of the ancient Chinese religion Taoism.  If you have a summer afternoon free, I highly suggest you sit back and soak up the ideas from Khalil Gibran’s most famous book.

After an hour in the museum, we continued through the mountains until reaching the park which held quite a few of Lebanon’s landmark cedar trees.  Everyone bought a few souvenirs from the stalls right outside the park but in order to make it to lunch on time, it wasn’t long before we entered the park itself and trekked our way up and down the paths that were lined by some of the biggest and most beautiful trees I have ever seen. 

We hiked up to a pretty sweet restaurant (reminded me of a Buschenschank from when I lived in Austria, except at this restaurant they actually serve hot food! :-D) and our tour guide Melkar ordered us all the standard sandwich with meat and fries…as in the fries are stuffed in the tortilla wrap…when I get back to the U.S. I’m going to be that person who dumps a bunch of fries on her burger and eats it that way—truly I will miss these sandwiches, just as I miss my beloved Moroccan tea.  I don’t know if I’ll ever find a taste for coffee, Turkish or otherwise…While we were there, the owner of the restaurant showed us an old machine in the corner that I had been eyeing earlier and it turned out to be an “Ibrik”, used to make the famous traditional Lebanese alcoholic spirit “Araq” (also popular throughout the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean), which means “sweat” (“عرق”) in Arabic for its color, I believe. 

We ate lunch in the bus, but pretty soon we drove past the ski schools (yes, ski schools!) and we got to the top of the Lebanon Mountains, when I begged Josh, the Deputy Escort (and Grand Valley alumnus ;-) Go Lakers!) to let us out for a quick snowball fight.  Claiming I was going to be the trouble-maker in the group (ha, hardly), he reluctantly obliged but he didn’t have to tell me twice!  It was fun playing in the snow in June and, I wasn’t going to go there, but because Hampton did, I had to get the boy back by proceeding to drop snow down his shirt, which ended up better than I planned because it ended up going down his pants as well.

It took another hour or two until we got to Baalbek, where the famous Baalbek ruins are located.  We stopped at a small tourist shop first, where the owner put a turban on my head and I learned that it is different than how I learned to tie a turban in Morocco.  They actually use scarves in the shape of a triangle here in the Mediterranean, not long rectangular ones like the Berbers of Morocco use.  Everyone was kind of surprised to find that the store also sold Hezbollah t-shirts and coffee mugs, but if you think about it, we were sort of in Hezbollah territory… 

The really sweet thing about the Baalbek ruins, besides the fact that there is still so much of the ancient city of Heliopolis left, is that there were at least four civilizations built on top one of another here at this sight.  It started as the Phoenician city Baalbek (“Lord (Baal) of the Beqaa Valley”) way back 9,000 years ago.  Then Alexander the Great came along and conquered the place in 334 BC, had the place renamed Helipolis, and had the place expanded to the enormous cultural sight that it is today. 

The symmetric, intricate, and elaborate construction done by the Romans to please their gods is mind-blowing, as is the fact that there is still so much of it preserved today.  I thought the remains of Volibilius in Morocco was impressive, and what’s left of Italy’s Pompeii.  But that was before coming here.  After the Muslim army conquered Baalbek in 637 CE, the city switched hands quite a few times, but it was constantly altered by the different civilizations—a roof was added to the center temple, as were windows to make up for the lost lighting; a mosque was fit in between two other temples—and eventually it passed into the hands of the Ottoman empire in the early 1500s.

On the way back through the Lebanon Mountains, we stopped at Zahle, the largest Maronite Christian community in the east part of the country.  The town was absolutely adorable and I wish we could have spent an hour or two there but we only stopped to grab some of Zahle’s famous ice cream (I got cherry vanilla, with chocolate of course).  It was delicious, and in a funny squish-shaped cone even, but it didn’t beat the bittersweet dark chocolate scoop I had on my birthday after the concert…still, I’m up for spending the rest of my days here to see if any ice cream will top that first one ;-)

The Land of Lebanon--

I’m not going to waste my time typing up fun facts about Lebanon that you could easily discover for yourself at popular geography sites, but I will share with you some other interesting facts that you won’t find anywhere on the CIA World Factbook about this country that is slightly smaller than Connecticut (:-P).  Just to give you a brief overview of things, I’ll divide into sections the observations which I have made from the past two days from my tour of Beirut and my meetings with officials whose specialties are all things Lebanon!

Society

The people who make up the country of Lebanon are affiliated with one of 18 different religious clans between the Muslims and Christians; essentially, atheism is unheard of, as far as I understand it, and contrary to American etiquette, it is not uncommon to bring up one’s religion in light conversation.  If nothing else, a person may merely introduce him or herself by the family name which is a hint enough for the other person to inquire, “So you’re a Muslim, then?” or  “That’s a Christian name, right?"”  While such religious diversity served as a primary cause for the 15- year-long Lebanese Civil War (1976-1991), it has also resulted in quite an interfaith community.  The make-up of the Lebanese society has spilled over into its politics, naturally, a unique form of government by the name of “confessionalism”.

Politics

The confessional federal government of Lebanon consists of the:

• President, who must be a Maronite Christian
• Prime Minister, who must be a Sunni Muslim
• and the Speaker of the Parliament who must be a Shi’a Muslim

Additionally, there are many other restrictions to ensure that there is near-equal representation of the different sects within Parliament itself, as well as in the Cabinet, etc.  This style was set up following the formulation of the 1989 Ta’if Agreement and to this day confessionalism has been at the center of political debate within the nation.  This governmental system fascinates me and I realize that I still have many more questions to ask about it; as of yet, however, it is unclear to me whether it is these religious affiliations which are so preventing the central government from being strong or whether this is due to some other key divide within the government’s people.  By the time I leave Lebanon, I will be sure to have found the answer to my question!  I do know for a fact though that the country’s greatest political flaw is, in fact, its weak central government, and considering Lebanon’s political past, I believe that my hypothesis is not too far off…

History

Since its reconstruction after the Civil War, strip malls and high-rises have flourished where the damaged souks and destroyed buildings of traditional Beirut once stood.  When I hear reference to the war’s Green Line, separating West Beirut from East Beirut, I can’t help but wonder how this division compared to that of West and East Berlin during WWII.  The people of today’s Beirut seemed to have tried hard to make a show of putting the war behind them; most of the women are not seen out of the house without a sufficient amount of make-up on and a nice pair of high heels, and the latest fashions of New York and London are flaunted within the windows of the same classy stores.  Men can be seen with their hair slicked back cruising around in Ferraris of the chic streets of the capital.  The city’s “Sky Bar” was voted one of the hippest dance clubs in the entire world.  And yet amongst all of this gleam and glam are statues where the sun shines through the bullet holes that serve as reminders of what Beirut went through.  The few buildings which did withstand the 15-year chaos of the Civil War are scarred with dozens of bullet holes that have been spackled haphazardly.  One of my favorite quotes from the past three days, and one which I think is most appropriate to describe Lebanon, is that it is a “country of contradictions”.  This refers to contradictions of all sorts, such as that which I described above.  A contradiction that you notice even more immediately is the infrastructure of Lebanon, or at least that of Beirut.

Infrastructure

During dinner last night, I experienced my first Beirut power outage.  Apparently this is pretty ordinary, sometimes the city can can experience multiple outages in one day, but this particular one lasted only 3 seconds long.  It’s incredible though, given all of the seemingly-richness of the city and that of its inhabitants, that the hippest night club in the capital of a nation such as this could black out until the club manages to get its generator to kick in.  Similarly, I saw fantastically ornate and elaborate mosques and churches today on my visit to Lebanon’s famous cedar trees and the famous ruins of Baalbek, yet I was afraid that the eroding switchback streets that our tour bus was driving on through the Lebanon Mountains to visit such wonders were going to crumble right beneath us.

Thus far, those have been my main observations, ladies and gentlemen, but this has only been the end of day 3 of my Lebanese experience, so I assure you that there will be much, much more to come.  In the meantime, between my valuable impressions of my “study excursion visit” (or whatever it is NCUSAR wants us to call it :-P), I will be posting stories and pictures of my daily adventures, such as the trip out East that my group went on today.  More about that tomorrow!

My Birthday in Beirut--

Unlike the second half of our group, which didn’t get in to the Hotel Alexandre until after 4 a.m. this morning, my group and I made it to Beirut by 9 p.m. last night—meaning that I just made it to Lebanon’s capital in time to say that I have had the opportunity in my short 21 years to live in four national capitals!  For this particular adventure, this means only a mere ten days of living in Beirut, but it is living nevertheless! 

Our first official night spent in this thriving city included bonding over dinner at a falafel and schawarma restaurant before a few hours of dancing right outside the restaurant.  The intersection of the street was blocked off this evening to make room for the stage of the famous Lebanese singer (although I am unfamiliar with her) Najwa Karam.  As I was sipping on my salty liquidy yoghurt-style drink that I thought I’d try, fireworks started going off in the intersection (how appropriate for my birthday! haha just kidding).  This scared me silly for a moment, which I believe is understandable given the violence in Syria taking place right now and Beirut’s own bloody past.  Fortunately, the exploding sounds that I heard were only the pops of colorful happiness that filled the sky as friends gathered on the streets and families shuffled onto their apartment balconies to get a good view of the fireworks.  Once my colleagues and I were happily finished with our dinner, we joined the crowd in the street and, relying on the buddy system, we made our way through the throngs of people until we found a spot with a reasonable view of the stage.  I couldn’t help but start dancing, as a young local girl caught on, and she invited me to join her family’s dancing circle.  I happily obliged, as I absolutely love immersing myself with the locals of whichever nation I am in.  I think that they get a kick out of me as much as I get a kick out of them, and this time was no exception; before I left, the mother insisted that I get a picture with her so I followed by requesting my own picture with the mother and then the two daughters, including the one who invited me to dance with them in the first place.  Before she left with her family, she even ran back to my group to say in English “I love you” and I tried to repeat the same thing in Arabic although I’m not sure if she understood me by the way I mix my three years of formal Arabic and my one semester of Levantine Arabic.  Still, these kinds of experiences in a foreign country is what I find priceless about traveling and made my birthday!  Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, so I think I’m going to pass on any further dancing for the evening (although it is one of my favorite things to do) and call it good for the night!  Leila sa’aida!  ليلة سعيدة!  Good night :)