A city of contrasts

Day 3

I was on my way to take some pictures of the old Jewish cemetery of Beirut, thinking that, although generally closed to public, it has never been desecrated and that nobody here is ever thinking to build a "museum of tolerance" or a parking lot over it. While I was in a shared taxi, a young woman called Cassandra (I'm not kidding) told me the news that a couple of Israeli soldiers had been kidnapped by Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and that Israel was threatening some sort of retaliatory measures against Lebanese territory. Now that's what I call my perfect sense of timing.






After confusing indications, I walked through the Sunni lower-middle class neighborhoods of Basta Al-Tahta and Bachoura and eventually resurfaced into downtown to visit the Moawad Museum. This is an eclectic collection of glassware, pottery, jewels, ancient weapons, tiles and antiquities which is hosted in the former mansion of Henri Pharaon, a local affluent tradesman. I was unimpressed: some pieces are precious, but such a diverse collection in such a small place really verges on kitsch.

I gave a try to the hammam Nouzha al-Jadid, despite the rather bad description on the Lonely Planet travel guide and all I have to say is: skip it. It doesn't have anything in common with the Nureddine hammam in Damascus or the wonderful Yalbougha al-Nasri in Aleppo. Furthermore, it really is ambiguous as LP states. Not recommended. I moved very quickly to the public library in Bachoura where I finally found two novels by Hoda Barakat (Ahl al-hawa and Hajar al-dhahik) that were not available in the bookstores I checked earlier.

I joined M, the journalist I met on Tuesday (not to be confused with my old friend M) and we went to see a pro-Palestinian rally in Martyrs' Square. It wasn't more than a small sit-in of leftist college students.




Most people were stuck to television screens to watch the speech of Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah broadcast live on al-Manar, which is Hezbollah's channel. We decided to stop for some good ice cream in Place de l'Etoile and visited the Greek Orthodox cathedral of Saint-Georges with its beautiful iconostasis before going back to Hamra.





The whole kidnapping story is not promising anything good for this country and while I am certainly pissed off by the statements of some Israeli officials, who (as always) have the nerve to pose as poor innocent victims, I am equally pissed off by the uncomprehensible and nearly hysterical scenes of jubilation that I have witnessed today in some parts of Beirut. As if kidnapping two soldiers might bring any good to the children, elderly people, women who are blockaded in Gaza or to the Palestinian refugees who live in inhumane conditions in the camps scattered all over Lebanon, with no decent housing, no decent education facilities and no decent healthcare.
Only in Beirut will you find a gay club which shows al-Manar on its megascreens while the bartender comments on how handsome sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his militiamen are.

But then again this is a city of contrasts and schizophrenia, and that makes up its personality and charme. This is a place where a Saudi family composed by one man and his four wives (all clad in black abayas from head to toes) and a lonely lady in her late 40s (in a very revealing attire and heavy make-up) share the same dining room without seeming even slightly baffled by the contrast.
I love you, Beirut.