Our street Gemmayzeh
begins at what was once the Green Line, the ground zero and dividing line of
the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) that more or less separated the Muslim West
from the Christian East of the city. It was green
because of the foliage that sprang from the streets in the absence of any human
activity outside of indiscriminate shelling. Starting at the edge of downtown,
Gemmayzeh snakes eastward toward the old Armenian quarter of Burj Hamoud, suitably
renamed Rue d’Arménie somewhere along the way.
Many of the older
buildings on our street are still pockmarked with shelling and bullet-holes. Our
landlord, who grew up on the first floor of the building but now lives above us
on the fourth, recalls hiding in the closet for 10 days during one particularly
nasty stretch of the war. The reason? Snipers beyond the Green Line, some four
blocks away, had been taking aim at anything that moved on her block, including
people inside their apartments. Only under the cover of darkness, when things
had calmed down, could she, her mother and siblings be spirited off to Athens
to stay with the grandparents until the fighting subsided.[1]
In the meantime, her father would stay behind to ensure that (Phalangist)
militias didn’t take over the building.
The closer the Green Line
gets to the sea, the harder it is to spot the traces of the war – or the city
that preceded it. Heavily though not irreparably damaged by fighting, most of
downtown was razed to the ground in the 1990s and rebuilt to resemble the
Orientalist Pavilion at the Epcot Center, should Orlando ever host the World’s
Fair. Ever present in the minds of its inhabitants, the actual traces of the
war – and any part of Beirut that predated it – are replaced by sparkling
towers, glistening shops and undulating escalators scurrying shoppers from one
sleek vulgarity to the next. Long on politico-confessional memory, it will be
interesting to see whether today’s young Beirutis will as adults ever recall the
pre-Dubai-ification of the heart of their city.
_________________________
In 1920, the French general
Henri Gouraud crushed the incipient Syrian Revolution and marched into Damascus
as the head of the French Mandate of Syria. Before lighting his first
celebratory bogalitz, he is reputed to have walked straight to the Grand Mosque
to visit the tomb of Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who liberated Jerusalem after
nearly a century of Frankish tyranny. Whereupon at the tomb he proclaimed, “Saladin,
we have returned. My presence here consecrates the Cross over the Crescent.”[2]
Three months later, in August 1920, this would-be crusader, born and raised on
the Left Bank’s Rue de Grenelle, declared the creation of the state of Greater
Lebanon. The official name of our street, popularly known as Gemmayzeh, is
actually Rue Gouraud.
________________________
The intersection with
Avenue George Haddad, where Gemmayzeh street begins, is typical of the new Beirut:
rich, colorful, bombastic and bleeding with a confidence that verges on feeling
forced. At the southwestern corner stands the beginning of Saifi Village, an orientalist Pleasant Ville of pastel apartment blocks and empty piazzas
plopped on the ruins of what used to be an artisan working class neighborhood,
all in the hopes that If You Build It, [People with Petrodollars] Will Come.
The marketing schema for convincing the Gulf’s moneyed masses to move in?
“Saifi Village: 240 steps to major banks. 350 steps to the highway. 20 minutes
to the airport.” Like a Saudi honeymoon, in and out as quickly as possible. Like
much of downtown Beirut, it is a gated community without the gates: the
cameras, security guards and empty luxury-brand boutiques preclude the need for
anyone with a semblance of ‘normality’ from strolling in. That said, Saifi
still has a density, proximity to the heart of the city and aesthetic that, to [my]
untrained eye, is hard to completely write off. Once these wedding cake communities
are weathered by 20 years of rain and shine and social decline, there may yet
be hope. What future urbanists shall deem the Preemptive Need to Break a Few
Windows in order to make things relatively interesting.
The northwest corner of
the intersection is an empty 100+ acre lot already slated for further (very)
exclusive residential development. Coming to our side of Avenue George Haddad,
Gemmayzeh gets more interesting – and, for better or worse, considerably more Franco-European.
Both fitting and odd, given that by simply crossing the street, we are
officially in (Christian) East Beirut and now surrounded by French bakeries and
Franciscan churches. Odd, because rarely are social, cultural and economic
identifiers so blatantly obvious: as if to enter a boogie American neighborhood
one first had to pass through a checkpoint selling overpriced lattés, Lush soap
and lentil smoothies. Fitting, however, because the northeast corner is home to
one of the city’s seven locations of Paul, an upscale Parisian chain of
bakeries that even New York has yet to acquire. Across the street they’re
opening a Monoprix.
Heading east, both sides
of the first block of Gemmayzeh are home to stately 19th century
buildings, each abandoned, riddled with bullet holes and broken windows. As is
the case with much of the city’s ‘heritage’ structures, they’re too costly to
repair, and the only thing preventing developers from tearing them down tomorrow
are the complicated inheritance procedures and intra-family feuds over which
brother owns this closet and which cousin that kitchen sink. Like St Louis or
Detroit, there are hundreds of beautiful, abandoned old mansions and multi-story
turn-of-the-century apartment buildings hidden and scattered throughout the
hills of Achrafieh, the ‘borough’ that is synonymous with East Beirut (though
by no means are they restricted to this area alone).
With the glaring
difference, of course, that a great many people want to live here and even more
want to build. Given the choice between shelling out to restore a drafty old artifact
or cashing in for life, most families do not hesitate to sell. People want clean,
comfortable, new, efficient shit, a man told me; to hell with restoring the
architectural ‘gems’ of an age that most would rather forget. Fair enough. Though
there’s a sizable population of thoughtful preservationists who disagree, they
don’t own the buildings and probably never will.
Continuing down the
street, the pedestrian is hard-pressed at times to tell what year – or even
decade – it is. A half-block after the upscale bakery is an abandoned car parts
wholesaler somewhat bizarrely called FAG. Meanwhile, four empty storefronts
bearing Armenian surnames (ex: Dagabian et
fils) flank the Rural Delights Boutique, while the rusty old bodega selling
homemade Lebanese pizzas (“Snack La Reine”) is next to a shop selling imported handbags.
In Gemmayzeh, gentrification is a peculiar kind of scourge, one that comes in
violent bursts before rapidly retreating once the neighborhood’s longtime
residents take to the streets (diverse, desirable communities the world over
could learn a thing or two). Though you’re safer scaling the Syrian border than
peddling around Beirut, we even have a bike store. Across the street – and just
down the hill from the neighborhood’s trendiest bar – is an old antiquarian who
stays open well after midnight on the weekends.
_____________________________
Not three blocks into the
neighborhood and Gemmayzeh is already home to a flurry of European
institutions. One block north of our street is the Lebanese Boy Scouts (whose
insignia are written in French despite the Scouts’ English origins). A stone’s
throw away, just after a charming little French bistro, Le Petit Gris, is the Goethe Institut. This faces the back of the
Collège du Sacre Coeur (est. 1894) – itself across the street from Église
Saint-Joseph, a beautiful, simple and cavernous little grotto that feels
more like a whiskey distillery than a place of worship. It is a cliché of hated
clichés to remark upon how “European”, “Westernized” or “Latin” some aspects of
Lebanon are, but that does not make the phenomenon any less interesting – or perplexing.
Just next to the Jesuit school is a sign for the German Sprachinstitut. If
there’s one thing and one thing only that unites the Lebanese
people, it’s their unabashed adoration of Germany. I’ve heard a great many
theories for why this is – some intriguing, others disingenuous – but the
answer to that question will be the subject of a much longer piece.
Getting closer to the
apartment, the gentrification grows a little more schizophrenic. On the left,
there’s the swanky Beiruti diner called Kahwet Leila, where ageing beauties spend their days in clouds of smoke and
gossip. From the outside, you’d be forgiven for thinking it a battle-tested
institution from the 1950s. Yet the pangs of nostalgia grip Lebanon as much as
anywhere else – and Leila’s website puts any misgivings of origins quickly to
rest: “Kahwet Leila is an authentic kitsch Lebanese lounge that serves food and
mood to a wide range of clientele. The objective is to create a setting of an
‘eatertainment’ business which comprises a healthy, fresh and affordable meal
while enjoying a warm kitsch setting Lebanese ambiance.” At the bottom of the
page is a shout-out to the restaurant’s parent group, the Food Trends
Corporation, which promises “A commitment that drains a tribute to our
heritage.”
I always knew I’d chosen
the wrong profession (if not having one counts for something). Outside kickboxing and hi-scale
hookery, marketing is only career where man is truly free. Indeed, just around
the corner is another establishment which desecrated the gauntlet and named
itself Kitsch. Its description reads as follows: “Kitsch
is a café, boutique & bakery shop and is one of kind place. Kitsch offer a
'home away from home' feel and encourage visitors to feel at ease and take
their time browsing through the various rooms teaming with countless novelties
ranging from everyday accessories to vintage rarities. When you have done with
that Kitsch invites to lay back and refresh with their selection of food and
beverages. Kitsch features a wide collection of clothes from the latest fashion
in USA, Paris, London and all over the world including lots of swimwear, shoes,
bags, gadgets sunglasses and cool stuff that you can’t find anywhere else.”
Now I love the entrepreneurial spirit that springs from the bowels
of mankind as much as the next Menshevik – and I’m not one to dog non-native
speakers – but sometimes people should consult a friend before pulling the
trigger. Then again, you have to admire the nostalgia-mongers’ dogged
transparence: it beats the ambiguity of the t-shirts being sold at the Sunday market
whose chest read: “Yes? No? Maybe so!” and “An oily fashion tance.”
Yet I do not want people to get the wrong impression. Firmly
within one of the most pleasant urban bubbles I’ve ever laid eyes on, Gemmayzeh
is a beautiful, rustic and charming neighborhood. And since the only currency
we deal in is clichés, stop there we shall not. From here all the way to the
Armenian quarter, nearly every man is bearded à la Civil War chic; a third of
women smoking outside the understated, dimly lit pop-up bars don patch-work
tights, oversized cable-knit sweaters and crazy blonde curls;
the beret-and-AK-toting cops in blue camo are either playing candy crush, chain-smoking
or chatting with passersby; and each and every motorist screams past you in one
of two vehicles: a black Range Rover or a blue one. Within the bubble, the only
people driving anything worth less than $60,000 are children and the
handicapped.
____________________________
These are the Laws of the Bubble – a pampered principality in
which it is all too easy to lose oneself. As (privileged-country) foreigners on
a very spurious “writing project,” we’ve been mysteriously welcomed in two
weeks’ time into some of the country’s finest circles. How does the expression
go? Fake it ‘til you’ve recourse to nothing but the shady Irish sneak-out? In
the past week alone, one introduction has lead to two, and before you know it
you’ve scaled the walls of class solidarity and waltzed into a dinner party in
one of Lady ____’s 18th century palaces, perched on the hill, hidden
by the city’s last remaining foliage and only accessible through a series of
meandering staircases, terraces and black iron doors. Grilled whilst trying to
justify our presence at a private dinner party for the city’s ruling class, I
impishly asked the 50-something matrician if she worked in the “arts.” She let
her tallboy crash to the Persian rug: “I am President of the [country’s most important
international arts] festival and am the managing director of [the most
important French-language newspaper].” Ah yes, I see! I think I’ve heard of
both. You know, this one time, my friend found a dead cat and a $100 dollar
bill on the very same day. We bought some brandy and went down to the river…
__________________________
Yesterday afternoon we were lunching in the French Mandate
villa of Sir ______, a Baronet and old Etonian of aristocratic Irish-Lebanese
stock. We’d somehow made a favorable impression upon his stately, elegant wife
several nights prior and been invited to make a Sunday afternoon house call. (Little
do they know their guest can scarcely cross the Canadian border without being
detained and interrogated for some youthful indiscretion that refuses to
disappear from Ottawa’s records). Asked to explain our presence in his home, we
mustered some miserable musing about curiosity and keeping an open-mind about
things, a passion for life, love, laughter and lentil soup. Eat, pray, poop? Whatever
it is the kids are doing these days. And my! is that lemon-tree in the
courtyard pretty. “Do you really think so? I’ve been meaning to cut it down for
ages.”
Slightly absurd social encounters aside, the point is that
foreigners receive a special treatment that verges on the extreme in Lebanon. Whether
or not it’s done in good faith is beside the point: upon hearing some doctored
version of our raison d’y être, people have let us into their lives and homes
with unprecedented hospitality. As if we’re one
of them. It’s hilarious, if slightly unnerving at times. A Paris-based
art-dealer one night; a famed Russian-Danish interior decorator the next. In a
city of chronic traffic, poor urban planning and massive, sprawling, suburban
slums, all of the old guard we’ve met lives within a 5-minute walk of one
another, somewhere in the plush hills of Achrafieh perched above Gemmayzeh. It
is the most wonderful bubble a bumpkin could find.
___________________________
The American University of Beirut (AUB) recently had a fully funded
scholarship program for Palestinian refugee girls to become nurses. These are
people born and raised in Lebanon, whose parents and quite often grandparents
were also born here. Yet not only do they have no right to ever obtain Lebanese
citizenship or receive any of the privileges that citizenship may bestow in a
semi-failed state, they are also barred from holding the vast majority of jobs
in Lebanon, especially anything that smacks of upward mobility. Despite the
country’s chronic shortage of nurses, the Palestinian girls graduating with said
nursing degrees from the country’s most prestigious university were prevented
by law from actually working as nurses – a profession reserved for Lebanese
citizens alone. I am told that many wound up becoming receptionists instead.
That is the most elementary power of the bubble: the ease
with which it warmly welcomes the foreigner is greatly exceeded by its exclusion
of those who spend their entire lives in its shadow. This, of course, is by no
means unique to Lebanon: the US gets better by the day at marginalizing its
poor and working classes. But here the contrast is far more extreme. Our first
week in town we scarcely left the cool, leafy confines of the city’s
fashionable, gentrified core; but the charm of its cosmopolitan inner ring all
too easily distracts you from a much darker underside.
One small but glaring example was the garbled, toothless
cabbie who picked us up outside of the horse races (another tale). A sweet if
bumbling old sack of bones, he wanted to know if we were from Italy. Sorry – Denmark
and USA. “Ahh, very good country.” What about yours? “Very bad country… at
least for people like me.” The plunge: why so? At the next stoplight, he pulls
over, turns around and lifts up his tattered shirt: his entire stomach is riddled
with bullet holes. Shot 29 times by the Syrians in 1982. Entire family murdered
in the war – siblings included. A Phalangist militia from the Mountain, his
entire family was killed in the war, siblings included. Stricken, it was only
later that we wondered how many lives he too must have taken. Several days afterward
I asked an acquaintance how many of the men walking among us and now in their
50s and 60s had participated in the war. “All of them. Especially the cabbies.”
For anyone from a (post)-conflict society, these anecdotes are
no more than amateur disaster-porn. But for someone spending their first week
between bookstores and superfly cafés peopled exclusively by some of the
world’s most bewitching beings, the creeping realization that something’s
deeply amiss comes with a sting – and a warning. How much more weight can the
bubble withstand? According to many, none: it’s an illusion, a placebo, a
demented psychological condition. In a country always on the verge of
implosion; in which everyone with means is desperate to leave; in which a
divided elite, a chronically inactive state and a sadistic army barely can
barely serve a “native” population of 3.8m, much less the 2m Syrian refugees,
on top of 650,000 already permanently stateless Palestinians – it’s amazing the
bubble exists at all.
Less than ten blocks from where Western-educated fashionistas
sip $5 coffees is a seething slum of a Hezbollah stronghold. Along with giant,
repetitive posters of bearded imams, fallen martyrs and Iranian flags, the
party’s green, black and red insignia hangs from most porches and every
streetlamp. Of course, apart from these ideological accoutrements – and the
fact that you probably shouldn’t take pictures – it is no different from other
working class Beiruti neighborhoods: it’s lively and pleasant, if poor and dense,
but only a five minutes’ walk from Saifi Village and two minutes from Monot, a
posh Christian neighborhood that’s literally across the freeway and home to a
series of beautifully restored churches, English pubs, French bistros and the
best Armenian café west of Yerevan.
Several miles to the south, half the distance from Clayton to
Ferguson, fester some of the biggest Palestinian refugee camps, where people
have been rotting in legal limbo for more than 60 years. Born and raised on
Lebanese soil, virtually none of them will obtain Lebanese citizenship. I was
told that Palestinians who’ve spent their entire lives in the south of Beirut
refer to everything outside the camps as “Lebanon.” Within it, of course, is
Palestine. How the massive influx of both Syrian and even Syrian Palestinian
refugees will alter the balance remains to be seen.
___________________________
Back on Gemmayzeh we go for our first meal at _____, a cheap
and thriving local joint serving traditional cuisine. From noon until
nearly midnight, it is thronged with people of every background. Women in veils
laughing and smoking shisha; silver foxes pounding jars of arak and mounds of
mutton while their pencil thin wives take spurious stabs at barely visible cucumber
salads; garrulous groups of early 20-somethings chain-smoking and sipping
Almaza, the sweet delicious water that passes for the country’s only truly
national beer. Just across the street from our apartment, not once in 16 days
has a table been empty at this crowning establishment. It is cheap, delicious
and utterly kitschless. For a moment, an hour, an evening – it really doesn’t
matter what’s happening elsewhere.
[1] Her mother was a Greek born in
Alexandria who had fled to Lebanon in the mid-1950s after Nasser expelled most
of Egypt’s Jews, Greeks, Italians, Syrians and Armenians, among others. Her
mother left Lebanon during the Civil War to settle permanently in Athens.
[2] For more, see Tariq Ali’s The Clash of Civilizations, p.42-3
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