Bluesy Beirut days

So far I've been mainly talking about positive experiences here, but of course I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't talk about the negative ones. They exist and have been bugging me lately, starting with the fact that it's impossible, as a foreigner, to walk anywhere without people staring, observing, occasionally even - this goes especially for old men - stopping on the sidewalk to get a better look and be able to spend more time staring. I've already told you about the security guards everywhere. I could also tell you about food problems: my stomach has had a hard time adjusting and I haven't really been able to eat anything apart from plain rice for the past week. Or about getting ripped off by taxi drivers, or the feeling of exposure to mortal danger that any pedestrian constantly experiences because people's driving over here is insane. Such 'normal' adjustment and culture shock problems are probably something most of us have experienced, and they're a bit of a bitch at times. What's really confusing me at the moment though is my situation at work, where I feel pretty lost with the tasks that have been given me as I receive no guidance, orientation or instruction by anyone. Still, I'm expected to figure everything out and be reliable and deliver on time (and to pretty tight deadlines). This seems very hard to do when around me, everything looks like chaos, I can never find the people I'm supposed to work with and the way people interact is hard to get used to. It seems that often people use a tone of voice which would be considered really rude in Germany, but it's normal here and nobody means anything by it. Conversely, this means if you want to get anything done at all, you have to be quite 'rude', in any case very determined and not put off by occasional setbacks ('Yeah yeah, I'll call you back, we will meet later today' for example is not at all a reliable statement but calls for further insistence on a meeting apparently...). And then there's of course the language barrier: sure, everybody speaks foreign languages, but all social conversations here at work, for example, are held in Arabic and it's frustrating to think that I've spent so long trying to learn this language and I still can't understand anything. I'm taking private lessons now though, so I'm hoping things will gradually improve, along with getting used to the other issues I've been talking about.

To distract myself from thinking about this stuff, I've been going to a bunch of cultural events recently. There was a lecture last week by Gayatri Spivak, the queen of postcolonial studies, at the Lebanese American University (another elite institution for sure). It's really weird because she seems to have this unique gift and charisma and everybody walked out of her lecture - essentially a plea for supporting 'the humanities' (i.e. studying languages, cultures, literature) as a counterforce to globalisation which makes everything alike and stamps of difference - thinking, wow, that was great, finally somebody has made sense of it all and explained the world and it's not so complicated after all. But the more you think about what she said, the less it makes any sense and you realise that a lot of it is basically hot air, or her talking about her own publications, achievements, basically about herself. With a week of hindsight and several accounts by people who went to a seminar she held the next day, I would even venture so far as to say a large part of what she said was bullshit. And yet, I clearly remember sitting in her lecture feeling all inspired and motivated. Never experienced anything like it. I suppose she would make an excellent populist and could whip up people's feelings for any idea. As she was keen to point out herself, someone once said to her that she could probably teach the phone book and people would think it was inspirational.

So as far as believing in the forces of good in the world, Gayavatri Spivak was not such a great help for me either. I've also gone to see a play by Rabih Mroue, apparently a really happening Lebanese director, called 'Who's afraid of representation?'. It was great and definitely the best threatre experience I (not very much into theatre and not having much of a clue about it) have had in a while. I think the main issues in it were how art deals with painful experiences - and being in Lebanon the main experience referred to was the civil war. How people deal or not deal with it seemed to be what this play was exploring, and it was done in a very clever and ironic way. The one I went to was the second performance, and interestingly (and sadly) it had been censored after the premiere. Some friends who went to see the first performance said that one recital of a poem which was quite sexual was taken out, and also several references to differences between religious sects. Instead of the original poem, the director had then put in a very cynical one which talked about a five-day festival (i.e., 'Homeworks', the festival the play was being performed at) with lots of sheep being slaughtered and blood spilt and animals being cut into little pieces and the whole barbarian mess then being loaded into a helicopter and dropped from above to fight the tanks that are threatening us, or something like that. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense this way, but when they were reciting it it was really funny and an amazing way for the directors to get back at the censors, as my friends were explaining to me. So compared to Spivak, this was definitely a lot more fun despite the heavy topic and all.

Tonight I am going to see a famous Lebanese Oud player give a concert in the 'Dome', which is a completely destroyed cinema from the 1960s which miraculously survived the civil war and is smack in the middle of 'Downtown'. I am sure in Germany safety regulations would prevent anybody from even going into this building! :) The concert is part of the Independence Day celebrations. Yesterday there was a military parade near my house and I was woken up by a bunch of explosions which were probably military salutes or something. Ok that's all for now, I will continue to keep you posted...