Charlotte, NC

“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.”

That is the opening line of the first number of a play I saw when I was 14 years old.

Incidentally, I was on my first trip to New York City, my first trip “solo” (visiting my God Mother), my first Broadway play, and it was the first time I knew how many minutes partitioned a year.

A lot has happened since then.

Most of 2010: Frankfurt, Germany

If I were to characterize the twelve years since that trip to New York, it would be a series of adventures of an ever accelerating scale.

Simultaneously, I would submit that the past year would best be described as a catalog of misadventures, proportionate only to the degree to which I was capable of finding trouble (or trouble was capable of finding me).

Misadventures, then, are what are on my mind as I sit here in the Bad Homburg Arcade, outside Frankfurt, Germany, writing this long-overdue post longhand as I wonder why the past year was the way it was.

Why the struggle? Why the trouble? Why did my good fortune turn to bad in an instant, and what is the use, therefore, of attempting to contrive a definition of a year like this past year based on something so innocuous and conspicuously nondescript as five hundred thousand plus minutes.

This picture was taken exactly one year ago in Amman, Jordan.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes ago I sat in Amman, Jordan with $71 to my name and over seven thousand dollars in credit card debt. Barred from Lebanon, I had yet to cement a deal with Henry Ijams to return to America and consult with PayStream Advisors in Charlotte, North Carolina, when I would veer away from the precipice of insolvency at the last second.

In fact, fifty two weeks ago the reality that my possessions, my money, my apartment, my work, and indeed my entire life had vanished like a mirage had yet to fully set in. I possessed a vague plan to move to Dubai, or to London, and I was seeking more detail on another vague plan with a Lebanese lawyer to post a bond in my name to guarantee one more Lebanese three month tourist visa (the money for which I didn’t have)… and I’d then have 90 days to secure a work permit (for which I had no guarantee).

Fifty one weeks ago, I was completely broke and out of time. I didn’t need to listen to Sultans of Swing to hear about Dire Straits. I’d moved, the previous year, to one of the world’s most troubling and confounding locales, and confounding trouble had finally caught up with me. It was time to turn tails and run. I bought a flight to New York and left the Middle East.

Prior to that, whatever was going through my head as I slept on the floor of a friend of a friend’s condo in Abdoun, Amman for a month, I seem to have repressed. I recall arriving at Queen Alia Airport (that would be the airport I’d passed through a dozen times on various other adventures, the airport that King Hussein named after his third wife… who died in a helicopter crash) feeling rather numb. I now had $40 dollars and that was after an emergency inter-Curtis loan. $40 would not get me from New York to Charlotte, so thankfully Oni bought my train ticket south… although I know that he could barely afford it either.

February: Istanbul, Turkey

Charlotte was a whirlwind – I won’t get into the details too much – but the experience was a jarring transition… although the crummy neighborhood on Wilksonson Boulevard that I moved into reminded me of certain other seedy places around the world I’d seen.

Accepting the job with TWI was essentially under duress (although indeed it was a timely blessing), as I’d made little headway with my debt and my gig with Henry was over – the inevitable consequence of the professional opportunity was the complete disintegration of my personal life and eight months of 14 hour work days, 7 day work weeks, and months in solitude.

In less than eight months I have ignominiously joined the 100K club at United Airlines, so it surprises me to have only seven counties under my belt this year. Nearly 100% of that travel was solo. The job? Replacing inventory management systems, which probably hold the rank of “most boring ERP systems ever.”

February: Kuwait City, Kuwait

Living in Germany for a lot of that time was particularly difficult – although the autobahn must be experienced to be believed. I don’t speak the language, I don’t know anyone here, the TWI team here has the highest of expectations, and the project began without a plan, without guidance, and previously implementations had not gone well.

I must of course thank TWI for the opportunity to complete a project so prone to failure…

13 months ago I was certain of my future in Beirut. My first post in exodus 12 months ago was titled “some Guy in the World,” as I suddenly felt I was a citizen of nowhere, which I never wanted.

What I’d failed to see at the time, however, was that my newly contrived status would unleash me from a long-held belief that my location should define my experience.

Instead, what I am now aware of is that the truth is the opposite: My experience should define my location. In fact, my experience should define everything.

June: Washington, DC

This awareness had its tradeoffs: I acknowledge that the past year has had a hardening effect, and the past 8 months with TWI in particular have been desensitizing and lonely.

But I should not assume that the effect was dehumanizing: Quite the contrary. The journey over the past five hundred twenty five thousand six hundreds minutes was Sisyphean and I am better for it.

I chose a path whose consequences I wrought, and as I watched the boulder roll down the mountain last September, I turned to push it back to new heights consecrated in the knowledge that my future was in my hands.

As that is the case, that this past year has been Sisyphean, I must turn to Camus to properly understand my year, and its epilogue, so forgive my aggressive quotation of his work, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” (which you can read in full by clicking here):

February: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Camus states the gods believed, as they punished Sisyphus, that “there is no more dreadful a punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” I know I have believed the same thing at times.

As Sisyphus, “stole the god’s secrets,” he was punished with the task of rolling a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down, in an eternal torturous cycle.

But, as Camus states, Sisyphus, “is. As much as through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life (meant) for him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole of his being was exerted in accomplishing nothing.”

And so as, “Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward the lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit, he goes back down the to the plain.”

I, like Camus, am most interested in that moment when Sisyphus turns to watch the boulder roll back down the mountain, for that is where I was a year ago, and it is where I find, for all intents and purposes, myself today.

September-October 2009: Amman, Jordan

For this is, “the hour of consciousness when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods,” when, “he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”

Indeed, “if this myth (of Sisyphus) is tragic, that is because our hero is conscious… the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.”

As Sisyphus’ return to the rock, at the base of the mountain, were his, “Nights in Gethsemane,” (the garden where Jesus begged God His Father for an alternate fate, and received no answer) so too were my nights, one year ago to the day, in Amman.

“But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.”

Camus quotes Sophocles’ Oedipus: “‘Despite so many ordeals,’” despite exhaustion and misadventure and misfortune, “‘I must conclude that all is well’, and that remark is sacred.”

January: New York City

“All Sisyphus’ joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him.”

His absurd struggle causes him to, “Say ‘Yes’, and his efforts henceforth will be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny… he knows himself to be the master of his days.”

“At that subtle moment when Man glances backwards at his life, Sisyphus returning to his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates the series of unrelated actions which became his fate, created by him.”

So, we leave Sisyphus as he proceeds to his boulder. We board the plane, pack the car, collect whatever is left after our choices lead us to disaster, and leap forth to whatever is next. Because we can, we must, and therein lies the reason that we can: Because we exist, and our actions, and their consequences, are proof enough that our existence is our own. Were it not for consequences stemming from our capacity to be deliberate, our humanity would be empty and our lives inescapably droll. To act, to choose, to be, is our gift, and any curses that stem from that gift pale, in comparison, to inaction.

April: Zug, Switzerland

In Camus’ immortal words, “Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.”

“Each atom of that stone, every mineral flake of that rock-filled mountain, in itself informs the world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I too conclude that all is well.

A year of struggle has yielded new friends, new love, new passion, new insights, new wealth, new opportunities, new risk, new growth, and an altered endeavor that is wholly my own, despite the unceasing mist that hides the path forward, and its boulders, from view.

It is with hubris, and without trepidation, that I will turn Monday morning to descend this year’s mountain. I have already paused long enough for consideration, and my clarity in this moment is my triumph, my higher fidelity – it is the evidence of, and the reason for, my happiness.

Late January: Dubai, UAE

It is in these moments that we should measure our years, and our lives.

Without Gethsemane, without God’s punishing silence or life’s innumerable obstacles, without our trials, without the mountain, how would we measure our triumphs? How could we ever be happy?

Without the actions we take that seal our fate and ignite our adventures and our misadventures, how else would we measure our years besides the droll of passing minutes?

As some of you might know, I am now living in Frankfurt, Germany, where I am managing a project to deploy ERP software across our supply chain.

As I sit here today writing this, I am in a little town in Switzerland called Zug, which is near Zurich, where our corporate headquarters is located. Our office overlooks Lake Zurich and the train station, and the office, the town, and the surrounding area is a vision of Swiss efficiency (I only reset my watch, and assume that it is correct, when I come to Switzerland).

I drove here from Frankfurt yesterday – a fun trip south which is mostly across the German autobahn… that provides the gut-crunching possibility of “speed-limit-less” travel. That being said, as far as I can tell, my rental Ford Fiesta is incapable of going much faster than 110 mph, and often it seems like that is standing still in comparison to the BMW’s that roar past at speeds that must be approaching 200 miles per hour. I took a quick picture of the road as I entered Switzerland… this country is like Narnia. I haven’t seen a sky like that collide with rolling green hills since Jerash in Northern Jordan overlooking the Golan Heights – I have a picture of Jerash somewhere… I’ll have to find it because it looks just like this.

This is the first generally relaxing and planned-ahead “trip” I’ve had with TWI… that being said… it was planned Monday afternoon and off I was on Tuesday morning.

I have traveled to so many locations since February 1st that I find it sort of shocking, and this trip has so far been pleasant in comparison by leaps and bounds. Since 2/1/2010 I have been to (in order): Dubai, Kuwait, Istanbul, Bishkek Kyrgyzstan (recently in the news but it was peaceful when I was there), Switzerland, Germany, Portland Maine, Charlotte NC, Denver CO, Swedesborro NJ, Cincinnati OH, back to Charlotte NC, back to Portland Maine, and back to Germany. Including this most recent drive to Zug, I think that adds up to about 25,000 miles of travel in about 75 days, or 333 miles per day.

I am looking forward to a trip to London over the weekend, my first “leisure” travel since Alana and I’s road trip in January.

So all is going very well work-wise but it has been quite a crazy two and a half months. I have found it exhausting and lonely but fascinating and constantly stimulating  - a bizarre but infinitely interesting combination of adventure and work. The people I work with are absolutely top notch and the company looks after its people 110%.

So all is well on my end – It’s been great to hear from so many people who are interested in moving to Lebanon… although I find that just absolutely bizarre. My flatmate in Beirut tells me rent has doubled since I left… perhaps as Nick predicted the yuppies might be headed to Beirut… crazyness. When I think back to his and I’s first trip there in the fall of 2007 when Hezbollah occupied downtown and the Armored Personnel Carrier outside of our hotel had its 50 cal machine gun pointed up at our balcony, I just can’t believe the stories I’m hearing about how tourism has taken off there. It still made me smile though when CNN listed Beirut as one of the 10 “most dangerous cities in the world” this past week.

My love to you all back home – stay in touch!

Today I sign off officially from ‘Some Guy in Lebanon,’ as I start work with TWI as IT Project Manager.

I will be traveling extensively across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East for the next year – if you live in Frankfurt, Zurich, Istanbul, Dubai, Kuwait, or Kyrgyzstan, I would love to hear from you, as I will bouncing around that part of the world extensively. For those of you who are wondering, yes, the plan is to be back in Beirut by the fall.

The last six months have been a wild ride – Last time I posted it was October 6th and I think I was in either Jordan or Charlotte. It was with some consideration that I decided to discontinue this blog, but it was clear that blogging shouldn’t be a priority now that I have to direct all my attention to a new and difficult job. I will be sure to keep personal notes, however, and I am more than willing to share where I am and how things are going, if you’re interested.

Feel free to contact me at anytime using this form if you have questions, thoughts, or whatever!

I’ll recap, quickly, what’s happened over the past month and a half. In late August, I approached the NYC Lebanese Consulate, requesting a proper visa to go back to Beirut on, so that I could arrange for work papers and legalize my status in Beirut. They stamped my passport and sent it back to me.

Upon arrival at the airport in Beirut, I was barred from entering the country, and I went to Jordan. A wide range of people did their very best for me, but at the end of the day, it was to no avail.

I have booked my flight back to America, and will spend the next three months or so in Charlotte, NC, working for PayStream Advisors on an integrated communications project – I am blessed to have the opportunity to finish what I started with PayStream, and it is truly a lucky stroke to have things line up time-wise.

Taking stock of the past month, I notice two things. First, it is apparent that the ground moved too quickly, this time, beneath me, to respond. I got caught on the wrong end of a bureaucratic stamp, and there was no way to flex around the problem. Second, as a learning experience, this was a good thing – I realize now that I took this situation far too personally, and allowed it to get under my skin. As someone who would like to spend the next five years or more overseas, I’ve got to learn that luck is not always going to go in my favor, and disasters are unavoidable.

In terms of actually just growing the heck up and getting on with it, I definitely noticed that I was in profoundly serious need for an event like this. I did not do a good job of securing a proper safety net in the event that something went wrong with my paperwork, nor did I move towards a place quickly where I could emotionally accept what was happening. Indeed, I did quite the opposite – I convinced myself that things would work out, and, as I said before, I took the whole situation personally, which was a dire mistake. When it didn’t work out, I did nothing but fight it. This was a serious mistake but one I’ll learn from.

In Arabic, there are two terms which tend to govern the general thought process of many people in the Middle East. On the one hand is Insha’Allah, and on the other is Mash’Allah. The former means, “God Willing,” pointing to future events, and the latter means, “God Wills it,” pointing to the present. I would like to venture the following: Somewhere between God’s relationship with the future and the present, lies everything else – Indeed, it is here that we make our stand for sorting out what we have control over.

We need not take this from a religious or spiritualist perspective – merely acknowledging that there is so much beyond our control, b0th in the present, and the future, gets to the heart of these statements. Indeed, recognizing that there are billions of other people and so many other forces acting in tandem to our own actions and choices, is to recognize just how little control we have, and how important it is to exercise our capacity to act when it is possible, and therefore necessary, to do so.

This is perfectly encapsulated in the age-old prayer, “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Where does that wisdom come from? I can only say, as someone who is as young as I, that it comes not from theoretisizing, but from experience. And experience is something I lack. I lack it in spades.

But I am pleased to say that, for what it’s worth, this was an experience that I’ll relish, although I don’t know how I’ll pay back the debts I’ve accumulated from this episode.

Gosh! What a month. I have to say it was not pleasant, but it was what it was. I’m still standing, still breathing… I wasn’t able to shift my weight on this occasion. And, to the ire of several people who I know have my best interests in mind, I even managed to lash out at the American government… something I probably should not have done.

Well, consider this my apology… and also my very specific statement that I’m not giving up. I am not.

I look forward to getting back on American soil – I guess that makes me a bit of a hypocrite… but whatever the case is, I’ll move forward and I won’t wallow in it.

Take care all – this will be my last post on Some Guy in Lebanon until I manage to get back… if I manage to get back. Thanks for reading – to those I’ll see soon, I can’t wait to see you.

As a parting… gift… or whatever, as they are my favorite places in Beirut and the spots I’ll miss the most, here is a picture of Cafe Rawda, of Andre and Captains Cabin. Naz is in there too

At least I can now tell a heck of a story!

A quick remark – I would like to take this moment to bring to light the pathetic response of the American Embassy in Beirut when I called them to let them know what was going on. Their response, “We can do nothing because Lebanon is a sovereign nation and it’s their call,” was as laughable as it was infuriating.

We all know that it is American money and aid that pays for Lebanon’s roads, medical support, and much more. We all know that American tax payer money was instrumental in the arrangement of the last election. We all know that American money paid for Israeli smart bombs used in the 2006 war, and we all know that American money now pays for rebuilding the infrastructure that Israel destroyed. Don’t tell me you can do nothing – That’s what you told the Marines you sent here to die.

So – to those of you at the American Embassy, thanks for nothing. If only I was a Senator’s son! Imagine! But no, I’m just some guy in Lebanon. I would venture to guess I do more in a day to extend American goodwill than the State Department accomplishes in a year. Your lack of action that night is disgusting, as I sat in a lonely airport terminal for 12 hours, awaiting a flight to Amman.

People always ask me why I don’t register with the Embassy – Why I don’t go there, why I have nothing good to say about American foreign policy. Well, let me tell you – I have met several people who work for various European embassies in Amman, and they are all were shocked to hear that you would do nothing for your own citizen in such dire straits. Money for bombs, bridges, and votes, but not a second thought for a tax payer.

But I have taken this experience to heart, and I know now to never expect anything from my government – neither social security nor the slightest inkling of help when I’m stranded thousands of miles from home. It’s a wonder I pay taxes at all – just remember who pays for your armored SUV’s and your cushy life up on that hill, let alone for the men who protect you. Next time you buy a drink in Gemayze, just think about where your paycheck from comes as well.

In the meantime, I am reading The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo – I can’t recommend it enough. It’s about the need to respond asymmetrically to today’s problems, and about the nature of Complexity Theory and its relationship to a world where information, decisions, and money move at the speed of light. He points out the extraordinary improvement in the movement of data – in the past one hundred years, the speed at which data moves has improved by 1,000,000,000%!

Anyways, it appears I will be back in Beirut early next week, thanks entirely to friends in Beirut. Though I blame the Consulate in New York for giving me the wrong information, I understand that they are operating within the context of Immigration policies that are fluid – Indeed, calls to various Lebanese agencies has revealed disbelief – No one can believe this happened and everyone seems to have a different reason, and I can accept that. But I am sorely disappointed with my own government’s response – We can invade countries, fund rebels, and buy elections. But for some guy in Lebanon, it’s “tough luck.” Thank you – lesson learned.

What a summer. What an extraordinary, incredible, lovely, indescribable summer. Hopefully not too-indescribable, or it would be hard to articulate it in this post…! And now it’s over, and tomorrow I get on a plane and fly back to Beirut. As my business partner Oni Kabir put it to me this evening, “It’s amazing how full circle things feel.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past year – 365 days ago I was working at the Portland Lobster Company and gearing up to fly to Lebanon, with literally zero plan besides to intern at the Daily Star. I was also painting houses. Hey, don’t knock it – It paid the bills. But I was staring out into a future that I’d no idea how to envision – In 45 days I’d be getting on a plane for Beirut, praying that Nick would, in fact, be at the terminal to receive me (he was).

9 months later I returned to the United States for vacation, initially planning on being here for a 30 days. However, as my grandmother had major surgery over the winter and wouldn’t be in Maine until late August, it was important (and fantastic) to stay for another three weeks to see her. And so my return date morphed to September 11th (I didn’t choose the date).

I’d like to reflect on that date for a moment – September 11th doesn’t need an introduction. It is a day that will long be remembered in horrifying imagery as America was attacked in an unprecedented terrorist incident. On that day, it seemed, the long arm of Middle Eastern politics, upheaval, and affairs, reached out far across the seas, as Saudis, financed by oil profits, and under the nose of one of America’s key allies, obliterated our sense of security and isolation. Suddenly there was an enormous realization that America did not stand alone in a vacuum. There was a new interest in the Middle East – People took Arabic in unprecedented numbers, and our President and our foreign policy took a new interest in the region, often for the worse. It is impossible to deny that September 11th awakened me to an interest in the Middle East, as well.

American interest had its many disasters, including, obviously, the Iraq war, the disastrous financing of Fatah in Gaza, and a blind eye to Arab dictatorships, new allies in the “War on Terror,” as they brutally cracked down on moderate Muslim democratic movements. But it had one interesting moment – Bush loudly backed the “March 14″ coalition in Lebanon when it streamed into the streets in 2005 to protest Syria’s occupation of the country following the assassination of Rafic Hariri. I will not attribute the entire thing to American foreign policy, but it is hard to deny that, in an ocean of failure, this was one bright spot for the post-September 11th American agenda. It paved the way for my life now.

That I am therefore flying back to Beirut on the 11th of this month only adds to an overall feeling that this trip has allowed me to “bring full circle” so many things.

So I’d like to do a quick recap over the past two months- sorry if I leave anything out!

July

I arrived on July 16th exhausted – I’d been up for three days straight because I’d had a lot of business to attend to before I left Beirut – Also, my flight left early in the morning of the 15th and I was afraid I’d sleep through my alarm. Landing in New York, I don’t remember feeling anything other than how big everything looked – Especially the highways and the airport. I think that all of Downtown Beirut (which I define, for those of you who know, as the box made by Hamra to Gemayze, up to the top of Monot and then across to Verdun, then back down to Ras Beirut and the sea) could fit in John F Kennedy International Airport! And to really drive the point home, I don’t think I left that box more than 10 times in the 9 months I lived in Beirut!

Getting back to Maine was wonderful – I took Jet Blue and I remember the only “astonishing” moment of my whole trip in terms of going from Lebanon to America: Satellite TV on the Jet Blue plane in every seat. ESPN! Comedy Central! While I fly! The moment passed, thank god.

I spent the rest of July driving the hot Mustang convertible I rented from the 7/16 to 8/16 (pictured to the right), complete with enormous sound system, but since it rained nearly every day of July I didn’t get much of a chance to use it until August. Didn’t matter – it was still great. It was wonderful to see Mariah Daily and Whitter Lewis get married shortly on arrival.

Those first two weeks of July were jarring – Parties in Small Point, where I was suddenly one of the oldest people there (especially as many of my generation had not yet arrived) produced a serious existential crises, which you can read about here: Some Guy in Lebanon Part 1. July was still wonderful, however, as mom and I stayed first at the Curtis house, and then Bumma’s – July was a quiet time – Lots of reading was done, lots of lounging around, and working on client projects. It was great to see people as they started to filter in, especially as they were people I’d grown up with… And then, suddenly, things took off as August arrived.

August

On August 1st, the weather suddenly drastically improved and wave after wave of folks arrived in Small Point. Small parties and gatherings turned into an endless string of beach days and nights, sailing, cliff walking, and cocktail parties. My favorite thing about Small Point started to materialize – very quickly a ‘sixth sense’ of ‘where people are at’ kicked in, as did an ever-growing need to see each other, to smile, to drink, to laugh, to watch the moon come up and then the sun go down, and then to howl at both, only to see the sun come back up again. Pictured to the right was one of those wonderful mornings when we all watched the sun rise up over the water. Below is all of us from the roof watching as the sun basked Head Beach in a beautiful glow at 6am.

It seemed as if, out of nowhere, flotillas of boats were being lashed together to watch the sun set, and the clinking of glasses filled with vast amounts of gin and tonic had become the anthem-song of August 2009.

Soon I moved in with Brady at his wonderful house on the Harbor, where endless afternoons sitting by the pool and watching the boats roll in and out became the norm. During this time I turned 25, as did Nick, and we both decided to host our party a few days later.

That “few days later” fell on a Friday, as our birthday party was unleashed on Shell Beach, completely equipped with music, dancing, bar, and bonfire. Many faces I hadn’t seen in ages turned up – I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but I had enough fun to last until next year.

It was great to meet Sarah and Josh, or “Thunderbolt” and “Fergie,” Chef and Sous Chef (respectively) at the Club, including a great night out at Portland bars with them. John Herrigel and Ben Lewis received the thumbs up that they will be running the Summer School next year! Other highlights included reggae at Peaks Island with Emma, Isaiah, and Tim Short-Lee – playing many rounds of chess with Nick at his family’s beautiful home – an amazing pool party at Brady’s – a fast but fun trip to DC to see Leigh, Kris, Devlin, and Alex Steele, and meet up with Oni to talk business – Brady and company’s incredible SPSS play “How to Eat Like a Child” – and so so very much more.

The end of August was of course characterized by the sadness of people leaving, but also the arrival of Maine’s best weather, as well as a few other surprises.

Here are the rest of the photos from the month:

September

Late August and early September brought me and mom back to the Curtis house, spending time with my grandparents – my grandmother (thanks to God) seems more fit than ever – medicine these days is unbelievable!

Sometime in late August or early September I saw my other grandmother, who seems equally fit as ever, while getting a new passport in Boston (lost the old one… then found it after I got a new one…) and had a great afternoon with her. She even made me Kabab, on the advice of her Lebanese hair dresser, and it was delicious.

Everything seemed to get well wrapped up in September – I finally felt that I had caught up on sleep, seen my family and friends, and done everything I wanted to do and all the realizations about my future that I wanted to have. I ended my trip this past week by finally finding peace with an angel, who will be traveling to Nepal this next year and following her dreams, as she should. I wouldn’t trade this past week, month, or year for anything in the world – I have nothing left to do now but smile smile smile.

Epilogue

So what is America to me, having been back for two months? I have traveled its highways, experienced its high speed internet, and enjoyed its Atlantic breezes. It was great to see my friends, who I love, and my family, who I also love. It was obnoxious to be so close to its politics, as they seem to have become horribly stilted, but I still feel the country is in good hands. To me, America is the beautiful, boisterous place where I was born, and where I’m proud to say I’m from. I love this country, and I’ll miss it.

But my home is over seas, and that’s just the way it’ll stay for a while. I have no regrets, and I’m excited to see what the seeds I’ve planted in Beirut will grow into.

I don’t know when I’ll be back next – I’d love to say I’ll be back next summer for a month, and I think it’s possible – but only God knows. Going back to Lebanon is going back to my home – My apartment, my friends, my work, my life. I’m looking forward to working with LAU, with other clients, and settling back in.

Maybe my arrival will herald a newly formed government! Who knows, stranger things have happened.

Some guy from America could move to Lebanon, with no plans, come home after 9 months self-employed, and then go back again with a smile on his face, stretching ear to ear.

Though you offered me no promises, this is my promise to you: No matter where I go in life, who I meet, what I see, I will sing your praises to whoever will listen, to the point of outright obnoxiousness.

Before I go to America for vacation on Wednesday, let me offer the following comment I made on November 4th, 2008:

“My new boss Marc remarked to me today, with excitement, trepidation, and the cynicism of a westerner towards the United States of this past decade, of the irony of my arrival the day before  the most important American election of the modern era, and that I would begin to work on the day after. He dared not even suggest that Obama could pull it off.”

The weight of those words still fall heavily on my mind. Marc – Marc Sirois is now a business partner. Barack Obama is now President of the United States of America. Excitement, trepidation, and cynicism are words that entirely describe my own attitude towards America in these turbulent times. Though we clamored to the call of Change, some things always stay the same. But not everything – instead of beginning work tomorrow,  today, tomorrow and Tuesday I must finish four enormous projects that will cement my professional base in Lebanon.

How could I have known, in those first few days, what this would be like? The highs and lows, the endless idle sunny days, the cold showers in December, the pain of incredible heart break, all to do battle with our greatest enemy in this life: the innate fear of meaninglessness.

I have run into several people over the past few days who have found my blog after recently moving here, and I’m also receiving more and more messages from people who stumbled across my posts and are interested in moving to Lebanon – It’s a very different country than it was in November 2008, let alone October 2007 when I first visited or when Nick first moved to this country. We’re no longer unique here, but the words that have been on my blog synopsis since late 2008 are still ringing true:

This is my blog about living in the Middle East trying not to run out of money and actually doing something worth doing.

I’m not sure I’ve accomplished either of these things in the slightest.

But a few people remarked that my post “Eight Months in Lebanon” was too modest. So allow me then to embellish for a few sentences in response.

As a disclaimer: Without friends, family, and the kindness of strangers, I would not have accomplished even the slightest iota of success here.

That being said. I moved to Lebanon on the first of November, 2008. I had $3500 in my pocket, one friend in Lebanon, no job and no guarantee of one. Eight and a half months later, here I am. I survived.

But we are not commanded to merely survive, and I would venture that I did more – I thrived. I thrived thanks to those things disclaimed: Friends, family, and the kindness of strangers. But I also thrived because, according perhaps to the Will of God (sic), I committed myself to do something extraordinary, though indescribable, and I achieved it.

If you can do the same, you should do with my strongest encouragement – Beforehand, let me share quickly share the summation of my experience here: There are no systems, no guarantees, no saftey nets in this life. There are only friends, family, the kindness of strangers, and our own eternal decision, to do, or not to do, something extraordinary.

As Lebanon stabilizes and more people move here searching for their own Lebanese story, Nick and I will be increasingly less unique – but don’t let anyone dare take from us our accomplishment, or equate it with this next generation of expatriates. Like the Lebanese, we learned to thrive despite odds and adversity for one reason, and one reason alone: Because we can.

To really drive that point home, here is a picture of Maxim Chaaya, the first Lebanese to ever summit Mount Everest, in May of 2006 at all times. He was 44.

His flag was my first Everest. God knows what I’ll be summiting in 20 years. Maktoub.

As usual, I digress. To conclude:

America is frozen in time for me, crystallized in two mental images: The Royal Jordanian gate in the international terminal at JFK, fighting tears, panic and the all-encompassing feeling that I’d made some terrible mistake – and hearing on the Captain’s Cabin television in early November the simple words of a personal hero that, if I ever met, would likely find little trouble understanding my journey this past year:

“Yes we can.”

We’ll see what happens when it is unfrozen on Wenesday afternoon.

1. I live at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. One can get a tan just by walking around
2. I spent Saturday at “Lazy B,” a wonderful little cabana-style resort south of Beirut.
3. I spent most of Sunday sitting in no-man’s-land at the Syrian border in the sun. For five hours. Just to be in Syria for forty five minutes.

I want to remark on this last point -  “Why did you go to Syria, Will?” Well, dear reader, it’s because my visa was going to expire and they changed the rules in Lebanon requiring an exit stamp to leave at the airport if you’re in your third month of a tourist visa. But I couldn’t get an exit stamp because my visa was going to expire in two days, so they told me ‘just go to Syria – you don’t need an exit stamp.’ Of course, going to Syria means waltzing into one of the most skeptical-of-Americans nation in the world – they purposefully make you wait forever if you’re American to dissuade you from coming back – or something, I’m not really quite sure (they fax the information to Damascus – who knows how long it sits next to a cup of coffee there). Luckily, they let me in after I got a mean tan – I had to be out of the country for “a few minutes” according to Lebanese authorities in order to renew my visa.

Unfortunately, I have renewed my tourist visa too many times, so they confiscated my passport on the way back into Lebanon, and I spent this morning at General Security sorting things out.

But, thankfully, this series of events brought to bare one of those keen little existential moments that sometimes come along and really force an expatriate to come to grips with their experience. This Sartre-ian moment was made extra poignant, I believe, because I am approaching (tomorrow) my eight month anniversary in Beirut, and will be returning to America in two weeks.

So before I go and jump the shark here with some shmrarmy expatriate psychological meandering (although I already have), let me illustrate the situation I faced this morning with the nice Lieutenant in charge of interrogating (that is to say, politely questioning and taking everything I had to say absolutely at face value… seriously) me:

Lieutenant: “What is it you’re doing in Lebanon.”

Me: “How much time do we have?”

Lieutenant: “All the time in the world.”

Me: “Well we’re going to need it…”

But then I drew a blank, as I always do when people ask me what I’m doing here. Because I didn’t know – and I said as much, although I did go through the logistics of it all – who I’d worked for, where I’d quit, etc etc. – I didn’t really think more of it until after things got sorted out and I was told I’d get my passport back tomorrow with the appropriate visa and got in a cab for home.

“What is it you’re doing in Lebanon.” Why am I here? Why is any expatriate in Lebanon, let alone the Middle East – citizens of this region aren’t ignorant; they know the type of press the Middle East gets in the West. They know Americans in particular think that Lebanon is sand dunes, camels and war (when Orlando Bloom lands near Tyre in the movie Kingdom of Heaven which is set during the crusades, he literally lands on rolling Suadi-style sand dunes, and is immediately challenged by a dark-skinned sword-waving mean-toned Arab to a fight to the death).

I admit I didn’t know much about Lebanon before I came, but I knew it wouldn’t be sand dunes and camels (there are neither in Lebanon as far as I can tell). I didn’t know about war, but I assumed it would be relatively safe, an assumption that turned out to be quite true. I knew that most pictures that accompany stories about Lebanon are of the bombed out Holiday Inn – cropped out of that picture are the Lebanese Canadian Bank Headquarters, the Intercontinental Phoenicia Hotel, the Sea, and a new high-rise development under construction.

And then it struck me, on the cab-ride home – Another man had already put the equation into words, and all I had to do was realize where I stood in that equation:

“And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” – Barack Obama, Inauguration Speech

When I heard these words five months ago, I and my peers were shocked at the simplicity yet profundity of the image – the statement it made, the weight that it carried, and the challenge it proposed.

Clearly Obama was directing this statement towards the Middle East, where corruption and deceit, so often supported directly through American aid, or indirectly through American acquiescence, is the status quo here, as is blaming the West for nearly everything. His words were straightforward yet poetic – understanding of the legacy of the past, yet pointing towards a future with different rules and different expectations.

Well good for Barack Obama – I read here that his speech writer is 27. I’m sure the kid has never been to the Middle East or the larger Muslim world, although obviously President Obama has.

And this gets me to my point – Sure, it’s nice that Obama said that. Bush said similar things (minus the imagery and skilled oration). Ameriacn foreign policy is supposed to be designed to change closed fists to open and welcoming hands, though we all know that isn’t true.

In fact, Obama and the State Department owes every American living in the Middle East who isn’t a soldier or arms dealer an enormous thank you.

For who will be there to shake unclenched fists? You’d best be sure that it will eventually be some member of the State Department – Eventually. But we – those of us who live here – we’re the ones that will be changing minds and extending hands, even as our State Department issues travel-warnings to places like Lebanon that are equivalent to:

“Traveling to Lebanon will result in your immediate death.”

So, President Obama, I would like to issue you a challenge, as you did five months ago to the tyrants, dictators and extremists of the world – don’t build bridges that you and your establishment secretly intend to blow up later, and likewise, don’t rebuild bridges you blew up in the past if you intend to do it agian.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the bridge being constructed on the Damascus highway in Lebanon that I past by on Saturday – It was blown up by the Israelis with American-made weapons in 2006 for the reason that “Hezbollah might use the bridge to send Israeli hostages to Syria” as if this sole bridge was the only passable transit to Syria, and its destruction was instead not obviously a part of an Israeli attempt to punish the Lebanese as a whole by destroying their infrastructure.

The lessons are obvious – The American government has to do more than just shake hands – That’s the easy part. Myself and the many Americans who live here are busy trying to get those fists to unclench:

• Lesson 1: I am here for the simple reason that I like shaking hands, and this is a part of the world where the West needs to be doing more hand-shaking. Our President said as much.
• Lesson 2: The minds that control clenched fists have long memories and short fuses. Rebuilding a bridge that your foreign policy and foreign aid were responsible for blowing up is not a proud moment for a nation.
• Lesson 3: Few foreigners who live in the Middle East have “tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter strong and more united” – But all foreigners who live in the Middle East know that, though old hatreds may someday pass, lines of tribe will never dissolve, and that it will be private expatriate citizens, independent of government, that play the true role in “ushering in a new era of peace.”

For we are the ones that draw suspicion – we are the ones that take the risk to leave everything for foreign shores in a part of the world that our friends and family are convinced is “dangerous” – without our effort and our presence Obama’s words would ring hollow.

I believe that our reasons for leaving America and finding a new home in the Middle East are not so diverse – We knew, before President Obama said it, that we were doing more for our country and for peace with our physical presence here than the building of any bridge by the American government can accomplish.

Especially if that bridge was destroyed by American smart bombs, just three years ago.

…

More Beirut Stories are coming soon.

I will never be able to repay the debt I owe to those who’ve made this possible – even here, I see that truly it takes a village to raise Will Donovan. Perhaps more here than anywhere.

Who has arrived in Lebanon without family, with limited finances, with no contacts, and with a degree in Religion, and built a business from nothing? To those of you who have done so, you know how hard it is. To those who have not, perhaps you can imagine.

To those who have treated me like a brother, God Bless you. You will always have a place in my heart. I could not have done this without you.

To those in particular who have opened your homes and your hearts to me, thank you. There are no words to express my gratitude.

Lebanon… Lebanon is a country that order forgot, despite certain appearances to the contrary. And Beirut is a city that is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, easy yet impossible, open yet confounding. It is almost impossible to imagine or fathom the emotional, professional, or personal extremes one must grapple with to achieve the most remote success here – but maybe not so impossible – Like America, it is both crowded and lonely, aggravating and pleasing.

And I will return to America shortly to see old friends, family, and others, and I will fail spectacularly in my ability to vocalize some sort of approximation as to what Lebanon is, and what this country means to me.

How will I, for example, juxtapose freezing winter nights in a dirty hostel in Gemayze with waking up in my breezy Hamra apartment? Or counting the equivalent to pennies in order to eat, with five-course steak dinners in biblical Byblos? Or cutting project costs by 90% to earn clients, when two months later one project earned me a year’s equivalent at the Daily Star?

As Nick puts it, Lebanon is the kind of country where you struggle to choose where to have brunch on Sunday mornings, even as elections threaten to boil over into civil or regional war with even the slightest provocation by dozens of parties.

If someone ever takes stock of the expatriate life in Beirut and writes it down accurately and cohesively, I wonder how they’ll do it. Will they remark at the perpetual poverty of those AUB students who burn their allowances and rent money at Hamra and Gemayze bars? Will they marvel at the serene calm of Cafe Rawda (where I am currently writing this entry long-hand), even as he or she is surrounded by screaming Lebanese children and the constant babble of Hijab-ed women smoking endlessly on nargile? Will they make the reader see that that is actually the definition of serene? Or that this time affords one to do things like read, write, learn Chess, leave the cell phone and computer at home, and then walk along the corniche for an hour?

Will they appropriately describe the Beirut club scene in all its over-glorified detail, commenting on the degree to which it simultaneously rivals the best parties in the world, yet still manages to suck the soul, and the host’s wallet, dry? Will they remind the reader that the reason the parties are so great is because everybody seems to have acquiesced to the end of the world, long ago? BO18 was built on the scene of a massacre – is it an act of defiance to the abyss or is it a counterpart?

What will be written of children that we encounter who speak three languages fluently but who will struggle to find work in ten years? Or of our Lebanese friends who are caged by their passport inside a country that could explode at a moment’s notice?

Perhaps more importantly, how will they quantify the experience of living in a Mediterranean paradise that still bares striking scars of wars that most of us never saw and cannot understand?

Suffice to say, anyone who attempts to write it down will face a paradox, largely because we have become, in due time, a piece of the landscape, and therefore are not really capable of defining its periphery. No matter – that will be left to the poets, which I thank God I am not.

To be perfectly frank, I’ve lost large pieces of myself here, and those missing-portions of me have been replaced by something else entirely. I have witnessed profound unfairness, and also the gentle kindness and hospitality, of which I have already remarked. I’ve seen the consequences of spectacular failures in domestic and foreign policy, and I am unlikely to forget them easily.

I’ve learned to keep my head out of the clouds, even as I used to admire the cloudy malaise of a life lived longing for a deeper truth – But I’ve become convinced that a survivalist and an intellectual do not walk the same path – In fact, I find that they are so often tragically at odds with each other, especially when they are one and the same disaffected, but ultimately, more-worldly, individual.

I’m rambling – I admit.

And it’s not as if enough people read this blog anyways to pretend that what I write holds some consequence – But if you are reading, and you do care, let me say the following: I have not yet made up my mind.

What is Lebanon? It is an interesting question. I am not necessarily suited to answer it, but for reasons that I’ve shared here and with others, it is likely answer-less because there are so many “Lebanons” – there are as many Lebanons as there are people who have experienced it for a day, a week, a year, or a lifetime.

I myself do more than just live here – over time I chose to abide by its few rules. This had several consequences, the most important being that by learning to live by Lebanon’s few rules, I left behind a life lived by many rules. And doing so has changed me, and not in some way that might be quantified as “better” or “worse.”

This dichotomy (better versus worse) is something of an obsession in America – and I find it reasonable by its own right, but also misguided in its aims. For the mission of tracking life on the basis of “better” versus “worse” is the trapping of “progress” and I am really very suspicious of this goal’s aims. For what sort of life, or society, can be gridded on axes of time and progress – we are not budget items to be treated or thought of as optimize-able.

Nowhere is this more true than places like Lebanon where the goal of progress has been so clearly abandoned. There is nothing here that could be objectively tracked by labels “good” and “bad” anyways. There is only us. And we are, here, surrounded by cheesy high-rises and five-star hotels, refugee camps and two-dollar cab fairs. But (like Sisyphus) we find that we are happy.

Like anywhere else, we are detainees by our own volition, and it will take more than revolutions to end that cycle of captivity – but at least here we are closer to the edge – it is easier to look back, and also to look over the precipice.

To digress, I tried to watch several American movies this week, and I had to turn them all off before the credits ever started rolling. What is it with the trite characters, the obvious storylines, the cookie-cutter personas on-screen, that we love to watch in America? How can a human being be captured in a two hour window or even a few scenes – we don’t give a few hours of dreaming the same credibility in our lives, and at least those are self-produced, self-affecting, and self-important.

How dare we then reduce our own lives to those of our on-screen counterparts – into little slices of manipulative nonsense?

How can we stomach such easily digestible and wholly inaccurate caricatures of our own lives? How can we credit such enormous self-impact to actors we don’t know – to depth-less forms that we are told to recognize as ourselves? Have we lost our minds?

And when the consequences of popular culture and hyper-reality are tabulated, what becomes of us?

By whose measure must we obey the standards of a system that is designed to program us with this qualified conformity to a quantified system of good and bad – why pay the slightest attention to a system that is so obviously corrupt and contrived and so single-minded in its purpose to produce the forced and forceful apartheid of our individual and collective reality? Who walks out of a movie theater any more aware of the obvious and immediate parallels between the ghettos of Warsaw, Gaza and Los Angeles? And who is any more likely or willing to do something about it?

It’s just embarrassing.

Lebanon has shown me the striking imbalance of the system itself – of its perpetual call to conflict, and its disgusting demand for conformity.

Indeed, the boundary of civilization is a red light at an intersection at midnight on an empty block that still demands one’s compliance to brake and signal.

Well. People don’t stop for red lights here.

For all this country’s ills, the Lebanese don’t need to watch City of God to see punishing poverty. They don’t need to watch Hostel to see torture, or Saving Private Ryan to see war. They aren’t required to watch Superbad to define the coming of age of a teen, or to see High School Musical to witness the pornographic overtones of a society gone mad.

The Lebanese dance when there is rhythm worth dancing to, cry when their homes are buried by American-made and Israeli-deployed smart bombs, and are perfectly aware of, and content with, the pornographic evidence of a society gone mad.

They are not so easily fooled by rigged elections that favor the powerful and the status quo, nor are they so lacking in awareness as to miss the fact that there are few promises in this world, and the time and place that one is born bares the most significant consequence as to whether a child will grow up to be wealthy.

They do not have adjustable rate mortgages or 0% interest credit cards, but they can get cheap loans for plastic surgery.

And they will, as far as I can tell, never stop to consider what might happen is they fail to brake (or even yield) at a red light at midnight. Or even at noon.

So to my friends and family, ignore my new-found impatience with well-formed and orderly lines at Starbucks, or Black Berry wielding captains of industry, whether they be twenty, forty or sixty.

I’ve finally realized what Ecclesiastes meant – and though I’ll embrace the vanity of the Western lifestyle both in Beirut and in America when it suits me, I will never again set myself in alignment to it. The order of our lives, I’ve learned, is nothing compared to the order of life’s unexpected impositions, and that is a fact no matter what family or time one is born into. Whether we choose to sit quietly while the world and its well-heeled and well-bred leadership flush us down the drain, or instead make the choice to recognize and reject the cost of the Americanized corporate primacy that demands near total-vanity, is up to us.

The Lebanese and those who live among them will smile as they purchase souped up BMW’s that they can’t afford, or blow a good chunk of next month’s rent on a night out, but they do so knowingly, and are aware that there are more important things than money: Family, friendship, connections, favors, wasta, and relaxing at Cafe Rawda watching the sun set. They know that a bank can repossess their car, but for the most part they’ve seen enough to know that such transient things hold little weight when compared to the value of kin and clan. And as such they reject the very basis of modern capitalism: An individual is not a credit score, and that almost nothing is under control.

Beirut is nothing more than that question, and that answer – and I cannot thank enough, or be more weary, of the paradox that I’ve discovered here – perhaps equally of importance, I’m keenly aware that this paradox is everywhere – it is unavoidable. And neither the television nor Google will ever educate us properly as to the truth of the matter.

I can only wonder at what its taught me so far, and what it holds further down the road.

Eight months in Beirut – we’ll just have to see what happens next.

I wrote him (he has yet to reply) the following: (Solidaire is Downtown Beirut and “Bukhra, InshaAllah” means “Tomorrow it will happen, God Willing” and it is said when it will most certainly not happen tomorrow)

Mr. Friedman – Your piece on the Lebanese elections was certainly sweet, and a wonderful line to toe, but I’m sure you’re aware that in Lebanon, there’s no such thing as “the real deal.” Don’t make me quote your own book to you…. You failed to mention, for example, vote buying at $2000 a head, or the remarkable speed that Hezbollah accepted the results of their extremely expensive loss (10 minutes flat – I timed it). You know as well as anyone that a preponderance of evidence in Lebanon, especially when it is made up largely of good-will and cheer, upon the shallowest of inspection will immediately reveal foul play.

The only influence Obama had on the elections over the weekend was signing off on the fixup-deal between the Saudis and the Syrians to keep things calm and keep their respective allies off the streets, for reasons that include more than just keeping their flats in Solidaire from losing half their value over night. I’m sure we could also include in that same list of reasons for a fix the fact that Persians, Arabs, and Israelis alike enjoy the clubs downtown (those within shelling distance of Ras Beirut and the airport) far better than those horrible places that are shielded from mortar fire in Jounieh.

But the most likely reason is that everyone’s lost their shirt in Dubai and they need the Lebanese economy’s projected 4% growth in 2009 to be more than myth.

Indeed, I’m sure on Friday night you could find members of both March 8 and March 14 kissing cheeks at Buddha Bar, toasting to the deal, likely engineered by the Obama White House, that kept the Belvedere and Red Bull (and foreign remittances) flowing, overlooking with the disastrous consequence of simultaneously guaranteeing the continued existence of Hezbollah’s arms.

I don’t mind the shrewdness of those foreign players who engineered a calm election weekend – those of us who do business here are better for it – I only mind that those who should know better chose instead to pretend that a Lebanese wink is as true-blue as a “Bukhra, InshaAllah.”

And of course, there’s nothing like delaying inevitable hard decisions (how to disarm Hezbollah without sparking civil war) in the name of the free market, especially when you can get everyone to believe (or pretend to believe) that it was Democratic. And nobody enjoys “Democratically” delaying tough choices like the Lebanese and their puppet-masters.

It was reading your book in Portland, Maine, in 8th grade that eventually brought me to this country – don’t let me down by stilting your analysis of this maze of a country twenty years later… your readers deserve better than that.

Yours truly,

Some Guy in Lebanon

That’s pretty much all I have to say – I’ve met people all over Beirut who alternatively believe that the election was free (Nick I’m looking at you), and those who think it was a sham – From my perspective, given the current economic climate of the Middle East, and given that the decision makers in Iran and the Arab world have too much invested in Lebanon right now, the thing smells like a fix. But then again, I could be wrong. We’ll have to see what happens – if a cabinet and a government are formed quickly and without too many problems, well… then we’ll have something to ponder. But even if plans for forming a government stall, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fix, it just means that things move quickly beneath one’s feet in Lebanon.

On a more positive note, I spent Thrusday at world-renouned club Sky Bar for their Opening Night – I didn’t get to take many pictures and they all turned out bad, but here are some pictures from the night taken by BeirutNightlife.com – Sky Bar is known in many circles as the world’s best club, and it certainly didn’t let me down (for more pictures of the evening, click here)…

White on Friday was more dilluted…I guess everyone was down the street.

Missing everyone back home – looking forward to my trip this summer to see you all!