I have a visa in my passport, as I did a year and a half ago when I flew in to Beirut…

only to be confined to the concourse of Rafic Hariri International Airport (like a bad Tom Hanks movie) and sent packing.

We’ll see if my luck is any better tonight… as they say, inshallah.

From my heart a greeting to Beirut!

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

But it seems that there is no solution to my problem in Lebanon. For reasons I don’t understand, I am not allowed entry, not even to collect my things and empty my bank account. A work permit is the only option, but I cannot make that option work, for now.

So now I’m truly in diaspora… and it’s amazing to know what that feels like. Whatever it is that the Lebanese government assumes I’m up to, at least I know I’m not. I have infinite reasons to be upset, but for some reason, finally, after losing my cool for a few hours, I am strangely at peace with everything.

Thank you Amman for your help – And thank you Lebanon. Hopefully, somehow, I’ll see you soon.

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!

I wanted to share these: The first is from the nightclub White, the second from Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, and the third are from the Sea Club Sporting (they call it a beach club but there’s no beach so I refuse to honor that title, even though it’s an awesome place.

First, White – didn’t expect to be back so soon but I had a great night out there and managed to get some reasonable pictures with the phone.

Next, a frightening and bizzarre experience at Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, which might as well have been somewhere in the Mid West or Boston or something. A truly strange experience to walk out of Beirut and into Chilli’s!

Finally, the wonderful club Sporting – I took a 360-Degree set of shots from where we (Me, Catherine and Nick) were sitting – you can see Rouche, the Sea, South Beirut, and the Ferris Wheel at the Amusement Park.

I also had lunch at the restaurant at the Club, which sits above the main pool areas – we were sitting to the far right:

That’s all for now – Hope all is well with everyone

Anyways, we got some great pictures. Quick introductions – You may know Kaiulani Kimbrell, Nick’s sister – Amanda is Catherine’s friend from the States (blonde hair) and Catherine is Nick’s girlfriend (gold dress/brown hair). Also pictured are Caroline Anning and Angie Nassar.

• A Thousand Words and Some Discussion
• The First 87 Days in Lebanon
• Eight Months in Beirut
• “Why I’m Here” and Other Beirut Stories
• Springtime in Beirut, or “*sigh*… c’est la vie…”
• My Dear Lebanon: Epilogue
• Captains Cabin: “Where the Present Catches Up to the Past in a Glass”

Hope you enjoy! Now, to the post…*

BO18  – for the un-initiated, it’s sort of the peak of Lebanon’s “stay out as late as possible while really not having a care in the world” culture. Designed like a coffin, it’s below ground, but with a roof that retracts up ‘on the fly’ so that the cramped and claustrophobic atmosphere suddenly transforms into an incredible outdoor nightclub. And we’re not talking about some little carbon-fiber roof – we’re talking about an enormous steel-girder thing.

This is a picture of what it looks like “above ground” that I found on Google – imagine walking down into that thing… filled with people and ridiculously loud music and expensive vodka, and those middle panels just suddenly “psshhh” lifting into the sky! It’s nuts.

This is the roof retracting/retracted (again, not my pics – they’re from Google)

BO18 is also the Lebanese way of deciding that, “it being only 4:30 in the morning, let us leave this expensive club with all these people… and continue on our way, in order dance to the loudest imaginable music at the expensive club with those people.” In other words, “let’s go.”

Turning our attention to last night, the evening was spent traipsing around Achrafiyeh, Downtown and then out the highway to the infamous BO, first at dinner at I think a restaurant called “Champagne” or something… then to White on top of the Nahar building where I got the following photos with my phone (which is why you can’t really see anything in the second picture, but luckily the first was snapped just as a strobe light went off):

Definitely a crazy night… Happy Birthday to Omar – I don’t really go out and hit the town very often but last night was definitely a good time.

…And then next weekend will be a return to the equally swanky Music Hall when Nick’s sister Kaiulani arives. Will be sure to take lots of pictures for the folks back home.

Another another note – I’ve resolved myself to start writing more often… even if it’s boring non-political posts about the occasional late-night crazyness.