let's not say adieu but rather aurie vorie

I'm done with one of my papers and still working on the other, which I'll e-mail from France. Today I bummed around town with some friends and ended up spending the afternoon on AUB's campus, watching cats and eating cake.

I'm leaving Beirut tomorrow morning, which hardly seems fair. I feel like the last 2 weeks I've been here have been completely stolen from me by paper obsessed professors. I guess I should have said goodbye a half month ago, but you can't look back. The last, most constested round of elections are tomorrow, so I'm kinda leaving right as things are heating up. Typical, I guess. I spent last night doing a girl's henna, so my hands are completely brown. Which is funny.

I'm looking forward to seeing my family in France and my brother in New York, but it's difficult to leave a city where you've lived for the last 5 months. Everyone here says that they'll see you again, but aside from a handful of people I think it's mostly goodbye forever. It's sometimes frustrating that that's not acknowledged by those around me, but I can understand it.

I'll be sad to leave my 9th floor (8th in Beirut, they don't count the ground floor) apartment (except, of course, for the nasty kitchen and bathroom), the cats, the nuts and orange juice, the balmy nights and the blistering days, the ocean, the fashionistas and fashionistos strutting down Hamra, the middle aged guy I buy my Almaza beer from, my Almaza beer, George and Jared next door, Naira and Elaine, Saed and company, everyone, the countryside, the cities and whatever else crossed my path.

I'll be in Los Angeles starting on the 22nd or the 26th or something and staying until the end(ish) of summer. So I'll be around.

I've flip flopped ending this with a Khalil Gibran (Lebanon's favorite literary son) poem for a while. I suppose, despite the cliche, I'll do it. Here goes:


"How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scatterd in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst."



..//Over and out.

The prodigal blogger (semi) returns

Syria was amazingly beautiful. I bought a carpet and got food poisoning. We started off in Damascus for a few days, wandered around the souks (markets for all you ignints), saw the Grand Mosque, partied at the nightclubs in the Christian Quarter (where dress and dancing was requisitely scandalous), went to the National Museum and enjoyed narguila and tea in the Old City. After two days in the capital we hopped a night train to Aleppo, cruised around its souks (which are small, warren-like, the size of 8 or 9 city blocks and hellishly easy to get lost in. Confusing, but in a really beautiful way) and the enormous crusader castle that towers above the city. We hit up the hammams (arab bath houses) in Aleppo due to the fact that we were not, in fact, staying in a hotel (we took the next night train back to Damascus). Half of us ended up in Jordan, I threw my guts up on the train and we argued with an old one legged Syrian man in the bus station who spoke perfect, curse-riddled English and kept saying that I needed to be more "fresh." In other words the trip was a roaring success.

In the meantime a prominent member of the press here got assassinated (probably for his anti-Syrian views), the Opposition officially cast Aoun out, the Hizbollah/Amal coalition completely swept the South despite still being labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, scattered violence is breaking out in contested electoral quarters, motorcycle parades are everywhere and just about everyone except the General seems to be calling for Lahoud's immediate resignation.

Oh, and I have a HUGE paper on Nasserism's rise and fall due in 2 days. And another due as soon as possible after that. And I'm leaving in five days. And I need to pack.

Life! Is! Exciting!

Syria!

I'm going to Syria tomorrow. I'll be gone until Sunday. Because I CAN.

bleagh

No updating despite historic elections is due to massive papers. Sorry.

As for the elections... hm. By the time they actually rolled around everyone seemed pretty well sick of them, aside from the people driving around with loudspeakers and handing out buttons, of course. They're staged, so this is only the first round. Saad Hariri's victory, however, was pretty much a given from the start. Most of the Beirut seats his coalition won were unopposed.

The difficult thing to swallow in these elections is the lack of platform of most of the politicians and coalitions. Hariri's campaigning on a kind of vague "get rid of [Syrian] corruption and punish whoever killed my father" ticket and he's definitely got the most coherent statement of the bunch. There's really no... issues at stake. Somehow this makes all the trumpeting of these free elections somehow sound kind of to me.

Aoun, meanwhile, is blaming Hariri's sweep on the "petrodollar." More fun as the rolling elections just keep on rolling.

craaazy!

The beginning of the elections are tomorrow! Aoun's alliance with Arslan leaves Chamoun out! Chamoun shifts sides to the Jumblatt-Hariri alliance! I'm getting very little sleep!

countdown

Liberation Day came and went in Lebanon. In the course of his speech, Nasrallah revealed that Hizbollah has "12,000" long range missiles ready to fire on northern Israel if that country undertakes large aggressive military action in Lebanon again.

He also told his audience that he had met with Hariri a week before his assassination and that the former PM had told him that he was firm in his support of Hizbollah's continued possession of arms. This, of course, is a move to legitimize Hizbollah's defiance of UN Resolution 1559. Hariri's name carries a lot of weight these days.

Lastly, Nasrallah declared that Hizbollah had entered into an electoral pact with Jumblatt, Hariri and Amal Movement. This leaves the General, who'd been courting Hizbollah recently, out in the cold. Accordingly, Aoun has turned to Arslan and Chamoun for support. Fight! Fight! Fight!

Slugging it out

The Aoun-Jumblatt rift is looking permanent. Jumblatt and Hariri, meanwhile, are fielding a joint ticket. Aley-Baadba district is becoming a focal point for the schism in the opposition as both sides gear up for making it the key electoral battleground. Aoun himself is running in Kesrouan-Jbeil.

Aoun also just managed to get on the cover of more than a few newspapers by comparing himself to Alexander the Great. Hooray for megalomaniac ex-generals. Whoo. Election posters of Saad Hariri frequently have him standing in exactly the same pose as a few of his father's pictures. The message is clear: Saad Hariri is the same man as his father, except with a rakish beard.

Elections are fun!!!! Papers and finals? Not so much.