tasty

here i sit in tasty, a nearby cafe, in faux-plushy chairs listening to "i will survive," lady gaga, rihanna ("disturbia" -- for you, mara!), & a mix of arabic music, while some sort of overdramatic indian soap is silently piped in on flatscreens. i finished salibi's a house of many mansions: the history of lebanon reconsidered for my thesis but have taken a break from note-taking to read robert fisk's take on yesterday's activities at the lebanese border. his opinion piece was published today by the independent -- a bit condescending, but a mostly humorous take on the violent exchange & the tensions boiling under the surface between lebanon & israel.


Robert Fisk -- "Israel-Lebanon Tensions Flare after Skirmish Leaves Four Dead"


i prefer al jazeera english's version of the story (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108310240207599.html), which ran on its front page yesterday. but fisk's is "funnier," if such an adjective is fair to use. "over a tree." humor is a mechanism of survival in this scary world (no less scary outside the middle east, by the way, than in the middle of it), perhaps especially when conflict constantly looms as a possibility. i don't believe we americans who do not serve in the military & have not lived to see combat can understand war, especially the concept of war on one's own soil. each day i roam streets that were battle zones just a few short years ago & the scars remain as a testimony, unhealed wounds in the form of bullet holes in the concrete. my teacher cried when we viewed the film "under the bombs," & not simply because its plot of a mother searching in vain for her missing child tugged at the heartstrings. she has lived in a different world than i have enjoyed. until the day we see armed conflict in our own streets, i don't believe most of us in the US can fully comprehend it. until we walk to school, to work in haunted streets, we will not understand, not in the same way. yet life goes on here.


some of the women in our program were apparently occupying the dorm's lounge last evening, offering a hysterical show to onlookers. they allegedly fretted (with dramatics, i imagine, not unlike the indian soap opera unfolding in my peripheral vision) that the end was nigh, that war would soon break out in lebanon... just in time to screw with our exam schedule, probably. parents were e-mailing with emotional requests to board early flights. 

meanwhile, my teacher says this is normal for lebanon. if you're not looking for any excitement, don't come to the middle east.


but also avoid dayton, ohio, which -- my history professor explains -- has a higher murder rate than anywhere in the middle east.

we're told that AUB is the safest place to be in all of lebanon, that people sheltered there during previous wars. this makes political sense to me for a number of reasons, so perhaps this is why i'm not concerned about events currently unfolding. anything is possible, but i could also walk out into the street in bustling (eh hmm) downtown oxford (or what there is of it) & get flattened by an obnoxious BMW. anything is possible.




i've booked a spot on a sunday trip with nakhal, this time to the cedars, becharreh, & kozhaya. not really sure where the last two places are or what they're all about, but i'm sure they're worth visiting. our new favorite travel guide will likely be leading the group, so it should be an excellent trip. meanwhile i have other trips to plan for the short time i have left in the country. i was reflecting today in class (oops, mind wandered) on how very quickly my time here has gone. just a few short weeks ago i was thinking about moving my flight up so i could go home right after the program & get more accomplished before classes resume. my momentary lapse in sanity, i guess. i'll get everything together just fine; in the meantime i have lebanon to enjoy. so much to do, so little time -- that doesn't begin to cover it.




i've earned my first "arabic callous." that's what i've decided to call the small, oblong callous that's formed on my index finger from so many consecutive hours of note-taking & واجبات-writing each day. my own battle wound, but the war i'm fighting is with my overloaded, sleepy, somewhat resistant mind.