Letter From Syria, Vol. 2

I must be in Syria again: It took six hours for two Americans to be issued a visa at the border. The highways and roads are in very good condition. There are no Starbucks, Burger Kings, or Kinko's. My U.S. bank will not allow me to use the ATM at the "Syria International Islamic Bank," access my account online, or transact in any way. The vast majority of the police force (in a country where fifty percent of the population works for the government) is undercover. Most businesses have young apprentices working in them, and it sometimes feels as if the country is run by twelve year old boys--but not girls. In addition to the myriad spices, candies, nuts, teas, coffees, soaps, clothes, and handmade items, a shopper with a keen eye for deals in the souks can find a Santa Claus bustier, an armoire inlaid with genuine camel bone, and pickled pigs' feet by the gallon. There are almost no American tourists, and only a handful of Europeans and Asians. Multiple photographic reproductions of a man looking like a darker haired Larry Bird are on display everywhere--oh wait, that's actually Bashar al-Assad, president of the Syrian Arab Republic, and son of Hafez al-Assad, the former president. (Okay, fine, here is the official government photo of the Syrian president. Nearly two weeks in Syria has permanently seared the man's face onto my visual cortex.) It is impossible to be served a bad meal--except in Palmyra, an archaeological wonderland, but a tourist trap of the worst degree. The typical restaurant has thirty-five to fifty employees on duty per shift. A delicious, leisurely dinner for two could cost $15, a hotel room $22, a rental car $35 a day, and a handmade Persian rug $1,000. The Middle Eastern pop music blaring from car stereos is just as bad as the pop music at home, but the classic Umm Koulthoum and Fairuz recordings are wonderful anywhere, anytime. The most commonly heard English word is "welcome." People on the street loathe George W. Bush, and want to talk about it. They love Barack Obama, and want to talk about it. Nobody bothers to read the [government owned and operated] newspaper. Signs on the highway point toward Baghdad. The 19th century architecture reflects an air of modernity. Local lore has it that the landing pad for the second coming of Christ is right over there atop the Umayyad Mosque, and some say John the Baptist's head is buried over there under that wall. Low key, easy to miss historical plaques tell of events which took place before Islam or Christianity existed. When I nod my head "yes" people assume I am saying "no." The fruit is abundant, fresh, and complimentary after most meals out, and the coffee is thick as mud.

Yes, I must be in Syria again.

Syrian Photo Journal

Here is the link to our Syrian photo journal. Most of the pictures were taken by Matt.

(K*d@k requires that you sign in with an email address, but you can easily opt out of their mailings with a simple X in the box.)

Letter From Syria

December 16, 2009

I returned to Lebanon on Sunday after more than a week of traveling in Syria. Next to Cuba, Syria is probably the country most misunderstood by Americans--though I hasten to add that Syria is not next to Cuba, nor anywhere near it.

I went to Syria with Matt, my good friend since middle school, who is now in many ways partly British, having lived in London more than a third of his life. Matt came to meet me in Lebanon after we wrapped production in early December. I was actually in Jordan the day he arrived, and then I slept most of the first forty-eight hours we were together in the Middle East. Such a host!

The geographical area of Syria is approximately fifteen times the size of Lebanon (which, as you will remember from an earlier report, is half the size of New Hampshire--itself being roughly twenty times the size of the five boroughs of New York City). Are we all clear on the size of Syria now? Please note: I may have most of my numbers wrong.

Let me be clear about one thing: there is enough hospitality, kindness, and good will in Syria to fill an entire continent many times over. The hardest time my travel companion and I had was getting across the border into Syria in the first place. The entire process took six hours, not including travel time--but delay is to be expected entering a country the United States government has officially considered a "rogue state" since 1979.

So many Syrians we met along the way took us in and offered us whatever they could: tea, cigarettes, food, lodging, travel pointers, and backgammon tips. (We did not realize there are several ways to play backgammon. Apparently, Westerners play "the boring way".) At each stop, our hosts would be curious why two Americans chose to come to Syria. The truth was that there was nowhere else to go from Lebanon.

Damascus
Damascus is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. I lifted that phrase right off Wikipedia, so it must be true, though I think they may have taken it from the Lonely Planet guide. Aleppo, in the north of the country, vies for the title as well. Plagiarism and contests aside, Damascus is a bustling old world city, with vast and significant religious and cultural history that one can feel as well as see. In a country crammed with ruins and thousands of archaeological sites, Damascus offers travelers a different experience, as one actually witnesses the current incarnation of the place as well as sees its artifacts.

The basement chapel where the apostle Paul, né Saul, first preached the gospel still exists in the Old City there. Paul claimed to have been struck blind by a vision of Jesus while en route to Damascus, where he intended to punish Christians. An early Christian dude named Ananais helped Paul recover and then helped him set up shop in his basement. The tiny hidden chapel reminds me of the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played those early gigs in Liverpool.

The Umayyad Mosque claims the status as the oldest location in which Muslims have continuously prayed. I can't tell you how many times I wrote that last sentence before it made sense; seriously, it was more than a twenty times. There are traces of civilization in Damascus and the surrounding area dating back, by some accounts, as far as 9000 B.C.E. For you historians, that's a very long time ago.

There is a small Jewish Quarter in Damascus as well, but you wouldn't know it when you're there. It's not exactly South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Souks
The rambling pedestrian marketplaces in Damascus, called souks, extend in a spaghetti maze within the walls of the Old City for miles. When you take into account the side streets and alleyways, the opportunities for commerce seem to go on indefinitely.

The question what is for sale in the souk? is actually easier to answer in the inverse: what is not for sale in the souk?, the answer to which seems limited to the following items:

• Stocks & bonds
• Automobiles
• Farm equipment
• Pornography
  
• Drugs & (with a few exceptions) alcohol
  
• Newspapers
• Yachts
  
• Land (as far as I could tell)
  

Any item not on that list could be found in a souk. I dare you to challenge me on this. The well known specialty items are the aged olive oil soap, silk scarves and linens. There is also an abundance of all clothing, socks by the dozen, jackets, hats, candies, nuts, coffee, tea, beeswax, handcrafted wooden boxes, swords, knives, antiques, cutlery, furniture, rugs, blankets, luggage, toys, paintings, cheese, fruit smoothies, shawerma sandwiches, falafel, yummy pancakes, fine dining opportunities, pearl-inlaid backgammon boards and chess sets, and underwear. There are several stores that only sell candy-covered peanuts.

Aleppo
On our first night in Aleppo, a northern city as large as Damascus, Matt and I had the misfortune of getting lost while attempting to take our tiny rental car the mere one hundred yards from our own one-star hotel into the basement parking garage of a luxury hotel down the street. I was at the wheel. One wrong turn brought us inside the Aleppo souk, which is at times barely six-feet wide, and we couldn't find our way out. I felt I was trapped in the Middle Eastern version of that 1960s folk song about "Charlie & the MTA" by the Kingston Trio. It took us the better part of forty-five minutes, sometimes driving in reverse, of barreling down those dark and narrow alleyways, past vendors, donkey carts, shoppers and, surely, disapproving secret policemen, until we popped back out onto an actual street. We were laughing harder than what you might think is appropriate given the situation, and we must have looked like idiotic American tourists.

The parking garage ended up costing more than our hotel.

Syria Feels Safe
For tourists, Syria is one of the safest place to travel. It seems unthinkable that a crime would be committed anywhere on the streets of Syria. The sad reality is that Syria is a police state, yet we saw no (uniformed) police presence anywhere, save for the traffic cops here and there. Statistics state that fifty percent of the Syrian populace works for the government in some way, and the vast majority much of the police force is undercover. The hotel where we stayed in Aleppo (just south of the Turkish border) was also the headquarters of the so called "Tourism Police" and we saw middle aged men in plainclothes come in and out all day and night. No evidence of crime can be seen anywhere.

Old Country For No Women
In a decidedly male dominated region, Syria is a decidedly male dominated society. Women out and about during the day, but the overwhelming majority of businesses are operated by men.

Syria has a very active nightlife. While it is mostly men eating and hanging out in the restaurants late at night, there are some families here and there. Most shopping in the souks closes down by seven or eight o'clock, but the restaurants are packed until one or two in the morning. There's no New Orleans style rowdiness at all in Syria. The Muslim population--ninety-percent and growing--tend not to drink, and indeed most establishments don't serve alcohol. You see a lot of card playing and backgammon, sitting around chatting, and smoking tobacco in a nargileh--also known as shisha, hookah, or "hubbly bubbly".

Syria is the First World
Coming into Syria from Lebanon is an enlightening experience. In so many ways, Lebanon--open to Western influence and commercialism--remains a developing country. This has a lot to do with the economic hardships created by long stretches of war. Syria, however, compared to its tiny neighbor the west, really seems to have its act together. There are trains and buses and the traffic flows according to a plan. People stop at traffic lights. Beirut doesn't think twice about putting up a luxury hotel with a Dolce & Gabbana store inside the lobby, but they neglect to replace the torn up sidewalk in front of it. In Damascus, the sidewalks are in good repair, and people use them.

Bedouin Culture: Welcome!
The Bedouins are the most hospitable people I have ever known, with Appalachian porch dwellers coming in at a close second. Inside the ancient ruins of Palmyra--an area that extends for miles allowing a visitor to roam freely through the temples and along the colonnade--we were invited in by a family of Bedouins: Khalid and his wife (whose name I found unpronounceable) and their two young daughters, both toddlers, Cedra and Nour, who are so different from one another but both lively and adorable. The four of them live inside a small complex of three tents, the largest of which is about fifteen by eight feet. Khalid's wife is pregnant with their third child.

Matt took photos and video of the six of us sitting inside the tent, drinking tea, smoking Khalid's knock-off Marlboros and playing silly-face with the girls. Neither Matt nor I speak Arabic, and Khalid's three words of English ("one", "two", and "welcome"--by far the most used English word in the Middle East) weren't enough to make up for own ignorance, but we happily spent more than hour with them, laughing, and playing, and "talking". We took turns pointing to phrases in Khalid's dog-eared English-Arabic phrase book to communicate such ideas as "it is still raining", "we are friends" and "Italy is nice." I gave Khalid my sunglasses as a thank you gift, in anticipation of the rainy season someday coming to an end.

When we finally went outside at sunset, there was still a light rain, and as we walked away we saw a rainbow high in the sky which seemed to end right at the entrance to their tent.

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 4

November 16, 2009

I have finally been able to check my email today and many of you have asked for an update. More specifically, many of you have asked if I am still alive. Internet is much scarcer now as I am on location all day and there is no connection where I am living. Filming began three weeks ago and I have not had a minute to write or even think. I jot these words down in haste as I am soon off to choreograph a chase sequence through the streets of "Tehran" (in Beirut) involving a stolen Mercedes, two motorcycles and a police cruiser. We don't have good walkie-talkies.

So much drama goes in to making a movie, though often most of it is behind the camera. This work is difficult anywhere but especially so in a place where the process is almost unheard of. For the small American crew here--four of us--we are working regular thirteen-hour days, but the local crew seems exhausted. There are about forty of them and I think they are starting to blame me for the circles under their eyes. Film shoots in Beirut are for videos or commercials and usually three days long, during which they work practically around the clock. We are on a twenty-seven day shoot. How do I express that the Lebanese, in general, are very sensitive? (I guess like that.)

Anyway, I am sleeping just fine.

I love it here still but I am missing home terribly now. I miss the orderliness of New York City. I miss riding my bike through the controlled traffic jams and good customer service and being in a place where religion is nothing to defend or argue about. I miss the clean New York City air. I miss the Maine woods.

One day we traveled out into a protected wilderness in the mountains of Chouf to shoot a hiking scene. The Cedars of Lebanon are truly magnificent. When I was ten years old I received a Bible from my church in Augusta, Maine, and I used to stare at the color photographs of those beautiful trees. Walking through the same hills last week I felt like a minor character in that book. Maybe Bildad the Shuhite, or Moses. I guess my Jesus complex is waning. (That Bible was dedicated to me by me father, who was the minister of the church. I still have it. It's got a red faux-leather cover and onion skin pages.)

Through an interesting coincidence, the son of my (need I say former?) pediatrician lives in Beirut and we have met up a couple of times, including a jaunt out to the suburbs to visit the magnificent Jeita Grotto. I have never seen anything like it. An underwater cavern and lake. During the civil war here it was used as an ammunitions depot. Now it's a tourist attraction. Jon has told me many interesting anecdotes of Lebanon--he was here in 2006 during the bombings. My new friend's wife is from Lebanon and he has heard a lot about what it was like in the days of the fifteen year struggle. I've heard some scary stuff.

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 3

October 14, 2009

Here I go again, beginning with the quotidian and working my way toward utter profundity in near record time:

Fill It To The Rim
In case you were wondering why Nescafe is still "manufactured" (or whatever the hell you call what a company does to convert coffee beans into "crystals") look no further. You can blame Lebanon. Many Lebanese, who you'd think would know better, knock this stuff back like it's 1977 all over again. You can order a "three-in-one" just about anywhere and you will have a hot instant coffee with condensed milk & artificial sweetener in front of you in no time. In the supermarkets, Nescafe accounts for far more than half of the already abundant coffee choices.

Eating
Just about every meal I eat here goes down in the book as the best meal I have ever had. There is a locally made bread here that is sold on the streets every morning. The shape of the bread is reminiscent of the crescent design on the Turkish flag, which is to say reminiscent of an Italian handbag. The poor Syrian vendors push their custom bakers-rack-bicycles through Muslim neighborhoods calling out an eerie sounding kaihik! and selling this surprisingly delicious treat for about 60 cents.

Fattoush is a local salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, tossed with pita chips. It is so incredibly tasty and fresh and I eat one nearly every day so please stop pestering me. I have yet to try (or even see) the traditional fava bean dish foul, though it is a common Lebanese staple, eaten here three meals a day.

We Exceeded the Water Ration for Our Apartment
When it finally happened there was much running about in a near panicked state. We muttered to ourselves "the water ration ran out, who should we call?" (alas, our landlord speaks only Arabic). Nobody could think to do much else. As that behavior was ramping up, someone pointed out that our office-style water cooler had also run out as well.

UPDATE: We all pulled through; the plumbing came back on in a few hours without anyone doing much of anything about it. Rami the Water Man delivered two bottles of drinking water the next morning. UPDATE NUMBER TWO: Yesterday (Monday) the plumbing shut off again, only this time it happened just as I had completely lathered up during my morning shower. This was an all time first for me, but even though I am an upbeat person I did have to admit that there was almost no way to put a positive spin on the situation.

Getting Around
I am still shunning taxicabs as much as I can, which is difficult in a city in which you are much safer inside a cab with a maniac driver than you are on a sidewalk where said maniac might run you over. Most days I walk a mile and a half each way to the production office. The weather is still warm but very humid, so I sweat quite a lot. This becomes especially troublesome when there is no running water at home for days on end.

I Promised I Wouldn't Bring It Up Again
Having studied the particular brand of vehicular insanity which makes up Beirut traffic, I have of late been revisiting the bicycle idea. I spent much of last Sunday searching for a place to to buy one that suited me. (During this excursion I approached a man named Rafia who is a professional photographer and who was out and about in the downtown area taking photos for a large multimedia art installation at the Unesco Palace here next month. Rafia is Lebanese and very friendly. When I told him I was out scouting for a store at which to buy a bike, his eyes lit up and he said this is a very good idea, I will go with you and rent a bike today as well. Rafia wanted to ride through the empty Vegas-like sprawl of downtown Beirut, a one-mile by one-mile area now called Solidere--named after the corporate real estate conglomerate that manages all of its development there--but neither of us could find what we wanted. I plan to attend his photographic exhibit.)

Anyone who has spent time with me in New York City knows enough not to get me started on the Moses Effect. Robert Moses was a famously misanthropic urban "planner" and for almost half a century one of the most powerful New York City officials of all time. Years before I was born, and in what Moses supporters claim to be the man's highest achievement, the neighborhood I now live in was cleaved in two by the Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway -- italics meant to highlight a misnomer if there ever was one. Beirut suffers from many such divisions as well. Overpasses, underground highways, eight-lane bridges. All of these have divided and destroyed communities to make smoother passage for automobiles. Add to this the culture of what I have dubbed pedestricide, and the quality of life for a diehard walker begins to feel limited.

The neighborhoods I pass through on this walk are varied, but most striking are the remnants of recent warfare. It is tough to get used to seeing bombed out buildings. Who invented bombs anyway, and why would anyone do that? What explains our ability--our propensity even--to sit calmly on our home turf, designing and constructing devices intended to be lobbed into our neighbor's home so that it kills him or maims him or (if he happens to not be home at that moment) rearranges and disrupts his surroundings and belongings in such a drastic way that he will be forced to focus only on his basic human needs for quite some time, thereby rendering him less likely to get all up in our business? It is the definition of barbarism, surely, and yet extremely popular the world 'round! Those are the kind of thoughts I tend to have when facing modern human-made ruins.

On a recent afternoon two Lebanese twenty-somethings from our crew--Jana, the office coordinator, and Jimmy, the locations manager--were telling me, in somehow side-splitting detail, how in years past they would pattern their socializing around the explosions going off around the city. They would sit home, waiting for an explosion, and then venture out to meet their friends in whatever hip neighborhood was farthest from where the blast occurred. Car bomb in Hamra, go to Gemmayzé. Rocket fire in Achrafieh, go to Hamra. And so on. They were laughing to the point of tears.

These same young people spoke of how downtown Beirut (now called Solidere--see above) has been destroyed and rebuilt seven times in recent history. They claimed since World War II--though I am led believe the place was leveled at the end of the First World War when the French wrestled the keys to the city from the Ottoman Turks. The most recent bombardment in 2006 drove the Hezbollah Party into the suburbs mainly to the south of Beirut, though in effect that organization is scattered about the way any political entity might be.

The Languages
France's "involvement" in Lebanon dates back to before World War I. In certain areas of the city French culture is quite prevalent and many Beirutians speak French as their first language. Almost all of my local colleagues here are fluent in French & Arabic, and more than proficient in English as well. A French speaker would find it much easier to get around here than an English speaker. My only question for all of French culture is: how is there time for anything besides greeting one another and saying goodbye when you must kiss three times on the cheek?

In Beirut it is not uncommon to encounter pockets of people who speak no French or English at all, especially in the predominantly Muslim neighborhoods like where I live near Sanayeh Park. As a woefully monolingual American, it's easy to feel left out of many interesting conversations.

Bruce Lee Meets Bob Fosse
Our production team has learned that there are no stunt coordinators within the tiny Lebanese film industry. Nor for that matter are there professional grade walkie-talkies. (There seem to be no harmonicas for sale either, but that fact has naught to do with my work.) The production is looking into hiring a local martial arts instructor and a choreographer to work together to help with several stunt sequences in our movie, and we may borrow some walkies from the military.

Trouble in Paradise
Our two lead actresses flew in for rehearsals this past weekend. We are still several weeks out from shooting and they will be here with us for the remainder of the project. Production made the rather serious mistake of putting the "talent" in the apartment in which I had been living so blissfully up until right about then. Product galore clutters both bathrooms now but there is nothing called simply "soap" or "shampoo" for me to pilfer without fear of smelling like berries afterward. There is actually a bottle in my shower whose label declares it contains an "ex-foliant". (Wasn't Agent Orange an exfoliant?) There are dirty ashtrays in the kitchen and we are always out of toilet paper. I plan on murdering one of them on my day off this weekend, partly for revenge and partly to send a message to the other one.

[UPDATE: After forwarding the above paragraph to one of the producers who I go to for help with spelling, I have since been told that I will be moving upstairs to my own apartment this Friday.]

What To Do, What To Do?
In general I am slightly overwhelmed by all of the cultural options here. The other night I was forced to decide whether to attend a screening of Jim Jarmusch's latest feature at the Beirut International Film Festival or go to a series of concerts at a local Jazz Festival. I went to the movie and loved it. The local line producer wrangled me an invitation for tonight's closing ceremony, also at the Unesco Palace, which is how I find myself in the predicament of needing to find a jacket and tie in Beirut. I'm actually a little stressed out about it. The event will include a screening of Ang Lee's brand new film Taking Woodstock as well as an open bar, and you have no idea how happy one of those facts makes me.

In addition to the Jarmusch film, I also saw an Iranian-French-Lebanese co-production called Niloofar, about a young Iraqi girl who runs away from an arranged marriage with a murderer, and who can blame her? I also watched Food, Inc., which I call a documentary for people who either don't know how to read, or would for some reason choose to watch cattle be cruelly pushed around by men driving forklifts rather than read about it. Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) are the main talking heads of the film.

Last night I saw a very good and uplifting film by a Palestinian American. It was called Amreeka and it might be coming to a theater near you.

What I Am Reading
The father of our local production manager is the famous Lebanese novelist, Elias Khoury. I have so far read his early novel, City Gates, and I hope to get to his acclaimed Gate of the Sun while I am still in the country. I often have no time to read once shooting begins. Mr. Khoury came to the screening of Amreeka and was kind enough to sign the copy of City Gates I had with me. I felt as though I was meeting the Lebanese Norman Mailer. It was a truly proud moment--for me, not him. Also on deck is a novel called Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz, another author I have never read.

Next
The electricity just went out so I will sign off. After my last letter, which I thought pretty much did the trick, many of you asked me "But what's it really like there?" to which, having recovered from my sense of total failure as a writer, I reply that's what I've been trying to tell you. Next time I will talk more specifically about what I see when I'm walking around here in the different types of neighborhoods. And as always, I take requests.

Kaihik!

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 2

October 3, 2009

In Memory Of My Only Uncle
Thirty hours after arriving in Beirut, I received word that my uncle, Dexter Below, the only sibling of either of my parents, had died unexpectedly in Vermont. The man was a force to be reckoned with the entirety of his too brief 67 years, and the news came as a total shock. He was the kind of person whom one felt would always just be there, like a mountain. My feelings were made more poignant by the fact of being on the other side of the globe, separated from and nearly unable to communicate with most of my family. The memorial service was yesterday, near his and my Aunt Donna's home in Connecticut. Today, weather permitting, the family was to scatter his ashes on Long Island Sound, where my uncle spent a significant amount of time on his beloved sailboat over the past thirty years.

I want to dedicate these words to him in the spirit of adventure and learning, insignificant though the gesture may seem. I come from a very small family and the loss of my uncle has affected me profoundly. After learning of his death, I was drawn to the sea, not inexplicably, and spent much of the following day gazing at the Mediterranean and imagining how much he would have loved to be out on those turquoise waters, which he would have called “blue-green”.

My Job
The movie I am working on is in prep until the end of October, which means long days at the production office near downtown, combined with driving around to scout prospective locations. As the first assistant director, I am responsible for breaking down the script elements and preparing the shooting schedule. Once we start shooting, I will be in charge of running the set.

Quiet, please, we’re rolling.

As I mentioned in my previous letter, the movie tells a story set in contemporary Iran, but we are shooting here in Beirut to stay out of Mr. Ahmadinejad's beautiful and well kempt beard. Being in the Middle East in general, and Lebanon specifically, where exists a rather colorful mixture of religions and races, and being so close to the Israeli border, shooting a film about Iran, with a crew and cast made up of Middle Easterners, Europeans, and Americans, there is no shortage of topics to avoid in conversation.

If ever there were a time when my sense of humor could get me into trouble, it is now.

Lebanese Culture
An Iranian friend from my college days recently described the feeling of experiencing a "great hug" from the Middle East. I recognized immediately what he meant. There's just no arguing with hospitality here, even when it's unwanted. The place takes you into its arms like a fat Italian grandmother, and if that was an ethnic slur or offensive to all you tub-a-lubs, I sincerely apologize.

I also heard from my cousin, a former US Navy pilot, who spent some time “nearby,” though not as a filmmaker, who had an understandably different take on the region. He described it as a "hornet's nest"—and I understood immediately what he meant as well. The underlying tensions here, when stirred up, often lead to unspeakable violence between what seem at present to be peaceful neighbors. It is a place of extreme contradictions.

The Human Being Is A Resilient Creature
Having lived the majority of my life in the United States, I have never been forced to consider the effect open warfare on one's home turf might have on one’s psyche. The Lebanese have no such luxury.

A Lebanese person my age saw open civil warfare in the streets from the age of three until eighteen, and has witnessed all manner of violent altercations since. Keep in mind this took place in a country one half the size of New Hampshire, though not nearly as mountainous. There was basically nowhere to hide. I have already mentioned the bullet holes in many of the buildings, most of which date to the civil war. In 2006 much of downtown Beirut was leveled by rocket fire during a brief but very deadly skirmish with Israel. I pass through downtown on my way to the office each day and I assure you it is quickly being rebuilt, and it looks like Las Vegas, only not as conservative.

As recently as 2008, a spate of car bombings targeting military and political leaders occurred in the very popular Hamra district. The locals say the popular nightclubs in the nearby Gemmayzé district were especially bustling during that wave of violence. Folks just gotta get the groove on! Only last month rockets were being launched from both sides of the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Money & The Cost of Living
As in any metropolitan city the cost of living in Beirut fluctuates widely depending on one's tastes. Last night four of us ate dinner in Hamra at a clean but not too fancy Lebanese chain restaurant called Kababji. The total cost of a rather large meal there was US$30, or $7.50 a person if my math serves me. The locals are immensely loyal to Kababji because it rather famously stayed open during the air strikes in 2006.

On the way home, we purchased several bags of household groceries which will feed the same four of us for several days. Total cost: US$22.

A tasty and filling shawerma sandwich (beef or chicken) from one of the many street vendors runs you a whopping two dollars. A delicious fresh falafel sandwich costs a buck-thirty. Western goods here, including clothing, electronics, and booze, are commensurate with Western prices. A drink out at a bar, which I swear I haven't been to yet, are expensive, up to $10 or more. Produce is abundant and costs pennies at the many stands markets around the city.

Beirutians use a mixture of US Dollars and Lebanese Lire (which they call Lebanese Pounds, or maybe it is the other way around). The two currencies are totally integrated and it is not uncommon to use a mixture of the two in a single transaction or to pay with one and receive the other back in change.

ATMs in Beirut dispense US dollars. Who knew?

How Things Are Rationed Here
I've mentioned the rolling blackouts and the generators used to combat them. There is a water tank on the roof of my apartment building which gets filled once a month, and that's it. When the electricity is on, there is high-speed Internet in Beirut, but at home one pays for it by the Megabyte, like an electric meter.

Service taxicabs take you as far as they feel like taking you, by whatever route, and they will pick other passengers up along the way. It’s a buck and a half and you ride in a filthy Mercedes. If you want a private taxi ride, you will pay four times as much.

Beirut Traffic, Redux
Q: Why did the Lebanese chicken cross the road?
A: Because it was impatient and suicidal.

I wrote that joke to demonstrate the driver-pedestrian social contract in Beirut, or the lack thereof. The Lebanese people come across as warm, generous, trusting, friendly, kind, protective even, but they undergo a Mansonification process when they get behind the wheel of an automobile. They truly become homicidal psychopaths, and will target everyone: women, children, old people, the handicapped, cute babies. Stephen King should pen a sequel to Christine and set it in Beirut: a city is terrorized by Mr. Hyde-like automobiles. My parents live an hour away from the guy. Maybe they could pitch the idea.

The Lebanese pride themselves on having the best traffic in the Middle East, with Cairo's being the worst.

As far as parking goes, fuhgeddaboudit. The rule of thumb is "put it anywhere." Cars park two-deep on sidewalks, on public stairways (!), at bus stops, and in the middle of intersections—reminding us that the middle of an intersection is, after all, wasted space. Certain side streets are transformed into parking lots during workdays.

After only three days, I've actually become bored of the topic of traffic, so this will be the last you hear from me about it, unless I start driving myself—at which point I will brag of running down pedestrians in my car.

Sounds
The ambient noise in Beirut is at times unbearable and for a New Yorker that's saying a lot. Taxis honk their horns constantly in an effort to attract customers. Additionally, and risking a small dose of cultural insensitivity, I will say that to my ear Arabic is a language to which whispering or speaking in hushed tones seems unsuited.

A building next to my apartment is being torn down, and all day long the rumble of dump trucks, jack hammering, and earth moving equipment can be heard. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that jack hammering is a national pastime here. And what’s with the welding? I've seen more welding in the streets and alleyways in the last week than I have in my entire life. Is there this much welding going on around the world and I've simply never noticed?

The Islamic call to prayer heard five times a day continues to be a welcomed antidote to the godawful street noise. The whole place really quiets down for those eight or so minutes, and the sonic atmosphere takes on an ethereal quality. Besides experiencing natural occurrences like a sunset or a full moon on top of a mountain, hearing these sound is the closest I've come to real life Magical Realism.

I've named the pre-dawn call God's alarm clock—my only beef with Allah being that he gets up a bit too early, especially on weekends.

What Else?
You could ask about the cats congregating around the city. I call them "gangs" and they remind me of South American street dogs, only they're cats. You could ask about the campus of the American University of Beirut. Or about how in certain places this city looks and feels like Rome, but in other places it’s like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Paris, or New York. There's so much character and variety and breadth and smog.

Letter From Beirut

September 30, 2009

I arrived yesterday in Beirut, Lebanon, where I will be living for the fall while working on a feature film. The movie is written and directed by a Iranian-American, and takes place in Iran, but will be shot outside of that country for reasons I would prefer not to put in writing until my Farsi improves.

Here are a few verbal snapshots of my experiences so far.
• Air France seems to have more flight attendants than passengers.
• I've been here only eighteen hours, but I already love the Middle East. The people of Beirut seem great, the food is delicious, abundant, and inexpensive. The culture is fascinating and the city of Beirut is easily navigated.
• After answering with an apparently acceptable "I don't understand what you are asking me" to all of the questions asked of me by Lebanese Customs yesterday, I was met and whisked away by my 2nd assistant director Reine ("it means queen in French") and plunged into the exhilarating reality of Beirut traffic. Very quickly, I reached a soul-level understanding of why Middle Eastern taxi drivers in New York City drive in that specific way they do. Traffic doesn't flow here, it oozes, sputters, clogs, and finally explodes in a flurry of sudden movement. Rinse and repeat. It appears acceptable to drive anywhere at any time in any direction at any rate of speed. There is no road rage, praise Allah, probably because, as Confucius must have said somewhere, he who becomes angry with Beirut traffic soon goes insane. The faces of drivers in other cars as we pass them on the wrong side of the street at full speed in reverse show utter complacency, as if they are listening to NPR, which I doubt they are.
• As a daily Manhattan & Brooklyn bicyclist, I dreamt of purchasing a bike here, but this dream was crushed within seconds of witnessing Beirut street culture. It's not so much that it would be dangerous (which it would be) as that there is no room to ride.
• I am living adjacent to Sanayeh Park, and a short walk to the popular Hamra, a neighborhood of on the west and mostly Muslim side of Beirut.
• Historically, before and during the fifteen year civil war here which lasted until 1990, Beirut was divided by what was called the Green Line, with Muslims to the west, and Christians to the East. As with everything else in Lebanese political history, this becomes complicated when you learn that the locals referred to the Christian area to the east as “West Beirut” and the Muslim area to the west as “East Beirut,” differentiating the sides on global cultural lines, rather than local. A cartography enthusiast such as myself becomes irate at this kind of haphazard nomenclature.
• I live in an enormous third floor apartment with ceilings so high I have to squint to see them. The windows and doors onto our six separate balconies remain open most of the time, and the Mediterranean air and smog blow right through. There are no screens on any windows and there is at least one mosquito living in Beirut, but not for long.
• For now, I share this palatial apartment with the director, one of the producers, and the director of photography, but as I can't see or hear any of them, it feels private.
• The neighborhood of Hamra is quite Westernized in terms of shops. I could have a cup of Starbucks in my hand within five minutes of leaving my apartment, if I didn’t loathe Starbucks so much. There are other chain stores as well, but plenty of local businesses too. Internet cafes are very popular.
• The famous American University of Beirut is a short walk from where I live. They are letting us use the pool, or at least they don’t seem to mind. The campus reminds me of Switzerland—and it is perhaps the only thing here that will ever remind me of Switzerland.
• I woke this morning at five o’clock to the sound of the hauntingly beautiful Islamic call to prayers. The amplified chant happens five times daily. The "song" emanates from the sky and fills every nook and cranny of the Muslim quarters of the city. It sounds as close as if a man were standing on my windowsill singing into a bullhorn. I struggle to imagine that I would ever be able to sleep through it.
• Beirut follows a daily schedule of rolling blackouts in three hour increments. These start at 6am and go until 9pm, and the outages follows some sort of "schedule" that everyone claims to know, though I've not yet heard any two people describe it the same way. To counter the blackouts, many buildings have installed enormous generators, which I have yet to hear or see, but I am no doubt distracted by other sights & sounds, namely traffic and general street noise, which are ample. Using generators to compensate for an energy saving blackout strikes me as the definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but what do I know?
• The locals describe the weather time of year "cold like winter". I call it perfect. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and dry. There are many rooftop bars in Beirut which have already closed for the season because it is too cold.
• It is an amazing and eye-opening experience to be somewhere affected by warfare so recently. After one day the bullet holes on so many of the buildings were old news. One of the balconies in my Sanayeh apartment overlooks an empty lot where a building used to be until 2006, during the month-long skirmish with Israel known locally as the July War. Across the street the other way there is an armored guard station outside the home of some high-level government official.