Beirut Report VIII

Originally written Monday, 7-22-02

First of all, my apologies for not writing in so long. Actually, I wrote a big entry on Thursday which the computer promptly teamed up with Blogger to destroy before I could post it. So really it's been a week, which shouldn't be the norm.

I spent the weekend at my family's up in the mountains. It was a good, relaxing time, as always, but I was definitely ready to come back by the time I did last night. This weekend was a day and a half longer than normal because I had no Saturday trip with the program here; it was our week off. Instead of going into the details of how much shish kebab I ate, I'll treat you all to a story I've heard twice from my neighbor here. Actually, you all are going to get the "airplane" version, since this blog is profanity-free. Generally, Charlie Brown (I kid thee not; his parents thought it was "cute") is also profanity-free, but his weekend was not quite as relaxing as mine, and from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

Charlie, a studious, engaged grad student with a quiet passion for what he studies (Iraqi history) wanted to go to Syria. He, his best friend Larry, and similarly aged Laura were the group planning on going. Word leaked to a certain student, we'll call her "Yenta", and - I was present for this - she pounced on them last Tuesday, invited herself and a few others, and pretty much took over. After all, she's been to Damascus 4 times in the last 5 years, and knows exactly what she's doing. The party ended up including Yenta, "Little Daoud" (there are 3 here), and the original 3. There was another 3 in another taxi, but they got seperated at the border, and never saw the others again.

Charlie should have known that his weekend had been hijacked when Yenta called a planning meeting of "everybody who wants to go to Syria" on Thursday. He attended.

On the way to Syria, the taxis made a pit stop at the west edge of the Beqaa Valley, in Chtaura. There, Yenta started a haggling argument with her driver: she and the others in her cab had paid extra to get AC, and she thought the AC wasn't working well enough to warrant that much extra ($4 per person). She eventually got the price down, but it was a Pyrrhic victory because most of the group didn't go along with the agreement, and just paid in full, she risked getting stranded in the Beqaa by angry drivers, and she made the whole group mad at her.

By some evil twist of fate, Charlie ended up in Daoud and Yenta's car from Chtaura to Damascus. It was brutal. Daoud, who's a young and innocently obnoxious kid with a reputation for stating the painfully obvious as though it were some sudden revelation at completely random intervals. Actually, the interval may not be completely random, since this does occur quite frequently... nonetheless, he can be a trying companion. Anyway, Yenta played off of Daoud. He would say something dumb, and she would elaborate with her patronizing, I'm-a-Ph.D.-student-and-you're-not tone. Then he would respond inanely, and she would take off once again, educating the poor benighted masses of such well-guarded secrets as the inherent danger of being in the Beqaa, the existence of Hezbollah, and the importance of drinking water when in a desert climate.

Damascus isn't far from here, but I suspect that for Charlie it couldn't have seemed further. The madness continued in the Syrian capital: Yenta took over, though she kept getting lost and referring to Charlie's "Lonely Planet" guide every few minutes. She'd been there 4 times in the past 5 years, mind you, and so she could show them the good stuff. Like the beautiful old souks, where she slowed the group to a crawl as she insisted on entering every single shop while everyone else was agitating to move on and get lunch. Charlie's not the confrontational type, but finally shut her down when they were dining at a nice Syrian restaurant. She gave him the menu, and promptly pointed out "this is the English, and this is the Arabic." According to Charlie, his withering "I can read" quieted her down for 10 minutes or so. The worst of having Yenta as a tour guide was that they missed certain sites because she'd already seen them, and wasn't taking input from the others on how to budget their brief time. Yes, Charlie, we feel your pain.

After puking for 4 hours in the hotel shower Friday night (and not having the consideration to at least turn the shower on), Daoud continued blithely driving his party crazy throughout the day Saturday. After getting on their bad side by condemning their alcohol consumption (they had sat down at a cafe to have a beer) out of his good Muslim heart, he set himself up for Charlie's shut-down by displaying his complete ignorance of Islamic history. The Ummayad mosque, Damascus' #1 sight, was the center of the Islamic Empire from 650-750, when the Ummayad Dynasty was expanding the empire to Spain and India, and apparently is quite a splendiforous affair. Charlie recalls having a near-religious experience in the mosque when gazing at the tomb of Saladin, a man he has been fascinated by and studied thoroughly since the sixth grade. Still glowing, they stepped outside. Daoud shattered the moment with a giggly "He isn't really in there, is he... I mean, he'd be decomposed by now if he was." Little Daoud's lip started quivering, by Charlie's account, when the latter delivered the killer line in a cold, calculating monotone, "Yes, Daoud, his body is in there. And considering he was buried in 1190, it's probably decomposed by now."


Perhaps I should stick to telling my own stories - you be the judge. And yes, I intended it to be melodramatic; when not delivered as a profane tirade, it needs some sort of schtick to prop it up. Maybe that wasn't the right schtick... I dunno. But that's just a little piece of my life here, and considering I've heard the whole story twice, I figured I should even the score by telling it once. Now it's off to the beach!