‘Drunken Cupids’ and Other Snapshots of Time at the National Museum of Lebanon

             "Drunken Cupids" is the title curators a the National Museum of Lebanon gave to a carving on one side of a second century Roman sarcophagus at the National Museum of Lebanon. Depictions of revels by imaginary beings such as chubby cherubim are just one of those themes Romans liked to do. (Top photo at left.)

            Possibly the museum's most spectacular pieces, four Roman sarcophagi were found in a necropolis in Tyre, one of Lebanon's oldest cities on the Mediterranean. Located on the boundary between East and West Beirut, the National Museum is beautiful airy building with an usually spacious layout for its best pieces. It was restored after the Lebanese Civil War, following heroic efforts to save the most important works from the violence that laid waste to much of the building.   

            According to the museum the Roman sarcophagi were found by the first director of Lebanon’s Director General of Antiquities and put on display when the national museum opened in 1943. The ornamental carvings on these are exquisite and have been preserved to a degree that would appear miraculous anywhere in the West. But the weather is kinder here to old stone.

            The second of four pieces, titled “Battles Between Greeks,” depicts feats of arms. It's the final two final sarcophagi, decorated with scenes from the Iliad entitled by the museum “The Legend of Achilles” that knock me out.(Second photo at left)

            In the Homeric epic of war, wartime politics, sexual politics, and a scale of human devastation that Achilles, among others, saw as fated and even managed by Olympians using human stupidity, greed and lust, as their agents, the single most human moment comes when Priam, the aging king of Troy, begs Achilles for the body of his son Hector slain by Achilles in single combat. Achilles has already abused the body, dragging it behind his chariot as he rode around the city of Troy. This was big boy warrior culture violence-as-intimidation, essential to the dehumanization of your enemy. The next step would be feeding it to the dogs. 

            Priam, who now knows that his city is doomed, travels virtually alone through the army lines at night to Achilles’ tent to beg for the body so he can take it home and bury it in accord with the deepest urgings of pagan religion. Burial will keep his son’s soul from howling in the wilderness. The artist’s stone-carved depiction of Priam on his knees, small and old, kissing the hand of the indifferent half-divine warrior is devastating. What this ‘depiction’ of a famous episode in the Iliad doesn’t show is that Achilles was moved, got beyond his own grief for the death of his lover Patroclus and rage at those who killed him in battle, and not only gave Priam the body but bared his soul to him by sharing his foreknowledge of his own doom. Their encounter is a moment of compassion, transcendence and despairing wisdom in a legendary chronicle of a ‘great’ war, a ‘great’ warrior, and the supreme founders of the war-like culture that – the Romans seemed to be saying in their art – gave birth to us all.

            Museums tell lots of stories. A few of the treasures in the National Museum of Beirut go back to the second millennium BCE (Before the Current Era). What the museum calls its most important piece is another sarcophagus, this time of Ahiram, a king of Byblos from the 10^th century BCE – think Pharonic Egypt (the style of its art, we're told, reflects the Egyptian influence of the previous millennia) and the early books of the Hebrew bible.

            Byblos was a coastal Phoenician city. What the Phoenicians did there was invent writing in the western tradition by creating the prototype of modern alphabets. When you look at the inscription you can see the similarity to the Greek and Roman alphabets. The inscription on the coffin, the museum says, is “the earliest text using the Phoenician alphabet.” From the name Byblos comes an early word for writing, which in turn gives us “bible.”

            For me the biggest reason to go to this museum or any museum that deals with humanity’s past is the stories that they tell.

Beirut Update: The Face of the City

        New brown signs have appeared here and there on the roadside saying, in French, something like "A district of traditional culture." It's a step; at least someone recognizes that the traditional face of the city of Beirut, the architecture that survived the civil war, deserves attention, care, and preservation.

            Two years ago we were impressed by the energy of the new construction in this city. Grand, enormous luxury hotels going up by the waterfront. We also heard a lot of worries then about the number of old buildings, the city’s architectural heritage, being torn down and replaced with modern, more expensive housing. That worry is still there. Some of the hotels are finished, some buildings have been saved, the noise of new construction still greets us every day, and the major change we’ve noticed is that a dense, busy, often noisy city is now more of all those things because more people are living here than ever.  

Anne and I walk the streets of the city, taking pictures of the now mostly isolated buildings in the old Arab or Ottoman style, hoping they can be maintained, saved, preserved from the next development scheme. More typically in the central city – the areas people want to visit; they places where they want to live -- they are being replaced by larger modern buildings, and the city loses its character as a result. (See pic at left)

We revisit some favorite spots. The remains of the Roman baths (second photo, left), abutting the government building known as the Serail, survived the rebuilding of the downtown after the destruction of the Lebanese Civil War. An old building like the “Quo Vadis,” (third photo) restaurant or hotel once frequented by foreigners, survives in splendid desolation. Maybe it will escape destruction by redevelopment.

More security conscious from the spillover of the Syrian war, some residents are locking doors that weren’t locked before. We see more uniforms on the street; some recognizably Lebanese army, some in the gray camo fatigues adopted by the new city security force whose job, I suspect, is to make sure people in Beirut feel secure in the fact of the bombings in other parts of the country by factions supporting one side or the other in the Syrian war and the other spillover of that horrifying disaster, a million refugees.

            Many of these inevitably end up in Beirut, where half of the country’s population already lives; housing has grown scarce, rents are up, and jobs scarce. As visitors, we encounter some refugees living a hand to mouth existence. Black head scarves covering all their hair, gowned mostly in black as well, some women sit on the sidewalk with their back to a wall waiting for people like us to pass by. Generally accompanied by a small child, they hold out one hand and emit a sing-song plea for alms in Arabic. If the children are old enough to run around by themselves they do a more aggressive begging, approaching with similar chanted pleas and then running alongside their target, foreigners for sure, as we try to walk away. The Lebanese are used to them, speak their language, and decide on their own terms whether to tolerate them or not.

         People make their own decisions on how to respond to a phenomenon the city has not experienced in the past. Some store owners chase them away. The same people who chase the children away in public may be giving to them privately through organized charities.

            Anne has made a practice of changing larger bills to gather some small denomination 1,000 Lebanese Lira notes (less than a dollar). Keep them separately in a pocket, Sonya urged; that way you don’t have to open your wallet, exposing the rest of your liquid wealth. 
            Anne  hands the bills to the women or children who solicit us. A very small gesture in a very big world.

Sonya’s Balcony Garden: Life Among the Leaves

          The sun sets and we hear the Call to Prayer, arriving from several directions to the balcony garden of Sonya’s apartment in a neighborhood a dozen blocks or so from Hamra, the commercial district and heart of West Beirut.

           The garden is a bower of endless delight. The sounds of the city filtered by the leaves of a score of potted and grown together plants are one of the recurrent pleasures of life on the balcony. The Call to Prayer comes with both regularity and freshness, like a call from a friend or a reminder of some special gift you have enjoyed in the past and will likely enjoy again in the future. This one comes at  sundown. But another came sometime in the late afternoon. In an hour or two we will be happily surprised to hear it again as an end of day declaration or celebration of full darkness. When the windows, the big glass sliders that separate the balcony from the house, are open, the call comes right into your senses. The balcony is all about the senses.

          When we were here two years ago, potted plants had staked out their territory over a good deal of the balcony. Now they’re working on the air space above. Sonya has constructed an arbor of thin wire the branches can tangle themselves up on. The result is a bower, a sheltered grove, a retreat, an eye and ear on the world, and something of a grotto after I help with the watering and create a few small fountains. The plants are a privacy screen, but also a blind for our own peeking, peering and monitoring of activity across the way in the neighboring buildings and below in the streets where people talk, laugh, shout, sell things and ride very loud motorcycles and equally busy though less powerful motorbikes.

           The balcony garden is anchored by bougainvillea that climb aggressively and provide branching for the fence of green. They make purple flowers all over the city. Also red, perhaps from a different variety of the plant. In one corner sits an olive tree, making grayish leaves and biding its time. (We’re not counting on homemade olive oil soon.) We watch the lemon tree, for signs of very pretty. The Asian jasmine is already blossoming sweetly. A gardenia has deep green leaves and a satisfying profusion of thick and promising buds. We watched a hibiscus bud slowly and reddishly, push its nose out of the covers and smell the sunshine for a week. This morning we were greeted by the emergence of a fully-fledged blossom, with its own specially ornamented architecture. The alyssum, native or not, drops its seeds with abandon and flowers in different quarters. Many other plants hold their place in the scheme, some of them thickly leaved, even if I can’t summon their names.

          The sounds of the city neighborhood come to the balcony in layers. The voices of the engines, sudden screams of motorcycles, building blasts during the work day, human voices calling out sales and services, singing the song of their days. And below that a constant murmur of throbbing human activity. Footsteps, talk, wordless activity, coming and going. It’s evening now. The human voices are domestic. I hear intonations of sharing, some excitement in voices, news or happy anticipation; the pleasure of a day’s work behind them and an evening’s fellowship at hand.

          We feel that too, though our vacationers’ day consisted of a pleasure trip, a lot of good food, and a little shopping. Besides, the balcony will bring us a fresh day in the morning.

Streetlife in Beirut: Crossing the Camels

"If you’re not tired, you’re not having fun." – Beirut taxi driver

             

           Imagine a caravan of camels. Beasts of burden plowing down an avenue under the whip of their drivers. They fill a street in Egypt, or anywhere that people have taken to driving large packs of dromedaries, through wadis, rues, paved streets, or crowded alleys for no doubt commercially minded purposes. You, the pedestrian, do not wish to wait for the whole parade of beasts to pass before your eyes before you cross the street to get where you are going. There might be another caravan right behind them. So you wade into the flow. You pick your spot. Your appearance among them causes the next rank of animals to slow a step or turn slightly aside to avoid you. A collision is annoying, even to a camel. So you advance a little further. You watch the beasts, the beasts watch you. You adjust, take advantage of tiny gaps that appear between them, step a little this way, a little that way, and then suddenly you have arrived on the other side.

            On the streets of Beirut, no camels appear but there is always another Carvan SUV, or more likely, a steady unbroken flow of motorized vehicles of all description. When you are in a place where there are no traffic signals and no break in the flow is likely or predicable, what you do is cross the camels. Somehow it works, since we’re all still here.    

            First impressions in Lebanon, after being away for two years, have everything to do with traffic. All forms of traffic on the streets of Beirut -- cars, trucks, junkers, black BMW SUVS with diplomatic plates, fat loud ego-stuffing motorcycles, low fast scuttery motorbikes, fat dirty construction vehicles with objects (and sometimes people) hanging off them – foot traffic as well -- compete for every square inch of pavement. Motorcycles drive the wrong way down one-way streets in order to jump up onto the sidewalk and then cut a corner into a clogged main street in order to resume the happy practice of zipping between lanes. It’s not just the motorcycles that execute unconventional appropriations of pavement. Cars behave the same way. Nobody bats an eye. It drives me crazy, and sometimes scares me, but I’ve never seen a fender bender. No accidents. I’ve never heard even any talk of a pedestrian accident. Quincy, full of lights and caution and rules, had a hundred pedestrian accidents a year ago, including a half-dozen fatalities.

            The Lebanese system works by a kind of “total awareness.” When on public pavement in Beirut you watch in all directions at once, including by the eyes in the back of your head, expecting anything and everything at any moment. If you’re approaching an intersection (or driveway or alley), assume something (or somebody) will come shooting out of it. If your are in a vehicle, you assume somebody (or something) will launch themselves off the sidewalk. Pedestrians adopt the same modus operandi. Particularly when crossing streets, but also while ambling along a sidewalk (no such thing as “safely on the sidewalk”: amble with eyes wide open).

We were shocked a few years ago when the city put in a few ‘walk’ lights. Some drivers even respect them. But that’s no reason to expect all will. Drivers also turn right on red through the walk light as they do in New York City. Here they also do ‘left on red.’ A decade ago people ignored lights completely: you slow down at an intersection to see if anyone is barreling out in a desperate attempt to get in front of you; if not, irrespective of traffic lights, you keep going. It the cars are stopping for a traffic light, that does not mean a motorbike will not suddenly appear from nowhere to whiz in front, behind or around you. He will not hit you, but you do not know that, so the maneuver may be, to say the least, startling. Motorcyclists do this constantly, every day, and have the timing down to a science. You’re a visitor, so just keep moving your head from side to side, like a bird. The hawks may not want to eat you, but you want to know if they're around.

Walking the sidewalks in Beirut is fun, stimulating, often entertaining, but you don’t do a lot of daydreaming. And when crossing the street, it’s advisable to avoid any sort of mental activity other than that required to keep moving.

            Simply keeping to the sidewalk, by itself, is a challenge Sidewalks exist almost everywhere in this time, but about half the time are unusable. While narrow, sidewalk are frequently appropriated for other uses besides ped-exing. Stores, restaurants and other establishments protrude their activities into the public space. Hotels place poles or minimalist fencing onto the sidewalk, generally to discourage parking in front of their grand entrances. High-end hotels or other businesses keep sidewalks clear for their own clientele, but they hire doormen or security for this purpose because the sidewalks and streets are remarkably free of policing. “Traffic safety” is an oxymoron here. Occasional soldiers or city police in their new gray fatigues stand around, but they don’t care how you drive or whether or not you can cross the street safely. We saw one police officer officiously direct traffic one afternoon on the heavily trafficked Corniche roadway. That lasted a few minutes until his girl friend (or his sister or his aunt) pulled over to the curb ("parking rules" is another oxymoron) and he sauntered off to talk to her, leaving motorists and pedestrians to their own devices.

            A shocking contrast to rule-happy France, driving, walking and other uses of public space in Lebanon is radically democratic and populist. Everyone has a right to do what they want within a broad and completely shared notion of what’s acceptable. On foot, you walk through other people, inches away from cars, over people’s business, between their conversations, through their restaurant or gas station, doing your best not to step on their toes -- and nobody bats an eye. You don’t touch, not intentionally, but a millimeter of separation is enough. If you do collide, a simple “pardon” is sufficient. Old half-lame women and dignified, Frenchified, silver-haired gentlemen follow the same rules. Children move out of your way without a pause in their usual occupations of games, mutual teasing and more or less good-humored badgering.

            As a rule people are remarkably considerate and polite. No public quarrels, no angry shouting. No fender benders, astoundingly, though I did hear a steady horn symphony when a van decided to attempt a U-turn on a narrow, crowded one-way street. In fact I don’t ever hear any swearing, except by me.