SHERLEX.COM

I recently posted about the lifting of the 18 month sit-in protest in downtown Beirut. The security put in place to guard the government against these nefarious and underhanded protesters made it really difficult to get into downtown, and most of the shops there had closed down for a lack of business.

Well downtown Beirut has rebounded with a vengeance. Heaps of cafes and restaurants have already re-opened, and Beirutis have been flocking in. At night the area - which is closed off to traffic - has been packed with people. We were down there the other night and Prime Minister Siniora came wandering through to check it all out.

I still find it quite surreal that we can now walk unfettered through areas which only a week ago were rendered offlimits by Hizballah supporters. Now that the razor wire and armed goons are gone, it’s actually a really nice area!

The best bit for me is I can just mosey on down the hill from the office and grab a primo frescati ice coffee from Costa if I need a refreshingly cool beverage to break up the day.

Of course the walk back up the hill is a bit of a bugger and now that it’s getting over 30 degrees I tend to be a slick ball of greasy man-sweat when I get back in the office.

A small price to pay for freedom.

In case you haven’t seen it in the news, Lebanon’s politicians have reached a compromise agreement to end the 18-month deadlock that has paralysed the country. The deal should see the election of a president on Sunday and, hopefully, will allow for a return to normal government in the lead up to the 2009 parliamentary elections.

The most immediate impact of this decision was an announcement by the opposition that the tent city protest in downtown Beirut will be packed up - something we never really expected to occur during our stay in Lebanon.

This is going to be such a shock for us - we’ve only known the tent city, which sectioned off large parts of downtown and had killed this previously vibrant part of the town. For Alex it was a particular drag as the security measures put in place to guard the government offices from the protesters also made it impossible to walk the short distance down to the cafes of downtown - seriously curtailing his ability to get a cappuccino and muffin for morning tea each day!

So anyway now that the protest is packing up it looks like the additional security barricades will be going too.

We won’t know what to do with ourselves if we have unfettered access across downtown!

To mark the occasion, here are a few photos of the tents being dismantled.

Well we have clearly made it in Lebanon now. Last night we were fortunate enough to experience a full-on Lebanese Maronite Catholic wedding in all its colourful noisy splendour. Our driver’s second son Pierre married his sweetheart in a wonderful and not excessively over the top ceremony.

She looked particularly lovely in a beautiful white dress. In fact pretty much every woman there looked striking, with lots of exquisite makeup, immaculate hair and expensive blingy dresses. The Lebanese hate to be underdressed at the best of times, but obviously a wedding is a perfect time to go that little bit further. The hairdressers of Achrafieh must have been busy!

Of course the whole ceremony was in Arabic so we didn’t follow what was going on, except that the bride and groom said “naam” (yes) quite a bit.

The highlight for me was when the bride and groom were walking back down the aisle at the end. Walking along the balcony above them were two guys, one carrying a garden blower-vac set on mulch while the other kept piling roses and other flowers into it. It was such a romantic sight watching pureed flower slurry being blasted out of the blower-vac over the assembled crowd! I assure you that the heart of even the coldest loneliest curmudgeon in the world would be warmed and filled with love and joy after receiving a high velocity blast of macerated rose in the face.

I’m just glad that the ceremony was this weekend and not the week before when all the fighting was still going on. I’m sure that having to use your 10-tier wedding cake to shelter from sniper fire would make for a particularly memorable matrimony!

Anyway, mabruk and bonne chance Pierre and Gisele!

Portrait of an old friend, in Tripoli

One thing you can say about Lebanon, it is never boring! I thought I’d post a few of the images doing the rounds from the current civil strife, plus a couple I took as well. Most of these are from the yalibnan website (though be warned, some of the photos on the site are a bit gruesome).

In case you’ve seen reporting about the fighting in Beirut over the past few days (eg this reuters report), just wanted to reassure you that we’re all fine.

Fighting has been concentrated in the Sunni suburbs of west Beirut, several kilometres away from where we live, and has mostly died down now. So far it all seems pretty exclusively Sunni vs Shia, explaining why our neighbourhood, which is Christian, has been spared.

In fact it is quite surreal being in Achrafieh through all this. I ducked out to get a few supplies yesterday and the shops were open, people were going about their business, walking dogs etc. Yet there was the constant staccato chatter of machine gun fire and thundering booms of RPG detonations echoing across the city. Madness!

ANZAC Day 2008 in Beirut: the Commonwealth War Grave in Beirut is a beautiful testament to the sacrifices made during WWI and WWII in Lebanon. Over 1000 Aussie diggers died in Lebanon during both wars.

After several months of calm and tranquility, today was something completely different.

Originally planned as a national strike calling for an increase in the basic wage, we ended up with tyre burnings and barricades in the streets, as well as gun battles and torched cars. Most of the action focused on the border suburbs between the Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods of Beirut - which are thankfully quite removed from where we live.

Work and the schools were closed for the day and the streets were largely empty. The airport has been blocked off by protesters who’ve constructed barricades out of earth and debris. Check out this Reuters post for more info.

Who knows when things will get back to normal? For the time being we’ll definitely be keeping our heads down and spending some “quality time” at home…

Life in Beirut is rarely boring!