Cyprus

After teaching my last class of the semester, it was a marvelous break to get away to the island of Cyprus for a few days. Cyprus is only 112 nautical miles across the Mediterranean from Beirut--for us, a quick 25 minute flight on Cyprus Air--but it feels like a world away. Cyprus is a member of the European Union, and the major language spoken there is Greek. All the roadsigns, menus, etc. were in Greek. Luckily for us, Cyprus's lovely weather makes it a vacation haven for the Brits, so most of the tourist-oriented things are written in English as well as Greek. It was the first place Jeff and I had visited since being in Beirut where we didn't need a visa. Passing through passport control in Cyprus was wonderfully easy, and provided a great start to our relaxing vacation.

One of the fun things about Cyprus was getting to sample some Greek food. We went to one place called Militjis that had a great view of the sea as well as super traditional food. Jeff had roast pork on a spit (hard to find in the Arab world), and I had tavas, which was lamb, potato, tomato, and spices baked together in the oven. And the ovens are these neat dome-shaped things out on the patio.

Some of the island's private homes had those outdoor ovens, too. Speaking of private homes, many of the places we walked past looked like charming little cottages with plants and flowers everywhere. It was neat to see that the whole island hasn't been swallowed up by tourism yet.

We were hoping to get to visit the natural history museum in Larnaca while we were there, but it was closed. There was, however, a weird little zoo area where huge birds like peacocks and pelicans were penned up in cages that were too small for them. Poor little things. That didn't stop us from posing for pictures in front of them, though:

A visit to Cyprus would not be complete without lolling around pool- or beachside in the Mediterranean sunshine. We slathered on the SPF 30 and did just that.

It was a wonderful respite from the noise of Beirut and the stress of grading. And since it's only a 25 minute flight, who knows, maybe we'll make it back there again!

Lebanese Elections

It is hard to believe that I have very nearly finished my first academic year at the American University of Beirut. All in all, it has been a really good one. I get to teach interesting courses to small classes of articulate and polite undergrads from backgrounds very different from mine, the campus is beautiful, my sunny office overlooks a palm tree and some good-smelling flowering shrubs, and there are cats everywhere. Add to that some nice colleagues and pleasant weather, and it is no wonder the year went by so quickly.

 

When I realized that the June 7^th parliamentary elections were a really big deal here, I started to wonder if my quiet first academic year would end with a "bang"…literally.  Lebanon's two major political entities are the ruling pro-Western March 14^th alliance, which is backed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, among others; and the March 8^th alliance, of which Hezbollah is a key member. March 8^th, also known as "the resistance," has the support of Iran and Syria. In the run-up to the election, many were predicting a March 8^th victory, but (not to spoil the suspense for anyone not following the news) that did not happen.

 

It sounds as though the actual voting itself was fairly calm, with fisticuffs limited to northern Lebanon. There was a lot of what sounded like celebratory gunfire in the streets of Hamra (my neighborhood) on the Thursday night before the election. I'm not sure what they were celebrating that early, but it was enough to make me stay in most of the weekend. It was the first gunfire I'd heard since I've been here. However, some of my colleagues were convinced that the noise was from firecrackers going off and thought I was crazy for worrying about it.

 

 AUB's final exam schedule was all messed up due to the elections: school (and most everything else) was shut down on the Saturday before and Monday after elections, I guess in case things got tense. Luckily, things did not get tense, and I'm sure the students appreciated the extra time to study.

 

I was surprised about the March 14^th coalition's win. I think everyone was. Some in the media have speculated that Obama's speech in Cairo might have helped tip the balance in that direction, but it's hard to say. I still find Lebanese politics so completely mystifying that I can't really identify any clear causal relationships. Part of what made the election so confusing for me is that there didn't appear to be any domestic issues talked about in the campaigns. No one is promising a chicken in every pot, or even promising to fix the holes in the sidewalks.

 

Another surprise is that the leader of Hezbollah gave a calm, gracious, and seemingly sincere concession speech. Although there were rumors that there would be an immediate coup if the opposition lost, that has not happened.

 

Add to that the fact that none of my students have yet complained about their final grades, and it looks like my summer is off to a smooth start. I'm looking forward to traveling in the Middle East with Jeff, catching up on some reading, and taking a quick trip to the U. S. sometime later in the summer (I haven't yet decided when). For now, I'll keep my eyes glued to Al Jazeera English's website to see how elections go today in Iran. I'm hoping that theirs will be just as peaceful as ours.

Biodiversity Day at AUB

The end of the semester is finally in sight. I have one more week of classes, then a bunch of grading, and then it's over until late September. Whew! It's hard to believe that I've almost finished my first year at AUB. It's been a pretty good one so far, I must say.

One of the many end-of-semester events that have been taking place lately is IBDAA, or AUB's biodiversity celebration. "Ibdaa" means something like "creative energy" in Arabic, and it seemed like a good way to describe the 140-plus student projects that were on display on Friday afternoon. A big outdoor area on campus was full of bulletin boards displaying colorful posters detailing the results of chemistry and physics experiments related to biodiversity or recycling. Some students were displaying buttons they had made out of potato starch. Other students explained to me how electricity can be generated using lemon juice, zinc, copper, and a bunch of wires. Still others showed how to make soap, or how to make "white coffee", which is really hot water infused with rose or orange blossom essence.

Students from my American Wilderness class added a touch of the humanities to the largely science-dominated event. Several had made posters comparing conservation efforts in Lebanon (unfavorably) to those in the US. One student profiled the Palm Islands off the coast of Lebanon, which had recovered from a plague of invasive rabbits only to be victimized by the oil spills resulting from the 2006 war. Other students wrote creative pieces in which the natural world figured prominently. It was fun seeing the students looking so proud of their efforts.

A literature student of mine made a fun game that involved guessing one of six natural scents and then touching a wire to the answer, like in the game "Operation."

Another student made a poster detailing land mine use around the world. The map showed the countries that still have land mines in them (i.e., most countries), and the countries that did not (the US, Canada, most of Europe, and some of Russia). The poster then explained that the countries that don't have mines in them are the countries that provide them to the rest of the world. Nice. She then shocked me by saying that in 2000, a good friend of hers had been killed by a landmine in the south of Lebanon. The friend and her whole family had been killed when their car detonated one of the landmines that still littered that area.

It was nice to get a chance to talk to my students more than I usually have time to during the normal routine. It was a moment to slow down a bit amidst the hectic end of semester. We'll get another chance to slow down on Monday, which the government suddenly and surprisingly declared a holdiay: National Liberation Day, which I think marks the liberation of some southern villages from Israeli occupation. It is a holiday on the calendar, but I'm told that it is unusual for schools and offices to shut down for it. Is it election related? Some think so. Whatever its motivation, I will relish the time to rest and get caught up before the semester ends for good. And happy Memorial Day to all of you!

Beiteddine and Deir al-Qamar

Over Easter weekend Jeff and I took a trip into Lebanon's Chouf mountains to get away from the noise of the city for a little bit. It's amazing how much cooler the air feels in the mountains. It felt like we were vast distances away from Beirut, but we could still see the sea from the terrace of our hotel, so we weren't really that far inland.

We visited Beiteddine palace, built in the early 1800s for an emir, or Ottoman-era governor, and still used at times in the summer by important Lebanese officials. There were some really ornate rooms inside.

Most of the rooms were locked, so we had to get a guide to take us around and unlock them. He also doubled as a photographer.

There is a second palace up the hill from Beiteddine, where the Emir's son lived. It has now been turned into a hotel, and that's where we stayed. It wasn't as fancy as you're probably imagining, (think drafty old stone building with 1960s-era plumbing) but it did have a nice view and a fountain in which one could cool one's toes after a day of sightseeing.

The nearby village of Deir al-Qamar is down the hill from Beiteddine.

It's a lovely little town, and we had a good time just wandering down the streets, getting a good falafel sandwich, and watching workers decorate the Church of Saidet at-Talle for Easter. They were filling it with huge white roses, and one of the workers gave me one...or rather he gave it to Jeff to give to me. The church was built on the foundation of a seventh-century temple to the goddess Astarte, and then repurposed for Christianity. I love thinking about the pagan foundations of so many churches here; what a sense of history.

All in all it was a lovely trip, and well worth the hair-raising hour-long taxi ride down windy mountain roads to get back to Beirut!

Washer!

There is only one "self-serve," "coin-operated" landromat in Beirut. I say "coin-operated" because you have to pay the attendant, and then he operates it for you. It is "self-serve" in the sense that there are, in fact, two washers that you can pay the attendant to use. That is, you can if they are not broken or down due to one of the daily power outages. I quickly began to understand why people just drop off their laundry rather than trying to do it themselves. The only trouble is that when you drop it off, they jam all the laundry from your huge bag into one tiny machine, and it doesn't get very clean. Add to that the fact that the laundromat is quite expensive and a long, awkward walk from home, and I started to earnestly desire the ability to do laundry at home while working. So Jeff and I took a cab to the big home appliance place in Beirut and bought one! It just got delivered today, and it seems to be doing fine. Like most Beirutis, we're just hanging it up inside to dry.

It feels very festive to be able to do laundry at home. Yay!

Springtime in Syria

I know it has been ages since I've updated my blog. My only excuse is the usual one: spring semester, in Beirut as everywhere else, seems to be especially busy and tiring. In its quest to acknowledge the holidays of multiple religious sects, AUB's calendar only gave us a couple weeks off after fall semester, and so everyone is feeling a bit frazzled by now. Classes are going well, and I am advising a couple Master's theses for the first time, so I'm staying busy.

However, we did recently get two long weekends in a row, in commemoration of both Western and Eastern Orthodox Easters, and so Jeff and I took a trip to Damascus. It was really exciting finally getting to visit Syria, and we had a great time visiting some historic sites, such as an old, ornate mosque where I had to put on a beige druid-like robe that the attendant handed me before I could go in.

Damascus is also known for its souks, or markets, and it was fun looking at the piles of nuts and spices some of the vendors had for sale.



We took a trip to the nearby town of Maalula, where the local people still speak Aramaic, an ancient language I thought was dead. We visited a church which had formerly been a pagan temple. When they redecorated, the Christians replaced the church's pagan altar that had a hole in the middle of it to drain off the blood of sacrifices. The tour guide there prayed aloud in Aramaic, which was neat to hear. Also in Maalula, we visited another ancient church that was actually just a walled-in cave. It has a tree growing in it, as well as a holy water basin that is continually replenished by the water seeping out of the rock itself. Pretty neat.





The town of Maalula itself was lovely, too, perched on some
desert cliffs.

All in all, we had a wonderful time looking around and getting to meet some incredibly friendly Syrian people.

Teaching the American Wilderness

Lest you think that my life in Beirut is an endless series of vacations and cooking experiments, I wanted to share some reflections on my first week of second-semester classes. As I've mentioned before, the academic calendar here is a bit out of sync with the U. S. schedule. Our second semester just started mid-February, and will continue into June. I'm teaching some good courses this semester: one on the novel as a genre, a reprise of my fall-semester American literature survey course (read: no new prep!), and a new course called "The American Wilderness."
 
The wilderness course is a new one I'm developing, and I'm told that nothing similar has ever been offered at AUB, which is neat. It is listed in the catalog as both an English and an American Studies course. We're covering a lot of ground, so to speak: The first part of the course investigates the intellectual, legal, and literary history of the wilderness idea in the U. S.  The second part of the course will focus on the way wilderness is managed as public land. This will include lots of conversation about the Park Service and a case study or two about the dilemmas faced by park management. The third part of the course will look at the ways in which wilderness is simulated and represented in 21st-century popular culture.
 
I am also trying to get students to compare the role of wilderness in the U.S. with the role of natural spaces here in Lebanon. To that end I've invited a guest speaker from a local conservation non-profit to talk to the class about conservation efforts in Lebanon. It's really interesting to see the very recent emphasis on hiking trails and nature preserves and think about how important peaceful natural places must be to a country used to decades of war.
 
So far, students have been engaged and enthusiastic in class. We started off talking about the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. No, that's not a typo--it is a former chemical weapons factory and Superfund site that the U.S. Army handed over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004. It is now billed as "the nation's most ironic nature preserve." As you might imagine, it provided lots of fodder for discussion. Some students mentioned the oil spills and environmental degradation that resulted in Lebanon from the civil war, which was a good reminder for me of how wilderness and natural areas are often-overlooked casualties of violence.
 
Of course, not everything has gone smoothly in class. For one thing, I assigned the Thoreau's classic "Ktaadn" section of his book The Maine Woods. I'd forgotten that the passage I assigned begins with him breakfasting on "some raw pork" along with a "wafer of hard bread." In a city where getting pork products of any kind can be quite a challenge, I imagined students throwing down the essay in disgust when they read that Henry David was chowing down not only on the flesh of swine, but the RAW flesh of swine. Surprisingly, though, no one brought it up in class.
 
Even though I myself had not been dining on raw pork or anything similar,  I had a mild stomach bug earlier in the week (I'm fine now--it was just a 24 hour thing). In an uncanny replay of my first week of fall semester classes, I taught my American Wilderness class while feeling like my stomach was a wilderness of its own. I made it through 40 minutes of my 50 minute class before I hastily dismissed the students and then...well, let's just say that I was very glad there was a trash can in the corner of the classroom. Talk about embarrassing teaching moments! As I stood there in the corner clutching the trash can I heard one student say, "Oh, I wondered why we were getting out early." Ha!
 
Aside from that little incident, though, I must say that I'm pleased with my classes this semester. I'm glad to have the opportunity to see what the American wilderness looks like through the eyes of my Lebanese undergrads. And when I get some free time, I'll work on my baba ghanoush technique and start thinking about where to travel during Easter break!