We walked down to the downtown area, to Beirut Souqs, for the Souq al-Tayeb, the biweekly farmer’s market. Along the way, amidst the reconstructed yellow buildings and across what was once the Green Line, we walked through the global chains that signify a blighted luxury; your Burberries, Ralph Laurens etc. In a shadow of a pockmarked old building was the souq, bustling with the usual international farmer’s market goers – the global young sophisticates with disposable income one sees at such places, whether in Islamabad, London, KL or Beirut. We had a two part breakfast – one part fuul, on a manakish filled with salads, olives and light cheeses, and then stocked up on essentials such as wild strawberries, grapes, borlotti beans and red figs. After depositing them at the flat and a spot of housework we went up the Mar Nicholas stairs to the Sursock museum. It was excellent. We only visited two floors, the top and the ground floor. The top floor had a very good display of the permanent collection, by theme and room, and included a fascinating manifesto on ‘oriental abstraction’ that I shall retun to copy. There were some very good works indeed: anything by Etel
The ground floor had two small rooms with temporary installations. One, by Ryan Gander, had stairs going up to a luminous door that was very effective, though it had one of those silly long titles. Another room was dark and enclosed within red velvet curtains, and a video installation by Lindsay Seers was projected onto two speherical screens that were remarkable to see. I don’t know why I haven’t seen spherical screens more often.
A fantastic museum.
In the evening we popped down to an Armenian restaurant nearby, in Mar Mikhail, where we’d spotted a sheep roasting on a spit. Another delicious meal, with roast mutton, hummus, grilled potatoes and a fantastic fattoush, followed by aysh saraya, a milky custard scented with orange blossom and topped with bread like a sheer kurma.
I think this might be one of my favourite places in the world. Certainly the food has been without exception spectacular.