This morning news came that the relative by marriage is not doing well. His organs are shutting down. His child sent me a heartbreaking voice message asking me to recite a prayer for him, holding his face and name in my mind. It is the prayer of Jonah in the belly of the whale, a […]
Nearly two months later
It’s nearly two months after the Beirut explosion. This blog has not reflected how much it’s been on my mind. The horror of what happened, in a long line of terrible events, is very persistent. Partly because I did fall in love, or at least in fascination, with Lebanon when we stayed there, and to […]
City of blood and roses
Two years ago and a day, we arrived in Beirut. This morning I woke to the news of the cataclysmic explosion in the city, heard in northern Israel, which has devastated so much of it. Had it been two years ago, the GF and would have been waiting outside one of the destroyed hospitals, hoping […]
On the fritz
I’ve been on the fritz for a couple of days, throwing mini strops, mostly silently, like a well-bottled beverage. One little eruption actually took place on Metafilter, where there has been a longrunning pair of threads on the site’s white middleclass American orientation and the moderators having only one solution: applying copious amounts of goodwill. […]
The biggest stone in the world
In the morning we walked to what is known as the Roman quarry, though I believe it is pre-Roman, and possibly alien. This is about 10 minutes down the road, behind a derelict petrol station and some piles of rubbish, where an enormous hole is scooped out of the earth. Along the sides are small […]
City of the sun
Last night, our last night in Byblos, had one of the most beautiful sunsets yet, a fierce red sun sinking from thick clouds into a sea the colour of black ice as it began to rain. It was time to leave, and this morning we got a car to take us to Beirut and then […]
Wassail
Today, our last weekend day in Lebanon, I decreed, would be a day of wassailing. It didn’t quite turn out like that, largely because in the afternoon we went in search of the Bird’s Nest, formerly an orphanage and now the Armenian Genocide Memorial. One does get overwhelmed, sometimes, by wave after wave of suffering […]
Horizons
Several days without writing, for which I apologise. Work has been very intense indeed, about 500 pages of reports needing the usual heavy handed editing, to be done in a tearing hurry as usual. But the first edit of the last is now in my Drafts folder and will be sent shortly. US politics is […]
Trablous
On Friday, soon after I finished my work the prayer took place at the mosque across the road from the cafe. Soon after it ended the Gentleman Friend arrived, and we hailed a taxi to take us to Al Mina, the port city of Tripoli where we had booked a bed and breakfast in the […]
Three step day
A couple of days without posting as I was either on a futile roadtrip or working or groaning in the throes of a headache. To take these in order: 1. On Wednesday, the Gentleman Friend and I went down to Beirut to collect our passports following visa renewal. It took about 90 minutes to travel […]