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 in this part of the world, as much as by its antiquity. Maybe the rest of us do a better job of hiding it or pretending that it never happened.
For lunch we tried something new, finding a small fish restaurant quite near the flat and ordering a grilled fish and fattoush. The fattoush was very good; less sharp than most, and with lettuce rather than purslane, but treated the bread component exceptionally well, crisp still-warm large wedges served separately from the salad. The fish itself was a bit muddy and there were far too many flies, but on the whole it was a pleasant lunch. We also located a graveyard we had spotted from the top of the crusader castle yesterday, hidden in the souq. The gate was barred so we couldn’t enter but it was good to confirm that it did in fact exist.