LEBANON: Country of dichotomies

By Noha El-Hennawy in Beirut

Carrying the preconceived baggage of many Arabs, I traveled to Lebanon: A beautiful country with a Westernized population and beaches flecked with bikinis not far from bars where men and women mingle freely. Reality, however, turned out to be more dizzying and complex. After a week of shuttling between the North, South, East and West of Lebanon, my Egyptian sensibilities realized that despite its small size, it’s hard to believe this exceptionally diverse land is actually one country.

EAST BEIRUT: In a nutshell, it is quiet, clean and cosmopolitan. You may think the country’s official language is French as you hardly hear the neighborhood’s Christian residents speak Arabic. Even houses are built and renovated according to European architecture. Blond women walk around in tight blouses showing cleavage; they seek posh malls and Western baubles. On weekends, nightclubs on the famous Gammayze Street are packed with young couples who cruise with hip-hop music thumping from luxurious cars. This is but one, intriguing window into Lebanon.

THE SOUTHERN SUBURB OR THE DAHYA: Being a Hezbollah stronghold, there is not an exposed cleavage to be gazed. The first thing that hits you as soon as you wander into Haret Hreik (Hreik Alley) is the huge al-Hassanein mosque, where prominent Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah lives.

Most women are veiled, but you can see a few modestly dressed, their hair uncovered. It seems a Third World city, a place where European architecture and mood have no resonance. People live in tight blocks and shop in stores that promote “the Islamic dress.” Unlike East Beirut, the suburb is engulfed by the roar of car horns and the clatter of reconstruction.

Billboards here advertise clerics and martyrs; the public space is decidedly politicized. The Dahya is more of an exhibit of pictures, a kind of flowing scrapbook of radicalism featuring Musa El-Sadr, Hassan Nasrallah, Emad Moghneyya and Hezbullah fighters.  You hardly find a street lantern that does not carry a picture of a slain Hezbullah warrior.

TRIPOLI: Roaming around the northern coastal city with a Lebanese journalist was illuminating. The Sunni Islamist influence is very much sensed in the city. “We have no bars here. Even coffee shops and restaurants are too scared to serve alcohol. You can only find alcohol in restaurants overlooking Tripoli port.” You don’t find any East Beirut woman here. Even young girls here wear the veil. There seems to be more adherence to strict traditions. The contrast was quite shocking. Yet nothing was more startling than the scene of two women in black wearing the Niqab standing with a bearded man at the corner in an Old Tripoli alley.

You end up feeling the country cannot be one entity; it is the playground, often a battleground, of dichotomous cultures and divergent political forces. This feeling is not only reinforced by dress codes or religious symbols but also by political icons. The influence of external forces and opposite ideologies can be easily sensed through the war of posters that sweeps Lebanon’s streets. A drive to the South shows the clout the Iranian leverage, as Ayatollah Khomeini’s pictures hang everywhere. Three hours to the north in Tripoli, a promenade shows that the Baathist party still has a following among Sunni Lebanese who have raised Saddam Hussein’s pictures on tops of buildings. And a drive across Beirut proves that some Lebanese are even inspired by failed pan-Arabic dream of former Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. While Nasser’s pictures are rarely glimpsed in Egyptian streets, they are posted on walls and bridges in many of Beirut's streets.

Photos, from top: A billboard with a bikini-clad blond model in Beirut (Raed Rafei), a billboard with the pictures of Musa El-Sadr and Nabih Berri in the Southern Qana Province (Noha El-Hennawy), picture of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser hanging in Beirut (Raed Rafei)

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Comments

[Christiane]

This is one of the most cliched articles I have read about the diversity and "dichotomy" of Lebanon.

I am afraid that Noha is comparing apples and oranges. She cannot go to an upper middle class Christian neighborhood [Gemmayze] and compare it to a poor/middle class suburb.
Instead, she should have compared Gemmayze in East Beirut to Verdun in West Beirut, and in that case she would not have been able to differentiate them from one another and she could have compared Shia Dahiyeh in the southern suburb to Christian/Armenian Bourj Hammoud and Furn El-Shubbak and barely seen any difference, except perhaps in clothing style.... etc... etc...

The differences only show up between social/educational classes rather than religions and sects. PLEASE take note. You will rarely ever be able to tell a wealthy Sunni, Christian or Shia apart, [neither in looks nor lifestyles] and poorer people from these religions will also have similar lifestyles, even though they might dress differently.

And I am really sad that she chose to ignore Ras Beirut which encompasses ALL religions with all their diversities in harmony. Each street boasts of allegiance to a different political group and veiled women as well as those wearing shorts and cleavage-baring clothes walk along side each other, and often even hand-in-hand.

I totally agree with Red: Lebanon is too complex for most people to understand, esp journalists on a first-time visit. But let's please drop the cliches and the insistence that there is a clash of civilization within Lebanon. There are only differences and diversity. Sometimes they seem sharp to the untrained eye... but in the end, all Lebanese share a lot more in common than even they might notice: hospitality, generosity, love of life, entrepreneurship, a fighter spirit, and a chaotic attitude as well as an abhorrence of discipline and regulations....

Let's focus on what we have in common as human beings... and the world will be a better place.

I think this blog entry should be revisited.

[Red]

funny article, don't get me wrong, i like the cleavage coverage vantage point, but it's but off key for sure.
not unlike many other articles of the same tad simple caliber, this one oversimplifies things, again.

but i don't blame the writer much though, it's not easy to understand lebanon. especially at first glance.

let's just say that lebanon is even much more complicated and interesting than this article's special cleavage laden description.

it's a country of many mixed influences, not many countries mislabeled as one.

there are many things divergent and paradoxical in lebanon, but many things in common also. that’s Lebanon for you..

but she did get one thing straight for certain, the preconceived notions of not only arabs, but also westerners about lebanon is one of the causes of this little country's endless problems.

[Mustapha]

I've never seen so much amalgamation of clichés and stereotypes in just one column, you can hardly believe this is one article only.

You must have missed the endless bikinis lying by the shores of Tripoli , the scantly-clad "Hezbollah babes" , and the countless East-Beirut christians who are so conservative they hardly leave home.

Lady, I appreciate your effort, but the one permanent rule about Lebanon is that there are no rules.