LEFT: Box containing Orthodox patriarch
The batroun projects is an art space where I stayed for a few nights, I entered and left the house through a window. The house was being looked after by a small Syrian man and his family, we had a few confusing conversations and he gave me some coffee.
This is the room, mosquitoes were a bit of a problem
LEFT: Ancient doorway with broken glass, in the old town part of Batroun.
BELOW:
Stylish red faced baker.
Pebble beach in Batroun, complete with Ottoman leftovers
These are the type of buses that take you up and down the length of lebanon. you stand at the side of the motorway waiting for one to approach you on the hard shoulder then you shout your destination at them. they either stop and let you in or if they're not going to that destination they drive on without acknowledging you. On the bus back from batroun I met a guy with a big bushy beard and the type of internationalist American accent that lots of the young Lebanese seem to have when speaking english. he started complaining about his country in the way many young Lebanese people do, however his particular brand of astonishment was very entertaining.
He told me about the port of beirut, how nobody knows what goes on in there, nobody knows what it does. "Is that where the money comes from?"
"Look at these cars, families are selling their land so their sons and daughters can have these cars. Other families are buying these cars for their sons and daughters with money from where, where did the money come from? - nobody knows, really nobody can be sure"
He also complained about the malls, countless air-conditioned shopping palaces everywhere in Beirut.
" these malls, they have all got absolutely stupid names, but there all the same. people attend the opening of a these malls, what for? Another place which offers you exactly the same experience as the other place - only this experience is a new experience, but still the same? my family are happy because I'm not like the other young people, but sometimes a bit confused by the beard, sometimes they say, look at him, he is an intellectual with his beard"
When I sat down next to him he was in the middle of revising equations. He is studying engineering, this is the career path these parents thought he should take, he said it was boring. He lives with his girlfriend, and has opened a cafe with her in Hamra, the cafe is named after a character from a play written by Khalil Gibran. ( He wrote the book, the Prophet, the most widely known book written by a writer from Lebanon, maybe the whole region ) His parents don't really ask him too many questions about his private life, and he does not tell them. His girlfriend is from Italy.
I mentioned offhand that his accent was quite American expecting him to spend some time there, he was surprised by this because he's never been to America. I can't really tell the difference between the international American accent, and one that just sort of been acquired through time spent there.
He then went on a tirade about young Lebanese people pretending to be sophisticated in these malls with their silly french names;
"They speak French not out of any practicality but in some sort of ridiculous display in order to appear sophisticated, but they can't even speak French. I don't speak French and even I can tell that they don't even speak French. They speak this crazy version of French which has nothing to do with the original language or the place they live in. And when they speak Arabic or English they put on this stupid fake French accent - I don't understand why they do this"
