Fatayl - it's better than it looks. Photo credit: Gabrielle Jackson
Mo is one of those expats who has just enough qualities of his new country and his old to be mocked and adored in equal measure by both nationalities. He’s a Lebanese American who, apart from a couple of years in his early adolescence, grew up in America. He’s returned to Beirut in his 30s to pursue a filmmaking career. And let’s face it, why wouldn’t he? It’s a great city.
But he’s undoubtedly a New Yorker: He likes his food white. He only eats the white part of the chicken and would always order an egg white omelet. And he’s undoubtedly Lebanese: He tells me he doesn’t eat meat. You can imagine my surprise therefore when I witnessed him tucking into a chicken schawarma. When I say ‘tucking in’ I really mean carefully inspecting the chicken to remove any traces of that horror of horrors, brown chicken meat, known to the rest of the world as the tastiest part.
‘I said I don’t eat meat. I eat chicken.’
‘But chicken is meat.’
‘No, meat is meat.’
‘Is lamb meat?’
‘No, lamb is lamb.’
‘Is fish meat?’
‘No, fish is fish.’
This conversation went on for quite some time, but you get the picture. Beef is meat. Don’t make the mistake in Lebanon of asking if something has meat in it. Simply say, ‘Does that dish contain any meat, lamb, fish, chicken, goat, turkey or products of these, or any other, animals in it?’ Then, you might get a straight answer. This isn’t a language problem either: the Lebanese speak perfect English.
But this isn’t about Mo’s eating habits, it’s about his peculiarly Lebanese-American way of taking two tourists on an outing.
Another particular Lebanese-inspired charm is Mo’s friendliness: It’s genuine, it’s heartfelt and it’s of the kind that warms your cockles. I met him at the airport. He asked if I needed help, handed over his card, offered me a lift and said he had plenty of time on his hands if I wanted to hang out in Beirut. So, of course, I emailed him the very next day. In a way that only Mo could manage, he introduced me to his friends and welcomed me into their lives as well as his with such ease that nobody even seemed to notice. But then, maybe that’s just Beirut.
As it happened, his Texan flatmate had a brother visiting, too, so Mo immediately included me on all the invites going. (‘Texas, near Austin,’ the brothers are known for quickly clarifying upon meeting.) One day Mo asked Bill, the Texan brother, and me if we’d like to go to Tyre, in the south – the part of the country that the Australian and American governments warn should not be visited under any circumstances. In my mind, the travel warning went something like, ‘Don’t go to Tyre because you’ll probably be kidnapped by Hezbollah and when they find out you’re going to Israel next they’ll probably kill you and then send your organs in the post to Tel Aviv.’
So I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to go to Tyre.’ And so did Bill.
Ruins at Tyre. Photo credit: Gabrielle Jackson
Off we went in the Beirut traffic. Bill was up front and his Texan charm did not allow him to yell, ‘What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to get us killed!’ at Mo’s driving. My Australian brashness probably did, but I hadn’t been in the Middle East long before I learned to never, ever, watch the road while in a car. The traffic situation is too bad to be countenanced. My nervous anxiety can’t handle it. So, instead of watching what was happening, I was looking out the side at the sea or the mountains – there’s always a view of either one, if not both, in Lebanon – or reading my book, totally oblivious to the fact that Bill was about to have heart failure. At first. The constant accelerating and then abrupt braking drew my attention to the fact that we might have a case of American-boy-gone-local (or was it loco?) on our hands.
I think Bill’s polite way of putting it went something like, ‘But you don’t drive like this in America, do you?’
To which Mo replied, ‘No, but you have to drive like them when you’re here or you’ll be killed.’
‘Oh,’ I pondered. ‘So this is us not getting killed,’ and carried on not watching numerous near-misses.
We were all a bit relieved when we made it to Tyre, a bit later than we’d planned. It was about 3pm as we wandered through the run-down souk and Mo casually said, ‘You wouldn’t know it, but a lot of these shopkeepers are Hezbollah guerrillas. They’ve all probably got a kalashnikov under their counter.’
‘Oh right,’ I said and sneaked a peak at Bill to see his reaction. If he was having a reaction, he was hiding it well. I followed his lead and decided that maybe this was OK. So there are a few guns around; we’re with a local, what could happen? This is the town in which Mo’s dad lives and in which he spent almost every summer, as well as the years he lived in Lebanon, growing up.
It was about that time I noticed the stares, the cars slowing down as they drove past, the slowly watching eyes and turning heads. This wasn’t the friendly ‘Welcome, how can I help you?’ stare that I’d become accustomed to in Beirut. It felt more like, ‘Look at those two people with their blue eyes and white skin. What are they doing here?’
‘We’re not going unnoticed, are we?’ I tried to slip into the conversation after I devoured possibly the nicest thing I’d ever eaten in my entire life. It was called fatayl and it was minced beef served in a little wrap with some chopped tomatoes and pine nuts. The minced beef was spiced with cinnamon and something else I couldn’t identify and which the shop workers refused to disclose. I literally had to stop in my tracks. I could not walk and eat this at the same time – it would be disrespectful. It might mean I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. And besides, I wanted another one. After I’d polished off a second wrap, we continued on our way through the souk and it was as the euphoria of the fatayl settled that the stares began to unsettle.
I looked at Bill. ‘Um, no,’ he replied and I was pleased he’d noticed it too. Mo hadn’t. Not that I was concerned. Yet.
It was about this time that Mo suggested he’d drop us off at the Hippodrome – a pretty spectacular ruin dating to 2750 BC – and run an errand and then meet us at a sandwich place about two kilometres down the road when we were finished.
Did I mention the sun was setting right about now? Or the UN tank we’d passed? Or the hole in the fence that Mo was trying to convince us was the entrance to the Hippodrome? ‘Personally, I’ve seen enough ruins recently,’ I offered as a personal get out clause. ‘I don’t think this is the entrance,’ said Bill.
‘Oh it’s amazing. You’ve got to go in,’ countered Mo, driving off road in the rental car through a vacant block of land towards a hole in a wire fence. ‘I won’t be long, I’ll be 20 minutes. If you get lost just ask someone – everyone knows that place, it’s famous.’
I could just see it: Hi, Hezbollah guerrilla, would you do me the kind favour of not kidnapping me but instead directing me to the local sandwich joint please? Thanks – so kind of you. I’ll be sure to put in a good word on your behalf with the international community.
I know it’s a stereotype! But this is what I thought! And so did Bill! I could see it in his eyes, even if he will later deny it! So I said, ‘I don’t want to go. I want to come with you.’
‘No, you should see…’ Mo started to say.
‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going. Our governments tell us not to even come here, let alone wander through holes in fences and vacant blocks in the dark, alone, looking for a sandwich shop where “a friend” is going to meet us,’ I said, or at least something like that.
‘I agree,’ said Bill, or at least something like that.
‘At last! He’s freaking out like me,’ I thought to myself. Maybe it’s not all in my head this time!
‘What’s this about the kidnapping?’ Mo asked. ‘I’ve never heard about a kidnapping.’
Probably because I’d mixed about three different stories into one (much more dramatic) story, but still – there are travel warnings! And people were staring! And he did tell us they all have guns and fight for an organisation which – however it might be perceived in Lebanon – is identified with terror, murder and intransigence in our Western-media-influenced brains!
So instead we went to Mo’s dad’s flat. While I stood on the balcony admiring the spectacular view of the orange groves, sea and mountains, Mo pointed out the pretty dire-looking Palestinian refugee camp and the sites where some Israeli missiles had landed in the 2006 war. As we watched a car reversing up the wrong side of the road beneath us, Mo pointed out that this road was a motor accident hotspot and there followed a conversation about the crazy Lebanese drivers with no hint of irony whatsoever.
On the way home, I stared out the side windows into the night sky and congratulated myself for not getting kidnapped while daydreaming about the fatayl we’d eaten in the souk. In the front, Bill held on and prayed for dear life we’d make it home alive. Having survived Hezbollah and all.
