I Can't Stay Long

by Laurie Lee

  I was shown two instances of this attitude: the destruction of a square of exceptionally fine villas to make room for a parking-lot and go-cart race-track. The other, more tragic; the ravaging of the classical old town, the main traces of which are being lost for ever. This was the site of the original Roman city, Berythus, famous for its law school, and favoured by retired Roman captains. Naturally, rebuilding has been going on for two thousand years, the new gently overlaying the old. Most of the Roman city had long since been lost to sight, surviving only in folk memory and civic myth.

  Following the Turkish destruction of this area, the lay-out of French-Lebanese shops and buildings achieved a distinctive and civilized style. Now that ultimate destroyer, the modern excavator, has moved in with bizarre and final results. Ploughing far deeper than the labourer’s traditional pick and shovel, it uncovered large areas of the lost Roman city – splendidly preserved columns and tessellated pavements buried as much as twenty feet underground. The developers’ economics left no room either to rebury or preserve them – apart from one minor token ringed by ‘municipal’ railings. The glories of Roman Berythus were revealed again only briefly, then smashed for ever beneath the basements of supermarkets and offices.

  Beirut is a racial club-sandwich – as is New York – and it balances its variety of factions with ease. It also displays a paradox of tolerance and intrigue. In the old commercial quarter of Bab Edriss, for instance, some ten thousand Jews carry on a busy, healthy and unharrassed existence in spite of the Republic’s deep enmity with neighbouring Israel. The rest of the city has its distinct ethnic quarters, but they lie comfortably against each other.

  Early one morning I went to visit the old town zouks – those crowded, coffee-drinking Arab street-markets which have scarcely changed since the birth of the Prophet. Apparently still untouched, with hardly a plastic container in sight, they snuggle together close to the harbour, and I was taken there by a pretty Lebanese girl who, though perfectly happy to show me around, said she wouldn’t dream of going there alone. ‘A good place for shopping for old women and servants,’ she said, ‘but if I go by myself, they joke of me in Arabic, and it is not nice that I understand.’

  Here it all was: the narrow noisy lanes heaped with wet fruit and vegetables; streets of tin-smiths mending kettles and slavering over old Ford radiators; streets hung with bunches of plucked chickens still indignantly alive (kept alive so they’d stay fresh in the heat); streets of caged birds, tame pigeons and grounded ducks, of bleating kids and lambs waiting for the knife, of ropes of red meat hung up like silken scarves, fat men in cubicles propping up bags of beans, shouting porters and beggars, boys scampering around with coffee, tailors sitting cross-legged on platforms, heads down, stitching madly … I’d seen it all before, two thousand miles to the west, in the zouks of Fez, Tetuan and Tangier, all part of that Arab civilization which still has no great wish for change, which remains traditional, self-nourishing, enclosed.

  ‘A pity,’ said my guide. ‘When I was just a little girl, I came here every day with the cook. Everything we bought was fresh and cheap. Now I am grown and respectable and cannot shop here no more. I must buy my grocery frozen and wrapped in the supermarket.’

  She took me on to the ‘gold zouk’ – much grander, of course, but still intimate, with all the suave dealers related. Here was much displaying of bangles, bracelets, rings and coins, rapid mental calculations in the world’s various currencies, lots of running in and out to fetch cups of coffee or tempting trinklets from neighbouring booths; but no bargaining – this was fixed-price, genuine gold.

  I ended that particular morning with a visit to a respected ‘dealer in antiquities’, recommended as expensive, but honest. The place was a treasure house, and no sooner had I been introduced than a young expert snatched the signet ring off my finger, placed it under a powerful glass, and pronounced the stone to be Roman (circa Caesar Augustus).

  I was encouraged by this beginning, having had the thing for years and always thought it was Tottenham Court Road (circa George VI). Clearly the shop knew its business – the Lebanon, with much of the Middle East, being one of the most valuable archeological mine-fields in the world. Apart from being the cradle of the Phoenicians, the world’s first international traders, every other local civilization had left something buried here. Dug up through the years, by peasant’s plough or prospector, funnelled into the National Museum or through the hands of private dealers, Beirut has collared most of the region’s portable prizes of the past – and quite a lot of it was in this shop. I saw exquisite Syrian drinking glasses (3rd century AD) the colour of orange sunsets, the dry soil still on them. There were Roman necklaces and ear-rings, gold and silver coins, clay masks of remote Assyrian goddesses. And a bronze figurine, Greco-Roman, classical, standing in a posture of innocent nakedness, image of that earth-mother who once ruled this world – Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus.

  There was little in the shop dated later than the 4th century AD, and prices were naturally high. I thought at least I might haggle for a few old coins. ‘A London dealer was here just a moment ago,’ they said. ‘He left with a hatbox full.’

  In the bar of a nearby hotel I thanked my guide for her patience. She raised her white wine to the wine-dark sea. Relaxed now, she began chattering in her French-accented English, showing every so often her bronzed Assyrian profile. ‘D’you believe in these love-goddesses of yours?’ I asked waggishly. Her large dark eyes gazed back at me. ‘Of course not. They were a myth.’ ‘The Virgin Mary, then?’ ‘But naturally.’ ‘Weren’t they all the same?’ ‘No, only the Virgin existed in truth.’

  My guide was a Maronite Catholic. Her grandfather fought the Druzes. She was French-influenced, innocently bigotted. She gave me a slow, indulgent Jesuitical smile. Her face was the glowing ghost of Astarte.

  As I was not in Beirut for oil, banking, or property development, I devoted myself to its other rewards – to its first breath of spring, its night life, food, and the hospitable vitality of its people. No matter who they are, or what racket they are in, they seem to take from their city an easy-going urbanity. You are unlikely to get the best of a Lebanese in a deal, but you will not be cheated – merely out-smarted. Business aside, you are met with generosity and warmth, and this is one of the memorable charms of the place.

  On the strength of a single introduction to a young professional couple I was immediately invited to an intimate family celebration. The occasion was the first communion of their ten-year-old son, and I was collected early from my hotel and driven out through the spring-flowering hills to a shining new church, built to serve a Jesuit college. The church filled up rapidly with friends and relations flashing gold teeth and Japanese cameras. The young mothers wore French frocks, the grandmothers tribal black, the menfolk Douglas Fairbanks moustaches. Then to a wail of liturgical treble, the first communion boys processed slowly towards the altar, each one habited in white, a Dominican mini-monk, each holding a fluttering vestal candle.

  Afterwards, outside, there was more photographing of the boys, grouped with their fathers, spiritual and temporal. French small-talk skipped and bounced as we regained our parked cars standing in rows under the flowering trees. Only the distant mist-covered mountains suggested the existence of rougher, unconverted and older tribes, still grinding away at their mysteries.

  With all colour-film exposed and celebration cards exchanged, my friends rushed me back to their Beirut apartment. Gracefully Lebanese in style (albeit five floors above ground) it still preserved the lineaments of local tradition: a large central room set with slender pillars and arches, kitchen and bedrooms leading off all round. One could imagine vines climbing up the pillars, the ceiling open to the sky, a well of sweet water in the middle of the room – the cool domestic design, the inward-looking refuge, that once marked the Arab world from Spain to Damascus.

  Together with her many relations, the mother of the first communion boy had prepared a large meal in his honour. There were crates
of wine and arrack, French and Lebanese dishes, mountains of sweets and ice-coated cakes. It was an immensely long but light-hearted meal, interspersed with songs, recitations and speeches. I was perhaps the only guest present who was not a member of the family, but this was in no way held against me. Though general conversation was in Arabic and French, an old gentleman sitting opposite described the ingredients of what I was eating and also gave me a detailed run-down on the Republic’s constitution. I was provided with a flute to blow, a tambourine to bang on my knee, and I was asked to sing a song. Then an Arab-speaking youth on my right suddenly switched to English and apologized for leaving the banquet so early (it was five o’clock). He was an undertaker, he said, and he had to dispose of three corpses that afternoon – each one of a different religion. ‘Some of the rituals are more implicated than others, y’know. I expect you’ll not see me again.’

  Among the variety of restaurants on offer in Beirut, Dimitri’s is probably the most individual and eccentric. The grey-haired, charming, but unpredictable proprietor will sometimes close shop when he sees guests coming. He’ll simply hide away in one of the many shady rooms and not bother to answer the door. I’d invited two Lebanese friends for lunch, and when we arrived at Dimitri’s we found the place barred and shuttered. We stubbornly rang the bell and waited five minutes. Finally there was an unrattling of chains, and Dimitri appeared. ‘Of course I open. Come in, come in!’ The smile on his face shone like a fresh meringue. Doubtless he had vetted us through a spy-hole.

  Dimitri’s is a series of dark intimate little rooms, each with a fireplace, the brown walls covered with nudes and proverbs. One of the last genuine old houses left in Beirut (and soon coming down to make room for a ring-road). It was one of Kim Philby’s hide-outs, and as I sat in the smoke-darkened bar I could imagine him crouching there and drinking his way out of his labyrinth. One understands that it is not done to mention Philby here. Instead, Dimitri beams and talks of other things. ‘I came here from Constantinople, forty-seven years ago. Before then this house belonged to a very rich merchant. He kept his women over that room. Kept his uniques here. Now you come out and see the garden.’

  Old, ripe, screened with laocoöns of vines and bougainvillia branches, the garden was a series of bosky little enclaves, each designed, one could imagine, for secret meetings and intrigues, each separate like the rooms of the house. Dimitri’s restaurant is old-fashioned, irreplaceable and doomed, peeling with an atmosphere of out-dated wickedness – pre-electronic, operatic, cast with Faustian shadows, where characters actually arrived in cloaks, sat down, and really ate with daggers.

  The restaurants of Beirut seem to offer something of everything; French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, American – and best of all Lebanese. I remember visiting three of these last, two with friends, one alone, each meal a variation and a surprise. First I dined at the Yildizlar, on the Rouche, having driven there in a hurry and getting the car-door slammed on my thumb. However, the throbbing pain and quickly blackening nail was soon anaesthetized by the restaurant’s mezzeh and arrack. Arrack is pure grape alcohol flavoured with anise, a colourless spirit which clouds white with water and has the impact of smashing into an iceberg. Mezzeh consists of up to forty-odd separate dishes, to be savoured slowly to the accompaniment of the wit of your friends. Originally intended, no doubt, as a mere appetizer to an orgy, my first mezzeh took about two hours to get through. Among its delicacies I noted sheeps’ brains, chicken livers, asparagus, Russian salad, dried fish, chickens’ legs, sheeps’ tongue, sour plums with salt, pancakes of fish mixed with onions, almonds, and chopped, spiced lamb.

  After demolishing these forty dishes (with arrack), one can if one is able, move on to one or more of the specialities of the house: Kibeh Nayeh – strips of fresh raw meat pounded with coarsely ground wheat and seasoned with onion and pepper; or Shawarma and Hommos – lamb cooked on a spit and eaten with a paste of chick-peas flavoured with garlic and sesame.

  You can round the whole thing off with some of the sweetmeats of Lebanon, of which few in the east are sweeter, such as a plate of Tripoli cream, chopped nuts, topped with mountain-honey syrups and sprinklings of crystallized orange blossom.

  Next day, I went to the Bahri, where the meal was even more formidable – largely because I was accompanied by a Lebanese artist who knew what he wanted. He bullied the waiters with a kind of grandiose bonhomie and we were served with a mezzeh on a lavish scale. His eyes then scoured the dishes, and if he saw anything missing he demanded it with a ringing shout. Replenishments, extensions, exotic variations, were produced and popped into my mouth. The Bahri overlooked the old harbour, and vines growing across the ceiling quivered with light from the sea. Four half-bottles of arrack, with the mezzeh, took us long into the blue-green afternoon, and we finished with a baked dish of loup de mer.

  Beirut’s many restaurants are not only places in which to eat, they are places in which to be seen eating expensively and well. Apart from a rash of Wimpy and Hamburger joints, aimed at the Americanized young, the Beirut restaurant is a temple of unblushing hedonism. Here it is the thing to display publicly your gastronomic lusts, to exhibit an almost erotic self-indulgence for food. You don’t eat alone, or snatch a snack, or gobble the cheap plat de jour behind a crumpled newspaper. Rather you book a large table and eat your way leisurely through the menu surrounded by your whole family and all their collateral tribes.

  My third Lebanese restaurant was not as lush as the others, but it had its own, rather dotty charm. I’d booked a table and was expected, but no one spoke adequate English or knew quite what to do with me. ‘Welcome, Mister Laurie!’ beamed the proprietor and his brother. I was shown to a table and given hors d’oeuvres. Nuts and sliced carrots were apparently on the house. The head-waiter’s napkin dusted me down. When I referred to the menu, he cried, ‘Mister Laurie, yes, welcome!’ More raw carrots were pressed upon me. Then another plate of nuts. Then a dish of cold sliced lamb. Try as I would, I could get nothing else. Large families around me were eating whole beasts from a spit. The succulent aromas were too much to bear. I shook the head-waiter by the hand and said I must go about my father’s business. ‘Yes, welcome, Mister Laurie!’ he cried.

  I suppose I reached my epicurean peak when I lunched at the Hotel St George, which looks, and is, the most distinguished hostelry anywhere in the Middle East. Standing on St George’s Bay, it commands a panorama of the city, the haze of the hills, and the pine-topped mountains. Not only is the hotel of Edwardian elegance, the cuisine reputed to be the best ‘east of Suez’, the service of an almost nostalgic, sychophantic smoothness; it is also the key place to go in the city, the place to be seen, the place to look and listen and enquire. Especially at lunchtime, it is Beirut’s centre of business and rumour, of brief encounters and social display. Oilmen, government officials, the rich and the lonely, con-men and journalists of all nations – all gather here at midday to taste the special quality of the place, the food, the drink, and the pregnant proximity of those who run the city, or are simply passing through.

  My table was in the window – pink roses, pink cloth, and an intricate arrangement of ‘gold-chased’ plates. Asparagus, local fish served hot and boned, and a local white wine labelled ‘Caves de Ksara’.

  Apart from the sharp-eyed gossip-writers exchanging notes, most of the diners around me spoke deep throaty French. Big business was being done, opportunities probed, boardroom and bedroom liaisons established, each table piled with the paraphernalia of five-star eating, each diner holding his cards to his chest. Heavy, dark-suited men; wise silver-haired politicos; opulent, well-sprung, musk-scented ladies.

  Taking lunch at the St George gave me, more than anywhere else, a sense of Beirut’s simmering sense of affaires. Nubile, bikini-wrapped oil-girls, with figures like greyhounds and waists as pliant as a bundle of banknotes, inhaled and exhaled their exquisite physical presences up and down the sun-spotted terraces. At one stage I saw a trim little warship peek
into the bay, turn and hesitate, and then race out again. A passing Canadian oil-driller put his hand on my shoulder and complained that last night he’d been stood up by a whore. And a Greek one at that. You wouldn’t expect it would you? He was led away by a friend.

  My last memory of St George was that of the single table nearby, its occupant clearly identifiable by her voice and style – one of the modern world’s wanderers, desolate in her well-heeled pain, a temporarily shocked casualty of American divorce. Tense, attractive, in her early thirties, but too young to be just a jolly widow, she sat staring across her coffee at the sea.

  Apart from the usual concentration of clip-joints and high-priced bars, there is also a new fashionable growth of ‘British Pubs’. They come in an assortment of styles – plastic Tudor beams and dartboards – and some of them nearly get it right. The Duke of Wellington, already mentioned, serves fine English beer, but to an accompaniment of raw carrot, which I found set my teeth sideways. The Pickwick Inn, just up the road, was rather nearer the mark – run by a whiskered Battle of Britain pilot and a barmaid from Liverpool (or nearby), who had a sharp but forgiving tongue. The Rose and Crown, just off the Hambra, didn’t quite hit it off, I thought – the wrong kind of dartboard, and again too many carrots.

  These pubs offered another angle on Beirut – hustlers, drug-pushers, and girl-friends of pushers; exiled British journalists longing for home, stringers sitting on their golden expense accounts and courteously borrowing words from each other (that week it was ‘tendacious’ and ‘pusillanimous’).

  They were also the refuge of visiting blonde English actresses. ‘Trev, darling, can’t stand another three weeks of this. Fly out Daphne and I’ll even play her mum’. International airline crews, too. (A pilot bought three of my paperbacks on tick. His stewardess was rather more critical. ‘Didn’t like your last one, to be honest – not as much as the first.’ ‘All right, you don’t have to say it three times.’) Also mysterious French-Canadians pressing into one’s hand crumpled visiting cards each bearing different addresses. And fruity flutters of matrons on a cruise from Massachusetts, enquiring if there was a local guru. And especially I remember that lone, ex-Army businessman from Tunbridge Wells who wanted to line up the TUC and shoot the buggers down.