post 153/365
The word ‘war’ is feared by all
Everything that one can think of
Environment, Economics, Politics
All joins in the fray
Man against man
War begins
Sending dancers of death into the battlefield
Changing the landscape, death to all
Leaving behind a stage, full of agony
What can we say,
When wars are waged?
post 152/365
Couched in the comforts of boutique plushness and nestled in the heart of Ashrafieh, the land’s historic multicultural heritage is captured in the picturesque Albergo Hotel, a refurbished Ottoman house located in the charming and traditional old quarter of Ashrafieh on Abdel Wahab el Inglisi Street. The Albergo Hotel, literally meaning the hotel in Italian, is a world in-between two worlds and the only deluxe boutique hotel in Beirut, preserving the Lebanese style and soul, reflecting a multifaceted country, at the crossroads of the Orient and the West.
post 151/365
In between its winding streets where the sounds of the city runs amongst its trees scattered here and there, Ashrafieh is definitely a love affair. Its luxurious apartment buildings combined with its renovated traditional houses and the dilapidated ones, its 50s, 60, 70s, and 80s buildings all seem like a charming movie set of a loved Beirut.
post 150/365
“Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
Desmond Tutu
post 149/365
There are many non-verbal cues that have completely different meanings in different cultures. One of the most important means of nonverbal communication in any culture is eye contact, or lack thereof. The eyes are the windows to the soul. That is why we ask people to look us in the eye and tell us the truth. Or why we get worried when someone gives us the evil eye or has a wandering eye. Our language is full of expressions that refer to where people are looking, particularly if they happen to be looking in our direction.
post 148/365
House of Zejd, meaning the house of olive oil, is a small boutique selling everything related to olive, located in the heart of Achrafieh, on Mar Mitr Street. Zejd, olive oil in ancient Phoenician, highlights the rich historical background of the Lebanese oleic traditions related to its Phoenician origins. In fact, the Mediterranean coasts of Syria, Mount Lebanon and Palestine appear to be the main original home of the wild olive tree where it is extremely abundant. Over time its cultivation developed considerably spreading along with the expansion of the Phoenician civilization.
post 147/365
Underdeveloped infrastructure, overgrown vegetation and the sea overlooked by palm trees, as Banana grooves run for miles along the coast, act as a thick green barrier between the blue Mediterranean and the pot holed roadway running from Sidon to Tyre. The name of the city means, rock after the rocky formation on which the town was originally built.
post 146/365
Italians and pasta connoisseurs beware this post is definitely not for you. In Lebanon, we tend to lebanify food and sayings that belong to other cultures, yet are very much part of our every day fabric. Words like chérie, become charchoura, to google a word we say gawgela. At dinner parties sushi cake ingeniously feeds a big number of guests. In a very friendly way we reply Bonjourein (two bonjours) when one greets us with a bonjour. We say things like “angaret ma3eh” which is derived from the word anger, meaning I got really angry, to express how we feel. We say “sachwaret sha3reh” (from the word séchoir, meaning I just had a blow dry). There are so many words and things that are part of our cultural, colonial, and historical background and are now so quintessentially Lebanese.
post 145/365
Labneh (strained yogurt) is a daily food in the Lebanese diet and known by everyone and mainly eaten at breakfast. Go deeper in the country, into the Bekaa Valley or the Shouf Mountains, and another delicacy will unfold made in a terra-cotta bowl (labnet al jarra), where baladi and shami goats are respectively the main grazing animals that produce it.
post 144/365
Winter casts a veil of snowy white upon our mountains, as spring breathes life into our rivers and waterfalls. Listening to the sounds of nature and discovering hidden gems make life in this small country an absolute dream. As you drive up from Batroun along a scenic road up the hills and mountains, Tannourine with its entire natural splendor opens up like a woman’s bust embracing the horizon beneath it.
365 Days of Lebanon 