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.
post 143/365
Zeid Hamdan, born in 1976, is a singer, songwriter, musician, and pioneer of the underground music scene. He is the music producer behind some of the most successful bands on the Lebanese and regional alternative scene. He created the website http://www.lebaneseunderground.com that often features some of the most interesting projects on the Arab music scene, deservedly earning him the title of “godfather of Lebanese underground music” after almost two decades of experimentations with music.
post 142/365
In a country full of juxtapositions, the Lebanese function beautifully as a community. The thing that I love the most about Lebanon, and I have to emphasize that it is a big part of its benefits, is the fact that we are a child loving nation and as a neighborhood we live together as one big affectionate family.
post 141/365
Beirut, once a model Levantine Mediterranean city, is quickly losing its traditional character to modernization. Its Ottoman-style mansions with lush interior gardens and triple-arched windows, and its French colonial buildings are increasingly being bulldozed to make room for modern high-rises. Fifteen years of a destructive Civil War, in addition to an Israeli invasion, caused extensive damage to the city, but a postwar development and reconstruction spree is turning out to be more detrimental.
post 140/365
Life persists, among a field of death, shallow, bleeding but still with breath. A flag once soaring high, now bathed in red still lies standing, among the fallen dream. The skies are smoke, thick and hot like an inferno of battle and shells. The earth is painted in shades of brown but where splashes of red taint the ground. While innocence dies, the flag endures to war’s overtures.
post 139/365
As you drive in a state of beauty, watching a world pass through your tinted windows, Jezzine unfolds in front of you. Surrounded by mountain peaks and pine forests, Jezzine, the most picturesque town in Southern Lebanon, is famed for its glorious waterfalls that cascade down from a height of 40 meters. The town rises on the Tumat Niha hills amidst lush pine forests, sweeping vineyards, and orchards, overlooking the beautiful Bkassine forest beneath it.
post 138/365
There is something about festivities that render the air around our household full of joy mixing with the aromas of butter, sugar, rose water and nuts, as the smell dissipates from the kitchen into the rest of the house. Religious traditions and love of family become the essence of the month of March. Ma’amoul are the holiday cookie par excellence in this part of the world; every family has the designated maamoul maker and in mine we luckily have my mother who would make them and decorate them by hand. These light golden crumbly sweets are very popular in the Middle East, and although they are particularly associated with festivals, it is not uncommon to find ma’amoul around the house at other times as well.
365 Days of Lebanon 