Speaker's Corner and Newsweek Brilliance
Okay, it is now the next day, and I am sitting in the apartment of another friend of a friend (this time Heather's friend Abdul). Abdul is lovely and Kuwaiti and cooks delicious food. He has already forcefed me chicken and rice today that tasted a lot like Iraqi food (duh, again) and is planning to feed me meat later. He just started cooking it. Uh oh.
Last night Heather and I spent the night at Sandra's again, which meant more couch sleeping. I was on this thing until about 4:30 and then couldn't go to sleep until I noticed that the street light had just turned off because the sun was rising. That was about 6 am, so that's good. We wound up wasting pretty much the entire day again, but that's okay. Tomorrow we are leaving on our beautiful trip at 6:30 in the morning. Huzzah.
Yesterday was extremely exciting though, because we went to Speaker's Corner, which I don't think I mentioned in that first entry that I wrote last night. It was pretty much the coolest thing I've ever been to and makes me want to move to London so that I can go every Sunday. Basically it's this thing in Hyde Park all day every Sunday where people just get up on their soapboxes and talk about whatever they want and people can respond to them or call them shitheads or be constructive or whatever they want. So we heard one guy talking about how if everyone realized that Islam and Judaism are really similar religions everything would be okay, then we heard another guy talk about how if we all realized that nothing matters in the grand scheme then we would achieve inner peace, and we watched a huge argument in Iraqi Arabic that was difficult to understand because everyone was yelling at each other on top of each other and I already have to concentrate to understand that stuff, and even then I don't understand anywhere near all of it. And there was this little tiny English guy who was talking about how to pick up a girl with all these gigantic black guys and then they decided to use Heather as a guinea pig. Basically all they wound up demonstrating was how NOT to pick up a girl. We also learned that it's important to know how to touch and how to smell a woman.
The meat smells good. Damnit Abdul.
Actually the most interesting thing about Speaker's Corner was that even the people who were talking about nothing that had to do with Lebanon or the Middle East wound up mentioning the situation in Lebanon at some point during their talk. It's on everybody's mind, no matter what. It's very surreal that I was just in the middle of a situation that is at the top of everyone's mind and on the front page of every newspaper.
Today I bought Newsweek, which was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I've made in awhile. I've been generally avoiding American news sources and sticking to the BBC/not reading the news at all in hopes that it will all just go away (not the most productive way of going about things, I know). But Newsweek just looked so exciting so I picked it up. I've never seen such masters of spin. These people seriously know how to make words say what they want them to say. They have this graph of the death tolls of the conflict, and they clearly report that many many more Lebanese than Israelis have died. And the caption reads:
"Though the number of Lebanese deaths has been difficult to determine, the Israeli military estimates that some 200 Hizbullah fighters have been killed since the fighting began on July 12. Other sources place the figure around 35."
Genius. I mean, honestly, who are you going to believe, the Israeli military, which has a clear stake in demonstrating that the deaths have been mostly soldier-esque people, or every other source ever (including, though they don't mention it, the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Red Cross). In a word, oy.
Okay, must go clean the bathroom, but I promise I'll write a serious play-by-play of things that happened in Beirut when everything started when I'm through.
Last night Heather and I spent the night at Sandra's again, which meant more couch sleeping. I was on this thing until about 4:30 and then couldn't go to sleep until I noticed that the street light had just turned off because the sun was rising. That was about 6 am, so that's good. We wound up wasting pretty much the entire day again, but that's okay. Tomorrow we are leaving on our beautiful trip at 6:30 in the morning. Huzzah.
Yesterday was extremely exciting though, because we went to Speaker's Corner, which I don't think I mentioned in that first entry that I wrote last night. It was pretty much the coolest thing I've ever been to and makes me want to move to London so that I can go every Sunday. Basically it's this thing in Hyde Park all day every Sunday where people just get up on their soapboxes and talk about whatever they want and people can respond to them or call them shitheads or be constructive or whatever they want. So we heard one guy talking about how if everyone realized that Islam and Judaism are really similar religions everything would be okay, then we heard another guy talk about how if we all realized that nothing matters in the grand scheme then we would achieve inner peace, and we watched a huge argument in Iraqi Arabic that was difficult to understand because everyone was yelling at each other on top of each other and I already have to concentrate to understand that stuff, and even then I don't understand anywhere near all of it. And there was this little tiny English guy who was talking about how to pick up a girl with all these gigantic black guys and then they decided to use Heather as a guinea pig. Basically all they wound up demonstrating was how NOT to pick up a girl. We also learned that it's important to know how to touch and how to smell a woman.
The meat smells good. Damnit Abdul.
Actually the most interesting thing about Speaker's Corner was that even the people who were talking about nothing that had to do with Lebanon or the Middle East wound up mentioning the situation in Lebanon at some point during their talk. It's on everybody's mind, no matter what. It's very surreal that I was just in the middle of a situation that is at the top of everyone's mind and on the front page of every newspaper.
Today I bought Newsweek, which was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I've made in awhile. I've been generally avoiding American news sources and sticking to the BBC/not reading the news at all in hopes that it will all just go away (not the most productive way of going about things, I know). But Newsweek just looked so exciting so I picked it up. I've never seen such masters of spin. These people seriously know how to make words say what they want them to say. They have this graph of the death tolls of the conflict, and they clearly report that many many more Lebanese than Israelis have died. And the caption reads:
"Though the number of Lebanese deaths has been difficult to determine, the Israeli military estimates that some 200 Hizbullah fighters have been killed since the fighting began on July 12. Other sources place the figure around 35."
Genius. I mean, honestly, who are you going to believe, the Israeli military, which has a clear stake in demonstrating that the deaths have been mostly soldier-esque people, or every other source ever (including, though they don't mention it, the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Red Cross). In a word, oy.
Okay, must go clean the bathroom, but I promise I'll write a serious play-by-play of things that happened in Beirut when everything started when I'm through.
posted by Dana at 8:43 PM
2 Comments:
I left Lebanon in 1976 on a ship, because I could not get to AUB for my classes. I wanted you to get that great AUB experience that I had missed, did not expect you to have the 'ship' experience as well.
Still waiting for that refund from AUB, which you're already spending. Enjoy your European adventure. We love you,
Papy Warbucks ("The Bank of Dad")
Your dad's comment is awesome: "Papy Warbucks ("The Bank of Dad")"
My dad likes the "Bank of Dad" one too, but Papy Warbucks is genius.
Also, I wish I were going with y'all. Being in the US is difficult right now, but Beth and I are going to meet up for drinks after I get back to DC from Louisiana and commiserate.
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