It Must Be the Hair

So actually, there are enough fair-haired people in Lebanon that people can’t always tell immediately that I’m a foreigner – or at least, usually when someone starts talking to me, they start off with Arabic, and only switch to English when I explain that I don’t actually speak much Arabic yet.  (The one exception that stands out was when I found myself sitting in a taxi that actually – <gasp> – had a seatbelt.  I immediately started wrestling to get the stiff, disused old thing out and across my lap into its catch.  The taxi driver caught my movement out of the corner of his eye, did a sort of double-take – you know, the what the heck is she doing kind – and then asked, straight out in English, “So…where are you from?”  Which should tell you all you need to know about road-safety in Lebanon.)  But incidents like this aside, the order usually goes 1.) Arabic, 2.) English (or sometimes French) 3.) any other languages they happen to know, if they don’t know English and once my French runs out (which happens pretty quickly.)  People are used to foreigners here, since there’s so many U.N. people running around.  And they seem to rather enjoy trying to guess where someone is from before they come out and ask.

But this last week, for two days in a row, I had the new experience of someone looking at me and asking right out, in German, if I was from “Deutschland.”  Everyone else (who presumably didn’t speak German) jumped to English right away (almost everyone in Germany is pretty competent in English as a second language.)  Just to be clear – I’m not German, I’m Anglo-Celtic.  (I mean, okay, I’m a pretty typical American mutt, so there might be some German in there somewhere – but all the family history that I know of originates somewhere in the British Isles.)  And it’s not like I look particularly German, due to a freak genetic coincidence or something.  At least, not in my opinion, and usually, when people try to guess where I’m from, they guess Britain.  But for two days in a row, people were suddenly surprised to find out I wasn’t German.

The only thing I can think of is that it must have been the bandana.

You see, I actually enjoy wearing scarves in my hair.  I especially like the look of folding a large square – especially a colored bandana – in half and using it as a headband.  I haven’t worn that hairstyle much since I came here, since I thought it might look kind of weird, given that the vast majority of women around here wear all-enveloping headscarves (called hijaab, in Arabic, just F.Y.I.) for religious reasons.  Like I was trying to make some sort of token compromise, or like I didn’t “get” how the hijaab was supposed to work, or like I was mocking the tradition, or something like that.  But lately, I’ve started to feel more confident (not to mention, I’m getting really tired of worrying about what people will think all the time,) and so, feeling at loose ends for what to do with my hair one morning, I pulled the bandana off the shelf.  It only occurred to me after the second time I was mistaken for a German woman that that particular kerchief-in-the-hair does sort of reflect the traditional (or at least stereotypical) German “peasant” look.  A la boheme, or whatever it’s called.  And I remembered how, several years ago when I was in Hungary, I was frequently mistaken for a Hungarian by other Hungarians – whenever I was wearing a scarf in my hair.  (Not Germany, I know, but hey, Austro-Hungarian Empire, so I figure, part of the same cultural spectrum, right?)

The bandana is, of course, a very American thing, but you probably wouldn’t notice it was a bandana if you weren’t looking closely.  And I’m not sure people here would recognize it if they saw it.   I remember, the semester I lived in Spain, several other European students from various countries talking (boasting) about their ability to tell what country someone was from just by looking at them.  And then someone looked at me, sort of tilted his head, and added, “Except Americans.  You can never tell with them.”  Which I took to mean that we sort of blur all the usual “categories” which are so well-established in the Old World (F.T.W.!!)  Likely something of the same dynamic is at work here.  (And incidentally, this also undermines the usual stereotype that Americans always stand out in foreign countries because of how we dress and act.  I mean, sure, if you’re wearing a cowboy hat or a baseball cap and flip-flops and conversing at the top of lungs, they’ll probably guess right the first time, but how many people do you know, besides Texans, who actually do that?  As for the record, when I was in Hungary, with a group of other Americans, they told us that it wasn’t how we dressed or talked that would be sure to tip people off as to our nationality; it was the simple fact that we were a group of many ethnicities.  (F.T.W. again!)  I was only mistaken for a Hungarian when I was alone.)

So I have a new plan to practice my German: I’ll just keep wearing bandanas on my head and watch all the German-speakers in Tyre come crawling out of the woodwork, eager to practice, and see how long I can go before it becomes obviously I’m limping along on three years of a high-school second language.

The latest product of this particular meme…

Arab Men--the Reality

For some reason WordPress insists on publishing a blurry version of this image, despite its being shrunk from a larger size (and perfectly clear in the editing program,) but you can get the full and clear image just by clicking on it.

I picked this up from a (local) Facebook friend, and thought it was absolutely perfect (based on my observations to date.)  In case you can’t tell, the guys in the last picture are smoking water pipes.  (Also known as hookahs, argilehs and hubbly-bubblies.)  You would not believe the popularity of water pipes here (and not just among men, I might add,) or the amount of time people (but especially men) somehow find to spend in hookah lounges, coffee shops, etc.

Now I’d like to see one for Arab women, just for contrast…except that, while you might be able to make a graphic like this for “Arab men” in general across the Arab world, what such a graphic would look like for “Arab women” would probably vary a lot more from country to country…

Holidays in Lebanon, Part II

So, only a month or two late, but here’s my observations on Christmas and New Year’s:

Christmas, to my surprise, was quite widely celebrated.  The season wasn’t as long as it is in the U.S., (maybe because Ashura fell so close to Christmas, or maybe just because of the lack of a nearby holiday like Thanksgiving to mark the season’s start) so I’d sort of come to the unconscious conclusion that people didn’t do Christmas here.  A week or two into December, however, decorations started to go up.  Not a lot of Christmas lights or public decorations (except for a few traffic circles with pointsettias in them,) but most of the stores had decorations, and many were selling manger scenes and ornaments and so on.

What was interesting was that this wasn’t restricted to the Christian minority population of Tyre–it was everyone.  It was a little surreal to walk by all these stores staffed by women in headscarves filled with Christian holiday motifs.  At first I thought that they were just catering to the foreign population of Tyre (having so many U.N. workers here really has a big effect on the town’s economics,) but then I had the chance to visit a couple Muslim women in their homes–and saw that they had Christmas trees and manger scenes up, and their children were getting Christmas gifts…I went out for a little last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve (and I wasn’t the only one; all the stores were open late!) and one covered woman in a fabric store had occasion to lament to me the drizzly weather we’d had all day.  “Yes, well it’s the same weather pattern we’ve been having all month,” I replied, somewhat resignedly.  (Being a desert rat, I like rain, but only in summer, and I’d better get a good lightening show along with it.)  “Yes, but today is special!!!” she almost wailed in reply.

It was all a little odd, to say the least.  Especially because it wasn’t restricted to the secular side of Christmas–like Santa Claus–but included the creches.  I had a small insight into what was going on, however, doing placement tests for the language school where I teach English.  The placement test basically involves asking the new student a lot of question in English, of increasing complexity, and rating their responses.  (Basically, once their ability to understand or respond peters out, you check the level of questions you’ve reached and place them in that level.)  At any rate, one of the questions was, “What is your favorite holiday?”  And I had two or three people–Muslims all–answer “Christmas.”  The last time someone told me this, they also spoke enough English for me to follow it up with, “Why?“  And she said that it was because it was one holiday that everyone could get in on: Sunnis, Shiites, Christians of whatever sect–everyone could agree that the birth of Jesus was something to celebrate.  It was a point of common ground.  (And something that hangs heavily over everyone here, even if it’s not often explicitly said, is the need, since the civil war ended, for common ground among the different religions of Lebanon.)

This is part of larger “phenomenon” I’ve been observing here–and hearing about from other Americans I’ve met here.  Well, I’m not sure if “phenomenon” is the right word.  My gut reaction is to say, “Well, this must just be Lebanon being weird again.  [From what I've read, Lebanon is regarded by the other Arab countries as sort of the odd, semi-dysfunctional half-brother nobody talks about, and probably a fifth column for Westernization.]  It can’t possibly be like this in the rest of the Muslim world.”  But what do I know?  This is the first Muslim country I’ve been to.  (Okay, it’s still like 40% Christian, but they’re almost all up north.  Here in the south it’s about as Muslim as the rest of the Arab countries.)  Maybe this is a fairly common aspect of Islam that we in the West just never get close enough to appreciate.  What I’m talking about is a genuine interest–I’d almost say fascination–with Jesus among the Muslims here.  I mean, I always knew that Islam considers him an important prophet; that’s part of any basic summary of Islamic beliefs.  What I didn’t expect was the degree to which this means many Muslims truly like, and are deeply interested in, just about anything to do with Jesus.  Apparently this means celebrating Christmas.  It also extends to an interest in the content of the Gospels, (which, despite being regarded as holy by Islam, are rarely read in any official Islamic setting,) and even an interest in Jesus as a mystical figure.  (I had one local friend recently tell me that Jesus had once appeared to her in a dream and advised her on an important life decision she was trying to make.)  The whole thing is fascinating to me, since it flies so much in the face of what we hear about Islam in the West–and also because, if finding points of common ground is important for keeping the peace in Lebanon, how much more important is it for building bridges between our civilizations?  Yes, there are still fundamental differences in the degree to which Muslims and Christians view the importance of Jesus, the significance of his birth–but still, at least it’s a place to start talking.

After all the Christmas celebrations (which for us also included a road trip up north to Byblos, to attend a Christmas party given by old friends of the Moores–we were blessed with beautiful warm, sunny weather that weekend and stayed the night in some rustic cabins built on clifftops overlooking the sea–breathtaking!!!) New Year’s was a quiet holiday.  There had been, I’m sorry to say, a couple bombings recently, of facilities that served alcohol.  No casualties, thank God–the bombs went off at 5 am, so you have to conclude the goal was more to make a statement than to hurt people–and everyone I’ve met is quick to say that this is the first time in memory that anyone has done anything like this in Tyre.  (Even during the civil war, there was mostly peace in this town, with the residents going out of their way to protect each other.)  So needless to say, everyone was really shocked.  But what was truly alarming was that the bombers threatened to plant bombs on New Year’s Eve at any establishment that served alcohol as part of the festivities.  Determined not to be cowed, all such establishments decided to go ahead with their celebrations as planned, and in the end there weren’t any bombs set off that night–but it gave people an extra incentive to celebrate the New Year at home.

For our part, New Year’s had always been a quiet holiday for the Moores.  David made tortillas and fry bread and managed to find a couple limes–as rare as gold around here, and they cost about $2 apiece, but it was totally worth it–and we had a “Mexican feast.”  (David is also from Arizona and has a nice deep appreciation of its cuisine.)  Then we played games (I’ve been introduced to “Settlers of Catan” and “Puerto Rico” here and, I confess, may have become something of a junkie) and, at midnight, we, along with just about everyone else in town, set off fireworks from our balcony.  Nothing big for us, but being on the eighth floor, we had a great view of some of the truly spectacular displays put on by other families in several different directions.  We drank sparkling cider to welcome 2012 and went to bed.

And that was that.  I’d half-wondered if there’d be anything special for Epiphany, but aside from its being a government holiday, nobody appeared to observe it here any more than they do in the U.S.  (Maybe it’s different up north.)  I baked a kings’ cake–which turned out to be nothing but a kind of sweetbread; I felt rather cheated–mostly because it was something I’d always wanted to do, but that was it.  Classes started up again on January 2nd, and that was that.  Except for the fact that nobody seemed in a hurry to take down the Christmas decorations.  Whereas in the U.S. the decorations go down the day after a holiday to make room for the next holiday’s, which go up as soon as possible, here it seems to be the opposite; decorations for one holiday don’t go down until the last possible minute before the next holiday begins.  I only just last week started to see stores putting out stuff for Valentine’s Day, and there are still surplus Advent calendars on sale in one large grocery store–and even a couple flags from Ashoura still hanging, rather bedraggled-looking, from one or two balconies I’ve passed.  It’s nice to be living in a society that obviously doesn’t revolve around marketing tactics, but it does have one negative (for me) side effect: instead of spending most of your time looking forward to the next holiday, you spend a lot more looking back to the previous one.  Nostalgia is rather dangerous for me, but seeing reindeer on Groundhog Day is not particularly conducive to its avoidance…