Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Your Kids' Friends







           Your friend's nose isn't the only thing in life that you can't pick.  When your kids are big enough to make their own friends and your opinion on who is a suitable companion for them doesn’t count any more, you realize that from here on in you’re going to have to be a more tolerant and accepting person than you ever had plans to be.  Or at least that you're going to have to fake being tolerant and then gripe and whinge about it in a blog like I’m doing.
            Actually, for the most part I’ve been lucky.  Although my kids have at times taken a shine to someone with poor manners or compromised personal hygiene it has generally been  a flow of good-hearted little people through our door.  Same with the mothers.  There has been the odd one that I suspected of being a closet psychopath and another who never once looked me in the eye during the entire year our kids went to each others’ houses. But I’ve also made some really good friends this way. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
            Yesterday I lost.

            Dude hadn’t exactly invited the boy to our house.  The boy, whom I shall call Geraldo because really, that name just doesn’t get used enough, has not been Dude’s friend for long.  In fact, I’d never heard Dude mention his name until last week and then it was in reference to World of Warcraft, the online game Dude is addicted to.  Apparently Geraldo plays it too, and, critically, is allowed to play it for as many hours as he wishes. 
            Dude had accepted two invitations during the week to go to Geraldo’s house and so when Geraldo phoned again yesterday morning I told Dude he ought to insist Geraldo came to our house this time, out of courtesy.  
            Dude insisted, Geraldo acquiesced, and the appointment was set. When Dude hung up the phone he said, “Well, he’s coming but I don’t know what he’s going to do while he’s here.”
            “What do you mean?” I said. “You spent seven hours at his house the other day.  What did you guys do all that time?”
            Dude shuffled. “We played video games.”
            “The entire time?”
            “Yeah.”
            “Didn’t his mom tell you to stop at some point?”
            “No.  Geraldo gets to play as much as he wants.  His parents don’t put a limit on his gaming time,” he added wistfully.
            I nodded grimly.  I was beginning to understand why Dude, with his restricted computer hours, had been keen to go to Geraldo’s house.
            “He also gets to stay home whenever we have school field trips,” Dude said.  “And while we’re out on our field trip he plays video games all day long.  He’s a bit fat.”
           
            I’d met Geraldo’s mom briefly at the school during curriculum night when I’d been startled out of a peaceful reverie in a darkened classroom while waiting for the teacher to come and give her talk.  Geraldo’s mom burst into the room in full cry, stepping on the heels of the teacher as she entreated her to take special care with Geraldo who was “capable of excelling but only if given adequate direction”. 
            What is it with parents who regard general information sessions like curriculum night as appropriate times to get in some one-on-one dialogue with the teacher about their own kid?
             I dread school meetings for this reason.  Our school principal, an excellent speaker and most likeable fellow, always precedes the evening’s information session with the polite suggestion that people hold their questions till the end of the talk.  But some people just can’t wait till the end.  And even though there are three hundred other parents sitting in the auditorium and tonight’s topic is the International Baccalaureate, it’s okay to stick up your hand and ask the principal why the school doesn’t offer violin as a band instrument because your darling Fou Fou is showing a natural gift for the violin and it’s just a shame a real shame that her budding talent is to wither on the vine. 
            While the auditorium full of parents sits silently listening to this not one of us stands up and says, “It’s a heartbreaking story, lady, but did you notice that there are three hundred other parents in this room, all of us needing to get home to make supper or grade papers and that there might be a more appropriate time for you to ask the principal about violin lessons for your daughter?  And by the way, did you know that in addition to violin the school also neglects to offer Mandarin, quilting and animal husbandry?  It can’t offer everything.  Spring for some private lessons, man.”
            It wasn’t that Geraldo’s mother seemed in any way unkind, and her loud voice and cattle-dogging of the teacher were not meant to offend anyone.  Moreover, she wasn’t snobby and in Beirut that is worth something.
            I had to give Geraldo’s mom directions to our building.  You’ll recall from previous blogs how much I enjoy giving directions here in Lebanon.  It’s not just that there are few known street names. Lebanese people are deeply opposed to any orientation lexicon other than ‘right’, ‘left’, ‘behind’ and ‘in front of’.  They will not use a phrase such as ‘on the north side’ and won’t understand you if you do.  Nor can you say, “It’ll be on your left if you’re going towards the sea.”  When you say that, they think you’re telling them to drive all the way to the seafront.  It’s a very tiring procedure.
            Geraldo’s mom made it worse by shouting at her kids while on the phone with me.  Several times she shouted at them, without warning, while I was in mid-sentence. From the nonstop background voices I guessed she had about six children in the car with her.  Luckily she was a quick study and found our place without much trouble.
            Geraldo turned out to be more or less a chip off the maternal block, although in this case the chip was bigger than the block.  We could hear his voice before he came in the front door.  Dude had gone down in the elevator to meet him when he was dropped off and through our steel-cored front door we could hear a loud, tuneless voice and I knew right away it had to be Geraldo.
            He strolled through the doorway as if he owned the place, giving me a thumbs up as he did so.  He wasn’t exactly rude, just afflicted with what I’d call misguided confidence. 
            He was a large boy, as Dude had mentioned, and he carried all the extra weight on his thighs and belly. This is just not a good look for a male of any age or species.  But, I told myself, who was I to judge?
            The boys closed themselves up in the bedroom to get down to the video gaming marathon they had planned.  I could hear Geraldo’s voice all the way through the house.  Noonie and I exchanged a look and I said, “Oh, I don't know about this guy.” 
         “Yeah, I know.”
          “But no, I mustn't think like this.  We live in Lebanon now.  We have to make new friends and sure, they’re going to be different than our old friends.  We have to adapt and not keep comparing.”
            Brave words, I thought, as I heard Geraldo exclaiming loudly in language that hadn’t been heard in our house since the time I’d brought home a 50 Cent CD in a misguided effort to get M some music for his car.
             Dude had warned me that Geraldo swore and in fact I’d overheard him telling Geraldo on the phone that he wasn’t to swear at our house.  Sure enough, Dude’s much lower, gentler voice followed the outburst in a tone of diplomatic reproof.
            When I called the boys for lunch Geraldo sat down to the take-out barbequed chicken with good will.  He said no thanks to my offer of Pepsi because, he explained loudly, he had become overweight from drinking too much of it.  
            He asked me for a glass of water and then turned enthusiastically to the chicken.  When Dude got up to get himself one of the apple flavoured fizzy drinks he likes from the fridge Geraldo bade him grab one for him, too.
            “What about the diet?” Dude said.
            “These only have half the sugar of Pepsi,” Geraldo boomed, grabbing the bottle and wrenching off the cap.
            M, now over on the couch, asked Geraldo if he knew how to speak Arabic.  As Geraldo’s mother and father are both Lebanese we knew he must be able to speak it even if he didn’t do so at school.
            “I go to the American school, what do you think?” Geraldo said without turning around, his back towards M.
            M looked at me and I looked back at him.  I thought M was going to give the kid a piece of his mind but he didn’t.  Like me, he must have sensed that there was no intention to be rude.  But still.
            “Well, that was a good first course but now I’m ready for the main course,” proclaimed Geraldo.
            “There is no other course,” said Dude. “Aren’t you full?”
            “Yeah, I am, I was just kidding,” said Geraldo.
            M leaned towards me and whispered, “I don't think he was.”
 
            After lunch M went in to the bedroom to take a nap and Noonie and I stayed in the family room.  The boys went back to Dude’s bedroom to continue the video games. 
            A half hour later there was a tremendous banging of doors and locking and unlocking sounds and I peered through the glass hall door to see the bathroom light on and Dude going into his room.  From this I deduced that Geraldo was in the bathroom and that his short journey from Dude’s room to the toilet had produced the series of loud sounds we’d just heard.
            “What’s going on in there?” Noonie asked.  “Baba’s going to be mad if they wake him up.”
            “I think it was Geraldo going into the bathroom,” I said.
            “Sheesh.  Can’t that kid do anything quietly?”
            The phone rang.  I saw that it was M’s number which meant that he was calling from the bedroom.  “Oh no, it’s Baba, they’ve woken him up.”
            “Tell those boys,” said M crisply, “If they don’t quiet down there’s going to be trouble.”
            “Well, it’s not Dude being noisy, you know,” I began, but M had already hung up.
            I went through to Dude’s room and poked my head in.  “Baba got woken up by all that  racket and he’s not happy.  Can you tell Geraldo to try to be a little quieter?”
            “I’ll try,” he said.
            On my way back past the bathroom I had the extreme misfortune to overhear sounds from within that put me in mind of a pail of chowder being dumped into a pond, with an accompanying horn quartet.
            I hastened past the bathroom and through the hall door which I shut quickly behind me. 
            “What’s going on?” said Noonie.
            “Well, either Geraldo’s colon just exploded or a full-grown cow somehow got into the bathroom and is making use of the toilet.”
            “Oh no.”
            “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
            I fell into gloomy silence, planning how I would sterilize the bathroom as soon as Geraldo went home.
            After a while the sounds ceased and the loud clicking of the lock and door handle recommenced.  I heard Geraldo going back down the hall to Dude’s room.
            “You know,” Noonie said, “I never actually heard the toilet flush while he was in there.”
            “What!” I squeaked. “Are you sure?”
            “Well, I wasn’t exactly listening for it but yeah, I’m pretty sure he didn’t flush.”
            “Oh dear heaven.” I clutched the edge of the couch.  “Well, there’s nothing else for it.  I’ve got to go in there.  And the sooner the better.”
            I stood up and paused. “You know, I don’t hear the fan, either.
            Noonie cocked her head to listen.  “No, the fan is definitely not on.”
            “I’m going in,” I said. “If I don’t come back in ten minutes call an ambulance.”
            I pulled my t-shirt up over my nose and mouth, opened the hall door and went through to the bathroom.  Very slowly I pushed open the door and poked my head in.
            The lights had been left on inside. The bathmat, normally found in front of the shower, had been dragged over to the base of the toilet and scrunched up all around it, as if applied in haste for the purpose of blotting up spilled liquid.
            The toilet, I found to my inexpressible relief, had not been left entirely unflushed.  It needed a second flushing to make it presentable but considering what I might have had to face it was very reasonable.  I gave it an extra flush for good luck, switched on the fan and got out of there.
           
            The boys stayed in the bedroom for a long time after that.  I was sitting at the computer when Geraldo burst into the family room.  I watched in surprise as he pulled his shoes noisily out of the shoe closet, opened the front door and stepped out onto the landing.  Dude, coming behind, was saying, “Okay, I'll see you later.”
            “Yeah, see you,” said Geraldo.
            “He’s going home?” I asked.
            “Yeah, he called his mom a little while ago and his driver is in front of the building now.”
            It was strange to say the least.  I was sitting right there, I mean, literally a couple of yards away from the front door and Geraldo hadn’t even looked at me on his way out. 
            Lebanese people are so gracious and well mannered in these situations --greetings and partings and so on -- that I could hardly believe what had just happened.  I didn’t expect him to say, “Thank you very much for having me over, Mrs. Lovely,” but how about a nod on the way out?
            “Bye Geraldo, thanks for coming,” I called.
            I could see him through the partly open door, waiting for the elevator.  He made no reply.
           
            In the evening I went in to Dude’s room and found his desk chair lying on its side amongst a sprinkling of wood splinters.  One leg was broken right off.
            “What the --?” I cried, falling to my knees and grabbing up the broken end of the chair leg. 
            It was a solid wood chair of sturdy construction.  The leg had been fixed to the seat by a long bolt and reinforced with two wooden pins at the seat level and another where it joined the other leg.  The bolt had been torn right through the wood.
            “Dude,” I called.
            He appeared in the doorway. “Yeah?”
            “Yeah?’ What do you mean, ‘yeah?’” I said. “What happened here? Were you guys jumping on this chair?”
            “No,” Dude said, “Geraldo was just sitting on it and it broke.”
            “Just sitting on it?  I don’t think so.  It couldn’t have broken in this way by someone just sitting on it.  Look at this, how the bolt has been torn through the wood. It needed some serious lateral stress to achieve that.”
            “Well, maybe he was leaning to the side a little,” said Dude.  “But I’m telling you he wasn’t jumping or anything, just sitting.”
            I looked at him.  “You sit on that chair every day and manage not to break it.  I use that chair to stand on when I get stuff out of high closets.  It’s a very strong chair. Or, rather, it was.”
            Dude nodded glumly. 
            I looked at him and thought, why am I making him feel bad?  It’s not his fault Geraldo broke the chair.  And even if Geraldo didn’t ooze charm from every pore he was still a friend.
            “Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you bring me the wood glue and we'll see if we can't fix this chair.”
          
            
           
                               
    
       

Friday, September 16, 2011

Electricity, Men and The Underwear Drawer



           
            It’s just getting worse.  Whatever scraps of knowledge I managed to acquire over the years seem to be falling out of my head like turnips from the back of a pick up truck.
            If I didn’t have kids, I probably wouldn’t even notice this terrible leak. How often are you pointedly asked where Andorra is and whether it’s really a country or what? But kids do ask you stuff like that and they expect you to know the answers. If you don’t, they start to question the usefulness of secondary education and that is a very sticky wicket to find yourself on, my friend.
            When my kids were smaller, they didn’t ask questions that I didn’t know the answers to.  At least, I could always make something up.  And a few years from now they won’t even bother coming to me with homework or general knowledge questions because they’ll know I can’t answer them.
            But right now they do ask. Especially that bookish, older one with the big hair.  She always wants to understand the big picture and frankly, I'm not up to the task.  
            Yesterday she had homework about electricity and started asking me about polarization and what does it mean to induce something.
            I squirmed in my chair. “I don’t really remember detailed stuff like that, sweetie.”
            “But you took electricity at school, right Mom?”
            “Probably.  I don’t remember.”
            “And didn’t you, like, study science at university?”
            “Now listen to me. It’s cruel to make a biology major study physics.  It took me three attempts to pass Introductory Physics and I still have nightmares about metal balls hurtling endlessly through space.”
            “Okay,” she sighed.  “I’ll look up the answers to the homework questions.”
            “An excellent idea.”
            “But before I do that could you please just help me understand what electricity is, like in a really general way?”
            I froze. 
            Noonie waited politely for a moment.  “Mom?  Did you hear me?”
            “I – yes, I heard you.  I was trying to think of the best way to sum it up for you.”
            I couldn’t believe it.  I didn’t know what electricity was.  Not really.  And the thing is, I really thought I did.  I went about my daily life using electrical appliances with the belief that I understood on a basic level how they worked. 
            I had to come clean to Noonie.  “Upon reflection, I don’t think I understand it very well. It’s something to do with electrons moving around but I’ve never really gotten a handle on how something that’s not actually a thing can move around.  An electron is a charge, they say.  But what’s that?  Is it a thing?  I don’t think it is a thing. You’d better wait till Baba gets home from work.”
            “He’s good at things like electricity, isn’t he?”
            “Oh yeah.  He’s actually interested in it.  Do you know that he used to design and play with electrical circuits when he was a boy?”
            “You mean like for fun?”
            “Yes.”
            “Wow.”
            “And your uncle Hiss used to do the same thing. I’d find him in his room bent over a piece of board onto which he’d nailed all manner of tiny, whirring  motors, miniature lights and switches. He even installed lights in his gerbil cage. Those rodents were on the grid, man.”
            Noonie shook her head. “I don’t understand how doing any of that could be fun.”
            “Me either.  But it explains a lot, don’t you think?”

                                                           ***

              My crummy memory has made me an ardent enthusiast of filing cabinets.  Everything goes in a file folder in my house.  If it doesn’t, it’s gone forever, and I understand that.
            But M works on a different system.  He doesn’t forget things so he doesn’t see the need to file.  Where’s the receipt for the monitor we bought last July?  Oh that’s in the back pocket of my black jeans, he’ll say.
            But for really important things he has a special place: his underwear drawer.  This, for M, is the safest spot in the house to stash not only papers and business cards and but also foreign money, extra watch straps, ties that haven’t been taken out of the box yet, throat lozenges, phone chargers, flashlights and cuff links.
            It gets a little full in there, you can imagine.
            Last week when I opened the drawer to put away his clean underwear I found there wasn’t room for them.
             So I cleaned the drawer out.  It had to be done and I knew from experience M would never get around to cleaning it himself.  (Once I tried leaving it until we moved house, thinking M would feel compelled to organise it before the movers came but all that happened was the drawer and its contents got wrapped up and transported exactly as they were).
            “What happened to all my underwear?” M said the next morning. “I used to have a whole drawer full and now there are hardly any.”
            I was surprised that the underwear were his primary concern.  I thought he’d be worried about what I’d done with the other stuff.
            “You didn’t have that many underwear,” I said. “Your drawer was just so full of other stuff that it looked like there were a lot.”
            “What do you mean, my drawer was full of other stuff?  Two or three business cards don’t take up much room.”
            “Two or three business cards – are you kidding me?  It was like a pack rat’s pawn shop in there.  And just out of curiosity, when did you get the Betty Boop tie?”
            “Look, I have to pack for this trip and I barely have enough clean underwear to take.  Are there a bunch of them in the wash right now or something?”
            “No, there are none in the wash, I just did all the laundry.  I’m telling you, it was an illusion that the drawer was full of underwear.  It was the same half-dozen pairs floating on top that you kept seeing.”
            M frowned. Clearly he didn’t believe me. “If there really are none in the laundry then it means someone has been stealing them.”
            “Maybe you’ve been forgetting them in hotel rooms when you travel.”
            M whipped his head around.  “Maybe the hotel employees are stealing them.”
            “Uh, I think that only happens to movie stars.”
            “I wonder…”  he mused as he opened the underwear drawer and withdrew the pairs needed for his trip.           
            “Hey!”  I cried.  “What’s that?”
            M quickly shut the drawer, pretending not to hear me, and said, “So you think that no one would want to steal my underwear?”
            “I caught a glimpse of a paper in that drawer.  You’ve already started filling it again, haven’t you?”
           
                                                                        ***
           
            He had started stashing stuff in there again.  Later I had a look and found not one but three different receipts, all dating from several years ago, none of them important.  One was for a 3 dollar lemon squeezer from the Dubai IKEA.
            I don’t know where M pulled them from.  Is his underwear drawer some kind of conduit to the past? 
            Weirder still, we’ve never bought a lemon squeezer from IKEA and, now that I think about it, M is right – he used to have more underwear.

            

Friday, September 2, 2011

24 Fairly Subjective Facts About Lebanon


 Here are some things I would tell a friend who knew absolutely nothing about Lebanon but was planning to move here. 

1. A red light at a traffic signal doesn’t necessarily mean stop.  You can stop, if you wish, but cars behind you may honk impatiently.  When you have a green light, be bloody careful to look to the right and left.

2. You can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet.  You have to throw it in the garbage, no matter what it’s got on it.  This goes for almost every toilet in the country, except maybe the swish hotels (I wouldn’t know, I’ve never stayed in them). Lebanese toilets plug if you look at them sideways so not only must you avoid throwing any sort of tissue in there, you would be well advised to eat prunes regularly.

3. Straight men sometimes kiss each other on the cheeks.  This can be an overwhelming concept for an Albertan, but there you are.

4. What kind of phone number you have says a lot about you.  When you’re getting your first sim card for your cell phone, you should shop all over town to find a ‘good’ number – something catchy and easy to remember.  People will judge you on what kind of number you have.  But not before judging you on what kind of phone you have.

5. The same goes for your car license plate.  There is no set number of digits in Lebanese license plates and people pay a lot of money for low numbers and for distinctive numbers.  If you see a ‘777’, for example, you know the guy driving the car probably paid thousands of dollars for that plate. 

6. Foreigners -- or rather, white, European-descended foreigners -- are revered here.  There is no reason they should be, they just are.  I mean, we just are.

7.  American money is used almost as much as the Lebanese currency.  The conversion rate is fixed at 1 dollar to 1,500 Lira.  We always seem to have a mix of American and Lebanese banknotes in our wallets and you get quick at converting after a while.

8. Hardly anyone lives in a house within the city of Beirut.  It’s too built up -- people live in apartment buildings.  But they all call their apartments ‘houses’ so it’s confusing at first.

9. Beirut city streets have names but no one uses them.  Try to imagine for a minute how you could give directions to your house without using any street names.  People who live by well-known bakeries or medical clinics are lucky.  The building I live in has no shop or institution beside it so giving directions takes fifteen minutes every time (“…Okay, so after you make that right hand turn you’re going to see a tall palm tree in front of a building with red shutters.  There’s a parrot in a cage on the first balcony of the building beside the palm tree.  If you don’t see a parrot in a cage, it’s the wrong building.  Or maybe the parrot has gone to the vet, in which case you have to look for a yellow plastic chair on the sixth floor balcony.  There’s always a yellow chair on that balcony.  Okay?  So if you see the yellow chair. . )

10. Women do not wear burkas or cover their faces.  What you will see is a lot of frighteningly tight jeans, plastered on make-up and tiny, glittery t-shirts stretched proudly over pushed-up boobs. Note: the age of a woman is no hindrance to the tightness of her jeans.

11. This is not a Moslem country, as such.  The majority of the people here are Moslem but a whacking great portion is Christian.  There are Druze, too.  It’s very complicated. The presidency of the country is reserved for a Christian.

12. French and Arabic are the two official languages of Lebanon but English is everywhere, too. The most prestigious university here is the American University of Beirut where the instruction is in English.  Most of the educated Lebanese speak all three languages.

13. Lebanon is not a desert.  It stretches along the Mediterranean sea.  It has rivers, a lot of rain in winter, and snow on its mountains.

14. Which leads me to say, because it really is too important not to, that Lebanon is a water-rich country in a part of the world with a fresh water deficit.  I’m not going to get into politics but just think about that for a moment.

15. But it’s a startling small country.  To compare: it is one third the size of Vancouver Island.

16. The cost of living varies hugely.  You can live cheaply – there is cheap food and cheap housing – but not in the good part of town and not with the luxury of sending your children to the best schools and best doctors.

17. Fresh fruits and vegetables are cheap and absolutely delicious.  They’re almost all grown here.  You can buy fruit that was on the tree yesterday and once you’ve tasted that there’s no going back.

18. Cars are expensive but Lebanese people don’t seem to like public transport and most have their own car.  Or, at least, a moped.

19. Beware of the mopeds.  They zigzag around cars on busy streets and zoom by within inches of the sidewalk edge you are about to step off.  Sometimes they drive on the sidewalk.  Being a pedestrian here is hazardous.

20.  Don’t drink the tap water.  Just don’t.

21. The night life is incredible so bring your little black dress.  I know a lot of people who want to live here just for the night life.  They are not people with young children.

22. There are wonderful beach clubs just outside of Beirut.  You have to pay around twenty dollars entry fee but it’s totally worth it.  The swimming pools are lovely and the sea is warm.  It’s actually warm

23. Oh yeah, and the weather all around is unbeatable.  It’s only a bit too hot during the middle of summer but the rest of the year is very pleasant.

24. There are ancient ruins here that will blow your mind and nobody in North America seems to know they exist.  Walk on Alexander the Great’s stone-flagged road and sit in the spectator seats of a Roman chariot track.  But keep Baalbek to the last.  Once you see it you might not remember who you are or how to speak.
                       
           
            

Back in Beirut


            A week back in Lebanon and already the memory of my home planet grows dim. It’s always like this.  As soon as I get off the plane in Beirut my grip on reality begins to slip.  Within a month I’ll only remember Canada as a long-ago dream.
            As we were driving home from the beach yesterday five or six motorcycles swarmed past us, two of them doing wheelies.  This was on the highway to the South -- a frighteningly generous stretch of asphalt by Lebanese standards.  There are a lot of motorists in this country who go as fast as the road will allow them.  On all but the biggest highways the width and condition of the road impose limitations of some kind.  But when this sort of driver finds himself out on a straight, smooth highway he stomps down on the accelerator and hurtles over the road with all the caution of mean kid in a bumper car.
            A lot of drivers don’t follow the most basic road rules, either. And when I say ‘basic’, I mean things like noticing the painted lines on the asphalt that organise the driving surface into lanes.  Or overtaking slower vehicles by moving to the left of them.  Or wearing seatbelts.  Or feeling some stirring sense of unease when piling wife, three kids and weekend luggage onto the moped behind them and going out to the highway where SUV’s are blowing past them at 130 kilometres per hour.
            You get the dangerously slow drivers, too, doing their best to cause disaster by spewing blue smoke and creeping along in the right hand lane (or even the left hand lane) at 20 km/hr.  They often have no working rear lights and sometimes no reflectors.  The entire rear end of the car may be made of duct tape.
            Almost nobody uses signal lights to indicate their intentions.  If anything they use signal lights to distract you --  by leaving the left one on, for example, all the way from Sidon and then suddenly, without warning, swerving to the right across three lanes of traffic to take an exit.  The only light drivers here are fond of using is the headlights high-beam, which they will flash at you impatiently if you are in the left hand lane and don’t get out of their way quickly enough as they approach from behind.
            I saw two men sprinting for their lives across the highway, nearly getting themselves squashed to smithereens, about 200 meters away from a bridge they might have used to cross safely.  It’s been years since a sight like that has surprised me.  It’s how pedestrians cross busy highways everywhere in the Middle East.  I don’t know whether they don’t understand the danger or don’t care. 
            The motorcycles doing wheelies were driven by young men in jeans and t-shirts, the hair on their helmetless heads whipping crazily  in the wind.  Each bike carried a passenger.  As the driver of the closest bike noticed us staring at him he grinned, moved closer to our vehicle and put one leg sexily (or so he must have fancied) on the upper portion of the machine, the better to impress us. His passenger clung on desperately, his face and its expression disappointingly obscured from our view.
            Nothing about this was unusual.  You see it all the time here and no Lebanese person would think it worth mentioning.  I don’t even think it’s worth mentioning, except that I am.
           

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Fart



            It came to my attention late last night that a fart which is somewhat of a legend in our family is being falsely accredited to me.
            Now, I’m sorry to you people who have found me through the expat blog site and came here expecting some useful information on Lebanon. I’ll be back in Beirut in a few days and promise to share more examples of my inability to adjust to Lebanese life. Today’s blog is about clearing my good name.
            It started last night when Theo made a Thai stir-fry and the smell of it settled in the bedroom Theo and I share (she has been with us here in Newfoundland since M and Dude and my in-laws left).  We opened all the windows in the house while she was cooking but the smell of fried onions and peanut sauce, instead of blowing out into the brisk, fishy air of Conception Bay, collected in our bedroom with a kind of solid resolution and plans to spend the night.
            The windows in the bedroom were wide open so there’s no reason why the stir-fry air should have pooled there.  I can’t explain the phenomenon scientifically.  Maybe there was some kind of thermal inversion going on.  All I know is that when I went in to get ready for bed I was surprised by how strong the smell was and called out a comment about it to Theo, who was in the bathroom washing her face.
            Hardly were the words out of my mouth when I heard a thundering in the hall and there was Theo, nostrils twitching and an expression of alarm on her face.
            “Good god,” she cried, “you weren’t kidding. It stinks to high heaven.  Are those windows open as far as they’ll go?”
            Without waiting for an answer she fell on the nearest one and cranked it, rocking wildly, to the limits of its range.  Then she grabbed her pyjama top which had been hanging by a hook in the wall and began fanning the air furiously with it. “Quick, get the hall door open, it might create a cross breeze.”
            “Geez, it’s not that bad,” I said, standing in the middle of the room idly scratching a black-fly bite. “We probably won’t even notice the smell once we’ve been in our beds a few minutes.”
            She shot me a withering look.  “Says the person with no nose.”
            “No nose! Hey, now, I happen to have a very sensitive nose.  It’s just that compared to yours it’s nothing more than a fleshy out-pouching on my face.  You don’t have a human nose.  What you’ve got is the olfactory super sponge of a sniffer dog.”
            “I can’t help it.  I just experience smells very strongly.”
            “I know.  I vaguely recall the eight thousand times this sort of thing has happened before.”
            “It’s not just that I experience smells more strongly -- they can actually make me feel sick. You want to help me fan or what?”
            “You should get a job in the airport.”
            “I think this fanning is helping.”
            “Or in a perfume factory.”
            “At least, I hope it’s helping.  There’s no way I’m sleeping in a peanut sauce cloud all night.”
            I sat down on the bed. “Say, it has never occurred to me before to ask you if you experience fart smells more strongly than a normal person. A packed elevator must be hell for you.”
            She eyed me wildly. “Of course.  You have no idea.  I don’t even take elevators if I can help it for that reason.”
            “Hmm.” I mused. “Have you ever tried customizing some  sort of charcoal air filters to fit up your nose? Though you wouldn’t want to be smell-impaired all the time.  Like if there was a gas leak in the house or something.”
            Theo stopped fanning and took a rest in the chair. “That reminds me.  Remember the story of the Gas Leak Fart?”
            “Remember it? It’s only the most famous fart in our family history.”
            “Yeah, well, when we had the family get-together at my place last month I overheard it being retold.”
            “Oh yeah?  Well, I certainly never get tired of hearing it.”
            “Well, me too, but the thing is, this time the story had changed a little.”
            “Well, stories do that over time.  As long as the essence of the story remains intact I guess it doesn’t matter.”
            Theo hesitated. “Maybe, but in this case the starring role had, er, undergone a replacement.”
            “The starring role . . . now wait just a minute, what are you getting at and why are you looking at me with that weird expression?”
            “Oh dear. What I'm trying to say is the latest version of the story has you in the starring role.”
           
            I think I may have fainted a little.  Theo kept talking for a few minutes but I only heard a rushing in my ears.  When I came to my senses I was able to question her precisely regarding the identity of the orator of the story and, most critically, who was in the audience.  I demanded to know why Theo hadn’t stepped in and set the record straight on my behalf (she only shrugged and said that everyone seemed to be enjoying it so much that she hated to interrupt).
         When I learned that the audience included our brother’s fairly-new-to-our-family wife I jerked straight up in bed, demanding my lap top be brought so that an email to my sister-in-law could be dispatched immediately.
            “On second thought,” I said, “I don’t need to write an email.  I’ve decided to do one better.  I’ll write a blog about it; it’ll reach more people that way.  Who knows how long that story has been circulating in its present format?”

            So here is the story of The Gas Leak Fart. Some details have been changed to protect the identity of the farter, though I would like him/her to know that allowing the story to be spread at my expense when they might have stepped up and set the record straight is not something I’m prepared to forgive in a hurry.
            On a cold December evening some years ago a group of people met as they did every Tuesday in a community hall off a lonely country road in Alberta.  They had come to learn French and the instructor was an elegant little Frenchwoman named Cecile.
            My dear blood relation, whom for the purposes of this story I shall call Gassy, was in attendance that night and eager to learn more of the romantic language he admired so much.  He was keen to better himself and had enrolled in the class with the belief that a little French would add poise and a certain je ne sais quoi to his character.
            It was – 25 degrees Celsius that night and the old, wood-floor community hall billowed heat through vents from the forced air furnace in the basement.
            It was cosy inside and the students chatted and laughed to each other as they took their seats and waited for Madame Cecile to begin the lesson.
            But poor Gassy was distracted by a faint rumbling and gurgling in his abdominal region. A spasm of pain caused him to wince and for his friend to ask if everything was all right.
            “Oh, I’m fine,” Gassy said, “I think I just ate too much at dinner.”
            He had eaten too much, that was true, but what he didn’t tell his friend was that he’d devoured half a bag of assorted dried fruit after dinner. 
            Madame Cecile began the lesson and Gassy focused his attention on learning how to ask for cheese in a shop.
            The shifting movements in his gut increased alarmingly and Gassy bitterly reflected that it was all his mother’s fault: she never allowed candy in the house and so an after-dinner sweet craving had led him in desperation to the bag of dried fruit.
            He began to feel hot and looked around the room to see if anyone else looked hot, too.  He might ask Madame Cecile if they could turn the heat down.
            He felt he had to get up and move around to settle his abdomen and had just decided to excuse himself when Madame Cecile announced that she had a nice treat for them all. They were going to try some traditional French folk dancing in the empty side of the hall where she had a stereo set up.
            Gassy was enormously relieved.  A little moving around was just what his tempestuous belly needed to sort itself out.  Sitting still in a hard chair was no good when one was trying to accommodate rapidly re-hydrating fruit. 
            The students assembled in front of the little stereo and Madame Cecile, very straight and correct in her posture, demonstrated the first steps of the dance. She turned on the music and the students began, clumsily, to try the steps.
            Gassy flinched as another cramp seized his abdomen.  He imagined the prunes and apricots swelling and pushing against his intestinal wall and knew that something was going to have to give soon. 
         And a few moments later he felt movement in the lowest portions of his interior, warning him that the gas build up was getting close to blowing the pressure relief valve.
            An evening French class wasn’t the ideal place to expel excess gas but at least the hall was very big and had a high ceiling.  The odor was sure to be lost in the voluminous interior of the building.
            He decided to hold it in until he could move to the fringes of the group and inconspicuously point himself away from the others. Of course, this was the sort of reasoning that had got Gassy into trouble before.  Anyone with dried fruit experience should know that you don’t waste time once the pressure gauge needle is in the red zone. 
            Just then Madame Cecile called the class to a halt while she demonstrated the dance again, adding a few more steps this time.  One of the students kept asking Madame Cecile questions while Gassy shifted his weight from foot and foot and groaned, “Come on, oh come on.”  
            At last the students were on the move again, shuffling in lines from left to right and Gassy found a perfect opportunity to ‘crop-dust’ -- releasing gas in a swathe across the back of the hall as the music and clattering of feet safely covered any noises.  Not that there was any appreciable noise; Gassy could tell that this flatulence was of the silent but deadly variety. 
            Gassy felt immediately better after the release and hopped nimbly over the wooden floor, putting maximum distance between himself and the drop zone.  He doubted the others would even notice the smell but he was a firm believer that discretion is the better part of valour.
            He had just reached the other side of the group and was preparing to concentrate on the dance steps when the smell hit him.  It was an eye-watering, sulphurous stench of singular robustness.  For a few seconds he was genuinely confused.  The potency of the odour at such a distance from the drop zone was incredible.  Maybe it wasn’t his fart.  Maybe it was a tragic coincidence and someone on the ‘safe’ side of the room had slipped a juicy one out just as Gassy crossed over.  But tempting as it was to hope, Gassy knew it wasn’t true.  He recognised his own flatus as surely as a mother recognises her own child.
            It didn’t take long for the rest of the group to react to the smell.  One by one they drew to a standstill and turned their heads this way and that, some in confusion, others voicing immediate accusations to their friends beside them.  
            Gassy noticed that Madame Cecile had stopped dancing, too, and was sniffing the air with an expression of concern on her face.  He watched in horror as she marched over to  the tape player and turned it off, clapping her hands to silence the chattering students.
            “Class,” she said, “I don’t want anyone to panic but I suspect there is a gas leak in this building. I may need to call the gas company.”
            There was an excited babble of voices.  Gassy heard a man say they’d better not dance anymore because he’d heard of gas explosions being caused by the friction under a person’s shoe.
            Then a girl said, “Um, not to be rude or anything but it kind of smells like a fart to me.”
            “Me too,” said someone else.
            “No way,” said a young woman who was always showing up late to class. “No fart smells that strong and I ought to know.”
            “It smells more like sulphur than flatulence to me,” said Madame Cecile, “and I’m really not comfortable carrying on here until I’ve spoken to the gas company.  Please return quietly to the tables and wait there while I go into the back room to use the telephone.”
            The students did as they were told, Gassy’s emotions in a ragged state.  He knew that the right thing to do would be to follow Madame Cecile to the back room and once there, quietly explain the situation.  But as his eyes followed her trim little figure and perfectly coiffed hair moving away down the hall he knew he could never do it.
            It seemed to take a long time.  Gassy tried to join in the debate going on around him about whether it was a fart or a natural gas leak but couldn’t seem to drag his attention away from the back room where Madame Cecile was speaking to the gas company.

            At last she appeared in the doorway and stood quite still a moment before lifting her chin and walking purposefully back to her students. Everyone stopped speaking and looked at her expectantly.
            “Class, I have spoken to the gas company and they have assured me that there cannot possibly be a gas leak in this building.” she said.
            “How can they know that just over the phone?” someone asked.
            “Because,” Madame Cecile said with an almost imperceptible shudder, “they have informed me that there is no natural gas service in this area.”