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.