Beirut Off the Beaten Path Tips by malasli

When you see the immaculately clean streets, the flowers growing in between avenues on those islands near the corniche you realize: Someone is doing some serious cleaning and gardening here. At night, I saw a guy who looked pretty South Indian to me do some sweeping: Bingo, he was from Tamil Nadu. Another day I chatted with a homesick Sri Lankan maid, who was about to go to a photoshop to send her little daughter and family at home her photos. She hadn’t seen her kid for 3 years. Her sister had been hospitalized because of the Tsunami disaster. These people come to Lebanon to make and save the money they otherwise never would—like 100 Dollars a month, which is an okay live-in housekeeper salary in the Middle East, if you don’t have any other expenses. (“Normal” Beirutis live on salaries more comparable to Western standards). They both didn’t look very happy—Think about the likely status of Hindus and Buddhists “multiple Gods and idolatry” (even though you find statues of “Mary-in-a-birdcage”, just like Shiva &Co. in India, at every corner) in a relatively modern, though predominantly monotheistic country doing the lowest work.

The Sri Lankan and I wanted to stay in touch, but when I gave her my home number—she said she didn’t do e-mail—it turned out she had thought I lived there. Later I read some articles about the situation of live-in maids: Pretty scary, if you ended up with a loony boss.

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Reminiscent of 9-11, there is a place where you are welcome to pay your respect to the murdered ex-prime and his bodyguards and the nurse, buried right in the city center, a place that is sheltered under a tent and has an exhibition about the reconstruction of some of Beirut’s buildings for which the former prime minister aid out of his own private pocket, near the cafes. The victims are buried in the center not because they died there—they died closer to Ain Al Mresse, the corniche area, but because the former prime minister helped to rebuild the city center and hung out there a lot.

When I went with my new friend, they still had (some…) of the silver footsteps glued to the ground leading to the restaurant where he took his last meal. I didn’t take a photo of the hole torn into the ground, near the Regis, out of respect—hated the tourists getting thrills out of ground zero—but you’ll see some Beirutis slow down in their cars or stop just to memorize the people who died. The impact was so great that it shattered many windows of nearby buildings

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