Beirut birthday

Birthdays are always a little bit strange. There's definitely an element of "hey, look at me!" that feels just a little unseemly...rather akin to when one is, say, writing a blog about her travels. Birthdays abroad are even stranger creatures, because generally you're with a group of people whom you don't know particularly well and there's artificial pressure for the gaeity and merry-making.

That being said, my 30th birthday in Lebanon was fantastic. It was touch and go there for a bit...the karma gods must have gotten wind of my plans to "call in sick" for my Saturday classes so that I could just stay in Beirut and actually made me sick. (side note: I teach Monday-Thursday and Saturday. I have Fridays and Sundays off. Two sabbaths in a row is what makes Judeo-Christian or Judeo-Muslim countries work. Muslim-Christian sabbaths? Not so compatible.) Luckily, my father had plied me with antibiotics before the trip, and so I was able to treat myself immediately and only felt sick for one and a half days. On Friday (my actual birthday) I came down to Beirut for a walk along the Corniche (a beautiful seaside path that curls around the city) and dinner with Lily and Trevor and headed back up to the Chouf at a very responsible hour as is befitting my newly acquired maturity that comes with living for three decades.

Saturday, I taught my class and slogged through the torrential downpour to my friend Amal's house in Bakleen. Amal is Sheikh Sami's assistant and an all-around amazing woman. She and her family (her mother, her sister-in-law Houda who speaks better English than I do, despite never having left the Chouf, her niece Gigi, and her brother) made Brazilian beans and rice and a pineapple-pistachio birthday cake, and we sat in their very cozy kitchen and chatted. I left from their house to go to Beirut, where I met Sarah, Lily, Tevor, James, Emma, and Rena for dinner at Le Chef, which serves cheap and delicious "working man" food. For those of you who are into this sort of thing, this is the one restaurant where Anthony Bourdain got to eat before he was evacuated in 2006. For those of you who are not into that sort of thing, sorry for wasting your time. Several bottles of wine later, we ended up in Hamra at a series of bars. There Trevor and I invented a drink (a variation on the "car bomb" in which a shot of Arak is dropped into a pint of Almaza beer) whose name I shall not repeat, as it is very far outside the realm of political good taste. Also, I am aware that 95% of my readership is family. I promise that nothing occured which would bring shame to any of you.

Which brings me to today, day 2 of my fourth decade of life. The rain is gone (but threatening to come back), my head is on my shoulders, and I'm ready to go.