Weekend in Beirut

Whoa! Busy few weeks there. With political turmoil, the pre-Ramadan work crunch, and the departure of several dear colleagues, I've been a busy girl. On top of it all, I can't seem to shake an unusually long stretch of insomnia, which has taken taken quite a toll on my productivity these last few days. Tonight I've got an early date with my bed and some complex survey analysis methods reading (to help me fall asleep), but before that I wanted to post some pictures from my recent trip to Lebanon last month. 

My dear friend H. (of the Pink House Girls) moved to Beirut shortly before I landed in Cairo and we have been trying to get together for about a year now. We finally had a matching free weekend in May and I booked a ticket for a mini reunion and a chance to see the city that had been described to me as the "Miami of the Middle East". 

The weekend before my trip, I had a minor aesthetic disaster at a salon here, and a friend who occasionally works in Beirut told me I could certainly get it fixed there. Lebanese women take their looks seriously. I saw more signage for plastic surgery centers and salons than traffic directionals. Apparently, its somewhat of a status symbol for girls (and guys!) to walk around post nose-job or face lift with bandages on display. Its such a prominent part of the culture that H. has a friend in Beirut who is actually doing her anthropology dissertation on plastic surgery in Lebanon. While I didn't get any new facial features, I did leave with a much more natural hair color. 

We hadn't seen each other in over a year (in which time a lot had happened), so we had quite a bit of catching up to do! We spent the entire weekend eating, talking, drinking, and sightseeing. We took a day to see Byblos, a town with Phoenician ruins on the sea and had an amazing lunch and conversation over a glass of perfectly chilled white wine. 

Moules frites - the perfect lunch :)

The ruins at Byblos reminded me a lot of the ruins in Tulum, Mexico. Is it just me?

Byblos

Tulum

Byblos

Tulum

 I also got to spend time with the sister of a very dear Austin friend, who is studying at AUB. She and H. have gotten to be buddies over the last year - I love how the world is such a small place!

Also, just needed to include this evidence that AUB is trying to one-up UT's tower. This is the main gate of the campus.

H. has promised to visit me in the land of not quite right if things stay stable. We currently have no parliament, no constitution and a shameless military council rewriting the rules in their favor as fast as they can. By tomorrow we should have an unofficial declaration of the winner. The official count shouldn't take much longer than Tuesday seeing as how initial reports cited turnouts of 5-7% in most districts. 

I don't have the energy to delve in politics tonight, and I'm afraid most of Egypt is in the same, slowly sinking boat. 

Actually, the revolution WILL be televised

Tomorrow, one of the main components of the Egyptian revolution - the trial of former president Hosny Mubarak - will (supposedly) come to an end as a verdict is delivered live on state TV. I wasn't able to find a time, but regardless I'm willing to bet a majority of Egyptians will be glued to their televisions tomorrow waiting for the announcement. Of course, the trial has been delayed so many times at this point that nothing is for certain - but this time I have a feeling they'll stick to schedule.

The timing of the verdict hardly coincidental. A week ago, Egypt's first ever free and democratic elections were held, and the outcome was disheartening. The runoff election, scheduled for mid-June, will pit Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the Mubarak era and a proponent of the current military regime (SCAF), against Mohammed Morsi, a conservative Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood. Mind you, at the outset of elections the Brotherhood had promised not to put field a candidate. In the end, they put forth not one, but two candidates - Khairat el-Shater, who was disqualified due to a recent prison term, and Morsi, who was only supposed to be a backup.

Most Egyptians I know with feel backed into a corner. Its come down to a choice between the old regime and an experiment in Islamist democracy. Those afraid of change, Egpyt's Christian Copts, and secularists may feel that Shafiq is the lesser of the two evils; revolutionaries and hardline Islamic Salafis (whose candidate was disqualified in an ironic birther controversy) may decide it's better to swallow their contempt for the Brotherhood and vote Morsi.

Interestingly, Alexandria went to a socialist candidate - Hamdeen Sabahi - and in Cairo, the very moderate ex-Brotherhood Aboul Fotouh prevailed. However, 60% of Egypt's population lives outside these two major metropolitan areas, and tend to be more conservative than their urban compatriots. See this fantastic map (linked from Arabist.net - a great site for Middle East politicking and commentary) as a visual representation - click on the governorates for a breakdown of votes.

I'm placing my money on  SCAF offering up Mubarak as the sacrificial lamb and ensuring that a guilty verdict is delivered, with a sentence of life in "prison" (don't delude yourself - he won't actually be wasting away with the rest of Egypt's political prisoners). This may soften the people's attitudes toward Shafiq for the upcoming election. SCAF knows that an majority-Islamist parliament (which already exists after this years elections), coupled with a Brotherhood president, is likely a formula for the end of their unchecked power and influence.

As an aside: On the way to work every morning, I pass by the burned-out shell of the National Democratic Party's headquarters. (NDP was Mubarak's political party). It was torched during the revolution in January 2011, and now stands as an eyesore on the Nile.

Unfortunately, the headquarters stands right next to the Egyptian Museum, which houses priceless Pharaonic artifacts which are no doubt susceptible to, say, a controlled demolition of a neighboring building. I'm wondering if thats why it has yet to be torn down..any engineers have a clue about how this could be accomplished with minimal impact on the mummies next door?